The Fellowship of the Ring

To celebrate Nanowrimo (because, of course, you're supposed to read a lot of books to help you write) I'm re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring.

I'm one of that approximately 25 year generation that did not have the visualization of Tolkien's world through Rankin-Bass' The Hobbit and Return of the King or Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings or Peter Jackson's mighty trilogy in the first decade of 2000. All of Tolkien's world lived in my head, so I got to come to the whole thing fresh.

In re-reading the book, what I'm captivated by is how good of a writer Tolkien really is. Even with the fine adaptation of Jackson's (which generally held the closest to the book), Tolkien's vision as expressed through his writing far excels anything that the movie visually shows.

But the strength of Tolkien's writing, as I journey with him again, is how much of his writing is dialogue, the interaction between characters, or the descriptive quality of the Fellowship's travel across Middle Earth. Tolkien paints what he knows, especially in the Shire: much like C.S. Lewis, his descriptions recall an English countryside which even in his time was rapidly disappearing. You can see the woods and hear the streams as you read along with them. Watching Frodo develop from a Shire-bound hobbit to one who will self sacrifice, or the growth of the courage of Sam and Pippin- these are things which are not overt, but subtly happen over the course of the book - the hallmark of a master writer.

In reading again, I feel sorrow - sorrow for those who thing The Lord of The Rings is only a movie series, or even an online game. In thinking that this is all there is - battles, Orcs, magic, with some travel thrown in - they miss the greater whole, a work by a man who studied the English language all his life and uses it masterfully.