Psychological depth in Tolkien's characters

[Aiwendil]

The Saucepan Man wrote:

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


quote:
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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.
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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".

Actually, I think that this point of contention is an illusion.

You quoted only half of my essential point above. What I said was:

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. One could also say that an unambiguously good character is not psychologically deep because his or her psyche is simple and thus lacks depth. These things seem contradictory only because each employs a slightly different definitions for "psychologically deep".

In other words, given a particular definition of "psychologically deep", either of these statements could be true.

You chose the second definition, which, I think, is a perfectly good one.