Exonian Review:Lord of The Rings
By SAM ALTMAN, SHAY KASHIF, MARVIN SHIM, and JINMIN LEE
Mordor, dwarves, elves, dragons, wizards, orcs: the staples of modern fantasy that fuel the minds of science fiction aficionados all across the world. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is a story about the inevitable victory of the meek against the powerful and the perseverance against the corruption of infinite power. This article is not meant to be an overarching review of Tolkien’s lore but rather a discussion about why we find his work so intriguing.
As a linguist, Tolkien understood that mythology could not be separated from language. He had a consuming fascination with Old Norse, Germanic, Gothic, Icelandic, and Welsh philology. It was from here that his imagination exploded. Though we may take for granted the absolute wealth of characters afforded us in every day games like Dungeons and Dragons, many of these were made common in pop culture by Tolkien. But Tolkien was not merely content to create backstories for mythological races in as far as they were useful in his story—rather, he made them real, and, for example, created an entire Elvish language. His utter world creation is a sort, we dare say, that is almost unparalleled in the modern world. This has allowed for escapism into Tolkien’s Middle Earth for all generations, not least of which the youth today.
But Tolkien’s impact goes beyond a purely literary one. Tolkien, through innumerable instances throughout his lore, explores how greed and lust for power corrupt the soul. To create a symbol for greed, Tolkien borrows from Plato’s allegory of the ring. In his book, Republic, Plato describes a ring that people can put on to become invisible. This ring corrupts its bearer to commit immoral acts to get more power. For instance, the bearer cannot resist the temptation to seduce the king’s wife and create a conspiracy to overthrow the kingdom. In Tolkien’s lore, there are many different rings with different powers, but the strongest ring is the Ring to Rule Them All. The main villain, Sauron, who represents pure evil, forged this ring in the volcanoes in Mordor to exert his power over others. However, Isildur, a man, defeats Sauron in battle and takes the ring for himself. Despite being a respectable and virtuous man, the ring corrupts Isildur, who becomes famished with a desire for more power.
This pattern continues when Isildur dies in battle and loses the ring. When two friends discover the ring thousands of years later, they fight over it. Eventually, one of the two—Smeagol—kills his friend and takes possession of the ring. The ring not only destroys his soul but sullies his entire existence, making him unrecognizable. After a few years of bearing the ring, Smeagol becomes the infamous Gollum. This trend continues as elves, wizards, and men all betray each other for the ring. Even the seemingly innocent elves become evil when presented with the ring.
The ring jeopardizes all relationships, and all races agree to destroy it. Unfortunately, no fire, no tool, no weapon can harm the ring. The only way to erase its existence is to travel back to Mordor, where Sauron forged it. Anyone who decides to carry the ring will become tarnished with greed. Further, Sauron’s troops heavily guard the path to Mordor. Men, dwarves, and elves argue about who is best fit to bear the ring but cannot come to a conclusion.
However, it is an unsuspecting character who eventually takes control of the ring. Not a wizard, nor a wise human, nor an immortal elf, nor a hearty dwarf, but a wee little hobbit—not four feet tall, and constantly barefoot. Even as the journey to destroy the ring proceeds forth, and characters of all races come together to do so, the control remains with the hobbits, and that is a very intentional choice. For the hobbits, so enthralled with the simple things of life—eating, writing, enjoying a cigar by the hearth—that the effects of power were not quite as powerful on them.
This provides a more profound understanding of what strength is, or what it ought to be. The hobbits are the center of the story because theirs is a higher sort of strength—a spiritual strength. Rather than simply figure out how to exact their desires the fastest (a utilitarian and almost animalistic strength), the hobbits instead were tasked to figure out how to restrain themselves from undue strength—a novel kind to the feudal kingdoms of Middle Earth. Although the hobbits themselves feel the emotional and spiritual burden of the ring, almost becoming tarnished on a few occasions, they successfully finish their mission, destroying the ring.
Ultimately, it’s not the skilled warrior in armor who is capable of undertaking such an arduous task. It is the seemingly weak, innocent pair of hobbits—Sam and Frodo—who eradicate the world from evil, greed, and suffering.