alt title(s): Lord Of The Rings
Ash nazg durbatulûk, Ash nazg gimbatul.
(One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them)
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
(One Ring to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them)
—The inscription on the One Ring, The Lord Of The Rings
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 is too well-known, and too complex, to be summarised in full, but in brief, Frodo Baggins, one of the
hobbit gentry, learns that the magical trinket he inherited from his uncle Bilbo is actually the One Ring, Sauron's masterpiece. While it exists, Sauron cannot truly be destroyed; should Sauron ever regain it, ultimate victory will be his.
Frodo, his cousins Merry and Pippin, and his gardener Sam take the Ring to the Elves of Rivendell, where Elrond fills in the rest of the
Back Story. The hobbits are joined by five more characters, selected by Elrond to
represent all the races of Middle-earth: Legolas, an elven archer; Gimli son of Gloin, a dwarf; Aragorn, rightful heir to the throne of the human kingdom of Gondor; Boromir, heir to the Steward (the current ruler) of Gondor; and the wizard, Gandalf the Grey.
Before long, Gandalf is
lost in combat against an
ancient evil, leaving the fellowship following Aragorn. When Boromir succumbs to the lure of the Ring, Frodo decides to complete the quest singlehandedly. Sam manages to catch up with him, but the others are unable to, due to being embroiled in a battle with the minions of Saruman, the first among wizards — and traitor to the forces of good. Boromir dies a
Karmic Death.
Guided by Gollum, a previous victim of the Ring, Frodo and Sam sneak into
Mordor, Sauron's realm, making their way towards the only place where the Ring can be destroyed: the volcanic fire in which it was originally created. Meanwhile, Gandalf has returned from the dead as Gandalf the White and leads Aragorn and the Fellowship in a series of epic battles which keep Sauron distracted from the real threat until it's too late.
When the hobbits return home, they find that Saruman has taken over their homeland, but after they defeat his minions,
Saruman is killed by his
Renfield, Grima.
The book was recently
adapted into
three films with great commercial and critical success. The films were faithful in many respects, though they omitted several subplots due to time constraints, most notably completely changing the events leading to Saruman's death. The debate as to whether the films are
Pragmatic Adaptation,
Adaptation Distillation or
Adaptation Decay still rages on the Internet. Among the contested issues are the depictions of Faramir and Arwen.
There have been at least two
Animated Adaptations as well, neither nearly as well-done. There has also been a BBC radio adaptation, two
Tabletop RPGs set in Middle-earth, and several video games, from early
text adventures to the latest
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
The majority of tropes used in
LotR are well-explained, unlike in the majority of its
imitators.
Mordor, for example, has large fertile areas, and the
Artifact Of Doom Ring is more than just a convenient
MacGuffin — its effects matter too much for that. This is largely due to the immensely elaborated
Back Story.
There were, though, some tropes
JRR Tolkien couldn't justify to his satisfaction. He spent years trying to decide how orcs could be
Always Chaotic Evil without being born evil or soulless (options he didn't think Morgoth, their creator, had the power to achieve), but never found any answer he liked. It was philosophical niggles like this that stopped him publishing the
The Silmarillion in his lifetime. His son Christopher did it anyway.
This book includes examples of, or the sources for:
- All There In The Appendices, including the love story. Tolkien's way of implying that the story of Lo TR, despite being the most important thing ever to happen in Middle Earth, was not the only thing happening.
- All Up To You
- Always Chaotic Evil (In one possible Back Story, orcs were magically corrupted from elf stock to be Morgoth's minions. Tolkien's own thoughts on this suggest that this may not entirely be the case, though.)
- Ancestral Weapon: The shards of Narsil.
- Annoying Arrows: Boromir.
- Applicability: Read the entry for details.
- The Aragorn (The original. The reason why this trope exists in the first place was because Tolkien wanted to write a story about the folly of power and strength, sanctifying the weak and humble. Otherwise Aragorn would have been the main hero. As a bit of trivia, his character was originally a ranger hobbit named Trotter.)
- Arcadia: The Shire.
- Artifact Of Doom (The One Ring)
- The Atoner (Boromir)
- Author Appeal
- Author Avatar: Faramir
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Sauron and Saruman
- Averted Trope
- Awesome Moment Of Crowning (Aragorn at the end)
- Badass Normal: Boromir, Eowyn, and all the hobbits, but especially Sam.
- Back From The Dead: Gandalf
- Backstory (And plenty of it)
- Beneath The Earth (The dwarven realm of
Moria Khazad-dûm)
- The Berserker
- Big Bad: Sauron
- Bittersweet Ending
- Black Cloak (The unusually powerful Nazgul)
- Black Speech (The language of Mordor and Sauron)
- Break The Haughty: Saruman
- But Now I Must Go
- The Cavalry: The Riders of Rohan and Aragorn, Rangers of Eriador and troops from southern Gondor
- Cave Behind The Falls
- Chessmaster: Several, but Denethor's "he uses others as his weapons" is probably the main doctrine of Chessmastery.
- Collectible Card Game (two, Middle Earth in the 1990s and [one of] The Game[s] Of The Movie)
- Collapsing Lair: Barad-dur
- Color Coded Wizardry
- Compelling Voice: Saruman
- Contemptible Cover
- Cool Horse: Shadowfax
- Cosmopolitan Council (The Council Of Elrond, possibly also The White Council)
- Cowboy Bebop At His Computer (Inflicted on the series by the Writer's Almanac)
- Crystal Ball (The Palantiri)
- Cue The Sun
- Dark Is Not Evil (The armies of Gondor)
- Death Glare (Aragorn to the Ambassador in the Black Gate)
- Diabolus Ex Machina: The Scouring of the Shire, a complete Take That to the Happy Ending. Omitted from The Movie.
- Die For Our Ship (Poor, poor Arwen. Both Aragorn/Legolas and Éowyn/Aragorn fanbrats hate and bash her like there's no tomorrow)
- The Dog Bites Back (Grima)
- Doomy Dooms Of Doom
- The Dragon (The Witch-King of Angmar)
- Dressing As The Enemy: Frodo and Sam in Mordor.
- Easing Into The Adventure (The beginnings in the Shire)
- Elite Mooks: Saruman's Uruk-hai and Sauron's specially bred sun-proof Trolls. Heck, Morgoth essentially created all the evil races on Middle Earth through dark magic and breeding.
- Elves Vs Dwarves
- Ending Fatigue (The end to both the books and movies drags. Tolkien wasn't eager to pawn off a pat "happy-ever-after" ending.)
- Enemy To All Living Things (The Nazgul)
- Ensemble Darkhorse (Glorfindel and Prince Imrahil)
- Estrogen Brigade (Given the fact most of the major characters are guys, this shouldn't be surprising)
- Everythings Better With Princesses (Lady Eowyn)
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good (The whole plan hinges on the fact that Sauron can't even conceive of someone trying to destroy the Ring and get rid of that kind of power)
- Evil Overlord (Sauron)
- Evil Power Vacuum
- Evil Sorcerer (Saruman)
- Evil Tower Of Ominousness - Barad-Dur, Minas Morgul, Orthanc, Dol Guldur, and Cirith Ungol
- Evil Versus Evil: Saruman was continually plotting against Sauron.
- Expansion Pack World
- Face Heel Turn (Saruman seduced into evil by the perceived superiority of Sauron's power; Denethor driven mad due to his imperfect understanding of how a Palantir works; The Scouring of the Shire, the ultimate result of a few hobbits wanting to bring in "outside ways" to do things "better" and "faster".)
- The Fair Folk
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture
- Fantasy World Map (yet another Tolkien example, also Left Justified Fantasy Map)
- Fictionary
- The Film Of The Book
- Final Battle
- Flaming Sword: The Balrog and the Witch-King.
- Follow The Leader: It started the fantasy genre as we know it, and indirectly started role playing games as we know them too. The live action movies led the way for more film adaptations based on epic fantasy books.
- Forbidden Zone
- Funny Background Event
- Genre Turning Point
- Giant Flyer
- Giant Spider - Shelob
- Gods Hands Are Tied - The Valar
- Gollum Made Me Do It - Trope Namer
- Gondor Calls For Aid - Trope Namer
- Good Hurts Evil
- Good Is Not Nice - Denethor
- Gotterdammerung: The War of the Ring signals the passing of the Elves in Middle Earth.
- Half Human Hybrids (Elrond and his family are half-elven, Aragorn's ancestors had elven blood, and the Uruk-hai are rumoured to be part-human part-goblin part-orc.)
- Hate Plague (The Ring)
- Healing Hands
- Hellfire
- Here There Were Dragons: The War of the Ring takes place in a world where Balrogs and wizards still walk the earth.
- Heroic Fantasy
- Heterosexual Life Partners (Frodo and Sam, Gimli and Legolas)
- Hidden Elf Village: Rivendell, Lothlorien.
- Hobbits
- Humans Are Special
- I Call It Vera (In spades...which are probably also named)
- I Have Many Names: Gandalf, Aragorn, the Witch-King, and Sauron all have many names.
- I Should Write A Book About This
- Impaled With Extreme Prejudice: spoilers
- Improbable Age: Aragorn
- Internet Backdraft (Everyone stand back... "The Balrog has no wings!" Watch the explosions!)
- It Has Been An Honor: Boromir to Aragorn
- Just Eat Gilligan (A few of these are ripe topics for fan squabbling, including easier ways that the Ring might have been taken to Mordor
and ways that Sauron might have guarded against the one thing that could defeat him, such as, I don't know, installing a door with a lock on it in the tunnel to the Cracks of Doom. Naturally, bringing something like this up among serious Ringers is at least as dangerous as making a statement about whether Balrogs have wings.)
- Karmic Death (Boromir, Saruman)
- Kill It With Fire (The Ringwraiths, Shelob. Depending on how you want to look at it, the Balrog inverted the trope)
- Lady Of War: Eowyn
- Leitmotif
- Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition
- Literary Agent Hypothesis: The author claims that Lord of the Rings is translated from the The Red Book of Westmarch, which was written by hobbits.
- Live Action Adaptation: The movies by Peter Jackson.
- Load Bearing Boss
- The Lost Woods (The Old Forest, Fangorn Forest, and Lothlorien)
- Lowest Common Denominator: The positive version of this trope.
- The Magic Goes Away
- Marathon Man
- Magnificent Bastard: Sauron, especially if you read his backstory in the appendixes and realize how magnificent a bastard he was.
- Mask Power: The Witch King in the Peter Jackson movies.
- Mayfly December Romance (Aragorn and Arwen)
- Meaningful Name: Most names in the books have other meanings and are often based on obscure words. Mordor, for example, comes from the old English word for "mortal sin" or "murder".
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: This happened to Gandalf. He's feeling much better now.
- Mithril: The Trope Namer
- Monogender Monsters (The movie's portrayal of Orcs, being all male and spawned from mud pits)
- Mooks
- Mordor (Again, the original.)
- Mythopoeia: (The Ur-example.)
- Narrative Poem: "Eärendil Was a Mariner"
- No Man Of Woman Born (After ''Macbeth'', the best-known example, like, ever)
- Word Of God once mentioned that this case of the trope, as well as the whole idea of the Ents, was directly inspired by Macbeth. Tolkien said he was disappointed that Macbeth wasn't just killed by a woman and that Birnham Wood didn't actually get up and march against Macbeth.
- The Obi Wan: Gandalf
- No Ontological Inertia (Everything done with the rings, including Mordor and Lorien.)
- Obviously Evil (Sauron)
- Odd Friendship (Legolas and Gimli)
- Offing The Offspring (Denethor tries, regrets this, and goes crazy with despair.)
- Older Than They Look (Aragorn, and Numenoreans in general.)
- Omnicidal Maniac: Morgoth, in the backstory
- One Gender Race (The Ents, whose situation is elaborated upon in the trope entry.)
- One Sided Battle
- Our Elves Are Better (Originator of the trope, with at least two subspecies inside the book. A rather different view of them is revealed in the Back Story, however.)
- Our Orcs Are Different (Yet another Tolkien-created trope)
- Playing With Fire: Gandalf
- Poisoned Weapons: The Morgul blade and the arrow that hit Faramir.
- Popcultural Osmosis: LotR's influence is widespread and isn't limited to the fantasy genre.
- High Fantasy: It popularized the genre and is generally credited with creating it, although high fantasy in the novel format is actually older than Tolkein. The demand for novels similar to Lord of the Rings was so great that many imitators joined in to feed the demand. The term "Tolkienesque" has been used to describe the literature of his many imitators. A few writers actually tried to go in a different direction than Tolkien, such as Ursula K. Le Guin with her Earthsea novels. Even today, Tolkien's shadow is so big that it's difficult for a writer to escape it.
- Role Playing Games: The Fellowship can be seen as the prototypical RPG party. It established many archetypes and tropes that are seen RPGs like "rangers", warrior dwarves, Balrog and Mithril. The Fellowship's trek through the dwarven city of Khazad-dûm might have been the basis for Ruins For Ruins Sake. It inspired D&D and many of the RPGs that came after it.
- War Gaming: Before LotR, war games were limited to historical wars like WWII, the Napoleonic Wars, and the American Civil War. LotR popularized the idea that war gaming can take place in a fictional land with fictional races and nations. It influenced such games as Warhammer, War Craft, and Star Craft.
- Heavy Metal: Many of the earliest metal bands were influenced by Tolkien. They use many of his themes and events as a basis for numerous songs. Led Zepplin is a band that shows a lot of Tolkien influence. There's even a subgenre called Tolkien Metal.
- Prophecy Twist: The Witch King
- Prophetic Fallacy: Denethor and the Corsairs
- Psychic Dreams For Everyone: Boromir and Faramir
- The Quest - Frodo's quest is a double subversion. So much so, it might called an Anti Quest
- Rain Of Arrows (Elves, mostly. Orcs manage it during the siege of Minas Tirith with ballista, though.)
- Redemption Equals Death (Boromir)
- Red Eyes Take Warning (Sauron)
- The Renfield
- Robe And Wizard Hat: Gandalf
- Royal Blood
- Second Hand Storytelling: Gandalf's escape from Saruman, Treebeard's attack on Isengard, and Aragorn's adventures in southern Gondor. Justified by Word Of God that the story is mostly seen from a hobbit POV.
- Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Almost every modern fantasy copies from it to some extent or another; so much of the genre is aimed at children that by the time a reader gets to the Real Thing, they've seen it before...
- Serkis Folk: Gollum
- Shadow Archetype
- Short Cuts Make Long Delays
- Single Line Of Descent (Surprisingly, subverted. Aragorn is descended from the northern branch of the kingly line; the Gondor branch of the Numenorean kings diversified into several potential claimants, endured a civil war over the question of inheritance, and eventually died out. All explained in the appendices.)
- Soul Jar (The One Ring)
- Speak Friend And Enter (Trope Namer)
- Split Personality (Gollum/Smeagol)
- Squishy Wizard: Gandalf
- Storming The Castle: Subverted
- The Strategist: Gandalf
- Succession Crisis: Gondor had a brutal civil war over who should inherit the throne, a half breed or a pureblood. A generation later, when the last king of Gondor foolishly walked into captivity and (presumed) death, there was no one left willing to take the throne, for fear of a second civil war.
- Super Soldier: Uruk-Hai
- Supervillain Lair: Barar-Dur and Isengard
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Eowyn
- Take My Hand
- Tear Jerker (Lots, especially in the movies.)
- The Law Of Scarcity: The ring seems to allure and tempt others partially due to the fact that it's beautiful, rare and powerful. It is "the precious."
- The Power Of Friendship: Especially the friendship between Sam and Frodo.
- This Is Gonna Suck: "They have a cave troll."
- This Is Sparta: "You! Shall not! Pass!"
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Frodo and Sam
- Time Abyss: Tom Bombadil, Treebeard, Elrond
- The Time Of Myths
- Translation Convention (Technically, they aren't speaking English; it's "translated" from Westron, including a few names supposedly being completely changed to preserve their linguistic meaning. This actually influences the plot slightly in places, although you don't find out unless you read the appendices.)
- Treacherous Advisor (Saruman, Grima)
- Trope Maker: And how! The ISO Standard Fantasy Setting started here.
- Two Lines No Waiting
- The Unfavorite: Faramir
- The Vamp: Parodied with Shelob
- Vestigial Empire (Gondor)
- Vindicated By History: The book wasn't really popular until the Vietnam war and then the reading public started seeing parallels between Vietnam and the War of the Ring.
- Walking The Earth
- We Are Struggling Together
- We Can Rule Together
- Well Done Son Guy: Faramir
- What Do You Mean Its Not Didactic
- When Trees Attack: Ents and Old Man Willow
- Where It All Began (Mordor and the Shire count.)
- Whip It Good: The Balrog, the nonsexual example.
- The Wise Prince - Faramir
- With Friends Like These (Gimli and Legolas, what with the Elves Vs Dwarves; more notable in the film than the book.)
- Word Of God (The appendices are only the start; Tolkien's son has edited together and published fifteen volumes from his notes.)
- World Building: The Ur-example
- Xanatos Gambit: the whole War of the Ring is used to distract from the attempt to destroy the ring
- Ye Goode Olde Days
- Actually one might argue that living at a time when a satanic demon has a high probability of making Earth into Hell is not so pleasant. But there are also constant references in the story to even earlier good old days. Although the Silmarillion would seem to indicate that the same objection applies.
- You Shall Not Pass: Trope Namer
Ralph Bakshi's adaption of
The Lord of the Rings includes examples of:
- Adaptation Decay: This is a pretty bad case of it.
- Animated Adaptation
- Cult Classic
- Everythings Better With Sparkles
- Ho Yay: The hobbits have enough of that for the whole movie.
- Improbable Hairstyle: Gandalf and Saruman. They have more hair than any man should have.
- Large Ham
- Memetic Mutation: partly inspired by the Peter Jackson movies. Boromir The Hornhead: "Gondor has no pants. Gondor needs no pants."
- Mr Exposition: Gandalf
- Narm
- Frodo's reaction when Gandalf tosses the Ring in to the fire.
- Sam's ''Oh my! Oh HOO-RAAAY!", when he's told that the Sam and Frodo are going to see the Elves.
- When the hobbits encounter the first Nazgul. The Nazgul gets off his steed and limps like a leper towards the hobbits.
- Frodo giving the audience a rather curious look just before the Council of Elrond scene, like he's pleading that he be taken out of this movie.
- The Terror of the First Age depicted as a man wearing a lion mask, with butterfly wings, and wearing fluffy slippers.
- Nonstandard Character Design: The masses of xeroxed Orcs with three to four colors on them obviously wearing gorilla masks going against the heroes.
- Off Model: The characters at times will switch from being a cartoon character to an animated color xerox copy with paint.
- Rotoscoping
- Sequel Hook
- Spell My Name With An S
- Uncanny Valley
Rankin Bass' adaption of
The Return of the King includes examples of:
