Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Corrupting Influence of Power
Sauron bound up much of his power in the One Ring when
he forged it ages ago, and whoever wields the Ring has access to
some of that power. The full extent and nature of the Ring’s power
never becomes entirely clear to us, but we get the sense that the
Ring symbolizes a power almost without limits, and which is utterly
corrupting. It is immensely difficult for many of the characters
to resist the temptation to take the Ring for themselves and use
it for their own ends. Regardless of the wearer’s initial intentions,
good or evil, the Ring’s power always turns the wearer to evil.
Indeed, even keeping the Ring is dangerous. The Fellowship
of the Ring is strewn with examples of those who are corrupted
by the Ring. The power of the Ring transformed the Black Riders,
once human kings, into fearsome, undead Ringwraiths. Gollum, once
a young boy named Sméagol, killed his friend Déagol for the Ring
and then gradually became a wretched, crouching, froglike creature
who thinks only of his desire to retrieve the Ring for himself.
During the travels of the Fellowship, Boromir grows increasingly
corrupted by the proximity of the Ring, wanting to use its power
to destroy Sauron rather than destroy the Ring itself, as Elrond
and Gandalf have advised; ultimately, the Ring leads Boromir to
desire it for himself. For many, the great power offered by the
Ring overrides all rational thought. The power of the Ring is by
no means the only temptation in Middle-earth—the Dwarves of Moria,
for example, coveted mithril too much, and they
dug so deep that they awakened the Balrog beneath them—but the Ring
is the greatest temptation and therefore the greatest threat.
The Inevitability of Decline
The Middle-earth of The Lord of the Rings is
a world on the cusp of a transformation. After the events the novel
describes, the age of the Elves will pass and the age of Men will
dawn. A large portion of the story eulogizes this passing age of
the Elves. The Elves and their realms have a beauty and grace unmatched
by anything else in Middle-earth. Though the Elves themselves are
immortal, as Galadriel tells us, the destruction of Sauron’s One
Ring will weaken the Three Elven Rings, forcing the Elves to leave
Middle-earth and fade away. Throughout the novel, Tolkien gives
us the sense that the adventures of the Ring represent the last
burst of a sort of magic that will not be found in the world that
comes afterward. This later world will be a world without Sauron,
but also a world without Lothlórien. Even in chapters about the
Hobbits and the lowly Shire, we sense that we are witnessing something
good and pure that is, for whatever reason, no longer present in
this world. The Hobbits, the narrator tells us, have become somewhat
estranged from Men in the times since The Lord of the Rings took
place, and now avoid us “with dismay.”
The Power of Myth
The sense of transience and lost grandeur that pervades The
Lord of the Rings goes, in part, with the territory in
which Tolkien is wading. He writes the novel in a mythic mode, and
one of the conventions of myth is that it describes a past that
is more glorious than the present. This sense of loss certainly
is present in the Greek myths, for example, or in Homer’s epic poems
that draw on these myths—both of which describe a world in which
men and gods mix freely, a world that is no more. Tolkien’s own
work is something between mythology and fiction, locating itself
in a middle ground between a past that is remembered only in song
and the everyday present of the reader. This sense of ancientness
is constantly present, brought to life in chants, poems, and graven
inscriptions. As Tolkien shows again and again—whether with the
Elves or with the Númenóreans or the Dwarves—the stories that the
characters tell define them. In some cases, as with Aragorn for
example, this mythology explains not only where a character comes
from, but also where he or she is going. The characters carry their
past and their lore around with them, and they are virtually unable
to speak without referring to this lore. The twist Tolkien adds
is that these “myths,” while retaining all of the usual metaphorical
resonance and symbolic simplicity, also happen to be true—at least
in his world. This sense of reality within the novel, in turn, lends
power to even the most everyday occurrences in Middle-earth.
