Wow! I'm really glad to see my late entry produced some more movement on this thread. I would be very proud to see the Barrow Downs sustain an entire book reading week by week.
Firefoot, I think your comments about your reading habits are some of the most honest I've ever seen here on a fan-based board.
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Hmm. Interesting how other people feel a let down after leaving the other story line - particularly on my first reading, I experienced a very different reaction. Upon my first reading, I was very much into Frodo (still my favorite character, but I appreciate others more as well now) - after leaving Frodo and Sam at Amon Hen, they were the only two characters I really wanted to know about. Admittedly, I did not get a whole lot out of Book 3 that first reading with the exception of a few notable passages. So eager was I to find out when I was getting on to Frodo that in name-scanning the proceding chapters I accidently found out Gandalf came back... oops. So, anyway, suffice it to say that I was thrilled to reach this chapter.
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I think that quite naturally there are passages and events that various readers skim through while others linger over them. It must reflect the various interests we have as readers--perhaps there is ground here for a thread on "What we skip and why".
I didn't mean to imply that I am not interested in Sam and Frodo. My interest in this "gap" really extends to trying to understand how it works rather than to discredit either side. And I think
Lyta's observation about the Merry/Pippin and Sam/Frodo split is a good one. We can probably later discuss what different lesson, if any, each takes home with him.
Thank you
Estelyn for the link to your thread with its link to a fascinating article and thank you
davem for pointing out Jung's tripartite model. I have to laugh to myself at
Fordim's dismissal of "psychobabble." While I myself do not have faith/ grant credence to either Freud or Jung's models, I think they can be useful to provide a model or layout of understanding, a way of thinking about the characters. It is also wise to keep in the back of our minds the possibility that the author was consciously working with some kind of pattern like this--not that it means automatically that the pattern works in the text for later readers, but that some kind of modelling or grouping might be going on.
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That, and the absence of a sexualised dynamic between Frodo, Sam and Gollum, makes Freud rather a red herring. Ditto for Jung, who would have us looking at these three -- who are among the most well-developed of Tolkien's characters -- as archetypes.
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I will grant
Fordim his point that Sam, Frodo and Gollem are some of the most complexly portrayed characters. Yet I don't see that it necessarily follows that they cannot be "archetypes." Literature abounds with characters who readers feel are fully actualized characters with agency and subjectivity but which also somehow partake of a larger aspect. Seen this way, archetype does not mean psychological simplicity but in face greater complexity.
The interiority or individual nature of Sam's, Frodo's andGollem's struggle is I think very interesting and made more interesting by the fact that they are isolated from the historical struggles of Aragorn and Co. Furthermore, I think it is interesting that while we can find relational patterns among Sam, Frodo and Gollem, I am less able to do that with the Aragorn/ Legolas/ Gimli axis. Perhaps this occurs simply because the plotting is different and the presence of the Ring and its power allows a more tightly developed focus. Without the kind of historical and cultural knowledge which Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have, the hobbit three act out the problem of evil on the personal level.
As for a repressed Sauron, while we are at it,
Fordim, I'm sure we could manage some kind of Hegelian model to account for him.
ahem.