The world-famous prelude to the epic trilogy The Lord of the Rings is a classic. Today it is also highly familiar within the 'non-readers' world' thanks to films. The anticipated three-part movie collection as a whole captures the story of "one of the greatest fantasy sagas of all time" (The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ballantine Books back cover).

Having seen the motion pictures and therefore having a clear idea of the setting and the whole visual side of the story already in my head, I decided to inspect the world of the Hobbit from the point of view of fantasy.

The task was to be easier than I had expected. On the very first page of my copy, I found a short piece of text explaining "what is a Hobbit?" I quickly formed an image of the Hobbits' inner personality. Now this is one of the great perks of books compared to movies: crafting the reader an understanding of the characters' typical traits. In a movie, the narrator would simply read out this piece of text because there would be no other sufficient way of doing it, but in the novel, it didn't really stand out in any peculiar way.

Turning the page once more I encountered a few maps of the world in which I would soon be submerged. The incorporation of maps like these is very common in the genre of fantasy. Through the read I could easily look back at the map to view the distances et cetera. Try that in a movie.

To accompany the brief but comprehensive description of Hobbits at the beginning, the pages were filled with colorful paintings by words of all sorts of creatures. I began marking them with Post-It notes. It soon turned out that there were very many pages like this, so I ended up running out of Post-It notes. They told me in exquisite detail about everything from the dwarves to rare mentionings of wizards, the life and ways of elves. Ugly goblins, dumb giants and ferocious wolves. Something to give me an idea of the Orcs, threatening spiders and the mystery of transfiguration. Not to mention the tremendous Smaug, who in fact was well described indirectly as well as directly. For one, Bilbo's clever play with words with "Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities"  (The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ballantine Books p.222) proved this. No living creature mentioned was left without a line or two. Very much like fantasy yes, and indeed a trait of its world.

Physically the land in all its shapes was just like we know it, only it was flavoured with a tad of thrill here and a pinch of enchantment there. Not a surprise considering the story being a representative of the genre that it is. Yet, in all its ordinarity, the world seemed quite unique and far away. Like it were set in a land far, far away like most fantasy novels.

Like so many other great stories of fantasy, the world lacks technology. The ways of war, for example, reflects a lot from history -with its own twist, of cource. Medieval Times come to mind in picturing the swords and armor. Needless to say, fantasy is clearly visible once again.

"And so this (The Hobbit) is the absolutely necessary beginning to the great story of the War of the Rings", and its world, "which J.R.R. Tolkien completes in -- The Lord of the Rings."


-Anna