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"My... precious."

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One 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 Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien is too grand and complex to be summarised in full. Succinctly, it is by far the most recent addition to the Canon of Western epic literature and is the epic which set the stage for the entire High Fantasy genre that followed in its wake. Interestingly, 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 Silmarillion, posthumously published in 1977, serves as a prequel to this, though its material was first written of all.

Volumes with Publication Dates

  1. The Fellowship of the Ring, July 24, 1954
  2. The Two Towers, November 11, 1954
  3. The Return of the King, October 20, 1955

All three volumes were revised in 1965, partly because the book had been pirated by an American publisher.

Though it (re-)popularised the trilogy format for fiction, it was written as one book and originally just divided into three for economic reasons. It has also been published in seven-volume editions, as each of the three original volumes includes two Books and the third also has several Appendices.

Adaptations include:

In addition, the books have been adapted multiple times for radio (with a 1981 BBC version as the most highly regarded) and theatre (most recently as the abovementioned 2006 musical, retooled for the West End from 2007-2008). The books and adaptations themselves have inspired various video games, tabletop games and card games.

The Harvard Lampoon published a parody titled Bored of the Rings in 1969, which manages to cover the entire journey in under 200 pages. In 1985, Fergus McNeill and Judith Child released an Amstrad CPC Text Adventure game of the same name, which also parodied Lord of the Rings, but was not based on the novel; one year later, they also released a prequel called Boggit. In 1996, Derek Mason made an online interactive fiction game called Quest for the Golden etc... that was also a parody of Lord of the Rings, and of 1980s text adventures in general.

Please note that this is the page for tropes used in the book. See above for the links to pages for the movies. (And Tolkien's Legendarium for the Middle-earth verse in general.)


The Lord of the Rings provides examples of the following tropes:


 
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Alternative Title(s): Lord Of The Rings, The Fellowship Of The Ring, The Return Of The King, The Two Towers

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The Fighting Uruk-Hai

For many ages, the scourge of the orc has plagued Middle-Earth, but from the bowels of Isengard, a new breed, refined and improved by Saruman, threatens the land. Unburdened by pain and hatred of the sun, they are brutish and cruel creatures bred for war

How well does it match the trope?

5 (11 votes)

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Main / OurOrcsAreDifferent

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