The appearance of mental illness in Middle-earth has been discussed by scholars of literature and by psychiatrists. Middle-earth is the fantasy world created by J. R. R. Tolkien. His novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are both set in Middle-earth and are peopled with realistically-drawn characters who experience life much as people do in the real world. Characters as diverse as Denethor, Théoden, Beorn, Gollum, and Frodo have been seen as possibly exemplifying conditions including paranoia, bipolar depression, schizoid personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and dissociative amnesia.
Tolkien's depiction of Frodo's mental suffering may derive from his own wartime experience. Scholars state that his friend C. S. Lewis was interested in Jungian psychology and the collective unconscious; Tolkien used these concepts in several places. Middle-earth is known to fans both through Tolkien's writings and through other media, notably Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series. In a celebrated scene, Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers depicts Gollum/Sméagol talking to himself, using the device of shot/reverse shot to switch between the two personalities.
Tolkien fans have discussed Gollum's diagnosis on over 1300 websites. A supervised study by medical students, in a paper that uses both Tolkien's and Jackson's depictions of the character, concluded that Gollum does not meet the criteria for schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder, but that he meets 7 of 9 criteria for schizoid personality disorder. Some psychiatrists have suggested that The Lord of the Rings offers useful and "very tangible" lessons for mental health by helping readers to envisage and empathise with the situations of other people.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , both set in his subcreated world of Middle-earth. [1]
The scholar of English Steve Walker states that Tolkien has rooted every element of Middle-earth naturally, using descriptions of Earthlike weather, landforms, peoples, cultures, flora, and fauna. [2] He comments that
The psychological authentication of Tolkien's fiction approaches Freudian levels of subtlety. That psychiatric insight can get almost clinical, as with the representation of Denethor's aberrant behavior in terms of paranoia, the motivation of Théoden's passivity as bipolar depression, and the causally rich implications of the parallels between Beorn's werebear transformations and symptoms of epileptic seizure. [3]
Other Tolkien scholars and psychiatrists broadly agree with Walker, in addition suggesting Gollum's schizoid personality disorder [4] and the resemblance of Frodo's increasingly disturbed mental state to post-traumatic stress disorder. [5] [6] The medievalist Alke Haarsma-Wisselink, who has experienced psychotic episodes, remarks that both Bilbo and Thorin in The Hobbit have symptoms of psychosis. [7] The Tolkien scholar James T. Williamson describes how Éowyn responds to her "perceived rejection" by Aragorn with "a madness" seen as her eyes change "from gray to 'on fire'"; [8] other scholars have named Éowyn as suffering from depression. [9] [10]
The psychiatrists Landon van Dell and colleagues write that The Lord of the Rings offers useful and "very tangible" lessons for mental health by helping readers to envisage and empathise with the situations of other people. [11]
Tolkien's depiction of Frodo's mental suffering may owe something to his own wartime experience. [13] The Tolkien scholar Karyn Milos comments that "recurring pain and intrusive memory, often triggered by significant dates or other reminders of the traumatic event, is a central characteristic of post-traumatic stress." [6] Janet Brennan Croft adds that "Frodo's experience of the war" resembles "modern war in its unrelieved stress". As in the static trenches of the First World War, in which Tolkien had fought, Frodo had to stay in cover on his quest to Mordor, constantly threatened by a watchful enemy he could not see. [13]
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term analytical psychology for his approach to the psyche. [14] [15] His theory included archetypes, the collective unconscious, individuation, the Self, and the shadow. [16] Tolkien and his friend C. S. Lewis were members of The Inklings literary club. The Tolkien scholar Nancy Bunting states that Lewis was interested in Jungian psychology and "enchanted" by the idea of the collective unconscious, and that he probably shared these ideas with Tolkien. [17] The scholar Verlyn Flieger states that Tolkien's incomplete novel The Lost Road was based on the collective unconscious. [17] [18] Flieger comments that in The Lost Road, Tolkien uses the "recognised psychological phenomenon" of sudden flashbacks "as a psychic gateway into locked-off areas of the soul". [19] The clinical psychologist Nancy Bunting writes that Tolkien expressed a Jungian view in several places, such as in a letter to Christopher Tolkien which, in her words, "sounds the Jungian refrain of linking native soil, race, and language". [17] Dorothy Matthews and others have identified numerous Jungian archetypes, such as the "Wise Old Man", in The Lord of the Rings. [20]
The madness and despair of Denethor, Steward of Gondor, have been compared to that of Shakespeare's King Lear. Both men are first outraged when their children (Faramir and Cordelia, respectively) refuse to aid them, but then grieve upon their children's death – or apparent death, in the case of Faramir. Both Denethor and Lear have been described as despairing of God's mercy, something extremely dangerous in a leader who has to defend a realm. [21] The Tolkien scholar Michael Drout writes that while Tolkien's professed dislike of Shakespeare is well-known, his use of King Lear for "issues of kingship, madness, and succession" was hardly surprising. [22]
J. R. R. Tolkien | Peter Jackson |
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Gollum was talking to himself. Sméagol was holding a debate with some other thought that used the same voice but made it squeak and hiss. A pale light and a green light alternated in his eyes as he spoke... | Peter Jackson's 2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers depicts Gollum/Sméagol talking to himself using the shot/reverse shot device in "perhaps the most celebrated scene in the entire film". [23] |
In Tolkien's book, the monster Gollum talks to himself in two different personalities, the good Sméagol and the evil Gollum. [4] Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers , part of his major film series on Middle-earth, similarly depicts Gollum/Sméagol talking to himself in "perhaps the most celebrated scene in the entire film". [23] The scene uses the device of shot/reverse shot to switch between the two personalities, who are represented as two different CGI characters. The scholar of film Kristin Thompson writes that Jackson and Fran Walsh, who directed the scene, suggest the mental conflict using a "subtle combination of framing, camera movement, editing, and character glances." [23] Thompson comments that the scene's ability to make the viewer "apparently see two characters arguing with each other when only one is actually present creates an eerie, even astonishing moment that transcends the presentation in the book". [23]
Tolkien fans have extensively discussed what mental illness this dual personality might represent. [4] [24] A 2004 paper in the British Medical Journal by supervised medical students at University College London (UCL) notes that the diagnosis for Gollum's mental illness is analysed on more than 1300 websites. [4] Nomenclature has varied over the years, and fans have applied labels more or less loosely; a common description is dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder. [25]
The UCL authors consider a diagnosis of schizophrenia for Gollum, based on Tolkien's and Jackson's depictions. [4] The disorder is characterised by hearing voices, delusions, disorganised thinking and behaviour, [26] and flat or inappropriate affect. [27] They find that this diagnosis superficially looks reasonable; 25 of 30 students surveyed thought it likely. However, they note that Gollum does not have "false, unshakeable beliefs"; that the power of the One Ring is real in Middle-earth; and that other ring-bearers have the same symptoms. Accordingly, they find that the criteria for schizophrenia are not met. [4]
The UCL authors then examine a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder in Gollum's case. They note that this looks possible; it is the second most common diagnosis in their student survey (3 of 30 thought it likely). However, they state that in multiple personality disorder, "one personality is suppressed by the other and the two personalities are always unaware of each other's existence". Because this is not true in Gollum's case, as the Gollum personality actually converses with Sméagol, and the two are aware of each other, the authors exclude this diagnosis. [4] Bruce Leonard writes that Gollum "probably fits the criteria for PTSD" and "may fit the diagnoses for Dissociative Identity Disorder (DSM 330)". [25]
The UCL team conclude, despite the plausibility of the other diagnoses, that on the basis of the available evidence Gollum meets seven of the nine diagnostic criteria (in ICD-10 1992) for schizoid personality disorder, making this the most probable diagnosis. They state that Gollum displays several symptoms of the disorder: "pervasive maladaptive behaviour" since childhood "with a persistent disease course"; he has "odd interests" and indulges in "spiteful behaviour" which makes friendships difficult and causes "distress to others". [4] The personality disorder is characterised by asociality, [28] solitariness, secretiveness, emotional coldness, detachment, and apathy. Affected individuals may find it hard to form intimate attachments, but have a rich internal fantasy world. [29] [30]
In early March ... Frodo had been ill. On the thirteenth of that month Farmer Cotton found Frodo lying on his bed; he was clutching a white gem that hung on a chain about his neck and he seemed half in a dream. 'It is gone for ever', he said, 'and now all is dark and empty'. But the fit passed, and when Sam got back on the twenty-fifth, Frodo had recovered, and he said nothing about himself.
The Lord of the Rings, book 6, ch. 9 "The Grey Havens" [T 2]
Milos and medical scholars like Bruce D. Leonard suggest that the ring-bearer Frodo, returning "irreparably wounded" from his quest, could be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They note that Frodo repeatedly relives the most traumatic experiences "mentally, emotionally, and physically", especially on anniversaries of the quest's events. [6] [31]
Leonard quotes Tolkien's description of Frodo's behaviour after the quest: "By the end of the next day the pain and unease had passed, and Frodo was merry again, as merry as if he did not remember the blackness of the day before". [T 3] [31] Leonard comments that this sounds like dissociative amnesia, common alongside flashbacks of traumatic events. He writes that Tolkien's doubting phrase "as if" and the amnesia both suggest that Frodo was in a dissociative state on the day that he relived the Witch-king's attack on Weathertop, not wishing to remember it. [31]
But far more he was troubled by the Eye: so he called it to himself... The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off. Frodo knew just where the present habitation and heart of that will now was: as certainly as a man can tell the direction of the sun with his eyes shut. He was facing it, and its potency beat upon his brow.
The Lord of the Rings, book 4, ch. 2 "The Passage of the Marshes" [T 4]
Walker suggests that Denethor's increasingly "aberrant behavior" can be explained as despair and paranoia. [2] As already mentioned, Croft writes that Frodo had to stay in cover on his quest to Mordor, constantly threatened by a watchful enemy he could not see. [13] Edward Lense, in Mythlore , describes Frodo's continuing experience of seeing the Eye of Sauron wherever he goes as "read[ing] like the record of a paranoiac's delusions". [5]
Samwise Gamgee is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. A hobbit, Samwise is the chief supporting character of The Lord of the Rings, serving as the loyal companion of the protagonist Frodo Baggins. Sam is a member of the Company of the Ring, the group of nine charged with destroying the One Ring to prevent the Dark Lord Sauron from taking over the world.
Shelob is a fictional monster in the form of a giant spider from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Her lair lies in Cirith Ungol leading into Mordor. The creature Gollum deliberately leads the Hobbit protagonist Frodo there in hopes of recovering the One Ring by letting Shelob attack Frodo. The plan is foiled when Samwise Gamgee temporarily blinds Shelob with the Phial of Galadriel, and then severely wounds her with Frodo's Elvish sword, Sting.
Scholars and critics have identified many themes of The Lord of the Rings, a major fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, including a reversed quest, the struggle of good and evil, death and immortality, fate and free will, the danger of power, and various aspects of Christianity such as the presence of three Christ figures, for prophet, priest, and king, as well as elements like hope and redemptive suffering. There is also a strong thread throughout the work of language, its sound, and its relationship to peoples and places, along with moralisation from descriptions of landscape. Out of these, Tolkien stated that the central theme is death and immortality.
"The Council of Elrond" is the second chapter of Book 2 of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. It is the longest chapter in that book at some 15,000 words, and critical for explaining the power and threat of the One Ring, for introducing the final members of the Company of the Ring, and for defining the planned quest to destroy it. Contrary to the maxim "Show, don't tell", the chapter consists mainly of people talking; the action is, as in an earlier chapter "The Shadow of the Past", narrated, largely by the Wizard Gandalf, in flashback. The chapter parallels the far simpler Beorn chapter in The Hobbit, which similarly presents a culture-clash of modern with ancient. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force". The Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge writes that the chapter brings the hidden narrative of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings close to the surface.
Gollum is a monster with a distinctive style of speech in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. He was introduced in the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became important in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit of the River-folk who lived near the Gladden Fields. In The Lord of the Rings, it is stated that he was originally known as Sméagol, corrupted by the One Ring, and later named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat".
Faramir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He is introduced as the younger brother of Boromir of the Fellowship of the Ring and second son of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. Faramir enters the narrative in The Two Towers, where, upon meeting Frodo Baggins, he is presented with a temptation to take possession of the One Ring. In The Return of the King, he leads the forces of Gondor in the War of the Ring, coming near to death, succeeds his father as Steward, and wins the love of Éowyn, lady of the royal house of Rohan.
Aragorn is a fictional character and a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is a Ranger of the North, first introduced with the name Strider and later revealed to be the heir of Isildur, an ancient King of Arnor and Gondor. Aragorn is a confidant of the wizard Gandalf and plays a part in the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron. As a young man, Aragorn falls in love with the immortal elf Arwen, as told in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Arwen's father, Elrond Half-elven, forbids them to marry unless Aragorn becomes King of both Arnor and Gondor.
Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings and one of the protagonists in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo is a hobbit of the Shire who inherits the One Ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, described familiarly as "uncle", and undertakes the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor. He is mentioned in Tolkien's posthumously published works, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
Sauron is the title character and the primary antagonist, through the forging of the One Ring, of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where he rules the land of Mordor and has the ambition of ruling the whole of Middle-earth. In the same work, he is identified as the "Necromancer" of Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit. The Silmarillion describes him as the chief lieutenant of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. Tolkien noted that the Ainur, the "angelic" powers of his constructed myth, "were capable of many degrees of error and failing", but by far the worst was "the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron". Sauron appears most often as "the Eye", as if disembodied.
Character pairing in The Lord of the Rings is a literary device used by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, to express some of the moral complexity of his major characters in his heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings. Commentators have noted that the format of a fantasy does not lend itself to subtlety of characterisation, but that pairing allows inner tensions to be expressed as linked opposites, including, in a psychoanalytic interpretation, those of Jungian archetypes.
"The Shadow of the Past" is the second chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. Tolkien called it "the crucial chapter"; the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey labelled it "the vital chapter". This is because it represents both the moment that Tolkien devised the central plot of the book, and the point in the story where the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, and the reader realise that there will be a quest to destroy the Ring. A sketch of it was among the first parts of the book to be written, early in 1938; later that year, it was one of three chapters of the book that he drafted. In 1944, he returned to the chapter, adding descriptions of Gollum, the Ring, and the hunt for Gollum.
The theme of addiction to power in The Lord of the Rings is central, as the Ring, made by the Dark Lord Sauron to enable him to take over the whole of Middle-earth, progressively corrupts the mind of its owner to use the Ring for evil.
Commentators have compared Peter Jackson's 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film trilogy with the book on which it was based, J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954–1955 The Lord of the Rings, remarking that while both have been extremely successful commercially, the film version does not necessarily capture the intended meaning of the book. They have admired Jackson's ability to film the long and complex work at all; the beauty of the cinematography, sets, and costumes; the quality of the music; and the epic scale of his version of Tolkien's story. They have, however, found the characters and the story greatly weakened by Jackson's emphasis on action and violence at the expense of psychological depth; the loss of Tolkien's emphasis on free will and individual responsibility; the flattening out of Tolkien's balanced treatment of evil to a simple equation of the One Ring with evil; and the replacement of Frodo's inner journey by an American "hero's journey" or monomyth with Aragorn as the hero.
J. R. R. Tolkien's presentation of heroism in The Lord of the Rings is based on medieval tradition, but modifies it, as there is no single hero but a combination of heroes with contrasting attributes. Aragorn is the man born to be a hero, of a line of kings; he emerges from the wilds and is uniformly bold and restrained. Frodo is an unheroic, home-loving Hobbit who has heroism thrust upon him when he learns that the ring he has inherited from his cousin Bilbo is the One Ring that would enable the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth. His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.
J. R. R. Tolkien was attracted to medieval literature, and made use of it in his writings, both in his poetry, which contained numerous pastiches of medieval verse, and in his Middle-earth novels where he embodied a wide range of medieval concepts.
Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' is a 1979 book of Tolkien scholarship by Jane Chance, writing then as Jane Chance Nitzsche. The book looks in turn at Tolkien's essays "On Fairy-Stories" and "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"; The Hobbit; the fairy-stories "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wootton Major"; the minor works "Lay of Autrou and Itroun", "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth", "Imram", and Farmer Giles of Ham; The Lord of the Rings; and very briefly in the concluding section, The Silmarillion. In 2001, a second edition extended all the chapters but still treated The Silmarillion, that Tolkien worked on throughout his life, as a sort of coda.
Scholars, including psychoanalysts, have commented that J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories about both Bilbo Baggins, protagonist of The Hobbit, and Frodo Baggins, protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, constitute psychological journeys. Bilbo returns from his journey to help recover the Dwarves' treasure from Smaug the dragon's lair in the Lonely Mountain changed, but wiser and more experienced. Frodo returns from his journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom scarred by multiple weapons, and is unable to settle back into the normal life of his home, the Shire.
The philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien made use of multiple literary devices in The Lord of the Rings, from its narrative structure and its use of pseudotranslation and editorial framing, to character pairing and the deliberate cultivation of an impression of depth while constructing the novel. The narrative structure in particular has been seen as a pair of quests, a sequence of tableaux, a complex edifice, multiple spirals, and a medieval-style interlacing. The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, on the other hand, has a single narrative thread, and repeated episodes of danger and recuperation in five "Homely Houses". His prose style, too, has been both criticised and defended.
J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly uses dreams and visions in his Middle-earth writings to create literary effects, allowing the narrative to transition between everyday reality and awareness of other kinds of existence. He follows the conventions of the dream vision in early medieval literature, and the tradition of English visionary writing of Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
results in a paralyzing depression that allows Wormtongue ...