The monsters of The Lord of the Rings were horrifying because they preyed on the audience's psychology. Since readers - and later, viewers of the film adaptations - were already familiar with these tropes to an extent, the narrative did not need to do as much to convince them that the monsters should be feared. For example, Orcs and Uruk-hai behaved similarly to zombies, being cannibalistic, humanoid monsters who moved in droves. Some of Tolkien's monsters even paralleled tropes that would not become popular until long after The Lord of the Rings' publication. Shelob and the Oliphaunts, meanwhile, embodied the similarly popular trope of giant versions of ordinary beasts. Ghosts and similar creatures have persisted in pop culture and mythology throughout history because humans have always been haunted by the question of what happens after death. In Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo also struggled against the ghoulish Barrow-wights, a scene Jackson did not include. In the chapter "The Forbidden Pool" from The Two Towers, Faramir even described them as "living ghosts." Nazgûl were far from the only undead creatures who roamed Middle-earth, as the Dead Men of Dunharrow were cursed by Isildur to linger as phantoms in the White Mountains. The first servants of Sauron that Frodo encountered, the Nazgûl, were essentially ghosts they were invisible wraiths who rode under the cover of night and struck those around them with intangible fear. Despite the term's negative connotation, tropes came into existence for a reason: they have been proven to work. ![]() ![]() Tolkien was a pioneer of the fantasy genre, but he also drew from long-standing tropes.
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