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The works of J.R.R. Tolkien have had a place in my life for as long as I can remember. They’ve been a source of inspiration and escape, as well as a light in dark places, when all other lights went out. I’ve come to a point where their meaning to me and the ideas that they evoke simply cannot be contained anymore: the only thing left to do is to write.

 

It all began with Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy. Being just the right age of 12 when I saw them for the first time, the music, the magic, the triumph of good over evil captivated me before I even had the words or insight to understand why. It became an annual tradition to watch the movies, and despite the 11+ hour extended edition runtime, I tried my hardest to show them to everyone that would listen to me. I can’t place exactly when, but some time during high school I read Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings for the first time - and I was greatly disappointed. This was not even close to the same kind of story! The hobbits were taking even longer to get out of the shire, I’m pretty sure I skipped through the absurdity of Tom Bombadil, and when the action finally was picking up, they reached Rivendell and I had to slog through about 40 pages of people talking about lore. "Who cares!" Is what my high-schooler brain was thinking. When do we get to the good parts? Why are all these elves dancing and singing poetry instead of being badass fighters? How could there be so much content in here that seems to just be idle filler? With the exception of Gandalf, the major characters that I loved weren’t the same at all, especially my personal favorite from the movies: Legolas. I just got this vaguely loose feeling of the “cool” characters in the story being a weaker version of themselves from the movies. I had come up against a common issue with adaptation in that it is always different from how the reader imagines it themselves: only my experience was reversed having read the books second. Not having the insight to understand what I was feeling, and that difference didn’t inherently mean worse, I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again until later in life. This was like a book for English class, and the movies were obviously better.

Fast forward to college and I was determined to try the books again. I had just finished up an intro course on the classics where we spent about a month reading the Iliad and comparing it to the movie adaptation with Brad Pitt. This was another case of a movie adaptation that I had enjoyed for the action sequences and visuals, but this time when I got to the book with its long drawn out descriptions (Homeric catalogs are a whole different animal) I was also learning about real history and mythology in tandem. The idea that Troy from the legends could have existed in real life was fascinating. Was it a real place? Who would have lived there? Where would it have been located? I was learning long-lost lore from real life and loving it. Needless to say I was primed and ready to attempt The Lord of the Rings again. This time with a completely different mindset: I was in it for the lore. I wanted to learn about the love story that Aragorn was singing early in Fellowship of the Ring, I wanted to understand Gandalf’s speech to the Balrog as he defies it, and I wanted to know what exactly was up with Saruman, Gandalf and “wizards” in general. So I started reading the books again and slowed way way down. I did my best to shove out the images of the movies that would pop up in my mind for character descriptions. I tried to forget the plot and flow of events as I thought I knew it and go with the flow of the slower pace that Tolkien was setting. And when any character started talking about the lore I soaked it up. The council of Elrond was no longer tedious, but an absolute goldmine of information, and the stern face of Hugo Weaving was slowly replaced by that of the original Elrond who was as “kind as summer”.

 

It took me quite a long time to finish the books. I would often have to go back and re-read certain pages 2-3 times because I kept slipping into the scenes as the movie had drawn them out rather than going off of Tolkien’s descriptions coupled with my own imagination. The result was incredibly rewarding. Tolkien takes so much time and care to set the scene for you, but the work to envision everything is ultimately on the reader. I found myself flipping back and forth between the maps in the back of the book and building a whole image in my head for each scene. What the landscape looked like down to the last hill and rock slowly formed in my mind's eye, and when the scenes were finally at their climaxing moments, it felt like all the little details that had been set into place were all put there for a reason. The act of envisioning the story itself felt more integral to my enjoyment than reading about what would happen next. The books are so full of information and feigned history that they take on a feeling of real legend. The characters and races of middle earth are so flushed out with a history and context that had been completely missing from the movies. Denethor was no longer an evil crazy king, Faramir was no longer weak, Aragorn was not reluctant to announce himself as king, and Saruman’s true prowess was his voice and ability for enchanting the minds of lesser beings. I was incredibly moved by the sense that the heroes of the story were not heroic because of their skills in battle, but because of the choices they made and the wisdom that guided them. It made faith and wisdom seem like the most badass traits you could possibly possess, rather than being able to charge down a horde of orcs or kill an Oliphaunt on your own. All the subtle details that made the books masterpieces, were all the things that the movies made it so easy to gloss over! Reading the books in this way required me to slow way way down, and was truly like discovering a completely new story -- one that moved me far more than the movies. And yet the movies are what captured me. The movies still move me deeply, I still watch them roughly once a year, and they still make me feel like I’m in the world of The Lord of the Rings. It’s just not Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson’s version is an incredible modernized take on the story and it absolutely deserves its place as the cultural icon that it is, but to truly understand and appreciate the original work, you still have to read the original work. Instead of one version of The Lord of the Rings, I now have two, and I’m all the better for it.

 

The primary story of The Lord of the Rings is just scratching the surface of what Tolkien created. The vast body of literature surrounding The Lord of the Rings ranges from a cosmology for Middle-Earth and an entire pantheon of gods, all the way down to the most mundane drafts of stories following sons of sons of daughters of sons of characters who would one day have a passing mention in The Lord of the Rings. His wider legendarium outlines the lore and history of a world so detailed and meticulously thought out that it ends up feeling real. Yet none of these earlier stories are finished. They have been left “sketched”, and their incomplete nature lends itself to viewing them as a set of lost legends, the true version of which has been lost to history. I can’t help but feel that these stories are ripe for adaptations of all kinds, none of which will portray the story quite like Tolkien himself, but that can still evoke the same awe and provide the same escape and consolation of Faerie story that the professor was all about.

 

It would seem to me that Tolkien saw his writing as a process of uncovering a story that was already there, rather than inventing. He was inspired by the myths and legends of our real world and he was moved by his spirituality and religious beliefs. He poured all this onto the page as he wrote and like a prism refracting light, the ideas that he drew from were inherently molded, shaped, and changed by passing through his own experiences and individuality on their way onto the paper. With this blog I wish to do a bit of recursive refraction, reflecting Tolkien’s stories through my own individual perception of them and experience with them. My writing will occasionally focus on adaptation of Tolkien’s works, for what is an adaptation if not someone else’s refraction? For me, there is no greater joy than continuing to interact with the professor’s works by engaging with other people’s interpretations of them. This is after all, what got me into Tolkien in the first place way back at age 12 when I first saw Peter Jackson’s interpretation and was completely oblivious to the true depth of what I was watching. I want to explore the ideas that Tolkien’s legendarium evokes from me, and what other people have tried to do with these same stories.