The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

Goodreads: The Fellowship of the Ring
Series: The Lord of the Rings #1
Published: 1954
Source: Purchased

Summary: A young Hobbit discovers that he has come to possess the One Ring, forged by an evil lord to find the other Rings of power in order to corrupt them and their works and bring the world into his control.  He sets off on a quest, aided by eight companions, to destroy the Ring in the only way possible.  He must walk across Middle-Earth and into the country of the enemy and then cast the Ring into the volcanic fires in which it was made.  The fate of the world is hanging around his neck.

Review:  It is always difficult to review a work that one loves, and it is even more difficult to review that work in pieces.  Though The Fellowship of the Ring is often cast as the first book in a series, it of course is really the first volume in what was written as a single book, a single story.  Publishers and a paper shortage were the causes of the resulting “trilogy.”  So though what is in Fellowship is good, it is not complete, and readers are left on a lakeshore wondering not just if Frodo will succeed in his quest, but also whether he is even close to his goal at all.

For although The Lord of the Rings is about Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom, and the journeys of others who are trying to pave his way, The Fellowship of the Ring is not.   Readers unfamiliar with the story (Are there many left after the release of Jackson’s movies?) will not even know that Frodo intends to go into Mordor at all.  Here his goal is first to get to Rivendell.  To get to Rivendell and hand this burden to someone else.  Someone, we must assume, bigger and stronger and better equipped to deal with the serious matters of the world.  When Frodo says, “I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way,” it is a surprise, and one that sets the tone of the entire story.  Here we see a small Hobbit become large and know that there is something surprising in each of us, as well. 

And this amazing story is told in absolutely beautiful language.  Tolkien was a philologist and deeply interested in words, so the ones he used in his books were chosen with care.  In The Lord of the Rings he uses language that evokes the spirit of the Middle Ages (which we most often associate with knights and deeds of honor), though of course he is not writing in Middle English at all, or even drawing upon the standards like “hark” and “prithee” and “thou”  that make so much fantasy sound ridiculously clunky.  Many readers think Tolkien’s writing sounds “old,” but with care they might find it is his sentence structure and not his vocabulary at all.  In fact, hints of his modern Englishness often slip into the text, if less often than in The Hobbit.

Poems scattered throughout the work give a sense that there is a deeper history propping the world of this book up.  Readers learn about the cultures and their values through their poetry and the subjects they preserve in it.  Elvish poems tell tales from Tolkien’s Silmarillion and hint at all the people and deeds of Middle-Earth that had passed before this Second Age even began.  Hobbit poems speak of food and comfort or silly tales of trolls.  Poetry is not often Tolkien’s strongest suit, and some readers like to skip it, but in truth much is missed when they do, including simply some really good stories.

In terms of themes, we have not yet come completely to the big ones: the struggle between good and evil, Sauron’s attempt to steal God’s role and create, the price of studying too closely the arts of the enemy.  Here, we have friendship.  Though of course this strengthens in later volumes, we begin to see here the three Hobbits who insist on accompanying their friend Frodo on a dangerous journey simply because they do not want him to go alone.  At first, they invite themselves to Bree and then to Rivendell.  Then they invite themselves farther, intending to go with him as far as Mordor.  They plead for the opportunity to do so, for Elrond in all his wisdom would have sent them home.

The rest of the Fellowship (but Boromir?) is loyal, and we see bonds begin to grow there as well, including between Legolas and Gimli who will finally overcome all the prejudices of their people.  Yet the best friendship we see is among the Hobbits, the everyday little people who are more like us than are the great heroes like Aragorn.  C. S. Lewis says in The Four Loves that “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival,” but here he appears to be wrong.  Without Sam and Merry and Pippin’s friendship, Frodo would not have survived, perhaps even failing far from Mount Doom, right at the beginning when he was still near the Shire.  The friendship between Frodo and Sam is perhaps one of the most beautiful ever written.

The Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly an exciting tale, one that finds fans because it offers heroes and swordfights and a frighteningly power evil.  Yet its greatest strength and the secret to its survival as a classic lie in its portrayals of truth and human nature, even if it is sometimes embodied in Elves or hobbits or dwarves.  Because The Fellowship of the Ring starts this epic adventure, it has a little more time to offer pictures of the home that make fighting evil, of any kind, worth it.  It is the most directly happy and hopeful of the volumes and a beautiful beginning.