Book review: Lord of the Rings

At last! Having read this Quite Often (last in summer 2020, this time finishing in May 2021) I finally review it.

First, I have to point out one of its flaws: the all-too-common one I discuss in Divine Endurance: that of characters-accepting-their-fate. In this case there is at least half an excuse, in that - although it is never said explicitly - there is some external Plan from the One. And yet... all during the Third Age the elves attempt nothing new; they are content to sit within their little forests and just let time pass by. In some sense, in the sense of all that matters of what you do is what carries forward into the future, they might almost as well not be there for most of that time. She seemed no longer perilous or terrible, nor filled with hidden power. Already she seemed to him, as by men of later days Elves still at times are seen: present and yet remote, a living vision of that which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time. Why have the elves lost their get-up-and-go, their oomph, their lust for life?

The good points: it is a good story, well told. It survives re-reading well. This is because it was slowly written by an intelligent well-read person who had pre-written a background (the obessiveness of that becomes clearer in the appendices, where we have for example Short names such as Sam Tom, Tim, Mat were common as abbreviations of actual Hobbit-names, such as Tomba, Tolma, Matta, and the like. But Sam and his father Ham were really called Ban and Ran. These were shortenings of Banazir and Ranugad, originally nicknames, meaning 'half-wise, simple' and 'stay at-home'; but being words that had fallen out of colloquial use they remained as traditional names in certain families. I have therefore tried to preserve these features by using Samwise and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient English samwis and hámfæst which corresponded closely in meaning) . The "magic" is interesting because so rarely explicit... the ringwraiths, for example, just spread fear; they don't cast firebolts or suchlike. Saruman can daunt or persuade, but this is just a normal characteristic, carried to magical extremes.

Quibble: the Ents would like to find the Entwives. Well, why don't they go and have a look? They've had hundreds, nay thousands of years of relative peace in which to do it. Elsewhere we encounter the same bizarre lack of desire to travel. In the story, this works well for the travellers, who can pass on news; but it makes all the people they visit seem parochial.

Quibble: how do people know that the chief Ringwraith will not be killed by the hand of man? The mechanism for this prophecy, and others, is unclear.

I'm not sure how much to object to stuff about "blood"; the Numenoreans in Gondor have declined, having mixed their blood with lesser men. Here's a description: The grey figure of the Man, Aragorn son of Arathorn, was tall, and stern as stone, his hand upon the hilt of his sword; he looked as if some king out of the mists of the sea had stepped upon the shores of lesser men. And this is how things work: great men of renown have special power, by virtue of themselves and that renown. Or All told the Dúnedain were thus from the beginning far fewer in number than the lesser men among whom they dwelt and whom they ruled, being lords of long life and great power and wisdom. So you could call this meritocracy: they rule because they are better and fitted for it; in the book this is true; in real life, it's what they want you to think.

Quibble: Saruman's attack on Helm's Deep makes little sense to me (but see here for a different view). S has sent out his Orcs against Rohan; at first, to the Fords which are lightly garrisoned. Where will these orcs go after the fords? To Medusheld, of course - that's where Theoden and the Rohirrim are. As it happens, unpredictably, T rides forth - but the orc host doesn't know this. T happens to go to Helm's Deep, and the orcs go there, though if T hadn't gone there, it would have been a pointless trip for the orcs to an outlying nearly unmanned outwork.

Lastly (because this is in no way an attempt at a complete review) I like the way it ends by trailing off. The story ends, in a way, with the destruction of the ring. Then it ends with the feast of praise. Then it ends with them leaving Gondor. Then it ends with the scouring of the Shire. Finally it ends with Sam coming home. But then we get the life and death of Aragorn. And then what happened after. Finally I think it actually ends with Legolas and Gimli. This is all well done.

Re-read: 2024/04

I think I find the absence of religion striking. Perhaps it is because there are genuine supernatural powers known in the world: certainly the wizards, but also to some extent (from the hobbits' point of view) the elves; so they feel no need to invent a religion? And yet we know (from the Silmarillion) that there is a genuine God who created the world; and there are powers (Maya) some of whom some of the elves must have met. Yet no-one feels any urge to worhip (aka, seek favours of) any of these powers.

Why are the elves so wonderful? They're allowed to be fair of face, and graceful, and so on, but these are mere physical characteristics; and being long-lived they may well also have become wise. But why are they not-evil? When the Fellowship is in Lothlorien, the elves are practically magical, and we are told there is no evil in Galadriel. I have an answer: because they have no desires. There is no striving in the elves, no lust for power or glory or anything really; the great years of Feanor are in the past, they live quietly, they do nothing. "and into ashes all my lust" as Marvell put it. THere's some references to this in Tolkein letter 154.