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In The Spotlight No.1 _____________________________________ THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien. _____________________________________
Tolkien’s masterpiece was published in three volumes between July 1954 and October 1955. It is the third bestselling novel of all time (after A Tale of Two Cities and The Little Prince). An estimated 150 million copies have been sold. The book was not, by any measure, an instant success and when it first appeared it sold only a few thousand copies. Sales only really took off in the mid-sixties, and have built ever since. So what is it about this book that has made so many people buy it? There are many reasons, semi-prosaic ones such as great timing and the fact Tolkien was an original. But there are also factors that are strictly to do with the writing and the story, factors that led to the book resonating with people, compelling them to tell others about it, and for each generation to be excited by it. Let’s look at five of these. 1. Devotion to a Fantasy. All the action takes place in a completely imaginary world which Tolkien portrays in intimate detail. The book is over 1,000 pages long, so he gave himself plenty of room to bring his fantasy world of Middle Earth to life. Tolkien really lived his fiction. He worked as a college
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lecturer during the day, and each evening for many years of his life he would disappear into an imaginary existence describing the world that was so clear in his head. And it is this incredible dedication, the author’s total immersion in an alternate reality that makes Middle Earth so real for the reader. I remember reading The Lord of the Rings when I was a teenager and wanting to know more and more about Tolkien’s creation. I couldn’t get enough detail. While I was reading the book (and I went on to read it 9 times!) I lived in Middle Earth, the characters were my friends, the locations were real, more real in fact than my mundane life at school and university. So, dedication, complete commitment to a fantasy world of the author’s creation is the first crucial ingredient. But this world had to be transferred from Tolkien to us via the medium of words on the page. Tolkien did not have the luxury enjoyed by Peter Jackson the director of the fabulous movies of the books. He could not pan the camera round and show exquisitely-designed sets and great actors in their finery. Tolkien had to give that to the reader with just the English language. 2. Great Writing. But what am I saying? ‘Just the English language?’ What amazing power it possesses! Although I love Peter Jackson’s films and I’m delighted they exist, I didn’t need them. I had those films in my head thanks to the WORDS Tolkien used, all three hundred and fifty-thousand of them!
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This is possible thanks to great writing. Tolkien was a superb crafter of words and a peerless manager of plot and character. Thanks to his ‘day job’, he was steeped in ancient mythology and a lifetime of study into arcane literature. But he also had a gift for lighting up the page and painting with words. Let’s consider the structure Tolkien used for his masterpiece. In his seminal work, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, the late Joseph Campbell explained how all stories may be described as ‘The Hero’s Journey’. By this, he meant that all stories from any age or culture follow a similar arc. I will be devoting a lot of attention to Joseph Campbell’s ideas on the YOU CAN WRITE A BESTSELLER courses. But for the moment, let’s see how they work for The Lord of the Rings. The first and most obvious point to make is that Tolkien’s story really is a journey! It begins with an innocent young hobbit, Frodo Baggins living in a bucolic idyll, the Shire, and, via a succession of adventures with life-or-death stakes to play for, he travels to the very pit of Hell (the Crack of Doom in Mordor), a Dantalian horror presided over by The Devil (Sauron). Along the way, Frodo and a small group of ‘helpers’ face incredible danger and our hero is almost killed on at least half a dozen occasions. He is stabbed, speared and poisoned; he loses a finger and he is damaged psychologically by the power of the ring. But of course he pulls through, survives the journey and returns, greatly changed, having saved the world in the process.
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Frodo is an innocent. He is the reader. He is you and I. His travails may be interpreted as they appear on the page, but for anyone looking further they also possess a deeper resonance of which most readers may be completely unaware. For the dangers and horrors Frodo faces may represent anything bad that we as individuals have to face up to in our everyday lives. When Frodo overcomes these challenges, we do too. And whether or not we can conquer our own real-life demons and rise above the adversities we face, Frodo can and does, and that makes us happy; and so we are drawn to him with increasing devotion. 3. Character. Tolkien uses an ensemble cast. This is a very common technique applied in all forms of storytelling and involves employing a small group of between 4 and 9 characters who interweave with the plot. My E-Force books involve a team of six; the TV series Friends has a core cast of six, Star Trek, seven. Tolkien has his Fellowship of the Ring consisting of nine characters, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli and Boromir. This is a little larger than most ensemble casts, but it is worth noting that Tolkien kills off two characters …Boromir and Gandalf (temporarily!). Then, about one third of the way through the trilogy he splits the ensemble into three smaller groups: Frodo and Sam travel to Mordor and are joined by Gollum; Merry and Pippin are captured by Orcs and eventually hook up with Treebeard; Aragorn Gimli and Legolas head off in pursuit of the kidnapped hobbits and meet up with the reincarnated Gandalf. Each of Tolkien’s characters plays a specific role in the story.
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As the ring-bearer, Frodo is of course the most important. Sam is his trusty friend and helper. Gandalf is a godlike being, the all-knowing sage and conduit of ancient wisdom. The unfortunate Boromir is crucial because he pushes Frodo into leaving the Fellowship and embarking on the perilous journey to Mordor. Legolas and Gimli are opposites who come together as firm friends halfway through the trilogy. They represent solid, faithful warriors and protectors. Aragorn is a messianic figure, Gandalf’s closest friend and the future benign ruler of Middle Earth. Merry and Pippin add comedic value and represent (like Frodo and Sam) the gritty little guys who start out vulnerable and needy and end up playing a key role in saving the world. Which brings me to… 4. The High Stakes Game. Between them these characters succeed in saving Middle Earth, they destroy the ring, remove the power of Sauron and restore order and balance to Tolkien’s universe. Job done! With the figure of Sauron, Tolkien created such a terrible evil pitted against such good (the Hobbits, the noble, high-born Gondorians, the Elves and others), that the stakes are as high as they can possibly be the very continuation of the universe he has created depends upon the success of good over evil. All stories need something extremely precious on-the-line. It might not be something as grand as an entire world, as we see in Tolkien, in Fleming’s James Bond novels or in many science fiction epics; but it has to be something the reader really cares about. In some novels it could be a group of people or an individual we root for. In war stories it might
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be the freedom of a country at stake. In the genre of romantic fiction, the high stakes can be something as seemingly down-to-earth as a relationship. In other scenarios, the high stakes may revolve around the stability of a family, or even an individual overcoming the fragmentation of their personality by facing agonizing social problems. 5. Escape! The final factor to consider in attempting to explain why The Lord of the Rings is so beloved is the very fact that it is set in a completely alien, fantasy world. When the book was first published, some critics questioned why anyone would be interested in a world so unreal, a universe populated with such bizarre creatures as Elves, Orcs and Dwarves. They were of course missing the point entirely. It was precisely because Tolkien’s universe was so different to our own regular everyday existence that so many readers were attracted to it and why it resonated with so many people wishing for a more exciting life. The power of escapism should never be underestimated by any novelist wishing to find an audience for their books. It sounds brutal perhaps, but that is your raison d’être. All artists create because they have to. We write for ourselves, but we also write for other people or else what we do is merely intellectual onanism. So, we must provide escapism for our readers. Personally, I feel there can be no higher calling….
Michael White. September 2012.
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