Re: Why do you like Lord of the Rings? (books/movies)
I echo all those who mentioned fellowship, friendship, companionship. But all of those, for me, are encompassed by the central themes of just doing something because it's simply the right thing to do. Also selfless commitment. All of the characters -- at least on the "good guys" side -- are given very hard choices and each of them accept the hard road every time. And once they've chosen their path, they commit themselves fully, even in the face of death -- for the better good of all.
I've been reading LOTR nearly every year since 1967 (and I was not in elementary school). Things really haven't changed much since. We had unbridled greed, loophole seekers, an unpopular war, seeming lawlessness, heinous murders, and crooks in DC back in those days as well. We had just crawled out from the depths of shock of 3 history-making assasinations, we saw WWIII as almost inevitable, my parents' generation saw nearly everything they'd sacrificed during the Depression and WWII become ash. And my generation lost our innocence about the society we were inheriting. Ironically, with that loss of innocence and rejection, was a wide-eyed belief that we could change the world. And, in some ways we kind of did....we were instrumental in the end of Vietnam, we were right in the front ranks with civil rights, we helped end the draft, we agitated to lower the voting age to be at least equal to the same age we could get drafted and die for our country. We naively believed "All you Need is Love." The idea that "even the smallest person can change the course of the future" was something many of us truly believed in. And I still do....even after all these years. In that, Frodo truly does live...in me.
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