There are many differences between the LotR books and the LotR movies. The differences between the LotR books and movies is greater than most movie adaptions. For example, I would say that Bernstein’s West Side Story is much more faithful to the letter and spirit of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet than Peter Jackson’s vision of LotR is to Tolkien’s.
I could write a long essay about the disappointment I felt at the unnecessary simplifications and recasting of the books in order to make the movies appealing to the broadest possible audience–and eventually I probably will–but for today I will focus on the differences in the character of Aragorn and the concept of leadership in the two depictions. This is not one of the differences that I’ve heard critics mention, but I feel that it’s much more important than many of the differences that people (people such as myself) have whined about in the past. It’s not unusual for film adaptations to elide characters or compress events in order to squeeze an enormously complicated book into a movie that can be sat through without a bathroom break, but what happened here is that one of the central characters of the book has been changed in a fundamental way. And the change is not flattering to the viewer, or what it says about what we expect from our contemporary leaders.
One of the conceits of the LotR is that J.R.R. Tolkien presents it as a cleaned-up and lightly edited history, written not by himself, but as a sort of autobiography and history of the contemporary times by some of the characters in the story itself, who lived in times long lost to any other record. Their title for this book is different from the one chosen by the editors at Random House: the more wordy but infinitely more informative The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King. The Lord of the Rings himself is a very minor character in the book–he doesn’t even have a speaking role–but the central story is his downfall, and the restoration of the monarchy (and things that go along with it, such as justice and the rule of law) to a major portion of Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth.
As one might guess, these two events are not unrelated, although either one would have made a wonderful story in and of itself. To explain their interconnection, however, requires some explanation of the back-story for the LotR.
For long ages, Sauron, the baddest of the bad guys during this age of Tolkein’s world (a fallen angel, to use the metaphor I used several blog entries ago when discussing the Balrog, but not quite Satan himself) has sought to rule the world. Treachery and deceit are his best weapons, although he also commands great military might. In an earlier age, he could still appear to be fair and good, and thus he tricked the greatest smiths and sorcerers of that day to help him create a set of rings, the so-called rings of power. The properties of these rings are not generally explained in much detail, but the general notion is that each ring enormously amplifies the characteristics and powers of its possessor.
Sauron distributed the rings among the rulers of the world, who were delighted to receive them. Even the wisest of the wise, who were aware of Sauron’s bad tendencies, accepted them, because they believed that in a pinch they could be used as weapons against him. But they were less than delighted to discover, in the fullness of time, that Sauron had a deck of aces up his sleeve. Working secretly, he had created a special ring whose sole purpose was to control the other rings, and through them, their possessors, their works, and eventually their very wills.
The elves immediately perceived Sauron’s intent. They used their rings cautiously and managed to wield the power of their rings in a limited way without falling into his snares. The dwarves were not as wise, but they proved very resistant to the lure of the rings and the power of the one. Their ability to defy the will of others was far greater than Sauron had understood, and for this reason their utility as slaves was negligible. Thus Sauron’s attempts to use the rings against the elves and dwarfs were not very effective.
Men, however, were perfect suckers. They did not comprehend their peril, and saw only the opportunity to increase their own power. In short order, many of the great houses of men were destroyed or subverted to serve Sauron’s purposes as their kings were reduced to monstrous wraiths, slaves to Sauron’s will.
But not all men were conquered in this way. The remnants of the great civilization of Numenor, which had apparently not been given a ring (perhaps because they had been among the chief agents of the downfall of Sauron’s previous attempt at world domination), were still very strong, and its heirs lived on in the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. When Sauron assailed Gondor in an attempt to destroy the last remaining men who could threaten him, Gondor appealed for help from Elves and Arnor, who formed the Last Alliance between men and elves. The union was stronger than Sauron had expected, and beat back his armies until he was besieged in his great fortress. War raged on the plains before the gates of the city for several years, but Sauron was unable to break the siege. In desperation, Sauron emerged to join the fight, and, after killing both the Gil-galad, high king of the Noldor, and Elendil, king of the remaining Numenorians, was defeated. Narsil, the sword of Elendil, is broken beneath Elendil as he falls, and its light is extinguished. Isildur, son of Elendil, cuts the ring from Sauron’s hand with the hilt shard of Narsil. So much of the will and power of Sauron had been invested in the ring that when it was cut from his hand his physical form was destroyed and his spirit fled from the world for a long time.
It’s worth pointing that only a weapon with fairly unique properties merits a name in Tolkien’s world; many great and legendary warriors make do with nameless weapons. But Narsil is a special, ancient weapon. It has a spirit of its own and, like other weapons of similar design, shines with an inner fire in the presence of an enemy–or, to be more accurate, in the presence of an enemy according to the judgment and design of its creators. (It’s wise to note that if you’re trying to use such a weapon, and it’s not shining furiously, then the weapon isn’t on your side in the fight, and you could be in a lot of trouble.)
There’s a bit of a power vacuum in Middle Earth: Sauron is fled from the world; the high king of the Noldor is dead, and there is nobody with the proper credentials to claim the title; Elendil is dead, and Isildur takes his place. And here’s where things take a bad turn. Isildur doesn’t destroy the ring, but instead he claims it for his own, thinking he can control it. He couldn’t be more wrong. Anyone who attempts to use the ring will be turned towards evil, and the more powerful the person is, the more likely it is that he will simply become Sauron’s successor.
Delving even farther into the back-story, it’s interesting to note that the house of Elendil was one of the few survivors of the ruin of the Numenor, the greatest civilization of Men the world had known, which was destroyed when the leaders of Numenor, goaded on by Sauron, challenged the gods in an attempt to gain immortality. The patience of the gods was at an end, and they responded by destroying, in the most literal sense, the entire continent on which Numenor lay. Sauron greatly feared the Numenorians, but he also knew how to use their own pride and power against them.
Isildur was old enough to witness that disaster, but survived because Elendil fled with his to the East instead of joining the assault on the undying lands to the West. He saw the result; he watched Numenor burn and then sink beneath the waves of the ocean forever. But he didn’t learn humility from it, and thus he is a perfect dupe for Sauron and the one ring.
But before Isildur has a chance to really foul things up, he and his party are ambushed by marauders in the wilderness. Isildur loses the ring during his attempt to flee, and is killed. The ring is lost, the Narsil is broken, the men of the west are left without a king, and the elves will never have another high king.
Don’t worry if you haven’t read the books or seen the movie; I haven’t spoiled anything for you. This is skimmed over lightly in the first two minutes of the movie.
Spoilers come now.
The Dunedain, the royalty of Arnor, had survived, and Isildur had a legitimate heir, although nobody knew of him. The shards of Narsil had been recovered as well. For many generations of men, both the knowledge of the lineage of the Dunedain and the shards of Narsil were the secret possessions of Elrond, a powerful elf leader. Aragorn is the direct heir of Isildur, and Elrond, believing that he has identified the proper leader at the proper moment, informs Aragorn of his true lineage and the identity of the shards of Narsil when Aragorn is somewhere in his forties.
The world will need a leader; Sauron has reestablished himself, and Middle Earth is threatened again. The books begin with the rediscovery of the ring, which has finally resurfaced. If Sauron regains the ring, his victory is certain. The opportunity to destroy the ring easily was squandered by Isildur; it is impervious to ordinary harm. The temptation to use the ring against Sauron is enormous, but worse than perilous. In the book, it is made clear that when Sauron becomes aware of Aragorn, he is deeply troubled at the possibility that Aragorn might acquire and wield the one ring–which is, after all, his heirloom–before Sauron can recover it, because Aragorn is one of the few people who might be able to control it, and as such Aragorn presents one of the few real existential threats that Sauron has ever had to face. The idea that Aragorn might not claim the ring instead does not occur to Sauron–it makes no sense to him, from his perspective, that anyone would throw away an opportunity to rule the world. In the end, Sauron is defeated in part because his strategy is aligned against the wrong threat: the real threat isn’t from someone who would wield the ring against him, but from someone able to simply reject the temptation to do so.
Will Aragorn be up to the task of leading the men of the world to defend themselves against this peril? This is one of the central questions of the book: what kind of man does Tolkien think might be up to the task? A different sort of man than Peter Jackson or millions of movie-goers, apparently.
When we first meet Aragorn in the book, he carries no martial weapon, but simply the tools of a hunter. He is a man long past his youth and who has had a very hard life. He is scarred and weathered. He has spent his adult life fighting a long retreat against the forces of evil that have been slowly but inexorably conquering his world, and he has suffered. He may be a king by rights, but he has no kingdom, no wealth, and no servants.
Aragorn is conspicuously absent from some of the battles in the book, unlike the movies, where he always seems to have a sword handy, and tends to resolve executive situations by lopping off a head or two. This is probably a good survival skill in the world portrayed by the movies, which have considerably more battles and fighting than the books. In the book, it’s quite clear that he is formidable in a fight, but he is not primarily a warrior. He is a leader, not a brawler. People who share his goals quickly trust him, like him, and eventually feel love and great loyalty to him. People who don’t share his goals learn to fear him–if they survive long enough. In the movies, Aragorn is always in the thick of things, leading all the charges, killing more than his share of enemies, providing a great spectacle. In the book, he is much less amusing, but infinitely more dangerous: he doesn’t need to kill all of his enemies personally because people are willing to lay down their lives to do so for him.
It is not long after Aragorn rejects the temptation of the ring that elven smiths reforge Narsil and rekindle its flame. Aragorn renames the sword Andruil, the Flame of the West, since the elves have considerably upgraded some aspects of the sword during its reconstruction. It is clear that the elves believe that Aragorn is worthy to claim his throne, should he prevail in the war against Sauron. But keep in mind that it’s not really up to them; the elves don’t choose the kings of men (nor vice versa). They do it because it’s their considered opinion that Aragorn is the right man for the job.
In the movies, the presentation of the newly-forged sword treated as a very big deal, and happens in a completely different time in the story than in the books, to heighten the dramatic effect and give Elrond a little more screen time. In the book, Aragorn has no sword and is essentially unarmed until he receives Andruil at the beginning of the second book, while in the movies, he isn’t presented the sword until what corresponds approximately to the beginning of the fourth book, after he’s killed some ridiculous number of enemy foot soldiers with nameless swords that he always seems to have on hand.
In the movies, Andruil is a talisman. There is no distinction between Narsil and Andruil (which in the book is essentially a new sword that nobody has seen before). When he shows Andruil to people, they recognize it as a sword out of legend, and it opens all sorts of doors. In the books, the sword is a symbol, but of war and conflict, not leadership.
Elrond also presents Aragorn with another symbol–a banner whose symbols link him to the glorious days of Numenor and the ancient but (by this time) nearly mythical alliances between the elves and men against the forces of evil. And the important thing is that when people see this standard, they don’t just think it’s bullshit. Unlike a sword, a banner doesn’t threaten. It is nothing more than a symbol, but it brings his allies hope. They believe that Aragorn is who he says he is, and they have faith in him.
In the movie, Aragorn accepts the sword like a forty-five year old man accepting the keys to his first shiny red corvette. In the books, Aragorn accepts the sword as a tremendous responsibility, and as a reminder both of his lineage, the horror of the previous war of the ring, and the failure and downfall of his ancestors.
At a crucial moment in the war, Aragorn is far from where he needs to be, and things are going badly almost everywhere. Sauron is no paper tiger, after all. When you’re fighting an enemy who can control volcanoes and the weather, you should expect some setbacks. Aragorn knows he needs to cover an impossible amount of ground to bring reinforcements to a besieged city, and he knows there are a lot of enemies and perils between him and his goal, including a haunted valley populated by the ghosts of an ancient army cursed to haunt the earth because they broke their oath to serve Isildur in the first war of the ring long ago.
In the movies, the sword impresses even the ghosts, who attack Aragorn but stop when they realize that he’s parrying their swords with Andruil, which they recognize as Narsil from lost ages in the past, and then they immediately decide to be his allies, in a turn of events that seems silly even compared to the other silly things in the movies.
In the books, events unfold much differently. Aragorn is not afraid of the ghosts because he is the one person in the entire world who can give them what they most desire: to rest in peace. They were cursed by Isildur for breaking their oath to service to the house of Elendil, and, as leader of that house, he can release them from their oath. And so Aragorn rides the paths of the dead and summons the king of the dead to meet with him–and the king of the dead comes. They could have effortlessly killed him and his company, but instead they come to talk.
Aragorn shows them his standard, tells them what he needs from them, and that he will hold their oath fulfilled when they do it, permitting their souls to depart from the world forever and have peace. And they believe him, and they assist him, and when they are finished, he keeps to his word and releases them. One has a sense that Aragorn could have asked much more of them (and in the movie, he does), but in the books he is not one to abuse loyalty or the bonds of an oath.
You will notice that I didn’t mention anything about a sword. The spirits of the dead don’t care much about swords, but the standard of Elendil got their attention.
Even with the ghosts lending a hand, Aragorn still has far to go, and so he leads his companions on a ride that lasts for several days, in “the greatest haste and weariness that any of them had ever known … and his will held them to it.” That’s what a leader is to Tolkien–someone who can make you do more than you thought possible, without threats or menace, and with his sword in his sheath the whole time. This journey is absent from the movies, where geography is rearranged to provide Aragorn with a short and painless trip. In the movie, heroics are performed on the battlefield, while in the books, heroism can consist of simple things like riding non-stop over difficult country for several days into the face of the enemy, instead of turning aside or choosing an easier, less perilous path.
To Tolkien, leadership is also not asking more than your followers can give, and understanding that weakness is as real as strength. When Aragorn leads an army on what is deservedly believed to be a suicide mission across the frontier of Sauron’s realm of Mordor, where Sauron has tortured and poisoned the very land itself, some of his soldiers panic at what they see and cannot go on, “… Aragorn looked at them, and there was pity in his eyes rather than wrath, for these were young men … to them Mordor had been from childhood a name of evil, and yet unreal, a legend that had no part in their simple life; and now they walked like men in a hideous dream made true, and they understood not this war nor why fate should lead them to such a pass.” Aragorn offers them a chance to keep their honor by undertaking a different task; instead of continuing with the assault, they may turn away and attack foes gathering behind them–battle nonetheless, but battle in the green, living lands. “Then some being shamed by his mercy overcame their fear and went on, and the others took new hope, hearing of a manful deed within their measure that they could turn to, and they departed.”
And finally, when Aragorn’s army is surrounded “by forces ten times and more than ten times its match” before even passing the first defenses of Mordor, and Sauron sends his emissary to discuss the terms of Aragorn’s surrender, there is yet another fundamental difference between the movie and the book, and the behavior we might expect from a leader. In the movie, Aragorn responds to the terms by impulsively lopping off the head of Sauron’s emissary. In the book, Aragorn’s response is silence, but gives the emissary a look that conveys such defiance and force of will that the emissary cannot meet his gaze. Knowing the hopelessness of their situation, the emissary expects the army to surrender–by mutiny, if necessary–but the reception he receives is unexpected and perhaps beyond his comprehension. Sauron drives an army of slaves before him via force and fear, while Aragorn leads an army of free men that follow him out of loyalty, duty, and a common cause in the defense of their families and their way of life. The Aragorn of the movies is the kind of commander with which the emissary is very familiar, but the Aragorn from the book is something else, and something much more dangerous.
