Thoughts on Reading ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ In 2024
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
It’s never too late to read Tolkien!
Finishing ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ turned into my own uphill personal quest. I started reading the book on May 26th and finally finished it on August 14th. I wasn’t expecting it to take that long. For context, it took me 10 days to read “A Suitable Boy” by Vikram Seth, which is one of the biggest novels to exist and is more than twice the size of “The Fellowship of the Ring”.
I honestly don’t even know how to rate this Lord of The Rings book out of five stars, because it was soooooo SLOW in parts that I started reading just a little every day (well, not every day really) before going to bed, and it made me fall asleep within a few pages. But not in an “oh, this is so boring, I hate it, I don’t want to read it” way, but more like “this is sort of nice, but too descriptive and too slow for me” kinda way. It’s like taking a 14-hour train ride on a scenic route when you could’ve taken a one-hour flight and gotten there, but you obviously want to take naps on the train. The destinations might be the same, but the journey is entirely different.
One can summarize the entire “The Fellowship of the Ring” in an easy paragraph. Little hobbit Frodo goes on a quest to destroy a powerful ring before it lands in wrong hands and faces many dangers along the way, but he can always count on his loyal friend Sam Gamgee and the wise wizard Gandalf to be by his side. Definitely convinced that Dumbledore was inspired by Gandalf. The villain – Sauron, the ruler of Mordor, is the titular lord of the rings, who wants to rule the whole of middle earth and one of his greatest source of powers is the ring that’s in Frodo’s possession.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s painstaking effort to describe everything about Frodo’s journey across middle-earth is impressive, but also definitely feels like overkill in many parts! It takes almost 100 pages for Frodo to just get out of The Shire, the hobbit region he inhabits. The middle section of the novel, where Frodo and company navigate ancient caves that were once the kingdom of Dwarfs, was the only part that I read for more than 30-40 pages at a stretch.
My favorite part about ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ were the poems/songs strewn across the chapters, which beautifully blend with the narration. Each time a character is recalling a story or historical event to explain their background, or each time they reminisce about something or simply decide to celebrate, they break into songs. Before the printing press came along, it were songs that carried our stories, and thus it is songs that poignantly carry the story forward in this book. I’ve seen the quote ‘Not all those who wander are lost’ so much on social media by travelers that I didn’t even know it’s from Tolkien, so I was definitely thrilled to bits when the poem/song featuring the quote turned up in the novel.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
I grew up watching “The Lord of The Rings” films—our parents took us when we were in school—and at that point in time, my brother and I didn’t really know the movies were based on books. But now that I’m done with this book, I totally understand why so many fans agree that the movies are better than the books. I LOVE the movies. My brother and I made our parents rent the DVDs after we were done watching the trilogy in theaters, so that we could watch all of them back-to-back once again. But again, the movie creators were able to make such great films thanks to Tolkien writing the story in such great detail. There’s no room for imagination; there’s not one scene that qualifies for “white room syndrome”—a term used for scenes where the writer doesn’t describe the setting, making it feel like the character interactions are taking place in a blank space. But ugh, I wish there were a lot more character interactions to make the novel more entertaining.
If there’s one thing that was annoying about the novel, it was the excessive use of names and places, it’s like Tolkien slaps the reader with a book of Yellow pages that’s not from their region. Thankfully, at least the fellowship is small enough to remember the main characters, although nine members isn’t all that small. Gandalf leads the fellowship, which includes four hobbits—Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin—two human warriors of royal lineage, Aragorn and Boromir, an elf named Legolas, and a dwarf named Gimli.
It’s only Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn, whose characters are well-developed in the first book, others still feel like shadows, although Sam’s personality is also clearly drawn out – he is fascinated by elves and is fiercely loyal to Frodo and will follow him anywhere, even to hell. One of the most dynamic and instantly likable character only appears for a flash in the book, it’s Tom Bombadil, who is a cheery, powerful, near-immortal man that helps out Frodo and his hobbit friends when they are lost in the creepy old forest in the first half of the book, before the fellowship is formed. Tom didn’t make it to the movies and I can see why, he isn’t very essential to the tale, but that doesn’t change that he was an absolutely firecracker in his little fascinating cameo. I would’ve loved to see some more of him in the books, but he is also the kind of guy who likes to be in his own bubble and not get embroiled in the power-politics of the world, possibly because he is a happily married man content with what he has.
Well, I am definitely glad to have picked up the series, and since Tolkien has done all the explaining needed of the different races and places of Middle Earth in the first book, I am hoping the others will be a lot more exciting! Here’s to hoping. I’ve already started book two – The Two Towers.
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