The Lord of the Rings paved the way for the fantasy genre to become what it has. There are both children’s fantasy and adult fantasy stories and novels. The children’s fantasies, in my research experience, tell a straight, innocent story that leaves much to the imagination, whereas adult fantasy fills in more story holes, and the love affairs become more “steamy” than those in children’s stories. I think that violence is not a problem, because kids are just as capable of imagining a battle scene full of lots of blood, guts and death as adults. (Depends on the kid and the story, of course.)
What age is appropriate to The Lord of the Rings? “Children’s literature” is a deceptive title given to the category of literature for children aged 0-12. “Young adult” or “Teen” is the category range roughly for about 11-18. After that, adult. In all forms of literature, there are watered down versions of the stories or histories for young children.
I was once in line at Barnes & Noble, surrounded by moms, grandmothers, a couple of dads, and kids aged probably 7-12, waiting to get tickets to see a live presentation of Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events, at a book fair. The mom in front of me told me of her 10 year old who read the Series because it was one of the popular books at school. The mom commented that she felt that the unfortunate events were inappropriate for children much younger than her daughter. I mention Snicket’s books here because their tone, their feeling of a grim future with no light at the end of the tunnel full of despair, mimics Frodo’s’ story in The Lord of the Rings.
I am more inclined to categorize The Lord of the Rings as appropriate for “young adults”. Young children need to feel, during their first stages of their identity formation, that no matter how ugly things may get, there is still a happy ending to look forward to. As they enter their teenage years, and their growth and development, Frodo’s despair parallels teenage angsty attitudes. C.S. Lewis would disagree with me. According to him, the appropriateness of a story extends from the author’s intent: “Where the children’s story is simply the right form for what the author has to say, then of course readers who want to hear that, will read the story, or re-read it, at any age” (Lewis 24). I have always believed that there is a certain time to read certain books. Several of my friends in high school read The Lord of the Rings, but I could not make it past the first chapter, despite several attempts, until I began the research for this paper. The time was right for me. Though I would not encourage anyone under the age of 15 to read LOTR, I would not discourage them if they felt called upon to read it.
Conclusion: Fairytales as the Modern Myth
“Once upon a time,” the stories begin, “when something was nostalgically better than it is now, there lived a beautiful/handsome somebody in the kingdom of so-and-so.” This set-up has been commonly associated with fairytales, setting them up to be stories of another time and another place that we still love to read and experience. This gives them the illusion of having existed before our great-great-grandparents, if not older, even if they were written yesterday. Children are bombarded with fairytales: in books, in movies (often animated), children’s theater, just to name a few, until all of the forms of mass-communication and children’s senses are exhausted. Through these stories, little girls can dream of being princesses and boys can dream of being knights in shining armor. Children learn to imagine and to dream. But somewhere along the way, the imagination is shut off by the need to grow up and be responsible.
Tolkien wrote his trilogy all the while thinking of fairytale and considered the story to be fairytale, though it is far longer than any fairytale I have ever read/heard/seen/imagined. At the same time, the impact of The Lord of the Rings is more akin to that of myth than it is to fairytales. Let us consider the modern role of both.
A long, long time ago, to borrow from another opening to fairytales, men and women equated the spiritual mystery with everyday life. They deified and worshipped the land, the sky, the water, their food, and created a sacred ritual of thanks for every task. Those groups have since fallen into the tomes of “primitive” mythology, a word I always put in quotes because I think its connotation leads to an unfair understanding. Within the area of the Levant (the near east) three of the great world religions developed around the same time: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. All three worship a single (common) deity. Judaism passes its religion through the bloodline, though in modern times converting has become easier. There are still sects that still include the sacred mystery in everyday life, some have “modernized” and only celebrate the bigger rituals.
Islam is quite a mystery to me, despite all of Campbell’s teachings. I would like to comment, however, on an interesting attribute of the religion that I believe is missing from Christianity, and which became apparent to me in light of the recent controversy surrounding cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. These pictures depicted several religious symbolic personages, with Mohammed depicted as a troublemaker wearing a bomb-shaped turban. The Islam community responded in vicious riots. The arguments out of the West were 1) of free speech and 2) if we can make fun of our prophet, why can’t they? The Islamic argument was also two-fold: 1) that it adds to the victimization the community already feels and 2) that they have rules within their religion governing depictions of Mohammed and that any depiction other than those sanctioned is sinful. The last argument is the one I would like to consider. In Christianity, the images of Christ cover almost everything: domes, sculptures, paintings, crucifixes, little figures for an alter, little bobble heads for the car, t-shirts, bumper stickers. Jesus is a greater marketing tool than the summer blockbuster. Christianity needs these images because the doctrine unstable enough to need to gain and maintain followers with show. The instability is especially apparent with all the schisms, break-aways, and sub-break-aways. No one can seem to agree what the Bible says. Even Christ’s disciples could not agree; for instance, the disputes between two of his followers, Peter and Paul.