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Old 08-21-2004, 07:43 PM   #1
Fordim Hedgethistle
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Pipe Paired characters in LotR

A while back I started a thread on monsters and the nature of evil in The Lord of the Rings. The discussion quickly turned to how the novel is organised around different patterns of monsters and baddies – I won’t recap the conversation here since it’s not really my point (hence my beginning a new thread). But that discussion did get me thinking about how consistently LotR works in terms of patterns that it sets up between characters, rather than just focusing on individual characters.

For example: Sam and Frodo are not just friends, but two ‘halves’ of a necessary whole. Frodo is the self-sacrificing, wiser of the two, but he gives in to despair; whereas Sam is more insular in his thinking, but never loses hope. This pair is reflected to some extent in the pairing of Merry and Pippin. I really think that Merry is to Pippin as Frodo is to Sam, and vice versa. Like Frodo with Sam, Merry is wiser, and more experienced than Pippin, and he is overcome by the despair of the Black Breath. And like Sam with Frodo, Pippin is younger and narrower in his view, but his spirits never fail, and his faith and hope is what saves Faramir.

Frodo and Sam are the ‘moral’ pairing, in that their struggle is, well, a moral one in which they must make good choices (in the sense of morally good, not just strategically correct choices). Merry and Pippin are the more ‘historical’ pairing, in that their struggles are, well, historical, in that they must make good strategic choices (that are still morally good). I’m not suggesting that there is some absolute split between Frodo/Sam and Merry/Pippin but that the two pairs, when put side-by-side, have a lot to say to and about each other. These two pairs of hobbits give us a full picture of hobbity virtue.

These kinds of patterns go on and on (and on). There’s the connections between Aragorn and Arwen to Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. Neither pair is complete without both halves – the masculine and the feminine. Whereas Aragorn and Arwen are the historical figures, however, Tom and Goldberry are folkloric and timeless. (This particular connection was made for me in the Chapter by Chapter discussion where it was pointed out that the first hint of Aragorn comes in the novel from Tom).

So I suppose that this thread addresses a number of questions. What other paired-pairings are there in the book? What do they tell us about the characters involved. Most significantly, what does this pattern suggest? That no one character alone is truly heroic? That only in the relations between characters can full heroic virtue be expressed?

Why so many paired characters?

And what about the significance of gender in these pairings? Are all the male-female pairs somehow the same? What about those characters (like Frodo) who are unpaired with females?

Finally, I have one particular pairing that I find very, very interesting: Boromir-Faramir and Faramir-Eowyn. I’ve long thought that Boromir and Eowyn were a lot alike, and the way in which Eowyn takes Boromir’s ‘place’ in Faramir’s affections re-enforces this. I think that it’s entirely possible to see Boromir and Eowyn as a natural pair that speaks volumes to other aspects of the book.
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