💕 Finding The Five Love Languages in The Lord of the Rings

From the Archives

Love is in the air. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.

The days are steadily getting longer, the Valentine’s day candy has been in the store aisles for weeks already, and V-Day itself cannot be far behind. So what better time than now to take a look at…

The Five Love Languages in The Lord of the Rings

1. Acts of Service

Is there any act of service greater than “I will take this cursed magic ring on a journey of thousands of miles at the potential cost of my own soul because none of you can agree who should do it even though I only signed up to get it here to your Elven haven and thought I was done with all this now”?

Credit for all images: New Line Cinema

Well how about offering your weapon and your service on the journey?

Yeah, you’re right, those are nice but not greater acts of service than simply walking into Mordor carrying the weapon of the Enemy in a plan so foolish he doesn’t even think it’s a possibility.

But what about going with you that entire way to Mordor AND THEN CARRYING YOU THE FINAL DISTANCE UP AN ACTIVE VOLCANO??

Yeah, now we’re talking. Speaking of talking…

2. Words of Affirmation

ok, there’s definitely the obvious — albeit a tad creepy — examples:

You shouldn’t have, Gollum. Like, literally, please stop.

Then there are the times where an attempt at conveying affection was made but it’s not at all clear if it was successful

Every hobbit in the audience thinking about what that means:

But there are of course genuine examples of heartfelt affirmations as well:

3. Receiving Gifts

Who doesn’t love gifts? And gifts are found all throughout Tolkien’s works.

Here’s an excerpt from a previous newsletter where I list just a few of the places we find gifts throughout Tolkien’s works:

Gifts are something of a minor recurring theme in Tolkien’s legendarium. Ilúvatar himself gives his younger children, the race of men, the gift of mortality. In the Second Age, Sauron disguises himself in a fair form and gives himself the name Annatar, which means ‘Lord of Gifts,’ while he attempts to sway the elves in Middle-earth to his side. Sméagol demands the One Ring as a birthday gift from his cousin Déagol. Bilbo gifts both Sting and his mithril shirt to Frodo, the latter of which was itself a gift to Bilbo from Thorin. Galadriel gives gifts to the members of the Fellowship upon their departure from Lothlórien [including three strands of her hair to Gimli]. And who could forget this moment from one of the most memeable scenes in the entire film trilogy:

Suffice it to say that there is no shortage of examples of the receiving gifts love language in The Lord of the Rings.

The Gifts of the Wise

4. Physical Touch

First of all, if we take this one quite literally, there’s oodles of physical touch in The Lord of the Rings.

“Hold out your hand, Frodo…

and if we count violence, there is more physical touch in this story than in most! Exhibit A:

bonk! bonk!

Ok, but we’re not just talking about any physical touch, we’re talking about affectionate physical touch connected to love.

Well, physical affection is a hallmark of both the love between friends and romantic love depicted in The Lord of the Rings.

I’m not crying thinking about Frodo leaving Sam, Merry and Pippin and sailing West, YOU ARE!

5. Quality Time

Nothing says quality time quite like being together from start to finish on the road to Mordor.

And of course we can’t omit Arwen’s “I’m here for a good time not a long time” to Aragorn:

So you see, each of the five love languages can be found illustrated by the way characters from The Lord of the Rings care for and love each other.

That’s it, there’s only five love languages, right?

Oh no…we’ve, all of us, been deceived, for another love language was made!

Just kidding!

But whatever your love language, you can find it exemplified in The Lord of the Rings.

To Discuss:

What are some other examples of the love languages from LOTR or Tolkien in general that come to mind? Do you find the love languages to be a helpful concept or one that’s not all that accurate/relevant? Let me know in the comments!

Appendices

• Are you on Medium as well as Substack? So am I! I’d love to connect with you over there if you are too. Find me at my author page!

• Today’s post is from the archives, but I hopefully have two new newsletters hitting your inboxes next week! We’ll see if I can pull it off haha (rest assured: there will be at least one).

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