*What Does "Lord of the Rings" Mean to You?*

Post Reply New Topic

Epic victorious inner journey. Jungian archetypes. Stages of growth/development. Supportive companion. A waking dream. A rich template, replete with meaning. Deep "energies" to identify with.

A modern myth. One of the greatest books of the 20th century.

What does it mean to you?

.

best entertainment ever. both the books and the movies. An amazing univers. a world where everything seems just a little less complicated.

One of my obsessions for 40+ years (including his other works)! A great example of an author who invented his own world and managed to enlarge and deepen it over his long adult life (and much of his son's). I think you covered most of it, except "Rorshach test"--love it or hate it, few are indifferent.

i cant believe that they made a book out of the movie.

Omg, my country really is beautiful. But now I have to convince all the kids I babysit that auks aren't going to jump out from under the bed and eat them, even though we live in NZ. Thank you, Mr Jackson.

Seriously, not my thing at all. Tried to read the books but found them very tiresome, and the films... yeah, they were pretty, and a nice story, but they were looooooooooong and I don't think I could watch them again to be honest.

a desperate borrowing of Finnish folk tales to construct an 'epic English mythology' by an English Don, who had to compete with his pub buddy, who was busy writing the 'Narnia' books (honest...

Nah...actually I like it a lot; read them several times, saw the movie (heck, I saw the Cartoon...'nuff said..., a good read. And it's better than the Silmarillon...

Watch Clerks 2 for Randal Graves opinion of LOTR, its exactly the same as mine.

Determination no matter the odds

The story or the title?

The book.

Apparently one of the reasons that some people find that it sends them to sleep/bores them to tears/they never get past the first 70 pages, is because it is such a waking dream, so replete with archetypes which conjure up the unconscious that in some it feels as if they are falling asleep. They do "drop off".

The first time that I read LOTR from start to finish, aged 20, it was "just" a wonderful read, a gripping tale, which I was obscurely surprised to find so "simple", so "adventure story" ish, because when I had first ever had a look at it, aged 14, it had seemed like a gloomy and over serious/heavy tome, which put me off totally.

But when I came back to it in my later twenties I was amazed to find how deeply it touched me, how much it seemed relevant to the "journey" I was going through at the time. And it continued to do so for several years. And I don't think that I have worn it out either!

.

One of the best books and one of the best movie series ever! Smeagol and Deagol are my favorite characters. I can't wait to see "The Hobbit' movies!

It has a lot of meaning to me, and my friends.
To me it symbolizes longing, for another kind of life, another world. It's about human qualities and spiritual qualities. It's about beauty.


Probably, the reason I feel so attatched to it is that it has a lot of recognizable elements from the scandinavian history and mythology.

Just a nice and thrilling fairy tale closely connected to the legends of our ancestors.

Nope. I just found it utterly boring.

I was bored by it and thus never finished it.

I've read it and I adore the movie. I'd say JRR Tolkien had a strange love for the imaginary, and then put it into context for all to enjoy.