The Fellowship of the Ring
LC Class PR6039.032 L67 1954, vol.1 | | |
Followed by | The Two Towers |
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The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel[1] The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The action takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth. The book was first published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom. The volume consists of a foreword, in which the author discusses his writing of The Lord of the Rings, a prologue titled "Concerning Hobbits, and other matters", and the main narrative in Book I and Book II.
Scholars and critics have remarked the narrative structure of the first part of the volume, which involves five "Homely Houses", the comfortable stays alternating with episodes of danger. Different reasons for the structure have been proposed, including deliberate construction of a cosy world, laboriously groping for a story, and Tolkien's work habits, involving continual rewriting. Two major chapters, "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond", stand out from the rest in consisting not of a narrative of action centred on the Hobbits, but of exceptionally long flashback narrated by a wise old character.
The volume was in the main praised by reviewers and authors including W. H. Auden and Naomi Mitchison on its publication, though the critic Edmund Wilson attacked it in a review entitled "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!". The two flashback chapters have attracted scholarly discussion; Tolkien called "The Shadow of the Past" the "crucial chapter" as it changes the tone of the book, and lets both the protagonist Frodo and the reader know that there will be a quest to destroy the Ring. "The Council of Elrond" has been called a tour de force, presenting a culture-clash of the modern with the ancient.
Title and publication
Tolkien envisioned The Lord of the Rings as a single-volume work divided into six sections he called "books" along with extensive appendices. The original publisher decided to split the work into three parts.
Before the decision to publish The Lord of the Rings in three volumes was made, Tolkien had hoped to publish the novel in one volume, possibly also combined with The Silmarillion.[2] However, he had proposed titles for the individual six sections. Of the two books that comprise what became The Fellowship of the Ring the first was to be called The First Journey or The Ring Sets Out. The name of the second was The Journey of the Nine Companions or The Ring Goes South. The titles The Ring Sets Out and The Ring Goes South were used in the Millennium edition.[3]
Contents
The volume contains a prologue for readers who have not read The Hobbit, and background information to set the stage for the novel. The body of the volume consists of Book One: "The Ring Sets Out", and Book Two: "The Ring Goes South".
Prologue
The prologue explains that the work is "largely concerned with hobbits", telling of their origins in a migration from the east, their habits such as smoking "
Book I: The Ring Sets Out
Bilbo celebrates his eleventy-first (111th) birthday and leaves the Shire suddenly, passing the Ring to
Frodo sets out on foot, offering a cover story of moving to Crickhollow, accompanied by his gardener
They decide to try to shake off the Black Riders by cutting through the
The Hobbits reach the village of
Book II: The Ring Goes South
Frodo recovers in Rivendell under Elrond's care. Gandalf informs Frodo that the Black Riders are the Nazgûl, Men from ancient times enslaved by Rings of Power to serve Sauron. The Council of Elrond discusses the history of Sauron and the Ring. Strider is revealed to be Aragorn, the heir of Isildur. Isildur had cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand in the battle ending the Second Age, but refused to destroy it, claiming it for himself. The Ring had been lost when Isildur was killed, finally ending up in Bilbo's possession after his meeting with Gollum, described in The Hobbit. Gandalf reports that the chief wizard, Saruman, has betrayed them and is now working to become a power in his own right. Gandalf was captured by him, but escaped, explaining why he had failed to return to meet Frodo as he had promised.
The Council decides that the Ring must be destroyed, but that can be done only by sending it to the fire of
After a failed attempt to cross the
Galadriel's husband Celeborn gives the Fellowship boats, elven cloaks, and waybread (Lembas), and they travel down the
Structure
The volume contains three types of narrative structure, not found in the rest of the novel, that have attracted the notice of Tolkien scholars and critics. Firstly, the Hobbit protagonists, having set out on their adventures, repeatedly return to "Homely Houses", comfortable and safe places where they recuperate.[4][5][6] Secondly, Frodo many times confers and eats with an advisor (not necessarily in a "Homely House"), then makes a clumsy journey in the face of a danger, then encounters unexpected help.[7] Thirdly, the volume switches between action into two exceptionally long chapters of flashback narrative, both critically important for the novel as a whole.[4][5][6]
Frodo's five "Homely Houses"
Deliberately constructed
In 2001, in the
"Groping for a story"
Shippey had noticed the alternation at the start of The Lord of the Rings between moments of dangerous adventure and of recuperation. Rather than suggesting that Tolkien had constructed this pattern deliberately, he proposed four explanations of how Tolkien might naturally have created this sort of material. Shippey suggested firstly that the text gives the impression not of a moment of inspiration followed by a period of careful invention, but of a lengthy period of laborious invention, in search of some kind of inspiration. Tolkien would write and invent characters, places, and events. He would then naturally run into the complications that inevitably arise when different story-elements collide. These then led at last to an inspiration.[10]
Shippey comments that the work gave the impression that Tolkien had been "initially groping for a story and keeping himself going with a sort of travelogue".[4] In search of material, Tolkien indulged in "a sort of self-plagiarism",[10] repurposing and expanding his own earlier inventions from, for instance, the poem "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" which he had written in 1934. This gave him the characters Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow, and the Barrow-wight.[10] Tolkien's professional knowledge of philology, too, came to his aid, with careful concern for places and placenames, starting in the rather English Shire and then moving outside it. Finally, Tolkien allowed himself a measure of whimsical fun, describing the delicious meals the Hobbit protagonists were able to enjoy when each adventure was over, singing cheerful songs in the form of poems embedded in the text, describing the Hobbits playing about like schoolboys when a hot bath suddenly became available in Tom Bombadil's comfortable house, and most pleasurably, constructing humorous dialogue. Shippey comments that "Tolkien found it too easy, and too amusing, just to let the Hobbits chatter on." His friends had to tell him to cut back the Hobbit-talk.[4]
Critic | Proposed explanation | Implied writing method |
---|---|---|
Jenny Turner | Deliberate storytelling for "vulnerable people" | "Scary, safe again. Scary, safe again."[9] |
Tom Shippey | Laborious inventions in search of inspiration | Invent characters, places, events. Run into complications: find inspiration at last. |
Use any materials you wrote earlier | Expand old poems, develop characters mentioned in them (Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, the Barrow-wight). | |
Concern for places and placenames | Develop placenames in Bree) using philology .
| |
Whimsical fun | Describe meals in detail; have the characters sing songs, included in the text; let the hobbits "chatter on" and play exuberantly. |
Cycles and spirals
In
Shippey describes Miller's analysis as giving "a sense of cycles and spirals"[11] rather than a feeling of linear progression. Shippey suggests that these structures might have been "created in part by Tolkien's work habits, rewriting continually", in many small stages like waves of an incoming tide, "each one rolling a little further up the beach."[11]
Flashback chapters
Scholars have remarked that unlike the rest of The Lord of the Rings (which has an elaborately interlaced structure), all of The Fellowship of the Ring is told as a single thread with Frodo as the protagonist, with the exception of the two long flashback chapters, "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond". Those two chapters combine summaries of the history of the Ring, and quoted dialogue.[5] Further, they are similar in having a character – Gandalf or Elrond – recapitulate the past so as to explain the present situation.[6]
Book | Single narrative thread with Frodo as protagonist |
Flashback narrated by Gandalf or Elrond |
Importance |
---|---|---|---|
The Ring Sets Out | "A Long-expected Party" | ||
"The Shadow of the Past" | "the crucial chapter" (Tolkien);[12] "the vital chapter" (Shippey); defines the work's central plot; Frodo and the reader realise there will be a quest to destroy the Ring[13] | ||
10 more chapters | |||
The Ring Goes South | "Many Meetings" | ||
"The Council of Elrond" | Exceptionally long at 15,000 words; explains danger of the Ring; introduces the Fellowship members; defines the quest (rest of novel)[14]
| ||
8 more chapters |
Reception
Of the volume
The poet W. H. Auden wrote a positive review in The New York Times, praising the excitement and saying "Tolkien's invention is unflagging, and, on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next, The Fellowship of the Ring is at least as good as The Thirty-Nine Steps."[15] However, he said that the light humour in the beginning was "not Tolkien's forte".[16] The volume was favourably reviewed by nature writer Loren Eiseley. The literary critic Edmund Wilson however wrote an unflattering review entitled "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!"[17]
The novelist H. A. Blair, writing in the
The novelist
Of "The Shadow of the Past"
Tolkien called the second chapter, "The Shadow of the Past", "the crucial chapter" of the entire novel;[12] the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey labelled it "the vital chapter".[13] This is because it represents both the moment that Tolkien devised the central plot of the book, and the point in the story where the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, and the reader realise that there will be a quest to destroy the Ring.[25][26] A sketch of it was among the first parts of the book to be written, early in 1938;[12] later that year, it was one of three chapters of the book that he drafted.[27] In 1944, he returned to the chapter, adding descriptions of Gollum, the Ring, and the hunt for Gollum.[27] The chapter changes the book's tone from the first chapter's light-hearted Hobbit partying, and introduces major themes of the book. These include a sense of the depth of time behind unfolding events,[28] the power of the Ring,[29] and the inter-related questions of providence, free will, and predestination.[30][25]
Of "The Council of Elrond"
"The Council of Elrond", the second chapter of Book 2, is the longest chapter in that book at some 15,000 words, and critical for explaining the power and threat of the Ring, for introducing the final members of the Fellowship of the Ring, and for defining the planned quest to destroy it. Contrary to the maxim "Show, don't tell", the chapter consists mainly of people talking; the action is, as in "The Shadow of the Past", narrated, largely by the Wizard Gandalf, in flashback. The chapter parallels the far simpler Beorn chapter in The Hobbit, which similarly presents a culture-clash of the modern (mediated by the Hobbit) with the ancient (the heroic Beorn). Shippey calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force".[14] The Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge writes that the chapter brings the hidden narrative of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings close to the surface.[31]
Notes
- ^ Although Frodo refers to Bilbo as his "uncle", the character is introduced in "A Long-expected Party" as one of Bilbo's younger cousins. The two were in fact first and second cousins, once removed either way (his paternal great-great-uncle's son's son and his maternal great-aunt's son).
References
- ISBN 0333290348.
- The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, touch on this matter, notably Letters 123, 124 (in which Tolkien explicitly desires to have the works published together), 125, 126, 131, and 133.
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1994). The Lord of the Rings (Millennium ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- ^ a b c d e Shippey 2001, pp. 59–68.
- ^ Tor.com. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-87338-699-9.
- ^ a b c d e Miller 1975, pp. 95–106
- ^ a b Shippey 2001, p. 65.
- ^ a b c d Turner, Jenny (15 November 2001). "Reasons for Liking Tolkien". London Review of Books. 23 (22).
- ^ a b c d Shippey 2005, pp. 118–119.
- ^ ISBN 0-87548-303-8.
- ^ a b c The Lord of the Rings, 2nd edition, "Foreword".
- ^ a b Shippey 2005, p. 154.
- ^ a b Shippey 2001, pp. 68–69.
- ^ Auden, W. H. (31 October 1954). "The Hero Is a Hobbit". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
- ^ Auden, W. H. (22 January 1956). "At the end of the Quest, Victory". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
- ^ Wilson, Edmund (14 April 1956). "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!". The Nation.
- ^ Blair, H. A. "Myth or Legend". Church Quarterly Review (156 (January–March 1955)): 121–122.
- JSTOR 26810708.
- ^ de Camp, L. Sprague. "Book Reviews". Science Fiction Quarterly (3 (Aug. 1955)): 36–40.
- ^ Derrick, Christopher. "Talking of Dragons". The Tablet (204 (11 Sept. 1954)): 250.
- ^ Lewis, C. S. "The Gods Return to Earth". Time and Tide (35 (14 August 1954): 1082–1083.
- The New Statesman and Nation(48 (18 Sept. 1954)): 331.
- ^ a b Muir, Edwin (22 August 1954). "Review: The Fellowship of the Ring". The Observer.
- ^ a b Nepveu 2008.
- ^ Hammond & Scull 2005, p. 80.
- ^ a b St. Clair 1995, pp. 145–150.
- ^ Flieger 2001, p. 21.
- ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 154–155.
- ^ Scott 2011, pp. 31–33.
- ^ Rutledge 2004, pp. 91–114.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-007-20907-1.
- Miller, David M. (1975). "Narrative Pattern in The Fellowship of the Ring". In ISBN 0-87548-303-8.
- Nepveu, Kate (16 December 2008). "LotR re-read: Fellowship I.2, 'The Shadow of the Past'". Tor.com. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-80282-497-4.
- Scott, Bud (2011). "Tolkien's use of free will versus predestination in The Lord of the Rings". Mallorn(51): 31–33.
- ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
- ISBN 978-0261102750.
- St. Clair, Gloriana (1995). "Tolkien as Reviser: A Case Study". Mallorn. 21 (2): 145–150.
External links
- The Fellowship of the Ring at the Internet Book List