Fordim wrote:
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In Romance, we have a form of narrative that is akin to allegory insofar as the characters are presented as ‘types’ but these types work together to form some kind of corporate representation of the human mind/soul. In this schema, I wonder what ‘part’ of humanity Frodo represents? Or Aragorn? Or Sauron? I have no doubt that such a schema is possible, but like I said, I resist this as I don’t think that assigning these characters to ‘types’ does them or the story a service, in that the complexity of the whole would seem to slip past such categories.
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This discussion calls to mind one of the few things any of my English teachers has ever said that I found genuinely insightful. We were discussing
Moby Dick (never mind that we hadn't actually read it . . .) and she said that the white whale is a
complex symbol.
Now I'm not entirely sure what she meant by that, but it did make sense to me in its own way, and I think that it can be useful to think about "complex symbols". What is a complex symbol? Well, it's a symbol that isn't simple. It's a symbol that doesn't map directly and uniquely onto a single "signified". It's a symbol that can simultaneously represent more than one thing. The white whale, for example, simultaneously symbolizes nature, obsession, purity, the sea, and so forth.
I've found this concept useful in thinking about other works that might be classed as "semi-allegorical". It never occurred to me think if LotR in this way, since it was not written with the intent of allegory. But now it strikes me that there may be a great deal of similarity between Tolkien's "applicability" and the idea of a complex symbol.
Take the Ring. It is not a simple symbol, certainly. It does not represent nuclear power or drug addiction or anything else. Nor is it quite right to say that it represents power. In the context of the story, it is merely an
example (if an incredibly potent one) of power. One is tempted to show that it is not a symbol by asking, rhetorically, what exactly it symbolizes: Power? Evil? Temptation? Addiction? Artifice?
This is where the complex symbol language becomes useful. We can say that the Ring is a complex symbol that simultaneously represents all those things. Moreover, in the very fact that it simultaneously represents different concepts, it also represents a certain set of relations among those concepts. It represents not only power and temptation separately; it also represents the tendency of power to tempt.
It is as though, rather than simply taking the fundamental "signified"s and fashioning a symbol for each one (as is done in a simple allegory), the artist has taken those fundamental concepts and fashioned his symbols by fusing certain of them together.
In this way, it does make sense to say that, for example, the characters in LotR represent aspects of the human mind - the catch is that they don't each represent only one aspect.