# Surely The Lord of the Rings is one of the best stories ever written **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** middle-earth, books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [May 13, 2024, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504 "2024-05-13T19:48:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/161 "2024-05-15T18:53:14Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Somewhere, I believe it is mentioned she was already in Cirith Ungol area before Sauron was in Mordor. I believe it is speculated. She does not so much work for Sauron as she benefits from living in that passage. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/162 "2024-05-15T18:57:51Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > > [@carrps](#): > > > > The Westing Game was fun, if a bit easy to figure out the “secret.” > > Hey, I didn’t. And I read it as an adult. I read a lot of mysteries, and I have a kind of sixth sense with clues sometimes. I think it was well disguised, but if you catch on early, everything confirms your guess. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/163 "2024-05-15T19:52:34Z")
Sure, he was more _comprehensive_ than his predecessors (or more anal, depending on your viewpoint). That doesn’t make him the _first_. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/164 "2024-05-15T20:39:29Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Incidentally, both _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ are among the best selling books of all time. If one ignores religious texts like _The Bible_ or _The Koran_ and also political texts that were required to be owned by most people in a country like _The Quotations of Mao Tse-Tung_, _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ are among the eight books that have sold somewhere between 100 million and 200 million copies. In counting the number of copies of _The Lord of the Rings_ that have been sold, you add together the copies with all three in a single volume to a second number which is the number of copies of the least sold of the three volumes published separately. So if the number sold was (to just make up some numbers which aren’t anywhere close to the real numbers) 86,159,502,897 copies of the volumes containing all three in one volume and 92,034,104,456 of _The Return of the King_ in a separate volume (and slightly more for the other two), the number of copies sold would be 178,193,607,353. I’m curious what the ranking of LotR book sales was prior to the Peter Jackson films. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > To me it just seems weird that this intricately detailed world had this random enigma tossed in. It’s incongruous with this massive and incredibly finely wrought world. I don’t disagree, but for me it wasn’t until multiple reads and/or understanding some of the appendices that Tom felt any more randomly enigmatic than Elvish poetry, or Gildor, or the wraiths of the barrow downs, or the ghost men of the mountain. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/165 "2024-05-15T21:12:52Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I like the ending portions, but the hill I’ll die on is that the Tom Bombadil stuff should have been cut. I swore to myself next time I read it, I’ll skip it. He’s such a weird character. At least Tolkien realized they better mention him at the Council of the Ring and had them quickly dismiss him as a caretaker of the Ring or it would have been a pretty obvious oversight. > > I’m glad the movies cut him completely. I would have liked to see Tom, but to be honest, the LotR is so long- something had to be cut, and Bombadil was one of the obvious choices- as well as the Scouring of the Shire. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/166 "2024-05-15T21:16:53Z")
Tom Bombadil is my favorite character in _The Lord of the Rings_. From a plot perspective, he plays the same role as Beorn in _The Hobbit_. But he’s so much more. More mysterious. More powerful. More mythic. I think Peter Jackson was right to cut him from the movie, because a lot had to be cut, and that’s pretty self-contained. But that’s one of the reasons the movies are so much shallower and poorer than the books. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/167 "2024-05-15T21:17:46Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > To me it just seems weird that this intricately detailed world had this random enigma tossed in. It’s incongruous with this massive and incredibly finely wrought world. > [@Mahaloth](#): > > No, I don’t need an explanation. I just find his chapter(s) very silly and sidetracking. > [@MrAtoz](#): > > It’s not that he’s unexplained and mysterious. It’s that he’s annoying and stops the story dead in its tracks. I won’t argue against any of your opinions (after all, I find _The Hobbit_ a better book that than _The Lord of the Rings_, because it is a tighter focus), but when you think “sidetracking” or “stopping the story”, I think the author is taking the story in an unexpected (to me) direction. Maybe that means the author needed a better editor. Or, maybe it means I’m missing what the author is trying to tell. In Tolkien’s works, the journey itself is just as important as the mission. The journey is prompted by the mission, but the mission does not define the journey. It’s why I’ve come to dislike the movie adaptation, which is more about the action of the heroes winning, rather than how they got to where they are. It’s not that action is wrong or unimportant, but it’s not the totality of the story that Tolkien was telling. * * * > [@eburacum45](#): > > There isn’t really a consistent history for Middle-Earth outside the appendices, and some of the material Christopher Tolkien published wildly contradicts some of the other stuff; but that is the creative process, I suppose. It’s not just the creative process, it’s how mythic storytelling is in the real world. There is no definitive “story of Heracles”, because every teller had their own variation with their own emphases. So while the movies are not my thing, I believe Tolkien himself would approve of them, simply because Jackson _should_ retell the mythic story in his own way. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/168 "2024-05-15T21:21:04Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Tom Bombadil is my favorite character in _The Lord of the Rings_. From a plot perspective, he plays the same role as Beorn in _The Hobbit_. But he’s so much more. More mysterious. More powerful. More mythic. > > I think Peter Jackson was right to cut him from the movie, because a lot had to be cut, and that’s pretty self-contained Yep. But one thing that cutting him out misses- that fact that Merry and Pippins daggers were magical and wrote with spells to fight the Witch King- _So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will._ ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/169 "2024-05-15T21:32:21Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will. See, if I had to read a thousand pages of that style of writing by the end I’d be wanting to die. Or by page 100. Verily foorsooth it soundeth as if it wast parodying itsownself. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/170 "2024-05-15T21:34:58Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > See, if I had to read a thousand pages of that style of writing by the end I’d be wanting to die. I’d want another ten thousand pages of that. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/171 "2024-05-15T21:43:18Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > So while the movies are not my thing, I believe Tolkien himself would approve of them, simply because Jackson _should_ retell the mythic story in his own way. Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R. Tolkien’s son and the editor of his posthumously published works) did _not_ approve. J.R.R. might or might not have had a similar reaction. It’s interesting to speculate, but that’s all we can do. > **[What would the Professor have thought of Peter Jackson’s version of ‘The Lord...](https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2013/06/03/72359-what-would-the-professor-have-thought-of-peter-jacksons-version-of-the-lord-of-the-rings/)** > > It’s a question many of us have asked, but none of us can answer: What would J.R.R. Tolkien have thought of Peter Jackson’s version of The Lord of the Rings? Because I’ve read a lot and thought a lot about Tolkien and his invented world, and I’ve... > **[LOTR: Why Did Christopher Tolkien hate Peter Jackson's Adaptations?](https://gamerant.com/lotr-christopher-tolkien-hate-peter-jackson-adaptations/)** > > Did Jackson create an injustice for the memory of Tolkien's writings? ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/172 "2024-05-15T21:47:08Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#): > > Peter Jackson made the right choice, in eliminating that bit from the movies. I didn’t MIND them in the books - like their stay in Rivendell and then with Galadriel and company, it was a desperately needed brief break from mind-blowing danger - but in terms of moviemaking, it could be eliminated entirely without taking away from the epic (ditto the Scouring of the Shire). This was my read as well, and I thought it was brilliant. Tolkien gave us opportunities to catch our breath after extended sequences of deathly peril. I saw these chapters as essential to the pace of the narrative, not as interruptions. ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/173 "2024-05-15T22:28:00Z")
Me too. I love it. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/174 "2024-05-15T22:36:26Z")
A thousand pages of it would bug me same as @Darren_Garrison. But I think I’d like more than @Darren_Garrison too. Somewhere in the middle. All things in moderation. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/175 "2024-05-15T22:53:24Z")
> [@FloatyGimpy](#): > > Me too. I love it. If I had to describe the style with one word, it would be “pompous”. Eyes-rolling was I as read it I did. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/176 "2024-05-15T22:53:54Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > All things in moderation. [Beware the Unitarian Jihad!](https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-CARROLL-3324002.php) ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2024, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/177 "2024-05-15T23:13:05Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Tom Bombadil is my favorite character in _The Lord of the Rings_. From a plot perspective, he plays the same role as Beorn in _The Hobbit_. But he’s so much more. More mysterious. More powerful. More mythic. > > I think Peter Jackson was right to cut him from the movie, because a lot had to be cut, and that’s pretty self-contained. But that’s one of the reasons the movies are so much shallower and poorer than the books. What I am about to say gets right to the heart of the differences and needs between the two media in question-note as said I come to the issue as a non-reader of the novels pre the year 2000, so I’ll be upfront with my bias from the start. For worldbuilding purposes in a novel a character like TB can indeed fulfill a useful role for the author. In a film a character like that would be dramatic poison; PJ would have lost 90% of the audience to have this singing dancing buffoon come along, laughing at the pretty but useless trinket that Frodo gives him, only to vanish from the rest of the narrative while people wonder how this bozo wasn’t affected by the Ring while pretty much everyone else is or will be (ok Sam maybe not, as well). This is why I get rather frustrated when literary Tolkienites get all up in arms about how PJ did this, that, or the other thing (or in this case didn’t do anything) that utterly despoiled his holy writ. The truth is that a 100% faithful adaptation would have been a crashing bore, requiring at least 6 films. If you honestly go over [each major change](https://www.theonering.com/complete-list-of-film-changes/) with an eye to how the original text would have worked, or not worked, on screen, while also keeping the time factor in mind, you’ll have to admit that he did an excellent job with said decisions about 90% of the time in FotR. [For the other two films I’d agree that that percentage dropped a fair amount, to 85% for TTT and perhaps as low as 75% for RotK] A lot of the notes in the linked article will often say “This change is an invention of the scriptwriters which takes screen time away from scenes that Tolkien actually wrote.” They did this for Frodo reading a book in a glade when Gandalf comes on by. I’d say that an addition like that was in perfect keeping with the tone and aim of the original novel. Bree would be an excellent example. In the novel, there was quite a bit of scheming with some of the human conspirators (some of which were the ones Pippen apparently spilled the beans about Frodo’s true identity to in the film), while Barliman and Fatty Bolger helped the burgeoning Fellowship avoid trouble with them. In the film adding all of that would have really caused the entire narrative to drag, taking away from the menace that the Nazgul posed and the need for the troupe to keep moving. Plus we would have had 2 allied characters that would have never shown up for the rest of the story. Law of Conservation of Characters. By contrast I think he could have added the Barrow Downs in without too much trouble (allowing the hobbits to get their swords w/o Aragorn handing them off), but PJ was on record as saying that the wights would have posed a weird contrast with the Ringwraiths and also might have taken away from the latter’s danger. Same thing with Faramir (I liked his changes, with the exception of him giving in only after Frodo offered the Ring to a passing focking Nazgul) vs. Denethor (which made a complex conflicted character into a cardboard villain). Point is, you have to consider each change in the context of the needs of film, without unilaterally assailing each one for daring to alter what JRRT originally did. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/178 "2024-05-16T02:06:56Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#): > > I didn’t MIND them in the books - like their stay in Rivendell and then with Galadriel and company, it was a desperately needed brief break from mind-blowing danger > [@](#): > > On rereading, since you know what’s going to happen next, I’ve read each of those bits with a strong sense of dread, since I know what’s coming after the idyll. That’s been noted as part of the narrative structure of the first part of _The Fellowship of the Ring_, called “Frodo’s Five Homely Houses”, interspersed with places of danger: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Frodo's\_Five\_Homely\_Houses.svg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Frodo%27s_Five_Homely_Houses.svg) > **[Literary devices in The Lord of the Rings | The Fellowship of the Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_devices_in_The_Lord_of_the_Rings#The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring)** > > The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, has a different structure from the rest of the novel. It has attracted attention both for its sequence of five "Homely Houses", safe places where the Hobbit protagonists may recuperate after a dangerous episode, and for its arrangement as a single narrative thread focused on its protagonist, Frodo, interrupted by two long but critically important flashback narrative chapters, "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond". ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2024, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/179 "2024-05-16T02:20:48Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > I’m curious what the ranking of LotR book sales was prior to the Peter Jackson films. They sold over 100 million copies before those films came out. I remember reading that they had sold that many before those films came out. That didn’t have that much effect on the number sold: > **[Why Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' succeeded as an adaptation](https://www.deseret.com/2012/12/7/20510908/why-peter-jackson-s-lord-of-the-rings-succeeded-as-an-adaptation/)** > > As a film adaptation of one of the most successful and beloved book series of all time, Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" succeeded in a way few would have imagined possible. Here's a look at what made his films so remarkable. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2024, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504/180 "2024-05-16T03:17:30Z")
A bare handful? Are,you talking about high fantasy or all fantasy? Because there was a lot more than “a bare handful”. L. Frank Baum. C. L. Moore. Leigh Brackett. A. Merritt. H. Rider Haggard. Clark Ashton Smith. Etc., etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surely-the-lord-of-the-rings-is-one-of-the-best-stories-ever-written/1001504.md?page=10)