The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R Tolkien The Lord of the Rings is a novel consisting of three volumes which themselves are divided in to two books each. The story is very vast and obviously very thoroughly. In order to make the book amusing to read this was probably nessecary, because the story takes place in a world which is itself completely made up. The story The story itself is the story of a great war between good and evil, a war in which evil controles the biggest armies, but lacks the very foundation of its power; the One Ring. This ring is the master of all magic rings (which are 20 in total), and if put on the finger of the Dark Lord, Sauron, will lead to the victory of evil for ages to come. But fortunatly for the good side, they are in possession of this ring. Under the administration of Gandalf the Grey (an imortal wizard) a party is set up which are going to go to Mordor (the evil kingdom) in order to destroy the ring in the fires from which it was created; the fires of Mount Doom. The original party consists of three hobbits (a small people with furry feet and a 'popular' - or that's probably what Tolkien meant it to be - way of thinking), of which one, Frodo, is the Ring Bearer, one elv, Legolas, who comes from the forest of Mirkwood and is a splendid assasin, the dwarf Gimli, son of Glóin (a dwarf who has a part in Tolkiens "The Hobbit"), Gandalf himself, the humans Aragorn and Boromir, both originally from Gondor, the last stronghold of man on the very outskirts of Mordor. During a fight with orcs (an engineered race, created by the evil side "in mockery of the elves") on the banks of the river Anduin the party is shattered, and Frodo together with Sam (one of the other three hobbits, Frodos greatest friend and servant) leave the others in order to go to Mordor alone. At the same time, the other two hobbits (Merry and Pippin) get kidnapped by the orcs. The remaining three, Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn (they had lost Gandalf and Boromir in earlier fights) start following the orcs. From this point on the story takes the character of a parallel story. The story jumps back and forth from the two kidnapped hobbits and their followers (first, this is two different parallels, but they merge later on) to the two hobbits going to Mordor. The frist of the two parallels is about war, beginning with the attack on Isengard (evils stronghold in the west) by the Ents (large tree-looking creatures) and the Men of Rohan (a kingdom of knights north of Gondor), before which Gandalf reappers as Gandalf the White. After the fall of Isengard Gandalf & Co hurry to Gondor to help in the defence of the city against the evil troops gathering in the east. They manage to hold the city and in order to keep Sauron busy they start a seemingly desperate campaign against him, and march towards Mordor. At the same time Sam and Frodo get closer and closer to Mordor, and after a while they meet Gollum (or Sméagol as he was originally called), who has followed them for a long time. Gollum has possessed the ring for a long time, before Frodos relative Bilbo stole it from him, and is completely in its power. He's forced by Sam and Frodo to help them on their quest, and he leads them into Mordor, where he betrays them to a giant spider which they barely escape. After this they don't see Gollum for a while. Not until they reach Mount Doom does he reappear to for the last time fight Frodo for the ring. Frodo himself has gone mad and claims the ring just as he is attacked by Gollum, who manage to get the ring by biting the finger off Frodo's hand. But in his state of extacy Gollum is ignorant and falles into the fires and the ring is destroyed. Immediatly the power of Sauron is destroyed and his ghost is seen by the armies of the west as it is swept away by the wind. Gandalf, flying on the back of a great eagle, hurries to get Frodo and Sam, who after some time of rest get to see the new king of Gondor, Aragorn. Soon however the hobbits return home to their Shire, where they have to fight and chase away the last remnants of evil. The story ends with Frodo, Gandalf and some of the other big characters in the book going on a boat to travel over the see and leave Middle-earth. Gollum If I have to choose one of the characters and describe him, I'll choose Gollum. This I do because he is so extreme in all his characteristics. Gollum was as I mentioned above a slave under the One Ring. In the book we are told (by Gandalf, who interrogated him for a long time) that he was once a hobbit-like creature living along a river/lake, where he and his friends often swam and fished. One day, which happened to be Gollum's (then Sméagol) birthday, he and a friend were out on the lake. After a dive to the bottom Gollum's friend returned with a golden ring he had found. Gollum got mad by the very sight of the ring (perhaps this was due to some influence from the ring itself, it is known that is sometimes acted like that) and demanded that his friend should give it to him; after all it was his birthday. Gollum's friend, however, refused to do this saying he had already given Gollum a present. Gollum then strangled his friend, took the ring and made for the underground rivers of the nearby mountains. There Gollum lived for ages, feeding on raw fish or lost goblins (see "The Hobbit" by Tolkien), just protecting his ring. Over time Gollums physical apperance changed. He turned dark, thin and almost hairless, got big feet like the ones you find at a frog, and green eyes which had a glow in the dark. At the same time his personality changed. Gollum - being a small-minded creature - could not use the ring in any way but for the purpose of being invisible when having it one, got enslaved by it. His personality changed and psycologically he became one with the ring, referring to the ring and himself only as "precious". Of course, this merging of the ring and Gollum did not meant that Gollum gained control over the ring, it increased it's control over him, making him nothing but it's tool (this is why Gollum for some time obeyed Frodo and helped him; he dared not challenge the Ring-bearer). But Gollum was never completely under the power of the ring. Frodo managed to get him to act according to his own will and liking for some time during their journey together (even if this was made possible partly because of the ring). When speaking to Gollum Frodo and Sam saw that they sometime were speaking to Gollum the slave and sometime to Sméagol the hobbit-like fisherman. When speaking to the latter they noticed a decrease in hissing etc. To summarize Gollum I think that one could say that he is not a credible character, to extreme in all aspects. This, however, does not make him a bit less interesting. After all it is a fantasy story, and increadible characters are welcome in those. What is interesting about Gollum is his lack of self-respect, dignity and a will of his own. For Gollum is not only horrible in his everlasting hunt for his precious, he is also pityful and pathetic. On several occasions Gollum manages to save his own ass simply by laying down on the ground humiliating himself, wining and flattering his attacker; a behaviour which makes him look like a creature you can't kill because it's already as pathetic and miserable as one can be. Own opinions I think there is basically two reasons why one should read "The Lord of the Rings". The first one is as I briefly mentioned the fun there is in exploring the vast world of Middle-earth with it's complex history, peoples etc. Especially this fact, that Midde-earth and it's peoples has a detailed history, increases the feeling that elves, dwarves, hobbits and men are real people with feelings, goals and destinies. The other reason is the way Tolkien writes, the way in which he expresses the moods and feelings felt by his characters as changes in their physical apperance or landscape, something that I believe suits the concept of fantasy very well. For example, when Gandalf gets mad he grows and a fierce flame is lit in his eyes, or when Sméagol gets enslaved by the ring, his apperance becomes merely a shadow of his past self, with only one purpose; the searching for/looking after the ring, symbolised by the never fainting green fire in his eyes. However, I believe that a consequence of this way of writing is that the writers political opinions/values are made very clear, at least that is how it seemes to be in Tolkien's case. The feeling that I got from reading the book was that Tolkien was an anti-democrat who glorified class-rule and western imperialism. The supposed anti-democratism and glorification of class-rule I base upon the fact that all the great people (the ones who make history) in the book are different types of royalties, wizards etc, who are physically superior to the rest of the people, who do not play any part in the story except for being hosts for the ring, which they are incapable of using to it's full extent. The political structures of both the good side (like the kingdoms of Gondor and Rohan) and the evil (Mordor) is identical; they are both governed by kings with absolute power (even though they have a few advisors). Still, the people of Mordor are said to be enslaved and ruled by the use of terror and fear, but the people of Gondor are not. They love their king (who simply returns out of the blue, conducting a coup d'état based on some ancient legend), and are said to be living in freedom. Thus, a dictatorian rule doesn't have to be bad at all, as long as the dictator is "good". What is it that makes him good then? This is where the racism comes in to the picture. It happens to be so, that the good side consists of tall, white people, who comes from genetically pure families who's blood has not been mixed with the blood of black people from the south, who of course are evil and in the service of Sauron (even the evil orcs are black and live in tribes). There are of course some evil white people, but they are often pictured as weak and treachorous, betrayers of the master race. Tolkien goes that far that he even relates the decreasing life-spann of the people of Gondor to their mixing with lesser blood from the south, and that the only people who had remained long-lived are the genetically pure kings. Too me the answer to the question asked above must be that the dictators of the north-west has the right to rule the south-east because they are of a superior race. People that I have discussed this with who usually defend Tolkien says that Tolkien wasn't a racist at all and that the supposed racism in the books are just concequences of the way in which he writes, that evil men, orcs etc are black simply because black traditionally has been the colour of evil etc, but I think that there's more to Tolkien's racism than this. If it was just this that caused the feeling of racism, why are the evil coming from the south? why do the orcs live in tribes, giving associations to the way of life of many native peoples in Tolkien's days? why is the evil of the bad white people of treachorous character, but that of the bad black people is not, if not because the evil whites has betrayed something, i.e their race? But, of course, it is a big issue and I can't say that I'm 100% sure on my case.