Creating Context in The Lord of the Rings: History in the Text and Films

July 7, 2023

J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a wildly successful fantasy novel known for its extensive worldbuilding. Tolkien, a linguist at Oxford University and a devout Catholic, spent decades developing Middle-Earth’s history, mythologies, and languages. The book has been adapted into other forms of media many times over the years: three radio plays, four film scripts (two of which were never produced), and one stage play. Of these adaptations, director Peter Jackson’s early-2000s trilogy of live-action movies is by far the best-known and best-received. Lord of the Rings and its adaptations present Middle-Earth’s history as the foundations upon which the story is built, and the quest of the Ring as a small chapter in the overall story. To accomplish this without overly reminding readers of history textbooks, both the original text and Jackson’s adaptation use a variety of methods. Both employ plot devices connected to history, real-world cultural references, and structure and style - Tolkien through language and Jackson through visuals. Though the two used very different forms of storytelling, both succeeded in evoking Middle-Earth’s deep history.

Characters, places, and objects associated with the past abound in Middle-Earth. The book begins by describing a personal history - Bilbo Baggin’s last sixty years - and the Ring which he held through the decades. The Ring is an artifact created thousands of years before the events of Lord of the Rings, forgotten and legendary, which returns as a malevolent force with power over every life in Middle-Earth. Its power and connection to the Dark Lord Sauron are a clear example of history’s impact in the land as well as the ideas of civilizational decline surrounding Tolkien’s work. Sauron was a corrupted angel of sorts, similar to the Christian Lucifer, and the Ring was a product of that corruption. The Elves exist partly outside of corruption, living more closely to the natural world than Dwarves, Men, or Hobbits. Meanwhile, the Ents are a living connection to the distant past of nature itself. Both Elves and Ents have pockets of Middle-Earth under their control, and ruins of other civilizations are dotted across the continent.

The original text of The Lord of the Rings gives readers plenty of time with all of these entities. The Elves and Ents each get their time at the forefront; Frodo and company visit the Elven towns Rivendell and Lothlorien, then hobbits Merry and Pippin spend time among the Ents in Fangorn Forest. Each of these locations is historic: “In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world.” Fangorn Forest, meanwhile, is composed of ancient trees and the long-lived, slow-speaking Ents. When Merry anxiously asks the Ent Treebeard which ‘side’ of the war for the Ring the Ents are on, Treebeard responds: “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them.” The Ents embody both nature’s distance from human problems and vulnerability to human impacts.

Another forest is the subject of the movies’ most egregious deletion: the Old Forest and its master Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic character from the first volume of the story whose anciency surpasses all else in Middle-Earth:

Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.

Tom essentially embodies history itself. Though Tolkien preferred not to allegorize, even he admitted that Tom functions as an allegory for “pure (real) natural science.” Unaffected by the power of the Ring, Tom also illustrates that no story covers all points of view.

Tom Bombadil has historically been a sticking point for adaptations of The Lord of the Rings. Across eight adaptations of the story, Tom has only been included in four. His jolly yet mysterious nature is easily described in the text, but incredibly difficult to portray visually without seeming comical. Tolkien himself was opposed to the idea of presenting fantasy stories visually: “Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy.” The Lord of the Rings is not a story meant for film. Jackson, then, faced a monumental undertaking when adapting Lord of the Rings into film, and leaned on what plot elements he could use to provide historic exposition.

Jackson’s Lord of the Rings was particularly intentional in its portrayal of the Ring as a historic artifact. The Fellowship of the Ring starts with the history of the Ring, which serves as an interest grabber for new viewers. A long scene soon follows during which Gandalf and Frodo discuss the Ring and its new impact on Frodo’s life. This connects history to ‘current-day’ events. We also meet Bilbo Baggins, who brought the Ring out of hiding, and are informed that he’s leaving for the Elven city of Rivendell to live out his old age in peace. Bilbo was the catalyst for the return of the historic Ring, is old enough to seem historic to hobbit and human viewers, and is leaving the historic Shire for the ancient Rivendell. His elderly portrayal in Jackson’s Fellowship shows viewers a more ‘human’ embodiment of living history than Elves and Ents.

Jackson portrays the Elvish and Entish areas from the book effectively enough: we see unusual, art nouveau-like Elvish architecture and large, gnarled Entish roots and trees. Importantly, though, Jackson also included evidence of history in every other area of Middle-Earth. Strider and the Hobbits pass through the ruins at Weathertop, where we see the overgrown remains of an ancient tower. The Fellowship travels the abandoned Mines of Moria, populated with skeletonized bodies of Gimli’s Dwarven kin. They travel under the Argonath, ancient monumental statues of Aragorn’s kingly ancestors. Frodo wanders, contemplative, past a fallen statue’s head taller than a man at Amon Hen. He encounters bodies from a long-ago battle at the Dead Marshes. The Battle of Helm’s Deep is held at a historic fortress carved into a mountain. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas meet an army of ghosts and an avalanche of their skulls in the Paths of the Dead. These and other historic locations constantly show viewers relics of Middle-Earth’s past, establishing its importance in the current story.

Beyond these plot devices, both the film and the original text employ subtle real-world cultural references. Tolkien was born in colonial South Africa but spent the majority of his life in England, and The Lord of the Rings is a very British story. He based the Shire and its hobbit inhabitants upon the rural English countryside of his pre-mechanical childhood. Its name alone is a connection to English history, as ‘shire’ is from an Old English word similar to ‘county.’ Similarly, the Rohirrim have many ties to the Anglo-Saxons whose language Tolkien studied. Details like these, combined with the Christian themes and medieval European heroism of the story, root The Lord of the Rings in a wider cultural context with deep roots in real-world history.

The Shire’s culture, geography, and inhabitants function almost as if a medieval English village was transplanted into Tolkien’s world. It is an insular, agrarian community with little interest in travel or change. Families take up residence in homes and neighborhoods and stay in place for generations. The hobbits’ relation to English culture is perhaps best illustrated by Tolkien’s description of himself:

I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.

The word ‘hobbit’ itself is derived from ‘holbytla,’ a fictional Old English compound word for ‘hole-dweller.’ We first encounter the word ‘holbytla’ when the Riders of Rohan meet Merry and Pippin, identifying the hobbits in Rohanese. Rohanese bears several other references to Old English/Anglo-Saxon. Many names of Rohirrim places and people use the prefix Éo-, which is quite close to the Old English for ‘horse,’ ‘eoh.’ Théoden, King of the Rohirrim, is named after the word for ‘prince/king.’ At times, the Rohirrim even speak in Old English, and their interactions “resemble those of the characters in Beowulf down to minute detail.” English-speaking readers may not notice these details, but can sense the consistency and anciency in the words. Rohanese - and the rest of Middle-Earth’s invented languages - suggest to readers that the world is as lived-in as our own.

These linguistic details are generally limited in the movies, where time for introducing new words was short. Instead, Jackson’s films draw on real-world sources for their visuals. New Zealand’s undisturbed natural landscapes served as a fitting backdrop for Middle-Earth adventures, seemingly devoid of modern human impact. The Shire’s idylls, buildings, and livestock are familiar to English viewers. The interior of Bag End, where the Baggins have lived for generations, looks like a shrunken version of an English cottage. Statues rest in niches at Rivendell, recalling Gothic architecture, and their unpainted appearances partly mimic classical Greco-Roman statues (or, at least, 19th and 20th century ideas of them). The Dwarven architecture in the Mines of Moria is rife with vaguely Celtic detailing, and Gimli’s armor looks as if it could have come from Sutton Hoo. The Argonath pose with the stiff dignity of the Greeks’ kouroi. Edoras, the court of Théoden King of the Rohirrim, is decorated with Anglo-Saxon classical-inspired geometric designs and zoomorphic motifs. Countless visual elements remind viewers of real-world history, subconsciously establishing the age of Middle-Earth.

Clearly, both Tolkien’s text and Jackson’s films have abundant historic inspiration. They show this inspiration through their content itself and by relating it to real history. Both go further by using structural elements, either in written style or in cinematography, which create, highlight, or deepen their content.

Tolkien was so passionate about language that The Lord of the Rings itself began as a mythology for his constructed Elvish languages. It is unsurprising, then, that each paragraph, song, or poem in the story seems so thoughtfully placed. The Fellowship of the Ring starts in the Shire, where hobbits speak and are described in fairytale-like language. We read, for example, Frodo’s dinner with his friends: Hobbits have a passion for mushrooms, surpassing even the greediest likings of Big People. A fact which partly explains young Frodo’s long expeditions to the renowned fields of the Marish, and the wrath of the injured Maggot. On this occasion there was plenty for all, even according to hobbit standards. There were also many other things to follow…

The cheerful narration with its focus on small details brings to mind images of some British grandfather telling children a story. Later, the story takes the point of view of Aragorn, a heroic figure who becomes a king, and is told in very different language:

Now men came bearing raiment of war from the king’s hoard, and they arrayed Aragorn and Legolas in shining mail. Helms too they chose, and round shields: their bosses were overlaid with gold and set with gems, green and red and white. Gandalf took no armour, and Gimly needed no coat of rings, even if one had been found to match his stature, for there was no hauberk in the hoards of Edoras of better make than his short corslet forged beneath the Mountain in the North.

Where the hobbits were narrated with short sentences and familiar words, Aragorn is narrated with far more complex, ‘archaic’ language. When asked about this, Tolkien wrote that such heroic scenes don’t fit into more modern English, and that he preferred to take advantage of the variety of styles English offers. Stylistic choices along these lines throughout the books show Tolkien using the narrative medium to its full extent.

Tolkien wielded English expertly, and Jackson did the same with cinematography, the language of film. Scene by scene, the trilogy used all of the medium’s possibilities for conveying context and meaning. Each shot is carefully composed, using well-established methods of cinematic shortcuts to meaning. Extreme long shots of landscapes appear frequently and establish the setting’s size beyond the story of the Ring. The first shot of Bilbo, in his study alone framed by darkness, speaks to his isolation as the Ringbearer. We see weak characters from above and strong characters from below. The Ring tends to take up the entire frame when shown, because its importance is so great. Saruman and Grima take up the foreground of a shot while commanding the Uruk-hai, seen from far above. Frodo and Gollum come to an understanding of each other and begin to have conversations with over-the-shoulder shots, a common method of portraying communication between equals. Lighting and color constantly add subconscious meaning to the film. The Shire is bright and green, while Isengard is dark and grey, for example.

Tolkien and Jackson worked in different mediums and different times, but on the same plot. The Lord of the Rings is steeped in a wider invented history that is inseparable from its success as a story. Tolkien, of course, created said history and was passionate about showing it. The plot of Lord of the Rings is woven from threads of Middle-Earth legends, which themselves take inspiration from a range of European myths. He raised the impact of the text through well-planned prose and invented words. Jackson took these elements and retold the story with visuals, using high-quality set and prop design and cinematography to translate Lord of the Rings across mediums. Both successfully portrayed Middle-Earth as a lively, well-established world of its own.

References Flieger, Verlyn. 2011. “Sometimes One Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures.” In Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Jackson, Peter, dir. 2001. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Extended ed. New Line Cinema. Jackson, Peter, dir. 2002. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Extended ed. New Line Cinema. Jackson, Peter, dir. 2003. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Extended ed. New Line Cinema. Merriam-Webster. n.d. “Shire Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Accessed July 7, 2023. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shire. Rateliff, John. 2011. “Kinds of Absence: Elision and Exclusion in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.” In Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Shippey, T. A. 1979. “Creation from Philology.” In J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tinkler, John. 1968. “Old English in Rohan.” In Tolkien and the Critics: essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Tolkien, J. R. R. 1981. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Tolkien, J. R. R. 2012. The Lord of the Rings. Rev. ed. 3 vols. Boston / New York: Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Figures