Lord of the Rings

Last weekend I watched the entire trilogy of The Lord of the Rings in one day along with a couple of my friends.  These movies are based on the novels by J.R.R. Tolkein, and tell the story of Middle Earth, a fantasy world that contains creatures such as wizards, dragons, orcs, talking trees, hobbits, and much more.  The films tell the story of a hobbit named Frodo and his quest to destroy the ring of power, thereby saving Middle Earth from evil.  A character named Sauron created this ring and the world can only be at peace again once it is ruined.  While Frodo attempts to complete this enormous task, numerous battles between the two opposing armies take place and the struggle between good and evil is constantly shown.

 

Qualities of the Empire are very evident throughout each of the three films.  The characters of Sauron and Sauromon are generally used to represent evil, along with the armies that each of them controls.  Even though the story takes place in a setting other than our world, and seems to have happened many years ago, we can still see concepts that apply to the Empire that we face today.  Issues such as power and oppression are frequent in the movies.   The ring represents power, and everybody who comes across it is greatly tempted and lured in by the strength of it.  Sauron never stops looking for the ring and thirsting for this power.  In addition, this power leads to oppression.  The evil characters in the story oppress numerous people in an effort to gain the ring.  Other qualities of the Empire that can be seen are violence and individualism.  Violence is frequent in these films.  There are numerous battles in each of the three movies and countless people and creatures are killed.  Individualism exists primarily on the evil side of things.  Betrayal is common and there is almost no sense of selflessness among these people.

 

Although there are many Imperial issues in The Lord of the Rings, we can also find quite a few Kingdom issues to combat these.  One of the primary qualities of the Kingdom that shows up is imagination.  It undoubtedly took an incredible imagination to create these elaborate stories, and the fact that J.R.R. Tokein was able to do so has allowed countless people to take joy and delight in them.  Another encouraging theme is hope.  Often times in the story, the good army, consisting of humans, dwarves, and elves, seem outnumbered and defeat looks inevitable.  Even in these circumstances, however, there is a sense of hope.  At one point, a young boy tells the character Aragorn that the men have said that a battle is hopeless and they cannot win.  Aragorn responds by telling the child, “There is always hope.”  Two other important Kingdom qualities are community and love.  The group of people sent to destroy the ring is referred to as the Fellowship of the Ring.  This fellowship is a great example of community.  Each person in it looks out for the others and a couple of them even sacrifice their own lives for the greater good.  This closely relates to the theme of love, as can be seen in the friendships of people like Sam and Frodo and even the romantic relationship between Arwen and Aragorn.

 

As a whole, I think that The Lord of the Rings does much more to build up the Kingdom of God than it does to support the Empire.  A few years ago I read J.R.R. Tolkein’s biography and was able to see some of his motivations for creating this trilogy.  Although violence is frequent throughout the books and films, Tolkein explains that he is really trying to symbolically portray a struggle between good and evil.  In the end, good wins out triumphantly.  Because Tolkein was a devoted Christian, many people even speculate that this trilogy was an allegory and each thing in it symbolized something Biblical.  For example, the ring could represent sin and the character Frodo is each of us.  Some people even saw Aragorn as a Christ figure since he became a king at the end of the story, or possibly even Gandalf since he died and was able to come back to life.  Nevertheless, I think that these movies embody many of the important aspects of the Kingdom.  The qualities of the Empire that we can see in them are used to portray evil more than anything else.  This evil is destroyed at the end of the story when Frodo successfully destroys the ring and redemption is brought to Middle Earth.