Lord of the Rings #4

Well, I am delighted to say that I have finished Lord of the Rings - all 3 books, or indeed 6 books as I read them.

I'm not sure whether reading the three one after the other (without reading something else in the meantime) was the best way to do it - by the end of book 3, I was a bit bored of the whole orc/war/good/evil thing, but having said that, they hang together so much more as one big story, rather than three individual episodes.

So, some thoughts. As I think I've mentioned before, it took me a while to get over my Lord of the Rings prejudice, and admit that I was interested, and I have, overall, thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience. The world is convincing and well-constructed, the storyline moves along at a good pace, and there is a huge variety of character, events, and place. Essentially, I guess I'm saying that it is very well and compellingly written.

However, I'm continuing to discover how much my reading is driven by caring about the characters, and it seems that I only extend this to human beings!! I was very much involved in LOTR until the point that Frodo successfully destroys the ring (presuming that since everyone in the world other than me has seen the films, this won't be a spoiler for anyone else), and the compulsion that the story held was very much wanting to know whether they were successful in their mission. Once the ring had been destroyed, in my mind, mission accomplished, and I then struggled to finish the rest of the book, because I'd pretty much forgotten that the hobbits would need to get home again...I didn't mind whether they had a happy resolution to the story as I viewed them very much as vehicles for the Ring, rather than beings with a right to an ending themselves. This may be a reflection on the way I read - generally described as charging through to get to the end rather than pausing to absorb the detail. It also may be a positive reflection on Tolkien in that the strongest character in the trilogy is the ring itself, and everybody else is a means to an end.

One thing that I became slightly weary of by the end is the way that significance/fate is attached to almost every event - nothing just happened because it happened, it was all part of the grand plan. After the ring is destroyed and the darkness lifts, there are two weddings. These felt like a slightly superfluous attempt to bring human interest into the story, and they were written in such a way as to indicate that Tolkien felt he ought to include them but wasn't particularly interested. So, rather than there being a gradual development of any sort of romantic feeling, both relationships seemed to arise almost out of nowhere, but to be portrayed as the fulfilment of something that was meant to happen. I suppose it is possible to read something into it about the lifting of the darkness of the Dark Lord's influence, allowing love & positive relationships to flourish, but I can't help feeling that I'm reading more than was intended into it! I don't feel that I've described that very well, but read it and you will see what I mean.

I don't know if it was necessarily intended, but I couldn't help but notice some parallels to religious concepts in there - I'm not in any way suggesting that this is an extended metaphor like the Chronicles of Narnia, but the sense of spiritual oppression brought by the darkness/black riders/ring, and the impression that so many events were predestined had a strong religious flavour to it.

An 8 hour drive from Devon today is clouding both my memory of the books and my ability to type so I will leave it there. Onto something with people in it next, I think!