SOURCE: Keenan, Hugh T. “The Appeal of The Lord of the Rings: A Struggle for Life.” In Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, pp. 62-80. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968.

[In the following essay, Keenan finds that the appeal of The Lord of the Rings for adults lies largely in the trilogy's examination of existential issues and the psychology of childhood.]

Long before The Lord of the Rings became popular with children, educated readers began taking it enthusiastically and seriously. But how could mature readers take to the melodramatic incidents, the superficial brotherhood theme, and the one-dimensional characters of the trilogy? Most only hint at the reason, and few reveal themselves as did W. H. Auden, who says, “by the time one has finished his [Tolkien's] book, one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one's own childhood.”¹ This hint from Auden marks the elemental nature of the book, I think. The major appeal of The Lord of the Rings grows from its underlying and pervasive presentation of the basic struggle of Life against Death. Tolkien's thematic presentation explores in its course the psychological meaning of childhood, another strong appeal for the mature reader.

But it is not often realized that psychology rather than philosophy or literary merit is responsible for a large portion of this growing esteem. Sober critics have read the novel as a basic conflict of good and evil in moral or Christian lights. They have debated the novel's determinism or free will. They have made the obvious comparisons between Tolkien's trilogy and the novels of C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams.² One critic has even compared Tolkien's theories about the fairy-tale genre to his practice in this story.³ All of their efforts have been somewhat disappointing, for they have to conclude that The Lord of the Rings differs from more than it resembles any of these philosophies, novels, or theories.

Despite their basic differences, three of the critics—Reilly, Sale, and Spacks—agree that the world depicted by Tolkien is amazingly alive.⁴ His world includes hobbits, elves, dwarfs, orcs, monsters, and ghosts. The abstracts of Death and Life are personified by the Nazgûls and the tree-like Ents. The creatures of this world interact and communicate to a surprising degree. The Rangers, as Miss Spacks points out, “understand the language of beasts and birds,” whereas Tom Bombadil “is in the most intimate communion with natural forces; he has the power of ‘the earth itself.’”⁵ Hobbits, men, and even orcs can talk through a universal language, the Common Speech. Some living creatures do not speak the Common Speech, and others which we ordinarily consider as inanimate in the real world are sentient in the world of the novel. These include the Balrog, the other spirits of Moria (i, 428), the Eldar beyond the Sea, and the mountain Caradhras (i, 302-307). Even stone statues cry out a warning in this gothic land (iii, 179), while stones, trees, and blades of grass listen for the advance of an enemy army (iii, 160).

In view of the reiterated fertility-sterility conflict in this world⁶ and the absence of a clearly defined deity or religion,⁷ the forcing of a vague moral pattern (good vs. evil) on the book's contents is an unpromising endeavor. Something is more important than good vs. evil. This something is life vs. death. Questions of life and death dominate the minds and actions of the inhabitants. As Sale observes in passing, “The world is alive, and the story is the story of the ways in which it is called on to be alive when the shadows threaten and darkness grows powerful” (217).

The peculiar achievement of the author is to have created a world which is at once completely (or to a superlative degree) sentient and yet dying, to have presented vividly, objectively, and emotionally the eternal conflict between life and death. The reader of this essay may rightly catch an allusion to Norman O. Brown's Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, to which this line of argument is greatly indebted. In applying Freudian analysis to mankind rather than to individual man, Brown concludes that

mankind, in all its restless striving and progress, has no idea of what it really wants. Freud was right—our real desires are unconscious. It also begins to be apparent that mankind, unconscious of its real desires and therefore unable to obtain satisfaction, is hostile to life and ready to destroy itself.⁸

This statement seems equally valid for the fictional world of The Lord of the Rings.

In Tolkien's trilogy as in the science fiction trilogy of C. S. Lewis (especially the final volume That Hideous Strength), man is bent on destroying himself through sociological, technological, and psychological means. Man's technology is the enemy of his humanity. But whereas Lewis' world is heavily Christian and he traces the source of man's perversity to the influence of the Devil, Tolkien's world is almost nonreligious. He traces the perversity of his creatures—in the Shire and outside it—to their own twisted natures. The greed of the dwarfs for mithril causes them to destroy their home in Moria by disturbing the Balrog (i, 331). Consequently they lose much of their skill in metalworking (i, 241-242). The exiled Númenor have become practicers of the black arts in their vain search for immortality and so have fallen into sloth. Faramir confesses that even “‘Gondor … brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed’” (ii, 286). The pride of Théoden and his people makes them isolate themselves and ally with Saruman, the tool of the Dark Lord.

In Beowulf, Grendel and his mother can be seen as the objectifications (in part) of the flaws of the king Hrothgar and of the faults of his court. In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron can be similarly viewed as the objectification of the fears and self-destruction (death instinct) of the inhabitants of Middle-earth.

Frodo, the hero of the trilogy, and his three fellow hobbits overbalance the nine-man fellowship. The question is why are so many representatives chosen from the Shire. To know the answer, we must find out what hobbits are. Then we may be able to understand too why Frodo is made the hero of the novel. Neither he nor his fellow hobbits are daring, handsome, or even clever as heroes typically are.

Exactly what are hobbits? Edmund Wilson, despite what else he says, seems to have a fair answer:

The hobbits are a not quite human race who inhabit an imaginary country called the Shire and who combine the characteristics of certain English animals—they live in burrows like rabbits and badgers—with the traits of English country-dwellers, ranging from rustic to tweedy. (The name seems a telescoping of rabbit and Hobbs.)⁹

Like rabbits or country folk, the hobbits emphasize family and fertility as manifested by their love for genealogical facts and by their well-populated, clan-size burrows. Their love of domestic comforts is in line with their dual nature. Like children they enjoy birthday parties as frequent as those in Alice in Wonderland, the receiving of presents, and the eating of snacks plus full meals, while they do little work and mostly play. Yet furry and fat like rabbits (or country squires) though they be, they prove to be the human-like creatures most interested in preserving life. The hobbits combine the strongest traditional symbols of life: the rabbit for fertility and the child for generation. They represent the earthly as opposed to the mechanic or scientific forces. Therefore they are eminently suitable heroes in the struggle of life against death.

In the journey to Mordor, these hobbits link the Men of Gondor to the Ents, Gollum, the Rohirrim, the Dwarfs, the Elves, the Barrow-wights, the Orcs, and all the rest of the creatures (except the birds)—even Shelob. Gandalf, whose sole purpose is to preserve the life of the world (iii, 30-31), acts in a similar capacity, but the hobbits become more personally involved. Gandalf interests himself in the fate of future living creatures. The hobbits Merry and Pippin act for the present. Merry becomes the retainer of Théoden (iii, 50-51) and Pippin becomes the retainer of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor (iii, 28).

What justifies Frodo's being the hero? Here one comes to a paradox. Frodo has the usual rabbit-like and child-like nature of a country hobbit. He enjoys smoking, birthday parties, presents, good food, and good company. But as he journeys toward Mordor, he loses some of this vitality. He becomes isolated, less humorous, more rational, and even mystical, in contrast to his old emotional, animal self. In other words Frodo grows up; he becomes adult in a human sense. He becomes conscious of his sacrificial duty. He becomes humble as he learns more about the world outside the Shire and as he perceives the pathos of mortality through the passing of the fair and the beautiful.

The sacrificial nature of Frodo brings us to two interesting points. Since the ensuing age is to be that of Men and since hobbits resemble markedly the Men who live isolated lives, prefer war and comfort to learning and beauty, and pride themselves on their sense of duty and honor, there is a strong suggestion that Frodo and his kind represent psychologically the eternal child who must be sacrificed so that the man may live. The national languages of the hobbits and the Men are very close (iii, Appendix F, 414). Douglass Parker puts it in other terms:

Their [hobbits'] real name, translated as ‘halfling’ is very significant. Half-fairy, half-man, yet neither, they are a transition-stage from the Third Age to the Fourth, and, in the destruction of the Ring by Frodo, Sam, and the erstwhile hobbit Gollum, they are the efficient causes of the transition itself.¹⁰

At a more universal level, Frodo is the Child who fathers the Age of Men.

The second point may prove clearer to see. When Frodo reaches the Crack of Doom, he suddenly puts on the Ring and vows to keep it, thus defeating the purpose of the arduous Quest (iii, 223). Why does he do it? Because of the Ring's powers. These include strengthening of hearing, while diminishing sight (iii, 174), preservation of youth if the Ring is kept but not worn (see the cases of Bilbo and Frodo, i, 29, 52), and invisibility when the Ring is worn, plus permanent vanishing if the Ring is worn too long (i, 56). But primarily, it grants one the power to rule and to achieve his chief desire. For instance, when Sam puts on the Ring, he has a vision of controlling the world and making it one large garden (iii, 177). As gardening is the idée fixe of Sam, for him the promise the Ring gives is the world cultivated as a magnificent garden. Gandalf and Galadriel also experience the power of the Ring; it offers them the chance to achieve their most cherished desires. Fortunately all three individuals refuse this unlimited power. Exactly what the Ring promises Frodo at this moment at the Crack of Doom we do not learn. But we may be assured that this includes the power to rule and to dominate in achieving the desire.

Norman O. Brown interprets such aggressiveness as an extroversion of the Freudian death instinct; in this way people repress the recognition of the existence of death.¹¹ Sale comes to a similar conclusion about Frodo's mental conflict at this moment. In speaking of Frodo's blindness to the powers and the results of keeping the Ring, Sale observes

Tolkien does not enforce this irony but he does make clear that the struggle is not so much one of good against evil as of life against itself in its effort to stay alive.

(223)

Additionally, since the Ring is a female symbol, the possession—not the use—of it makes Frodo a type of the perfect hermaphrodite, the perfect androgynous Adam, or simply a child. Norman Brown says that for the unconscious or for the child,

the sexual differentiation of the adult libido, as presupposed in genital organization and the human family—masculine aggressiveness and feminine passivity—is a loss of sexual completeness; hence the fact of sexual differentiation is regarded with horror. In each sex, says Freud, it is the attitude belonging to the opposite sex which succumbs to repression. In each sex the unconscious does not accept the repression but wants to recover the bisexuality of childhood.

(p. 132; italics mine)

Frodo's conscious assumption of the Ring is a symbolic assumption of sexuality, a symbolic coitus and acceptance of death. Gollum rushes forward and bites off the finger of the invisible and therefore symbolically dead Frodo. This symbolic castration returns Frodo to life temporarily. But as castration is not unconsciousness of sexual role (the child's state) but loss of sexuality, the act represents a death of the body. On his return to the Shire, Frodo's conduct is marked by passivity as compared to the masculine aggressiveness of Sam, Merry, and Pippin. He becomes a retired, Messianic figure; in a short time, he is almost forgotten by the hobbits whom he leaves for the Grey Havens.

One should notice that this decline in aggressiveness and this change in Frodo's protagonist role are compensated for by an increased focus on the developing strength of Sam (iii, 218). Sam becomes the vital, the interesting hero in the latter pages of the novel. He fights the orcs at Cirith Ungol and becomes increasingly protective toward the rapidly weakening Frodo, who in Mordor loses his zest for life (iii, 215).

This life strength of Sam's comes from his gardening, his relation to the soil. He is the good country person par excellence. Only two characters wear the Ring without ill effects: Tom Bombadil and Sam, who becomes Samwise. As the more primitive, the more vital, and the more mysterious, Tom Bombadil has the greater strength. When he puts on the Ring, he does not vanish. Tom can laugh and then return the Ring to Frodo without hesitation (i, 144). Because Sam is weaker than Tom, Sam vanishes when he wears it. But his vitality and his love for Frodo are so strong that he can return the Ring easily to Frodo (iii, 188).

One may notice that the last volume closes with Sam happily married, a fulfilled adult, the father of his first child. It is he to whom Galadriel entrusts the magic dust which makes the seedlings sprout into saplings in one season, thus replacing the Shire trees destroyed by the Enemy's minions. Since Sam is the agent for this reforestation, he becomes closely akin to Tom Bombadil, who has been called “a kind of archetypal ‘vegetation god.’”¹²

The marked absence of women in the novel calls attention to its fertility theme, an important part of the continuing struggle of life against death. It might be argued that women are naturally excluded from a battle story. But here the story is more that of a journey than that of a battle or wars. The women are missed. The Ents tell of the disappearance of the Entwives long ago in explaining why there are no young Ents; the dwarfs have few women and fewer children (ii, 78-80; iii, 360). In Gondor, too, there are not enough young people (iii, 24, 36).

In considering the women who are present, we need not be as unchivalrous as Edmund Wilson, who says that “the fair ladies would not stir a heartbeat; the horrors would not hurt a fly.”¹³ Though the ladies are scarce, they do capture hearts. Though a dwarf and an enemy, Gimli becomes enraptured of the elven queen Galadriel, so much so that he offers to fight Faramir. The hobbits—Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam—are charmed by Goldberry, Tom Bombadil's consort. There is the inset story of Tinúviel, the elf queen, and her tragic love for Beren, a mortal man (i, 204-205). This story of Elrond's ancestors foreshadows the love of Elrond's daughter Arwen for Aragorn (i, 239; iii, 252-253). There is Éowyn's unrequited love for Aragorn and her happy marriage with Faramir. There is nurse Ioreth, who is the garrulous domestic. Although her type characterization has charm, it is underdeveloped.

What the trilogy lacks is a mother with children. The women, even if married, are not shown as mothers. They have charm but not earthiness. Or they are cold, though they may not be as cold as the Lady Éowyn. She becomes a Britomartis figure. Disguised as a young man, she rides to the war alongside her uncle Théoden, without his knowledge or consent. After the defeat of Mordor, she abandons significantly her desire to be a soldier or a queen; she elects instead to be “‘a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren’” (iii, 243).

Not until the end of the book do women as child-bearers appear. Then their role is prominent. When Sauron is defeated, the Ring destroyed, and the lands cleansed, there comes a succession of marriages: Faramir marries Éowyn; Aragorn marries Arwen; Sam marries Rose Cotton. The marriage of Aragorn and Arwen has been foreshadowed. That of Sam and Rose is more of a surprise. Like the end of a Shakespearean comedy, the trilogy concludes with a series of engagements and marriages.

One famous female—Shelob—has been passed over. This horror, this travesty of love and generation, refutes Edmund Wilson's pronouncement that the horrors would not hurt a fly. True, if her appearance and function are judged by standards of realism, the giant spider is a flaw. She reminds us of the insect villains of too many poor science-fiction movies. But in the story, Shelob is symbolically appropriate.

She is the feminine counterpart to Sauron. As he represents Death, the opposite of Life, she represents destruction and physical corruption, the opposites of generation and birth. This mistress of Sauron greets the visitors to Mordor with death. Nor does she spare even her own brood, she “who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her” (ii, 333).

When one considers the structure of the trilogy in which these characters play their parts, the struggle of life against death is very important. To a reader of Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance, Tolkien's use of the Wasted-Land-and-the-Wounded-King theme is obvious. As Tolkien uses these traditional elements in the fertility theme, Gandalf comes to Théoden's court, rouses the old king from illness, drives out Wormtongue, and thus restores the leader to his people and the land to its former vigor. (There is a parallel to Beowulf and Hrothgar too in all of this.) Traditional elements appear also in Aragorn's restoration of the kingdom of Gondor: the reforging of the broken sword, the return of the kingdom to its rightful owner, and the consequent revitalization of the city and its inhabitants.

Older than these motifs is the seasonal significance of the time span of the novel. The Quest begins in winter, a traditionally dead period. Frodo and his friends leave the Shire on September 22, for Rivendell; they depart from Rivendell on the last of December. The Quest is achieved in the spring, March 25, to be exact. And at the end of a year, Frodo and Sam are home again in the Shire. The traditional associations of the seasons underscore the theme of a change from death to life.

The change in landscape is symbolic. As Miss Spacks observes,

The progress toward the heart of evil, toward the Crack of Doom into which, in the trilogy's central fable, the Ring-bearer must throw his Ring of Power, is a progress from natural fertility to the desolation of nature.

(p. 84 below)

To this observation, one need add only two comments. First, the desolation of nature at Isengard and at Mordor is due to the technological devices of the Enemy.¹⁴ Second, the journey does not stop at the Crack of Doom; Frodo and Sam return to the Shire and restore the land to its former fertility. So the complete pattern circles from natural fertility in the Shire to technological desolation of nature at Mordor and afterwards ends at the Shire and fertility again. Or as Bilbo might say, “‘there and back again.’”

Tolkien regards advanced tools and mechanics with suspicion. He praises the hobbits and dwarfs for using only simple hand tools and such necessary, simple machinery as water mills (i, 10). Fangorn characterizes Saruman as having “‘a mind of metal and wheels’” and possessing no concern “‘for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment’” (ii, 76). The land of Mordor itself is a place of “mines and forges” (iii, 201). On the other hand, the Elves have as their concerns, not “strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained” (i, 282).

The numerous tunnels, the trees, and the bodies of water—especially the Sea—are important to the fertility theme, although Mark Roberts doubts that the numerous tunnels are so much Freudian symbols as they are ruts marking the author's lack of inventiveness.¹⁵ Some are associated with death and corruption, such as the lair of Shelob, the Paths of the Dead, and the tunnels of Moria. But in the Shire and at Helm's Deep, tunnels are linked with health, happiness, and safety. While none are insignificant, context determines whether they are associated with death or with life. Although trees seem ambiguous at first, they stand for life. The malevolent trees in the Old Forest and in Fangorn are more than offset by the good influences of Tom Bombadil and the Ents. Trees, as a general symbol of naturalness and fertility, are more than commonly important to the hobbits returning to the Shire. The elves are almost druidic in their worship of and empathy with trees. Legolas is drawn to them as strongly as Gimli is to caves. And still better, elves understand the language of the trees. In Lothlórien the elves make their homes in giant trees and venerate especially the mallorn tree. In Gondor one of the primary symbols of the life of Minas Tirith is the White Tree in the courtyard. Its dead trunk and branches betoken the dying of the city. Likewise the discovery of a scion of this tree symbolizes the rebirth of Minas Tirith under the leadership of Aragorn (iii, 250).

Finally there are the Ents—especially Fangorn or Treebeard—and their tree herds. The life history of these living trees demonstrates the literal and symbolical import of their preservation. For as the forests have disappeared by being pushed back, burned, or cut down, the land and its peoples have suffered. The return of the forests to Isengard and to the Shire signals the return of life to the dead and dying lands.

In addition to symbols, we find patterns of contrast in character, incident, and place which define the theme of life against death. At the beginning of the journey, Frodo and the three hobbits meet Tom Bombadil and his consort Goldberry. At the end of the journey, Frodo and Sam encounter Gollum and his mistress-ruler Shelob. Besides the parallels and contrasts of character—Tom Bombadil (life) and Gollum (death), Goldberry (preserver) and Shelob (destroyer)—there are parallel actions. At the beginning of the story, Tom rescues the lost Frodo and company from the Old Forest and then saves them from the Barrow-wights. Later Gollum rescues the lost Frodo and his companion Sam in the wilderness of Emyn Muil and guides them through the treacherous Valley of the Dead. As one guide leads them to safety and life, the other one leads them to treachery and death. While Tom Bombadil cannot be moved by the Ring, Gollum can never be free of it.

The contrasts of Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul are equally clear. The Tower of the Sun, which is held by the Men of Gondor, rises up on the mountain. The Tower of the Moon, which is held by the Enemy, lies in the valley (iii, 160). Both are white-walled cities, but one has the white color of life (though it is dying) and the other has the white pallor of death. The decay of the Babylon-like, seven-tiered city of Minas Tirith is clear to Pippin:

Pippin gazed in growing wonder at the great stone city, vaster and more splendid than anything that he had dreamed of; greater and stronger than Isengard, and far more beautiful. Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there. In every street they passed some great house or court over whose doors and arched gates were carved many fair letters of strange and ancient shapes: names Pippin guessed of great men and kindreds that had once dwelt there; and yet now they were silent, and no footstep rang on their wide pavements, nor voice was heard in their halls, nor any face looked out from door or empty window.

(iii, 24)

To Sam, Frodo, and Gollum, Minas Morgul (Ithil) appears even worse:

Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.

(ii, 312)

Unlike the eager travellers to Minas Tirith, Frodo and Sam pass this dead city with fear and reluctance. The river, the flowers, and even the statuary there are corruptions of life, bitter opposites to the fruitful land of Gondor and the healthful Anduin River:

Wide flats lay on either bank, shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. Luminous these were too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel-smell; an odour of rottenness filled the air. From mead to mead the bridge sprang. Figures stood there at its head, carven with cunning in forms human and bestial, but all corrupt and loathsome. The water flowing beneath was silent, and it steamed, but the vapour that rose from it, curling and twisting about the bridge, was deadly cold.

(ii, 313)

The implication left is that as Minas Morgul is, so Minas Tirith will be if the war goes against Gondor.

The decay theme of the trilogy is carried out in the contrasts of Edoras and Minas Tirith too. Of the cities, that of Rohan is the more healthful, the brighter, the stronger in spirit, the more natural. Legolas is first to see Edoras set on a green hill in a valley and close by a white stream. From afar, the elf sees the Meduseld, the hall of Théoden, shine like gold (ii, 111). This land is spring-like, grassy, well-watered, and planted with budding willows and ever-blooming white flowers (ii, 111). The gleam of the armor of the men, their bright golden hair, and their formal yet ceremonious courtesy (ii, 112-116) are in contrast to the dark armor and the coldness of spirit found at Gondor.

The interior of the Meduseld is much brighter and livelier than that of the Hall of Minas Tirith:

The hall was long and wide and filled with shadows and half lights; mighty pillars upheld its lofty roof. But here and there bright sunbeams fell in glimmering shafts from the eastern windows, high under the deep eaves. Through the louver in the roof, above the thin wisps of issuing smoke, the sky showed pale and blue. As their eyes changed, the travellers perceived that the floor was paved with stones of many hues; branching runes and strange devices intertwined beneath their feet. They saw now that the pillars were richly carved, gleaming dully with gold and half-seen colours. Many woven cloths were hung upon the walls, and over their wide spaces marched figures of ancient legend, some dim with years, some darkling in the shade. But upon one form the sunlight fell: a young man upon a white horse. He was blowing a great horn, and his yellow hair was flying in the wind. The horse's head was lifted, and its nostrils were wide and red as it neighed, smelling battle afar. Foaming water, green and white, rushed and curled about its knees.

(ii, 116)

Théoden, their leader, retains some of the vigor of this young heroic man. Though white-haired, the Lord of Rohan leads his men against Sauron's forces and laughs to scorn the wiles of Saruman at Isengard. Even Aragorn recognizes the unfallen state of these Men in contrast to the lesser vigor of those of Gondor (ii, 33).

In Gondor, the Hall of Minas Tirith is much darker, less lively, less human, more like a tomb; its Steward Denethor, unlike Théoden, scorns help, despairs of victory, and commits suicide. Here is the Hall as Pippin sees it:

It was lit by deep windows in the wide aisles at either side, beyond the rows of tall pillars that upheld the roof. Monoliths of black marble, they rose to great capitals carved in many strange figures of beasts and leaves; and far above in shadow the wide vaulting gleamed with dull gold, inset with flowing traceries of many colours. No hangings nor storied webs, nor any things of woven stuff or of wood, were to be seen in that long solemn hall; but between the pillars there stood a silent company of tall images graven in cold stone.

(iii, 26)

The two halls mirror the different natures of their leaders and peoples.

This contrast of the quick and the dead is seen most simply in the cities of Caras Galadon and its enemy Dol Guldur. From a platform in the ancient city of Cerin Amroth, Frodo sees the green city of the Elves and the dark tower (Dol Guldur) of the Enemy in Southern Mirkwood, the evil forest. Haldir tells him:

In this high place you may see the two powers that are opposed one to another; and ever they strive now in thought, but whereas the light perceives the very heart of the darkness, its own secret has not been discovered. Not yet.

(i, 366)

Caras Galadon, which from a distance appears “a hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green towers,” (i, 366) reveals itself to be a city built in great branches of the forest, a city gleaming with green, gold, and silver lamps (i, 368). This is the good place for Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn, Sam, and even Gimli the dwarf. But this natural paradise set in a tree is fated to perish and its Elves must depart to the West when the battle against Sauron is over.

Perhaps one more contrasting pair in the life and death theme may be added. In the central incident of the journey through the tunnels of Moria, whose name carries important suggestions,¹⁶ we find two contrasting lakes. The one before the entrance is dark, loathsome, and artificial, a product of the evil within; and in it lurks an octopus-like monster (i, 322). Only two ancient holly trees remain there as evidence of benevolent influence and symbols of the former friendship between the Elves and the Dwarfs (i, 316). On the other side of Moria lies the beautiful, natural, life-giving lake of Mirrormere, which is worshipped by the dwarf Gimli as he looks into its depths with Frodo:

At first they could see nothing. Then slowly they saw the forms of the encircling mountains mirrored in a profound blue, and the peaks were like plumes of white flame above them; beyond there was a space of sky. There like jewels sunk in the deep shone glinting stars, though sunlight was in the sky above. Of their own stooping forms no shadow could be seen.

(i, 348)

By looking deeply into The Lord of the Rings, we see our world and something beyond. The hero, the other characters, and the structure of the trilogy appeal to us not rationally but emotionally. Its characters are caught up in the decay theme of the novel, the eternal struggle of life against death, just as we are. We recognize that the hobbits are emblematic of naturalness, of childhood, and of a life which will yield to the Age of Men with its technology, its rational adulthood, and death. This recognition strikes a sympathetic chord in the human heart. The reiteration of the decay theme and the recognition of the temporary triumph of the forces of life over the forces of death as the Third Age ends—both of these give the book a bitter-sweet tone. This truth of vision makes the book appealing to readers who acknowledge that of them also, at the last, not a shadow of their stooping forms will be seen.¹⁷

Notes

1. “The Hero is a Hobbit,” New York Times Book Review (Oct. 31, 1954), 37.

2. W. R. Irwin, “There and Back Again: The Romances of Williams, Lewis, and Tolkien,” Sewanee Review, lxix (1961), 566-578, Douglass Parker, “Hwaet We Holbytla …,” Hudson Review, ix (Winter, 1956-57), 598-609. Roger Sale, “England's Parnassus: C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J. R. R. Tolkien,” HR, xvii (1964), 203-225, Patricia Meyer Spacks, “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings,” below pp. 81-99. Douglass Parker gives lesser emphasis to the conflict of good and evil. He says the novel is “the story of the end of an age, an age which the author has gone to a fantastic amount of effort to make specific, to make real. And it is from the varied reactions of races and individuals to this end and to other ends of other ages, past and future, that the meaning of the work arises” (603).

3. Robert J. Reilly, “Tolkien and the Fairy Story,” below pp. 128-150. Mark Roberts, “Adventure in English,” Essays in Criticism, vi (1956), 450-459, examines the same question briefly and gives Tolkien high marks.

4. “Tolkien and the Fairy Story,” 139, 149; “England's Parnassus,” 216-221; “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings,” p. 95.

5. “Power and Meaning,” p. 84.

6. The wasted land or decline theme occurs prominently. See i, 257-258, 271-272, 329-330, 363, 380, 388-389, 392, 393, 396; ii, 45, 71, 287, 311; iii, 22, 36, 151, 155-156.

7. Faramir does observe a kind of grace before meals (ii, 284-285); there is mention of a god or God, called the One (iii, Appendix A, 317, 344). Spacks uses these slight references to the One in arguing that the world of the novel is guided by a purpose (p. 89 f.).

8. (New York, 1959), xii.

9. “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!” Nation, clxxxii (April 14, 1956), 312.

10. “Hwaet We Holbytla,” 607.

11. Life Against Death, p. 101. Brown acknowledges that this opinion opposes that of Freud who viewed aggressiveness as “a fusion of the life instinct with the death instinct, a fusion which saves the organism from the innate self-destructive tendency of the death instinct by extroverting it, a desire to kill replacing the desire to die.”

12. Reilly, below, p. 131.

13. “Oo, Those Awful Orcs,” 314.

14. Spacks notes (p. 85 below) that the Enemy tends to use “machinery rather than natural forces.”

15. “Adventure in English,” 459.

16. Mor is “mountain” in A. S.; but Moria suggests also moira, “fate” in Gr. and mors, “death” in Lat.

17. I wish to thank Professors Neil Isaacs and Rose Zimbardo for reading the Ms. of this article and offering suggestions for its improvement. Thanks are due also to my colleagues and friendly critics: Stephen Cox, Laura Keenan, and Helen Hollingsworth.