Lord of the Rings: A Defense

Part I: Identification of problem and steps to improve it.

So, it is my personal belief that Lord of the Rings is under-appreciated by the population as a whole. As an individual with feelings, I find the disgusted stares and incredulous comments that seem to accompany any obscure ‘lotr’ reference I make to be insensitive and quite simply the greatest sign of ignorance one could display. Everyone hates what they don’t understand, my brothers Martin and Mahatma can attest to that, they’d dig what I’m throwing down. Yes, Lord of the Rings is a subculture, yes, Lord of the Rings fans are people with rights, and yes, Gandalf could have just asked a Great Eagle to drop the One Ring into Mount Doom and save everybody a lot of hassle, but God could have just not allowed AIDS and a lot of people wouldn’t be dead, so maybe some questions don’t have answers you assholes…. anyways, the greatest weapon against naivety is knowledge, so I’m going to throw some facts at you, a short bio is also in store, and for any auditory learners out there, this lecture is available on iTunes… but not really.

Part II: Re-education

Tolkien in Hebrew means “God” or roughly “the greatest guy ever” (that’s not true, the rest is though, I promise). Born to British parents in South Africa, John Ronald Reul Tolkien became an orphan very early in life and came to depend on relatives in England to support him. He attended English boarding school where he and a number of middle school friends formed the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, a group of astounding intellectual prowess, despite its members being 14. It’s probably pertinent to tell that Tolkien lost all of these friends but one in WWI - It was in war ravaged Europe that Tolkien created his first completely original elven language while occupying the muddy trenches of France, most notably in the Battle of the Somme.
After the war Tolkein would go on to receive his degree in Linguistics and become an educator at Oxford University. He invented and refined many more languages, a few for every culture in Middle Earth, and then proceeded to write the history of the languages, that is, where in Middle Earth it originated, who spoke it, with what dialect; he then intertwined these histories, each belonging to a people, a race, a culture. That’s essentially how Lord of the Rings began, as whispers of unknown tongues in an old man’s head, released and slowly typed out with two fingers until finally they came alive with depth and color and majesty to rival even the most original tales passed down through time. Aragorn could kick Arthur’s ass, Excalibur is no match for the blade that was broken…its ok if that last part didn’t make sense to you.

Part III: Some bullshit

I was in at The Burlington Coat Factory one day when this little kid came up to me and said the Lord of the Rings was boring. I quickly found this little boys mother, told her what her child had just said, and then slapped her in the face, which was the best thing I could think of doing short of calling Child Services. I can’t name all the social repercussions our society experiences today due to Lord of the Rings under education. Imagine a world fluent in Quenya, drenched in mythology and inhabited by things and beings so much cooler than real life---or don’t. I’ve constructed a list of aspects people seem to miss in this ‘boring’ 500,000 word journey.

Part IV: Aforementioned ‘list of aspects’

Adventure- epic journeys, cloaks, campfire talk, ambushes, ring wraith chases, elven paradises, hobbit feet, the Mines of Moria. They walk from the Bag End to Moria, does that sound like anything but adventure???

Action- Swords, soldiers, sieges, trebuchets, orcs, magic, descriptive/graphic battle sequences, the Battle of Pelannor Fields, giant spider, elven assassins, I think the encounter between Gandalf and the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dum speaks for itself.

Romance- Aragorn and Arwen have the hots for eachother, but wait, it’s a forbidden love, they’re distantly related and Arwen is scheduled to leave for the Grey Havens with her people, can Aragorn end the war before she leaves??? Also note that neither of these lovers are vampires, which I’m afraid makes it---ahem---way better than any ‘contemporaries’ (which don’t actually exist).

Comedy- Tolkein is a Brit, enough said.

Originality- It really was the first fantasy novel of its kind. It has so many intricacies and ‘ancient’ history and ‘famous’ battles and epic warriors and, in Tolkiens opinion, provides a mythology the English culture never had due to a French takeover at the Battle of Hastings, which Tolkien thought would never had happened had England a cavalry, hence the fictitious culture of Rohan, which translates into ‘horse land’ in its original Rohirric.

Social Significance- Tolkien was a veteran of the great war, a man of many passions, and a man who encompasses all of these passions into his work. The books touch on things such as mechanized warfare, something Tolkein (and the world) was introduced to and abhorred in WWI. There are environmental themes, the scorching of Fangorn Forest by Saruman that began the Siege of Isengard by the Ents, a story that tells of the trees having the last word. Tolkein esteemed chivalry, a concept he thought the current generation of Englishman lacked completely. Tolkein had the names of ‘Beren’ and ‘Luthien’ put on his tombstone and his wife’s tombstone respectively, the story behind which is too long to go into here, but is assuredly full of beautiful imagery of forests and dancing and water (which we all know metaphorically means sex).

Part V: Masterful Conclusion

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t knock it till you try it, a motto I suggest you take to heart (except maybe in reference to suicide). I laugh when people tell me that I should be happy to live in a free America, but I suppose Sitting Bull was laughing when Custer charged, maybe even Dred Scott when he found out that he was in fact just property. I laugh because I see an America where Lord of the Rings fans are ostracized, criticized and socially susceptible to lessened sex lives. I see Lord of the Rings compared to Dungeons and Dragons, which let me assure you is for faggots and the weak-minded. I see a long road ahead until our fellowship of members and sympathizers reaches its destination of equality, throwing the one ring of intolerance into the fiery depths of cultural enlightenment, but I also see the ACLU coming to our rescue, so that’s cool at least.