Xenite.Org News

LOTR fan site fools UK's Sunday Times - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

July 26, 2000 at 14:06:13

TheOneRing.Net has run a couple of items about a recent Cate Blanchett article in the Sunday Times. TORN is criticizing the poor reporting in the article. It appears the reporter, unfamiliar with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, went searching on the Web for a quick summary and got caught in a wider web.

Years ago, when students kept pestering the Tolkien news groups for help with their book reports on Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, O. Sharp wrote a parody which completely summarizes the story in all the worst ways possible. People searching for Lord of the Rings summaries often find the Web site (note the page is named "homework.htm") because it ranks highly in the search engines.

The part of the misleading summary cited from the article in TheOneRing.Net's article is:

"For the uninitiated, Galadriel is the good sister of the evil but beautiful Queen Beruthiel, who imprisons the Fellowship of the Ring in the forest of Lothlorien. In the book, Galadriel frees them from her sister's clutches."

Anyone who has actually read the book would know immediately this is nonsense, but any student who turns in the report will get a failing grade (or perhaps may get an excellent grade for being original -- but the intention was to teach cheaters a lesson).

So, it looks like the news media still needs to learn a little more about checking their facts when using the Internet. There is, btw, only one complete summariztion of The Lord of the Rings on the World Wide Web, although it contains a few mistakes. The Web site was created explicitly for the purpose of helping students cheat on their homework, and Xenite.Org refuses to link to it for that reason.