The Lord of the Rings/Tropes S-U

Tropes from The Lord of the Rings (the book)

Tropes A-C — Tropes D-F — Tropes G-I — Tropes J-L — Tropes M-O — Tropes P-R — Tropes V-Z

---

Tropes S-U

• Samus Is a Girl: Dernhelm aka Éowyn
• Sapient Steed: Gandalf's steed Shadowfax.
  • Merry and Pippin hitch a ride on Treebeard, and also the eagles when they rescue Frodo and Sam from Mordor.
  • Presumably some of the mounted orcs' steeds in the battle scenes were sentient Wargs.
• The Savage South: The land south of Gondor, called Harad, is considered savage land. Sauron musters an army from there.
• Sealed Army in a Can: The Oathbreakers from the Paths of the Dead.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Balrog of Moria
• Second Hand Storytelling: Gandalf's escape from Saruman, Treebeard's attack on Isengard, and Aragorn's adventures in southern Gondor. Justified by Word of God that the story is mostly seen from a hobbit POV, since it was hobbits that wrote the tome professor Tolkien translated
  • Also note that parts of the story with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli traveling away from the rest of the Fellowship (the majority of The Two Towers and the Paths of the Dead) are known to the Hobbits because they shared their stories with them at Isengard and Minas Tirith respectively.
• Secondary Character Title: The Lord of the Rings refers to Sauron not Frodo as some believe. The full title of Frodo's book about the war is The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King.
  • It is a particularly strange error to ascribe such a title to Frodo, as there is a scene where Pippin says, "Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring" and is quite strongly corrected about it by Gandalf.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Faramir and Boromir.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The Ring's effect on Frodo.
• Shining City: Minas Tirith.
• Shown Their Work: Tolkien's understanding of Mythology, Linguistics, Geography, Geology and Climatology are masterful.
• Shrug of God: Tom Bombadil. In response to a question from a fan about his true nature:

"Even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)."

• Siege Engines: The assault on Minas Tirith.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The main continuity splits off into two branches when the Fellowship breaks up near Rauros - one arc following Frodo, Sam and Gollum in the journey to Mordor, the other one following everyone else and the wars in Rohan and Gondor. The second arc itself splits, rejoins (at Isengard), and then splits into three (with Pippin and Gandalf to Minas Tirith, with Merry and the Rohirrim, with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli through the Paths of the Dead).
• Single Line of Descent: Surprisingly, subverted. Aragorn is descended from the northern branch of the kingly line; the Gondor branch of the Numenorean kings diversified into several potential claimants, endured a civil war over the question of inheritance, and eventually no viable successor could be found (All explained in the appendices). Also there are other people appearing and mentioned who also descend from the same ancestor as the "main descendant" of that line.
  • Further subverted in that although the Gondorian and Arnorian branches claim direct descent from Elros, first king of Numenor, they are not descendants of the last king, as their ancestor branched off from the eldest daughter of the 4th king. Also found All There in the Manual.
• Sleep Cute: Gollum has a fleeting Pet the Dog moment when he catches Frodo and Sam doing this on the stairs of Cirith Ungol.
• Sleeping Dummy: The hobbits pull this off at the Prancing Pony in Bree, with the help of Barliman the innkeeper.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Heavily on the idealistic side. Evil may triumph temporarily, but in the long run it's made very clear that evil is nothing but a hollow mockery of good and is destined to lose in the end. That does not, of course, mean that in the immediate term Sauron is any less of a threat.
  • Well, sort of. Gandalf makes it clear that fighting evil is a constant thing, and that plenty of evils will come after Sauron is defeated.
    • Even then, however, the nature of Good and Evil in Middle Earth is heavily influenced by Tolkien's Catholicism. Good and Evil are not equals, and while the latter may dominate for a time and seem unstoppable, when all is said and done the former is stronger.
    • Some essays point out that the combination of Earn Your Happy Ending, the general hopelessness of conventional victory, the Norse "Theory of Courage" one could equate to Knight in Sour Armor -ness at times, and the fact that Frodo is so physically and emotionally beaten by the Quest to the point that he can no longer continue to live on the Middle-Earth he saved makes this work, while still decidedly idealist, hardly a super-happy-Tastes Like Diabetes ending.
• Smoking Is Cool: Pipe weed.
  • Gandalf catches himself getting excessively tetchy with Pippin in the Mines of Moria, and eventually realizes what the problem is — he hasn't had a decent smoke in a week.
• Sneaky Departure: Frodo embarking on a solitary trip to Mordor (though followed by Sam).
• So Much for Stealth: Moria in particular.

Gimli: That was the sound of a hammer, or I've never heard one. Gandalf: Yes, and I do not like it. It may have nothing to do with Peregrin's foolish stone; but probably something has been disturbed that would have been better left quiet.

• Soul Jar: The One Ring
• Spanner in the Works: Gollum
• Speak Friend and Enter
• Split Personality: Gollum/Smeagol. It's highlighted even more in the films.
• Spontaneous Reverb: When Frodo is trapped in a burial mound on the Barrow Downs, he sings a rhyme to summon Tom Bombadil:

"...with that name his voice seemed to grow stronger: it had a full and lively sound, and the dark chamber echoed as if to drum and trumpet."

• Sssssnaketalk: Gollum
• Staff of Authority - The Istari, including Saruman and Gandalf have staffs that seem to be symbolic as well as practical. In their confrontation at Isengard after the Ents march on the place, Gandalf breaks Saruman's staff to show that his authority has been revoked by the Powers That Be.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: The Trope Maker, or at least the Trope Codifier.
• Starfish Language: The language of the Ents is implied to be this. Even the simplest words are very long and elaborate, and so even the shortest conversations probably last several hours.
• The Starscream: Saruman.
• Stay on the Path: Averted. Gandalf tells the hobbits to stay off the roads on their way to Bree.
• Stealth Pun: Merry is given the name "Holdwine" by Éowyn and Éomer once, and it's never mentioned again. It means "loyal friend" in Old English, but in Modern English ...
• Steel Mill: Saruman runs one at the basement of Isengard. Instead of coke, he uses charcoal made from trees as the iron reducing agent. Which, of course, the Ents find less than amusing, considering the sheer number of trees he's cut down.
• A Storm Is Coming: When Gandalf came bearing news of Saruman's plans to the Rohirrim. King Theoden (still under Saruman's influence by way of Wormtongue) calls him "Stormcrow", and Wormtongue mocks him: "Lathspell I name you, Ill-news; and ill news is an ill guest, they say."
• Storming the Castle: Subverted.
• Story-Breaker Power: Gandalf in both The Hobbit and LoTR.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: When they return home after the War and the Shire is back to normal after its occupation, all of the four hobbits do feel this effect to varying degrees. While the other three are coping with it, Frodo, with the additional burdens of the Ring and his other wounds, cannot "return home" or find peace again; he leaves the Shire to sail to the West with the Elves.
• The Strategist: Gandalf
• Succession Crisis: Gondor had a brutal civil war over who should inherit the throne, a half-breed or a pureblood. A generation later, when the last king of Gondor foolishly rode off toward captivity and (presumed) death, there was no one left willing to take the throne, for fear of a second civil war.
  • Something similar led to splitting up the realm of Arnor into three smaller and weaker parts, ultimately leading to its fall at the hands of the Witchking of Angmar. Again, it's All There in the Manual.
  • It's mentioned several times that Aragorn is specifically trying to avoid this by waiting until the end of the war to take the throne.
• Suicide Mission: Aragorn leads a hopeless march against the gates of Mordor, to draw the orc armies out of Frodo's way.
  • Frodo believes his own mission is this, since he holds very little hope that he and Sam will make it to Orodruin and is certain that there won't be a return if they do.
• Supernatural Aid: Galadriel's gifts to the Fellowship.
• Super Soldier: Uruk-hai, Olog-hai. Not really super though, just Elite Mooks. Then there are the Rangers and the Knights of Dol Amroth on the side of the heroes, playing it more straight.
• Supervillain Lair: Barad-dûr and Isengard
• Swamps Are Evil: The Dead Marshes and the Midgewater Marshes.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Éowyn
• Take Our Word for It: Gandalf's description of the "nameless things" that dwell beneath Moria; Tolkien's description of many of the Orc's family-unfriendly habits, and of Sauron himself and his hideouts. If it's something of which Gandalf or Aragorn "will not speak... to darken the light of day", you know it's bad.
  • Aragorn seems to have encountered the Ringwraiths personally at least once before he met the hobbits in Bree; the only description he can bear to give is simply: "They are... terrible." And as he says it, his hands are clutching the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turn white.
• Take That, Critics!: In the Foreword: "Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kind of works that they seem to enjoy."
• Take Up My Sword: Isildur takes Narsil from his dead father, and 3000 years later Aragorn uses the same sword re-forged in the War of the Ring.
  • A literal, unspoken example when Sam, believing Frodo dead from Shelob's poison, takes Sting (and the Ring).
• Tangled Family Tree: The Hobbits. Thanks to generations worth of intermarrying between the Tooks, Bagginses, Bolgers, and Brandybucks (all of them among the most respected families in the Shire), Frodo is Bilbo's first and second cousin, Pippin's second and third cousin, Merry's first, second, and third cousin, and his own third cousin! Sam, in fact, is the only major hobbit character who isn't related to any of the others.
• Talking in Your Dreams
• Talking in Your Sleep: Frodo seems especially prone to doing this. It also applies to Merry, Eowyn and Faramir in the Houses of Healing.
• Terrain Sculpting: The Ents divert a river in order to flood Isengard. Once this is done, they put it back again.
• That Was the Last Entry: The Book of Mazarbul ends with a hurriedly scrawled "They are coming."
• Thermal Dissonance: The One Ring.
• This Is Reality: Apparently halflings and Ents are no more than myth.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Frodo and Sam.
  • Technical Pacifist: Hobbits in general.
• Time Abyss: Tom Bombadil, Treebeard, Elrond; the Ents, Maiar and Elves overall.
• Title Drop
• Together in Death: Arwen chose a mortal fate (much like her ancestor Lúthien in The Silmarillion) so that she could die soon after Aragorn and follow his spirit out of the world.
• Translation Convention: All of our real-world languages do not exist in Middle-earth, and so the common Translation Convention applies. When not convention-translated, names and speech make use of either Tolkien's constructed languages, or of a real-world language used as stand-in for a fictional one. The latter ones are not chosen randomly, but to represent the relation between the respective 'proper' languages, or a certain image. Languages regularly replaced by stand-in languages in the text are: "Westron" aka the "Common Speech" is always rendered as English (as it is the Third-Age-novel's POV-character's language), the Rohirric language by Anglo-Saxon aka Old English (to appear vaguely familiar to the hobbits' Westron-English), and the language used by the Dwarves and the Men of Dale by Old Norse. Information on the 'translation' and what these languages 'really' look like, can be found in various appendices and additional texts.
  • If you read the appendices you also find out that the "original language" version actually has features which influence the plot, but which are not rendered in the English "translation". One of such is the contributing factor to the rumor in Minas Tirith that Pippin was a Prince of high status and power: hobbits no longer have/use a formal address, so Pippin's informal address to Denethor made the listeners think he would have to be of high status indeed. It's better implied in some of the foreign translations, in languages that do still have formal and informal variations of "you" (the hobbits simply don't use the formal ones).
• Treacherous Advisor: Grí­ma Wormtongue
• Trope Maker: And how! The ISO Standard Fantasy Setting started here.
• True Companions: The Fellowship of the Ring
  • The appendices only reinforce this; it's strongly implied that when Legolas finally sailed West, Gimli went with him, the only Dwarf ever to sail out of Middle-Earth.
• Understatement:

Gandalf: "The courtesy of your hall is somewhat lessened of late, Théoden son of Thengel."

• Unfamiliar Ceiling: Several examples: Frodo waking up in Rivendell in the first book, a bunch more in the third.
• Ultimate Evil: Sauron himself, of course is this trope incarnate (see trope description). Although he is not the first.
  • The fact that there's a Bigger Bad in the Backstory is thus Beyond the Impossible. Then again, Tolkien states that Sauron at the height of his power was more powerful than Morgoth during the War of the Jewels. Interestingly enough, he's not motiveless Evil Incarnate: his Start of Darkness was motivated by a desire for order and control, not destruction.
    • Depending on which version you favor, Morgoth started out far more powerful than Sauron but graually became weaker as he spent his power damaging the world. (At the start of The Silmarillion the combined powers of all the other gods/ archangels can barely hold him off; but towards the end of the War of the Jewels one single Elf challenges him to a duel and manages to wound him seven times.)
• Undead: The Nazgul, the Dead of Dunharrow. The barrow-wights however, are evil spirits possessing the remains in the barrows, so are functionally undead.
• The Unfavorite: Faramir
• Unintentional Backup Plan: Gandalf and Aragorn's Batman Gambit pays off in getting the One Ring to Mount Doom, but the One Ring itself spans their plans by finally corrupting Frodo at the last crucial moment. Fortunately, Gollum shows up to take the ring for himself before accidentally falling into the volcano and destroying it.
• Universe Chronology: more so in The Silmarillion but the Appendices give a lot info too.
• Unstoppable Rage: After seeing Eowyn apparently dead on the Pelennor fields, Eomund takes up the Battle Cry of "Death! Death!" and he and his men become an unassailable force of vengeance for the rest of the battle.
• The Usual Adversaries - Orcs mainly, but the Dunlendings, Easterlings and Haradrim as well to a lesser extent.