Themes of The Lord of the Rings

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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.

Contents

In addition, some modern commentators have criticised Tolkien for supposed failings in The Lord of the Rings , such as not including significant women, not being relevant to city-dwellers, not overtly showing any religion, and for racism, though others have defended Tolkien against all these charges.

Reversed quest

Unlike a typical quest like seeking the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend, Frodo's is to destroy an object, the One Ring. Vision of the Holy Grail by William Morris, 1890 Galahad grail.jpg
Unlike a typical quest like seeking the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend, Frodo's is to destroy an object, the One Ring. Vision of the Holy Grail by William Morris, 1890

The Tolkien critic Richard C. West writes that the story of The Lord of the Rings is basically simple: the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest is to take the Dark Lord Sauron's Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it. He calls the quest "primary", along with the war against Sauron. [1] The critic David M. Miller agrees that the quest is the "most important narrative device" in the book, but adds that it is reversed from the conventional structure: the hero is not seeking a treasure, but is hoping to destroy one. [lower-alpha 1] He notes that from Sauron's point of view, the tale is indeed a quest, and his evil Black Riders replace the traditional "errant knights seeking the holy of holies", while the Fellowship keeping the Ring from him cannot use it: thus there are multiple reversals. [3] The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey concurs that it is "an anti-quest", a story of renunciation. He writes that Tolkien had lived through two world wars, the "routine bombardment" of civilians, the use of famine for political gain, concentration camps and genocide, and the development and use of chemical and nuclear weapons. Shippey states that the book raises the question of whether, if the ability of humans to produce that kind of evil could somehow be destroyed, even at the cost of sacrificing something, this would be worth doing. [4]

Antitheses

"No careful reader of Tolkien's fiction can fail to be aware of the polarities that give it form and fiction," [5] writes Verlyn Flieger. Tolkien's extensive use of duality and parallelism, contrast and opposition is found throughout the novel, in pairings such as hope and despair, knowledge and enlightenment, death and immortality, fate and free will, good and evil. [5]

Death and immortality

Tolkien stated in his Letters that the core theme of The Lord of the Rings is death and the human desire to escape it:

But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man! [T 1]

He commented further:

It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the 'escapes': serial longevity, and hoarding memory. [T 2]

An appendix tells The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen , in which the immortal elf Arwen chooses mortality so that she can marry the mortal man Aragorn. After more than two hundred years of life, Aragorn chooses the time of his death, leaving behind a heartbroken and now-mortal Arwen. She travels to the faded remains of Lothlórien, where she was once blissfully happy, to die on a flat stone next to the river Nimrodel. This theme recurs throughout the book, [6] and in specific sayings and poems such as Gilraen's linnod [7] and the Lament of the Rohirrim. [8]

Good and evil

Imagemap with clickable links of Tolkien's moral geography of Middle-earth, according to John Magoun Tolkien's Moral Geography of Middle-Earth.svg
Imagemap with clickable links of Tolkien's moral geography of Middle-earth, according to John Magoun

The Lord of the Rings presents a sharp polarity between good and evil. Orcs, the most maligned of races, are in one interpretation a corruption of the mystically exalted race of the Elves. Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery, home of the Lord of the Nazgûl, the most corrupted King of Men, directly opposes Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard and the capital of Gondor, the last visible remnant of the ancient kingdom of Men in the Third Age. Mordor, the land of the Dark Lord Sauron, is opposed to Gondor and to all free peoples. These antitheses, though pronounced and prolific, are sometimes considered to be too polarizing, but they have also been argued to be at the heart of the structure of the entire story. Tolkien's technique has been seen to "confer literality on what would in the primary world be called metaphor and then to illustrate [in his secondary world] the process by which the literal becomes metaphoric". [5] The theologian Fleming Rutledge argues, on the other hand, that Tolkien aims instead to show that no definite line can be drawn between good and evil, because "'good' people can be and are capable of evil under certain circumstances". [12]

Fate and free will

In the chapter "The Shadow of the Past", Gandalf discusses the possibility that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and that Gollum has an important part to play, the clearest testament to the role of fate in The Lord of the Rings. Beyond Gandalf's words, the story is structured in such a way that past decisions have a critical influence on current events. For instance, because Bilbo and Frodo spared Gollum, Gollum was able to destroy the Ring by falling into the Cracks of Doom while Frodo failed to destroy it. Thus Frodo, who is overpowered by the evil Ring, is saved by what seems to be luck. [13]

The role of fate in The Lord of the Rings is contrasted sharply with the prominent role also given to personal choice and will. Frodo's voluntary choice to bear the Ring to Mordor is central to the plot of the whole story. Also important is Frodo's willing offer of the Ring to Gandalf, Aragorn, and Galadriel, and their willing refusal of it, not to mention Frodo's final inability to summon the will to destroy it. Thus, both will and fate play out throughout the story: from Sam's vision of old Gaffer Gamgee's wheelbarrow and the Scouring of the Shire in the Mirror of Galadriel, to Arwen Evenstar's choice of mortality. [14]

Peter Kreeft notes that divine providence, in the form of the will of the Valar, expressing the will of Eru Ilúvatar, can determine fate. Gandalf says, for example, that a hidden power was at work when Bilbo found the One Ring as it was attempting to return to its master. [15]

Gain and loss

The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns notes in Mythlore that the book's "sense of inevitable disintegration" [16] is borrowed from the Nordic world view which emphasises "imminent or threatening destruction". [16] She writes that in Norse mythology, this process seemed to have started during the creation: in the realm of fire, Muspell, the jötunn Surt was even then awaiting the end of the world. Burns comments that "Here is a mythology where even the gods can die, and it leaves the reader with a vivid sense of life's cycles, with an awareness that everything comes to an end, that, though [the evil] Sauron may go, the elves will fade as well." [16]

Patrice Hannon, also in Mythlore, states that:

The Lord of the Rings is a story of loss and longing, punctuated by moments of humor and terror and heroic action but on the whole a lament for a world—albeit a fictional world—that has passed even as we seem to catch a last glimpse of it flickering and fading... [6]

In Hannon's view, Tolkien meant to show that beauty and joy fail and disappear before the passage of time and the onslaught of the powers of evil; victory is possible but only temporary. [6] She gives multiple examples of elegiac moments in the book, such as that Bilbo is never again seen in Hobbiton, that Aragorn "came never again as living man" to Lothlórien, or that Boromir, carried down the Anduin in his funeral boat, "was not seen again in Minas Tirith, standing as he used to stand upon the White Tower in the morning". [6] Since he was dead, Hannon writes, this was hardly surprising; the observation is elegiac, not informational. [6] Even the last line of the final appendix, she notes, has this tone: "The dominion passed long ago, and [the Elves] dwell now beyond the circles of the world, and do not return." [6]

Hannon compares this continual emphasis on the elegiac to Tolkien's praise for the Old English poem Beowulf , on which he was an expert, in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics , suggesting that he was seeking to produce something of the same effect: [6]

For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote. If the funeral of Beowulf moved once like the echo of an ancient dirge, far-off and hopeless, it is to us as a memory brought over the hills, an echo of an echo. [T 3]

Environmentalism and technology

Mines, ironworks, smoke, and spoil heaps: the Black Country, near Tolkien's childhood home, has been suggested as an influence on his depictions of industrial hell, such as Mordor. Griffiths' Guide to the iron trade of Great Britain an elaborate review of the iron (and) coal trades for last year, addresses and names of all ironmasters, with a list of blast furnaces, iron (14761790294).jpg
Mines, ironworks, smoke, and spoil heaps: the Black Country, near Tolkien's childhood home, has been suggested as an influence on his depictions of industrial hell, such as Mordor.

Tolkien's environmentalism and his criticism of technology has been observed by several authors. Anne Pienciak notes that technology is only employed by the forces of evil in Tolkien's works, and that he found it to be one of "the evils of the modern world: ugliness, depersonalization, and the separation of man from nature". [18] This technophilia is seen in Saruman's character and in his name: the Old English searu, or in the Old Mercian dialect saru, means "skilful, ingenious". It is associated in Beowulf with smithcraft, as in the phrase "searonet seowed, smiþes orþancum", [19] "ingenious-net woven, by a smith's cunning": perfect for "a cunning man", a wizard. [20] Saruman's city of Isengard has been described as an "industrial hell", [21] and his "wanton destruction" of Middle-earth's trees to fuel his industrial machines as revealing his "evil ways". [22] The chapter "The Scouring of the Shire" sees the industrial technology imported by Saruman's minions as an evil threat to the natural environment, replacing the traditional crafts of the Shire hobbits with noisy polluting mills full of machinery. [23]

Andrew O'Hehir wrote in Salon that the hobbits' homeland, the Shire, was inspired by the "woods and hills" near Sarehole. Tolkien lived there during his childhood, and was horrified decades later to find the area urbanised. O'Hehir notes that Mordor is characterised by "its slag heaps, its permanent pall of smoke, its slave-driven industries", and that Saruman is depicted as an ideological representative of technological utopianism, who forcibly industrialises the Shire. O'Hehir calls the novel a lament over the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the environmental degradation of England's formerly "green and pleasant land". In this, in O'Hehir's view, Tolkien's sentiments are like those of Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and William Blake. [24]

Pride and courage

Tolkien explores the theme of "the ennoblement of the ignoble". The scholar of English literature Devin Brown links this with the Magnificat's "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree." [25] He gives as example the humble hobbits who defeat the proud and powerful Sauron. [26] Tolkien's biographers Richard J. Cox and Leslie Jones write that the heroes who destroy the Ring and scour the Shire are "the little guys, literally. The message is that anyone can make a difference"; they call this one of Tolkien's main themes. [27]

Tolkien contrasted courage through loyal service with arrogant desire for glory. While Sam follows Frodo out of loyalty and would die for him, Boromir is driven by pride in his desire for the Ring, and would risk the lives of others for his personal glory. Likewise the refusal of the ring by Sam, Faramir, and Galadriel is a courageous rejection of power and glory and personal renown. [28] Courage in the face of overwhelming odds is a recurring theme. Tolkien stated in The Monsters and the Critics that he was inspired by the apocalyptic Norse legend of Ragnarök, where the gods know that they are doomed in their final battle for the world, but go to fight anyway. Frodo and Sam share this "northern courage", knowing they have little prospect of returning home from their mission to Mount Doom. [29]

Addiction to power

Lord Acton famously stated "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", an idea embodied in the addictive power of the One Ring. Picture of John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton.jpg
Lord Acton famously stated "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", an idea embodied in the addictive power of the One Ring.

A major theme is the corrupting influence of the One Ring through the power it offers, especially to those already powerful. [31] Tom Shippey notes Gandalf's statements about the corrupting influence the Ring has on its bearers. The powerful Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn and Faramir all reject it, believing that it would overpower them. The Hobbits Frodo and Sam, much less ambitious for power, are less susceptible but not totally immune to its effects, as can be seen in the changes it works in Frodo, Bilbo and Gollum. [32] On the other hand, Boromir becomes murderously obsessed with the Ring, but never possesses it, while Sméagol kills his friend Déagol, the first Ringbearer after Isildur, to obtain it. [33]

The corrupting effect of power is, according to Shippey, a modern theme, since in earlier times, power was considered to "reveal character", not alter it. Shippey quotes Lord Acton's 1887 statement:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men [30]

Critics have argued that this theme can be found as far back as Plato's The Republic, where the character Glaucon argued that doing justice to others is never to one's benefit; he cited the mythical Ring of Gyges, which could make any man who wore it invisible and thus able to get away with theft or other crime. Glaucon claimed that such power would corrupt any man, and that therefore no man truly believes that acting justly toward others is good for him. [34]

Colin Manlove criticises Tolkien's attitude towards power as inconsistent, with exceptions to the supposedly overwhelming influence of the Ring. The Ring can be handed over relatively easily (Sam and Bilbo), and removing the Ring by force (Gollum to Frodo) does not, despite Gandalf's assertion at the beginning of the story, break Frodo's mind. The Ring also appears to have little effect on characters such as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. [35]

Shippey replies to Manlove's doubt with "one word": addictive. He writes that this sums up Gandalf's whole argument, as in the early stages, as with Bilbo and Sam, the addiction can be shaken off easily enough, while for those who are not yet addicted, as with Aragorn and indeed others like Galadriel and Faramir, its pull is like any other temptation. What Gandalf could not do to Frodo, Shippey writes, is make him want to hand the Ring over. And for the owner of the Ring, the destructive aspect is the urge to use it, no matter how good the intentions of the owner might be at the start. [30] [36] [37] [38]

Christianity

Applicability, not allegory

Tolkien stated in the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings that "it is neither allegorical nor topical ... I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations ... I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers." [T 4] Shippey comments that Tolkien certainly did sometimes write allegories, giving the example of Leaf by Niggle , [39] and that there is meant to be some relationship between his fiction and fact. [40] He notes, too, that Tolkien deliberately "approach[ed] to the edge of Christian reference" [41] by placing the destruction of the Ring and the fall of Sauron on 25 March, the traditional Anglo-Saxon date of the crucifixion of Christ and of the annunciation, and of the last day of the Genesis creation. [41] Other commentators have noted further echoes of Christian themes, including the presence of Christ figures, [15] the resurrection, [42] hope, [43] and redemptive suffering. [44]

Christ figures

The philosopher Peter Kreeft, like Tolkien a Roman Catholic, observes that there is no one complete, concrete, visible Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings comparable to Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series. However, Kreeft and Jean Chausse have identified reflections of the figure of Jesus Christ in three protagonists of The Lord of the Rings: Gandalf, Frodo and Aragorn. While Chausse found "facets of the personality of Jesus" in them, Kreeft wrote that "they exemplify the Old Testament threefold Messianic symbolism of prophet (Gandalf), priest (Frodo), and king (Aragorn)". [15] [45] [46]

Peter Kreeft's analysis of Christ-figures in The Lord of the Rings [15]
Christ-like attribute Gandalf Frodo Aragorn
Sacrificial death,
resurrection 		Dies in Moria,
reborn as Gandalf the White [lower-alpha 3] 		Symbolically dies under Morgul-knife,
healed by Elrond [lower-alpha 4] 		Takes Paths of the Dead,
reappears in Gondor
Saviour All three help to save Middle-earth from Sauron
threefold Messianic symbolism Prophet Priest King
Commentators have compared Frodo to Christ, and Sam, who carried Frodo on the way to Mount Doom, to Simon of Cyrene, who carried Christ's cross to Golgotha. Church of St. John Nepomucen, Brenna 5 Simon of Cyrene carries the cross. Church of St. John Nepomucen in Brenna.JPG
Commentators have compared Frodo to Christ, and Sam, who carried Frodo on the way to Mount Doom, to Simon of Cyrene, who carried Christ's cross to Golgotha. Church of St. John Nepomucen, Brenna

Several commentators have seen Gandalf's passage through the Mines of Moria, dying to save his companions and returning as "Gandalf the White", as a symbol of the resurrection of Christ. [42] [49] [44] [50] Like Jesus who carried his cross for the sins of mankind, Frodo carried a burden of evil on behalf of the whole world. [51] Frodo walks his "Via Dolorosa" to Mount Doom just like Jesus who made his way to Golgotha. [52] As Frodo approaches the Cracks of Doom, the Ring becomes a crushing weight, just as the cross was for Jesus. Sam Gamgee, Frodo's servant, who carries Frodo up to Mount Doom, parallels Simon of Cyrene, who helps Jesus by carrying his cross to Golgotha. [48] When Frodo accomplishes his mission, like Christ, he says "it is done". [53] Just as Christ ascends to heaven, Frodo's life in Middle-earth comes to an end when he departs to the Undying Lands. [51]

Hope

The motif of hope is illustrated in Aragorn's successful handling of Saruman's seeing-stone or palantír. Aragorn is given the very name of "Hope" (Sindarin "Estel"), by which he is still affectionately called by his queen, Arwen, who at the hour of his death cries out "Estel, Estel!". Only Aragorn, as the heir of Isildur, can rightfully use the palantír, while Saruman and Denethor, who have both also made extensive use of palantírs, have fallen into presumption or despair. These latter traits have been identified as the two distinct sins "against the virtue of Hope". [43]

Redemptive suffering

A specifically Catholic theme is the redemptive and penitential nature of suffering, apparent in the dreadful ordeal of Sam and Frodo in Mordor. As another example, Boromir atones for his assault on Frodo by single-handedly but vainly defending Merry and Pippin from orcs, [44] which illustrates also another significant Christian theme: immortality of the soul and the importance of good intention, especially at the point of death. This is clear from Gandalf's statement: "But he [Boromir] escaped in the end.... It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for Boromir's sake." [T 5]

Language

True language, true names

Shippey writes that The Lord of the Rings embodies Tolkien's belief that "the word authenticates the thing", [54] or to look at it another way, that "fantasy is not entirely made up." [55] Tolkien was a professional philologist, with a deep understanding of language and etymology, the origins of words. He found a resonance with the ancient myth of the "true language", "isomorphic with reality": in that language, each word names a thing and each thing has a true name, and using that name gives the speaker power over that thing. [56] [57] This is seen directly in the character Tom Bombadil, who can name anything, and that name then becomes that thing's name ever after; Shippey notes that this happens with the names he gives to the hobbits' ponies. [56]

This belief, Shippey states, animated Tolkien's insistence on what he considered to be the ancient, traditional, and genuine forms of words. A modern English word like loaf, deriving directly from Old English hlāf, [58] has its plural form in 'v', "loaves", whereas a newcomer like "proof", not from Old English, rightly has its plural the new way, "proofs". [59] So, Tolkien reasoned, the proper plurals of "dwarf" and "elf" must be "dwarves" and "elves", not as the dictionary and the printers typesetting The Lord of the Rings would have them, "dwarfs" and elfs". The same went for forms like "dwarvish" and "elvish", strong and old, and avoiding any hint of dainty little "elfin" flower-fairies. [59] Tolkien insisted on the expensive reversion of all such typographical "corrections" at the galley proof stage. [59]

From language to story

According to Tom Shippey, Tolkien invented parts of Middle-earth to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium. Linguistic Map of Middle-Earth.svg
According to Tom Shippey, Tolkien invented parts of Middle-earth to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium.

Tolkien devoted enormous effort to place-names, for example making those in The Shire such as Nobottle, Bucklebury, and Tuckborough obviously English in sound and by etymology. Shippey comments that even though many of these names do not enter the book's plot, they contribute a feeling of reality and depth, giving "Middle-earth that air of solidity and extent both in space and time which its successors [in fantasy literature] so conspicuously lack." [61] Tolkien wrote in one of his letters that his work was "largely an essay in linguistic aesthetic". [T 6]

He made use of several European languages, ancient and modern, including Old English for the language of Rohan and Old Norse for the names of dwarves (initially in The Hobbit ), and modern English for the Common Speech, creating as the story developed a tricky linguistic puzzle. Among other things, Middle-earth was not modern Europe but that region long ages ago, and the Common Speech was not modern English but Westron. Therefore, the dialogue and names written in modern English were, in the fiction, translations from the Westron, and the language and placenames of Rohan was similarly supposedly translated from Rohirric into Old English; therefore, too, the dwarf-names written in Old Norse must have been translated from Khuzdul into Old Norse. Thus the linguistic geography of Middle-earth grew from Tolkien's purely philological or linguistic explorations. [60]

Language, peoples, and places

In addition, Tolkien invested a large amount of time and energy creating languages, especially the Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin, both of which appear, sometimes untranslated, in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had a private theory on the way that the sounds of a language convey a feeling of beauty; he felt pure pleasure in the vocabulary of the Gothic language, and indeed of Welsh. Shippey explains that "He thought that people could feel history in words, could recognise language 'styles', could extract sense (of sorts) from sound alone, could moreover make aesthetic judgements based on phonology." [60] Thus Tolkien has Legolas say, on hearing Aragorn singing The Lament of the Rohirrim in Rohirric (the language of Rohan), which Legolas does not understand: [60]

That, I guess, is the language of the Rohirrim, for it is like to this land itself, rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains. But I cannot guess what it means, save that it is laden with the sadness of Mortal Men. [T 7]

Shippey states that Tolkien liked to suppose that there really was such a strong connection between things, people, and language, "especially if the person who spoke the language lived on the thing." [60] He notes that the effect of language appears again and again in The Lord of the Rings, such as when the hobbits hear the Elf Gildor singing and find that the blended sound and melody "seemed to shape itself in their thought"; [T 8] when everyone at the Council of Elrond quails at the sound of Gandalf's voicing the Black Speech in Rivendell; [T 9] or when Sam Gamgee responds "I like that!" when the dwarf Gimli sings about the dwarf-King Durin long ago. [T 10]

Moralisation from landscape

Tolkien describes the landscapes of Middle-earth realistically, but at the same time uses descriptions of land and weather to convey feelings and a sense of something beyond the here and now. Shippey states that "both characters and readers become aware of the extent and nature of Tolkien's moralisations from landscape" [62] in the many passages where he ambiguously writes about landscape, such as Frodo's reflections on the Dead Marshes: [62]

They lie in all the pools, pale faces deep deep under the dark water, I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them. [62] [T 11]

Shippey writes that Tolkien frequently comes close to what the critic John Ruskin called the pathetic fallacy, the idea that things in nature can express human emotion and conduct. However, he states, the literary theorist Northrop Frye more accurately named the function of such passages as hinting at higher literary modes. In his Anatomy of Criticism , Frye classified literature as ranging from "Ironic" at the lowest, via "Low Mimetic" (such as humorous descriptions), "High Mimetic" (accurate descriptions), and "Romantic" (idealised accounts) to "Mythic" as the highest mode; and modern literature is generally at a lower level than literature of past centuries. In Shippey's view, most of The Lord of the Rings is in Romantic mode, with occasional touches of myth, and moments of high and low mimesis to relieve the mood; and Tolkien's ability to present multiple modes at once is a major reason for his success. [63]

Debated themes

The Lord of the Rings has repeatedly been attacked, as scholars such as Ralph Wood write, on the grounds that it is a story about men for boys, with no significant women, that it omits religion from its societies, [64] and that it appears to be racist. Against this, scholars have noted that women do play significant roles, [64] that the book carries a Christian message, [64] and that Tolkien was consistently anti-racist in his private correspondence. [65] [66]

Sexism

Some commentators have accused Tolkien of placing women only in background roles while the male protagonists see all the action. Arwen sewing Aragorn's standard, by Anna Kulisz, 2015 Arwen by Anna Kulisz.jpg
Some commentators have accused Tolkien of placing women only in background roles while the male protagonists see all the action. Arwen sewing Aragorn's standard, by Anna Kulisz, 2015

The first accusation is that there are no significant female characters; [64] or that there are few; or that their roles are tightly constrained. [67] [68] [69] Against this, Wood writes that Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen are far from being "plaster figures": Galadriel is powerful, wise and "terrible in her beauty"; Éowyn has "extraordinary courage and valor"; and Arwen gives up her Elvish immortality to marry Aragorn. Further, Wood argues, Tolkien insists that everyone, man and woman alike, face the same kinds of temptation, hope, and desire. [64] Ann Basso argues in Mythlore that the female characters, including figures like Goldberry, are "diverse, well drawn, and worthy of respect", [70] while Katherine Hasser argues in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that gender roles in the Shire are not sharply separated, as males like Bilbo carry out domestic duties like cooking and cleaning. [71]

Lack of religion

Wood notes that the work contains no formal religion. Hobbits have no temples or sacrifices, though Frodo can call to Elbereth, one of the Valar, in extremis ; the nearest anyone comes to religion is that the men of Gondor "pause before meals". Wood's answer here is that Tolkien intentionally left religion out of Middle-earth so that "we might see Christianity reflected in it more clearly if also indirectly". [64] He quotes Tolkien's remark in a letter that "the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism". [64] [T 12]

Racism

Tolkien has frequently been accused of racism; however, during the Second World War, he consistently expressed an anti-racist position. [65]

Sandra Ballif Straubhaar writes that far from being racist, "a polycultured, polylingual world is absolutely central" [72] to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that. She notes that the "recurring accusations in the popular media" of a racist view of the story are "interesting". Straubhaar quotes the Swedish cultural studies scholar David Tjeder who described Gollum's account of the men of Harad ("Not nice; very cruel wicked Men they look. Almost as bad as Orcs, and much bigger." [T 13] ) in Aftonbladet as "stereotypical and reflective of colonial attitudes". [73] She argues instead that Gollum's view, with its "arbitrary and stereotypical assumptions about the 'Other'", [73] is absurd, and that Gollum cannot be taken as an authority on Tolkien's opinion. Straubhaar contrasts this with Sam Gamgee's more humane response to the sight of a dead Harad warrior, which she finds "harder to find fault with": [73]

He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home. [T 14]

Straubhaar quotes the English scholar Stephen Shapiro, who wrote in The Scotsman that [74]

Put simply, Tolkien's good guys are white and the bad guys are black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate, and a psychologically undeveloped horde. [75]

Straubhaar concedes that Shapiro may have had a point with "slant-eyed", but comments that this was milder than that of many of his contemporary novelists such as John Buchan, and notes that Tolkien had in fact made "appalled objection" when people had misapplied his story to current events. [74] She similarly observes that Tjeder had failed to notice Tolkien's "concerted effort" to change the Western European "paradigm" that speakers of supposedly superior languages were "ethnically superior". [76]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Other authors such as Michael N. Stanton and Lori M. Campbell agree that it is an "inverted quest". [2]
  2. ↑ Other scholars such as Walter Scheps and Isabel G. MacCaffrey have noted Middle-earth's "spatial cum moral dimensions". [10] [11]
  3. ↑ Other commentators such as Jane Chance have compared this transformed reappearance to the Transfiguration of Jesus. [47]
  4. ↑ Also by other commentators, such as Mathews, Richard (2016). Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination. Routledge. p. 69. ISBN   978-1-136-78554-2.

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Gandalf is a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He is a wizard, one of the Istari order, and the leader of the Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien took the name "Gandalf" from the Old Norse "Catalogue of Dwarves" (Dvergatal) in the Völuspá.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, Man and Men denote humans, whether male or female, in contrast to Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and other humanoid races. Men are described as the second or younger people, created after the Elves, and differing from them in being mortal. Along with Ents and Dwarves, these are the "free peoples" of Middle-earth, differing from the enslaved peoples such as Orcs.

<i>The Two Towers</i> 1954 part of novel by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Two Towers is the second volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It is preceded by The Fellowship of the Ring and followed by The Return of the King. The volume's title is ambiguous, as five towers are named in the narrative, and Tolkien himself gave conflicting identifications of the two towers. The narrative is interlaced, allowing Tolkien to build in suspense and surprise. The volume was largely welcomed by critics, who found it exciting and compelling, combining epic narrative with heroic romance.

<i>The Return of the King</i> 1955 part of novel by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Return of the King is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. It was published in 1955. The story begins in the kingdom of Gondor, which is soon to be attacked by the Dark Lord Sauron.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, the Battle of the Morannon or the Battle of the Black Gate, is the final confrontation in the War of the Ring. Gondor and its allies send a small army ostensibly to challenge Sauron at the entrance to his land of Mordor; he supposes that they have with them the One Ring and mean to use it to defeat him. In fact, the Ring is being carried by the hobbits Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee into Mordor to destroy it in Mount Doom, and the army is moving to distract Sauron from them. Before the battle, a nameless leader, the "Mouth of Sauron", taunts the leaders of the army with the personal effects of Frodo and Sam. Battle is joined, but just as it seems the army of Gondor will be overwhelmed, the Ring is destroyed, and the forces of Sauron lose heart. Mount Doom erupts, and Sauron's tower, Barad-dûr, collapses, along with the Black Gate. The army of Gondor returns home victorious, the War of the Ring won.

"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 Fellowship 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.

Peregrin Took, commonly known simply as Pippin, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is closely tied with his friend and cousin, Merry Brandybuck, and the two are together during most of the story. Pippin and Merry are introduced as a pair of young hobbits of the Shire who become ensnared in their friend Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the One Ring. Pippin joins the Fellowship of the Ring. He and Merry become separated from the rest of the group at the breaking of the Fellowship and spend much of The Two Towers with their own story line. Impetuous and curious, Pippin enlists as a soldier in the army of Gondor and fights in the Battle of the Morannon. With the other hobbits, he returns home, helps to lead the Scouring of the Shire, and becomes Thain or hereditary leader of the land.

Aragorn is a fictional character and a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn was 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 was a confidant of the wizard Gandalf, and played a part in the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron. As a young man, Aragorn fell in love with the immortal elf Arwen, as told in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Arwen's father, Elrond Half-elven, forbade them to marry unless Aragorn became King of both Arnor and Gondor.

Elrond Half-elven is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Both of his parents, Eärendil and Elwing, were half-elven, having both Men and Elves as ancestors. He is the bearer of the elven-ring Vilya, the Ring of Air, and master of Rivendell, where he has lived for thousands of years through the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth. He was the Elf-king Gil-galad's herald at the end of the Second Age, saw Gil-galad and king Elendil fight the dark lord Sauron for the One Ring, and Elendil's son Isildur take it rather than destroy it.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">One Ring</span> Magical ring in The Lord of the Rings

The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring and Isildur's Bane, is a central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). It first appeared in the earlier story The Hobbit (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and re-wrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring.

<i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i> 1954 part of novel by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The action takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth. The book was first published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom. The volume consists of a foreword, in which the author discusses his writing of The Lord of the Rings, a prologue titled "Concerning Hobbits, and other matters", and the main narrative in Book I and Book II.

Christianity is a central theme in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional works about Middle-earth, but the specifics are always kept hidden. This allows for the books' meaning to be personally interpreted by the reader, instead of the author detailing a strict, set meaning.

Women in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> Role of women in Tolkiens fantasy

The roles of women in The Lord of the Rings have often been assessed as insignificant, or important only in relation to male characters in a story about men for boys. Meanwhile, other commentators have noted the empowerment of the three major women characters, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen, and provided in-depth analysis of their roles within the narrative of The Lord of the Rings.

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychological journeys of Middle-earth</span> Analysis of J. R. R. Tolkiens fictional characters

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.

J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly dealt with the theme of death and immortality in Middle-earth. He stated that the "real theme" of The Lord of the Rings was "Death and Immortality". In Middle-earth, Men are mortal, while Elves are immortal. One of his stories, The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, explores the willing choice of death through the love of an immortal Elf for a mortal Man. He several times revisited the Old Norse theme of the mountain tomb, containing treasure along with the dead and visited by fighting. He brought multiple leading evil characters in The Lord of the Rings to a fiery end, including Gollum, the Nazgûl, the Dark Lord Sauron, and the evil Wizard Saruman, while in The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug is killed. Their destruction contrasts with the heroic deaths of two leaders of the free peoples, Théoden of Rohan and Boromir of Gondor, reflecting the early Medieval ideal of Northern courage. Despite these pagan themes, the work contains hints of Christianity, such as of the resurrection of Christ, as when the Lord of the Nazgûl, thinking himself victorious, calls himself Death, only to be answered by the crowing of a cockerel. There are, too, hints that the Elvish land of Lothlórien represents an Earthly Paradise. Scholars have commented that Tolkien clearly moved during his career from being oriented towards pagan themes to a more Christian theology.

References

Primary

  1. ↑ Carpenter 2023, #203 to Herbert Schiro, 17 November 1957
  2. ↑ Carpenter 2023, #211 to Rhona Beare, 14 October 1958
  3. ↑ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1984). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics . Houghton Mifflin. pp. 5–48. ISBN   978-0048090195.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  4. ↑ Tolkien 1954a "Foreword to the Second Edition"
  5. ↑ Tolkien 1954, Book 3, chapter 5 "The White Rider"
  6. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , #165 to Houghton Mifflin , June 1955
  7. ↑ Tolkien 1954, book 3, ch. 6 "The King of the Golden Hall"
  8. ↑ Tolkien 1954a, book 1, ch. 3 "Three is Company"
  9. ↑ Tolkien 1954a, book 2, ch. 2 "The Council of Elrond·"
  10. ↑ Tolkien 1954a, book 2, ch. 4 "A Journey in the Dark"
  11. ↑ Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 2 "The Passage of the Marshes"
  12. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , letter #142 to Robert Murray S.J., 2 December 1953
  13. ↑ Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 3 "The Black Gate is Closed"
  14. ↑ Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 4 "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"

Secondary

  1. 1 2 West, Richard C. (1975). "The Interlace Structure of 'The Lord of the Rings'". In Lobdell, Jared (ed.). A Tolkien Compass . Open Court. p. 81. ISBN   978-0875483030.
  2. ↑ Campbell, Lori M. (2010). Portals of Power: Magical Agency and Transformation in Literary Fantasy. McFarland. p. 161. ISBN   978-0-7864-5655-0. the mission is to destroy rather than to find something, what Stanton calls an 'inverted quest' in which 'Evil struggles to gain power; Good to relinquish it'
  3. ↑ Miller, David M. (1975). "Narrative Pattern in 'The Fellowship of the Ring'". In Lobdell, Jared (ed.). A Tolkien Compass . Open Court. p. 96. ISBN   978-0875483030.
  4. ↑ Shippey 2005, pp. 369–370.
  5. 1 2 3 Flieger, Verlyn (2002). Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World (2nd ed.). Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. p. 2. ISBN   978-0-87338-744-6.
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  25. ↑ Luke 1:52, King James Version
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  27. ↑ Cox, Richard J.; Jones, Leslie (2003). J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography . Greenwood Publishing Group. p.  136. ISBN   978-0-313-32340-9.
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  29. ↑ Solopova 2009, p. 28.
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  60. 1 2 3 4 5 Shippey 2005, pp. 129–133.
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