A Study Guide (New Edition) for "The Lord of the Rings trilogy" (lit-to-film)"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide (New Edition) for "The Lord of the Rings trilogy" (lit-to-film), excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Feb 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780028666389

Book preview

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The Lord of the Rings

2001–2003

Introduction

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) has sometimes been regarded as the greatest novel in the English language. It is certainly a unique combination of fiction and philological research that is without precedent or parallel. That it became a best seller in America in the 1960s among the American counterculture movement is a testament to its applicability, Tolkien's term for the ability of readers to find their own meaning in a work. Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films (2001–2003) were planned to capture the vast audience of the book and be what has become known as event films, movies made as investments of a large amount of capital with an almost certain return because of their subject's popularity with the public. In this way, they became a model for the future direction of Hollywood as a whole. They succeeded in becoming one of the most financially successful film franchises in history and generally gained excellent critical reception. Newline Cinema carefully shaped the films based on polling and surveys of self-identified Tolkien fans, representing a new fusion of the commercial and the artistic. Both versions use source material in radically different ways but have surprising connections to modern culture as well as to the Middle Ages and the world of myth. The novel's apparent genre as an adventure story, with its plot to destroy an ancient magic ring, has long prejudiced reviewers against it, though scholars have turned increasing attention to The Lord of the Rings in no small part because of the popularity of the films.

Plot Summary

As far as Jackson's films are concerned, this summary deals only with the theatrical versions and none of the additional material added to various recorded editions.

The Fellowship of the Ring

The film begins with a prologue explaining the history of the Ring drawn from material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings and from The Silmarillion, Tolkien's history of events of the First Age, a heroic period in his legendarium that provides a backstory for the trilogy. The legendarium focuses on the struggle between factions that want to control the world and the continent of Middle-earth. On one side are the Valar and Elves, and on the other are the Orcs and Dragons, under the command of the rebellious lord Morgoth. His chief lieutenant is Sauron.

Once Sauron (having taken over with the defeat of Morgoth in the First Age) is defeated at the end of the Second Age—and against the advice of Elrond, lord of Rivendell and one of the eleven leaders of Middle-earth—Isildur, the King of Arnor and Gondor, cuts the Ring off Sauron's finger. Sauron had created the Ring, which confers invisibility on its wearer, in his plot to win control of Middle-earth. Corrupted by the Ring, Isildur takes it for himself (believing Sauron to be dead) and is killed in an ambush by Orcs when returning to the Northern Kingdom of Middle-earth. The Ring falls from his finger and is retrieved by Sméagol the Hobbit, who keeps it for 2,500 years in the caves of the Misty Mountains. Corruption by the Ring causes him to become stretched and twisted into the monster Gollum, and he loses the Ring to the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

The narrative of the book begins with the next scene of the film, Bilbo's 111th birthday party in the Shire, the land of the Hobbits. After this he retires to Elrond's city of Rivendell and leaves the Ring to his nephew Frodo. Seventeen years later, Gandalf, a Wizard, persuades Frodo to take the Ring to Rivendell. He journeys there with his servant, Samwise Gamgee, and his cousins, Merry and Pippin, pursued by mysterious black riders. They pass through the Old Forest, where they meet the spirit ruler of the forest, Tom Bombadil, in a scene left out of the film. At Bree they stay in the Prancing Pony, an inn run by Barliman Butterbur. He gives them a letter from Gandalf urging Frodo to leave much sooner than he has done (it is now late autumn), but which the innkeeper forgot to send. The Hobbits also meet Strider, who offers to guide them through the wilderness to Rivendell. The other Hobbits distrust him, but Frodo thinks that a spy in