Book Review: The Tower and the Ruin

I recently read the book The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation written by Michael D.C. Drout and published by W.W. Norton & Company in November 2025. This ambitious book is partially a memoir of Drout’s own experience as a lifelong lover of Tolkien’s work, having read the book over 40 times (123), including with his father and his own children. It also covers seven themes describing how Tolkien constructed his fantasy world and how it affects other people: origins, frames, texts, patterns, emotions, threads, and tapestry.

In his “Introduction: Son and Father”, Drout notes the absurdity of The Lord of the Rings as a family-oriented book: “it uses hundreds of unfamiliar names; there are untranslated passages written in invented languages; and the book depicted multiple scenes of terror and violence, including the mutilation of the protagonist—of course we should read it out loud to our six-year-old . . . and people do” (3). This same breed of humor is on display throughout the text, from his pet unicorn Clarence who dictated the book and “is not responsible for [his] errors and misunderstandings” (75), to a jab at Saruman who “truly was just a pathetic imitation of the real Dark Lord… Loser” (183), to a riff on “[t]he cliché of the blind men and the elephant… the blind hobbits and the oliphant” (234). The lighthearted banter balances the sober meditations on Tolkien’s belief that “as soon as we enter the world, we are inevitably moving toward death” (173). To illustrate this point, after carefully sketching a picture of his family who shares their love of Middle-earth, Drout reveals the deaths of his father and son in the “Conclusion”. This mix of humor and sorrow, at times almost uneven, is of the same spirit as the original text without closely imitating its writing style.

As for the content of the book, the strongest sections focused on the similarities between The Lord of the Rings and historical manuscripts, reviews of linguistic and grammatical concepts, and explanations of literary devices. Since my packed schedule at Wheaton College did not allow me to take a course on Medieval, Anglo-Saxon, or Old Norse literature, the explanations helped me catch up to my peers. I learned that historic present tense was a type of verb used in sagas, meaning that an event from the past is written as if happening in the present. Some of these sagas were prosimetrum, a poem that combines elements of prose and verse. I appreciated the reference to dendrograms and Lexos, a lexomics program created by undergraduates at Wheaton and used to analyze text. I also learned new new vocabulary: heimweh, German for “home pain”, translated into Greek by Johannes Hofer as the term nostalgia (175-176) in his 1688 book Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe (339), and sibb, Old English for “unity, togetherness, and peace that can be found among close, loving kindred” (186). As an aside, this concept appears similar to ubutu, a Bantu African concept of togetherness that has been appropriated by humanist philosophers and open source operating system developers, even when sibb was available.

Among the more confusing explanations in the book was parsing through pronoun usage in a short conversation between Frodo and Gollum in the first chapter of Book IV, where Frodo states, “Perhaps we’ll find him again, if you come with us.” Drout neatly sorts out the sentence as: we’ll = Frodo + Gollum; him = Sméagol, the lost self of Gollum; you = Gollum; and us = Frodo + Sam (280-281). I would personally argue that the “we’ll” includes Sam. However, a highly effective sequence of camera shots would begin in Sam’s perspective with Frodo talking to Gollum, and then cutting Gollum’s perspective as Frodo refers to himself and Sam. This discussion of confusing pronouns continues with “Gollum’s abandonment or loss of the first-person singular[, which] happens at the same time he decides to betray the hobbits to Shelob… responses to having been terrified and humiliated by Frodo’s use of the Ring.” (283) To me, this humiliation parallels Frodo’s treatment of Boromir at the entrance to Moria back in Book II, but Boromir’s pronoun usage is not studied here. I might have to write an essay about it.

Beyond literature and linguistics, Drout discusses the origins of Tolkien’s works as inspired by older literature. The Kalevala, especially “The Story of Kullervo”, is noted as an inspiration, which I did know from previous research. I was less aware of the origin of Eärendel, later spelled Eärendil, seeming the first character created by Tolkien, and inspired by a line in the Old English poem now called Christ I or Crist I found in the Exeter Book. The framing narrative of the book being several accounts of a war written from the perspective of different characters is similar to a compilatio, a compiled medieval manuscript. In modern terms, this makes the work multivocal with each writer having “a distinctive and distinguished speaking style” (86). Drout quipped that, “Expanding “The Council of Elrond” to novel length and having each chapter narrated by a different character would just be As I Lay Dying in Middle-earth” with Elrond acting as a committee chair (88). Other literary references were more recent. Tolkien was inspired by Eric Brighteyes, a Viking novel written by H. Rider Haggard and published in 1891. Since the target audience was men, the book is regarded as an epic, although it seems stylistically similar to a romance novel, much like some chapters of The Lord of the Rings.

While an overall strong work, I did have two points of discontent. Some of the vocabulary seemed overly complicated, as is common in academic writing. For example, Drout noted that the “focalizing character” (145), or the person who is writing the section, was often the least knowledgeable person in the scene. The phrase “unironic epistemic regime” is used to contrast post-modernist / metafictional writing, the latter class I did take while at Wheaton. As best as I can parse it, the phrase means that the reader assumes the narrator is telling the truth, and there is only one truth. This contrasts post-modernism, where the reader assumes the narrator thinks the truth is fake and is kind of bitter about it.

My second point of discontent is that some interpretations of the text run counter to the actual text, which mainly appear in “Chapter 7 Tapestry”. I will discuss most of these more thoroughly in my essay series that usually runs on Sundays, but I do want to point out a fallacy in theory that the Ring causes desire for isolation. I agree that the Ring has the power to isolate, but the examples are not as strong as they might have been (267). I also agree that Gollum self-isolates in a cave after having been kicked out by his grandmother. While the concept of Bilbo having “no close friends except Frodo” is correct, Bilbo has told stories to his younger cousins and treats his servants well. Merry was comfortable enough around Bag End to read Bilbo’s diary. Frodo’s core friend group is mentioned by Drout, but not the twenty friends invited to the parties at Bag End, nor his hobby of talking to the strangers wandering through the Shire; in this regard, Frodo is actually more social than other hobbits.

For those interested in Tolkien studies and looking for a current and nonpartisan look at the subject, this is an excellent choice. The language was mostly approachable, with the few exceptions that I noted, but this is not an entry level book. Readers might want to look at the work of Tom Shippey and Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond (dutifully cited throughout the text) before tackling this work. However, “Chapter 6 Threads” is a thorough explanation of fantasy racial hierarchy in The Silmarillion could be helpful to first time readers. Few other academic books contain elements of memoir, making this work unique.

The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien's Creation by Michael D.C. Drout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars