I just re-read the Lord of the Rings for the ?? time (dunno, many). I promise this thread will be insufferable.

But I think the most important section of LOTR is the Scouring of the Shire. It shows how much the hobbits have changed, especially Frodo.

This makes me feel like Peter Jackson never really truly understood the books. Frodo becomes merciful and gracious because he’s touched darkness and he’s realized the greatest darkness was within him.

Once the Hobbits leave the Shire, the language in conversation changes - everyone talks with an almost unconscious sense of the importance of the story. Even the children. When they return, so does the “ordinary.”

I’m struck by how the hobbits are perceived as almost “magical” to the Men, to the Elves, even to the Ents. To me, this is one of the wisest parts of the story. It’s the humble and the ordinary and the small that saves the day, in the end. Esp. Gollum.

In fact, Gollum is one of the greatest characters in all of literature. The story threatens to fly into the atmosphere and have no grounding without the hobbits and without Gollum. Without them, it’s just a fairytale.

After I watched the movies, I watched the commentary, and unsurprisingly, the dominant interpretative frame seemed to be WWII. This explains why Helm’s Deep is such an important part of TT. But tragically, it misses the Gospel thread.

In fact, LOTR is one of the few stories that actually manages to transmit joy - before the Scouring, the 70 or so pages of revelry are so unlike what we’re accustomed to reading. It’s literal joy. And it’s a lesson to us.

This is commentary about the best of literature and movies and stories today. They can do dark and depraved and do it well. But hardly anyone can do joy well. To prove my point, take Harry Potter. The worst part of those tremendous books is the epilogue.

I think it’s perhaps the problem of living in a world where freedom and fulfillment and our dictating of the horizons of those two things that makes joy so hard. Joy is not everybody getting what they want. Nobody believes endings like that.

Frodo returns from Mordor changed. He’s better, but he’s scarred. He’s essentially awaiting death. He’s diaphanous, almost transparent to the world. And I guess this is why I like the books so much. You lose your life to find it.