The Structure of The Lord of the Rings

[Turin]

For a good analysis of the Structure of LoTR, read Tom Shippey's "Tolkien - author of the Century".

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Turin

For a good analysis of the Structure of LoTR, read Tom Shippey's "Tolkien - author of the Century".

Hello Turin, and welcome to the Downs.

Many of us already have read Shippey. But for those who have not, could you elaborate on your recommendation? Ours is to reason why.

[Turin]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Hello Turin, and welcome to the Downs.

Many of us already have read Shippey. But for those who have not, could you elaborate on your recommendation? Ours is to reason why.

Thank you for your welcome

I've not been a particular fan of Shippey in the past, his writing style seemed to be too tedious and pedantic, and he often reads too much into little things. However, Author of the Century is written in more simpler language and with simpler experessions. It is useful for someone who is not that experienced in reading Tolkien. This time round, Shippey breaks things down in easily understandable terms and, as I have said, focuses on less "academic" matters and discusses structure, themes, symbolism etc.

I'll have to refer to the book again to comment on the specifics with regards to the structural elements.

Hope that's not a cop-out

[ivo]

Thank you littlemanpoet, very kind.
I'm not familiar with the work of Joseph Campbell, please tell me why I should be.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Hello Ivo, and welcome to the Downs.

I like your take on this, but I think I will resist the desire to render the complexity of the story in such comparatively ‘simple’ (but certainly not simplistic) terms. It seems to me that this Hegelian idea as you are presenting it is another version of the old Romance ideal of Middle English – something that Tolkien was more than familiar with. 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. As your own post makes clear, you also want to look at how Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo all pass through death: which would seem to indicate that you are considering the story as being governed by twinning and repetition at least as much as by some form of progressive schema of evolutionary growth. I’d like to think that story can be apprehended in both ways (that is, as progressive and repetitive) but if we want to do that we have to acknowledge that at some level these two modes of structuring the tale are not entirely compatible (you can’t go forward and back at the same time – at least not easily or comfortably).

Another aspect of your idea I that I very much like is the emphasis that you seem to be giving to what I’ve called above a ‘moral’ structure, in that the shape of LotR cannot be understood in terms of its events (which are disconnected) or even its characters (which are not three dimensional on their own, and need to be related to each other) but that it must be understood in terms of the larger ‘moral framework’ that it is both constructing and dramatizing. In this respect, I suppose that the Ring would be the central structural device insofar as it symbolises the morally bad that the Good is trying to destroy or overcome.

Littlemanpoet, some of the points you raise here about the archaic language of LotR were recently discussed here, if you’d like to take a look.

[Aiwendil]

Fordim wrote:

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.

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.

[littlemanpoet]

I'm not familiar with the work of Joseph Campbell, please tell me why I should be.

Should be? That may be saying too much. My question to you was engendered by this:

The mind becomes conscious as it travels to Mordor. There it faces its ultimate negation, death. But in order to become selfconscious it has to return to where it came from. Only then it is Geist.

Joseph Campbell wrote a book entitled Hero With a Thousand Faces. In it, he described how all myths can be boiled down to a few psychological types with which humans deal. His theories have been exploded lately, but that does not lessen his impact on the educated public during his lifetime.

Tolkien considered Campbell's idea frankly spurious. Humbug, even. His thought was that though many mythic stories had similar ingredients, the specifics in each one were at least as important as the similarities between them.

I'm not saying that you think like Campbell. I just noticed your psychological reading into LotR, and wondered if you were familiar with the most famous pyschological reader-into-myth. I would guess that Campbell was well versed in Hegel. You see, consciousness and death were two of Campbell's key "types" in myth.