Lord of the Rings Summary: Tolkien's Quest Through Middle-earth Explained
What it is about
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. It began as a sequel to his 1937 children's book The Hobbit and grew into something far larger. Tolkien wrote it in stages between 1937 and 1949. It is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
The title refers to Sauron, the Dark Lord. In an earlier age he made the One Ring, which gave him mastery over the other Rings of Power handed out to men, dwarves and elves. The Ring was lost, then found, and it has now come to a hobbit in the Shire, a quiet farming land that reads like the English countryside. Bilbo Baggins leaves the Ring to his cousin and heir Frodo. Gandalf the wizard suspects what it is. Seventeen years later he confirms it and tells Frodo to get it out of the Shire.
From there the story opens outwards. Frodo leaves on foot with his gardener Sam Gamgee and his cousins Merry and Pippin, pursued by Black Riders. They pass through the Old Forest, meet Tom Bombadil, reach the village of Bree and fall in with a Ranger called Strider. At Rivendell, the Council of Elrond decides the Ring cannot be used or hidden. It must be taken to Mordor and destroyed in the fire of Mount Doom, where it was forged. Frodo volunteers. Elrond picks eight companions to go with him, and the Company of the Ring sets out.
The quest splits. One strand follows Frodo and Sam east towards Mordor. The other follows the rest of the Fellowship into the wars of Rohan and Gondor, where the aim is to rally the Free Peoples of Middle-earth and keep Sauron's attention away from the two hobbits carrying the thing he wants most.
The main characters
Frodo Baggins carries the Ring. Sam Gamgee, his gardener, refuses to let him go alone and intercepts him when Frodo tries to slip away. Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took work out what is going on and insist on coming too. Gandalf is the wizard who sets the whole thing moving, falls into an abyss fighting a Balrog in the Mines of Moria, and returns as Gandalf the White. Strider turns out to be Aragorn, the heir of Isildur, the man who cut the Ring from Sauron's hand in the Second Age and then kept it for himself.
The rest of the Fellowship stand for the free peoples of the West: Boromir, son of the Steward of Gondor; Legolas the elf; Gimli the dwarf. Around them move Elrond of Rivendell, the Lady Galadriel of Lothlórien, King Théoden of Rohan and his nephew Éomer, and Treebeard the Ent. Against them stand Sauron, the nine Nazgûl who ride as Black Riders, and Saruman, the chief wizard who has turned traitor and built an army at Isengard.
The themes
Power is the central problem, and Tolkien tests it on his best characters rather than his worst. Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel. She refuses, because she knows it would master her. Boromir, a brave and decent man, tries to take it by force and the attempt breaks the Fellowship. The Ring does not need an evil owner. It corrupts good intentions first.
Friendship carries the plot. The quest only works because small people keep choosing each other over sense. Sam guesses what Frodo means to do and goes with him. Boromir dies trying to shield Merry and Pippin. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas chase an orc war band across open country on the chance that two hobbits are still alive.
War runs through the book, and Tolkien drew on his own experience of the First World War among his other influences, which included philology, mythology, Christianity and earlier fantasy writing. The battles at Helm's Deep and the ruin of Isengard are not glorious. They are exhausting, and the cost lands on ordinary people.
Why it still matters
The literary establishment gave it a mixed reception at first. Readers disagreed. It has been reprinted many times, translated into at least 38 languages, and in 2003 it was named Britain's best-loved novel of all time in the BBC's Big Read poll.
Tolkien meant it as a single volume to sit alongside The Silmarillion. For economic reasons it appeared in three parts between 29 July 1954 and 20 October 1955, as The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Internally it is six books plus appendices of chronologies, genealogies and language notes. A boxed set followed in 1957, and a single volume in 1968, which is what Tolkien wanted all along.
It is the book that shaped modern fantasy. Almost everything in the genre since either borrows from it or argues with it. It has produced award-winning radio, theatre and film adaptations, plus paintings, music, games and a long shelf of scholarship. Readers who want invented history with real weight behind it, or a long quest told with patience, tend to come back to it more than once.
