“6) Tolkien’s hero was average, and needed help, and failed. This is the place where most fantasy authors, who love to simultaneously call themselves Tolkien’s heirs and blame him for a lot of what’s wrong with modern fantasy, err the worst. It’s hard to look at Frodo and see him as someone extra-special. The hints in the books that a higher power did choose him are so quiet as to be unnoticeable. And he wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without his companions. And he doesn’t keep from falling into temptation. A lot of modern fantasy heroes are completely opposite from this. They start out extraordinary, and they stay that way. Other characters are there to train them, or be shallow antagonists and love interests and worshippers, not actually help them. And they don’t fail. (Damn it, I want to see more corrupted fantasy heroes.) It’s not fair to blame Tolkien for the disease that fantasy writers have inflicted on themselves. […] Fantasy could use more ordinary people who are afraid and don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but volunteer for the Quest anyway. It’s misinterpretation of Tolkien that’s the problem, not Tolkien himself.”
The whole point of The Lord Of The Rings… like, the WHOLE POINT… is that it is ultimately the hobbits who save the world. The small, vulnerable, ordinary people who aren’t great warriors or heroes.
Specifically, Sam. Sam saves the world. All of it. The ultimate success of the great quest is 100% due to a fat little gardener who likes to cook and never wanted to go on an adventure but who did it because he wasn’t going to let his beloved Frodo go off alone. Frodo is the only one truly able to handle the ring long enough to get it into Mordor – and it nearly kills him and permanently emotionally damages him – but Sam is the one who takes care of Frodo that whole time. Who makes him eat. Who finds him water. Who watches over him while he sleeps.
Sam is the one who fights off Shelob.
Sam is the one who takes the Ring when he thinks Frodo is dead.
Sam is the one who strolls into Orc Central and saves Frodo by sheer determination and killing any orc who crosses him. (SAM THE GARDENER GOES AND KILLS AN ACTUAL ORC TO GET FRODO SOME CLOTHES LET’S JUST THINK ABOUT THAT). And then Sam just takes off the Ring and gives it back which is supposed to be freaking impossible and he barely even hesitates.
Sam literally carries Frodo on the last leg of the journey. On his back. He’s half-starved, dying slowly of dehydration, but he carries Frodo up the goddamn mountain and Gollum may get credit for accidentally destroying the ring but Sam was the one who got them all there.
Sam saved the world.
And let’s not forget Pippin and Merry, who get damselled out of the story (the orcs have carried them off! We must make a Heroic Run To Save Them!) and then rescue themselves, recruit the Terrifying Ancient Powers through being genuinely nice and sincere, and overthrow Saruman before the ‘real’ heroes even get there.
Let’s not forget Pippin single-handedly saving what’s left of Gondor – and Faramir – by understanding that there is a time for obeying orders and a time for realizing that the boss is bugfuck nuts and we need to get help right now.
Let’s not forget Merry sticking his sword into the terrifying, profoundly evil horror that has chased him all over his world because his friend is fighting it and he’s gonna help, dammit and that’s how the most powerful Ringwraith goes down to a suicidally depressed woman and a scared little hobbit.
Everything the others do, the kings and princes and great heroes and all? They buy time. They distract the bad guys. They keep the armies occupied. That is what kings and great leaders are for – they do the big picture stuff.
But it is ultimately the hobbits who bring down every villain. Every one. And I believe that that is 100% on purpose. Tolkien was a soldier in WWI. His son fought in WWII. (And a lot of The Lord Of The Rings was written in letters to him while he did it.)
And hey, look, The Lord Of The Rings is about ordinary people – farmers, scholars, and so on – who get pulled into a war not of their making but who have to fight not only because their own home is in danger but so is everyone’s. And they’re small and scared but they do the best they can for as long as they can and that is what actually saves the world. Not great heroes and pre-destined kings. Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things because they want the world to be safe for ordinary people, the ones they know and the ones they don’t.
Ordinary people matter. They can save the world without being great heroes or kings or whatever. And that is really important and I get so upset when people miss that because Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli and Gandalf and all the others are great characters and all but they are ultimately a hobbit delivery system.
It is ordinary people doing their best who really change the world, and continue doing so after the war is over because they have to go home and rebuild and they do.
If nothing else, I have to reblog this for the phrase “hobbit delivery system.” So accurate it hurts.
What I love too is how even the foretold king and the assorted great heroes themselves all come to recognize that their main (and by the end, only) role is to distract Sauron. To the point that by the end they’re all gathered up before the black gates of Mordor in order to keep his attention focused on them, with only the hope – not the certainty – that they can buy Frodo whatever remaining time he needs, if he’s even still alive.
One thing the movies left out but has always been such a key part of the books for me was how when the hobbits returned home, they found that home had been changed too.
The war touched everywhere. Even with all they did in far-off lands to protect the Shire, the Shire had still been damaged, both property and lives destroyed, and it wasn’t an easy or simplistically happy homecoming. They had to fight yet another battle (granted a much smaller one) to save their neighbours, and then spent years in rebuilding.
if anyone is need of a long, entertaining adventure with a hero who never set out to be a hero but was just TRYING TO DIG A TUNNEL DAMMIT, Ursula Vernon’s Digger and its delightful wombat heroine might be up your alley.
tbh nothing is weirder to me than manly grimdark dudebro lord of the rings bc it’s just??? the epitome of light and love to me???? no narrative embodies hope and gentleness and healing like lotr does why must you insist on talking to me about badass aragorn vs. useless frodo. that’s not the point brad
I feel like this is also why so many of the post-LOTR Tolkien ripoffs are so terrible! It’s people pulling from Tolkien when they fundamentally don’t understand what makes Tolkien work. You get all these stories written by people who don’t think Frodo was worthy of his plotline and so they give it to their Aragorn expy instead, and it’s dull and boring and totally lacks the themes and the heart that make LOTR an important, enduring story.
when Aragorn shows up in Gondor no one cares who he is until he gets to the Houses of Healing, because the proof of true kingship is not being able to fight real good, it’s having “the hands of a healer”
so Aragorn calls his friends back from the darkness with little more than a gentle touch and a loving voice (and some plants, but it’s pretty clear that the plants alone aren’t enough) and that’s when the rumors spread through Gondor that the King has returned because the love of a king has this great power
like… that’s the big moment. washing his friends’ wounds and telling them they’re going to be okay. this is not macho! it’s not badass! I mean… in a way it’s actually really fucking badass that someone can get stabbed by a knife made of evil and Aragorn doesn’t even have to raise his voice when he says “not today,” but it’s not, like, standard fantasy badass.
Tolkien lived through a war. War is not entertaining and epic, it’s horrifying and terrible. That’s why all the climatic moments of LOTR aren’t battles, but decisions of love: Sam going back for Frodo, Bilbo giving Bard the Arkenstone, Aragorn healing Merry and Eowyn…
Where modern fantasy falls short is they think a war setting is the key to Tolkien’s success, so they describe warrior-man and the gorey, rapey, traumatizing things he does/sees (looking at u, SOIAF). But it’s not about fighting the war, it’s about living through it and loving despite it. Bilbo Baggins slept through his battles, Frodo and Sam (arguably, the main heroes) never fought or killed, a woman & hobbit defeated the witch-king out of love for their lord, not for power or fame. LOTR isn’t a story of war bc Tolkien had already seen that, it’s the story of hope.
The most telling and terrible moment for me in all of LotR is nowhere in the main quest. It’s the Scouring of the Shire. What must it have been like to come home from the war to blitzkrieg-ravaged cities, to continued rationing? What must it have been like to see the occupied territories while he fought and know this was someone else’s home?
The Hobbit and LotR were written by a veteran and incorporated his own experiences of what was possibly the war with the largest death toll in human history in its time. The violence is realistic, but it’s not the point. Like the rest of his generation, Tolkien was writing about what happens to the survivors.
Why do you think Aragorn forgives Boromir? Why does Boromir get a heroic death and funeral? Because he’s not an antagonist. His only guilt is to wish for an easy way out for his people, to spare them. Yeah, it wasn’t going to work, but it’s hard to blame him. It disturbs me how many characters in modern fantasy appear to be twisted homages to Boromir – traitors who only think of power for themselves.
Glorifying war and atrocities in Tolkien’s name is one of the grossest elements of modern fantasy. He would be appalled, I think.
2. BOROMIRThrough Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes. ‘What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight? Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?’ ‘I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey; I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away’
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.
ealdor 