In the world of fantasy fiction, perhaps no other writings have found such fame as J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and its companion books The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
They have also been the subject of much controversy as the “true” meaning of them has been endlessly disputed (Weidner, 2002). The book focuses on the future of civilization that rests in the fate of the One Ring, which has been lost for centuries. Powerful forces are unrelenting in their search for it. But fate has placed it in the hands of a young Hobbit, who inherits the Ring and steps into legend. A daunting task lies ahead for the young Hobbit when he becomes the Ring bearer and eventually will require him to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom where it was forged.
The Lord of the Rings places its characters and its readers on a collision course with modern moral dilemmas of knowledge and power. J.R.R Tolkien was one of a generation of Englishmen “caught by youth” during World War I.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are by no means allegories of that or any other war, yet the impact of the Great War is evident (Croft, 2002). Lord of the Rings, written by Professor J.R.R Tolkien in the midst of 1930’s to the 1950’s, continues the trend in political and social relationships for it focuses on the group as a political unit and its interactions as well as on the means and ends of political systems (Barnett, 2018).
Middle Earth in Tolkien’s fiction world still parallels the world that existed in the late 1940s when the book was being completed. The varying of powers within his created world still supports the political ideologies that Tolkien advocated in life (Weidner, 2002).
