Tolkien Got Me into Reading

The first time I came across, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, it wasn’t the book(s), but Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 (incomplete) animated film, and it scared the absolute bejesus out of me.

It was the early 80’s; I think it must’ve been 1981 because I’m pretty sure I was about six years old, and my older brother and sister, (who are eight and ten years my senior), had a VHS copy of the film to watch at home.

I followed those two around a lot back then, and wanted to do whatever it was that they were doing. I loved hanging out with them; it made me feel all grown up, and luckily for me, neither of them seemed to mind. So, when they wanted to watch the film, naturally I wanted to as well.

Now remember, those two were in their mid-teens, and the story does heavily feature wizards, elves, and dwarves; total fairy tale stuff, so they wouldn’t have given too much thought about whether it was age appropriate for me to watch or not. In fact, I’m betting they thought quite the opposite. I mean, it’s a cartoon, right?

If you know Ralph Bakshi’s version, you’d know that he used an animation technique called rotoscoping, where live action footage is actually traced on to animation cells, as well as the use of traditional animation. Of course, none of us kids knew or cared about that at the time, but because of that technique, it made the film appear much darker and sinister in certain places, especially for a six-year-old who could scare easily.

The beginning of the film was fine. I don’t recall it being a problem for me at all, but why would it? With the exception of some creepiness from some Ringwraith action (along the road etc), there isn’t anything particularly dark or sinister about the opening scenes. It was all fine until Frodo and Co. make it to Bree and meet Aragorn that it started to put six-year-old me on edge, and if you know the story, you all know why.

The Ringwraiths, man! Those were THE creepiest, scariest things I had seen, and when they arrive in Bree in the middle of the night, make their way to Frodo and Co’s room, break out their swords and stab, stab, stab, well c’mon! What six-year-old wouldn’t get freaked out by that? Even looking at the clip now, it still has a bit of a creepy quality about it (see below).

To this day, that’s the scene that I remember the most of my first ever introduction to the, ‘Lord of the Rings’. It wasn’t good, but somehow, it didn’t put me off the story either.

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Fast forward to about an eleven or twelve-year-old me and my teacher, Mrs Rowland (I think that was her name). Mrs Rowland absolutely loved books and reading. I don’t know if she had a particular favourite genre or style of writing, I just remember that it was her passion, and as a teacher, she encouraged us to read all the time. She wasn’t a ‘Dragon Lady’ of any kind; quite the opposite. She was kind and a gentle soul, and was always encouraging of us to use our imagination which was something that I liked about her.

A couple of stories that she loved and wanted to teach us about was, ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. She spoke of them as if they were the most magical things; as if the stories were almost real, but to twelve-year-old me, it didn’t sound that special.

Then, as a treat for the class, she brought out the VHS; a copy of Ralph Bakshi’s film and we all settled in to watch. I didn’t connect the dots right away that this was the film that scared the bejesus out of me all those years before, but it did have a sense of familiarity about it. In fact, I don’t think I realised it was the same film until sometime later. It certainly didn’t trigger any unpleasant feelings at the time. All I know is that after watching it as an older kid, that I loved it. Gollum, Gandalf, the elves; all of it. I could see the magic that Mrs Rowland was talking about. I truly thought it was wonderful.

One of our ongoing assignments was to read a different book every month and to write/talk about it in class afterwards.

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I think at this point, I should let you know what kind of a student I was; I think the term, “Daydreamer” was used a lot throughout my education. If it wasn’t interesting enough, I had a nasty habit of going off into my own world, thinking about anything other than what I was supposed to be listening to in class.

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The one book a month thing wasn’t for me. I struggled to finish books a lot, or I would skim through them to get enough of a gist so that I could talk about it in class later. I did read sometimes, just not so much for school. I think I was probably choosing the wrong books, but mostly because I was being told that I had to read something; I didn’t like being told what to do much, and so it put me off the idea of reading, that is until…

After watching the film and hearing about, ‘The Hobbit’ from Mrs Rowland, I decided to give that book a go. I remember being in class at my desk and looking at the front cover for a minute before opening. Mrs Rowland was walking by and caught a glance at what I had chosen. She knelt down beside me and whispered, “you’re going to love it”, got up and walked away. Well, she wasn’t wrong!

Oh, how I loved that book. I couldn’t put it down; everything about it I adored. As a twelve-year-old, it wasn’t about how beautifully written it is, or that Tolkien was an incredible Linguist, or what his influences were to write those stories; the appreciation of those things didn’t come until much later. No, it was the magic, the adventure, how cute the Hobbits were, the humour; and not to mention Gollum, one of my favourites; Bilbo in the darkened caves, answering riddles with Gollum is one of my favourite scenes in the book.

Loving that book is what got me into reading, so much so that I asked for and received, ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ book set for Christmas that year. I can’t tell you how many times I ended up reading those books, but it was a lot.

Reading the books opened the flood gates to me, because then what happened was, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, more Tolkien, books by Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, the ‘Sweet Valley High’ series; later on, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Henrik Ibsen, Patrick White, Tim Winton, and more. I strongly believe that if it weren’t for Mrs Rowland properly introducing me to Tolkien, I may never have gotten into reading at all.

As for Tolkien, I will forever be a fan of his work.

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A couple of side notes to finish…

Fast forward again to the late 90’s, me in my twenties and showing my love for these stories by immortalising some of the language in the form of a tattoo (sorry Mum), it being in Elvish; then the Peter Jackson films that came out through the 2000’s. Of course, I have copies of them all and have lost count of how many times I’ve watched them (I will say that I was a little disappointed in the Hobbit films – sorry).

Then in 2014, it finally happened. I got to go to New Zealand and see the Hobbiton set with my very own eyes. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl the day I got to do that. Even with the weather being freezing, (it had rained heavily just prior to arrival and it was muddy; I didn’t care, I was there). It was only the second day that I had been in New Zealand and I had already taken about two hundred photos at that one location! My souvenir budget took a massive hit that day as well – worth it!