Tolkien's ambiguity

Last updated

Tolkien's ambiguity, in his Middle-earth fiction, in his literary analysis of fantasy, and in his personal statements about his fantasy, has attracted the attention of critics, who have drawn conflicting conclusions about his intentions and the quality of his work, and of scholars, who have examined the nature of that ambiguity.

Contents

Scholars such as Steve Walker and Nils Ivar Agøy have noted that Tolkien leaves wide freedom for the reader to imagine different aspects of Middle-earth, such as through his diction, his balancing of psychological reality against the possibilities of fantasy, and the vagueness of his descriptions of characters and landscapes. Others like Catherine Madsen and Verlyn Flieger consider the way that The Lord of the Rings is at once pagan and Christian, where events arise naturally but carry a moral message. Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien made equivocal statements about fantasy, such as in his essay "On Fairy-Stories". Tolkien was similarly equivocal about the nature of evil, as seen through the One Ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth; it behaves both as an inanimate object, and as a thing with constantly evil intent. Shippey considered Tolkien lucky to have been able to balance between pagan and Christian worlds through literary skill and suggestion.

A film adaptation inevitably reduces the complexity and ambiguity of a narrative, not least because any object described has to be represented in just one way. The fact that Peter Jackson's film version also chooses to emphasize the metaphor of a journey further simplifies the presentation. On the other hand, music is, like text, inherently ambiguous, and a work like Johan de Meij's 1989 Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings" can in its way preserve some of the ambiguity of Tolkien's narrative.

Context

J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English; he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford. [1] He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , and for the posthumously published The Silmarillion which provides a more mythical narrative about earlier ages. A devout Roman Catholic, he described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work", rich in Christian symbolism. [T 1]

Freedom for the reader

Ambiguous diction

Boromir, wondering what exactly Galadriel had been doing with her mirror (emphases added)

'To me it seemed exceedingly strange', said Boromir. 'Maybe it was only a test, and she thought to read our thoughts for her own good purpose; but almost I should have said that she was tempting us, and offering what she pretended to have the power to give. It need not be said that I refused to listen. The Men of Minas Tirith are true to their word.' But what he thought that the Lady had offered him Boromir did not tell.

The Lord of the Rings , book 2, ch. 7 "The Mirror of Galadriel" [T 2]

The scholar of English literature Steve Walker states that Tolkien's prose leaves ample freedom for the reader through its ceaseless ambiguity in many dimensions, such as in diction, [2] in balancing psychological reality against "imaginative possibility", [3] in description of characters and landscape, [3] in tone, [4] between past and present, [5] and between the ordinariness and almost pantheistic animation of nature. [3]

Tolkien deliberately introduces ambiguity in many places with words of various parts of speech – including adjectives, verbs, and nouns – that hint at uncertainty, strangeness, or chance. [2]

Steve Walker's analysis of Tolkien's ambiguous diction [2]
Part of speechExamplesFunction
Verb imagined, believed, half fancied, seemed, suspected, wonderedActively introduce ambiguity
Adjective curious, odd, queer, strange, unnaturalQualify ordinary nouns, "tending to objectify the supernatural even as they imply mystery in the natural"
Abstract noun chance, fortune, luck"Complicate [the] significance" of "plotted coincidences" with ambiguity between luck and fate

In his tone, Tolkien achieves an ambiguous balance by offering alternative views or opinions, such as when the Elves Galadriel and Celeborn meet the ancient Ent Treebeard near the end of the book. [4]

Steve Walker's analysis of Tolkien's ambivalent tone in one conversation [4]
CharacterStatement in The Return of the King [T 3] Tone
Treebeard "It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. I do not think we shall meet again.""reluctantly pessimistic"
Celeborn "I do not know, Eldest.""abstaining"
Galadriel "Not in Middle-earth, nor until the lands that lie under the wave are lifted up again. Then in the willow-meads of Tasarinan we may meet in the spring.""hesitantly hopeful"

Ambiguous description

Tolkien's description of Frodo after meeting the Elves,
discussed by scholars [6] [7]

In the morning Frodo woke refreshed. He was lying in a bower made by a living tree with branches laced and drooping to the ground; his bed was of fern and grass, deep and soft and strangely fragrant. The sun was shining through the fluttering leaves, which were still green upon the tree. He jumped up and went out.

The Lord of the Rings , book 1, ch. 4 "A Short Cut to Mushrooms" [T 4]

Some of Tolkien's critics, like the Beowulf translator Burton Raffel, have been in two minds about The Lord of the Rings . Raffel liked the book, but in the words of the historian and Tolkien scholar Nils Ivar Agøy "reached the weird conclusion that it was 'not literature'." Taking the passage describing Frodo's awakening after meeting the Elf Gildor Inglorion, Raffel calls the prose "brilliantly adequate, straightforward, just starched enough to have body, resilient enough to catch the echoes of speech, not a super-charged instrument, nor one with great range, but very competent". Agøy describes Raffel as being "in two minds" on Tolkien's descriptive powers. [6] [7] Raffel wanted Tolkien's descriptions to be precise, with "particular objects in particular relationships with the characters", and without all the ambiguity and uncertainty that Tolkien had created. [6] Agøy contrasts Raffel's reaction with Walker's, noting that Walker describes Tolkien's prose as "sensuous, the landscape tangible". He adds that Walker also states that Tolkien is "less concrete than he seems", his writing full of a "generalized quality" (with archetypes in place of individual characters), causing critics like Raffel to react against the book. [6] Tolkien's ambiguity further explains why The Lord of the Rings has been seen in so many different ways. [8]

Agøy finds that while Tolkien does sometimes describe people, places, and objects such as utensils, swords, and staves, he just as often makes the descriptions "general ... almost generic", leaving plenty of room for the reader's imagination: "If we see cosy Bag End in vivid color and high definition, the colors and details are added by us, the readers, to a framework provided by Tolkien." [9] Agøy adds that in his essay On Fairy-Stories , Tolkien states in a footnote (Note E) that "illustrations do little good to fairy-stories", since "every hearer of the words will have his own picture" of what a piece of bread, a hill, or a river is like. [10] Accordingly, Agøy summarizes Tolkien's view as being that authors should "not unnecessarily constrain the reader's 'own picture'", in other words favouring "quite vague descriptions." [10]

Tolkien took care, too, to choose ambiguous titles, so as not to give away too much of the story. [T 5] When his publishers decided to bring out The Lord of the Rings in three volumes, rather than six books as Tolkien had hoped, he stated in a letter that "I prefer for Vol. III The War of the Ring, since it gets in the Ring again; and also is more noncommittal, and gives less hint about the turn of the story: the chapter titles have been chosen also to give away as little as possible in advance." [T 5]

Pagan and Christian

Echoes of Christianity

Catherine Madsen, writing in Mythlore , describes the contradictory quality of The Lord of the Rings, "religion without revelation", in which "all triumphs are mixed: every victory over evil is also a depletion of the good." [11] She sees "echoes" of Christian imagery in the book, but "precisely not witnesses to the Gospel", arguing that if Elbereth has something of the Virgin Mary about her, it is her "starriness that crosses over into Faerie, not her miraculous motherhood or her perpetual virginity." [11] Tolkien had in Madsen's view a strong allegiance both to Christianity and to the "laws and form of the fairy-story". She argues that he wanted to show "a world on its own terms" where "both catastrophe and eucatastrophe developed from natural facts, because these carry a weight which the supernatural cannot." [11]

Moral ambiguity

Tolkien's Cracks of Doom scene has been likened to "Aeneas' morally ambiguous killing of Turnus". 17th century painting by Luca Giordano Aeneas and Turnus.jpg
Tolkien's Cracks of Doom scene has been likened to "Aeneas' morally ambiguous killing of Turnus". 17th century painting by Luca Giordano

Madsen notes the "immense moral ambiguity" of the book's Cracks of Doom scene where Frodo and Gollum struggle for the One Ring; far from some simple good triumphing over evil, good "depends on evil to deliver it." [11] The classicist J. K. Newman calls the scene the book's "morally ambiguous climax", likening it in Classical terms to "Aeneas' morally ambiguous killing of Turnus" at the end of Virgil's Aeneid . [12]

Imagination and orthodoxy

The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger notes that The Lord of the Rings has constantly attracted conflicting analyses, such as those of neo-pagans and evangelical Christians. Tolkien replied ambiguously to questions, or gave conflicting statements of his own view. [13] Flieger states that he "trimmed his sails to meet winds from different directions", noting that the book offers "richness and multivalent texture", enabling every reader to take what they personally need and want. [14] In her view, Tolkien was trying to "harmonize his work's originality and his own imagination with Christian orthodoxy, and to situate his often unorthodox views within the narrower confines of his religion without abandoning either." [14] Flieger quotes Judith Thurman's remark that "A coherent personality aspires, like a work of art, to contain its conflicts without resolving them dogmatically", [15] stating that Tolkien had the advantage of being inclusive enough to achieve this. [16] Flieger ends by stating that the book is "not a story about good and evil but a story about how good can become evil, a story whose strength lies in the tension created by deliberately unresolved situations and conflicts... [tapping] into that 'reservoir of power' below the visible world." [17]

Hinting at evil

Metaphors and metonyms

The Lidless Eye, a metonym for the Dark Lord Sauron, an embodiment of evil power in The Lord of the Rings Flag of Mordor SVG.svg
The Lidless Eye, a metonym for the Dark Lord Sauron, an embodiment of evil power in The Lord of the Rings

Joanna Podhorodecka writes that Tolkien revives numerous familiar and seemingly linguistically dead metaphors for evil in the book, ambiguously treating them both as familiar phrases, and hinting that they are (perhaps) literally true of the shadowy presences such as the Dark Lord Sauron and his deadly servants, the Nazgûl or ringwraiths, that he is describing. Among Tolkien's metaphors are the Lidless Eye, the symbol of the evil land of Mordor, metonymic for Sauron; the hand, stretching out to control; and shadow, denoting Sauron's power. [18]

Evil: nothing, or powerful

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that shadow is "Tolkien's distinctive image of evil". [18] [19] Podhorodecka adds that describing evil as dark is inherently ambiguous, as this could mean simple absence of light, or "the Unlight", an actual and substantial enemy. [18] Tolkien's ambiguous account of evil is "an attempt to reconcile two views", which Shippey describes as "both old, both authoritative, both living, each seemingly contradicted by the other." [20] These are the Boethian view that evil is nothing, it does not exist but is the absence of good; and the opposing view, tending towards the Manichaean, that evil is equal and opposite to good, and ceaselessly battles against it. Thus, Shippey notes, Frodo states the Boethian view directly while he is in Mordor: "the Shadow ... can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own"; [T 6] similarly, he writes, the Ent Treebeard states that "Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy ... in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves". [21] [T 7] But, Shippey writes, evil felt real enough during the Second World War and the Holocaust when Tolkien was writing. So, Shippey argues, the Ring behaves inconsistently, being both an inanimate object and definitely evil, since it "betrayed" Isildur to his death, "abandoned" Gollum when it had no more use for him, and in Frodo's words "perhaps it had tried to reveal itself in response to some wish or command that was felt in the room" [T 8] in the Prancing Pony inn at Bree, when the Ring advertises its presence to the watching spies by slipping itself onto Frodo's finger, making him suddenly invisible. [21]

Punning on second meanings

The name Avallone, a city on the island of Tol Eressea close to the Undying Lands of Valinor, recalls the name of the magical Arthurian island of Avalon. Valinor.svg
The name Avallonë, a city on the island of Tol Eressëa close to the Undying Lands of Valinor, recalls the name of the magical Arthurian island of Avalon.

Bilingual puns

Pierre H. Berube suggests in Mythlore that Tolkien used punning names to hint at their meaning in a second language, such as English or Greek. [22] He comments that Mordor and Númenor weakly suggest the verbal associations "murder" and "numinous". More strongly, he notes that Avallonë and Atalantë remind readers of the Arthurian Avalon and Plato's Atlantis; the latter was acknowledged by Tolkien as a happy coincidence. [22]

The name of the tower of Orthanc is unique in that it is explicitly stated to be a bilingual pun in The Two Towers : Tolkien gives the two meanings as "Mount Fang" in Elvish (Sindarin), and "Cunning Mind" in the "language of the Mark of Old". Tolkien had chosen to represent Rohirric, the language of Rohan/the Mark as Old English, [22] where orþanc means "intelligence, understanding, mind; cleverness, skill; skilful work, mechanical art" as a noun, and "ingenious, skilful" as an adjective. [23] Tolkien was thus admitting that he was using Old English to represent Rohirric. [22]

A different case was Beleriand, which Tolkien had earlier named Broceliande, another Arthurian reference, this time to the magical forest Brocéliande. Since Tolkien had dropped that, Berube suggests that he wanted to find a different allusion, and chose the obscure Belerion as his target. This was the name given to Cornwall, or perhaps more specifically to the tin-mining region near Land's End, by the traveller Pytheas of Massalia in around 240 BC. Berube comments that few readers can have made this association. [22] One pun that Tolkien dropped, fortunately in Berube's view, was "Gnome" for the Noldor, a group of Elves distinguished by their knowledge and skill; the intended association was with "gnosis", from the Greek, meaning "knowing"; but Tolkien was persuaded not to use the name because of its trivial popular usage. [22]

Building double meanings

Walker writes that Tolkien makes his words "work overtime", weaving double meanings "into the essential texture of the prose". [24] Some of these are explicit, like Aragorn's epithet "Estel" which is stated to mean "Hope"; Tolkien then freely puns on this in a sustained way throughout the novel with phrases like "hope dwelt ever in the depths of his heart" or that by his efforts "hope beyond hope was fulfilled". [24] Other cases are lighter, as when the Elvish boats (craft) given to the Fellowship are called "crafty", meaning "clever as well as seaworthy", or when the evil battering-ram Grond is wound about with "spells of ruin" which, Walker suggests, are "both ruinous and runic". [24]

Further, Walker states, much of Tolkien's punning attends so closely to the situation that it could be called "mimetic diction", painting a word-picture of whatever is happening. When describing the evil Old Man Willow, the words become treelike: his heart is called "rotten", his strength "green", his wisdom "rooted". [24]

Steve Walker's analysis of some of Tolkien's mimetic puns [24]
SituationTolkien's mimetic phraseComments
Discussing the Prancing Pony inn"My people ride out there now and again""Lively semantic horseplay"
Dwarves fearing to be eaten by Trolls "[We are in] a nice pickle"Stock phrase "to be in a [pretty] pickle"
Nearing the Cracks of Doom Frodo talks in "a cracked whisper"Stock phrase "the crack of doom"
Goldberry addresses the ring -bearer, Frodo"I see you are an elf-friend, ... the ring in your voice tells it"Play on homonyms

Balance between subcreation and underlying reality

Equivocating about fantasy

Shippey writes that Tolkien made multiple equivocal statements about fantasy itself, both in "On Fairy-Stories" and in his poem "Mythopoeia". In Shippey's view, Tolkien was expressing his conviction that "fantasy is not entirely made up", but was at once what Tolkien called "the Sub-creative art in itself" and "derived from the Image", existing like Tolkien's beloved Old English words before any philologist (such as Tolkien himself) began to study them. So Tolkien was lucky enough to be able in his fiction to "balance exactly between 'dragon-as-simple-beast' and 'dragon-as-just-allegory', between pagan and Christian worlds, on a pinpoint of literary artifice and mythic suggestion." [25]

Some degree of sentience

Tolkien never makes it quite clear how close to sentient the trees in the Old Forest may be. An old, damaged oak, Savernake Forest - geograph.org.uk - 344479.jpg
Tolkien never makes it quite clear how close to sentient the trees in the Old Forest may be.

Cynthia Cohen comments that Tolkien is steadily ambiguous about an Old Forest character, Old Man Willow/"old Willow-man", interchanging the two terms, and so hinting that he might be "a tree-like man, a man-like tree, or something in between." [27] She writes that Tolkien is equally vague about the difference between Old Man Willow and the rest of the trees in the Old Forest; they may just be trees but who are somewhat sentient, as they are "under its dominion" (though Frodo refers to Old Willow Man as "he" not "it") [27] and watch the intruding Hobbits with hostile "emotion and intent", indeed seeming to have a "vindictive will". [28] [T 9]

Tolkien's trees range from being simple, natural, primary world plants through to fully-sentient and mobile Ents, with Huorns (who can be stirred up to walk by the Ents) and Old Forest trees in between. Cohen comments that Tolkien carefully crafts an account that preserves "the inner consistency of reality", moving from vague feelings about "queer" trees through to progressively more sentient and hostile beings as the Hobbits travel deeper into the Old Forest. She notes Tolkien's use of phrases that indicate ordinariness as well as the Hobbits' feelings of discomfort: "It seemed [her italics] that the trees became taller, darker, and thicker"; they had "writhing and interlacing roots", which might be familiar metaphors for real-world trees, or might be a literal account of dangerous and threatening beings. [26]

In adaptations

Lost ambiguity in film

The flaming of the stars on Aragorn's battle standard can be imagined in many ways by a reader, but anyone presenting the standard in a film has to choose just one appearance for it. Flag of the Kings of Gondor.svg
The flaming of the stars on Aragorn's battle standard can be imagined in many ways by a reader, but anyone presenting the standard in a film has to choose just one appearance for it.

Scholars such as Michael D. C. Drout and Estelle R. Jorgensen state that Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings reduces the complexity and ambiguity inherent in Tolkien's story. [29] [30]

Drout writes that even the most detailed prose description inherently retains "a certain ambiguity". He gives as an example the long sentence detailing the symbols on Aragorn's battle standard, commenting that no film director can hope to preserve the ambiguity of a statement like "And the stars flamed in the sunlight, for they were wrought of gems by Arwen daughter of Elrond". [29] Drout states that the director has to "choose which gems (which colors, what kind of faceting, etc.) and arrange them in some way." [29] Thus, Drout concludes, even a director who was trying to represent a book literally would reduce or eliminate the text's ambiguity. [29]

In Jorgensen's view, one of Tolkien's many metaphors, that of the journey, takes over as "the single and definitive idea" in the film. [30] The drawings by Jackson's conceptual artists Alan Lee and John Howe, along with Richard Taylor's costume and set designs, drove Jackson's visual presentation, creating an "authoritative" picture of the story. [30] The film version, Jorgensen writes, "becomes one version of what ... might be multiple imagined versions", overriding viewers' own ways of seeing the story. [30]

Ambiguity preserved or lost in music

A musical adaptation may in Jorgensen's view be better able to preserve Tolkien's ambiguity better, generating the sort of wonder that could match the feelings evoked by Tolkien's mythic narrative. She writes that music may hint at the story's "transcendence, profundity, ambiguity, narrativity, and an aesthetic and didactic character that arouse awe, mystery, and a heightened sense of the human condition." [30]

Johan de Meij's 1989 Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings" is programmatic (with movements explicitly named "The Mines of Moria" and "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm"), but Jorgensen suggests that "music's very ambiguity suggests an array of possible other scenarios that listeners, without intimate knowledge of the program [of de Meij's symphony] (or even with it) might construct for themselves." [30]

Howard Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings film series, however, is "pervasively orchestral and tonal", and Tolkien's songs for the Hobbits and for the Elf-lady Galadriel are missing. Instead, Shore uses leitmotifs representing the various cultures depicted, such as the Shire for the Hobbits. The result, in Jorgensen's opinion, is that the music "is swallowed up by sight", as viewers pay attention to the films' unambiguous visible action. [30]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bilbo Baggins</span> Protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkiens The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, and the fictional narrator of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves to reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving, and through his adventures grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rivendell</span> Fictional valley of Elves in J. R. R. Tolkiens Middle-earth

Rivendell is a valley in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, representing both a homely place of sanctuary and a magical Elvish otherworld. It is an important location in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being the place where the quest to destroy the One Ring began.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Lothlórien or Lórien is the fairest realm of the Elves remaining in Middle-earth during the Third Age. It is ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn from their city of tree-houses at Caras Galadhon. The wood-elves of the realm are known as Galadhrim.

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest was a daunting and ancient woodland just beyond the eastern borders of the Shire. Its first and main appearance in print was in the chapter of the 1954 The Fellowship of the Ring titled "The Old Forest". The hobbits of the Shire found the forest hostile and dangerous; the nearest, the Bucklanders, planted a great hedge to border the forest and cleared a strip of land next to it. A malign tree-spirit, Old Man Willow, grew beside the River Withywindle in the centre of the forest, controlling most of it.

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.

Magic in Middle-earth is the use of supernatural power in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Tolkien distinguishes ordinary magic from witchcraft, the latter always deceptive, stating that either type could be used for good or evil.

The cosmology of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium combines aspects of Christian theology and metaphysics with pre-modern cosmological concepts in the flat Earth paradigm, along with the modern spherical Earth view of the Solar System.

Meriadoc Brandybuck, usually called Merry, is a Hobbit, a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, featured throughout his most famous work, The Lord of the Rings. Merry is described as one of the closest friends of Frodo Baggins, the main protagonist. Merry and his friend and cousin, Pippin, are members of the Fellowship of the Ring. They become separated from the rest of the group and spend much of The Two Towers making their own decisions. By the time of The Return of the King, Merry has enlisted in the army of Rohan as an esquire to King Théoden, in whose service he fights during the War of the Ring. After the war, he returns home, where he and Pippin lead the Scouring of the Shire, ridding it of Saruman's influence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Man Willow</span> Evil character in Tolkiens fiction

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy The Lord of the Rings, Old Man Willow is a malign tree-spirit of great age in Tom Bombadil's Old Forest, appearing physically as a large willow tree beside the River Withywindle, but spreading his influence throughout the forest. He is the first hostile character encountered by the Hobbits after they leave the Shire.

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.

Galadriel is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth writings. She appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales.

The impression of depth in The Lord of the Rings is an aesthetic effect deliberately sought by its author, J. R. R. Tolkien. It was intended to give the reader the feeling that the work had "deep roots in the past", and hence that it was attractively authentic.

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.

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.

Tolkien's monsters are the evil beings, such as Orcs, Trolls, and giant spiders, who oppose and sometimes fight the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon. The European medieval tradition of monsters makes them either humanoid but distorted, or like wild beasts, but very large and malevolent; Tolkien follows both traditions, with monsters like Orcs of the first kind and Wargs of the second. Some scholars add Tolkien's immensely powerful Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron to the list, as monstrous enemies in spirit as well as in body. Scholars have noted that the monsters' evil nature reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, a religion which has a clear conception of good and evil.

The prose style of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books, especially The Lord of the Rings, is remarkably varied. Commentators have noted that Tolkien selected linguistic registers to suit different peoples, such as simple and modern for Hobbits and more archaic for Dwarves, Elves, and the Rohirrim. This allowed him to use the Hobbits to mediate between the modern reader and the heroic and archaic realm of fantasy. The Orcs, too, are depicted in different voices: the Orc-leader Grishnákh speaks in bullying tones, while the minor functionary Gorbag uses grumbling modern speech.

The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien set out to explore time travel and distortions in the passage of time in his fiction in a variety of ways. The passage of time in The Lord of the Rings is uneven, seeming to run at differing speeds in the realms of Men and of Elves. In this, Tolkien was following medieval tradition in which time proceeds differently in Elfland. The whole work, too, following the theory he spelt out in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", is meant to transport the reader into another time. He built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into the story, echoing the sense of impending destruction of Norse mythology. The Elves attempt to delay this decline as far as possible in their realms of Rivendell and Lothlórien, using their Rings of Power to slow the passage of time. Elvish time, in The Lord of the Rings as in the medieval Thomas the Rhymer and the Danish Elvehøj, presents apparent contradictions. Both the story itself and scholarly interpretations offer varying attempts to resolve these; time may be flowing faster or more slowly, or perceptions may differ.

<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.

In Tolkien's legendarium, ancestry provides a guide to character. The apparently genteel Hobbits of the Baggins family turn out to be worthy protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is seen from his family tree to be both a Baggins and an adventurous Took. Similarly, Frodo Baggins has some relatively outlandish Brandybuck blood. Among the Elves of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, the highest are the peaceful Vanyar, whose ancestors conformed most closely to the divine will, migrating to Aman and seeing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor; the lowest are the mutable Teleri; and in between are the conflicted Noldor. Scholars have analysed the impact of ancestry on Elves such as the creative but headstrong Fëanor, who makes the Silmarils. Among Men, Aragorn, hero of The Lord of the Rings, is shown by his descent from Kings, Elves, and an immortal Maia to be of royal blood, destined to be the true King who will restore his people. Scholars have commented that in this way, Tolkien was presenting a view of character from Norse mythology, and an Anglo-Saxon view of kingship, though others have called his implied views racist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phial of Galadriel</span> Artefact in Tolkiens novel

The Phial of Galadriel is an object that appears in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. This glowing vial is a gift from the Elf-lady Galadriel to the protagonist Frodo Baggins, who uses it several times during his journey to Mount Doom.

References

Primary

  1. ↑ Carpenter 2023 , letter 142 to Robert Murray, 2 December 1953
  2. ↑ Tolkien 1954a, book 2, ch. 7 "The Mirror of Galadriel"
  3. ↑ Tolkien 1955 , book 6, ch. 6 "Many Partings"
  4. ↑ Tolkien 1954a, book 1, ch. 4 "A Short Cut to Mushrooms"
  5. 1 2 Carpenter 2023 , #140 to Allen & Unwin , August 1953
  6. ↑ Tolkien 1955 , book 6, ch. 1 "The Tower of Cirith Ungol"
  7. ↑ Tolkien 1954 , book 3, ch. 4 "Treebeard"
  8. ↑ Tolkien 1954a , book 1, ch. 9 "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"
  9. ↑ Tolkien 1954a , book 1, ch. 6 "The Old Forest"

Secondary

  1. ↑ Carpenter 1977, pp. 111, 200, 266.
  2. 1 2 3 Walker 2009, p. 34.
  3. 1 2 3 Walker 2009, pp. 49–51.
  4. 1 2 3 Walker 2009, p. 69.
  5. ↑ Walker 2009, pp. 84–86.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Agøy 2013, pp. 52–53.
  7. 1 2 Raffel 1968, pp. 218–248.
  8. ↑ Walker 2009, p. 28.
  9. ↑ Agøy 2013, p. 60.
  10. 1 2 Agøy 2013, pp. 50–51.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Madsen 1988, pp. 43–47.
  12. 1 2 Newman 2005, p. 240.
  13. ↑ Flieger 2014, pp. 149.
  14. 1 2 Flieger 2014, pp. 162.
  15. ↑ Thurman 1999, p. xvi.
  16. ↑ Flieger 2014, pp. 163.
  17. ↑ Flieger 2014, pp. 164.
  18. 1 2 3 Podhorodecka 2013, pp. 215–237.
  19. ↑ Shippey 2005, p. 166.
  20. ↑ Shippey 2005, p. 159.
  21. 1 2 Shippey 2005, pp. 159–166.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Berube 2018
  23. ↑ Clark Hall 2002, p. 270.
  24. 1 2 3 4 5 Walker 2009, pp. 123–127.
  25. ↑ Shippey 2005, pp. 55–58.
  26. 1 2 Cohen 2009, pp. 91–125.
  27. 1 2 Cohen 2009, p. 111.
  28. ↑ Cohen 2009, p. 109.
  29. 1 2 3 4 5 Drout 2011, p. 254.
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Jorgensen 2010.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.