Lord of the Rings 1-3

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

1: The Fellowship of the Ring

2: The Two Towers

3: The Return of the King

If you're like me before I read these books, then you thought that the movies were an amazing work of art, and that the books look like written death so to speak. But my dad knew how much I loved to read, and how hard it is to find challenging books, so he bet me to read them in six months. Obviously I did (and so won the bet) and I've read them again. I do have to say that the books are entirely different than the movies, very different. But they are amazing in their own way. Very descriptive, very long, but very able to hold your attention, I can't put them down whenever I read them. 

The first one is by far my favorite, it tells Frodo's life in the shire, and describes the beautiful majesty that is Hobbiton. Did you know that in the movie it seems that Frodo begins the quest right after he gets the ring, and right after Gandalf tells him of the dangers? In the books he actually waits 27 more years, till he is fifty hobbit years old to begin his quest to vanquish the dark lord of Mordor. It describes how Frodo never ages after he becomes of age at 23, or how he eventually makes a plan to leave Bagend to the Sackville Baggins's  and move off onto a house that is in a way hidden from other people so that he can leave without notice. It tells how he and Samwise Gamgee go on to Rivendell with Merriadoc Bradnybuck and Pippen Took, how they meet Strider and meet the elves, thinking that they have finished their  journey and may go on home, that the ring will be safe. How wrong they were huh? They form a fellowship  with the four hobbits, Gandalf the grey, Boromir, Aragorn/ Strider, Legolas the elf, and Gimli. They make great haste in their  journey, but eventually Frodo and Sam disband the fellowship for the safety of their friends, and to go on to Mordor alone. 

What I find a little funny about the difference between the movies and the books is how in the first movie, Boromir dies trying to save Merry and Pippen, but in the books he dies in the very beginning of the second one.  And in the third movie,  Frodo doesn't abandon Sam on the great stairs, on the contrary he begins to get more and more wary of Gollem, and when they reach the Shelobs lair, Sam saves him. But this all happens in the second book as well. It's amazing how the director could choose which parts were unimportant because they were all so important to the entire storyline. 

The second book is really good in its own way, but it can be very dry at many times. It is by far my least favorite of all three. It doesn't really tell much of Frodo and Sam, more of Aragorn, Merry, Pippen, and Gandalf.  But it is interesting to see what happens to them, like how Pippen becomes a  knight of Rohan and gives his service to Denthor, their steward.  And how Merry strides to become a real knight of Gondor, but they think little of him because of his size. He eventually becomes a real hero by taking on the King of the Ring Raiths, or Nazgul. 

The third books is where you get to see how Frodo makes the final strides of his journey with Sam and Gollem, and in the end is taken fully by the power of the ring, and only destroys it because Gollem takes it from him and falls into the fires of Mount Doom. And remember how in the end of the third movie they go back to the shire and a few years later Frodo takes to the ships with the elves and goes on to "paradise" where there’s no war, and no one can die? Well in the books that does eventually happen, but when they get back to the shire they see that Saruman has taken over management of it and has made it into a mere shadow of what it used to be. But Frodo and his gang of hobbits destroy his evil rein rendering him powerless. Then Sam gets married and all that, Frodo writes his book, and goes on with the elves. But the movies and the books are very different. 

Not that that means that they [the books] are awful, on the contrary, they've become some of my favorites. I most definitely recommend reading them, they are so descriptive that you seem to be there with Frodo as he makes his long journey, or with Aragorn and Merry as they fight their battles. 

Alysha,

Teen Volunteer Blogger

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