J.R.R. Tolkien
Il Signore degli Anelli

Plot

You all know the plot of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings": four hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Peregrine, and Meriadoc), aided by a mysterious knight (Strider), a dwarf (Gimli), an elf archer (Legolas), and a wizard (Gandalf) traverse Middle-earth (an island probably based on Ireland) to throw a cursed ring into a volcano and keep it away from the desire of the dark lord (Sauron), who wants it to increase his power even more. In the end, the good guys win, but there's always a price to pay.

Author

Tolkien was a professor in England.

His passion for ancient British legends and ancient languages led him to reinvent an alternative medieval period, with realistic characters (humans) and fantasy ones (wizards, elves, monsters in general, walking trees). There is also a strong influence of Mediterranean myths (some have said that Middle-earth and the hobbits could be Atlantis!), where, for example, the oliphants remind us of Hannibal and the African elephants.

It is precisely his passion for philology that explains how in this long novel there are also terms and a particular mix of languages that seem ancient but are actually invented.

Finally, Tolkien was very Catholic, which is unusual in England: his Catholicism led him to distinctly divide the good from the bad, and the whole story of Frodo and his friends can be seen as a journey of atonement and maturation. In particular, Frodo is a kind of sacrificial lamb, who through his journey removes the sins from Middle-earth and takes them upon himself, like Jesus or even Saint Francis.

Comment

I didn't like this book much, here I explain the ten reasons.

•1.       Too long and verbose: many episodes could be eliminated (like the moving forest), and halfway through it becomes boring, with all the battles.

•2.       Boring and useless insertions in strange languages.

•3.       Too many secondary characters that get confused with each other.

•4.       Too much chatter about knights, weapons, and loves. At school, they made us read Ariosto, which seems more original and also makes you laugh.

•5.       Characters are too generic: the good ones are good and the bad ones are really bad. In reality, there are many middle ways!

•6.       Not very exciting and very rhetorical: pages and pages to describe a situation. Synthesis is important! Maybe Tolkien dragged it out because he wrote as a hobby(t).

•7.       Very rushed and sensational ending, and also very simple. Evil is eliminated too quickly.

•8.       Too much insistence on magical thinking and supernatural and fantastic things. It is unclear if it's the man who changes things or the magic. Lack of clarity.

•9.       Lots of exaggeration about heroism and individuality. My teacher told us that in the 70s, when she was young, some young people invented "Hobbit camps" and imitated hobbit life even here in Italy, inspired by the book and the values it calls upon. In my opinion, heroism and individuality are fine, but you also need to be in company (but not with the ring)!

•10.     A lot of wasted effort: some say Tolkien intended to talk about current events (the bad guys would be the Nazis and the good guys the English). But I don’t understand why he invented this strange fantasy world and didn’t write a real novel.

Rating

2/5. A very demanding work and a very serious writer who, in my opinion, wasted his talent. He also invented a genre - fantasy - that was then poorly imitated.

My advice is to watch the three movies taken from the book and read something else.