What happens? Bilbo Baggins vanishes during his birthday party, leaving a strange ring for his nephew, Frodo.  Frodo spends the next couple of decades managing his uncle’s estate before Gandalf, the wizard, reveals the dark origins of the ring and that its master may be looking for it again.  Frodo must now leave the safety of the Shire to find a way to destroy the ring, accompanied by a group of his closest friends.  However, darkness may have already entered the Shire, as strange figures in black hoods seem to be on the prowl have been looking for someone by the name of “Baggins.”

There are a lot of elements that make The Lord of the Rings the fascinating work it is. The one that stuck out to me is that, despite being the bedrock for the fantasy genre, it isn’t structured like a contemporary fantasy novel. The plot often takes a backseat to side trips, long conversations, or just long descriptions of some aspect of Middle Earth. While it might be tempting to say it’s structured like a road trip story or the more derogatory “like a DnD campaign” I don’t think either of those labels work. While a large portion of the book is focused on the journey, Tolkien spends just as much time describing conversations had by background characters or on Frodo’s time growing up as he does on the various obstacles put in the way of the party. That’s because the plot structure isn’t from other works in the same genre, like many modern fantasy books, but instead takes cues from epics like Beowulf, the Odyssee, and the Ramayana. When looking at the story from this light, the hooded figures take the same role as Poseidon, the dark forest becomes the island of Polyphemus, and the path from point A to point B becomes a journey. However, Tolkien didn’t just steal from Homer, he took the DNA of epic stories and then mutated it into something just as large in scope, but with the same intimacy works like Jane Eyre or Great Expectations gave to their characters and worlds.

This can be seen in the conversations had in the Green Dragon before the story proper begins.  While it serves the same function as a lore dump, the way it’s written makes it feel less like you’re reading an encyclopedia and more like you’re listening in on a conversation. Characters interrupt and butt in on other people’s stories to give their own thoughts, rumors that the narration neither confirms nor deny are brought up, and by the end of it all, we have a rough idea of what relationship each character has with each other.  You feel like you were in that tavern sharing a beer with these characters and are, by extension, part of their world. This would be like if Beowulf stopped to focus on the conversations happening in Hrothgar Hall before Grendel invades. Something that I’m sure would turn many people off but, for me, just made me feel all the more immersed in the world of Middle Earth.  It helps set the pace for the rest of the story and gives you an idea of what the status quo is before it broken.

It’s an often quoted piece of writing advice that you should hook your reader in with the first page, sentence, or even word and I think that it’s a bit of a misguided idea. With short stories, sure it’s important to start as close to the conflict as you can, but the advantage of novels is the amount of room you’re given to breath. Many fantasy stories seem to think that you have to open up on a giant war scene, or at least something just as grand in scale, to keep your readers from putting your book back on the shelf. However, Tolkien shows that your opening is an important pace-setter and making sure that you get your reader’s expectations in the right place is more important than wowing them with spectacle. This is why we start with tavern talk about a birthday party in the first few pages, so that way you know you’re in for a slow burn but also that things aren’t as quiet as they seem. After all, before your characters can journey into the “unknown” it’s a good idea to show what their “known” is.

While the beginning is slow that doesn’t mean “nothing” happens in it.  Rather, Tolkien uses it to build a comfortable atmosphere that he then slowly unravels as more and more tiny abnormalities happen.  Bilbo showing signs of becoming taken over by the ring are as memorable as they are because we’ve spent so long in the Shire and have context for how strange this is.  The same goes for the hooded figures when they’re mentioned and when they make their first appearance.  Those descriptions of Frodo getting his affairs in order or of the party just making their way towards Brandy Brook lure you into a particular mood that prime you for when something out of the ordinary happens.  It doesn’t even have to be sinister, the night spent with the elves is almost dreamlike in how beautiful and strange it is. The pacing of the story might not be miles per minute, but it climbs and slopes in just the right places to keep you hooked going forward.  Something that could only happen because Tolkien is a master of his craft.

Whether you like the pacing, atmosphere, or structure of The Lord of the Rings, there is no denying that it’s exactly the kind of story that it wants to be and the reason all of these elements come together like they do is because of the prose. Tolkien is a master wordsmith and I’m tempted to just say “his work is so amazing it almost makes me give up writing completely because I will never be able to write anything as good as this.” His descriptions paint pictures worthy of hanging in a museum, his dialogue oozes personality, and his sentence structure is sharp as a knife.  One of my personal favorite examples of this is, 

“There were green trees with trunks of dark smoke: their leaves opened like a whole spring unfolding in a moment, and their shining branches dropped glowing flowers down upon the astonished hobbits, disappearing with a sweet scent just before they touched their upturned faces.” (Tolkien 27)

I could talk about how much I love the imagery or the word choice, but I think what stands out to me the most is the way the sentence is structured.  The colon separates the image of “the green tree” from the rest of the description, which gives the impression that we’re watching the first part of the firework going off.  Then each comma makes you pause just for a moment, which continues the illusion that you’re watching the firework go off in real time.  It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to just quit writing cause I’ll never make something as well crafted as this.

It’s works like these that made me want to start this little series in the first place. Brilliant works that I’m now old enough to truly appreciate, as both a writer and a reader.  I’ve got a basic idea of what’s going to happen going forward, but that doesn’t hamper my enthusiasm for the coming journey one iota.

Works Cited

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Great Britain: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2004), 21-123.