Shell-shocked Frodo .... or .... PTSD in LOTR - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

littlemanpoet · 12-25-2006, 03:43 PM

Two additional perspectives have come to mind on this. Excellent, post, Child, by the way.

First, there is a paradigm of mythic legend such that the hero of the story moves from isolation to community by means of the hero's adventures. The fascinating thing about this is that Frodo, who at the beginning of the story is described as being used to isolation, (an orphan, and then only adopted heir to an isolated old hobbit), does not achieve community at the end of the story. The Ring's effects on him exacerbate his isolation. In terms of this thread, the Ring, and the features of shell-shock or PTSD, keep him from being able to go back to the Shire and be part of it. What strikes me is that Tolkien has prepared us for this at many points throughout the story. Frodo tells Sam that the Shire may be saved, but not for him.

But running counter to that persepective is the Elvishness of Frodo. As Child has implied in her post just before this one, Frodo does not fit with hobbits for he has graduated, after a fashion, from hobbit-hood. He has become a sort of Elf; not literally, of course, but his emotional, psychic, and spiritual natures tend toward Elvishness instead of hobbitishness.

So he is isolated from fellow hobbits, by and large, but those same isolating factors seem to bring him into community with Elves; and his final companions are a fellow Ring-bearer hobbit who has experienced just as much isolation and Elven community, an Istari, and some of the greatest Elves ever to walk the shores of Arda.

Thus, it almost .... almost, mind you .... appears that those things that seem to grind him down and make his Middle Earth life insufferable, are the very things that make it possible for him to join a higher community that lives at a level that hobbits can't even imagine. Just so, 'the pain that he feels and the suffering he has endured, becomes the very stuff of his healing', as it were....

12-25-2006, 03:43 PM	#21
littlemanpoet Itinerant Songster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Edge of Faerie Posts: 7,066	Two additional perspectives have come to mind on this. Excellent, post, Child, by the way. First, there is a paradigm of mythic legend such that the hero of the story moves from isolation to community by means of the hero's adventures. The fascinating thing about this is that Frodo, who at the beginning of the story is described as being used to isolation, (an orphan, and then only adopted heir to an isolated old hobbit), does not achieve community at the end of the story. The Ring's effects on him exacerbate his isolation. In terms of this thread, the Ring, and the features of shell-shock or PTSD, keep him from being able to go back to the Shire and be part of it. What strikes me is that Tolkien has prepared us for this at many points throughout the story. Frodo tells Sam that the Shire may be saved, but not for him. But running counter to that persepective is the Elvishness of Frodo. As Child has implied in her post just before this one, Frodo does not fit with hobbits for he has graduated, after a fashion, from hobbit-hood. He has become a sort of Elf; not literally, of course, but his emotional, psychic, and spiritual natures tend toward Elvishness instead of hobbitishness. So he is isolated from fellow hobbits, by and large, but those same isolating factors seem to bring him into community with Elves; and his final companions are a fellow Ring-bearer hobbit who has experienced just as much isolation and Elven community, an Istari, and some of the greatest Elves ever to walk the shores of Arda. Thus, it almost .... almost, mind you .... appears that those things that seem to grind him down and make his Middle Earth life insufferable, are the very things that make it possible for him to join a higher community that lives at a level that hobbits can't even imagine. Just so, 'the pain that he feels and the suffering he has endured, becomes the very stuff of his healing', as it were....