The Wonder of The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien's Amazing Work
This article was originally published in The People Sentinel in February of 2022.
Last week was my birthday, and to celebrate, I decided to host a Lord of the Rings marathon. I got out the chairs, invited my nerd friends, and put out a spread of junk food that every hobbit in the Shire would have been proud of. And for nine hours, my friends and I entered the cinematic version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, experiencing its adventure, its majesty, and its magic.
Nothing else has quite had the impact on my life that The Lord of the Rings has had. From seeing the films when I was thirteen years old to reading the books in high school and throughout college, Tolkien’s imagination has left a large impact on me that other fantasy books have not.
Compared to other fantasy literature, whether it be Harry Potter, The Forgotten Realms, or Eragon, there is something profoundly wholesome and good about The Lord of the Rings. It possesses a purity that I have not come across in any other piece of modern literature. Not to say that other works are not good and wholesome, but Tolkien’s work is in a league of its own. Tolkien is like a shaft of light piercing a dark canopy of clouds. His work is filled with strife, but there is a profound hope in the books and films that I have seldom found elsewhere.
And I love sharing this hope. In my classroom, I let students check out my books to read. One of them checked out The Hobbit and returned wanting more of Bilbo and the magic Ring. So, I showed her The Fellowship of the Ring. And now she’s hooked. Almost every day when I walk into the cafeteria, I’ll see her poring over the copy she checked out, the same copy that my parents gave to me for Christmas nearly ten years ago, with yellowed pages and highlighted passages. She begs for independent reading time in class so that she can spend more time in Middle-Earth, and every day I check on how far she has made it in the book. We discuss the events, the chapters, the story. It is an awesome joy.
After watching the movies this past week with my friends, and discussing the lore of the story, I have decided to reread the books. Stephen King once said life is too short to reread books. I partly agree with him, but The Lord of the Rings is an exception. It is a story that demands to be experienced again and again because so many of the truths of the goodness of life and God are recorded within its pages. If you have never read Tolkien’s masterpiece, I encourage you to give it a go (do skip the opening pages on hobbits and go straight to chapter one; the prologue is quite dense). I can guarantee you that you will never come across another book like it, and the change it may have on you can very well be invaluable.
Great article! I've not seen the movies in years, but I've listened to a radio-drama, an audiobook rendition of Fellowship and read the books. It is indeed a story that must be experienced again and again.