Imagine entering a pre-industrial world full of mystery and magic. Imagine a world full of monsters, demons, and danger, as well as a world of friends, fairies, and adventure. Imagine finding a little hole in this world and out pops a hobbit. A hobbit? What exactly is a hobbit? This same question ponders the mind of author and scholar John Ruele Tolkien and allows him to create this world of Middle-Earth. J.R.R. Tolkien is a brilliant man with unlimited imagination and fantasy. He writes The Lord of the Rings as an aged man with much experience and knowledge. Certainly reality around him helps shape this epic. The culture and the time period in which he writes influences his pieces, but most importantly his faith does. J.R.R. Tolkien is a strict Catholic Christian whose writing relates to his beliefs in several ways. Although The Lord of the Rings has a pagan setting with no direct acknowledgement to any religion, Christianity is still symbolic within this masterpiece and contains subtle messages. The Lord of the Rings is certainly not to be read literally, but neither is every word of the Bible. Instead in the Bible there is religious truth to be retrieved and J.R.R. Tolkien applies the same idea to his work. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a myth whose basis lies on the ideas of Christianity.
Clearly, the character within The Lord of the Rings parallel biblical characters. The evil, antagonist of this epic is Sauron who has a direct relationship with Satan. In A Tolkien Compass Jared Lobdell states, "Originally Sauron was a fair creature to look upon and had been given supremacy in Middle-earth Sauron bewitched the king of Numenor and most of his subjects, telling them that "everlasting life would be his who possessed the Undying Lands" Deceived, the Numenoreans committed Middle-earth's Original Sin" (68). This shows how Sauron tricks the fair men of Numenor into violating their single prohibition.