Psychological depth in Tolkien's characters

[The Saucepan Man]

Davem, as I have said, I agree with your description of Faramir's character as decent, noble and inspirational. But I would maintain that these aspects of his character do not by themselves give him psychological depth. If these characteristics were the sum total of his persona, he would be no more than a one-dimensional character, single-minded in his desire to do good. He might struggle to find the inner strength necessary to put his high-minded values into action, but that alone would not provide psychological depth, for it would in itself be a single-minded struggle.

Where Faramir's psycholgical depth lies (to my mind) is in the tension between these and other aspects of his character. Lyta, I think, has put her finger on this perfectly in identifying the tension between his noble values and the compulsion that he feels to do his duty to his father and his people and to earn his father's respect. As mark12_30 said, this is a struggle with which many readers will be able to identify.

I actually feel that film Faramir has more psychological depth, since the tension that Lyta has identified is brought out to a greater extent (and even more so in the extended edition of TTT). Admittedly, his nobility suffers as a result, since his desire to do his duty and earn his father's approval is initially dominant in this struggle, and so he is a different character from the one we know from the book. On the other hand, it looks as though film Denethor will be have less psychological depth than the book character, since it seems that his unsympathetic characteristics will be played up and that his own internal struggle will hardly, if at all, be touched on.

Eurytus, you said:

Quite a few people on this thread have stated that we get all the psychological depth we need in Tolkien from the character’s actions. I cannot see how this can be the case.

I am not by any means saying that this is the case with all of Tolkien's characters. Many of Tolkien's characters do, in my view, lack psychological depth since they are not required to have psychological depth for the purpose of the story. But there are characters whose actions and interactions do give them psychological depth.

As for Hurin, Aiwendil has pointed out that his actions do give us a measure of his personality. I would not say that he is particularly psychologically deep but, as Aiwendil said:

this may not be psychological depth in the sense defined ... by The Saucepan Man, but it certainly is characterization.

As for the relative merits of the internal and external methods of characterisation, I can do no better than agree with the points that Aiwendil has made. This really depends upon what kind of book you want to read. There is validity in both methods but, properly done, neither one is better than the other. They simply acheive different results.

Mark12_30, you said:

To rephrase several folks here, Tolkien "shows" us the character, rather than "telling" us the character (as lmp would say); actions rather than thoughts. To a modern reader I think this is often easier to swallow, especially when demonstrating virtue.

Actually, I would say that Tolkien "tells" us most of his characters, in the sense of portraying them largely by reference to their actions and interactions, rather than "showing" us them by giving us direct access to their inner thoughts. But I think that the point is still a valid one. A story told by reference to the inner thoughts and feelings of a worthy and high-minded character would probably be dreadfully dull, and almost certainly give the reader the feeling of being "preached" at. Whereas, when we are told of those noble values by reference to a character's heroic deeds, the story (if well-written) gains interest and the values portrayed become far more acceptable to the reader.

Aiwendil said much the same in describing the benefit of the external approach in the context of the story that Tolkien set out to tell:

... in the particular case of Tolkien, it allowsfor an essential feature of his world - the existence of unambiguously good characters.

I do still have one point of contention with you, though, Aiwendil:

One could very well say that an unambiguously good character is psychologically deep because we see all that there is to see of his or her psyche - it just happens not to be very complicated.

I do not think that a character can be said to have psychological depth when his or her psyche is not complicated. To my mind, it is only when there is some tension, or at least interplay, between aspects of a character's persona that he or she begins to gain psychological depth. So that is where I am coming from in formulating my definition of "psychological depth".