The Return of the King

The Return of the King is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. It was published in 1955. The story begins in the kingdom of Gondor, which is soon to be attacked by the Dark Lord Sauron. The volume was praised by literary figures including W. H. Auden, Anthony Price, and Michael Straight, but attacked by Edwin Muir, who had praised The Fellowship of the Ring. The chapter "The Scouring of the Shire", and a chapter-length narrative in the appendices, "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen", have attracted discussion by scholars and critics. "The Scouring of the Shire" has been called the most important chapter in the whole novel, providing in its internal quest to restore the Shire a counterbalance to the main quest to destroy the Ring. Commentators have read into it a variety of contemporary political allusions including a satire of socialism and a strand of environmentalism. Tolkien described "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" as essential to the plot of the novel. It covers events both before and after the main narrative, and differs from it in not being from the hobbits' point of view. Scholars have discussed the tale's themes including love and death, Tolkien's balance between open Christianity and treating the characters as pagan; and the fact that having the tale as an appendix deprives the main story of much of its love-interest.