Six Cliches Tolkien Got Away With

Today’s post is part of Rachel’s Tolkien blog party mentioned in my previous post. If you’d like to learn more about that, you can use this link to check it out and enter the giveaway (which is pretty amazing!). Now, let's get started! Here are six tropes/cliches that Tolkien and very few others have gotten away with.

1. The Chosen One

Frodo is the chosen one. Gandalf tells him that he was “meant” to take on this task. He is the only one who can fulfill the quest. Bilbo was already too taken with the ring, Sam would have fallen under its spell if he didn’t have to protect Frodo, Merry and Pippin probably would have lost it, and everyone else is either so powerful the ring would have used them or so weak they would fall almost instantly. Frodo is the only one who could fulfill the quest, and Tolkien is one of the only ones who can pull it off.

2. The Powerful Artifact

The ring, the silmarils, I’d even count Andúril! Tolkien’s writing is full of magical artifacts, and he gets away with all of them. The reason is that his artifacts all have a variety to them. The silmarils started out as just shiny rocks. Then they were the only place you’d find the light of the two trees. Andúril’s power comes simply from belonging to the king of Gondor. The ring was made by the dark lord, so his searching for it isn’t the cliche “dark lord has heard of ancient magic that he wants to possess”. He is searching for what is his own. There are other powerful artifacts, and they all have their own purpose in the story.

3. Elves

Elves have become such a problem in our stories that it is very likely a publisher will turn down your novel if they find evidence of your elves being only a carbon copy of Tolkien’s elves. It takes a very talented writer to pull off elves that are anything like Tolkien’s.

4. The Homemade Language

Tolkien’s language works because one, he studied for it, and two, he enjoyed it with every fiber of his being. He didn’t just sit down and tell himself that his book wouldn’t succeed if he didn’t have his worldbuilding done to the literal word. He truly enjoyed what he did, and this is one of the main reasons so much of what he did succeed.

5. The Convenient Arrival of Special Forces

This is happening left and right throughout The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings. Sometimes it’s Gandalf, sometimes it is Aragorn, sometimes it is the eagles! Now, the eagles in The Hobbit are on the border of being too convenient, but it all still works! Tolkien’s characters plan their moves very carefully. Gandalf tells Aragorn when to expect his arrival and Aragorn takes the paths of the dead for the sole purpose of bringing back a convenient army.

6. The Invisible Dark Lord

One reason this works so well is the number of antagonists throughout the series. Yes, Sauron plans to make every race of Middle-earth his slaves, but so does Saruman. Yes, Sauron’s ring seeks to corrupt the heart, but so does Wormtongue. The dark lord, while he still is the ultimate evil, takes second place to the evils that directly challenge the main characters. Why worry about what might happen if Sauron gets the ring when we could be worrying about what is happening now that Denethor is burning his own son alive?

And there you have it; six tropes Tolkien got away with that most of us can probably only hope to pull off. Don’t forget to check out this post for links to more Tolkien-related blog posts.