The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings were highly successful – so successful they inspired their own genre, and a horde of imitators. The misspelled word Dwarves is now common in books. Elvish arches are now legendary.
Why were they so successful?
Let’s start with the Hobbit. i read that in a kid’s magazine, in first grade. They’d taken the riddle game chapter and put that in Highlights or something – I don’t remember what. It was a kid’s magazine.
I was captivated. A monster and a overweight little man doing nothing more than telling riddles – and a single line in it that hints at an outside world, and cultural practices where experts debate years later whether Bilbo violated the rules of the game or not.
I had to read the rest of the book.
Because I identified with Bilbo.
Why?
I don’t know!
I wasn’t overweight – as a matter of fact, it took me over 35 years to get my weight to a point where I could be classed as overweight. I was short, but not excessively so – just a couple of inches below average height.
There was just something about it, where Bilbo was every man. All these adventures came his way, from Gandalf. And Bilbo was caught up in it, and it’s the kind of thing everyone wants – some mysterious stranger to come along and choose you for something, tell you you’re special, and after some crazy adventures you don’t want to be in the middle of, you end up respected and wealthy at the end.
If someone came to my house and handed me a sword, and told me in grave tones that nine men needing a champion were to show up on my doorstep, it would be like my every day dream come true. I’d finally be the real me nobody else gets to see.
When I got Fellowship, I identified with Frodo. And you know what? You did too.
Frodo had a quest appointed to him. He didn’t want it, would have given anything to get out of it – but he set his face to do his duty. he had moments where he tried to abdicate, but eventually he always came back to – this is my duty. I cannot leave it.
We all identify with that.
I identified with every last member of the company except Boromir. And the sad part was, by my thirties, I identified completely with Boromir – the one who wanted greatness, the loyal one – who saw the appointed King and bowed to him. Yes, Boromir came under the spell of the ring – but every last member of the company was beginning to be affected by it as well. We all like to think we wouldn’t have, but the ring was behind a lot of the strife between Legolas and Gimli, Boromir and Gandalf, and Aragorn beginning to speak of his destiny. Yes, he was Isildur’s heir – but there was a transformation between the Strider of Bree and the Aragorn that used the Palantir, an arrogance. That was brought on by the ring, even though the company had broken up by that time.
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And that’s the key. You identify at some point or another with every last character in the company. What happened to them happened to you.
That’s why it’s one of the most successful fiction series of all time. And readers are looking for books like it.
