LORD OF THE RINGS

Journal Entry #1 …..

Critical Analysis-Setting

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, in this case part 1: The Fellowship of the Rings, there is one thing that is evident from the start. This is the absolutely Enormous world that Mr. Tolkien has created. A world of such scale that one (or at least I) feels that an entire encyclopedia set would be needed to hold it all. (which in fact is partly true considering all the “Unfinished Tales” and histories of Tolkien’s middle Earth that have been released.) This is obvious right from the start with a “small” history of Hobbit’s provided by the author which in itself contains more than one could really remember and spans a decent amount of pages in itself. So even before the book has started one begins to feel even the 400 page book, or even the 3 book set is not nearly the entire story but just a tiny bit of it, just a tiny bit of Middle Earth, a world that almost seems to really exist. Indeed, it seems impossible that such a huge complicated World could be fake, even with all it’s Fantasy elements that to most people at least are obviously not true. My view is probably starting to become a bit repetitive but I cannot quite manage to state how huge the universe is.

However it is not just the hugeness of scale that makes the setting of Lord of the Rings so notable and incredible. In fact part of it is just the opposite. The attention to fine detail also makes the universe seem all the more real. Some might consider it imagery more than setting, but Tolkien describes practically every hedge, ridge, hill, and river the hobbits come across, and usually in doing so gives the reader a history of the place. He describes the atmosphere constantly, and ones imagination can easily start to get a picture not just of the huge world, but can also see every location the Hobbit’s and their companions travel across in great detail. And what makes it even more amazing is that almost every one of these tiny places, in fact have some bit of importance in the world, and how well all the “pieces” fit together. As far as I have read, the book never even in the slightest sense contradicts anything it says, unlike some other fantasy/fiction worlds in which the author/authors sometimes can’t seem to decide on what they want, and the world constantly is changing, and contradicting of previous information. Absolutely everything fits together perfectly.

So, in short after reading Lord of the Rings, or in fact during it’s reading, one finds themselves immersed in a world, that is not just huge, but at the same time, finely detailed, full, densely historied, and “real.” I like the book.