Here is a history of my reading Lord of the Rings and an inventory of the new things I’ve been gleaning out of it. I came to read it first as a teenager and am now reading it as a graduate student, and my understanding of it has grown deeper like the rings of a tree, which I really appreciate. As I’ve written below, my current reread is me coming “round the bend of graduating college, going through real-life wars and losing many loved ones – as compared to when I was 18 and naïve towards grief.” Ah well… But, let us go onward.
(This post is written in a more stream-of-consciousness/note-taking style so I apologise when it’s uneven, but I hope you also take something out of it 🙂)
(Re)reading Lord of the Rings
My first time reading Lord of the Rings (LOTR) was when I was around 12 or 13. A Filipino friend had visited us in Nepal and she saw that I loved reading books, so she wanted to buy me a new book. She asked me what I wanted and I said, “Lord of the Rings!” (I had recently read The Hobbit and loved it.) And she went and got me a 3-in-1 version of it that was almost three inches thick.
It had thin white pages and the text was pretty small; I remember writing a note and/or putting a doodle on the margin in ink (gasp!) – a comment about Eowyn’s doomed love for Aragorn.
I remember bringing the book with me as I went around Kathmandu with my parents on their errands – I read about the mines of Moria in a store in Pulchowk next to the fire station that collapsed during the magnitude 7.8 earthquake a few years later in 2015. I travelled with the Hobbits to meet the delightful Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry and encountered the horrifying Barrow-wights while resting my eyes from the pages by looking at a fish tank at this electronics store in a mini mall probably near New Road. The prophecy/poem about Aragorn was also stuck in my head for a while, since “Not all who wander are lost” was a pretty popular line, and I loved the imagery of “deep roots are not reached by the frost”.
At that point, I hadn’t seen the films yet (except for the time I was eight or nine, and saw some parts of them in the Philippines on TV – I remember being scared at night thinking about Frodo frothing at the mouth after being stung by Shelob) and relied solely on my imagination while thinking of the happenings.
My second time reading the series was after I finally watched all the films with my family here in Yerevan, Armenia, in 2018. I started reading the Fellowship of the Ring (FotR) from a bootlegged version on my laptop, so for my 18th birthday, I added the books to my wishlist. Unfortunately, I had to leave my big LOTR book in Nepal 🙁 There was a group of Filipino friends coming to Armenia and knew about my birthday, so they got the books for me! So poetic – travelling friends from my homeland always seem to bring me LOTR stuff haha.
The versions they got me were film tie-ins, and I loved that they were from Booksale, a secondhand bookstore in the Philippines, so I felt they also had a past life and a history to them (although I will never know whose hands they used to belong to). It’s also poetic how they had the movie covers, because it was my experience of watching the trilogy with my family that prompted me to reread the series. (I reread The Hobbit far more times because I didn’t wanna tie myself up to a long trilogy, to take a long time on it.)
During that 2018 reread, I remember the places where I read it in the Philippines (we went there for a couple of months), and the most memorable parts. Faramir comes to mind first, I LOVED him so much. He was way better as a character in the books than in the movie, but I also fell in love with David Wenham’s portrayal of him (he was blond lol, and had a distinct grey voice; I remembered him as the loveable monk from Van Helsing 😂) plus I also saw him in an Australian film on TV with my relatives during that trip to the Philippines.
I loved how he became the comfort for Eowyn, and how he was called a man of quality by Samwise (it takes one to know one). I ate up the stronghold scenes in Ithilien and relished them so much, more than I did on my most current reread this year. I wonder why. Maybe because the visuals of Faramir from the film were fresh in my mind’s eye.
I remember reading the love story of Faramir and Eowyn first in Miniso then at the SM Aura bathroom 😂😂 The Two Towers and Return of the King were my company on long shopping days in Manila haha.
I also remember finishing the Mount Doom scenes in Lolo Ernan’s apartment with the emotional “conclusion,” and the Scouring of the Shire at a foot massage parlour in Dansalan 😂😂😂 bruh, Hobbits and feet hahahaha.
I’d love to write more about that past reread but I’ll move on now to my current reread of the trilogy. I had just turned 18 back then but now I started reading it as a 23-year-old (I turned 24 a few weeks later), round the bend of graduating college, going through real-life wars and losing many loved ones – as compared to when I was 18 and naïve towards grief. I have also learned a lot of lessons from growing up and being more mature towards life. Well, I also graduated partly as a literature student, so that has definitely helped me analyse the books from a literary perspective.
So I started rereading the books back in August before Rings of Power (ROP) Season 2 came out. It was also a sort of reprieve as I was completing my application for graduate school. I tuned into Phil Dragash’s unofficial audiobook while doing chores. I LOVE how he does the accents (movie ones plus additional ones of characters that weren’t in the movie) and included immersive sound effects and Howard Shore’s score. It’s like a book extension of the movie, performance wise – if you wanted the film to be bookish and have more of the dialogue and extra descriptions. I’ve recommended it to many people since. (Below is the FotR playlist :D)
I remember sweeping the floor and listening to the Old Forest debacle – seeing the green trees and the suffocation of the hobbits; washing the dishes while burning through the 8 hours per “Book 1, Book 2” and so on; walking to the bookstore to find Abbie’s Howl’s Moving Castle with a headache, but managing to listen to the portion about Elrond’s council and understanding for the first time the gravity of their debate about who should take the Ring and who shouldn’t take it.
I also read the actual books sometimes (I’m almost halfway through Return of the King, but I paused because it’s too depressing), but there’s just something about the slower pace of listening to the audiobook which helps me savour what’s happening. Hearing the dialogue performed – especially with their unique voices and accents – helps me encounter the characters even more. The music also makes the dramatic tension more impactful, so looking at the pages feels dry sometimes.
But my focus would sometimes falter when listening or reading, and I feel that I haven’t fully experienced or gone through every corner of the books because of my divided focus. So I realise I have to reread this series even more in the future (damning my 30-book upwards Goodreads Reading Challenges per year).
It was also nice to see my old highlights on the pages, but a part of me wanted to retread them as new territory. Well, it has been six years.
Now, what are the new things I learned from rereading LOTR? What are some of the themes I’m meditating about or am seeing in a new light?
“Eucatastrophe”
I noticed that, after Frodo and his hobbit-friends in FotR would face trouble and danger (which they are unused to as cosy hobbits living in the Shire), they would be met by comfort and rest which would heal them and prepare them to continue on their journey, where they would meet more trouble – but actually emerge stronger. Here are the instances I saw.
Leaving Bag-End, they journeyed to Frodo’s new house at Crickhollow, but were chased by the Ringwraiths, who caused them great fear. They were almost caught by them, but Gildor and his company of elves scared them away. Gildor then invites Frodo and his friends to stay the night with them in safety (he’s the guy who says the quote that I love: “Courage is found in unlikely places”), eat dinner together, and receive counsel. There’s a really nice fellowship between the elves and Frodo, whose cultural knowledge of the elves (especially understanding and speaking their language) wins him the title Elf-friend, and it’s reminiscent to me of my own cross-cultural interactions and the delight and lasting friendship that can come out of them. Language really is the key to opening doors.
Then the hobbits journey onward and get chased by a Ringwraith again, but, after redirecting to a long trail, they end up in Farmer Maggot’s territory. Frodo was once really scared of him because he stole the farmer’s mushrooms when he was younger, plus the farmer had big dogs, but at present the farmer shelters them and welcomes them for the night, protecting them even till they get to the river-bridge to go to Crickhollow.
From Crickhollow, they decide to go through the dangerous Old Forest to deter the Ringwraiths from following them. Here, they get trapped by Old Man Willow and almost die (again), but Tom Bombadil rescues them. He welcomes them as guests for what I remember as a few days, and comforts them from the trauma of the forest. He also gives them some provisions (“for free!” I thought) – I forgot if he gave these before the hobbits went to the Barrow-downs and got trapped (almost dying again) by the zombie/ghost-like Barrow-wights, but the fact is that he saved them twice from trouble and sent them off to Bree with gifts and equipment.
(I don’t know who did the fanarts in the previous pics, but it just portrays the joy and love for life of the Bombadil couple :’D)
At the Prancing Pony, the hobbits meet Strider (Aragorn), who becomes their guide to reach Rivendell. To make the long story short, Frodo gets stabbed by a Ringwraith on Weathertop, and Glorfindel the mighty elf meets them along the way and he rushes to bring Frodo on horseback across the river with the Ringwraiths at their heels (some of these get swept away by the deluge of the river). The hobbits get a chance to rest at Rivendell, and Elrond heals Frodo’s wound enough for him to go on.
With the Fellowship of the Nine in place, they cross the mines of Moria (Khazad-dum), where Gandalf dies fighting the Balrog as the rest escape towards the exit. The hobbits weep and mourn outside, but Aragorn tells them to immediately move onward to Lothlorien, the realm of Galadriel and Celeborn. In that beautiful, otherworldly realm, they stay for about a month without noticing it (time flows differently there), and they heal enough from their grief of Gandalf to continue on their journey (side-note: the Fellowship’s representative of two cultures hostile to each other – Legolas and Gimli – become fast friends after staying in Lothlorien).
The Fellowship breaks once Frodo decides to go alone to Mordor with Sam, but even then, the two parties receive succour and respite: Merry and Pippin, after being kidnapped by the Orcs, meet Treebeard the Ent and get refreshed by their time in the Fangorn forest before they besiege Isengard; Sam and Frodo meet Faramir after long, weary days of walking with Gollum, and get a good night’s sleep on actual beds in Ithilien; Aragorn & co. get to eat and rest for a bit in Rohan.
What’s in common with all of these events I’ve summarised? I see a lot of hospitality for these travellers, a lot of kindness from strangers, right after moments of trauma or danger. I first realised what was happening after reflecting on Tom Bombadil’s generosity.
And I think it’s not merely the mini-climaxes and falling action necessary in a story’s three-act structure (see pics below)…
…but the fact that the relief for the main characters come from hospitable people who actively take care for them makes this special. It was also a comfort for me at a time I was facing challenges and tiredness myself.
Then, I somehow came across Tolkien’s term “eucatastrophe” probably on Reddit or one of the articles I read connected to Rings of Power. Or no, probably this article on Ekstasis (“Grace at Mount Doom” by Ryan Diaz). But yeah, Tolkien Gateway explains it this way:
Eucatastrophe is a neologism coined by J.R.R. Tolkien from Greek ευ- (“good”) and καταστροφή (“sudden turn”). In essence, a eucatastrophe is a massive turn in fortune from a seemingly unconquerable situation to an unforeseen victory, usually brought by grace rather than heroic effort.
Or, in my own simple words (kinda paling in comparison to the definition), it is how bad events set up the opportunity for good things to happen: restoration, healing, rest.
I like how Tolkien talks about grace. I’ve experienced it myself, not just in my faith in Christ, but also from people I’ve met around the world growing up, who were very caring and generous (like the people who gave me my LOTR books over the years 💓).
It gives us hope that – even if we face terrible and dark experiences, like the members of the Fellowship, God desires for us to receive rest and comfort, firstly from Him, and the people He uses to be generous and kind. Out of a good relationship with Him, we can also choose to be the Tom Bombadils to people in our own circles and outside them.
Inventory of Other Themes
I’ve listed the following down on my computer’s Notes, but I don’t want this post to get longer than it already is. It kinda reminds me of those Tumblr notes. Well, I’ll leave it to you to connect your own thoughts to my notes. I have a lot to say about them but I feel it’s better to explain it in real life…
- medieval joy ! reading Pippin and Merry – the parallels
- prophetic and wise Faramir
- Frodo’s heroism
- the idea of being small and young and yet flipping over people’s expectations. This hits hard because I still look like a 16-year-old and I still struggle with seeing myself as a capable person…
- finding references mentioned in ROP
- – Galadriel: flowers (daisies?) in her hair when she first met Celeborn :”))
- wanting to cry because of Gandalf’s death
- Frodo being more authoritative than my impression from Movie Frodo
- starting to like Aragorn because of his nobleness in character
- finally noticing the minor characters like Beregond 🥹his little son!!!
- Forth Eorlingas! Elendil!
- – understanding the Numenor lore more bc of ROP
- AAAAAH the songs! there were way more songs in the first book. a bit in the second. but i love how Phil Dragash also composed them. Sam’s poetry 🥰🥰
Well, I may have more notes, but that is that for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Let me know which parts struck a chord with you!
May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.