Lets do a Review - of The Lord of the Rings (Part 2)

Was the first part of the review quite praising (no wonder: it was called "The Good Things" after all!), this part will deal with the things I have mixed feelings about - still nothing terrible. I don't think there are much pieces of literature without their weak spots. The last part of my review though is something die-hard-Tolkien-fans perhaps shouldn't read!

The Not-So-Good Things:

The Ring's big shadow

Ok, this is not quite a flaw of the book itself, but the huge, overwhelming influence it had on the fantasy-genre, and popular culture in general, is quite problematic.

Tolkien's elaborated world became literally a bible of fantasy. A blueprint for countless variants of sword-and-sorcery-fantasy, as it soon was called. The Lord of the Rings has defined stereotypes of characters, races and creatures in such a predominant way that even the slightest deviation is pretty notable in the genre.

Of course there are other fantasy-authors who created and still create their very own worlds, far away from the Tolkien-style fantasy, but they are in the vast minority really. Since the 1950s the mainstream is strongly influenced by the Lord of the Rings and its derivative, the Dungeon-and-Dragons-universe. Both are in the end simply one interpretation of English, German and Scandinavian mythology, but not the only. Nevertheless they dominate the fantasy-genre throughout all sorts of media: From books, to games, films and music.

The result of this development is quite appaling: While the original meaning of the term “fantasy” has something to do with imagination, the domination of Tolkien-style fantasy is actually the opposite of that: it became a quite restrictive mental corset, which makes it hard for creativity to breathe.

Good vs. evil stereotypy

The factions in the Lord of the Rings are more than clearly divided into good and evil. Though there have been historical tensions between the “good” factions, they all seem rather petty in the context of the story and all races are eventually united in fighting the evil Sauron.

Even the more ambivalent characters, like Saruman (who is basically a fallen minor angel) and Boromir, who eventually fails to resist the ring's temptations, are pretty clear-cut. Saruman's plotting is revealed early in the story and there were plenty of hints on Boromir becoming a threat for the main protagonist too. The only Character, who really stands out as balancing on the edge of good and evil is Gollum/Smeagol, who – at least briefly – was about to tip from a pure, degenerated villain to becoming an ally of Frodo and Sam.

On the side of the villains the good/evil duality is even more clear. Evil beings in Tolkien's Middle-Earth are evil to the bone. And ugly. And usually not too bright. There is no remorse, no mercy and no beauty in the realms of Tolkien's evil. Actually the villains are that evil that they more than once start fighting and killing each other, involuntarily giving the good guys a chance to escape.

It wasn't until recent that this decade-old written-in-stone duality has been broken up in fantasy-mainstream. Games like Skyrim don't offer the player a clearly good or bad side to join. They all have their light and dark sides. And the TV-series Game of Thrones, based on the Song of Ice and Fire series of books take this approach to the extreme: everyone may die, no-one is innocent.

By his approach of creating so clear-cut sides Tolkien did seriously limit the possibilities of developing characters or races further. For example fairy creatures, like Elves, are depicted rather ambivalent in folk-tales. Sometimes nice and helpful, but also malicious and cruel. In sword-and-sorcery-fantasy this lack of development potential has been compensated by dividing them into a growing range of sub-races with various characteristics, but such divisions (and subdivisions of divisions) appear pretty artificial to me really.

Eating, Drinking, Singing – and way too much Talking!

There was a lot where Tolkien was good at, but there are also things which didn't went so well, or at least made the story at times unnecessarily difficult to read. One thing are the often long and cumbersome dialogues. Especially higher-ranking characters use a – actually quite rambling - courtly language. I can't help but think that you could understand them just as well if simply you shorten their dialogues to a fifth of their length. It may reflect the customs of medieval courts, but that doesn't helps the neither courtly, not medieval reader. A more straight-to-the-point-approach would have done very well there.

Oh, and the eating! Especially the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, seems to consist of equal parts of walking, eating and talking about eating! I assume it was Tolkien's way to show us how nicely quirky the Hobbits were, and to create a contrast to the more harsh conditions they face as the story continues, but turns out to be more of a culinary traveller's guide through Middle-Earth.

Another thing is the amount of songs and poems in the story. You get the impression that, as soon somebody sits down and takes a rest, he starts singing or reciting a poem (if he doesn't starts eating, that is!). That's surely a nice thing for the characters, who don't have radio or TV, nor an internet to get some entertainment, but I don't believe that many readers actually read them. I think giving a short summary of their content in the story and print the whole lyrics as appendix would make the book more readable really. The way the lyrics appear in the text just disturbs the reading flow.

Speaking of reading flow, Tolkien's dramaturgy and timing could also really be better. In some cases – like when the Ents are attacking Saruman's tower – he seems to deliberately take tempo and tension out of the narration by messing up the timing and the causality of events: Its never a good idea to have the action being told by a protagonist, instead of simply showing it.

Also the parallel stories of Frodo and Sam trying to destroy the ring and the rest of the fellowship distracting Sauron by fighting his armies could use more shifts of perspective. Tolkien simply stays with one storyline for too long, which disturbs the sense of synchronicity of events.