6 Things everybody gets wrong about The Lord of the Rings
From Balrog wings to elven ears, the most common mistakes of Middle Earth
Widely recognized as one of the richest and most influential works in modern literature, the compendiums called The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion have become a major influence to pop culture ever since the 50’s. With the astonishing Peter Jackson adaptations of LotR — and the not so impressive adaptations of The Hobbit — these classic books have flooded popular conscience, winning over new readers and fans year after year. But this also created a great flood of bulshit.
There are dozens of misconceptions regarding J. R. R. Tolkien’s universe that have spread like wildfire through many fans. Maybe the problem is that most people only read or watch part of the work (only watching the movies and reading one or two books) and maybe these wrong notions were spread by other sources, like books and documentaries that comment on tolkien’s universe. And, of course, It is possible that the sheer number of pages of Tolkien’s endless descriptions have lead people to be lazy about checking and re-checking information.
So, to clean up the mess, I made a list with the 6 most common LotR misconceptions. Consider yourself lucky if you didn’t ever fall for one of these:
1: All Maiar are equivalent in power
This misconception usually comes in two forms. Either wll someone say “Sauron and Gandalf are equivalent”, or “The Balrog and Gandalf have the same power. These affirmations are often result of the common knowledge that these three beings (Gandalf, Sauron and the Balrog of Moria) are all of the caste of the Maiar. I Once saw a guy post that Sauron’s appearance is likely to be close to Gandalf’s, because he is also a Maia.
We only need to stop and think about this for a second to realize it’s terribly wrong. There are many maiar in Tolkien’s legendarium. None of them are equal in power, and most are very different in appearance:
Melian is a Maia so powerful that she can protect the realm of Doriath and make it inexpugnable to the power of Morgoth, a Vala, while Gandalf the Grey is fearfull of Sauron — another Maia — and is reluctant to come to Middle Earth to fight him. Ungoliant is a giant spider who grows so powerful after devouring the trees of Valinor that she is able to match Morgoth himself in battle, and is driven away by the balrogs, which are all Maiar. The Balrog of Moria is a lot more powerful than Gandalf the Grey, who needs to use a ring of power to defeat the monster. He is also weaker than Saruman, another Maia. And all of that changes when he returns as The White.
That being said, it is necessary to understand that the Maiar are not all made from the same mold. In fact they are of the same kind as the Valar, the god-like creatures of Tolkien’s legendarium. The Valar are simply the kings, and the Maiar, their people. They are as varied as any race, even human race.
Look around you. Do you see any other humans? Would you say they are your equivalent in power? What about Mike Tyson, would you stand against him? Probably not, and that is because you are different, even being of the same race as him. That’s what I mean.
2: Sauron doesn’t have a physical form
If you are one of the millions of people who watched the Peter Jackson films, you probably believe in this. The mith is that, after being defeated by Elendil and Isildur in the siege of Barad-dûr, Sauron has become an evil spirit unable to take a physical form, unless he gets the One Ring back. Because of this, he has become a sinister eye of fire.
The problem here is that part of this is true, but only part. Sauron is an evil spirit, and for some centuries, he could not take a form. But because a portion of his power survived in the Ring, he was eventually able to return with a body, and he did so as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, a side villain in The Hobbit (actually, that was the second time he “died”, the first being during the fall of Númenor. He came back quickly after that one because he had the One Ring in Mordor).
But Sauron is also represented as an evil eye of fire atop the tower of Barad-dur. Frodo sees him twice like this, and both times the hobbit almost faints. But it is not clear if that is one form of Sauron or if he is able to take more than one at the same time.
There are even partial descriptions of Sauron’s body in LotR. Gollum, who was tortured by him, says he has a dark hand with only four fingers (one having been cut by Isildur), and Tolkien himself stated that sauron should be imagined as being “very terrible” and with the likes of a man, but greater and taller. Also, Aragorn challenges Sauron himself to come to battle on the Black Gates, which only makes sense if the dark lord has a body. Also, when the ring is destroyed, a last faint but dark form is seen, gigantic over Mordor, stretching an arm.
There is a reason, however, for not showing him in the books. For all his long, often boring descriptions, Tolkien sometimes purposefully neglects describing some characters. This is partly because it stirrs imagination, and partly because we fear the most that which we do not know. Sauron is a terrible being, unconceivable in his evil, and has a form of terror made solid. That is all we need to know of him. He is much more frightening as a dark, powerful and mysterious presence that sees all and reaches everywhere, than as a 3 meters tall brute with a human face. And describing him would weaken the whole story, as well as the character.
3: Balrogs do/don’t have wings
The greatest discussion among Tolkien fans. The Balrog of Moria is described as having shadows around him that extend like wings, and there are some other hints to these wings in Tolkien’s work. That was enough to spark an endless debate about the winglessness of Balrogs.
And the verdict is: irrelevant.
That’s right. There is a reason this entry is number 3 in this list. It is because both items before it play a part in this mith. First, people tend to think that all Balrogs look the same because they are all evil Maiar, and second, Tolkien never described what one of them actually looks like, because the only description we ever get is very subjective.
What is stated in LotR is that the specific Balrog of Moria is a dark shade inside of which is a dark form. It can come into a room, but also fill a gigantic hall of stone. It has fire, but has no light. It has glowing red eyes, a flaming sword and a whip. That is all.
Also, the very conception of Balrogs changed A LOT for Tolkien. The first time he wrote that scene in Moria, the monster was sleek and man-sized. He wrote notes stating that only 7 Balrogs ever existed, years after writing stories in which armies of Balrogs come from the deep. Gandalf, who is also a Maia, dies fighting one, while elves fight dozens of the beasts in the first age - and kill some of them.
There is only one conclusion that would make sense of this: Balrogs are very different and take many forms. And some are weaker than others. It is very possible that the one in Moria did not have wings, but it doesn’t matter because it says nothing of the other ones. Again, Tolkien’s universe is far more complex than we tend to give it credit for.
4: Elves are blond with pointy ears
This one is classical. Elves seem to have been blonde since ever. Dungeons and Dragons elves are blond and have pointed ears, and Legolas and Galadriel are blond too. So all elves must be blond, right?
Wrong. Most elves are actually brunette, probably including Legolas. Tolkien again neglects describing him and the color of his hair, and some assume he is blond because his father is described as being of “golden” hair in The Hobbit. But Fëanor and most of the Noldor were black haired, and so was Elrond and Arwen, and even Luthien, the fairest of all elves. And many elves have dark brown hair. The Teleri, including Celeborn, have silver hair. Galadriel had silver and golden hair at the same time. You can guess this only gets messier the more you look into elven esthetics.
Also, Tolkien never described elven ears. He did describe them as slightly pointy in his notes and used the word “elvish” to describe hobbit ears, but none of this is conclusive. Pointy ears are probably true for elves, but probably not as pointy as we tend to tink.
5: Tolkien copied almost everything from norse mythology
Yes, Tolkien did have a lot of influence from norse mythology. Gandalf is an adaptation of Odin’s common disguise of an old bearded man with big hat and a staff, while Dwarves and Elves are the beings called Alfar by the old-timey vikings. Trolls are there too, as well as talking crows and eagles as birds linked to a higher god. And the runes are definitely Nordic, as are the names of the dwarves of The Hobbit.
But people tend to forget that many of the most iconic and important stuff are based on nothing but Tolkien’s mind. Hobbits are totally original, and were created as a wordplay because of an anglo-saxon word meaning “he who lives in holes”. Orcs are also brand new, and the Ents too were created from scratch, even when the word Ent derives from Ettin, whitch is old English for Jotun, the frost giant of norse mythology.
Most importantly, the central concepts of the universe are very original, even the most subtle and profund, e. g. Music as an actual power (being the very thing that makes the universe) and the concrete properties of light as being a vessel for direct influence of gods.
6: There is one true version of… well anything
The problem with Tolkien’s work is that he wrote two major books about Middle Earth and the rest are lesser known works or posthumous compilations. And the problem is that two of these compilations are The Silmarilion and the collection History of Middle Earth, which is practically all that is relevant about Middle Earth’s history.
This means that almost everything we know of Tolkien’s world comes from hundreds of different notes and annotations, piles of paper that seemed impossible to organize. On top of it, many of Tolkien’s earlier scripts contradict or completely differ from the later ones, which is normal because they were written in different stages of his creative process. Even the Silmarillion and the History have their contradictions, especially regarding the dates of events. Remember that he never organized and released these books, and thus he never gave these stories their final form.
This should make everything about middle earth very confusing, but I find that it makes it much more interesting and real. This final touch of source confusion, while unintentional, turned the tales of Middle Earth precisely into what Tolkien always wanted them to be: a complete mythology for the English language. Just as we have many contradictory versions of Thor’s tales or Perseus’ journeys, we have many descriptions of balrogs, given names that pose a challenge to etymologists and different accounts of the same stories, some more fantastic, some less.
I hope that you have reached the end of this article with a lighter heart, for all of the uncertainties, the things never described and the many complexities of Tolkien’s work are what makes me so fascinated for all of it. I hope I gave you a little push in that direction, of amazement before a wonderful universe beyond our own.
