"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the skySeven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to dieOne for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lieOne Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie"
With those words,
Sauron forged the
One Ring, the
vessel of his power and the pivot on which the fate of Middle-earth would turn for five thousand years — until the
most unlikely of heroes did the one thing Sauron
could never have imagined, and brought his
dark tower tumbling down.
The story was originally intended as a
shorter sequel to
The Hobbit, but as its author famously remarked, "the tale grew in the telling."
The Lord of the Rings by
J. R. R. Tolkien is too well-known, and too complex, to be
summarised in full. Succinctly, it is by far the most recent addition to the
canon of Western epic literature and is, in the
words of Jude Fisher
, the "
Ur fantasy trilogy", which set the stage for the entire
modern genre that followed in its wake.
Volumes with Publication Dates- The Fellowship of the Ring, July 24, 1954
- The Two Towers, November 11, 1954
- The Return Of The King, October 20, 1955
AdaptationsIn addition, there has been a BBC radio adaptation, three
Tabletop RPGs set in Middle-earth, and several video games or mods. There is also a tabletop miniature game by
Games Workshop, and a board wargame was published by Simulations Publications, Inc. in the late 1970's.
The first attempt to make a screen version was made in 1958 by a certain Zimmerman, who wrote a film script for "The Lord of the Rings". J.R.R. Tolkien looked through it and in his letter to Forrest Ackerman heavily criticized this feeble attempt. It turned out that the script didn't reflect many of Tolkien's thoughts and some of the characters lost their appeal.
There was another aborted attempt by John Boorman to adapt the books in the 70's. It would've been live action and the notes from it might have suggested that adaptation might have looked like
Zardoz. The Harvard Lampoon published a parody titled
Bored of the Rings in 1969, which manages to cover the entire journey in under 200 pages.
Tropes
The majority of tropes used in
LotR are well-explained, unlike in the majority of its
imitators. For instance, Mordor has large fertile areas offstage where food is grown, thus explaining how Sauron's armies survive in the volcanic hellscape around Barad-dur. The
Ring is also more than just a convenient
MacGuffin — its effects matter too much for that. This is largely due to the immensely elaborated
Back Story and Tolkien's life-defining experiences in
The Great War.
There were, though, some tropes
J. R. R. Tolkien couldn't justify to his satisfaction, not helped by the fact that he updated his mythos constantly over a period of years, creating a minor
Continuity Snarl at times but never quite reaching the
Shrug of God. He spent years trying to decide how orcs could be
Always Chaotic Evil without being born evil or soulless - since Eru would not give creatures born evil souls, on moral grounds, Morgoth was unable to create souls, and Tolkien believed anything without a soul would be a mere animal - but he never found any answer he liked. It was philosophical niggles like this that stopped him from publishing
The Silmarillion in his lifetime. His son Christopher did it anyway,
to the delight of all Tolkien scholars, and most of his readers.
Please note that this is the page for tropes used in the book. See above for the links to pages for the movies.- Army of the Dead
- Black Speech: The language of Sauron and Mordor.
- Breaking the Fellowship
- Common Tongue
- Dug Too Deep
- Echoing Acoustics used to be named "Live from Khazad Dum".
- The Fellowship Has Ended
- Gollum Made Me Do It
- Gondor Calls for Aid
- Hobbits
- Kneel Before Frodo: Aragorn bows to Frodo and Sam at Cormallen during the honoring of the Ring-bearers.
- Mithril: A fantasy version of Unobtainium
- Mordor: Although only true for parts of it (Volcanic soil is usually very fertile). The south of Mordor has huge fertile farmlands, which are needed to keep the Mooks fed.
- Mouth of Sauron
- Mythopoeia: Tolkien coined the term.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Formed the template that all modern fantasy copies from.
- Ring of Power: Several rings, but The One Ring is nicknamed this.
- Short Cuts Make Long Delays: Spoken first by Pippin.
- Speak Friend and Enter
- Supporting Leader was formerly known as The Aragorn. The reason for this trope's existence was that Tolkien wanted to write a story about the folly of power and strength, sanctifying the weak and humble. If not for this theme, Aragorn would probably have been the main hero. As a bit of trivia, his character was originally a ranger hobbit named Trotter who would have turned out to be in one early suggestion Bilbo, but then another cousin, who had lost his feet after torture in Mordor, resulting in him wearing wooden feet!).
- Walk Into Mordor: that dreaded thing, what which one does not simply do.
- You Shall Not Pass: Spoken first by Gandalf as "You cannot pass.", though the movie is the actual trope namer.
Provides Examples Of: