Documentary, History Channel - Clash of the Gods - S01E09 Tolkien's Monsters
#ClashoftheGods #Documentary #Monsters #TheLordoftheRings
#ClashoftheGods #Documentary #Monsters #TheLordoftheRings
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00:01It is the greatest myth of modern times.
00:05An evil ring of power.
00:08And an unlikely hero on a mission to destroy it.
00:13The Lord of the Rings is a world filled with warriors, wizards, and monsters.
00:19All created in the mind of one man.
00:23But there is more to it than imagination.
00:27The story has a series of intriguing connections to reality.
00:32From the trenches of World War I to the Bible.
00:36Now, discover the facts behind the fiction.
00:40This is the real story of the Lord of the Rings.
00:44A lone figure teeters on the edge of an abyss.
00:59Gazing into the fiery pool of lava below.
01:05Here, the long arduous journey of Frodo Baggins has come to an end.
01:14A mission to destroy an evil ring by casting it into the same fires from which it was forged.
01:24This is the quest at the heart of the Lord of the Rings.
01:37It is a classic story of good versus evil.
01:41Unfolding in a world called Middle Earth.
01:45There's something about the Lord of the Rings that is able to speak to people.
01:49And I think that that has a lot to do with its connection to mythology.
01:58Behind the Lord of the Rings, there are a number of ancient and modern influences that combine to create the most ambitious mythological journey since the Odyssey.
02:10All of them are channeled through one man.
02:15Author J. R. R. Tolkien.
02:20Tolkien famously wrote a letter saying that he wanted to create a mythology for my country.
02:26He was trying to produce a mythology that was truly English.
02:30That was centered around the North and West rather than around the Mediterranean Sea like the Greek and Roman had been.
02:36And since it didn't exist, he figured he would have to write it.
02:40To create his mythology, Tolkien drew from his own experiences in the modern world.
02:47As well as his favorite stories from the ancient world.
02:52He broke down many different mythologies and medieval traditions, then refashioned them to create his own mythos.
02:59Tolkien was really using a lot of the mythological elements from Old English and from the Old Norse material.
03:14Beowulf.
03:16King Arthur.
03:18The Viking sagas.
03:19King Arthur.
03:21All our sources behind the Lord in the Rings.
03:28The ancient connections begin with the setting of the story.
03:34In Norse mythology, the world is made up of three levels.
03:39The highest is Asgard, dwelling place of the gods.
03:43The lowest is hell, underworld of the dead.
03:51Between the two lies the world inhabited by elves, dwarves, and men.
03:59It is called Midgard, which translates as Middle-earth.
04:05Middle-earth is the Midgard that we've encountered in Old Norse, or Midanjerd in Anglo-Saxon.
04:11And it simply, in those contexts, means the earth in the middle between the sky and hell, surrounded by the ocean.
04:21In The Lord of the Rings, it is through Middle-earth that Frodo must travel to destroy the evil ring.
04:30This ring is the central focus of the story, and it too is inspired by earlier legends.
04:37The Lord of the Rings centers on 20 magical rings found in Middle-earth.
04:46Some of them offer healing.
04:49Others can extend life.
04:51But one is more powerful than all the others.
04:56It is called the One Ring.
04:58It has the ability to make the new wearer invisible when they put the ring on.
05:06A ring that can make someone invisible.
05:10It is a concept that plays a key role in The Lord of the Rings.
05:14But it didn't begin there.
05:17It can also be found in the most legendary tale of the Middle Ages.
05:22Another story of courage in a time of peril.
05:28King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
05:32In the Arthurian legend, there are magical objects.
05:35And there is actually a case of a ring of invisibility that the maiden lunatic gives to the knight of wine.
05:40It is an intriguing parallel between two myths created more than a thousand years apart.
05:49But Frodo's ring does more than make its wearers invisible.
05:54It also corrupts them.
05:58The One Ring is a creation of an evil lord who imbued it with his own destructive power.
06:06Sauron.
06:06When Sauron forged the ring, he put part of himself in it.
06:11It's intrinsically evil.
06:13If you wear it and claim it, you cannot use it for any good cause.
06:16It is going to twist everything you do for evil.
06:25The One Ring actually has a malevolent spirit, part of Sauron's spirit, living inside of it.
06:31And so this malevolent spirit works on people to change them, to manipulate them.
06:36To do evil things.
06:38And the ring acts as an addiction.
06:40The longer you have it, the more you desire it.
06:43It's like a bottomless pit.
06:45This idea of an evil ring also has a mythical precedent.
06:52In an old Norse epic called the Valsunga Saga.
06:56Many of the Norse sagas are based on family histories, and we find this very engaging combination of historical material and mythological traditions.
07:09The Saga of the Valsungs is an Icelandic saga, written sometime probably in the 1300s, based on old Germanic tradition.
07:18It treats a set of Germanic cultural heroes, based loosely on historical figures that existed in pre-medieval times, the end of the West Roman Empire.
07:31These heroes and the epic poems about them were very important in the Germanic warrior courts.
07:37When the Scandinavians settled Iceland, they took this tradition with them.
07:45There are some intriguing parallels between the Valsunga Saga and the Lord of the Rings.
07:50In one scene of the Saga, a king possesses a golden ring that gives him unimaginable wealth and riches.
07:59But the king's son wants it for himself, and the temptation drives him over the edge.
08:10He kills his father to claim the ring, then takes it and hides in a cavern.
08:16There, the evil ring transforms the prince into a hideous serpent.
08:26It's a harsh lesson in the danger of greed, one that echoes in the Lord of the Rings.
08:32This is in some ways quite similar to Gollum in the Lord of the Rings.
08:38Gollum was a hobbit originally.
08:40One day, he and his friend Deogal went fishing, and Deogal sees something glinting in the bottom of the river.
08:48He pulls it out.
08:49It's the ring.
08:50And it's so beautiful.
08:52But Gollum, whose name was Smagol at that time, wants the ring.
08:57He's so greedy about the gold that he murders his best friend.
09:01Gollum takes the ring and hides in a cavern, just like the prince in the Volsunga Saga.
09:16He transforms into this hideous, long-lived, but very pathetic creature.
09:22Gollum's entire life is spent dwelling on the fact that he possesses this ring and obsessing with it.
09:28It's completely taken over his mind.
09:31After possessing the ring for nearly 500 years, Gollum loses it.
09:44Sometime later, it ends up in the hands of an innocent hobbit named Frodo Baggins.
09:50Frodo was an interesting name because it means wise in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon.
09:55And Frodo is the one who gets stuck with the ring.
10:01Frodo's journey begins in a land of rolling hills and green fields called the Shire.
10:07Hobbits are a little people, probably four feet or shorter.
10:23They don't wear shoes because they have very thick soles on the bottom of their feet and lots of fur on the top of their feet.
10:30They're sort of homebodies.
10:31They don't ever really go in for adventures.
10:35The slow pace of life in the Shire mirrors author J.R.R. Tolkien's own childhood in the countryside of Western England.
10:43In some ways, Tolkien must have put himself into The Hobbit.
10:49Many of his ideals are embodied in The Hobbits.
10:51It's sort of embracing the rural ideal, embracing the simple pastoral life,
10:56common good old-fashioned virtues in the face of grandeur and pretension.
11:01A Hobbit is the last creature one might expect to save the world from evil.
11:13But Frodo Baggins is different.
11:17Frodo is not a typical Hobbit because he's learned.
11:20He's interested in elves and dwarves and outsiders, and he knows a little bit about the world.
11:25And he cares about the outside world enough to sacrifice everything he actually loves.
11:30If you go back to these original myths, you're looking at the heroes themselves, the warriors, if you will.
11:39Tolkien then takes this story, and he tells it from the point of view of a not likely hero, the reluctant warrior.
11:45And that, I think, is rather unique.
11:50Frodo inherits the One Ring from his uncle, Bilbo, who found it in Gollum's cave.
11:56When he discovers the Ring's destructive power, he sets out to destroy it.
12:05But he soon finds himself being drawn in by its evil.
12:10At the beginning of the book, he already starts feeling the temptation,
12:13maybe putting the Ring on and escaping, leaving his friends behind.
12:17He passes the test at that stage, but later on the temptation becomes worse and worse.
12:21Frodo's quest to destroy evil is the heart of the Lord of the Rings.
12:32But the myth of Middle-earth doesn't begin there.
12:36This is only its final chapter.
12:38In 1977, more than 20 years after the Lord of the Rings was first published,
12:51its forgotten blueprint emerged,
12:54revealing for the first time how the most ambitious myth of the modern era really begins.
13:02It's a creation story with intriguing ties to the Christian Bible.
13:07The Lord of the Rings is a modern myth
13:20with direct connections to history's most legendary tales.
13:29J.R.R. Tolkien's mythological world is so detailed,
13:34he even created a word to describe it.
13:37Mythopoeia.
13:39By this he meant a whole mythic place that was a whole world,
13:44very populated with a whole geography and a whole ability to map it.
13:49If you wanted an example in the modern period,
13:51you would look at the world created it with Star Wars, for example.
13:55Tolkien's mythopoeia even had a creation story to explain how Middle-earth came into existence before the Lord of the Rings.
14:06But it wasn't published until after his death, in a book called The Silmarillion.
14:14All the ancient backstory to the Lord of the Rings, all the things that had happened thousands of years before,
14:28were more than two feet thick, huge pile of papers, poems written in Elvish and English and histories,
14:36and the publishers were like, we have no idea what to do with this.
14:39Tolkien drew from many sources as he set out to create his own mythical world.
14:47But there was one that influenced it above all others.
14:50Tolkien was an extremely devout Roman Catholic for reasons of personal faith and also for family history.
15:01His mother converted to Catholicism, and when she did, her family sort of disowned her.
15:08She raised her two children Catholic, and then she died of diabetes when Tolkien was very young.
15:15He was adopted by a Roman Catholic priest who took care of him and his brother.
15:20So the whole work is informed by Catholic thought.
15:23And that shows through in his stories in some interesting ways,
15:26especially in creation stories and the role that the creator plays there.
15:32In Tolkien's story, there is one supreme god called Iluvatar.
15:38He creates angelic beings called the Anyur,
15:43who sing songs so beautiful that the world springs forth from them.
15:48The world is created in a kind of giant symphony or music of the Anyur, as it's called.
15:54And in singing their song before the throne of God,
15:58they map out the whole history of the world that's to come,
16:01which God then makes real.
16:04This is the beginning of Middle-earth,
16:09the future setting of the Lord of the Rings.
16:17By 1928, Tolkien had quietly sketched out the framework of his mythology.
16:22He didn't expect it to be seen beyond his close circle of friends.
16:28But then a spark of inspiration hit that would transform him from a 36-year-old college professor
16:36into the modern master of myth.
16:38From this one sentence, a whole new world would open up.
16:53And he had no idea what it meant and started to develop the story from that.
16:57There may not be any very clear linguistic precedence for the word hobbit.
17:06Nevertheless, if you think about it, it sounds quite like the word habit,
17:10or in the earlier Latin habitus, a creature of habit,
17:15a creature that's set in its ways, living a very ordinary existence.
17:18Wordplay was nothing new for Tolkien.
17:24He began inventing his own phrases as a child.
17:29They became the foundation for the many languages spoken in the Lord of the Rings,
17:35especially the language of the elves.
17:39The elves are not to be confused with hobbits.
17:41They are a race of near-perfect immortal beings
17:46who represent a vision of what humans would be like
17:49had they not been tainted by the original sin of Adam and Eve.
17:56The elves speak in several distinct dialects
17:59and have the most fully developed of Middle-earth's languages.
18:05Some parts of the elvish language are based on a real one,
18:09Finnish.
18:11Tolkien learned it while studying the national myth of Finland
18:16called the Kalevala.
18:19The Kalevala is the epic of the Finnish people.
18:24It includes dwarves and elves,
18:26and so in that way it has characters that resonate
18:29and perhaps inspired some of Tolkien's later writings.
18:34Languages of other creatures also, though,
18:36play an important role in the story.
18:38Even the language of the black speech spoken by Sauron
18:42gives you a sense of his ethos,
18:44of the nature of his being.
18:46So the languages of each of these different races
18:48tells you something about their nature.
18:50In the Lord of the Rings, another language belongs to the dwarves,
18:57a short, stout group of characters who live underground.
19:03Their alphabet is inspired by Norse inscriptions
19:06that can still be found in Scandinavia
19:09on ancient memorials called rune stones.
19:16Runes were often used to mark objects of great significance.
19:20For example, swords that would be passed down as heirlooms,
19:24sometimes burial sites.
19:26Sometimes we have in runic writing
19:30short riddles that provide an extra problem for their interpreters.
19:35First you have to read the runic alphabet,
19:36then you have to figure out what the riddle means.
19:43Tolkien added a runic riddle to his first published novel,
19:47the epic precursor to The Lord of the Rings,
19:50The Hobbit.
19:52It centers on Bilbo Baggins,
19:56Frodo's uncle,
19:57a hobbit in search of stolen treasure.
20:02The clue to finding it is on an ancient map.
20:08It is a hidden runic text
20:09that can only be seen in moonlight.
20:15Tolkien actually wanted to make the runes
20:17be representative of a real language.
20:20It was an idea of secret writing,
20:22of magic writing,
20:23but also it was connected with his invented languages.
20:28The magic writing on the map
20:30leads Bilbo to the lair of Smaug,
20:33the most dreaded dragon in Middle-earth.
20:39This is the monster who holds the treasure.
20:43Smaug is the last of the great golden dragons.
20:46And he gathered up all the wealth
20:48from the dwarfish kingdom
20:50and piled it up into a huge mound.
20:53Dragons represent human greed,
20:56but really amplified,
20:59because this is this monstrous creature
21:01whose only interest is in gathering gold
21:04and keeping it.
21:07Bilbo bravely enters the dragon's lair
21:09and steals a golden cup from its horde.
21:17In retaliation,
21:19Smaug angrily attacks a nearby village.
21:22This is the myth.
21:43But what inspired it?
21:45If the story of a dragon
21:51who guards a horde of gold
21:52sounds familiar,
21:53there's a good reason.
21:55The plot of this incident
21:56is almost identical
21:57with the incident in Beowulf.
22:01Beowulf.
22:02One of the most famous myths
22:04in human history.
22:06And one that was a favorite
22:08of J.R.R. Tolkien.
22:10It is the story
22:12of a Scandinavian hero
22:14who becomes king
22:15of his homeland
22:15and faces the ultimate test
22:19of fire-breathing dragon.
22:25The dragon is guarding a treasure
22:28from kings of a previous age.
22:31A slave discovers
22:33a secret passageway
22:34down into the dragon's lair,
22:36finds this fabulous treasure,
22:37sees the sleeping dragon,
22:38and creeps in
22:39and steals a gold cup.
22:42It's a tale
22:43with obvious similarities
22:44to the story in The Hobbit.
22:47Both are allegories
22:49about the danger of greed.
22:53In each case,
22:55a desire for treasure
22:56sets off a chain reaction
22:58of horrific consequences.
23:03Tolkien has taken that
23:04from Beowulf
23:05Beowulf
23:06and made it into
23:08one of the crucial
23:09centerpieces
23:10of his entire story.
23:15Beowulf is one of many
23:17written sources
23:17that had a major impact
23:19on the Lord of the Rings.
23:20But there was a real-life experience
23:27that shaped the story
23:28more than anything
23:29pulled from the pages
23:30of a book.
23:32A terrifying trauma
23:33laden with ghosts,
23:35blood,
23:36and death.
23:38The battle-scarred trenches
23:40of World War I.
23:42France, 1916.
23:52A barrage of enemy fire
23:54rattles an Allied trench.
23:57A group of British soldiers
23:59scramble for safety,
24:01crawling like worms,
24:03inch by inch.
24:04Among them
24:07is 24-year-old
24:092nd Lieutenant
24:10J.R.R. Tolkien,
24:13future author
24:14of The Lord of the Rings.
24:19His experiences in war
24:21will have a profound influence
24:23on the mythical battle
24:25for Middle-earth.
24:27When we read
24:28Lord of the Rings
24:29and we read about
24:30the battles
24:31and we read about
24:32the bloodiness
24:32and we read about
24:34the destruction of nature,
24:36it is a statement
24:37about war.
24:39World War I
24:41was a scene of death
24:42on a scale
24:43that defies belief.
24:46The history books
24:47call it
24:47The Great War.
24:50A time when men
24:51slaughtered each other
24:52over mere yards
24:54of mud.
24:55Tolkien and the people
24:57of his generation
24:58that experienced
24:58World War I
24:59experienced a brutality
25:02in warfare
25:03that was unique.
25:05Not to say
25:05that warfare itself
25:06isn't bloody
25:07or violent,
25:08just the trench warfare
25:10in northern France
25:11was particularly gruesome.
25:14It was waiting around
25:16to see if you were
25:17going to be hit
25:17by an artillery shell.
25:20It was having your feet
25:21in so much trench water
25:23that you developed
25:24a condition called
25:25trench foot
25:26in which the flesh
25:27just slid off
25:28your bones.
25:29It was being attacked
25:30by mustard gas
25:31and all this
25:32Tolkien would have seen.
25:37Lieutenant Tolkien
25:38sees action
25:39in the Battle of the Somme.
25:42A brutal stalemate
25:43that results in carnage
25:45on a scale
25:46never seen
25:47in human history.
25:49The Battle of the Somme
25:51raged for four months
25:52each side losing
25:53one and a half million men.
25:55Nobody gained
25:56or lost an inch
25:57at the end of that battle.
25:58It was just a tragic
25:59waste of lives.
26:00After serving
26:02for approximately
26:03a year or so
26:04Tolkien developed
26:05trench fever
26:06in the form
26:07of dysentery or typhus
26:08and was hospitalized
26:10and taken home
26:11and it took him
26:12a very long time
26:12to recover
26:13and he actually
26:13never returned
26:14to the war.
26:17He was damaged,
26:18wounded internally
26:20by the war
26:20and traumatized.
26:22The trauma
26:23that he had suffered
26:23had to have influenced
26:25the way he wrote
26:25about the trauma
26:26that Frodo experiences
26:28in his quest
26:29to destroy the ring.
26:31Much of Tolkien
26:32made its way
26:33into the hobbits
26:34without them being
26:36a thinly disguised Tolkien.
26:38in the Lord of the Rings
26:48the hobbit Frodo
26:50travels through a bug
26:51called the Dead Marshes
26:53where a great battle
26:54had taken place
26:55thousands of years earlier.
26:59There, ghosts are still lurking
27:01beneath the waterline.
27:03They lie in all the pools
27:06Pale faces
27:09Deep, deep
27:11under the dark water
27:12I saw them
27:13Grim faces
27:15and evil
27:16and noble faces
27:18and sad
27:19But all foul
27:20All rotting
27:22All dead
27:23In the Dead Marshes
27:27where you have
27:28this kind of
27:28rotting landscape
27:30with bodies
27:31of an older war
27:32you definitely get
27:34these memories
27:35of the summer
27:36of the trenches
27:37of these rotting
27:38bodies of soldiers
27:39This is not anymore
27:41the idea of a heroic war
27:43This is the death
27:44and devastation
27:45What is left really
27:46is just dead men
27:48The horrors of war
27:52were first exposed
27:53in the precursor
27:54to the Lord of the Rings
27:55The Hobbit
27:59The story culminates
28:02in a battle
28:02of five different armies
28:03all vying
28:05for the dragon's treasure
28:06The main character
28:08Bilbo Baggins
28:09sees many of his companions
28:11killed on the battlefield
28:13and comes to understand
28:15the futility of war
28:16Like Bilbo
28:20Tolkien himself
28:22watched his companions
28:23die in battle
28:25In France
28:27he fought alongside
28:29three of his oldest
28:31and closest friends
28:32But by November of 1916
28:35two of them
28:36were dead
28:37It seems obvious
28:39when one reads
28:40the story
28:41where you have
28:41comrades in arms
28:43facing a seemingly
28:44insurmountable foe
28:45and the fear
28:46that they feel
28:47and the sounds
28:48of the battle approaching
28:49they know
28:50they're going to be tested
28:51and probably die that night
28:52and so on
28:53And yet the way
28:54they find a way
28:55to express both humor
28:57and courage
28:57and to keep each other's
28:58spirits up
28:59in a time like that
29:00seems to be drawn
29:01directly from
29:02his battle experience
29:03The misery and terror
29:19of World War I
29:20are reflected
29:20not only in the suffering
29:22of Middle-earth's heroes
29:23but in the ruthlessness
29:25of its villains
29:26Perhaps nowhere
29:29is Tolkien's war experience
29:31more powerfully revealed
29:32than in the horrific evil
29:34of the orcs
29:35The Lord of the Rings
29:47is the work of a vivid imagination
29:50rooted in ancient myth
29:54and modern life
29:56The first-hand war experience
29:59of its author
30:00J.R.R. Tolkien
30:01framed its central conflict
30:03between good
30:04and evil forces
30:06The final battlefield
30:09in that conflict
30:10is an infernal hell
30:12Mordor
30:15At the heart of Mordor
30:24lies Mount Doom
30:25the volcano
30:27where the one ring
30:28was forged
30:29This is where
30:30the hobbit Frodo
30:31must come to destroy
30:32the ring
30:33before its evil power
30:35overcomes him
30:36It is a setting
30:39drawn from one
30:40of the world's
30:41most well-known
30:42ancient sources
30:43The Bible
30:45If we look at the Bible
30:50hell has been described
30:51as this place of fire
30:54and brimstone
30:54and eternal torment
30:56and when we see Mordor
30:59we see this place
31:01of this black wasteland
31:03It's got very close
31:05connections
31:05with Dante's description
31:07of hell
31:07in that there's
31:08the burning plain
31:10in hell
31:10the dry desert
31:12with the flakes
31:12of fire
31:13falling from the sky
31:14Even Mordor's name
31:18has a sinister ring
31:20to it
31:20This is no accident
31:23Mordor actually
31:25sounds similar
31:26to Mordor
31:26in Anglo-Saxon
31:28it means
31:28Mordor
31:29or it means
31:30a murder
31:31We also have
31:32the connection
31:33to the old
31:33Norse
31:34Morth
31:35literally
31:35same thing
31:36meaning murder
31:37In the story
31:42those who enter Mordor
31:45are as good
31:46as dead
31:46It is patrolled
31:49by a race
31:49of ruthless foot soldiers
31:51known
31:51as orcs
31:53Orcs are
31:55very horrible
31:56They are bent
31:56They are crooked
31:57They are ugly
31:58We are told
31:59that they are actually
32:00elves gone wrong
32:02The dark forces
32:04have taken
32:04and twisted
32:06into this horrible race
32:07They are described
32:10as creatures
32:11fascinated with machines
32:12fascinated with making
32:14clever things
32:15fascinated with profit
32:17who try to get other people
32:18to work for them
32:19This has been read
32:20as sort of a thinly disguised
32:21capitalist
32:22or capitalism
32:23the orcs as capitalists
32:24Orcs
32:26are
32:27completely corrupted
32:29They are
32:30ruined
32:31They were good creatures
32:33originally
32:33but their wills
32:34are set entirely
32:35on evil
32:36Mordor's evil race
32:41like so many
32:43components
32:43of the Lord of the Rings
32:44may derive
32:46from an ancient myth
32:47In line 512
32:49of Beowulf
32:50there is a description
32:51of all the evil
32:52creatures
32:52that have been
32:53descended from Cain
32:54after Cain killed
32:55his brother Abel
32:55and those are
32:57Eotanas and Ulpha
32:58and Orkneas
33:00and that is
33:00Ettens
33:01and Elves
33:02and Orkneas
33:04The Orkneas
33:06are demon-like beings
33:08in Beowulf
33:09They have a spirit-like quality
33:11but they are considered
33:12like an evil
33:13spirit being
33:15Historical sources
33:20inspired not only
33:22Middle-earth's
33:23most despised fiends
33:24but also one of its
33:26principal heroes
33:27The Wizard
33:29Gandalf
33:30In the Lord of the Rings
33:34Gandalf guides Frodo
33:36in his quest to destroy
33:38the One Ring
33:39Gandalf has become
33:42an archetype for wizards
33:44after the writing
33:45of Lord of the Rings
33:47prior to that
33:48magic was considered
33:49bad
33:50anti-Christian
33:51was a little bit evil
33:52Gandalf I think
33:53is a solidly good figure
33:54he really tries to do
33:56what's best
33:56for all the creatures
33:57of Middle-earth
33:58Clues about Gandalf's origins
34:01can be found
34:01in Norse mythology
34:03In the Old Norse
34:04Gandalf means
34:05magical elf
34:07or magic using elf
34:09of course Gandalf
34:11is not an elf
34:12but he is certainly
34:13a magical figure
34:15of great power
34:15But Gandalf draws
34:17more than his name
34:18from Norse myth
34:19His appearance
34:21is modeled after
34:22its most powerful deity
34:24Odin
34:27To the ancient
34:29Scandinavians
34:30Odin represented
34:31many things
34:32He was a god of wisdom
34:35war
34:35battle
34:36and death
34:38But it is his role
34:40as the wanderer
34:41that echoes
34:42most clearly
34:43in Gandalf
34:44It's clear that
34:46Odin inspired Gandalf
34:47One of his aspects
34:48is the god of masks
34:50and many identities
34:50So he has many names
34:52hundreds of names
34:53and disguises
34:53and when he travels
34:54on earth
34:55he often travels
34:55as the grey wanderer
34:57He wears a grey robe
34:59He has a wide
35:00brimmed hat
35:01He has a long beard
35:02and all of these things
35:04fit very well
35:05with Gandalf
35:05Like Odin
35:07Gandalf roams
35:09Middle Earth
35:09for years
35:10quietly working
35:11to destroy
35:12its evil forces
35:13But the wizard
35:20may also be influenced
35:22by another
35:23more prominent
35:24ancient figure
35:24Gandalf has also
35:30been compared
35:31by some people
35:32to Jesus
35:32He sacrifices himself
35:34is dead
35:36and comes back
35:37clothed in white
35:38As Gandalf battles
35:40to save Frodo
35:41he metaphorically
35:43dies
35:44and is resurrected
35:46as Gandalf the White
35:47And this is one
35:50of the instances
35:51where we can see
35:52Tolkien's
35:53Catholic roots
35:54A pagan god
35:56of many disguises
35:58and a Christian savior
35:59who was resurrected
36:01Two powerful figures
36:03from the ancient world
36:04both seen
36:05in one
36:06main character
36:07This is what is
36:08so unique
36:09about Tolkien
36:10He is very good
36:11at bringing together
36:12Christian and pagan
36:13motif
36:13The religious influences
36:19behind
36:19The Lord of the Rings
36:20are fully revealed
36:22in the climax
36:22of the epic
36:23As the story
36:26concludes
36:26It is not Gandalf
36:28but Frodo
36:30who is in a position
36:31to save the world
36:32The myth's
36:34defining moment
36:34will draw from
36:36a pivotal chapter
36:37in the life of Christ
36:38as Frodo
36:39faces the last
36:40temptation
36:41of the reign
36:42Mordor
36:50A fiery hell
36:54Home to the orcs
36:57and the evil
36:58Lord Sauron
36:59This is where
37:03the hobbit Frodo
37:04finds himself
37:05at the end
37:05of a painful journey
37:07across Middle-Earth
37:08His quest
37:12to reach
37:12Mount Doom
37:13is over
37:13but his real test
37:15is about to begin
37:16To destroy
37:18the One Ring
37:19Frodo
37:20must scale
37:20the mountain
37:21and drop it
37:22into the volcanic fires
37:23from which
37:24it was forged
37:25But the Ring
37:28won't go quietly
37:29It's no accident
37:32that the symbol
37:32is a circle
37:33It sucks in
37:35everything good
37:35about you
37:36and about your personality
37:37just like any other
37:38kind of addiction
37:39until all you can
37:40think about
37:41is the Ring
37:41As Frodo climbs
37:49Mount Doom
37:49The Ring
37:51draws him in
37:52challenging him
37:53to abandon
37:54his mission
37:55and give in
37:56to its power
37:56It is the ultimate
38:00battle with temptation
38:01An internal struggle
38:03between darkness
38:04and light
38:05inspired by author
38:07J.R.R. Tolkien's
38:08Christian Worldview
38:09The whole work
38:12is informed
38:13by Catholic thoughts
38:14The very end
38:15Tolkien said
38:16was illustrating
38:17the last two petitions
38:18of the Lord's Prayer
38:19He says
38:20Lead us not
38:21into temptation
38:21but deliver us
38:23from evil
38:23Frodo's final moments
38:26with the Ring
38:26parallel one of the
38:28most famous passages
38:29in the New Testament
38:30Satan comes to earth
38:35to tempt Christ
38:36in the desert
38:37while Christ
38:38is fasting
38:39for 40 days
38:40He tempts him
38:42with power
38:43He tempts him
38:44with food
38:45He tempts him
38:45with dominion
38:47over earth
38:48In the Bible
38:49Jesus resists
38:51Satan's offer
38:52But Frodo's will
38:58proves weaker
38:59Frodo has made it
39:07to the very
39:08crack of doom
39:09the edge
39:10the edge
39:10of the chasm
39:10in the volcano
39:11where the Ring
39:12was forged
39:13and he has
39:14the Ring
39:15on its chain
39:15but he can't
39:17destroy it
39:18It's become
39:19too much
39:19of his personality
39:20and he says
39:21I do not
39:22choose to do
39:24what I came
39:25here to do
39:25The Ring
39:27is mine
39:27and he puts
39:30it on
39:30The Ring
39:33instantly makes
39:34Frodo invisible
39:35but he is not
39:38alone
39:38Gollum
39:41the evil creature
39:42who once held
39:43the Ring
39:43for hundreds of years
39:45has followed
39:46Frodo all the way
39:47to Mount Doom
39:48He desperately
39:50wants the Ring
39:51back
39:51and now
39:53he sees his chance
39:54Gollum bites
40:01his finger off
40:01Gollum grabs
40:05the Ring
40:06He in turn
40:08falls into
40:09the fiery flames
40:10of the volcano
40:12This destroys
40:18the Ring
40:19it obviously
40:19destroys Gollum
40:21but then
40:22in a sense
40:22it liberates
40:23Frodo
40:24As evil
40:25as Gollum
40:26is
40:26it's Gollum
40:27who saves
40:28Middle Earth
40:28by doing
40:29something evil
40:30If Gollum
40:33hadn't done that
40:34the world
40:35wouldn't have
40:35been saved
40:36so it's
40:36a nice little
40:36twist
40:37about how
40:37this all
40:38works together
40:38A flawed hero
40:43who doesn't
40:44save the day
40:45It's an ending
40:47that strays
40:48from Tolkien's
40:49Christian roots
40:49and mythological
40:52tradition
40:52Usually a tragic
40:54hero
40:55no matter
40:55what happens
40:56to him
40:56at least
40:56he can feel
40:57good
40:57because he's
40:57done the right
40:58thing
40:58Frodo
40:59could not
41:00Despite
41:08Frodo's
41:08failure
41:09the final
41:10outcome
41:10echoes
41:11the Christian
41:11belief
41:12that good
41:12will triumph
41:13over evil
41:14But that triumph
41:17comes at a cost
41:18After the ring
41:22is destroyed
41:22Frodo and the
41:24hobbits
41:24return to the
41:25Shire
41:26They are horrified
41:30by what awaits
41:31them there
41:32They find the
41:34Shire in ruins
41:35It's become
41:36an industrial
41:36nightmare
41:37There are big
41:39steel machines
41:40everywhere
41:41that people
41:41are oppressed
41:42and it's a
41:43very dirty
41:44polluted
41:44place
41:45It is a
41:46vision of
41:47technology
41:48run amok
41:49This
41:51was one of
41:52Tolkien's
41:52worst fears
41:53In England
41:58he saw the
41:59same transformation
42:00happening to
42:01the countryside
42:02he called
42:03home
42:03Tolkien was
42:05deeply concerned
42:05from his early
42:06childhood about
42:07the process
42:07of industrialization
42:09in large part
42:10because he saw
42:11it as a reflection
42:12of human corruption
42:14That is
42:17the urge
42:17to industrialize
42:19is in his mind
42:20inextricably
42:22connected
42:23with this impulse
42:24to dominate
42:25and to Tolkien
42:27it's the same
42:28will to dominate
42:29whether you're
42:30dominating people
42:30or whether you're
42:31dominating trees
42:32and plants
42:33When Frodo
42:38returns home
42:39from his quest
42:40to destroy
42:40the ring
42:41he is restless
42:43He has terrible
42:45dreams
42:46and he can't
42:47readjust
42:47to life
42:48in the Shire
42:48Frodo
42:50like the author
42:51who created him
42:52is a soul
42:53forever changed
42:54by traumatic
42:55memories
42:56Frodo is
42:58wounded
42:58he is
42:59devastated
43:00by his experience
43:01and he can never
43:02live a normal life
43:03again
43:03He bears the
43:04physical wound
43:05but he also bears
43:06the spiritual wound
43:07in his soul
43:07and this has to be
43:08a metaphor
43:09for what Tolkien
43:10is going through
43:11himself
43:11with his suffering
43:12from the First World War
43:13I think what's really
43:18curious about
43:19the character Frodo
43:20and the author Tolkien
43:21is that
43:23after the end
43:24of the drama
43:25so to speak
43:26after the end
43:26of World War I
43:27after the end
43:28of the War of the Ring
43:29the kind of joy
43:31that we might imagine
43:32was missing
43:33So we see
43:36this lingering
43:37malaise in Frodo
43:38you might say
43:39as a result
43:41of being the ring bear
43:42and we might say
43:43that with Tolkien
43:44he also had
43:45this lingering
43:46post-traumatic stress
43:47from seeing
43:48countless people
43:49butchered
43:50in the muddy fields
43:51of northern France
43:52At the end
43:54of the Lord of the Rings
43:55Frodo remains
43:57deeply wounded
43:58by his battle
43:59with evil
43:59He leaves the Shire
44:01once and for all
44:02to seek a new beginning
44:03in Middle Earth's
44:05holy lands
44:06And so ends
44:12the most ambitious
44:14mythology
44:14of the modern age
44:16This is really
44:18what started
44:19you might say
44:20the whole genre
44:20of fantasy literature
44:21as we now know it
44:23The idea of creating
44:25a world
44:26that really stands
44:27as a world
44:28of its own
44:29that has its own
44:31history is really
44:32fairly new
44:33and quite original
44:34It's remarkable
44:35how popular
44:37The Lord of the Rings
44:38is so dense
44:40in so many ways
44:41and so complicated
44:42but it has always
44:43had this really
44:44vibrant life
44:45among the common readers
44:47and that's the thing
44:48that is so remarkable
44:49about it
44:50in so many ways
44:57You don't have a
44:58life
44:58You don't have to
44:59do
44:59anymore
44:59But
45:00do
45:01that whole
45:02matter
45:03in there
45:03about it
45:05we don't have to
45:05do
45:06from a
45:07flame
45:08and
45:08day
45:09to Cal
45:10and
45:10say
45:11that were
45:12our
45:12stroke
45:13and
45:13that we
45:16do
45:16Now
45:17can
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45:00
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