The Lord of the Rings: Great Books Explained

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In 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien was 62 years old and had just spent the last 16 years working industriously on a book. It was now time to release it into the world and he was very nervous.
And he should have been - because no-one had seen anything quite like The Lord of the Rings before.

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"What a brilliant series this is" - Stephen Fry on Twitter

SUBTITLES
I input the English subtitles myself but I rely on volunteers to do subtitles for other languages and I really appreciate it - just contact me at [e-mail]

CREDITS
Co creator Michael DiRuggiero
Actor: Roger Surridge
Sound Engineer (UK): Robert Lewis

Opening Animation and Title Sequence by Brian Adsit (instagram https://instagram.com/brian_vfx?utm_m... and Behance www.behance.com/badsit88)

IMAGES
Thumbnail Gandalf image: Nidoart
Scouring of the Shire: Owen William Weber @www.oweber.com

VIDEOS
All the videos, songs, images, and graphics used in the video belong to their respective owners and I or this channel do not claim any right over them.

MUSIC
"Theme" music: JS Bach “Sonata for violin solo No.1 in G Minor”
Sibelius, The Swan of Tuonela
Jerusalem (Hymn), music written by Sir Hubert Parry, Lyrics b William Blake
Elven anthem by Katarzyna Bartnik - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M0BAJIb6mA

FILMS AND TV
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) - ©New Line Cinema
The Lord of the Rings (2022) - ©Warner Bros
Rings of Power (1966) - ©Amazon
dune 2 (2024) - ©Warner Bros
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope - ©Lucasfilms

PODCASTS
The Rest is History (Lord of the Rings), Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook
The Lord of the Rings Podcast (The Topic Archives), Albert Chessa
Lord of the Rings (BBC) - Brian Sibley

BOOKS
Lord of the rings - JRR Tolkien
Humphrey Carpenter. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. [Houghton Mifflin, 1987].
Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, editors. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. [William Morrow, 2023].

Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

This episode is sponsored
by the Manhattan Rare Book Company.

In 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien was 62 years old,

and had just spent the last 16 years
working industriously on a book.

It was now time
to release it into the world,

and he was very nervous.

And he should have been,

because no one had seen anything
quite like "The Lord of the Rings" before.

It was a huge risk for the publishers

who were convinced
that it wouldn't sell many copies.

Who was the audience for this strange book

filled with unfamiliar and unpronouncable
names of people and places?

Was it a children's book
like "The Hobbit"?

It certainly had wizards
and strange creatures,

and it was also an epic adventure
of some kind.

It was also very, very, long.

Three volumes in fact,

and several appendices.

But no, it was neither a children's book
or an adult novel.

Tolkien wrote to his publisher
at the time:

"My work has escaped from my control
and I have produced a monster,

"an immensely long, complex,

"rather bitter, and rather
terrifying romance,

"quite unfit for children
(if fit for anybody)..."

"I now wonder whether
many beyond my friends [...],

"would read anything so long."

"We can only imagine
what was at stake for Tolkien.

If the first volume wasn't a success,

what would happen to the other two volumes

which he had spent
the best part of 16 years writing?

In the early 1930s, when Tolkien
was a professor of anglo-saxon at Oxford,

he was grading papers when he noticed

that one of the candidates
had left a blank sheet of paper.

"Nothing to read. So I scribbled on it
I can't think why:

"In a hole in the ground
there lived a Hobbit"

And so, the Hobbits were born.

The Hobbit can broadly be considered
a prequel to The Lord of the Rings.

It introduces Tolkien's world
of Middle Earth.

The world of Hobbits, wizards,
dwarves, and elves.

But it is a much different book,

with a different intended audience.

Upon publication,
Tolkien''s friend C.S. Lewis

compared "The Hobbit" to such classics

as "Alice in Wonderland"
and "The Wind in the Willows",

and like those works
it has often been considered

a children's fantasy book

written primarily
for children or adolescents,

but enjoyed by adults as well.

"The Hobbit" was a huge success

and only a few weeks
after its publication,

Tolkien met
with his publisher Stanley Unwin,

to discuss a sequel.

The writer expressed his desire to publish

a long, detailed, mythological work

about Middle Earth, called the Silmarillion.

But Unwin insisted that
what the public really wanted,

was more stories about the Hobbits.

He wanted The Hobbit 2.

Tolkien and Unwin had variations
of this debate

for the entire 16 years Tolkien
was working on his next book.

Ultimately the Lord of the Rings

succeeded in developing
Tolkien's Middle Earth,

without losing
the narrative appeal of "The Hobbit".

The result was not so much a sequel
but a much more complex, adult work.

In the process Tolkien had invented
a whole new genre - the fantasy novel.

"I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size).

I like gardens, trees
and unmechanised farmlands,

"I smoke a pipe,
and like good plain food."

"- J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien in his later years professed
to love the simple life,

much like his beloved
Hobbits in the Shire.

This desire for peace, security,
and companionship, however

was likely the result of his upbringing
and young adulthood,

which was anything
but peaceful and secure.

This quintessentially English Professor

was born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
in Bloemfontein,

in what is now South Africa, in 1892.

In 1895 Tolkien, his mother,
and his infant brother, Hillary,

went to England for a visit
to his mother's family,

who like her were British.

But soon after their arrival,
his father died in Bloemfontein,

of rheumatic fever,

leaving the family
with very little inheritance.

The family stayed in Britain,
where she had the support of her family,

and moved to the small village of Sarehole

just outside the industrial city
of Birmingham.

Although they didn't have much money,

Tolkien became captivated
with his environment.

He would later say:

"It was a kind of lost paradise.

"There was an old mill that really
did grind corn with two millers,

"a great big pond with swans on it,

"a sandpit, a wonderful dell with flowers,

"a few old-fashioned village houses

"and, further away,
a stream with another mill..."

The village scenery would Inspire the Shire.

But it was just outside
the major industrial city of Birmingham

which was expanding rapidly

and in the process absorbing
the surrounding villages.

"I was brought up in considerable poverty,

"but I was happy running about
in that country.

"I took the idea of the Hobbits
from the village people and children...

"The Hobbits are just what I should like
to have been but never was...

"an entirely unmilitary people

"who always came up
to scratch in a clinch...

"Behind all thi Hobbit stuff
lay a sense of insecurity.

"I always knew it would go - and it did."

The theme of the destruction
of idilic countryside

would fill his literature.

Tolkien's mother Mabel was the primary
influence on his early life.

In 1900 when Tolkien was 8,

Mabel converted to Catholicism.

Her family, who were Methodist,
disapproved.

Her father disowned her,

and her brother-in-law,
who had been assisting her financially,

withdrew his support.

It was a spectacular fall from grace,

a theme we often find in Tolkien's books.

She homeschooled him
until the age of eight,

encouraging him to read widely,

and introducing him to the works
of George McDonald and Andrew Lang,

early developers of fantasy literature.

In 1904 however, when a Tolkien was 12,

Mabel died of diabetes,

hastened, Tolkien later believed,

by persecution for her faith,

leaving her two sons orphaned
with bleak prospects.

He took refuge in language,
learning Chaucer's Middle English,

the old norse of the Viking sagas,

the old English of Beowulf,

and even reviving long dead languages

and inventing languages of his own.

"I first began seriously inventing languages...

"about when I was 13 or 14,
and I've never stopped really."

School was a haven for Tolkien.

He first attended
King Edward's School in Birmingham,

and it was here crucially, that he formed
his first literary group

the "Tea club and Barovian Society",

four friends who played rugby together,

and talked about Norse mythology,

while drinking tea
and inventing languages.

Groups like this were important to Tolkien

a fatherless boy, and now an orphan.

And it was the first
of many literary groups

that Tolkien would form
- a fellowship of sorts.

Even this early on, he was obsessed
with myths, legends, and folklore,

and concerned with creating
a British mythology.

He won a scholarship
to Exeter college, Oxford,

and unsurprisingly he showed
a special aptitude for languages,

Old and Middle English,
Old Norse, and Gothic in particular.

Graduating in 1915 with a degree
in English language and literature,

with First Class honours.

And it is these studies that will lead

to the creation of a series
of languages in Lord of the Rings

which are among the most fully developed
fictional languages in literature.

But 1915 could only mean one thing...war.

And almost immediately after graduation

he was commissioned
into the Lancashire Fusiliers.

"The Lord of the Rings" is
at its most basic level, a hero's quest.

But the hero in this case
is not someone strong and fierce

like Odysseus, Beowulf, or Aeneas,

but the Hobbit Frodo Baggins,

a diminutive creature who, at his core,
like other Hobbits,

wishes to be left alone
to enjoy peace, good food and fellowship,

in his homeland the Shire.

Frodo has no special abilities,

and is extraordinary, only in his courage,
loyalty, and incorruptibility.

And the quest of Frodo and his companions
is most unusual.

Instead of trying to gain power,

they are dedicated to the destruction
of the one thing, a magical ring,

that would give them great power.

In fact, the quest succeeds,

because the idea
that someone would forego power

and intentionally destroy the most
coveted possession in their world,

is a thought that is impossible
for their enemy Sauron to anticipate,

or even to contemplate.

Tolkien was an academic deeply steeped
in the tradition of the Epic,

but he also knew
how to subvert those traditions,

to create a new kind of Epic,

that address the fears
and concerns of his generation

- the generation of World War One.

War of one kind or another
permeates "The Lord of the Rings",

through death and loss,
through notions of power,

through camaraderie in deathly times,

and eventually through disappointment.

Tolkien took part
in the battle of the Somme,

one of the most horrific battles
of the 20th century.

Over 3 million men fought in the battle,

which saw over a million
killed or injured,

scarring the Earth in one
of the most deadliest battles

in human history.

He saw many of his school friends
die in the fighting,

and by 1918, he said that he had lost
all but one of his closest friends.

In some sense he was lucky

to have contracted
a severe case of trench fever

near the end of the battle of the Somme,

and sent back to England to recover.

While convalescing in army barracks,

with the war very much fresh in his mind,

Tolkien put to paper much of the story

that would later become
"The Fall of Gondolin",

a story published after his death,

of a cataclysmic battle featuring orcs,
dragons, and bullrogs,

and notably his first work
to feature "Middle Earth".

"They walked slowly, stooping,
keeping close in line,

following attentively
every move that Gollum made.

"The fens grew more wet, opening
into wide stagnant meres.

"among which it grew
more and more difficult,

"to find the firmer places
where feet could tread

"without sinking into gurgling mud...

"Wrenching his hands out of the bog,

"he sprang back with a cry.

" 'There are dead things, dead faces
in the water', he said with horror.

" 'Dead faces!' "

Although Tolkien here is describing
the outskirts of Mordor

in his fictional Middle Earth,

it is not hard to imagine this
as a description of Tolkien's experience

during the battle of the Somme.

The I World War begins as a battle
on horseback with cavalries,

but it is the beginning
of mechanised warfare.

Characters in "The Lord of the Rings"

describe being watched
by mysterious figures flying overhead,

and in 1914, airplanes on both sides
were first used for reconnaissance,

flying deep behind enemy lines.

Over the course of the war,

aviation developed significantly
into a major force,

and by the end of that war

it was obvious that airplanes
were the weapon of the future.

"Then Frodo and Sam staring at the sky...

"saw it come: a small cloud
flying from the accursed hills,

"a black shadow loosed from Mordor;

"a vast shape winged and ominous."

"It scudded across the moon,

"and with a deadly cry went westward,

"outrunning the wind in its fell speed."

He is at the Somme
when tanks were first used,

and although Orcs make up the bulk
of Sauron's Army

in "The Lord of the Rings",

one of his most powerful weapons
were the tanks of Middle Earth

- the "Oliphaunts".

Newsreel: "A state of war once more exists

between Great Britain and Germany"

Tolkien began writing
"The Lord of the Rings"

at the outbreak
of the II World War, late 1937.

So the world was once again
on the precipice of war.

Tolkien denied
it was an allegory of any kind

in the forward to the book,

but also admitted that an author
is influenced by his experiences.

The writing of the novel began
during the rise of Hitler,

and continued during the darkest days
of World War II,

when all hopes of a peaceful
New World Order had vanished,

especially for someone living in England

and in constant fear of air raids
and Nazi victory.

"If you really come down
to any 'large' story

"that interests people - that can hold
their attention for a considerable time

"stories - human stories - are practically
always about one thing: death."

The I World War almost certainly
had more influence on Tolkien,

but "The Lord of the Rings"
can also be considered part

of post-World War II literature,

that includes "The Lord of the Flies",
"1984", and "Animal Farm",

books that were marked
by their author's wartime experiences,

and deal with the question
of good and evil.

"Sauron was become now
a sorcerer of dreadful power,

"master of shadows and of phantoms,

"foul in wisdom, cruel in strength,

"misshaping what he touched,
twisting what he ruled."

In "The Lord of the Rings"

there is the rise of an evil force Sauron,

who is not unlike Hitler

in his desire for power
and world domination.

Just like countries during the war,

some societies in the book,

whether out of self-interest or fear,
side with Sauron,

adding to the hopelessness
of the good-hearted.

The fate of the world
is at stake in both worlds,

and the outcome hinges on a race

to prevent ultimate power
getting in the wrong hands.

Crucially, the ring
is not just about power,

it is about what we do with power

and how it can corrupt us,

and how that corruption
can be addictive

leading to the eventual loss
of your Humanity,

as the evil within you is exposed,

absorbing all morals.

The very things that were being discussed

at the outbreak, during, and at the conclusion of World War II.
14:56
The horrific evils of the 20th century were just around the corner.
15:05
Despite the horrors Tolkien witness firsthand, the Lord of the Rings is not as you might expect explicitly anti-war.
15:13
Tolkien may describe battles, almost poetically, and place an emphasis on heroism in combat, but for a man
15:19
who spent his life studying traditional myths and legends, often involving War, he understood
15:24
that nobility often means that we need to take up arms for a "just" cause. The Lord of the Rings is
15:31
in fact, a book about the "unfortunate necessity" of War - when it is a just war - against evil.
15:38
But crucially, Tolkien also understood that there was good and evil on BOTH sides of War, an unpopular
15:45
sentiment in a time when those boundaries were being blurred beyond recognition. He was outspoken against bombing campaigns
15:52
on German cities, and even used a quote from The Lord of the Rings, in a letter to his son about the campaigns:
16:04
He knew, as the characters of the fellowship do, that just because one fights for good,
16:10
it doesn't make one immune to the power of evil - to the power of the Ring. The Fellowship
16:15
must resist the temptation of the ring, as we must resist using evil to fight evil. Tolkien understood
16:24
that bravery is a complex notion, for while battles swarm around him it is our little hobbit Frodo who
16:30
succeeds on his journey by avoiding War. But even he is not immune to War's effects and Trauma.
16:36
When the war is over and he is returning to the Shire, Frodo confesses to Gandalf, in one of
16:41
the most poignant passages in the book, that he is in pain, as so many shellshocked men of the trenches were.
17:16
After World War I, and certainly during World War II, artists and writers had to wrestle with a new reality:
17:23
"How to present life in the aftermath of such Horrors?", "Were the old stories of heroism even relevant anymore?"
17:31
Tolkien, through his fictional world, has reinvented the heroic epic for our times. Giving us a fresh and more ambiguous perspective
17:40
on Modern Warfare, through the realm of fantasy. You may get all the heroics, but there are also points when his greatest heroes are full of fear.
17:53
Reducing the Lord of the Rings to a heroic Quest or a war narrative, is convenient, and an an aid to our understanding, but ultimately
18:01
does disservice to the book. It more likely just exposes our difficulties in identifying exactly what this strange work is.
18:21
The action of the book takes place over a relatively short period of time, but throughout the Lord of the Rings, we hear tales and legends about the past, often stretching back thousands of
18:32
years. Tolkien hasn't just written a story, but has given us the impression that we are witnessing a
18:37
series of events, inside an entire history that exists outside of the books. Although he is just
18:44
one writer, he has created an entire mythology comparable to traditional cultural mythologies.
19:03
Documenting the history of Middle Earth, was a lifelong project of Tolkien's. In his letters, notes, and unpublished works
19:10
he filled in details of this mythology, complete with elaborate geneologies, and geographical details.
19:17
Tolkien had the genius to make it sound like it was a "real history" he was exploring, as if
19:23
he was just "researching" it and reporting it to us. There had been fantasy books before Tolkien,
19:29
but never had there been such successful "World building", with such a serious tone and seismic events
19:52
From 1924 to 1945, Tolkien was the professor of anglo-saxon at Oxford, and even after the huge success of The Hobbit