Did J.K. Rowling borrow heavily from J.R.R. Tolkien?
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Did J.K. Rowling borrow heavily from J.R.R. Tolkien?
Submitted by Khalid on Sat, 2004/06/05 - 23:40Is it just me, or did someone else notice?
Initially, after seeing "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone", and "The Fellowship of the Ring", I thought there are too many similarities between them to be coincidental.
After seeing "The Chamber of Secrets", and reading a bit about "The Prisoner of Azkaban", I saw "Lord of the Rings" trilogy again at home on DVD.
I thought that there was a lot of borrowing that J.K. Rowling did from J.R.R. Tolkien.
Let us see a list of similarities:
| Similarity | Lord of the Rings | Harry Potter |
|---|---|---|
| Villian | Sauron is the head of evil. He lost his power, and needs the ring to gain it all back | Voldemort is also a vanquished evil wizard. He needs the Sorcerer's Stone in order to gain his strength back |
| Unlikely Hero | Frodo Baggins is a Hobbit, a peaceful -- almost childish -- and weak race. He is entrusted with the task of saving the world from great evil | Harry is an 11 year orphan who does much the same |
| Special Object | The One Ring is the object that the hero must prevent the villian from getting, so as to regain his full powers | The Sorcerer's Stone is the same |
| Mentor/Protector | Gandalf is a guiding, helping, mentoring, teaching figure for Frodo | Professor Dumbledore is the same in the Harry Potter series |
| Troll | In the Fellowship of the Ring, the Orcs have a Cave Troll with them, and in The Two Towers, the Cave Trolls open the gates of Mordor | In Harry Potter II, there is a Mountain Troll, whom Harry and his friends have to overpower |
| Giant Spider | Shelob is a giant spider that almost kills and eats Frodo, in The Return of the King | In the forest, there is a talking spider. It is a friend of Hagred, but chases Harry wanting to eat him |
| Giant raptor bird | A giant eagle saves Gandalf from Isengard | In the Prisoner of Azkaban, Buckbeak is a giant raptor helping Harry and friends |
| Dragon | In the Hobbit, the prelude to The Lord of the Rings, the dragon Smaug is Bilbo Baggins adversary | In Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets, there is a dragon like reptilian monster, the Basilisk, whom Harry has to slay |
| Goblins | The goblins are one of the races of evil allying with Sauron and Saruman | There are goblins who run the bank. They are physically similar to the other ones, although mostly benign |
| Sidekick "Creature" | In Lord of the Ring, Gollum is a creature with both dual good and evil personalities. He helps Frodo in his quest | Dobby is a house elf who is both a hinderance and helpful at different times |
Of course, J.K. Rowling has a lot of original ideas of her own, such as the concept of muggles, and the game of Quiddich.
My opinion is that she borrowed too many themes to be a coincidence. For sure she was "inspired" by Tolkien's Lord of the Ring, at least partially.
After writing this page, I found the following links that ponder some of the points above:
- "Stone" and "Ring" look like 2 pages out of Same Spell-book
- Wikipedia article has a brief mention of similarities.
- A web page listing the similarities between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings going into character details.
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J.K. Rowling
It says that Rowling got sued, or came close to it, for stealing "muggle" from another book.
A lot of fantasy these days
A lot of fantasy these days are borrowed from Tolkien and he borrowed from mythology and other sources before. Most of the simaliarities are just chance, or is very common. Many books feature parentless heros. I like LOTR and HP both very much, but I've also read enough other books to see that HP is not a rip off and everybody borrows ideas.
beautifully said
beautifully said
Thank you this claim that
Thank you this claim that everybody is always ripping off Tolkien is getting old. The truth is all of these different stories all get inspiration from somewhere even Tolkien. Most heroes over all of mythology are orphans of some kind or another! Heroes like Robin Hood, Beowulf, King Arthur, Hercules, Peter Pan, Perseus to name a few. This is not a concept reserved as being invented by Tolkien alone. There are many themes that are found in all of these stories and the can be traced farther back than Tolkien. You could draw and find these same kinds of similarities between Star Wars and Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings and The Legend of King Arthur and so on. This doesn't mean that Tolkien wasn't a brilliant writer nor does it make any of these people thieves! I love all of these stories for their own value and people might enjoy them all more if they worried less about if they are similar to another story.
law suit
I read somewhere that the court dismissed the claim and had the person suing Rowling pay some 30.000 pounds for falsification of documents or somesuch...
She did not actually steal it
She did not actually steal it though, as the book in question was never published!
Similarities
"As long as it survives so will He"
As long as the Rings survives Sauron will. As long as the objects will Voldemort's soul in it survive so will he.
Names
Arago... Aragorn and Aragog
Loose their parents
Both Harry and Frodo lost their parents.
Living Relatives
Neither like their living relatives (except Bilbo, who, Frodo doesn't know at first, is still alive)
Trolls
Both have to attack a troll.
Scars
both have scars given by the enemy that hurts if they come close. Frodo has a scar where he got stabbed and Harry where Voldemort hit him with the curse.
Spiders
Concerning the Arago... point you made - that will most likely be complete coincidence as Aragog is clearly based on Arachnid (a class of animals comprising scorpions and spiders!).
Losing one's parents and disliking one's relatives are two of the oldest components in the basket case of literary tricks. They might be based on Tolkien or not. They might just as well be based on myriads of other books (Oliver Twist for an English school teacher, for example) or just literary knowledge per se. In any case, I do not think that it accounts to stealing if the concept in question is so widely used.
I agree that the names of
I agree that the names of Aragon and Aragog are completely irrelevant, however Aragog is very similar to Shelob in The Two Towers.
Both well-written
Also, in LOTR, Sauren does not allow anyone to speak his name, and in part of the Fellowship it refers to him as "he who must not be named", which is how Voldemort is referred to throughout HP. They are both also referred to as "Dark Lord". In LOTR the Two Towers there is a close adviser to the Lord of the Mark in Rohan named "Wormtongue" whereas in HP there is a man called "Wormtail" who is in league with Voldemort. I noticed a lot of similarities in reading all of these books, however, I believe they are simply two books of a similar tale and are both very well written. Tolkien was so popular and influential it would be hard to write a book of such myth and magic without using any of his ideas. He was an extremely thorough and descriptive writer. Sufficing to say, he covered it all. Both series were very well done in my opinion.
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