Why Does Middle-earth Feel Deeper Than Other Fantasy Worlds?

A lone traveler walks past a Hobbit hole toward a vista filled with fortresses, rivers, and mountains beside the words 'What Did Tolkien Do That Other Fantasy Writers Didn't?' — Middle-earth has become the standard by which many other fantasy worlds are judged, but J.R.R. Tolkien himself was only one author in a long tradition of writers who created stories, characters, and settings that enthralled many generations of readers. So why has modern fantasy readership focused so intensely on Tolkien?

Q: Why Does Middle-earth Feel Deeper Than Other Fantasy Worlds?

ANSWER: I was browsing a Tolkien & Middle-earth discussion on social media and someone for what felt like the millionth time said, “J.R.R. Tolkien was the father of modern fantasy.”

I honestly don’t know where this idea came from. When you get down to it, J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t particularly original in his concepts. His goal was not to invent something new, but to tell interesting stories in settings that felt familiar and comfortable.

Tolkien himself acknowledged many sources of inspiration for his stories (like the Finnish Kelevala) and for his creatures (like George MacDonald’s goblins). Even the Ents and their walking trees were a kind of response to Shakespeare.

I’m not even sure of what “modern fantasy” is supposed to be. I AM sure that people have tried to define the term. You can probably find definitions going all the way back to the 19th century in literary criticism. And for that reason I sometimes wonder why people think in terms of “modern” fantasy versus some other, older fantasy.

I Grew Up On Fantasy

The earliest book I remember enjoying was about some kind of crocodile dressed as a swashbuckling pirate. The earliest movies I remember were classics like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins. I watched Mary Martin play Peter Pan in a (rebroadcast of a 1960) television production.

Like millions of other kids, I found myself receiving Dr. Seuss books every month. But after a year or two of that I graduated to an illustrated book about The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (based on the 1883 Howard Pyle classic) that I bought at a school book fair. And eventually my mother bought me books like Gulliver’s Travels, The Swiss Family Robinson, and — yes — The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

I went soaring through the skies with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn on an accidental balloon voyage. And I watched an enormous number of movies and TV shows and cartoons that all fit into the “fantasy” genre. No one talked about “modern” fantasy in those days. At least, not around me.

I didn’t even learn about J.R.R. Tolkien until I was fifteen, a few years after he had already died. Tolkien was already having an influence on fantasy authors, but I was discovering many others who had not written anything about elves, dwarves, goblins, and halflings. Tolkien was just another writer.

So what happened?

Fantasy Was Already Thriving Before Tolkien

The fantasy genre exploded in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Spare me the endless lectures about the influence of Mary Shelley. I never could get into Frankenstein until Abbott & Costello met the monster. Jules Verne was the master of fantasy as far as I was concerned. His books are often slipped into the “early science fiction” category, but to me it was all the same.

And how could you not grow up reading about Tarzan, John Carter, Carson Napier, and David Innes? One of the best fantasy movies of the 1970s was The Land That Time Forgot starring Doug McClure. And hard-core fans will be quick to point out that the screenplay was written by Michael Morcock, whose Elric of Melniboné was for many years considered the classic fantasy anti-hero.

Elric was adapted into many media formats before Aragorn could say “Elendil” in a roto-scoped movie.

And, of course, we had all those Robert E. Howard stories, and Clark Ashton Smith, and Lord Dunsany, and L. Frank Baum among many other authors whose books sold well throughout most of the 20th century. The Wizard of Oz is still much beloved, although I’m not sure many people realize that Baum wrote fourteen books about the land of Oz.

If anything, “modern” fantasy in the early 20th century was much more diverse and thoughtful and creative than all the Tolkien-inspired stuff that came in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It’s one thing to pay homage to Tolkien’s story-telling; it’s another to suggest that he’s the father of anything.

Why Are People Still Reading Tolkien?

Perhaps the chief difference between Tolkien and so many other authors is that his books are now outselling many of the authors who, the middle of the 20th century, were outselling his. Tolkien is the new kid on the block as far as Andre Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester del Rey, and other “masters” of science fiction and fantasy are concerned.

And even though the Harry Potter books surpassed Tolkien’s books for a while, J.K. Rowling hasn’t spent 40 years writing new stories, explaining background details, or inventing new characters. Whatever you think of those books (and I’ve read and enjoyed them all), or of Rowling herself, the world of Harry Potter hasn’t managed to displace the world of Tolkien.

There’s something about Middle-earth that reminds me very strongly of that mysterious island where the Robinson family was stranded for so many years. I wouldn’t say there were many direct elements of modern fantasy in the story, but there was certainly one monster that scared the living heck out of me the first time I read the story.

I could see myself in the treehouse and the cave on that island, just as I could stroll through the Shire and gaze upon the walls of Minas Tirith. Both settings feel real. Both stories took me into the writers’ narration.

I think Tolkien remains readable across generations just as many of those older writers remained readable across generations. Some authors persist only because teachers require students to read them. Some authors persist even when academia doesn’t acknowledge their existence. And while you might easily find Tolkien courses throughout high schools and universities today, I remember asking one of my professors if I could write a paper about The Lord of the Rings and he was half a paragraph into his thoughts before he realized I wasn’t talking about The Lord of the Flies (which I’ve always found to be immensely boring and depressing).

What Did J.R.R. Tolkien Do That Other Fantasy Writers Didn’t?

I can’t get into a lot of fantasy stories that were written after Tolkien. They turn dark. Many of them are attempts to “do Tolkien better,” either by throwing more short characters into direct action roles or by writing every main character as darker and more evil than Aragorn.

A common criticism directed at Tolkien is that his characters are one-dimensional: all the good guys are good guys and all the bad guys are bad guys, and no one has to struggle with making a hard decision. I wonder what book the people who say these things actually read, because that’s not how Tolkien writes characters.

How could “The Choices of Master Samwise” NOT make it clear that these characters had to make hard choices? Aragorn had to choose between following Frodo and Sam to Mordor or to try and save Merry and Pippin from a large company of Orcs.

If people can so easily forget how difficult the challenges were for the characters, what else do they forget, and why? Is Denethor a good guy or a bad guy? He treats his younger son like crap, tries to murder him, and just gives up the war before anything has really been decided.

What about Éomer and Eowyn? Neither one of them did what they were supposed to: Éomer led his personal guard north to attack the Orcs and Eowyn abandoned her post in the middle of a war. Both decisions were essentially acts of treason punishable by death.

And these are unconflicted good guys? Again, what books are y’all reading, because I don’t see the simplicity that everyone bashes.

I think Tolkien’s gift is in making it all seem so easy and natural. He writes about the doubt. He creates the conflict. He shows the reader multiple sides to characters. No one is perfect or perfectly bad in Tolkien (not even Sauron or Morgoth, both of whom began as “good” creatures).

Tolkien seems to create transitions in story, details, and characterizations from one end of the spectrum to the other and people get so lost in the narrative that they don’t realize, “Hey, this isn’t the same person or place that I originally thought it was.”

He allows the reader’s perception of the world, the characters, and the story to change over time. He encourages that change.

Middle-earth Explains Itself From Within

And Middle-earth is unusual in some respects because it feels so complete. I haven’t been able to write over 1,000 articles on this blog about Middle-earth because it’s so easy to keep dragging out the same topics and reuse them. I’ve been answering questions about minutiae that people find in the stories.

Midde-earth works so well because Tolkien ensured that it made sense in many ways. Not in every way. Geologists will tell you that a land like Eriador shouldn’t be as green and fertile as it appears in the book (or that it could even exist because the mountain ranges don’t result from natural causes). But Tolkien’s explanations for the geography of Middle-earth make sense anyway: someone built those mountains for purposes, and someone ensures that water flows throughout Middle-earth.

So you don’t need to stop and ask, “Hey, should there really be a mountain here?” You just accept that there is. The mountain has its own story and yet its story is part of a larger story. The details flow into each other with a narrative ease that no one ever wants to question.

There are rules in Middle-earth that people often overlook. One of the most common criticisms I still see today is that “Tolkien’s magic makes no sense — it has no rules.” And yet, it does follow rules. There are costs to everything the magical characters do. They literally spend their own essences, their own beings, in creating the magical artifacts and wonders. If a character makes something truly unique and powerful, they can only do it once.

And when hordes of nameless, faceless “Easterlings” or “Southrons” come charging across the horizon, you know they should be there because the story has prepared you for them. Almost from the first mention of Gondor early in The Fellowship of the Ring we hear about the many foes and wars Gondor has suffered. By the time Sam sees his first battle in Gondor, the reader just accepts that, yes, there is a war going on — and we may not know why these guys from a foreign land are here to cause trouble, but we know they are willing to put their lives on the line.

The Hobbits Made The Mythology Accessible

Of course, Hobbits are central to the theme. That wasn’t Tolkien’s original intention. He wandered into the realm of Hobbitry quite by accident. He was more interested in his conception of elves, and what he thought they could be in a literary perspective.

Elvish stories were more interesting to Tolkien, perhaps because they present a unique concept to write about: how does the Elvish perspective differ from the Mannish perspective when one considers how long Elves should live?

But it was the Hobbits that pushed Middle-earth into the popular imagination. They’re both ordinary and different at the same time. One can imagine what it’s like to be a Hobbit, or perhaps to know and live next to a Hobbit. It’s easy because in many ways they’re just like us (except for their pointy ears and their ability to eat 6 meals a day).

Without Bilbo Baggins, Tolkien’s idea of a mythological past was deemed “too Celtic” (a characterization over which he expressed some bemusement, considering how he tried to avoid Celticisms).

We follow the adventures of the Fellowship through the eyes of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin most of the time. In fact, I think one of the exceptional narrative rules Tolkien used was to avoid showing the story from the direct perspective of any character who dies. Every event is expressed through the experience and point of view of one of the characters who survive the war, and most of the time that perspective is from one of the Hobbits.

Many of the fantastic things Tolkien placed in Middle-earth feel completely normal because even in spite of their sense of wonder, the Hobbits accepted these things right away. When an Elvish rope magically unties itself from a rock high up a cliff, Sam just kind of shrugs and puts the rope away. The reader might be thinking, “Okay, how did that happen?” but the narrative pushes on and the Hobbits quickly move to the next point in the story.

Conclusion

It’s not easy to answer the question this article’s title asks: Why does Middle-earth feel deeper than other fantasy worlds? I’ve responded to many variations on this question across the years. My answers have never been exactly the same, because each time I’m addressing something that differs in a significant way from whatever I’ve discussed before.

It’s not just that there are so many details to think about and discuss. It’s that the details all seem to belong there. You need the rivers, the bridges, the harbors, the towers, and the roads because without them the stories make no sense. You could have a group of people walking across a bland countryside just to get them from point A to point B (where the primary action takes place). Or you can act as a tour guide and point out not only all the interesting things along the way, but also to explain why they are relevant to the fact that the world is threatened by a small gold ring.

When Legolas speaks of how the Elves of Eregion had been forgotten by the grass but not the stones, he’s not just providing some background details. He’s talking about how change is inevitable in Middle-earth, and sometimes it’s tragic and sad, and sometimes the things people choose to do have real consequences that cost them dearly.

The War of the Ring is the final chapter in the story that began with the Elven-smiths of Eregion asking, What can we do to make Middle-earth a better place? And it all goes horribly wrong from there.

Are they not the most flawed characters in a flawed world that cannot escape from the consequences of bad decisions? There is no quest for Mount Doom without the sad lamentations of the stones of Eregion. It’s all tied together. And the details are built in layers so that you have to stop to think about why they are there even as the story moves you forward.

I think that’s why we keep reading Tolkien. I think that’s why Middle-earth feels deeper, richer, more full than other fantasy worlds.