LOTR vs. HP

Here’s a long-standing debate that I’ve been meaning to throw my 2 cents into for a while. The Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter. The stalwart cornerstone of a genre vs. the young hot upstart. In terms of popularity, there should be no contest. To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more than 350 million copies world wide in the span of a decade. The Lord of the Rings series, in contrast, has sold roughly 100 million since the first publication in 1954. Indeed, Harry Potter has sold more than three times as many copies as The Lord of the Rings in less than one-fifth the time. Further, there should be no doubt that Harry Potter is here to stay. Though its days as a cultish cultural phenomenon are coming to a close, the Harry Potter series is all but assured of enjoying a long shelf-life as a staple of childhood reading.

Believe it or not, I have done some research on this debate. If you google some variant of the phrase ‘Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter’ as I did, you will find the sites of many bloggers who have tackled the exact same question. They break into two camps; the Harry Potter camp, and The Lord of the Rings camp.

Each side tends to parrot one of the following arguments. The Lord of the Rings fans contend that the Middle Earth universe is far more comprehensive Harry Potter’s. The meticulous mind of JRR Tolkien imagined every detail in the Middle Earth universe; he even wrote an extensive back story in the Silmarillion. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is riddled with inconsistencies and plot holes that tend to be repaired by magical technicalities, and a heavy reliance upon the Deus Ex Machina technique. Lord of the Rings fans also allude, somewhat mysteriously, to their series’ depth, which apparently far exceeds that of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter fans counter that at least Harry Potter is exciting. A valid point, considering the Lord of the Rings can be somewhat dull in comparison. They also argue that Harry Potter is not shallow because of the historical parallels to World War II. The rise of the Death Eaters is easily analogous to real historical movements like Nazism. Lord Voldemort, with his infatuation with blood purity, sounds a lot like Adolf Hitler. This, they assert, constitutes depth and complexity.

Clearly, depth must be an important status-marker, since both sides invoke it to justify their allegiance. Many bloggers throw the word around, but few actually explain what makes the books deep. Lord of the Rings fans refer to the overwhelming detail in books’ mythology, but they seem to confuse detail with depth. To actually understand the depth of the Lord of the Rings, we should look to the early 20^th century, when the series was first conceived.

The Lord of the Rings universe was forged in the trenches of World War I, where Tolkien served as a communications officer. JRR Tolkien actually witnessed the Battle of Sommes, one of the truly horrifying events of European History. Upon becoming ill (disease actually accounted for the majority of deaths in WWI) he left the frontlines to recover. The war that killed an entire generation of young European men took Tolkien’s three closest childhood friends as well. It also utterly shattered Europe’s intellectual traditions, and seemed to reveal the violent, irrational nature that lied beneath nationalism, technology, and modernity itself. To all those it affected, World War I represented a failure of Enlightenment thinking and Western Civilization as a whole.

Tolkien began to elaborate upon the Lord of the Rings universe in the dark years that followed World War I. On a personal level, it was an escapist fantasy that was easier for him to face than everyday life. On a more universal level, The Lord of the Rings was his attempt to grapple with and re-imagine a destroyed European consciousness. If the Enlightenment had failed, what was the solution? What could replace Western Civilization? These are the questions Tolkien wrestled with.

The War for the Ring is not a direct allegory for World War I or II, as Tolkien warns us. Instead, we should view it as a more general representation of the violence and cultural shock of the early 20^th century. The war between Orcs and Men is a fight for the modern world. Would the new world be characterized by greed, fear, darkness, and duplicity, which the armies of Sauron represent? Or could a new era of prosperity be built from the ashes of a ruined heritage, much like the fallen race of Numenor?

Tolkien was not the only author to struggle with these questions. Tolkien is actually writing in the same vein as TS Eliot. Both writers believed that Western Civilization had failed. But what would replace it? In The Wasteland, Eliot seems to say we ought to look towards Eastern Philosophy. Tolkien, on the other hand, seems to say that Europe’s salvation lies in its distant past.

The Lord of the Rings is written in the style of Beowulf, the 9^th century epic of a mythical war hero. By deciding to write in this antiquated trope, Tolkien seems to be saying that Europe must look deep into its own past in order to escape from its devastating malaise. Look beyond the Enlightenment, beyond even the Renaissance, and start from scratch, Tolkien commands us. In order to revive Western civilization, we must return to its very foundation.

Our readers who are familiar with the series may notice that there are many avenues wide open for interpretation that I merely glazed over. This is precisely what makes the Lord of the Rings a deep novel. There are innumerable levels of allusion and historical relevancy that simply do not exist in Harry Potter. Rowling’s allusions to World War II are largely extraneous, and further no greater purpose within the novel. Often times, it seems Rowling alludes to World War II to give her novels a sense of depth without too much serious consideration.

I will try not to overstate my case. Harry Potter is a wildly entertaining and engaging series, and likewise it is very possible to enjoy the Lord of the Rings even on a superficial level. Further, I don’t want to elevate The Lord of the Rings to the same level as The Wasteland, a work of unrelenting complexity and beauty. I just want to settle the debate once and for all: Harry Potter is fun reading, but in terms of literary merit, it cannot stand up to the Lord of the Rings.