Themes of The Lord of the Rings

• 1. Introduction

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  Themes of The Lord of the Rings have occupied scholars for decades, starting with Tolkien's own account of what the book is about. In one of his Letters, he rejected the idea that the story concerns Power and Dominion. He wrote that such matters only set the wheels going. The real subject, he said, is Death and the desire for deathlessness. That is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man. That single line reframes a book many readers first meet as a war story. Frodo Baggins does not set out to win a prize. He carries one toward its destruction, a shape critics have called backward rather than heroic in the usual sense. Scholars have also traced a string of opposites through the text: hope against despair, fate against free will, good against evil. Others read three of its characters as echoes of a single older figure, split into prophet, priest, and king. Underneath all of this sits Tolkien's own training as a philologist. He was a scholar of language who believed names could hold real power over the things they named. Not every reader has accepted the book on these terms. Some have argued it sidelines women, avoids religion, or leans on racial stereotype, charges that other scholars have contested point by point. Why would a story built on refusal, rather than pursuit, have generated this much disagreement about what it actually means?

• 2. The Anti-Quest

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  Richard C. West describes the plot in blunt terms. The hobbit Frodo Baggins must carry the Dark Lord Sauron's Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it. West calls this quest primary, standing alongside the war against Sauron as the engine of the story. David M. Miller agrees the quest drives the narrative, but stresses that it runs backward. The hero is not searching for treasure. He is trying to get rid of one. Miller notes that from Sauron's own perspective the tale still looks like an ordinary quest. His Black Riders stand in for the errant knights who once sought the holy of holies. The Fellowship, meanwhile, holds an object it cannot use, producing what Miller calls multiple reversals stacked on top of each other. Tom Shippey goes further, calling the book an anti-quest and a story of renunciation. Shippey ties this shape to Tolkien's own life. He lived through two world wars and the routine bombardment of civilians. He saw famine used as a political weapon, concentration camps, genocide, and the development of chemical and nuclear weapons. Shippey frames the book as asking whether it would be worth destroying humanity's capacity for that evil, even at the cost of sacrifice. That question, framed around giving something up instead of gaining it, carries into the polarities running through the rest of the book.

• 3. Opposing Forces

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  Verlyn Flieger writes that no careful reader of Tolkien's fiction can miss the polarities that give it shape. Hope stands against despair, knowledge against enlightenment, good against evil, running through the novel as paired opposites. An appendix titled The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen carries this furthest. The elf Arwen gives up her immortality so she can marry the mortal man Aragorn. After more than two hundred years of life, Aragorn chooses the moment of his own death. He leaves Arwen behind, heartbroken and now mortal herself. She travels to the faded ruins of Lothlórien, once the site of her happiest years, to die on the green hill of Cerin Amroth. The same theme returns in poems scattered through the book, including Gilraen's linnod and the Lament of the Rohirrim.

  Orcs, the book's most maligned race, are read by some critics as a corruption of the Elves. Alongside mortality, the book draws just as sharp a line between good and evil. Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery, is home to the Lord of the Nazgûl. It stands directly against Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard and capital of Gondor. Mordor, the land of Sauron, opposes Gondor and every free people in the story. Some critics find these divisions too stark, though others argue they sit at the very center of the book's structure. The theologian Fleming Rutledge disagrees with the idea of a clean split. She argues Tolkien means to show that no firm line separates good and evil, since good people are capable of evil under the right circumstances.

  In the chapter "The Shadow of the Past," Gandalf raises the possibility that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. He adds that Gollum still has a part left to play. Critics point to this scene as the clearest sign that fate operates in the story. Bilbo and Frodo had earlier spared Gollum's life. Because of that mercy, Gollum was later able to destroy the Ring, falling into the Cracks of Doom after Frodo failed to throw it in. Frodo, overpowered by the Ring at the final moment, is saved by what looks like luck.

  Frodo volunteers to carry the Ring to Mordor, a decision that drives the entire plot. Yet the book gives just as much weight to personal choice as it does to fate. He later offers the Ring to Gandalf, Aragorn, and Galadriel, and each of them willingly refuses it. Sam's vision in the Mirror of Galadriel shows old Gaffer Gamgee's wheelbarrow and the Scouring of the Shire. It sits alongside Arwen's choice of mortality as another instance of will shaping outcome. The scholar Peter Kreeft notes that divine providence, expressed through the will of the Valar and of Eru Ilúvatar, can itself determine fate. Gandalf says a hidden power was at work when Bilbo first found the Ring, as it tried to make its way back to its master.

  Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns traces the book's steady sense of loss to Norse mythology. There, even the gods can die, and destruction is always close at hand. She notes that in the realm of fire, Muspell, the jötunn Surt was already waiting for the end of the world. This began, she says, at the very moment of creation. Patrice Hannon, writing in the same journal, Mythlore, calls the book a story of loss and longing. She describes it as a lament for a world that has already passed, even as readers catch a last glimpse of it. Hannon points to details such as Bilbo never being seen again in Hobbiton. She also cites Boromir, carried down the Anduin in his funeral boat, who was never again seen standing on the White Tower in Minas Tirith. She compares this tone to Tolkien's own praise for the Old English poem Beowulf. He seems to have aimed for the same effect, a story that feels ancient even to the people telling it.

• 4. Nature Versus the Machine

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  Andrew O'Hehir writes in Salon that the Shire, the hobbits' homeland, was inspired by the woods and hills near Sarehole. Tolkien lived there as a child and was horrified decades later to find the area urbanised. Technology in the story belongs almost entirely to the forces of evil, a pattern the scholar Anne Pienciak has traced through the book. Pienciak writes that Tolkien saw modern technology as tied to ugliness, depersonalization, and the separation of people from nature. This shows up most clearly in Saruman. His very name draws on the Old English searu, meaning skilful or ingenious, a word linked in Beowulf to smithcraft and to a cunning wizard. Saruman's city, Isengard, has been called an industrial hell. His destruction of Middle-earth's trees to fuel his machines has been read as proof of his evil turn. In the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire," the industrial machinery imported by Saruman's followers threatens the natural world directly. It replaces the traditional crafts of the Shire hobbits with noisy, polluting mills. O'Hehir describes Mordor in similar terms, marked by its slag heaps, its permanent pall of smoke, and its slave-driven industries. He calls Saruman an ideological representative of technological utopianism, forcing industry onto the Shire. O'Hehir reads the whole novel as a lament for the impact of the Industrial Revolution on England's landscape. He places Tolkien's sympathies alongside Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and William Blake, writers who mourned the same vanishing green and pleasant land. That same instinct toward humility over dominance, toward small things resisting large machines, runs into the book's treatment of pride itself.

• 5. Power, Pride, and Courage

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  Devin Brown links Tolkien's theme of "the ennoblement of the ignoble" to the Magnificat's line about putting down the mighty and exalting the lowly. Brown points to the humble hobbits who defeat the proud and powerful Sauron as the clearest example. Tolkien's biographers Richard J. Cox and Leslie Jones describe the heroes who destroy the Ring and scour the Shire as "the little guys, literally." They call the idea that anyone can make a difference one of Tolkien's central themes. The book draws a sharp line between courage rooted in loyalty and pride rooted in a hunger for glory. Sam follows Frodo out of loyalty and would die for him without hesitation. Boromir, by contrast, is driven by his desire for the Ring and would risk others' lives for his own renown. When Sam, Faramir, and Galadriel each refuse the Ring, their refusal counts as a rejection of power and personal glory. Tolkien said he drew this courage from the Norse legend of Ragnarök. There, the gods know they are doomed in the final battle, but fight anyway. Frodo and Sam carry this same northern courage on the road to Mount Doom, knowing they have little chance of returning home.

  Power itself corrupts, and the Ring is the clearest proof of it in the story. Tom Shippey notes Gandalf's repeated warnings about what the Ring does to those who carry it. Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn, and Faramir, all already powerful, refuse the Ring because they believe it would overpower them. Frodo and Sam, far less hungry for power, resist its pull more easily. Even they are not immune, though, as the changes in Frodo, Bilbo, and Gollum show. Boromir becomes obsessed with the Ring without ever holding it, while Sméagol kills his friend Déagol, the Ring's first bearer after Isildur, to obtain it. Shippey argues this corrupting effect is a modern idea. In earlier times, he says, power was thought to reveal character rather than change it. He quotes Lord Acton's 1887 statement: power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; great men are almost always bad men. Critics trace the same worry back to Plato's Republic. There, the character Glaucon argues that no one truly believes acting justly benefits them. He points to the mythical Ring of Gyges, which let its wearer turn invisible and escape punishment for any crime. The scholar Colin Manlove calls Tolkien's treatment of power inconsistent. He notes the Ring passes easily between Sam and Bilbo. He also notes that forcibly removing the Ring from Gollum does not break Frodo's mind, despite Gandalf's early warning. The Ring also appears to have little effect on characters such as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. Shippey answers Manlove with one word: addictive. In its early stages, he writes, the addiction can be shaken off easily, as it is with Bilbo and Sam. For those not yet addicted, like Aragorn, Galadriel, and Faramir, the pull works like any other temptation. What Gandalf could never do to Frodo, Shippey writes, is make him want to hand the Ring over willingly. That refusal to hand the Ring over, forced on no one, sits close to another set of readings that see Frodo's burden in religious terms.

• 6. Christ Figures and Hope

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  Tolkien wrote in the foreword to the second edition that the book is neither allegorical nor topical. He said he cordially disliked allegory in all its forms. He preferred history, true or invented, for its varied applicability to readers' own experience. Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien did write allegory elsewhere, citing Leaf by Niggle, so some relationship between the fiction and Tolkien's beliefs clearly exists. Shippey points out that Tolkien placed the destruction of the Ring and the fall of Sauron on the 25th of March. That date was, in Anglo-Saxon tradition, the date of the crucifixion of Christ, the annunciation, and the last day of the Genesis creation.

  The philosopher Peter Kreeft, a Roman Catholic like Tolkien, notes there is no single, visible Christ figure in the book, unlike Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Narnia. Instead, Kreeft and Jean Chausse find reflections of Jesus Christ split across three characters: Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn. Kreeft describes them as embodying the Old Testament's threefold Messianic symbolism of prophet, priest, and king. Gandalf's death in Moria and return as Gandalf the White has been read by several commentators as a symbol of the resurrection. Aragorn's own echo of the pattern comes through the Paths of the Dead, a road he takes before reappearing to help save Gondor. Frodo carries a burden of evil for the whole world, much as Jesus carried his cross. Commentators call his march to Mount Doom his own Via Dolorosa. Sam Gamgee, who carries Frodo up the mountain, has been compared to Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry his cross to Golgotha. When Frodo completes his task, he says, "it is done," a line commentators link to Christ's own words. Frodo's departure to the Undying Lands at the end of his life has likewise been compared to Christ's ascension.

  Hope appears as its own theme, tied closely to Aragorn's handling of Saruman's seeing-stone, the palantír. Aragorn's own name, Estel, means Hope in Sindarin, and Arwen still calls him by it, crying "Estel, Estel" at the hour of his death. Only Aragorn, as the heir of Isildur, can rightfully use the palantír. Saruman and Denethor, who both misuse their own palantírs, fall instead into presumption or despair, sins scholars describe as offenses against the virtue of Hope.

  Sam and Frodo's ordeal in Mordor illustrates a related Catholic theme, the redemptive and penitential nature of suffering. Boromir provides another example, atoning for his assault on Frodo by dying while defending Merry and Pippin from orcs. Gandalf later says of Boromir, "he escaped in the end," adding that the young hobbits' journey was not in vain, "if only for Boromir's sake." That line about escape, spoken over one character's death, points toward a theme running just as deep in the book. Tolkien believed that language itself carries meaning and truth.

• 7. Language and Landscape

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  Tom Shippey writes that The Lord of the Rings embodies Tolkien's belief that the word authenticates the thing, that fantasy is not entirely made up. Tolkien worked as a professional philologist, a scholar of language and etymology. He found this idea echoed in the old myth of a "true language." There, each word names a thing, and speaking that name gives power over it. Tom Bombadil embodies this directly in the story. Whatever name he gives something, Shippey notes, becomes that thing's name from then on, as happens with the names he gives the hobbits' ponies.

  This belief shaped Tolkien's insistence on what he saw as the correct, traditional forms of English words. The word "loaf," from Old English hlāf, properly becomes "loaves" in the plural, the way old words work. A newer word like "proof," lacking Old English roots, correctly takes the modern plural "proofs" instead. Tolkien reasoned that "dwarf" and "elf" should follow the old pattern too, becoming "dwarves" and "elves" rather than "dwarfs" and "elfs." He insisted on paying to reverse these "corrections" at the costly galley proof stage of publication.

  Tolkien also poured enormous effort into place-names, giving Shire locations like Nobottle, Bucklebury, and Tuckborough an obviously English sound and history. Shippey notes that many of these names never enter the plot at all. Even so, he argues, they give Middle-earth a sense of solidity that later fantasy writers have struggled to match. Tolkien called his own work "largely an essay in linguistic aesthetic" in one of his letters. He used Old English for the language of Rohan and Old Norse for the names of dwarves, alongside modern English for the Common Speech. In the story's own logic, none of these languages is truly English. The Common Speech is Westron, so the English dialogue readers see is a translation from it. Rohan's language is rendered in Old English as a stand-in for Rohirric, and dwarf names in Old Norse stand in for Khuzdul. Tolkien also built two full Elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin, both of which appear untranslated in the text.

  Shippey explains that Tolkien believed people could feel history in words and make aesthetic judgments from sound alone. This plays out when Legolas hears Aragorn singing the Lament of the Rohirrim in Rohirric, a language Legolas cannot understand. Legolas calls it "rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains." He adds only that it is "laden with the sadness of Mortal Men." The same effect appears when the hobbits hear the Elf Gildor singing, and the blended sound and melody "seemed to shape itself in their thought." It recurs when everyone at the Council of Elrond quails at Gandalf speaking the Black Speech aloud in Rivendell. It happens again when Sam Gamgee says "I like that!" on hearing the dwarf Gimli sing of the dwarf-king Durin.

  Tolkien's descriptions of landscape work the same way, carrying feeling beyond the literal scene. Shippey points to Frodo's reflections on the Dead Marshes. There Frodo sees "pale faces deep deep under the dark water." Some are grim and evil, others noble and sad, but all of them are foul and rotting. Shippey links this to what the critic John Ruskin called the pathetic fallacy, nature expressing human emotion. He notes that the literary theorist Northrop Frye offered a sharper account, ranking literature from Ironic through Low Mimetic, High Mimetic, and Romantic to Mythic. In Shippey's reading, most of the book sits in Romantic mode, with occasional touches of myth and moments of higher and lower mimesis mixed in. Tolkien's ability to blend these modes at once, Shippey argues, is a major reason for the book's success. That reading of landscape as something more than scenery sits alongside the sharper disagreements critics have raised about what the book leaves out entirely.

• 8. Debated Themes

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  Ralph Wood and other scholars note the book has faced repeated attack for being, as critics put it, a story about men for boys. Critics also say it lacks significant women. Wood answers that Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen are far from minor figures. Galadriel is powerful, wise, and "terrible in her beauty." Éowyn shows "extraordinary courage and valor." Arwen gives up her Elvish immortality to marry Aragorn. Wood argues Tolkien insists that everyone, regardless of gender, faces the same kinds of temptation, hope, and desire. Ann Basso, writing in Mythlore, argues that female characters in the book, including figures like Goldberry, are "diverse, well drawn, and worthy of respect." Katherine Hasser notes that gender roles in the Shire are not sharply divided, since hobbits like Bilbo handle domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning.

  Frodo can call on Elbereth, one of the Valar, in moments of extreme danger, though Wood confirms hobbits otherwise have no temples or sacrifices. A second charge against the book is that it leaves out formal religion entirely. The closest thing to religious practice, Wood notes, is that the men of Gondor "pause before meals." Wood argues Tolkien left religion out on purpose, so that Christianity might be seen reflected in the story more clearly, if indirectly. Tolkien himself wrote in a letter that "the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

  Tolkien consistently expressed anti-racist views during the Second World War, despite frequent accusations of racism directed at his fiction. The scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar argues that Middle-earth is built around a deliberately polycultured, polylingual world. She points to the Swedish scholar David Tjeder, who examined Gollum's line about the Men of Harad. Gollum calls them "Not nice; very cruel wicked Men," which Tjeder read as reflecting colonial stereotypes. Straubhaar argues Gollum is not a reliable narrator and his prejudice should not be read as Tolkien's own view. She contrasts this with Sam Gamgee, who looks at a dead Harad warrior and wonders where the man came from. Sam also wonders whether the man was truly evil, or had been driven to fight by lies or threats. Straubhaar quotes the scholar Stephen Shapiro, writing in The Scotsman: Tolkien's "good guys are white and the bad guys are black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate, and a psychologically undeveloped horde." Straubhaar concedes Shapiro may have a point about the phrase "slant-eyed." She notes, though, that this was milder than language used by Tolkien's contemporary novelists, including John Buchan. She adds that Tolkien objected strongly whenever people misapplied his story to real-world events.

  Sam Gamgee's relationship with Rosie Cotton is one of several places where love appears in the book, handled throughout with restraint. Éowyn's unreturned feelings for Aragorn, followed by her love for Faramir, form another thread. Aragorn's own love for Arwen appears mainly in an appendix rather than the main story. Scholars have also focused on the close bond between Frodo and his gardener Sam as they travel together toward Mount Doom. That relationship is modeled partly on the wartime bond between an officer and his personal batman. Interpretations of that bond range widely. Some read it as close but not necessarily romantic, others as openly homoerotic, still others as an idealised form of heroic friendship. That range keeps this last debated theme as unsettled as any question the book has raised.