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> “I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.”

> “Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of Justice ... even the wise cannot see all ends.”

Remains a very good, concise argument against capital punishment.

I don't feel like quoting Tolkien is going to win anyone arguments.

We should keep in mind that Gollum is for a short time reformed before he tries to lure Frodo and Sam to their deaths so that he can have a golden ring...

Not the poster child for capital punishment reform. Turning off snark, that quote sounds very informed by Tolkien's Catholicism.

If this wise man, who cannot see all ends, witnessed a wolf with a flock of sheep, would this same logic apply?
Yes, because the wolf-sheep situation is orthogonal to moral arguments about justice amongst the race of Men.
An alternative to capital punishment: exile.

Fence off a large part of the American southwest. Surround it with guard towers and automatic motion-activated machine guns to destroy anything that comes within 100 ft of the fence. Then drop the exiles off with a backpack of basic equipment and wish them well.

I think I saw that movie a few times. Never seems to work out well.
LOTR is really cool. For example, Aragorn is a supersoldier and long lost true heir who's engaged to an immortal princess, but the world ends up being saved by Sam who doesn't have any of those gifts. Sadly, most later genre fiction succumbed to nostalgia for aristocracy, with heroes like Luke Skywalker or Paul Atreides relying on inherited special powers.
I think claiming that any single member of the troop saves the world misses the point. All of them had a part to play. At best you could argue Gandalf was the one who moved the pieces into place and made it happen.

I accept the premise that the gambit was won not through great warriors, but by folk of spirit, loyalty and fortitude disproportionate to their stature.

One thing that really struck home as a youngster reading was of course Eowyn and the witch king.

Sam is based on the ordinary British soldiers that Tokien served alongside as an officer while enduring the horrors of the Western Front in WW1

"“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” "

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2014/02/26/87195-sam-gamgee-...

>Sadly, most later genre fiction succumbed to nostalgia for aristocracy, with heroes like Luke Skywalker or Paul Atreides relying on inherited special powers.

Which by the way I prefer. The cliche of the powerless humble guy who in the end saves the world has become boring and predictable.

Paul Atreides was literally designed/breed to have the special powers though, which makes his case a bad example.

If not him it would have been whoever else was at the peak of the sisterhood's breeding plan.

Since it's the best source on Tolkien's view of his stories, let me recommend his "On Fairy Stories" for those who have not read it: http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~bakovic/tolkien/fairy_stories.pdf
The Lord of the Rings is the book that turned me into an avid reader when I was 13 or so. I remember sitting in the school library studying the maps and translating the runes with a reference book I found. I was so excited when I discovered that the runes on the maps in the Hobbit turned out to be the riddle for opening the way to the lonely mountain. I still read it every few years, and was just listening to the audiobook while browsing HN and saw this article! I do get tired of all the singing though. :)
Tangentially related, in the sense of inspiring imagination - this summer I was in Switzerland and looked up Wiki articles on where I was visiting, and came across this Tolkien-related tidbit:

>J. R. R. Tolkien hiked from Interlaken to the Lauterbrunnen Valley while on a trip to the Continent in 1911. The landscape of the valley later provided the concept and pictorial model for his sketches and watercolours of the fictitious valley of Rivendell, the dwelling place of Elrond Half-elven and his people.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauterbrunnen

Having accidentally recreated this trek, I can attest to its natural beauty, and I can see how it inspired his imagination. I highly recommend doing the same if you're lucky enough to be able to.

A photo of Lauterbrunnen: http://gotravelaz.com/wp-content/uploads/images/Lauterbrunne...

I remember the same thing - World Book Encyclopedia 'R' had Runes in it that corresponded to Thorin's map. Thankfully, the alphabet lined up, and tolkien wrote those runes in english.
"For evil is matched and overcome not by superior power, but by the determination and the goodness of ordinary beings, ennobles by the assumption of burdens beyond their capacity to bear."

Lovely bit of prose for a book review.

I do love the style of that review - you don't find reviews like that nowadays. Pity about all the spelling mistakes in the digital edition though.
If you're into Tolkien, I highly recommend listening to the Silmarillion Seminar: http://tolkienprofessor.com/lectures/courses/silmarillion-se... and also to the Tolkien Professor's other series. They've greatly increased my understanding and enjoyment of Tolkien.
Shippey's "J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century" is a very good read.

https://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Century-Tom-Shippey/dp/...

"The Lord of The Rings" is the most incredible book and the most well done I ever read.

I read it recently, I knew it first time because the movie. I read it in English, and it improved my language skills a lot (even the listening, to my surprise).

The author, Michael Straight, later said he was a KGB operative at the time he wrote this.
...and Tolkien wasn't really translated or available to Russian up until late 80s, but when the Professor finally arived he sparked spectacular amount of activity in Russian-speaking fandom.
One more random thought: I can barely remember anything of the animated LotR film, but the "Where there's a whip, there's a way" marching song has stuck with me for decades.

"We don't want to go to war today, but the Dark Lord says, nay nay nay".

Found it: https://youtu.be/YdXQJS3Yv0Y

Was a bit off ("lord of the lash", not "Dark Lord"), but not bad for something I haven't heard for ~35 years.

I wish that copyright law was different than it is largely because Tolkien's works would then have entered the public domain. And the opportunity to create, play, and profit in Middle-earth sounds amazing.
This review is scarily wrong in its understanding of Tolkien's works. First, LotR does not refer to the One Ring, but to the master of the ring. Second, Balrogs are not "dreadful spirit of the underworld" but are Maia, basically corrupted angels. Third, Orcs are not "a new kind of goblin", but are tortured and enslaved elves. And they're not new; they've been around since the First Age. Fourth "Aragorn returns from the battle and by healing earns his place as King". No. That is not why he is the King, it just fulfills the prophecy. He is King because he was descended from Isildur, not because he has magic healing powers.

If you're going to review something, at least get the facts right.

Satan isn't a dreadful spirit of the underworld, he's basically a corrupted angel!

I get where you're coming from, but this kind of pedantic hair-splitting with a condescending tone doesn't advance the conversation. There's nothing "scarily wrong" about a reviewer from 1956 not being intimately familiar with the breadth and depth of Tolkien's canon.

This is a review of a massive epic that was written very shortly after its last installment was published. Yes, the reviewer got some details wrong, but there simply hadn't been time for him (or just about anyone else) to have read it through multiple times and analyzed it in depth like so many of us have today. A great deal of the backstory hadn't been published at all. (I'm pretty sure nobody outside Tolkien's inner circle and maybe a handful of publisher's readers had even seen the term "Maiar" yet when this was written, for example.) So I'd praise this review for its early enthusiasm and for its appreciation of some of Tolkien's core themes and give it something of a pass on the niggling details.

[There's a lot more wonderful Tolkien knowledge waiting for you out there, too, if and when you want to delve into it. It starts to lean inevitably toward textual history as you delve deeper, but some of that is inevitable with a work of this scope whose author was so far from completing it when he died.]

> but are Maia

maiar is the plural of maia (in Quenya, anyway, but conventionally in English, too). At least get the facts right.

> He is King because he was descended from Isildur

Perhaps before critiquing someone else's understanding you should make sure yours stacks up. Aragorn is careful to avoid being proclaimed king because he wishes to demonstrate he is worthy of the title. Breaking the siege of Gondor and demonstrating that "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer" is how he does that.

If we are going to go down this road, then very well...

Being the descendant of Isildur does not, by birth right, make Aragorn king. When the two kingdoms of the Dunedin were formed in Middle Earth after the fall of Numenor, the North Kingdom of Arnor was ruled by the High King Elendil, and the South Kingdom of Gondor was ruled by his sons, Isildur and Anarion. [1][2]

During the first war of the ring against Sauron, Elendil and Anarion were both slain. After the war, Isildur, as the oldest surviving member of his line, became high king of the two kingdoms. However, when he left Gondor the year after the war and travelled north to Arnor, he installed his brother's son Meneldil as King of Gondor. On his journey north, Isildur was killed by a band of Orcs. The crown of Arnor was then passed to Isildur's only surviving son, Valandil. [3]

Valandil never made a claim to the thrown of Gondor. As a result the two kingdoms were separated. It was accepted in both kingdoms that Isildur, by installing Meneldil to the throne of Gondor, had forsaken his claim. From that point forward, Arnor was ruled by the line of Isildur and Gondor was ruled by the line of his brother Anarion. [1][2]

At one point in Gondor's history, the current king died without any obvious heir. At that time, Arvedui, king of Arnor, claimed the kingship of Gondor as the descendent of Isildur. Gondor refused the claim, saying that Isildur had granted the kingdom to his brother's line and only direct descendants of Anarion could be king. [4] Another later attempt at reunification was also rebuffed.

After the Second War of the Ring, where Sauron was finally destroyed, Aragorn again claimed lordship of both Arnor (which was destroyed but he hoped to rebuild) and Gondor. He was a direct descendant of Arvedui, who was rebuffed thousands of years before when he tried to reunite the kingdoms. [5] Throughout the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is nervous about returning to Gondor because his claim is not assured.

The people of Gondor accept Aragorn's claim to the throne and he becomes the first High King of the Reunited Kingdom. [5] His lineage does play a part in their acceptance. However, the same lineage had been rebuffed several times in Gondor's past and was not seen as a mandate to rule.

Aragorn's actions during the war played a much larger role in the people accepting him as king. Much of this was due to an old prophecy, saying that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known." When Aragorn healed the people wounded by the Black Breath of the Nazgul during the Battle of Pellenor Fields, the rumor went around the city that the king had returned. When he defeated Sauron, the people accepted him. [6]

So there you have it. Aragorn was considered a possible match for the Kingship due to being a descendant of Isildur. However, his lineage did not give him the right to claim the role on its own. The people of Gondor chose to disregard their ancient rules about the rights of succession in order to appoint him king. They did so because of his actions during the war and the prophecies he fulfilled. The main prophecy that planted the seed of him returning as king was his healing of the wounded in Minas Tirith. The article is more correct than you.

You know... if you want to be pedantic about it.

Sources:

1. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Gondor

2. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Arnor

3. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Isildur

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Kings_of_Arnor_and_Gondor

5. http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/King_of_the_Reunited_Kingdom

6. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Aragorn#Reign_as_Elessar

Edit: Fixed typo.

LOTR is a fine but flawed book. Reading it as a dark skinned Asian boy the characterization of all dark races as evil definitely stung and still hurts. The evil side is one dimensional and has no redeeming qualities at all.

The female characters also tend to be quite weak and uninteresting.

Still the vision and the universe was inspiring. I still prefer it to most other fantasy.

That Sauron was evil with no redeeming qualities was the whole point. Otherwise the quest would not have been so heroic. Some of the dark races were described as deceived more than evil. As far as female characters go, I would say Galadriel, Eowyn, and Arwen were all quite powerful and interesting.
Much of the article is retelling of the storylines.
"trilogy" Eh,, Maybe I'm being a pedant but LOTR is 6 books is it not?
I looked it up.. whomp "Tolkien regarded it as a single work and divided it into a prologue, six books, and five appendices. Because of post-World War II paper shortages, it was originally published in three volumes." :p Tolkien is quite clear about that in his letters

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/47419/is-lord-of-th...

Wish they'd put a bit more time into editing this OCR scan. So many typos, it gets quite distracting.
'(1956)' should be appended to the title [1] thank you for fixing
Most overrated author of all time whose shortcomings and excesses (simplistic morals, obvious dichotomy between good and evil, wafer thin characterizations) continue to haunt the genre
I'd say he invented the genre and so had to include some simple and readily grasped tropes in order to give it mass appeal... Or perhaps it gained that mass appeal precielsely by incorporating what you criticize.

Don't sweat it, when you write your world changing, genre defining masterwork, you can make it as deep and morally ambiguous as you please.

For an alternative to Tolkien's simple morality, consider “The Last Ringbearer” by one Yisroel Markov. It is effectively telling the LOTR story a Mordor point of view. Quoting from an article [1] about it:

"In Yeskov’s retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor ... He’s in cahoots with the elves, who aim to become “masters of the world,” and turn Middle-earth into a “bad copy” of their magical homeland across the sea. ...the remnants of Mordor’s civilization fight a rear-guard guerrilla campaign to sustain the “green shoots of reason and progress,” in opposition to the “static” and “tidy” pseudo-paradise of Middle-earth under the elven regime."

[1] http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/

Well, much of the evil is truly evil. But there is the recurring danger that good people become seduced by the evil, and the acknowledgement that the capability to be overcome by that seduction exists in "good" people. I'm not sure that I see the dichotomy as a ruling idea here.
> obvious dichotomy between good and evil

You probably haven't read a line from him if you say this. Do not mistake the author for the movies from Hollywood.

I think Frodo's failure to destroy the ring is a good example of how Tolkien's books do not have a simple good vs. evil dichotomy. Other good examples are the wrath/pride of Feanor's sons, and the tale of Turin, both from the Silmarillion.
"Most overrated author of all time"?
I hadn't realized we were discussing R.R. Martin here.
Just like with Star Wars, revisiting one's preferred childhood media can lead to disappointment.

I recently re-read Tolkien's material and have to admit that whilst it is indeed genre-defining and carefully planned on the conceptual level LotR is indeed a heavily flawed book. I do not understand the reviewer's POV as we had excellent "high" literature all through the 20th century.

I totally accept that the more nerdy HN community mostly see literature as having three genres (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror) but there is a weird egghead world of people reading "art" books. Those who attended school might had the questionable experience of studying Hemingway or Joyce or Fitzgerald. These authors are different to Tolkien.

You can indeed compare Beethoven to Elvis. Or Michelin gourmet places to street food. I am just not sure it makes sense.

And no, one is not "better" than the other. Outside of the minds of console warmongers and GOP nominees there are more shades of grey than any shady SM e-book fanboi would ever fathom.

Who's comparing? It is a great book. It both influences and is influenced by other great books. I agree that it's pointless to ask whether "Lord of the Rings" or "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is the best, but I don't think anyone here is doing that.
Yes shame on us for enjoying Tolkien and Star Wars. How dare we consume media that is fun, and not the pinnacle of artistic achievement in the decade it was created in.