The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is the renowned and beloved fantasy of the 20th Century, a carefully constructed epic filled with elegiac romance, sprawling imaginary vistas, and pert memorable characterizations. I've read it a few times over the course of my lifetime, but I might have to say this most recent venture to Middle-Earth might be the best yet. I read the saga in a single volume edition given to me by a good friend decades ago. It's a robust version, known in the circles as the "Red Edition". Let me discuss the book though as it is most commonly presented, a trilogy of connected novels.
(Jack Gaughan did all three of the covers for the Unauthorized Ace Editions)
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first installment and is comprised of "Two Books". The first introduces our Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck, as well reintroducing the enigmatic Gandalf. This saga was begun when Tolkien was not yet committed to an epic and so this early part of the story feels the most like The Hobbit. A group of doughty little people are on a mission and encounter an array of threats as they wend their way through the often-bewildering and sometimes dangerous countryside. As the story develops the seriousness of the mission becomes ever more evident as our heroes are pursed by Black Riders, strange magical creatures in service to Sauron, the Lord of Mordor. They are assisted at different times by the likes of the peculiar Tom Bombadil and later the mysterious man called Strider. Later a "fellowship" of Hobbits, Men, Elves, and Dwarves join forces to help destroy the one thing Sauron craves more than anything, the One Ring which will give him absolute power over Middle Earth.
In The Two Towers, the "fellowship" of the previous novel has fallen apart and our Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee must work by themselves to find an entry into the deadly land of Mordor and take the One Ring to Mount Doom where they can destroy it once and for all. They get the help of Gollum, a strange, debased creature who once had the ring in his keeping before it came to Bilbo. The rest of our cast are likewise searching for one another. The other two Hobbits, Merry and Pippin fall into the hands of Orcs and later meet up with the enigmatic Treebeard, an Ent, one of the oldest races on Middle-Earth. Strider, Legolas, and Gimli search for these two but find an old ally returned from the grave. We meet the Riders of Rohan, a great warrior people and we go with them to Helm's Deep where they and some of our cast fight a great battle against an army of Orcs sent by Saruman, a great and powerful figure who also vies for the One Ring.
The Return of the King wraps up this grand epic. Our two Hobbit heroes continue their quest to Mount Doom and give the reader a grim tour through a dark and depraved territory. Strider is revealed to be the next king of Gondor and that makes our villain Sauron quite upset who then sends his vast army to besiege the venerable city. The scale of the conflict has been steadily growing throughout the saga and reaches its climax here with a terrible war that even if won will mean little if the One Ring survives to find its way back into the clutches of the necromancer Sauron. The many characters who have been introduced in the novels get their moments to shine and the story winds down to its conclusion. After all the hubbub our Hobbit heroes find that their home the Shire has need of heroes as well as enemies have used the war to plunder. The Hobbits, having been tempered by adventure, danger and war, must fight again for their homes.
(Barbara Remington)
It is much different reading the novel as Tolkien intended, as a single book. The trilogy we know is a result of the limitations of publishing which balked at issuing a book so massive and opted instead in the early 50's to bring out the saga in three mostly annual volumes, each given a memorable title of its own. I've always preferred
The Fellowship of the Ring, but this reading with the focus on a different structure has given me new admiration for
The Two Towers and
The Return of the King.
(The Brothers Hildebrandt)
If each is seen as a single volume, there is almost inherently an expectation of a rise and fall within the narrative structure. That exists in abundance in the first part, the part of the story which introduces the majority of the characters and the milieu. Those characters follow a story arc which sees them become aware and finally resolved, transformed from bystanders into legitimate heroes. The depth of detail used to build this world, one so very similar to our own, intended to become our own after the passage of many millennia is stunning. Tolkien took a lifetime to create an environment fit for his created languages, and then he chose to tell a grand sweeping tale of heroism and sacrifice in that environment.
(Frank Frazetta)
That said, neither of the other latter volumes really has a fair chance to recreate the arc seen so wonderfully in the first book, and for the most part don't. But seeing the story as one complete yarn, the latter stages of the epic come more fully into focus and build on the charming and sometimes quaint beginning with robust full-blooded heroic adventure on an every-increasing scale. This sweep works when the story is understood as a single narrative and not three individual ones. This unintended bias ingrained in my own understanding of the tale by its marketing, has limited to some small extent my appreciation of the latter stages. Until now.
Despite the clever marketing by Ballantine Books and others, when I'm thinking of
The Red Book of the Westmarch in the future, it will always be one narrative and not three.
Now it's time to tackle The Silmarillion.
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