Is 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.
Comments
Anonymous (not verified)
i think your all being
Mon, 2008/07/07 - 20:43i think your all being stupid and looking to much into things.
the charicters & things you claim to she took from J.R.R. Tolkien, are used in such a different way that it has to be a coincidence.
Ariel (not verified)
Response to HMMMMM and others
Thu, 2008/07/24 - 01:07HMMMM you obviously did not read the books. The movies are an awful representation of the HP novels. Dumbledore didn't "egg" him on as far as killing Bellatrix in the BOOK.
There are a lot of original ideas in Harry Potter like the logical division between Muggles and Wizards, quiditch, professor/student relations in a magical boarding school, the concept of Horcruxes, Snape's character, etc.
A lot of critics like to point out that HP is a simple book that is very easy to read. Guess what, making a book easy to read is a very hard task. It's like people who play video games and say to themselves "Wow this seams so easy, why don't I just go into video games" just to find out that there are many technical things to master in order to make video games enjoyable and simplistic.
It's strange but a lot of critics are English majors who want to attach more meaning to what the authors intend in their works. Unfortunately they don't want to admit that English while great to read and write is not a definite science and should not be considered absolute as it is full of subjectivity. Psychology is more of an appropriate field to analyze characters in fiction.
Anonymous (not verified)
something to think of
Tue, 2009/03/24 - 02:45well then i belive peter jackson should sue the harry potter director instead of tolkiens sue rowling.
Anonymous (not verified)
Muggles ...
Wed, 2008/07/30 - 11:52Muggles are very similar to the concept of Mundanes in the Piers Anthony Xanth Series. No refuting that.
*** (not verified)
i noticed these similarities
Wed, 2008/07/30 - 17:59i noticed these similarities as soon as i watched both these movies
the characters are very similar
it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day i enjoyed harry potter and the lord of the rings
I think the lord of the rings is fantastic, especially the different locations they have used.
Anonymous (not verified)
i dont care if rowling
Sun, 2008/09/21 - 10:27i dont care if rowling copied anything from anyone. my point is that Tolkien is waaaaaaay better than her. i mean, ok, she started this harry potter series quite charmingly, but she totally messed it up in the later books. and dont tell me rowling showed things (read:emotions, relationships among characters, etc) coz she didnt. its all just details. insignificant ones. and why do people love her so much? coz she's soooo good in keeping people curious. and she's got some mysteries that people were dying to know about. that, is not originality. that, is a trick to sell more books. harry potter is the kind of books id only read once and forget about it, while the LOTR trilogy, its something ud reread again, and again, and would still find something new about the story. thats the kind of a genius Tolkien is. people who say LOTR trilogy is boring are people who dont love reading enough. or people who arent deep enough to read such deep books. or people who simply dont have enough vocabularies to UNDERSTAND the books.
Anonymous (not verified)
If you like Tolkien you
Tue, 2008/10/07 - 06:41If you like Tolkien you should stop using the word trilogy for the LotR. It was conceived as a single book and intended to be published as this by Tolkien, but it was split by the publishers into three parts. In fact, if you read the book, you should have seen that the LotR is divided by Tolkien into six parts according to the narrative sections, named Book I-VI.
grace (not verified)
Actually, I think they are a
Wed, 2008/10/08 - 12:40Actually, I think they are a trilogy. I know Tolkien did say that his work wasn't a trilogy, because it was meant to be a single work, but, "A trilogy is a set of three works of art, usually literature, film, or video games, that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or three individual work"-Wikipedia.
So. literally speaking, LoTR is a trilogy, whether Tolkien wanted it or not, no matter if it was meant to be published as a single work, cause in the end, it was published as a three book novel which were connected to each other and thus, it meets all of the requirements to be a trilogy. LITERALLY speaking. which matters, because the "trilogy" tag has become so popular and everybody uses it nowadays. even literature experts.
And admit it, trilogy or not, these books rock!
=]
Ignotus Peverell (not verified)
People love her because she
Sun, 2009/09/27 - 10:52People love her because she wrote great books. I like Tolkien but not fans who are Rowling haters or Rowling Fans who are Tolkien haters. Harry Potter are books that you WILL read again and again. Some people say that there are details not necessary in Lotro, it gets so detailed it gets borring. There are some parts yes, but its AWSOEME none - the - less. Rowling didn't steal ideas. Everyone does. Tolkien "stole" too from other myths and stories. You can copyright the plot and names, but not the Creatures used.
Anonymous (not verified)
Ok, but again, Tolkien gave
Mon, 2013/04/15 - 19:04Ok, but again, Tolkien gave credit to them
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