The Fellowship of the Ring
The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien’s first installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, brings Bilbo Baggins’s adventuring days to an end as Frodo Baggins, his nephew, embarks on his first and most crucial journey yet. After Bilbo’s extravagant birthday party and his unexpected disappearance, Gandalf the Grey comes to Frodo and makes his plea for the hobbit’s help, and tasks him with the burden of being the bearer of the now identified relic that Bilbo discovered and kept for his own after his own adventures: the enemy’s ring of power, The One. And so Frodo is to set off to the far reaches of the realm, to the dark lands of Mordor, where he will have to destroy The One before the enemy brings ruin to all of Middle Earth. In the company of his dear hobbit friends, Frodo sets off to join what would be known as The Fellowship of the Ring, a party of adventuring heroes representing all the races of Middle Earth, to help Frodo with his daunting task. Through many dark trials and a very long journey, these characters endure more hardships than fortunes on the dark road to Mordor.
I have always enjoyed the fact that the hobbits have played a central part in Tolkien’s universe, and this made the prologue of the book very entertaining as he sheds light on the race as a whole and their customs and rituals, from pipeweed, the Shire Reckoning calendar, and a recap of Bilbo’s adventures and his discovery of the ring in The Hobbit. I also appreciate that my copies of the books have detailed maps inside, and so I spent a great deal of time flipping back and forth from the page I was reading to the map so that I could gain a better spatial awareness of the geography as the story unfolded across Middle Earth. It helped a lot, and I also took the time to look up every character’s name as they came up so that I could place them contextually in the story and in my mind, so I could stop mixing up obvious characters, such as Sauron and Saruman, like I have so often done in the past when watching the movies.
I will say that upon a first reading, the name dropping of characters and places across Tolkien’s world is very much overwhelming. But at the same time I love this because it shows me just how vast his universe is, and how much thought and care he put into building the world and creating the story of the lands and its people, as well as all the languages he invented to tell his stories. It is a dedication to the craft that I have to admire, wordy or not. Once again, I enjoy all the poems and songs that are in the books that the movies don’t have time to explore. They add an extra layer of personality to each character. I also love the elusive nature surrounding Tom Bombadil, a character who I couldn’t possibly ruin because there isn’t much to learn about him in this particular book. I enjoy the mystery that is Tom, and all his boisterous songs.
Even though it is a different story surrounding different characters, I like how the book revisits familiar faces and places to root and connect the story with its prequel. Through revisits and new additions, Tolkien merely enriches the preexisting lore and expands the world even further in his unique and beautiful fashion. I still very much like his descriptive style, his direct humor when the situation calls for it, as well as the heart wrenching moments in between. The trilogy is set up nicely in this first book, and ends on a cliffhanger where you have to keep reading to see what happens next, if you in fact don’t know what’s going to happen yet. But I know that’s probably just a handful of people at this rate, considering many people have probably seen the movies and haven’t read the books and I’m pretty late to the game myself reading these for the first time.
I don’t have any major complaints about this book, for I believe it was the right length and Tolkien spent the right amount of time on every minor and major event. The characters and their growth is evident and enjoyable, and through the dark journey Tolkien still manages to deliver lightheartedness where it’s welcomed as a breath of fresh air.
Reference
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020.