The Structure of The Lord of the Rings

[Mithalwen]

This is another of those threads which is so vast and erudite that I know I will have to take a deep breath before hitting "post" at the end of my ramblings.

First is to point out is to point out the silmilarity between the journeys in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (cf Paul Kocher ?) Ie Leave Shire at instigation of Gandalf, arrive at Rivendell where Elrond dispenses wisdom, dangerous crossing of mountains , part with Gandalf, cross river into magical Elvish realm, which is left by river... ultimate destination a perilous mountain... of course there are differences to but in some respects the Lotr is a "Grown up" version of the Hobbit. Tolkien isn't afraid to use the same elements and let them play out in diffferent ways (several stories in the silmarillion have similar elements). However it was the separation of the threads in TTT which stalled my first attempt at reading LOTR when I was about 10 (Father Christmas had noticed I had enjoyed the Hobbit ). By the end of the Christmas Holidays I was struggling across the Ephel Duath with Frodo and Sam and by the time I rejoined Gandalf and Pippin I had forgotten what they were up to and they went back on the shelf for a couple of years when I skimmed book 5 ( despite Faramir it remains my least favourite and least read part apart from Bombadil). I wonder if the complete separation of the threads is to stop it being quite so obvious that the main thrust of the plot has relatively little action? In the Radio version where they cut back and forth between the two this is alleviated partly by exploring the psychology of the 3 main protagonists whose mental journey is so much more interesting than the physical journey, and of course in the "real time" version Faramir becomes a muchstronger link between the plotlines. I must reread the relevant parts of HoME.

As for Christopher as audience, I am sure we owe him a fair bit - including the original map (if memory serves correctly). Even as a small boy he seems to have a memory to detail that proved complementary to his father's creative imagination. I really much get "The Letters" - that quote is quite touching and I wonder which Hobbit? Merry maybe.. It also ties in with my theory that the LOTR is the grown up version of the Hobbit...

As for the scouring of the Shire, I understand why some feel it an anticlimax , especially if you have been caught up with all the great deeds and great people- the wondrous elves and the noble men, but I think if you lose the scouring of the shire you lose the "point" of the whole thing. It is the Hobbits, that Tolkien identifies himself with and I sense that he expects us to too - much as we might fancy ourselves as Aragorn or Galadriel, Faramir or Eowyn - and we cannot live on the heights for long. The hobbits have to go home and the reader has to get back down to earth. Again it reprises "The Hobbit". Bilbo returns to find his home in the narrower sense overrun ( albeit non violently) and he has some bother before it is restored to him. Frodo and Co return to find their home overrun.. I think this shows that we cannot insulate ourselves in our own little world and keep the outside out forever (I am sure I have said this elsewhere but cannot remember which thread ) - nor can we leave and return to find it unchanged. Frodo's words about going to save the Shire, and it having been saved but not for him are perhaps the most moving and significant for me and I think that the character of Frodo lost out most of all in the movie version. I know there are cinematic reasons why they simplified the story but I find the book (and Radio) Frodo, facing middle age and making a choices to go (rather than running away all the time) so much more moving. Especially when the other hobbits are able to find a degree of fulfilment in Middle Earth. Enough rambling

[littlemanpoet]

Mr. Underhill, I await your erudition in regard to Milieu or not.

Mithalwen, I found it interesting that you pointed to the similarities between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Your similarities seem to consist mainly in plot-string, which seem to me to be more on the face of things. Your comment that LotR is a "grown-up" version of TH may have something to do with a rather fundamental difference between TH and LotR: whereas TH is an adventure story, a "there-and-back-again" tale, to use Tolkien's words (as spoken through Bilbo), Tolkien has made quite a point that LotR is a quest story, and not merely an adventure story. To overstate the case, the adventure story is a lark: the hero leaves home, has his adventure, and goes back home again. By contrast, in the quest story, the huge events spread wider until they overtake the humble home of the hero, who is taken up into the quest, against his own will, and only accepts the arduous task appointed to him because he must remain true to himself, knowing full well that he will probalby fail. So the quest nature of LotR raises the story to a more serious level, more mature, more thematically deep and rich, than TH.

[Mithalwen]

I wouldn't say Bilbo quite goes of his own free will..... and the story of the Hobbit is known as the "Quest of Erebor"..

[littlemanpoet]

Granted. I still see a difference between the two. Not least is that Frodo can't go home again. Not really. There is, of course, the greater gravity of the LotR quest. And you (or should I say, I) have a sense that Bilbo could have said "no" because it really had nothing to do with him, but really wanted to go; whereas Frodo had no such choice, because his uncle's heirloom made him the steward of the Ring, and thus the one appointed; it had everything to do with him, like it or not. So maybe it wasn't quest versus adventure as much as ...... oh....... fate? or providence? or meant-to-beness?

[Mithalwen]

fair points and which raise various interesting questions which have been aired if not answered in other threads if I remember rightly..... Gandalf (who of course maybe in a better position to judge as a Maia.. implies the intention of a higher power ... "Bilbo was meant to find teh ring but not by it's maker" - andI quite agree that while Bilbo yearned for adventure, Frodo seems to have a sense of destiny

[Boromir88]

whereas Frodo had no such choice, because his uncle's heirloom made him the steward of the Ring, and thus the one appointed; it had everything to do with him, like it or not.

Good point lmp, and Tolkien does draw a lot of connections between Frodo and Bilbo. There birthdays are on the same day, when Frodo met Gildor the first thing Frodo talked about in their conversation was "have you seen Bilbo?," and it mentions in A Long expected Party, how Frodo approaches 50, and yet is still active, and adventurous, which happened to be the same age Bilbo started to get anxious/antsy.

I also love the connections between Gloin/Gimli/Bilbo/Frodo. In Many Meetings we see at the supper that Frodo sits next to Gloin and it states how they talked together for most of the time. Then later on in Lothlorien

"Come with me, Frodo!" cried the dwarf, springing from the road. "I would not have you go without seeing Kheled-Zaram."

Now we see the growing friendship between Gloin's heir (Gimli), and Bilbo's heir (Frodo). So Tolkien is drawing all these connections between Bilbo and Frodo, as well as throughout his stories he draws other connections with (excuse me I don't know the proper word for this) "lineage."

Take the Istari for example. Radagast-Yavanna, so Radagast ends up being known for falling in love with nature, and tending the birds...etc. Saruman/Dwarves/Noldor-Aule, they all greed for something, or some desire whatever it may be. Gandalf-was said to not really to be represented by a Maia but is most like Manwe, so he succeeds in his "task."

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Only time for a very brief post -- there is one 'truism' about LotR that I have seen batted around here for a while that I'm not sure holds much water. The 'party line' seems to be that in the Scouring of the Shire we see that evil will never suffer a final defeat and that the stain of this incident upon the Shire serves as a reminder of that fact.

Well, the problem I have with this theory is that in the Scouring of the Shire the very last of the (Third Age) evil is done away with in the form of Saruman's death. After this (relatively minor) battle, the story is quite clear that life in the Shire actually improves. The crops are better, thanks to Sam and Galadriel's gift, the borders are secured, thanks to Aragorn, and even the really disturbing memories are expunged, thanks to Frodo's decision to leave. I think that the presence of Saruman in the Shire when the hobbits return is an intrusion into their complaisance about the Shire (it can be touched by evil), but they very handily do away with that evil.

Now, I am not suggesting that there is a final defeat for evil – a personage of no less stature than Gandalf tells us the contrary on more than one occasion. Sauron will never die, just lose strength, people are still flawed, there is greed and weakness and desire, the line of Men is failing…but in the Shire, in the incident of the Scouring and its immediate aftermath, I just don’t see any of that. I find the whole incident an extraordinarily purgative/healing (even cathartic) process of regeneration: of the turn from good to better, through momentary worse.

So this leaves me, I realise, with having to contend what function or place the Scouring does hold in the overall structure. I shall have to turn to that in a later and longer post…

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Gandalf-was said to not really to be represented by a Maia but is most like Manwe, so he succeeds in his "task."

I remember Child of the Seventh Age saying that Gandalf was (to some degree) associated with Nienna-- the one who weeps so copiously. Perhaps this helps explain Gandalf's compassion-- for instance, towards Smeagol.

Being compassion-oriented towards the smaller folk, he therefore cares about the peoples of Middle-Earth as a whole. And that's a better platform for his task than (for instance) greed.