J.R.R. Tolkien Boxed Set (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings)
by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Book Summary Information

• Product Details: Boxed Paperback (4) books in a set,
• Publisher: Del Rey (September 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345340426, ISBN-13: 978-0345340429, Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.4 x 4.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies), Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,260 customer reviews)

• Dune 2000

Book Reviews of J.R.R. Tolkien Boxed Set (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings)

Book Review: sublime
Summary: 5 Stars

When we speak of authors as gods, or more likely they speak of themselves as such, there is of course an element of hyperbole, but it accompanies a kernel of truth. Within the boundaries of their fiction, authors are in fact Creators and wield godlike powers. They define reality, control events, decide who lives and who dies. The best of them create characters and situations that the reader genuinely cares about and a very few of them, the best of the best, create characters and situations which seem to exist beyond the bounds of the story. To take an easy example, there is Sherlock Holmes. Not only do many people simply assume that he actually existed, not only did readers demand that he be brought back from the dead, there is a continual flow of further adventures and prequels being written all the time. Holmes is so "real" to us that an author can write about his childhood or his old age and easily carry us along because in our guts we feel that he enjoyed such phases of life. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a character whom we feel must have had a past and a future independent of the tales the author left us. This is truly a remarkable accomplishment.

On the other hand, consider Leopold Bloom from James Joyce's Ulysses (see Orrin's review). Because the entire novel is technique and artifice it is impossible to imagine a Bloom who exists outside of the author's head. He has no past or future because Joyce didn't write them. This in itself does not make Ulysses a bad book--there are plenty of other reasons that it is a bad book. It is certainly possible to create a great book or a great protagonist within these bounds. Holden Caufield, for instance, is a great character and Catcher in the Rye a great book (see Orrin's review), but he is unimaginable as an adult. Though memorable and sympathetic, his existence is intrinsically enmeshed within this particular novel.

All of which is by way of introduction to what is perhaps the greatest feat of creative imagination in all of literature, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Tolkien created not merely one or two characters who seem to have an external existence, he created an entire world, several races, entire languages, mythologies, songs, poetry, and so on, until finally it comes to seem that he is merely the historian of a separate world, rather than it's Creator. The thoroughness with which he realizes his unique vision gives to his fiction a texture and a substance which may never be equaled. He was able to achieve this remarkable effect in large part by spending years working on the background elements of his story before ever turning his attention to the main narrative thread. For example, dwarves are a common enough staple of fantasy and fairy tales, but because Tolkien had spent years developing a dwarvish language and writing a history of the dwarves and imagining a dwarvish mythology, when we come upon a dwarf in Middle Earth, he seems not to be a convenient imaginary figure but an actual being with his own life story, racial history and tongue. This is likewise true for the elves, the hobbits, even the orcs--a pretty amazing achievement.

All of this would suffice to rank these books among the world's greatest, even if he just put the characters through some fairly pedestrian paces, just some standard quest or adventure. But Tolkien's has a much higher ambition here. His religious influences and aims are well understood and I'll not dwell on them here. I'm more interested in the way the stories function as democratic myth. The great tension in the series is not truly between good and evil, rather it derives from the capacity of power to corrupt good people. Elves and men and dwarves and even Gandalf must all struggle, some successfully, some not, against the temptation to take the ring of power themselves. Each is able to imagine that committing acts of short term evil will allow them to act for what they perceive as the greater good. But in fact it is only the lowly hobbits, Sam and Frodo, with no aspirations towards greatness, who can wield power selflessly and even they ultimately require divine intervention to finally destroy the ring. This political understanding further elevates the series and provides it with a message that resonates with our experience, particularly in the 20th Century. The various races who are tempted by the ring resemble New Dealers and Bolsheviks and Maoists, each of them thinking that they are uniquely capable of using power toward good ends, failing to perceive that the seductive qualities of power itself is warping their souls. In the end, in Middle Earth as on Earth, only the humble folk should be trusted with power and even they bear watching.

Finally, to my subjective reasons. If my Mom is to be believed, and I think we can trust her on this one, it was around 5th grade that I really became a reader. As I recall, my teacher Mrs. Deakens got me going on books about explorers. Like any young boy I was captivated by such tales of adventure. I devoured comic books swashbucklers and science fiction. I read every Doc Savage I could get my hands on, Tarzan (see Orrin's review), John Carter of Mars, Conan, and any other pulp fiction I could find. Meanwhile, our neighbor, Mark Farris, read the same books over and over again in an unending cycle--the Chronicles of Narnia (see Orrin's review) straight through, then the Lord of the Rings from start to finish and back to Narnia--and he swore by them. Now the Narnia books weren't too daunting. each one is pretty slender, so I managed them. But the Lord of the Rings offers quite an imposing structure to the kid who contemplates reading it. Taken together the four books are what? maybe 1700 or so pages? Well, of course I did eventually screw up my courage and tackle this daunting task and not only was I ensorceled by the story, but having finished I was naturally inordinately proud of myself. Add that sense of self satisfaction into the mix and I'd imagine that for most kids who read the series at a certain age it inevitably becomes their favorite. In fact, I'd like to get these kids who are so enraptured by the Harry Potter books (see Orrin's review) and make sure that they continue on through C.S. Lewis and on to Tolkien. The Potter books are fun; Tolkien is sublime.

GRADE: A+

Summary of J.R.R. Tolkien Boxed Set (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings)

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