This is a comparison of the three Lord of the Rings novels that compares not only the
specific individual words used in the text but also some phrases as well.
Voyant Analysis
In these tabs the Voyant analysis shows that said as the most used word in the text
throughout the three novels which is represented in both the chart and group of
words shown on the site. However, this pattern of the exact same word being at the
exact rankings breaks apart quickly when getting into the second most famous word of
each text because as you may be able to see Frodo is the second most famous word in
the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, this second spot is followed by long as
the second most word in The Two Towers which is also Frodo, and finally we come to
the final book which shows a tie in the second most words which are Sam and Came
respectively. This is interesting because Tolkien emphasizes dialog as the most
important part of all his books due to the word said playing the most key role in
allowing for characters to speak to one another in text. But, when diving deeper
into the analysis for the following words they change a lot with the first and
second books emphasizing Frodo's sole need to destroy the ring of power by himself
almost since there are no names that come even close to his own in terms of use.
This will go on to flip through as in the third analysis at the bottom many other
words such as Sam, Gandalf, come are much closer to taking a higher usage in the
novel compared to the first two. My assumption from all of this, Tolkien more than
likely decided to write the second most used words this way so that in the first two
novels he wanted to use Frodo as the sole ring bearer and destroyer in these but in
the third he flips the narrative and shows how it’s not only Frodo's journey and
overall mission to destroy the ring rather many others are now emphasized to this
task as well bringing the message home that, “we need to do this together” rather
than, “I can do this alone”.
Antconc Analysis
All of the N-gram sizes, which are a series of text sizes you can use to analyze text
and documents, to five, which chooses a pattern of five words throughout the text,
since I thought this would be a good middle ground to test out text. I did this
because I wanted an interesting mix of words but didn’t want to stretch my search
out for too long, only getting a single-digit analysis for each one. So in that
case, in the first text which is the first photo under the Antconc Analysis heading
shows that the phrase to pop up most was "it seemed to him that" twelve times. For
the second text which is the next picture down from the previous one shows that "the
Lord of the Mark" appeared thirteen different times. Finally, in the last picture it
shows that the phrase of five words used most in the third text was "the Paths of
the Dead" which appeared twenty-four different times in that novel. Now my final
analysis of these texts are split a little bit since on one hand I want to say that
in the first two novels he had more creativity than the final one because the first
two texts showed that Tolkien may have been more creative in the first two than the
final one because the first two N-grams were in the low teens when set to a five
word size versus the final text which text was used over twenty times showing a lack
of creativity. Or, this could be a stroke of creative genius since in the first two
novels we had to be introduced to a whole new world, characters, and setting that
had to be uniquely established versus the third book where he may have used these
repeating phrases in order to tell the most important parts of the text over and
over. That is because instead of having to introduce us to new concepts in the final
book he wanted to emphasize the final parts of the journey and how it concludes
reusing the most important phrases rather than multiple ones.
Conclusion between these two Analysis Websites
So, this is an interesting final conclusion we need to create because on one side we
have the word said and all of our gathered second and more most-used words being
used throughout all three texts the most but never once appearing in the N-gram
sizes I set up. So, with that in mind it shows that Tolkien more than likely used
very unique dialogue and writing when making his characters speak and when he
mentioned their names. This here would disprove my theory of him being lazy and
instead being very uniquely brilliant with how he crafted this story together since
he didn’t allow for the most popular words in the Novels that I found coincide with
any of the most popular phrases in his texts I could find at least. So, overall
since none of the words I found in the voyant analysis weren’t in the antconc
phrases this shows that Tolkien was a very creative and thoughtful writer who built
a masterful and original story that didn’t repeat very often unless it played a very
large role in the overall story.
