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J. R. R. Tolkien´s "The Lord of The rings" - Mythology, Philosophy, Allegory
"Facharbeit" - Essay by Manuel Steiner, written ´00 p.r.i.

Introduction

There are currently many rumours going on about the movie Peter Jackson has been shooting for a while now in New Zealand: it is going to be a new, epic-style adaptation about the best-known fantasy novel there is: Tolkien´s "The Lord of the Rings". Whereas "normal" people will not likely care about the movie until it hits the cinemas in 2001, Tolkien fanatics have been preying on any slight bit of spy-gained information they could get for months.

While the project itself was greeted by rave opinions, some things caused the Tolkien fan society to frown upon them. The cast of actors, which, for example, includes stars such as Christopher Lee as Saruman and Elijah Woods as Frodo, is less a point of debate than script pieces and a character list for the casts which fans discovered. Seemingly, the director is planning on rewriting the plot of the book in order for to adopt it to modern taste, including changes of the appearance of characters, the role they play and especially their behaviour. The importance of female characters is to be stressed, while smaller roles are to be left out according to the cast script. These planned changes have ignited a heated discussion on the meaning of the book, and the way the characters were meant to be. One Internet website is even collecting a petition they will send to Peter Jackson as soon as there are enough subscriptions; demanding the movie to stay totally true to the novel. Slight differences of interpretation have to be undertaken with care, as there is the danger that the book can be easily misunderstood, as it has always been once and again since it was first published in 1954/55; with diverse misleading allegories and stubborn-minded critics underrating it. In this essay, I try to provide the information necessary for an understanding of the novel, its mythology and meaning, and I will show common allegories and interpretations and how likely they are to be true to the book´s content.

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