#Frodo home how to#

There’s at least one novel about a batman and his officer having a romantic relationship ( Look Down in Mercy by William Baxter, 1951), and many accounts of queer soldiers who found they could - while facing nightmarish conditions in the trenches - live out relationships that would have been impossible at home. Tolkien based Frodo and Sam’s relationship on ones he had seen and experienced in World War I - that between a usually upper-class officer and his batman, a usually lower-class man who served as his bodyguard, personal assistant, and constant companion. The exception is Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee - the Ring-bearer with an impossible burden, his loyal gardener, and the bond between them that ends up saving their world. But they do not read as intentionally romantic (and while fan interpretation is a diverse, wonderful thing, this essay is focused on authorial intent). These relationships are high drama powerful examples of male friendship and family. Boromir and Faramir have an intense brotherhood, and have complex feelings about the loyalty owed to their king, Aragorn. Gandalf takes on a sometimes kind, sometimes frustrated grandfatherly role to the hobbits. They fondly tease their other cousin Frodo, and talk down to working-class Sam. Merry and Pippin are cousins, and banter like cousins. There are many relationships between men in the book, most of them platonic. Revisiting the book in the last year, as someone who has been out for many years and who is deeply engaged in making and consuming queer stories, I was amazed to find a same-sex love story at the heart of the narrative. The essayist Italo Calvino defined a classic as “a book that has never finished what it has to say,” and The Lord of the Rings is certainly a classic. But for a long time I avoided it, for the same reason that I learned not to talk about the movies at school: The accusations of queerness somehow tied into a story about elves, hobbits, and looming evil. It’s written on my creative DNA as the first book I really loved.

#Frodo home how to#

I listened to The Lord of the Rings before I knew how to read. So each Wednesday throughout the year, we'll go there and back again, examining how and why the films have endured as modern classics.

2021 marks The Lord of the Rings movies' 20th anniversary, and we couldn't imagine exploring the trilogy in just one story.