The Fellowship of the Ring

I’ve been rereading this first part of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I liked the movies, but they have wholly paved over my own first experience of the books. I wanted to go back and perform a work of imaginative restoration.

I can’t begin to say how great it is to be journeying with the fellowship again — though of course, the fellowship at this point is breaking up, or greatly reduced, as Frodo and Sam launch together in their elven boat toward Mordor.

One aspect of reading vs. viewing: I can pause and think about the story. It results in a longer enterprise, one in which Tolkien’s world seeps into my perspective over a course of days. It stays with me. I like that. My day-to-day life has felt very ho-hum; I needed this book that reaches deep into the themes of real heroism, and the battle of good and evil, and the tang of life with risk and danger and great reward, to enliven me.

Some of the things that strike me:

*Gandalf. He is the archetypal mentor, one we’d all love to know: wise, old yet vigorous, full of surprises. He goes into the abyss on behalf of the fellowship. And the scene where he battles the Balrog in Moria — a battle not of wits or strength, but of knowledge and authority — never gets old for me.

*History. Gandalf and other wizards, Elrond and other elves, even Sauron — these are characters that populate the landscape of Middle Earth, characters who have lived literally for ages. Their knowledge of history is close to the bone because they have lived through it and seen events with their own eyes, then been given the privilege of learning from it. What a world it would be to have that dimension! In a way we do, through books; we can learn from “those who have gone before.” We can interact, through our reading of old books, with great minds that perished before we were born. But in Middle Earth they still breathe and laugh and talk back. They are still at work putting their knowledge into action, protecting borders, discerning threats, speaking into the fray.

*Elves. Another appealing aspect of Tolkien’s world is the variety of beings there, each very distinct — hobbits, men, dwarves, elves, wizards. The elves are the elevated class, rich in poetry and song, in beauty and wisdom. Yet they are also quite earth-ward in their giftedness; the elves of Mirkwood and Lothlorien belong fully to the woods. They live there without leaving any imprint or scar, and they love the natural world and know it intimately. They are skilled not just in the more ethereal arts of epic poetry and music, but in the practical arts of rope-making, boat-making, waybread-making. At the root they are beings who are keenly attentive to nature. Tolkien’s idea of wisdom is very this-worldly as it’s depicted in the elves.

*The ring. What a concept — a device by which evil enslaves all, activating its power through lesser gifts. There’s just a lot to think about there.

Because I don’t have tons of reading time these days, I borrowed a library copy of an unabridged audio recording of the book. This has helped me to make faster progress, because I can listen while I’m making supper, supplementing my time among the pages. The girls have been listening as well, and it’s been neat to see their response.

Younger Daughter emerged from her room yesterday with a map she’d made, filled with perilous woods and mountains, and a carefully threaded dotted line tracing the route through the obstacles. She’d invented her own parallel story to Tolkien’s, one with a different mission and different obstacles, but one that clearly shows the book’s impact on her imagination.

Older Daughter gives me periodic progress reports and plot summaries, and I’m always amazed by her depth of insight into what’s really at stake in the story. When I eavesdrop on the girls’ play, I hear it again.

I have mixed feelings about audiobooks. They raise the question of whether I want to instill a love for stories, or a love for books. Listening gives a very different experience than reading, though it shares some key elements. The girls do open the book to pore over the maps. I hope they will read it themselves one day, drinking in the visual experience, the internal quality, and the slower pacing of wading through words. But for now, I’m grateful that there is an unabridged recording of the book, because it allows the girls to move through it more quickly than if they were dependent on my reading aloud.