In recent years I reread Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS with the intention of blogging about it, only to bog down because even the individual segments have too much detail to cover in a blogpost. However, for my more recent re-visit to Middle-Earth, I decided only to cover the elements I found to be the most mythic in the trilogy, and to make the assumption that anyone who reads my posts here is likely to know the basic story of LORD, even if only from the movies rather than from Tolkien's books.
One mythic opposition with which FELLOWSHIP opens is the one between Bilbo Baggains, the protagonist of the previous HOBBIT, and his younger relation Frodo. In the HOBBIT, a more cheerful and escapist story, Bilbo is a fusty and settled inhabitant of the Shire, who can only be "called to adventure" by an appeal to the pride he takes in his more venturesome ancestors. Frodo, however, is more serious, in keeping with Tolkien's graver concerns throughout the trilogy. Once Gandalf has convinced Frodo of the world-spanning danger represented by the One Ring, Frodo is motivated by sober responsibility, and other characters throughout FELLOWSHIP also reflect the resolve to "do what must be done." Late in TWO TOWERS, Frodo and Samwise get into a slightly "meta" conversation about what it means to be a character in a story rather than a reader reading the same story, and Sam rejects his earlier opinion that stories about adventurous heroes came about because the heroes wanted "sport" as an anodyne to the dull round of regular life.
Tolkien's conception of the One Ring, the nexus over which Good and Evil contend, is also more sophisticated in FELLOWSHIP, though nothing in the later book precisely contradicts anything in HOBBIT. Bilbo has a grand old time turning invisible in HOBBIT, but after having the Ring for many years, he confesses in FELLOWSHIP that it's made him feel "stretched" in that his long life doesn't feel quite natural. Later Gandalf will tell Frodo that when one continues to use the Ring for the power of invisibility, the user will himself start to "fade" as he yields his actual self to the dark power created by Sauron. I speculate that this was Tolkien's way of saying that the childish desire to escape scrutiny by one's fellow man has the effect of cutting oneself off from humankind. Indeed, one of Frodo's key uses of the Ring's invisibility power occurs when he subconsciously dons the ring in front of a crowd at the Prancing Pony. Frodo's disappearance not only alerts one of Sauron's agents in that town, so that the Ringwraiths bear down upon Frodo and his friends, the careless use of dark power violates the fellow feeling that the hobbits are enjoying with the men at the inn.
Gandalf is absent from this exploit because at the time he's been imprisoned by his former superior in the magical council, the traitor Saruman. In the exchange between the two wizards, which Gandalf relates to the proto-fellowship after escaping, Gandalf makes the significant remark that "he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." Saruman is in many respects a "Sauron manque," willing to bend the rest of the world to his will out of a perverse (and reductionist) will to control all reality. Of course in Book Two Saruman's ambitions are foiled by the Ents, the embodiments of the natural world against which Saruman has transgressed. Yet the forces of Sauron himself are far more formidable, as is illustrated by Gandalf's apparent death at the hands of the Balrog.
Indeed, the novel is entirely pessimistic about the chances of any mortal to master the insuperable power of the One Ring. Gandalf and Galadriel are both sorely tempted by the Ring's power, but wisely refrain, while the human Boromir strays from the correct path by trying to steal the Ring from Frodo, even though he redeems himself afterward. This incident leads to one of Tolkien's greatest innovations; after the author has gone through hell and high water to establish the Fellowship of man, elf and dwarf to defend Frodo's quest, the author then separates Frodo and his loyal servant Sam from that company-- as they indeed remain until the main action of the plot has been finished. I should note that the strange immortal Tom Bombadil alone stands outside the dark power of the Ring, but the very essence of his power makes him impotent to control or destroy the Ring as well.
To briefly address the matter of female representation in RINGS, Tolkien hews to a traditional depiction of male agency in affairs of state, while the few female characters are more symbolic figures. Still, it's interesting that FELLOWSHIP is loosely bookended by two seemingly passive female figures. The first is Goldberry, companion to Bombadil, who is explained only as a "daughter of the river," as if she were one of the Greek river-nymphs. Goldberry does not actually do anything but provide Bombadil with a haven, and so the two of them may incarnate the familiar trope that "men hunt, women nest."
Galadriel, though, is subtler in her influence. She may not speak before all the male representatives at the Council of Elrond, but she too provides a spiritual center for the quest, and of course lends some of her power to Frodo and Sam for their later confrontation with Shelob, the incarnation of negative femininity (also a "nester" in her way). Galadriel rejects the Ring's power in FELLOWSHIP for the same reason that Gandalf does, but I find it significant that Tolkien pictures Galadriel, under the Ring's influence, becoming something like an evil goddess. Still, she refuses the temptation, and thus accepts that she will someday "go to the West" yet will retain her identity. This reinforces FELLOWSHIP's early point about how identity is lost through the ambition to control others, and TWO TOWERS continues to explore that theme in greater depth.
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