The Lord of the Rings

The One Ring to rule them all

Thought-paper on

J. R.R. Tolkien’s

The Lord of the Rings

By

Francis Byron P. Abao

97-06526

English 146

Inst. Emil Flores

Department of English and Comparative Literature

University of the Philippines

Diliman, Quezon City.

Submitted on

October 14, 2002.

The One Ring to rule them all

The Lord of the Rings is a three part epic fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien about the struggle to destroy the One Ring of Power. Published in 1954, the work remains as relevant today as ever, when the question of power and its consequences is concerned. In fact, the work reached the height of its influence in the antiwar protests of the 1960s, where it was a main source of inspiration for activists. Part of the reason for its enduring appeal may be that it resists any one to one correspondence of symbolism and meaning. And so, people are drawn into endless debate and speculation as to what Tolkien ‘really’ meant by his story. If Tolkien had cast his work into a form that was more easily interpreted, if he had been more dogmatic and called it ‘The Use and Misuse of