Adriano Re-reads Lord of the Rings
My life can be measured out in chapters. My introduction might be Brooklyn, interludes in Italy, causing a ruckus on the Brooklyn Bridge, and chatting up girls on AIM. These chapters wouldn’t follow the guidelines of school. I can’t see my life story described in terms of earning numerical grades and graduation from various schools. The story would be divided up into epic battles, duels, victories, and defeats. Somewhere in my life, I imagine, there would be a battle like the Battle at Helm’s Deep.
When I was younger I loved to read. I would retreat to my designated spot with a book in hand and escape into the fictional world of whatever I was reading. I loved feeling like I was a part of something epic and adventurous. If the weather was nice - and it was, the summer I’m recalling - I always read in my garden. Gardens in my Brooklyn neighborhood are square lots behind the houses that are fenced off. Though it’s not much, it’s a paradise compared to what the rest of New York has to offer. However, my garden is unique, it's bigger than average and rectangular, because it stretches across two lots.
In the far left corner of this special rectangle in Brooklyn was my reading hideout. In this corner my father had built two stone benches along the fence so that they met at the corner. They were purposefully set apart from the rest of the garden, intentionally created to provide a breather from the rest of chaotic New York. There are two paths that lead through various trees and shrubbery before delivering their travelers to the peaceful alcove, enhancing the feeling that you might as well be tucked away in a distant wooded area.
I read countless books in my little corner domain. I have never considered myself solitary, but I liked the peace and seclusion and the feeling that this space belonged to me, that it was my haven. In my nook I liked to curl up against the wall with a book laid out atop my crossed legs. One arm rested languidly on the corner of the page, another propped up my chin as my head bent down to read. The position was not always comfortable, but I usually became so engrossed in my book that I felt it wouldn’t be worth breaking the spell of the story for my own selfish reasons. The words on the page stopped looking like words after only a few moments, and the book became a gateway for the exploration of my imagination.
I read most of The Lord of the Rings perched atop those cold stone benches during the summer of 5th grade and into 6th. I remember the extraordinary light that would fall onto the pages of what ever I was reading, the illuminating sunlight broken often by the swaying patterns of the leaves that sheltered me. Occasionally an ant or spider would make its way onto the pages of my book. My memories now of my garden are vivid, but my memories of the book are even sharper. I was never really in Brooklyn, instead, those books took me to a level of new immersion in reading. My mental excursions and three-dimensional fantasies would only be disturbed by calls from the kitchen alerting me that lunch or a snack was ready. Even then I was barely interrupted, often retrieving my sustenance and then retreating back into the fictional realm of whatever I was reading. It was like being in a coma. My meals were my life support and no one ever really knew where my mind might be.
The Lord of the Rings was unlike any book I had ever read. I was 11 years old, and I had frequented "Books of Wonder" (a children’s bookstore specializing in fantasy) since I was a toddler, but The Lord of the Rings set a new standard for fiction. These books weren’t fantasy, they were legend. The book took me in; it did not pretend to be anything less than a masterpiece. I couldn’t stop thinking about it even when I wasn’t reading it. Every aspect of the book seemed uniquely important: to me, the detailed histories of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth were the greatest works of fantasy literature ever written and still are today.
The adventures of Tolkien’s archetypes resonated with me, in a way that I couldn’t and didn’t try to understand at the time. I held the books on a higher pedestal than most of my other materialistic possessions, often collecting and expanding my collections of Rings related literature. Eventually, I stopped to care about them with such fervor, the sanctity preserved in my mind, but my actions ebbing away from active worship. I found new ways to escape, ones that usually involved being far away from my house. The garden became my cat’s domain, and he was the one whose mind and lithe body prowled like a Ranger.
Naturally, the Lord of the Rings books seemed like the obvious choice for a rereading. They were captivating and awe-inspiring and I couldn’t wait to return to them. For the first time, I read the prologue and introduction in the front of the book. Before they felt like extraneous appendages. I always wanted to jump straight to the story, and didn’t much care for what the publisher or author had to say externally. However, the sheer depth of Tolkien’s mythos is apparent by reading his prologue. The prologue reveals how affectionately Tolkien regarded the hobbits. Though he created an entirely new languages, histories and myths for the numerous species that populated his Middle-Earth, he begins his story with hobbits. A strange affection for the hobbits surged in my heart when I began to reread. The feeling is old, and inspires a brief nostalgia. I remember the garden, my worn nerdy tennis shoes with white socks, the LOTR posters I bought for my room. However, after a few chapters and a few returns to happy memories of reading, I dropped the book and went to play Grand Theft Auto: IV.
I have watched the Lord of the Rings movies countless times since I read the books, and numerous viewings of the movies have caused me to lose track of some of the details. For Tolkien, all that matters is detail. Impressions, anecdotes, and details are resurfacing in my mind as I read. The story is incredibly layered, and eventually I begin to lose myself in it. The book isn’t succeeding at holding my attention, however. Every time I pick up the book to read, I find my attention wandering. I get a text message. I go to get a snack, and instead of rushing back to the book I stay by the fridge. The story feels farther away, and I am failing to become engrossed.
The sensation is not a good one. These books defined me and my interests for a large part of my youth. The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t stirring me. I wonder what’s changed. Having provoked that question, I think of the millions of things that have changed since I entered 6th grade and entered Middle Earth. This is nothing new, but I’m strangely surprised that The Lord of the Rings has changed, too.
To compensate for this unsettling reaction to the books, I skip to the end of the first book. I never enjoyed Fellowship as much as the other books, and during my first rereadings of the books I often skipped around to access my favorite parts. I try The Two Towers. It starts out differently than Fellowship did. Instead of nostalgia for the scenic life of the hobbits, I am immediately in the aftermath of the a dramatic battle.
There is this strange way that memory creeps up on you. You suddenly realize that you are reliving your past, and that you have been for some time. I found myself gripping the rough edges of the pages again after I got a few chapters into Two Towers. The faraway nostalgia and boredom of Fellowship is gone. This is the meat of Tolkien, and always has been, for me.
It took me a while to become readjusted to the language. When trying to read the first book, it had kept me at a distance. It was great writing, but it was too fantastic. The Two Towers has swept me up and I notice after a half hour of reading that I again feel fluent in the words of Tolkien. It takes me longer to put the book down this time. When I do, I turn back to the front of the book and look at the Table of Contents. There I see two familiar words: Helm’s Deep. It’s a phrase that I’ve memorized, recited, repeated in my head again and again. When I reach it in my rereading, the battle is as grand as I remembered it.
Since I read the books, I’ve been through more battles. They were not the sort of battles that Tolkien prepared me for. When I read the books, I imagined that my most glorious moments in life would come on a battlefield like the one's found in The Lord of the Rings, vaquishing what ever evil was in my way with the epic fashion of Tolkien. This attitude has manifested itself in my life. Reading these books, I saw my desire to always be in action, never hesitate, and perhaps saw its origins.
Wading through The Two Towers took me longer than I expected it to. When I set out to re-read, I thought I would be able to conquer the entire series in the time allotted for the assignment. I was surprised by my inability to get past the first book. I found new inspiration in the second book, but didn’t reach the third. Rereading the book reminded me of my childhood wonder for grand battles and epic language, and this reading revealed new things to me.
Tolkien meant for Helm’s Deep to resonate with the reader, I could tell, but my eyes noticed something new. When I reached the end of the book, I found a chapter I didn’t remember so well called “The Choices of Master Samwise.” A secondary character gains the spotlight and suddenly has the fate of the world thrust upon him.
There was never any importance in this chapter before. No swords, no masses of villains, just one chubby character in a dark cave, alone and scared. Yet the chapter throws me off balance when I read it again. The character is at a crossroads, one he is unprepared for. Tolkien chose to end his book with this story, not the sweeping story of Helm’s Deep. Even in The Two Towers, there is great value placed on individuals’ choices. When The Two Towers ends, the character is not sure where he is going, but he has to go there anyway. I have fought battles, slain metaphorical Uruk-hai, but I have never been quite so unprepared for what lies ahead of me as I am now. I’ve changed since reading The Lord of the Rings the first time around, and I was shocked to find that the books had changed to. After finishing the Two Towers, however, I found that that books changes fit mine. I have past my epic battles, and more lie ahead of me. But at this point in my life, I am faced with choices. I have never considered myself solitary. But like Sam, I’m forced to be alone. I’m not sure where I’m going, but I’m going there anyway
My life can be measured out in chapters. My introduction might be Brooklyn, interludes in Italy, causing a ruckus on the Brooklyn Bridge, and chatting up girls on AIM. These chapters wouldn’t follow the guidelines of school. I can’t see my life story described in terms of earning numerical grades and graduation from various schools. The story would be divided up into epic battles, duels, victories, and defeats. Somewhere in my life, I imagine, there would be a battle like the Battle at Helm’s Deep.
When I was younger I loved to read. I would retreat to my designated spot with a book in hand and escape into the fictional world of whatever I was reading. I loved feeling like I was a part of something epic and adventurous. If the weather was nice - and it was, the summer I’m recalling - I always read in my garden. Gardens in my Brooklyn neighborhood are square lots behind the houses that are fenced off. Though it’s not much, it’s a paradise compared to what the rest of New York has to offer. However, my garden is unique, it's bigger than average and rectangular, because it stretches across two lots.
In the far left corner of this special rectangle in Brooklyn was my reading hideout. In this corner my father had built two stone benches along the fence so that they met at the corner. They were purposefully set apart from the rest of the garden, intentionally created to provide a breather from the rest of chaotic New York. There are two paths that lead through various trees and shrubbery before delivering their travelers to the peaceful alcove, enhancing the feeling that you might as well be tucked away in a distant wooded area.
I read countless books in my little corner domain. I have never considered myself solitary, but I liked the peace and seclusion and the feeling that this space belonged to me, that it was my haven. In my nook I liked to curl up against the wall with a book laid out atop my crossed legs. One arm rested languidly on the corner of the page, another propped up my chin as my head bent down to read. The position was not always comfortable, but I usually became so engrossed in my book that I felt it wouldn’t be worth breaking the spell of the story for my own selfish reasons. The words on the page stopped looking like words after only a few moments, and the book became a gateway for the exploration of my imagination.
I read most of The Lord of the Rings perched atop those cold stone benches during the summer of 5th grade and into 6th. I remember the extraordinary light that would fall onto the pages of what ever I was reading, the illuminating sunlight broken often by the swaying patterns of the leaves that sheltered me. Occasionally an ant or spider would make its way onto the pages of my book. My memories now of my garden are vivid, but my memories of the book are even sharper. I was never really in Brooklyn, instead, those books took me to a level of new immersion in reading. My mental excursions and three-dimensional fantasies would only be disturbed by calls from the kitchen alerting me that lunch or a snack was ready. Even then I was barely interrupted, often retrieving my sustenance and then retreating back into the fictional realm of whatever I was reading. It was like being in a coma. My meals were my life support and no one ever really knew where my mind might be.
The Lord of the Rings was unlike any book I had ever read. I was 11 years old, and I had frequented "Books of Wonder" (a children’s bookstore specializing in fantasy) since I was a toddler, but The Lord of the Rings set a new standard for fiction. These books weren’t fantasy, they were legend. The book took me in; it did not pretend to be anything less than a masterpiece. I couldn’t stop thinking about it even when I wasn’t reading it. Every aspect of the book seemed uniquely important: to me, the detailed histories of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth were the greatest works of fantasy literature ever written and still are today.
The adventures of Tolkien’s archetypes resonated with me, in a way that I couldn’t and didn’t try to understand at the time. I held the books on a higher pedestal than most of my other materialistic possessions, often collecting and expanding my collections of Rings related literature. Eventually, I stopped to care about them with such fervor, the sanctity preserved in my mind, but my actions ebbing away from active worship. I found new ways to escape, ones that usually involved being far away from my house. The garden became my cat’s domain, and he was the one whose mind and lithe body prowled like a Ranger.
Naturally, the Lord of the Rings books seemed like the obvious choice for a rereading. They were captivating and awe-inspiring and I couldn’t wait to return to them. For the first time, I read the prologue and introduction in the front of the book. Before they felt like extraneous appendages. I always wanted to jump straight to the story, and didn’t much care for what the publisher or author had to say externally. However, the sheer depth of Tolkien’s mythos is apparent by reading his prologue. The prologue reveals how affectionately Tolkien regarded the hobbits. Though he created an entirely new languages, histories and myths for the numerous species that populated his Middle-Earth, he begins his story with hobbits. A strange affection for the hobbits surged in my heart when I began to reread. The feeling is old, and inspires a brief nostalgia. I remember the garden, my worn nerdy tennis shoes with white socks, the LOTR posters I bought for my room. However, after a few chapters and a few returns to happy memories of reading, I dropped the book and went to play Grand Theft Auto: IV.
I have watched the Lord of the Rings movies countless times since I read the books, and numerous viewings of the movies have caused me to lose track of some of the details. For Tolkien, all that matters is detail. Impressions, anecdotes, and details are resurfacing in my mind as I read. The story is incredibly layered, and eventually I begin to lose myself in it. The book isn’t succeeding at holding my attention, however. Every time I pick up the book to read, I find my attention wandering. I get a text message. I go to get a snack, and instead of rushing back to the book I stay by the fridge. The story feels farther away, and I am failing to become engrossed.
The sensation is not a good one. These books defined me and my interests for a large part of my youth. The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t stirring me. I wonder what’s changed. Having provoked that question, I think of the millions of things that have changed since I entered 6th grade and entered Middle Earth. This is nothing new, but I’m strangely surprised that The Lord of the Rings has changed, too.
To compensate for this unsettling reaction to the books, I skip to the end of the first book. I never enjoyed Fellowship as much as the other books, and during my first rereadings of the books I often skipped around to access my favorite parts. I try The Two Towers. It starts out differently than Fellowship did. Instead of nostalgia for the scenic life of the hobbits, I am immediately in the aftermath of the a dramatic battle.
There is this strange way that memory creeps up on you. You suddenly realize that you are reliving your past, and that you have been for some time. I found myself gripping the rough edges of the pages again after I got a few chapters into Two Towers. The faraway nostalgia and boredom of Fellowship is gone. This is the meat of Tolkien, and always has been, for me.
It took me a while to become readjusted to the language. When trying to read the first book, it had kept me at a distance. It was great writing, but it was too fantastic. The Two Towers has swept me up and I notice after a half hour of reading that I again feel fluent in the words of Tolkien. It takes me longer to put the book down this time. When I do, I turn back to the front of the book and look at the Table of Contents. There I see two familiar words: Helm’s Deep. It’s a phrase that I’ve memorized, recited, repeated in my head again and again. When I reach it in my rereading, the battle is as grand as I remembered it.
Since I read the books, I’ve been through more battles. They were not the sort of battles that Tolkien prepared me for. When I read the books, I imagined that my most glorious moments in life would come on a battlefield like the one's found in The Lord of the Rings, vaquishing what ever evil was in my way with the epic fashion of Tolkien. This attitude has manifested itself in my life. Reading these books, I saw my desire to always be in action, never hesitate, and perhaps saw its origins.
Wading through The Two Towers took me longer than I expected it to. When I set out to re-read, I thought I would be able to conquer the entire series in the time allotted for the assignment. I was surprised by my inability to get past the first book. I found new inspiration in the second book, but didn’t reach the third. Rereading the book reminded me of my childhood wonder for grand battles and epic language, and this reading revealed new things to me.
Tolkien meant for Helm’s Deep to resonate with the reader, I could tell, but my eyes noticed something new. When I reached the end of the book, I found a chapter I didn’t remember so well called “The Choices of Master Samwise.” A secondary character gains the spotlight and suddenly has the fate of the world thrust upon him.
There was never any importance in this chapter before. No swords, no masses of villains, just one chubby character in a dark cave, alone and scared. Yet the chapter throws me off balance when I read it again. The character is at a crossroads, one he is unprepared for. Tolkien chose to end his book with this story, not the sweeping story of Helm’s Deep. Even in The Two Towers, there is great value placed on individuals’ choices. When The Two Towers ends, the character is not sure where he is going, but he has to go there anyway. I have fought battles, slain metaphorical Uruk-hai, but I have never been quite so unprepared for what lies ahead of me as I am now. I’ve changed since reading The Lord of the Rings the first time around, and I was shocked to find that the books had changed to. After finishing the Two Towers, however, I found that that books changes fit mine. I have past my epic battles, and more lie ahead of me. But at this point in my life, I am faced with choices. I have never considered myself solitary. But like Sam, I’m forced to be alone. I’m not sure where I’m going, but I’m going there anyway
