SOURCE: Chance, Jane. “The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien's Epic.” In Tolkien's Art: A Mythology for England, rev. ed., pp. 141-83. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

[In the following essay, Chance examines the tension in Lord of the Rings between the values of the age of Germanic heroism and those of the later Christian age.]

But as the earliest Tales are seen through Elvish eyes, as it were, this last great Tale, coming down from myth and legend to the earth, is seen mainly through the eyes of Hobbits: it thus becomes in fact anthropocentric. But through Hobbits, not Men so-called, because the last Tale is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in “world politics” of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). … [W]ithout the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.

—J. R. R. Tolkien Letter 131, to Milton Waldman of Collins (c. 1951)

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

—J. R. R. Tolkien Letter 142, to Robert Murray, S. J. (1953)

The epic form has proven useful in reflecting the clash of value systems during periods of transition in literary history. In the Old English Beowulf, Germanic heroism conflicts with Christianity: the chivalric pride of the hero can become the excessive superbia condemned in Hrothgar's moralistic sermon. Similar conflicts occur in other epics or romance-epics: between the chivalric and the Christian in the twelfth-century German Nibelungenlied and in Sir Thomas Malory's fifteenth-century Le Morte d'Arthur; between the classical and the Christian in the sixteenth-century Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser; and between chivalric idealism and modern realism in the late-sixteenth-century Spanish epic-novel of Cervantes, Don Quixote. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings [LR] delineates a clash of values during the passage from the Third Age of Middle-earth, dominated by the Elves, to the Fourth Age, dominated by Men. Such values mask very medieval tensions between Germanic heroism and Christianity evidenced earlier by Tolkien in his Beowulf article.

In this sense The Lord of the Rings resembles The Hobbit, which, as we have seen previously, must acknowledge a great thematic and narrative debt to the Old English epic, even though The Hobbit's happy ending renders it closer to fantasy in Tolkien's definition than to the elegy with its tragic ending. The difference between the two most significant Tolkienian works stems from form: Randel Helms notes that the children's story narrated by the patronizing adult in The Hobbit has “grown up” sufficiently to require no fictionalized narrator in the text itself and to inhabit a more expansive and flexible genre like the epic: “[W]e have in The Hobbit and its sequel what is in fact the same story, told first very simply, and then again, very intricately. Both works have the same theme, a quest on which a most unheroic hobbit achieves heroic stature; they have the same structure, the ‘there and back again’ of the quest romance, and both extend the quest through the cycle of one year, The Hobbit from spring to spring, the The Lord of the Rings from fall to fall.”¹ Although Helms does not mention their relationship with medieval ideas or even with the Beowulf article, still, given this reworking of a theme used earlier in The Hobbit, I would speculate that The Lord of the Rings must also duplicate many medieval ideas from The Hobbit and elsewhere in Tolkien.

As an epic novel The Lord of the Rings constitutes, then, a summa of Tolkien's full development of themes originally enunciated in the Beowulf article and fictionalized later in other works. It was, after all, begun in 1937—the same year The Hobbit was published and a year later than the Beowulf article—and completed in 1949, prior to the publication of many of the fairy-stories (1945-67) and the medieval parodies (1945-62). Its medial position in Tolkien's career indicates how he articulated his major ideas generally and comprehensively in this mammoth work before delving into their more specialized aspects in the later fairy-stories and parodies.

As a synthesis of Tolkienian ideas, both Germanic heroic or medieval and Christian, The Lord of the Rings reconciles value systems over which its critics have debated incessantly and single-mindedly. Some critics have explored its major medieval literary sources, influences, and parallels, particularly in relation to northern saga and Old and Middle English literature, language, and culture, chiefly Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.² Other critics have explored its direct and indirect religious, moral, or Christian (Roman Catholic) aspects.³ No one seems to have understood fully how the dual levels of the Beowulf article might apply to The Lord of the Rings, although Patricia Meyer Spacks suggests provocatively that at least one level does apply: Tolkien's view of the “naked will and courage” necessary to combat chaos and death in the context of northern mythology (as opposed to Christianity) resembles the similar epic weapons of the Hobbit-heroes of his trilogy.⁴ In addition, no critic has seemed to notice that even in genre and form this work combines an explicitly medieval bias (as epic, romance, or chanson de geste) with an implicitly Christian one (as fantasy or fairy-story).⁵ The most interesting and most discussed genre has been that of medieval romance, with its tales of knights and lords battling with various adversaries.⁶

Its title, The Lord of the Rings, introduces the ambiguous role of the ruler as a leader (“The Lord”) with power over but also responsibility for others (“the Rings”). Elsewhere in Tolkien's critical and creative works the lord has been depicted as an excessively proud Germanic warrior bent on the sacrifice of his men for his own ends (for example, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son”), or as a humble Elf-king modeled on Christ, intent on sacrificing himself for the sake of his followers (for example, “Smith of Wootton Major”). So in this epic Sauron typifies the Germanic lord in his monstrous use of his slaves as Gandalf typifies the Elf-king or Christ-figure in his self-sacrifice during the battle with the Balrog. But there are hierarchies of both monstrous and heroic lords in this epic, whose plenitude has frustrated critical attempts to discern the hero as either Aragorn, Frodo, or Sam—or, including Gollum, all four.⁷ Aragorn may represent the Christian hero as Frodo and Sam represent the more Germanic hero—that is, the subordinate warrior—yet all three remain epic heroes. The complexity of Tolkien's system of heroic and monstrous “lords” in the trilogy becomes clearer through an examination of its structural unity.

In defining the parameters of the work's structure,⁸ Tolkien declares that “[t]he only units of any structural significance are the books. These originally had each its title.”⁹ This original plan was followed in the publication in 1999 of the Millennium edition, with its seven slim volumes, one for each renamed book and the appendices: book 1 is “The Ring Sets Out”; book 2, “The Ring Goes South”; book 3, “The Treason of Isengard”; book 4, “The Ring Goes East”; book 5, “The War of the Ring”; book 6, “The End of the Third Age”; and book 7, “Appendices.” Apparently Tolkien had initially substituted titles for each of the three parts at the instigation of his publisher, although he preferred to regard it as a “three-decker novel” instead of as a “trilogy” in order to establish it as a single, unified work, not three separate works.¹⁰ But in either case, with six books or with three parts, the title of each thematically and symbolically supports the crowning title, “The Lord of the Rings,” by revealing some aspect of the adversary or the hero through a related but subordinate title that fixes on the Ring's movements and the ambiguity of its “owner” or “bearer,” and each of the three parts is itself supported thematically and symbolically by its two-book division.

In The Fellowship of the Ring the focus falls upon the lord as what might be termed both a hero and a monster, a divided self discussed in chapter 1, “The Critic as Monster.” Frodo as the “lord” or keeper of the Ring in the first part mistakes the chief threat to the Hobbit Fellowship (a symbol of community) as physical and external (for example, the Black Riders) but matures enough to learn by the end of the second book that the chief threat exists in a more dangerous spiritual and internal form, whether within him as microcosm (the hero as monster) or within the Fellowship as macrocosm (his friend Boromir). The Fellowship of the Ring as bildungsroman echoes the development of the hero Bilbo in The Hobbit discussed in chapter 2, “The King under the Mountain.”

The Two Towers shifts attention from the divided self of the hero as monster to the more specifically Germanic but also Christian monster seen in Saruman (representing intellectual sin in book 3) and Shelob (representing physical sin in book 4), who occupy or guard the two towers of the title. This part duplicates material in The Hobbit outlining monstrosity in terms of the Beowulf article and the Ancrene Wisse discussed primarily in chapter 2, “The King under the Mountain.”

The evil Germanic lord often has a good warrior to serve him; the figure of the good servant merges with the Christian king healer (Aragorn) who dominates The Return of the King in opposition to the Germanic destroyer (Denethor) in book 5, the consequences of whose reign lead to a “Return,” or regeneration within the macrocosm, in book 6. Ideas in this last part mirror chapter 3's “Christian King” appearing in fairy-stories and chapter 4's “Germanic Lord” appearing in medieval parodies. The structure of the epic then reveals a hierarchy of heroes and monsters implied by its title but also summoned from Tolkien's other critical and creative works.

I. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING: THE HERO AS MONSTER

Because the title of The Fellowship of the Ring links the wandering “Fellowship” with the “Ring” of The Lord of the Rings, a subtitle for the first part of the epic might be “All that is gold does not glitter, / Not all those who wander are lost.”¹¹ Thematically, the title and its “subtitle” suggest that appearance does not equal reality: the Ring appears valuable because it glitters; the wandering Fellowship appears lost. But in reality the gold Ring may not be as valuable as it appears and the Fellowship may not be lost; further, the wanderer to whom the lines refer, despite his swarthy exterior and wandering behavior as Strider the Ranger, may be real gold and definitely not lost. As the king of light opposed to the Dark Lord, Strider returns as king after the Ring has been finally returned to Mount Doom, ending the aspirations of the Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring as a title stresses the heroic mission of Aragorn's “followers” to advance the cause of the good king. The band of gold represents by synecdoche the power of the evil Lord of the Rings, to be countered by the “band” of the Fellowship, whether the four Hobbits in book 1 or the larger Fellowship of Hobbits, Wizard (Istar, most likely a Vala), Elf, Dwarf, and Man in book 2.

Because the Fellowship is burdened with the responsibility of bearing the Ring and because its presence attracts evil, the greatest threat to the Fellowship and its mission comes not from without but within. The hero must realize that he can become a monster. The two books of the The Fellowship of the Ring trace the process of this realization: the first book centers on the presentation of evil as external and physical, requiring physical heroism to combat it; and the second book centers on the presentation of evil as internal and spiritual, requiring a spiritual heroism to combat it. The hero matures by coming to understand the character of good and evil—specifically, by descending into an underworld and then ascending into an overworld, a natural one in the first book and a supernatural one in the second. The second book, then, functions as a mirror image of the first. These two levels correspond to the two levels—Germanic and Christian—of Beowulf and The Hobbit. For Frodo, as for Beowulf and Bilbo, the ultimate enemy is himself.

Tolkien immediately defines “the hero as monster” by introducing the divided self of Gollum-Sméagol and, then, to ensure the reader's understanding of the hero as monster, Bilbo-as-Gollum. The Cain-like Sméagol rationalizes the murder of his cousin Deagol for the gold Ring he holds because it is his birthday (LR, 1:84). Sméagol deserves a gift, something “precious” like the Ring, because the occasion celebrates the fact of his birth, his special being. The parable of Sméagol's fall illustrates the nature of evil as cupiditas, or avarice, in the classical and literal sense. But as the root of all evil (in the words of Chaucer's Pardoner, alluding to St. Paul's letter to Timothy), cupiditas more generally and medievally represents that Augustinian self-ishness usually personified as strong desire in the figure of Cupid (=cupidity, concupiscence or desire). The two names, Gollum and Sméagol, dramatize the fragmenting and divisive consequences of his fall into vice, the “Gollum” the bestial sound of his swallowing as an expression of his gluttony and greed, the “Sméagol,” in its homonymic similarity to “Deagol,” linking him to a group of others like him (the Stoors, as a third family-type of Hobbit) to establish his common Hobbitness—and heroism.¹² That is, Gollum's psychological resemblance to the Hobbits is revealed when good overpowers the evil in him and, as he witnesses his master Frodo asleep in Sam's lap, he reaches out a hand to touch his knee in a caress. At that moment he seems “an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing” (LR, 2:411).

But also, Tolkien takes care to present the good Hobbit and heroic Bilbo as a divided self, “stretched thin” into a Gollum-like being because of his years carrying the Ring. The scene opens after all with Bilbo's birthday party, to reenact the original fall of Gollum, on his birthday. The role of Deagol is played by Bilbo's nephew Frodo: on Bilbo's birthday, instead of receiving a gift, Bilbo, like Gollum, must give away a gift—to the other Hobbit relatives and friends and to Frodo, recipient of the Ring. But at the moment of bequest Bilbo retreats into a Gollum-like personality as illustrated by similar speech patterns: “It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious” (LR, 1:59). Bilbo refuses to give away the Ring because he feels himself to be more deserving and Frodo less deserving of carrying it. Later the feeling is described as a realization of the Other as monstrous (presumably with the concomitant belief in the self as good). In the parallel scene at the beginning of book 2, Bilbo wishes to see the Ring, and so he reaches out a hand for Frodo to give it to him; Frodo reacts violently because “a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him” (LR, 1:306; my italics). The Ring, then, a sign of imperial or ecclesiastical power in medieval contexts and a sign of the conjugal bond in personal and familial contexts, appropriately symbolizes here the slavish obeisance of Sméagol to Gollum and a wedding of self to self, in lieu of a true wedding of self to Other.

That is, wedding the self to Other implies a giving up of selfishness out of love and concern for another being. An expression of such caritas is hinted at in Gollum's momentary return to Hobbitness, when he seems to show love for his master Frodo, and is symbolized by the “band” of the Fellowship to which each member belongs—another “Ring.” Such caritas opposes the view of the Other as monstrous. Even Frodo at first sees monstrous Gollum as despicable: “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!” (LR, 1:92). But just as the hero can become monstrous, so also can the monster become heroic: it is Gollum who helps Frodo and Sam across the Dead Marshes and, more important, who inadvertently saves Frodo from himself; Gollum also saves Middle-earth by biting the Ring off Frodo's finger as they stand on the precipice of Mount Doom in the third part. Therefore, Gandalf cautions Frodo to feel toward the despicable Gollum not wrath or hatred but love as pity, as Bilbo has manifested toward Gollum: “Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need” (LR, 1:92). Gandalf explains: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not least” (LR, 1:93). This pity as charity, or love binding one individual to another, cements together the “fellowship” of the Hobbits in book 1 and later, in book 2, the differing species who form the enlarged Fellowship. The “chain of love” such fellowship creates contrasts with the chains of enslavement represented by Sauron's one Ring. Described as “fair” in the Middle Ages, the chain of love supposedly bound one individual to another and as well bound together the macrocosm of the heavens: Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy terms it a “common bond of love by which all things seek to be held to the goal of the good.”¹³ After Boethius explains that “love binds together people joined by a sacred bond; love binds sacred marriages by chaste affections; love makes the laws which join true friends,” he wistfully declares, “O how happy the human race would be, if that love which rules the heavens rules also your souls!” (The Consolation of Philosophy, book 2, poem 8, p. 41).

The chain of enslavement, in contrast, involves a hierarchy of power, beginning with the “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, / One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” (LR, 1:7i), and encompassing the seven Dwarf-rings (could they be found) and the nine rings of the “Mortal Men doomed to die,” the Ringwraiths.¹⁴ If love binds together the heavens and the hierarchy of species known in the Middle Ages as the Great Chain of Being—which includes angels, humankind, beasts, birds, fish, plants, and stones—then hate and envy and pride and avarice bind together the hierarchy of species under the aegis of the One Ring of Sauron the fallen Vala. Only the “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky”—the loftiest and most noble species—were never made by Sauron because, says Elrond, the Elves “did not desire strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things sustained” (LR, 1:352).

Tolkien intentionally contrasts the hierarchy of good characters, linked by the symbolic value of fellowship into an invisible band or chain of love, with the hierarchy of evil characters and fallen characters linked by the literal rings of enslavement—a chain of sin.¹⁵ It is for this reason that the miniature Fellowship of Hobbits in the first book draws together in love different representatives from the Hobbit “species” or families—Baggins, Took, Brandybuck, Gamgee—as the larger Fellowship in the second book draws together representatives from different species—the four Hobbit representatives, Gimli the Dwarf, Strider and Boromir the Men, Legolas the Elf, and Gandalf the Wizard (Istar, Vala). In both cases, however, these representatives are young—the heirs of the equivalents of the “old men” who must revitalize and renew Middle-earth because it too has become “old” and decrepit, governed by the spiritually old and corrupt influence of Sauron. Symbolically, then, these “heirs,” as the young, represent vitality, life, newness: Frodo is Bilbo's nephew and heir, Gimli is Groin's, Legolas is Thranduil's, Strider is Isildur's, Boromir is Denethor's, and the remaining Hobbits are the still youthful heirs of their aged fathers. Only Gandalf as the good counterpart to Sauron is “old.” In part Gandalf constitutes a spiritual guide for Frodo, especially in book 2, as Aragorn-Strider constitutes a physical (literally powerful) guide in book 1.

The necessity for the young figure to become the savior hero (like the novus homo) of the old is introduced by Tolkien in the first pages of The Fellowship of the Ring. Note the spiritual oldness of the fathers of the miniature “Fellowship” of Hobbits: the old Hobbits view those who are different, or “queer,” as alien, evil, monstrous, or dangerous because the fathers themselves lack charity, pity, and understanding. They condemn the Brandybucks of Buckland as a “queer breed” for engaging in unnatural (at least for Hobbits) activities on water (LR, 1:45). Yet these old Hobbits are not evil, merely “old.” Even the Gaffer vindicates Bag End and its “queer folk” by admitting, “There's some not far away that wouldn't offer a pint a beer to a friend, if they lived in a hole with golden walls. But they do things proper at Bag End” (LR, 1:47). Gaffer's literalness—his “oldness”—is characteristic of the Old Law of justice (note Gaffer's term “proper”) rather than the New Law of mercy. Such old Hobbits also lack imagination, an awareness of the spirit rather than the letter. Sam's father expresses a literalism and earthiness similar to Sauron's: “‘Elves and dragons’! I says to him, ‘Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you’” (LR, 1:47). This “Old Man” Tolkien casts in the role of what might be termed the “Old Adam,” for whom Christ as the New Adam will function as a replacement and redeemer. A gardener like Adam at Bag End, Gaffer condemns that of which he cannot conceive and accepts that of which he can—cabbages and potatoes—and presents his condemnation in the appropriately named inn, the “Ivy Bush.” Although his son Sam is different and will become in effect the New Adam of the Shire by the trilogy's end, generally, however, earthbound Hobbits (inhabiting holes underground) display a similar lack of imagination, symbolized by their delight in the pyrotechnic dragon created by Gandalf. They may not be able to imagine Elves and dragons, but they love what they can see, a “terribly lifelike” dragon leaving nothing to the imagination (LR, 1:52). This dragon, however, unlike that in Beowulf, poses no threat to their lives. In fact, it represents the “signal for supper.”

The “New Man” represented by the Hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin then must overcome a natural inclination toward “oldness,” toward the life of the senses inherent in the Hobbit love of food, comfort, warm shelter, entertainment, and good tobacco. All of the Hobbits do so by the trilogy's end, but Frodo as Ring-bearer changes the most dramatically and centrally by the end of The Fellowship of the Ring. His education, both oral lessons from guides and moral and life-threatening experiences, begins with the gift of the Ring after Bilbo's birthday party.

Designated as Bilbo's heir and recipient of the Ring at the birthday party (chapters 1-5) in the first book, Frodo is also designated as the official Ring-bearer after the Council of Elrond (chapters 1-3) in the second book, to which it is parallel. In the first book Gandalf relates the history of Gollum's discovery of the Ring and Bilbo's winning of it, and he explains its nature and properties. In the second book, at this similar gathering, the history of the Ring, from its creation by Sauron to the present, and the involvement therein of various species are related. The birthday party that allows Bilbo to “disappear” as if by magic from the Shire is like the council that allows Frodo and other members of the Fellowship to “disappear” as if by magic from Middle-earth—and from the searching Eye of Sauron, for the Dark Lord will never imagine them carrying the Ring back to Mordor. Further, the distribution of gifts to friends and relatives after the party resembles the council's decision to give back the “gift” of the Ring to its “relative,” the mother lode of Mount Doom. The gifts in each episode make explicit the flaws of the recipient: Adelard Took, for example, receives an umbrella because he has stolen so many from Bilbo. In a sense Sauron too will indirectly receive exactly what he has always wanted and has continually tried to usurp or steal—the Ring. The point of these parallels should be clear: the concept of the divided self or the hero as monster was revealed in the symbolic birthday party through the figures of Gollum-Sméagol, Bilbo-Gollum, Frodo-Gollum—the hero as monster suggested by the notion of the “birthday.” For the reader, Tolkien warns that the most dangerous evil really springs from inside, not from outside.

This message introduced at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring is what Frodo must learn by its end. The “Council of Elrond,” its very title suggesting egalitarian debate among members of a community rather than group celebration of an individual, symbolically poses the converse message, that the most beneficial good similarly springs from the inside but must be directed to the community rather than to oneself. The humble member of the council—the insignificant Hobbit Frodo—is ultimately chosen to pursue the mission of the Ring because he is insignificant.¹⁶ Frodo's insignificance in the community there contrasts with Bilbo's significance as a member of the Shire community. However, as the chapter of “A Long-Expected Party” (or what might be called “The Birthday Party”) had dramatized the presence of evil among inheritance-seeking relatives (specifically the greedy and self-aggrandizing Sackville-Bagginses), so the “Council of Elrond” indicates the potential of evil threatening the Fellowship from within through the greed and self-aggrandizement of some of its members—Men like Boromir.

In the first book Frodo comes to understand evil as external and physical through the descent into the Old Forest, a parallel underworld to the supernatural underworld of Moria¹⁷ in the second book. Both Old Man Willow and the barrow-wights represent the natural process of death caused, in Christian terms, by the Fall of Man.¹⁸ Originally the Old Forest consisted of the “fathers of the fathers of trees,” whose “countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice” (LR, 1:181), as if they had sprung from the one Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden. The ensuing history of human civilization after the Fall of Adam and Eve resulted in similar falls and deaths: “There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them and the stone doors were shut and the grass grew over all” (LR, 1:181). As Old Man Willow and his malice represent the living embodiment of the parent Tree of Death, so the barrow-wights represent the ghostly embodiment of the dead parent civilizations of Men: “Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind” (LR, 1:181). The Hobbits' first clue to the character of the Old Forest (note again Tolkien's emphasis on oldness) resides in the falling of the Hobbits' spirits—a “dying” of merriment—when they first enter. Their fear, depression, and gloom are followed by the deathlike sleep (again, a result of the Fall) as the chief weapon of Old Man Willow (LR, 1:165). All growth in Nature is abetted by sleep and ends in death, usually after oldness (again, the Old Man Willow figure). The barrow-wights who attack the Hobbits later in the Old Forest are also linked to the earth, like the roots of Old Man Willow, but here through the barrow, a Man-made grave which they inhabit as ghosts. The song of the barrow-wights invokes coldness and death, literally, the “bed” of the human grave, where “Cold be hand and heart and bone, / and cold be sleep under stone” (LR, 1:195).

The attacks of the Old Man Willow and the barrow-wights on the Hobbits are stopped by Tom Bombadil and his mate Goldberry, who personify their complementary and positive counterparts in Nature.¹⁹ The principle of growth and revivification of all living things balances the process of mutability and death: what Goldberry lauds as “spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!” (LR, 1:173), omitting autumn and winter as antithetical seasons. Tom Bombadil as master of trees, grasses, and the living things of the land (LR, 1:174) complements the “fair river-daughter” dressed in a gown “green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew,” her feet surrounded by water-lilies (LR, 1:172). Because their role in Nature involves the maintenance of the existing order, their songs often praise the Middle-earth equivalent of the medieval Chain of Being:

Let us sing together
Of sun, stars, moon and mist, rain and cloudy
          weather,
Light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather,
Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reeds by the shady pool, lilies on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!

(LR, 1:171)

As the Old Forest depresses the Hobbits, Tom Bombadil cheers them up so much that, by the time they reach his house, “half their weariness and all their fears had fallen from them” (LR, 1:171). It is no accident that Tom Bombadil always seems to be laughing and singing joyously.

Frodo learns from the descent into this underworld of the Old Forest that the presence of mutability, change, and death in the world is natural and continually repaired by growth and new life. In the second book he learns through a parallel descent into the Mines of Moria that the spiritual form of death represented by sin stems from within the individual but is redeemed by the “new life” of wisdom and virtue counseled by Galadriel, the supernatural equivalent of Tom Bombadil, who resides in the paradisal Lothlórien. The descent also involves a return to the tragic past of the Dwarves, who fell because of the “oldness” of their kings, their avarice; the ascent involves an encounter with the eternal presence of Lothlórien, where all remains new and young, and filled with the healing spirit of Elven mercy and caritas.

The Dwarves led by both Durin and later Balin fell because of their greed for the jewels mined in Moria²⁰—its depths a metaphorical equivalent of Old Man Willow's buried roots and the deep barrows inhabited by the wights. But unlike the sense of material death pervading the Old Forest, the death associated with the Mines of Moria is voluntary because it is spiritual in nature and one chooses it or at least fails to resist its temptation: this spiritual death exists in the form of avarice. Gandalf declares that “even as mithril was the foundation of their wealth, so also was their destruction: they delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin's Bane” (LR, 1:413). Durin's Bane, the Balrog, monstrously projects the Dwarves' internal vice, which resurfaces later to overpower other Dwarves, including Balin. It is no accident that Balin dies at Mirrormere, a very dark mirror in which he is blind to himself. His mistaken goal of mithril and jewels contrasts with that of the Elves of Lórien, whose Galadriel possesses a clear mirror wisdom.

Lórien of the Blossom boasts an Eternal Spring where “ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass” (LR, 1:454), a “vanished world” where the shapes and colors are pristine and new, for “[n]o blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything, that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien there was no stain” (LR, 1:454-55).²¹ In this paradise of restoration, like that of Niggle in “Leaf by Niggle,” time almost ceases to pass and seems even to reverse, so that “the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair” (LR, 1:456). Evil does not exist in this land nor in Galadriel unless brought in from the outside (LR, 1:464). The physical and spiritual regeneration, or “life,” characteristic of these Elves is embodied in their lembas, a food that restores spirits and lasts exceedingly long—a type of communion offered to the weary travelers. Other gifts of the Lady Galadriel—the rope, magic cloaks, golden hairs, phial of light, seeds of elanor—later aid them either physically or spiritually at times of crisis in their quest, almost as a type of Christian grace in material form.²² Like Adam and Eve forced to leave paradise for the wilderness, although taking with them its memory as a paradise within, “happier far,” in Miltonic terms, the travelers leave Lórien knowing “the danger of light and joy” (LR, 1:490). Legolas reminds Gimli the Dwarf that “the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale” (LR, 1:490). Gimli's Dwarfish and earthbound nature compels him to deny the therapeutic value of memory: “Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror, be it clear as Kheled-zâram” (LR, 1:490). The mirror to which he refers in Westron is called “Mirrormere” and, instead of reflecting back the faces of gazers, portrays only the reflection of a crown of stars representing Durin's own destructive desire. In contrast, the Mirror of Galadriel with its vision of the Eternal Present, connoting supernatural wisdom, invites the gazer to “see” or understand himself, however unpleasant. Gimli is wrong; memory is a mirror and reflects back the consolation of truth, at least for those wise and steadfast beings like the Elves, whose “memory is more like to the waking world than to a dream. Not so for Dwarves” (LR, 1:490).

This lesson in natural and supernatural evil and good also functions as a mirror for Frodo to see himself. He must learn there is both Dwarf and Elf in his heart, a Mines of Moria and Lothlórien buried in his psyche. Having learned, he must then exercise free will in choosing either good or evil, usually experienced in terms of putting on or taking off the Ring at times of external or internal danger. While his initial exercises are fraught with mistakes in judgment, the inability to distinguish impulse from deliberation or an external summons from an internal decision, eventually he does learn to control his own desires and resist the will of others. Told by Gandalf to fling the Ring into the fire after just receiving it, “with an effort of will he made a movement, as if to cast it away—but he found that he had put it back in his pocket” (LR, 1:94). As Frodo practices he grows more adept but still slips: at the Inn of the Prancing Pony, his attempt at singing and dancing to divert the attention of Pippin's audience from the tale of Bilbo's birthday party allows him to become so “pleased with himself” that he puts on the Ring by mistake and becomes embarrassingly invisible. The physical dangers Frodo faces in these encounters culminate in the attack of the Black Riders one night and later at the Ford. The Ring in the first instance so controls his will that “his terror swallowed up in a sudden temptation to put on the Ring, desire to do this laid hold of him, and he could think of nothing else. … [A]t last he slowly drew out the chain, and slipped the Ring on the forefinger of his left hand” (LR, 1:262-63). As a consequence, Frodo can see the Ringwraiths as they really are, but, unfortunately, they can also see him, enough to wound him in the shoulder. The worst test in the first book involves the encounter at the Ford. Counseled first by Gandalf to “Ride” from the Black Rider attacking them, Frodo is then counseled silently by the Riders to wait. When his strength to refuse diminishes, he is saved first by Glorfindel, who addressed his horse in Elvish to flee, and again by Gandalf, who drowns the horses of the Black Riders when they prevent Frodo's horse from crossing the Ford.

While Frodo fails these major tests in the first book and must rely on various manifestations of a deus ex machina to save himself, his established valor and courage represent the first steps to attaining the higher form of heroism expressed by wisdom and self-control in the second book, a heroism very like that Germanic form exhibited by Beowulf in the epic of the same name.²³ Frodo's physical heroism evolves in the combat with physical dangers in book 1: his cry for help when Merry is caught by Old Man Willow; his stabbing of the barrow-wight's hand as it nears the bound Sam; his dancing and singing to protect Pippin and their mission from discovery; his stabbing of the foot of one Rider during the night-attack; and his valor (brandishing his sword) and courage (refusing to put on the Ring, telling the Riders to return to Mordor) at the edge of the Ford. But this last incident reveals Frodo's spiritual naïveté: he believes physical gestures of heroism will ward off the Black Riders.

Only after Frodo's education in the second book, which details supernatural death and regeneration instead of its more natural and physical forms, as in the first book, does he begin to understand the necessity of sapientia, in addition to that heroism expressed by the concept of fortitudo. In the last chapter, “The Breaking of the Fellowship,” he faces a threat from the proud and avaricious Boromir within the macrocosm of the Fellowship. Fleeing from him, Frodo puts on the Ring to render himself invisible and safe. But this unwise move allows him to see clearly (too clearly) as he sits, symbolically, upon the Seat of Seeing atop Amon Hen (“Hill of the Eye”), built by the kings of Gondor, the searching of Sauron's own Eye.²⁴ What results is a second internal danger—the threat from within Frodo, the microcosm. A battle is staged within his psyche, and he is pulled first one way, then another, until, as a fully developed moral hero, he exercises the faculty of free will with complete self-control: “He heard himself crying out: Never, never! Or was it: Verily I come, I come to you? He could not tell. Then as a flash from some other point of power there came to his mind another thought: Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!” He feels the struggle of the “two powers” within him: “For a moment, perfectly balanced between their piercing points, he writhed, tormented. Suddenly he was aware of himself again. Frodo, neither the Voice nor the Eye: free to choose, and with one remaining instant in which to do so. He took the Ring off his finger” (LR, 1:519). In this incident, parallel to the encounter of the Riders at the Ford in the last chapter of the first book, Frodo rescues himself instead of being rescued by Glorfindel or Gandalf. Further, in proving his moral education by the realization that he must wage his own quest alone to protect both their mission and the other members of the Fellowship, he displays fortitudo et sapientia (fortitude and wisdom) and caritas (charity)—hence, he acts as that savior of the Fellowship earlier witnessed in the figures of Tom Bombadil and Strider in the first book and Gandalf and Galadriel in the second. His education complete, Frodo can now function as a hero for he understands he may, at any time, become a “monster.”

The turning point in the narrative allows a shift in Tolkien's theme and the beginning of the second part of the epic novel in The Two Towers. The remaining members of the Fellowship are divided into two separate groups in this next book, a division symbolizing thematically not only the nature of conflict in battle in the macrocosm but also the psychic fragmentation resulting from evil. It is no mistake that the title is “The Two Towers”—the double, again, symptomatic of the divided self. There are not only two towers but two monsters.

II. THE TWO TOWERS: THE GERMANIC KING

The two towers of the title belong to Saruman and in a sense to Shelob because the quest of the remainder of the Fellowship in book 3 culminates in an attack on Orthanc and because the quest of Frodo and Sam in book 4 leads to their “attack” on Cirith Ungol, the sentry tower at the border of Mordor guarded by the giant spider.²⁵ Both Orthanc and Cirith Ungol copy the greatest tower of all, the Dark Tower of Sauron described as a “fortress, armory, prison, furnace … secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength” (LR, 2:204). Through these two monsters represented by their towers, this second part of The Lord of the Rings defines the nature of evil in greater detail than the first part. Thus, it also introduces the notion of the Christian deadly sins embodied in the monsters (found in the Ancrene Wisse), which must be combated by very Germanic heroes.²⁶

The tower image is informed by the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. In this biblical passage, at first, “[t]hroughout the earth men spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary,” but then the sons of Noah built a town and “a tower with its top reaching heaven.” They decided, “Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not be scattered about the whole earth.”²⁷ Their desire to reach heaven and “make a name” for themselves represents the same desire of Adam and Eve for godhead. Because these men believe “[t]here will be nothing too hard for them to do” (11:6-7), the Lord frustrates their desire by “confusing” their language and scattering them over the earth. Their overweening ambition and self-aggrandizement result in division of and chaos within the nation.

Selfishness, or cupiditas, symbolized by the Tower of Babel, shows how a preoccupation with self at the expense of the Other or of God can lead to confusion, alienation, division. The recurring symbolism of The Two Towers in Tolkien's work helps to break down this idea of cupiditas, or perversion of self. The Tower of Saruman, or Orthanc, means “Mount Fang” in Elvish but “Cunning Mind” in the language of the Mark, to suggest perversion of the mind; the Tower of Shelob, or Cirith Ungol, means “Pass of the Spider” to suggest perversion of the body. While the creation of the Tower of Babel results in differing languages to divide the peoples, the two towers in Tolkien express division in a more microcosmic sense, in terms of the separation and perversion of the two parts of the self. Saruman's intellectual perversion has shaped his tower (formerly inhabited by the wardens of Gondor) to “his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived—for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor” (LR, 2:204). Specifically, the pride and envy of Sauron impel him to achieve ever more power as his avarice impels him to seek the Ring and conquer more lands and forests through wrathful wars. Like Saruman, Shelob “served none but herself” but in a very different, more bestial way, by “drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness” (LR, 2:422). Her gluttony is revealed in her insatiable appetite, her sloth in her demands that others bring her food, and her lechery in her many bastards (perhaps appropriately and symbolically quelled by Sam's penetration of her belly with his sword). Never can Shelob achieve the higher forms of perversion manifested by Saruman: “Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, 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” (LR, 2:423). Guarding the gateway to Mordor at Cirith Ungol, Shelob suggests another guardian—of the gateway to Hell. In Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan's daughter Sin mated with her father to beget Death, the latter of whom pursued her lecherous charms relentlessly and incessantly.²⁸ In this case, Shelob is depicted not as Satan's daughter but as Sauron's cat (LR, 2:424).

Tolkien shows the analogy between the two monsters and their towers by structuring their books similarly. The perversion of mind embodied in Saruman is expressed by the difficulty in communication through or understanding of words or gestures in book 3, and the perversion of body personified in Shelob is expressed by the difficulty in finding food and shelter, or hospitality, in book 4. Specifically, Wormtongue, Grishnákh, and Saruman all display aspects of the higher sins of pride, avarice, envy, and wrath through their incomprehension or manipulation of language. Gollum and Shelob both illustrate the lower sins of gluttony, sloth, and lechery. Each book centers on the adventures of only part of the Fellowship, the nobler members in book 3 (Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn, and Merry and Pippin) and the more humble members in book 4 (Sam and Frodo). In each book, too, the adventures progressively become more dangerous, the enemies encountered more vicious.

The Uruk-hai in book 3 illustrate the disorder and contention caused by the literal failure to understand languages. When Pippin first awakens after being captured, he can understand only some of the Orcs' language: “Apparently the members of two or three quite different tribes were present, and they could not understand one another's orc-speech. There was an angry debate concerning what they were to do now: which way they were to take and what should be done with the prisoners” (LR, 2:60); debate advances to quarrel and then to murder when Saruman's Uglúk of the Uruk-hai kills two of Sauron's Orcs led by Grishnákh. The parable suggests that the tongues of different species of peoples create misunderstanding and hence conflict, disorder, and death, because of the inability to transcend selfish interests. Because they do not adhere to a common purpose, their enmity allows the Hobbits their freedom when Grishnákh's desire for the Ring overcomes his judgment and he unties the Hobbits just before his death.

This literal failure to communicate is followed in book 3 by the description of a deliberate manipulation of language so that misunderstanding will occur. Wormtongue's ill counsel renders the king impotent and his people leaderless. As a good counselor, Gandalf begs Théoden to “come out before your doors and look abroad. Too long have you sat in shadows and trusted to twisted tales and crooked promptings” (LR, 2:151). When Théoden spurns the “forked tongue” of the “witless worm” (the Satanic parallels are surely intentional) in exchange for wise counsel, the king of Rohan leaves the darkness: he stands erect, and drops his staff to act as “one new awakened.” Gandalf—unlike Wormtongue, who has manipulated others by means of belittling words into death and despair—wisely counsels life and hope. Such good words unite the Rohirrim and the Fellowship in a common purpose—fighting Saruman—rather than one that divides, like that of the quarrelsome Uruk-hai and Orcs.

If Gandalf awakens Théoden from a sleep caused by evil counsel, then Merry and Pippin awaken Treebeard from no counsel at all, given his sleepy neglect of his charge as Shepherd of the Trees.²⁹ While Treebeard has been used as a source of information by Saruman, the latter has not reciprocated, even evilly: “[H]is face, as I remember it … became like windows in a stone wall: window with shutters inside” (LR, 2:96). But Treebeard must realize the threat to Fangorn posed by Saruman, who “has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far they serve him for the moment” (LR, 2:96). Saruman has abused Nature's growing things by destroying the trees and twisted human nature by creating mutants and enslaving the will of Men like Théoden to obtain his own will. In the Entmoot, an orderly civilized debate in contrast to the quarrels of the Orcs and the one-sided insinuation of Wormtongue, language serves properly to unite the Ents by awakening them to Saruman's threat. These talking trees—signifying the principle of reason and order inherent in Nature as the higher complement to the principle of life and growth signified by Tom Bombadil—join with the Men of Rohan (as Riders complementary to the Rangers we met in the figure of Strider in the first book) to combat the evil represented by “Cunning Mind.”

These episodes that delineate the problem of language and communication in the attempt to join with or separate from the Other culminate in the most important episode of all in the chapter entitled “The Voice of Saruman.” Here, in the final debate between the fallen and the reborn Wizards, Saruman fails to use language cunningly enough to obtain his end and hence he loses, literally and symbolically, that chief weapon of the “cunning mind,” the palantír (“far-seer”). Unctuous Saruman almost convinces the group that he is a gentle Man much put upon who only desires to meet the mighty Théoden. But Gimli wisely perceives that “[t]he words of this wizard stand on their heads. … In the language of Orthanc help means ruin, and saving means slaying, that is plain” (LR, 2:235). In addition, Eomer and Théoden resist the temptation to believe the wily ex-Wizard, so that his truly corrupt nature³⁰ is then revealed through the demeaning imprecations he directs toward the house of Eorl.

The emphasis upon language in this book shows that human speech can reflect man's highest and lowest aspirations: good words can express the love for another as cunning words can seek to subvert another for the speaker's own selfish ends. The archetypal Word is Christ as the Incarnation of God's love;³¹ but words or speech in general, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas in his essay “On Kingship,” naturally distinguishes human from beast because they express a rational nature. However, the misuse of reason to acquire knowledge forbidden by God leads to human spiritual degeneration and the dehumanization of the Other. On the one hand, such behavior marks Saruman as a perverted Wizard accompanied by his equally perverted servant, Wormtongue—their perversion makes them monstrous. On the other hand, to underscore the extent of Saruman's perversion this book is filled with examples of the heroes' difficulty in communicating with others and understanding the signs and signals of another's language.

Thus, for example, when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli find the Hobbits missing but their whereabouts unknown, they face an “evil choice” because of this lack of communication, just as Merry and Pippin, once captured, almost succumb to despair because they do not know where they are or where they are going (LR, 2:59). In the attempt to pursue the Hobbits, the remainder of the Fellowship must learn to “read” a puzzling sign language: the letter S emblazoned on a dead Orc's shield (killed in Boromir's defense of the Hobbits), the footprints of Sam leading into the water but not back again (LR, 2:25), the heap of dead Orcs without any clue to the Hobbit presence (LR, 2:53), the appearance of a strange old man bearing away their horses (LR, 2:116), and the mystery of the bound Hobbits' apparent escape (LR, 2:116). All of these signs or riddles can be explained, and indeed, as Aragorn suggests, “we must guess the riddles, if we are to choose our course rightly” (LR, 2:21). Man's quest symbolically depends on his correct use of his reason; the temptation is to know more than one should by consulting a magical device like the palantír.

If book 3 demonstrates the intellectual nature of sin, then book 4 demonstrates its physical, or material, nature. Although the structure of Shelob's tower of Cirith Ungol ends this book as Orthanc ends the third, the tower is never described in this part. Instead, another tower—Minas Morgul—introduces the weary group to the land they approach at the book's end. In appearance Minas Morgul resembles a human corpse: “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” (LR, 2:396-97; my italics). The holes might be a skull's. As a type of corpse it focuses attention on the human body, whose perverse desires preoccupy Tolkien in this book.

So Gollum's obsession with fish and dark things of the earth disgusts Frodo and Sam: his name as the sound of swallowing aptly characterizes his monstrously gluttonous nature. Again, when Gollum guides the two Hobbits across the Dead Marshes, it is dead bodies from the battle between Sauron and the Alliance in the Third Age, or at least their appearance, that float beneath the surface and tempt Gollum's appetite (LR, 2:297). But the Hobbits' appetites result in trouble too: they are captured by Faramir when the smoke of the fire for the rabbit stew cooked by Sam and generously intended for Frodo is detected (just as Gollum is captured by Frodo at Faramir's when he hunts fish in the Forbidden Pool). Faramir's chief gift to the weary Hobbits is a most welcome hospitality, including food and shelter as a respite from the barren wasteland they traverse. Finally, the Hobbits are themselves intended as food by Gollum for the insatiable spider Shelob. Truly the monster (whether Gollum or Shelob) is depicted as a glutton just as the hero—past, present, or future (the corpse, the Hobbits, Faramir)—is depicted as food or life throughout this book. Physical life can end without food to sustain the body; it can also end, as the previous book indicated, because of an inaccurate interpretation of language to guide rational judgment.

These monsters representing sin are opposed by heroes constructed as Germanic lords and warriors. As we have seen, Théoden the weak leader of Rohan is transformed by Gandalf's encouragement into a very heroic Germanic king in book 3, unlike the proud Beorhtnoth of “The Battle of Maldon.” In book 4 the Germanic warrior or subordinate (chiefly Sam) vows to lend his aid to his master out of love and loyalty like the old retainer Beorhtwold in “The Battle of Maldon.” The bond between the king as head of a nation and the reason as “lord” of the individual corresponds to that between the subordinate warrior as servant of the king and the subordinate body.

To enhance these Germanic correspondences Tolkien describes Rohan as an Old English warrior nation complete with appropriate names³² and including a suspicious hall guardian named Hama, very similar to the hall guardian in Beowulf, and an ubi sunt poem modeled on a passage from the Old English “Wanderer,” as the following pair of passages from The Two Towers and that Old English poem attest:

Where now the horse and rider? Where is the horn
          that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright
          hair flowing?

(LR, 2:142)

Where went the horse, where went the man? Where
          went the treasure-giver?
Where went the seats of banquets? Where are the hall-
          joys?(33)

In addition, throughout book 3 Tolkien stresses the physical heroism of the Rohirrim and the Fellowship in the battle at Helm's Deep, which resembles those described in “The Battle of Maldon,” “Brunnanburh,” and “The Fight at Finnsburg.”

But in book 4 the heroism of the “warrior” depends more on love and loyalty than on expressions of valor in battle. Four major subordinates emerge: Gollum, Sam, Frodo, and Faramir. Each offers a very Germanic oath of allegiance to his master or lord: Gollum, in pledging not to run away if he is untied, swears by the Ring, “I will serve the master of the Precious” (LR, 2:285). So Frodo becomes a lord, “a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a whining dog” (LR, 2:285). Gollum must also swear an oath to Faramir never to return to the Forbidden Pool or lead others there (LR, 2:379). Sam similarly serves his master Frodo but, like Gollum, betrays him, not to Shelob but to Faramir, by cooking the rabbit stew. Likewise, Frodo the master seems to betray his servant Gollum by capturing him at the Forbidden Pool even though Gollum has actually saved him from death at the hands of Faramir's men—“betray,” because the “servant has a claim on the master for service; even service in fear” (LR, 2:375). Finally, because Faramir has granted Frodo his protection, Frodo offers him his service while simultaneously requesting a similar protection for his servant, Gollum: “[T]ake this creature, this Sméagol, under your protection” (LR, 2:380). Ultimately even Faramir has vowed to serve his father and lord, Denethor, by protecting this isolated post. In the next part of the epic Denethor will view Faramir's service as incomplete, a betrayal. Because Faramir has not died instead of his brother Boromir, he will seem to fail, just as the warriors lying in the Dead Marshes have apparently succeeded only too well, given the fact of their death in battle. While the exchange of valor or service for protection by a lord duplicates the Germanic contract between warrior and king, the exchange in The Two Towers seems fraught with difficulty because of either the apparent laxity of the lord or the apparent disloyalty of the subordinate.

The enemy, interestingly enough, functions primarily as a version of Christian rather than Germanic values, but still there is some correspondence between the ofermod of the Germanic lord and the superbia of the Christian, both leading to other, lesser sins. The Germanic emphasis in this volume does continue in the next part of the epic but ultimately merges with a more Christian definition of both servant and king.

III. THE RETURN OF THE KING: THE CHRISTIAN KING

This part of The Lord of the Rings sees the climax of the struggle between good and evil through battle between the Satan-like Dark Lord and the Christ-like true king, Aragorn. Because Aragorn “returns” to his people to accept the mantle of responsibility, the third volume is entitled The Return of the King, with emphasis upon “kingship” in book 5 and “return” in book 6. Dramatic foils for the Christian king as the good steward are provided in book 5 by the good and bad Germanic lords Théoden and Denethor, whose names suggest anagrams of each other (Théo + den: Dene + thor). The good Germanic subordinates Pippin and Merry, whose notion of service echoes that of the good Christian, similarly act as foils for the archetypal Christian servant Sam, whose exemplary love for his master, Frodo, transcends all normal bounds in book 6. Finally, the concept of renewal attendant upon the return of the king pervades the latter part of the sixth book as a fitting coda to the story of the triumph of the true king over the false one.

The contrast between the two Germanic lords is high-lighted early in book 5 by the offers of service presented respectively by Pippin to Denethor in chapter 1 and by Merry to Théoden in chapter 2. As the Old Man, the Germanic king more interested in glory and honor than in his men's welfare, Denethor belittles Pippin because he assumes smallness of size equals smallness of service. This literalistic mistake has been made earlier by other “Old Men,” especially Beowulf critics, the narrator of The Hobbit, and Nokes in “Smith of Wootton Major.” Why, Denethor muses, did the “halfling” escape the Orcs when his much larger son Boromir did not? In return for the loss of Denethor's son, Pippin feels moved—by pride—to offer in exchange himself, but as an eye-for-an-eye, justly rendered payment of a debt: “Then Pippin looked the old man in the eye, for pride stirred strangely within him, still stung by the scorn and suspicion in that cold voice. ‘Little service, no doubt, will so great a lord of Men think to find in a hobbit, a halfling from the northern Shire; yet such as it is, I will offer it, in payment of my debt’” (LR, 3:30). Pippin's offer is legalized by a contractual vow binding him both to Gondor and the Steward of the realm either until death takes him or his lord releases him. The specific details of the contract invoke the usual terms of the bond between lord and warrior: according to the Germanic comitatus ethic, Pippin must not “fail to reward that which is given: fealty with love, valor with honor, oath-breaking with vengeance” (LR, 3:31).

Merry's vow to Théoden, in contrast, expresses a voluntary love for, rather than involuntary duty to, his king, characteristic of the ideal Germanic subordinate in Tolkien's “Ofermod” commentary. And Théoden, unlike Denethor, represents the ideal Germanic lord who truly loves instead of uses his Men. Viewing Merry as an equal, he invites him to eat, drink, talk, and ride with him, later suggesting that as his esquire he ride on a hill-pony especially found for him. Merry responds to this loving gesture with one equally loving and spontaneous: “Filled suddenly with love for this old man, he knelt on one knee, and took his hand and kissed it. ‘May I lay the sword of Meriadoc of the Shire on your lap, Théoden King?’ he cried. ‘Receive my service, if you will!’” (LR, 3:59). In lieu of the legal contract of the lord Denethor and the servant Pippin there is Merry's oral promise of familial love: “‘As a father you shall be to me,’ said Merry” (LR, 3:59).

These private vows of individual service to the governors of Gondor and Rohan are followed in chapters 2 and 3 by more public demonstrations of national or racial service. In the first incident the previous Oathbreakers of the past—that is, the Dead of the Gray Company—redeem their past negligence by bringing aid to Aragorn in response to his summons. This contractual obligation fulfilled according to the letter of prophecy, Théoden and his Rohirrim can fulfill their enthusiastic and loving pledge of aid by journeying to Gondor. They themselves are accompanied by the Wild Men in chapter 5 as a symbolic corollary to their spontaneity, love, and enthusiasm—the new law of the spirit.

In addition, two oathmakers of Rohan—Eowyn and Merry—in contrast to the Oathbreakers mentioned above, literally appear to violate their private vows of individual service but actually render far greater service than any outlined in a verbal contract. When Eowyn relinquishes her duty to her father and king, Théoden, of taking charge of the people until his return, by disguising herself as the warrior Dernhelm so that she may fight in battle, she also allows Merry to relinquish his vow to Théoden when he secretly rides behind her into battle. But when Théoden is felled by the Nazgûl Lord, it is she who avenges him—Dernhelm “wept, for he had loved his lord as a father” (LR, 3:141)—as well as Merry: “‘King's man? King's man!’ his heart cried within him. ‘You must stay by him. As a father you shall be to me, you said’” (LR, 3:141). Dernhelm slays the winged creature ridden by the Lord of the Nazgûl; Merry helps her slay the Lord. The service they render, a vengeance impelled by pity and love for their lord, is directed not only to the dead king and father Théoden, or to Rohan and Gondor, but to all of Middle-earth. Interestingly, her bravery in battle arouses Merry's: “Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided” (LR, 3:142). Simple love for another results in Merry's most charitable and heroic act. These subordinates have completely fulfilled the spirit, if not the letter, of their pledges of allegiance to their lords.

Tolkien also compares and contrasts the lords of book 5. The evil Germanic lord Denethor is matched by the good Germanic lord Théoden; both contrast with the Christian lord Aragorn. Denethor fails as a father, a master, a steward, and a man (if the characteristic of Man is rationality). In “The Siege of Gondor” (chapter 4) and later in “The Pyre of Denethor” (chapter 7), Denethor reveals his inability to love his son Faramir when, Lear-like, he measures the quality and quantity of his worth. The Gondor steward to the king prefers the dead Boromir to Faramir because of the former's great courage and loyalty to him: “Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard's pupil. He would have remembered his father's need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift” (LR, 3:104). So he chastises Faramir for his betrayal: “[H]ave I not seen your eye fixed on Mithrandir, seeking whether you said well or too much? He has long had your heart in his keeping” (LR, 3:103). Even in the early chapters Denethor has revealed his failure as a master: he has assumed that the service of a small individual like Pippin must be domestic and menial in character, involving waiting on Denethor, running errands, and entertaining him (LR, 3:96). As a steward of Gondor Denethor fails most egregiously by usurping the role of lord in his misguided zeal for power and glory and by using his men to further his own ends. He views this act in monetary terms: the Dark Lord “uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling. Or why should I sit here in my tower and think, and watch, and wait, spending even my sons?” (LR, 3:111). Unlike Théoden, who heads his troops on the battlefield, Denethor remains secure in his tower while his warriors die in the siege of Gondor. Most significantly, he fails to exhibit that rational self-control often described in the Middle Ages through the metaphor of kingship. Such unnatural behavior results in despair and irrationality and he loses his head. When he nurses his madness to suicide and adds even his son Faramir to the pyre, he is termed by Gandalf a “heathen,” like those kings dominated by the Dark Power, “slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death” (LR, 3:157). As Denethor succumbs to his pride he refuses to “be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. … I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity” (LR, 3:158). Symbolically, the enemy hurls back the heads of dead soldiers branded with the “token of the Lidless Eye” to signal the loss of reason and hope—the loss of the “head”—and the assault of despair on this city and its steward (LR, 3:117).

Théoden and Aragorn epitomize in contrast the good king. As a Germanic king Théoden serves primarily heroically after his contest with Wormtongue, giving leadership in battle and loving and paternal treatment of his warriors outside it, as we have seen with Merry. So he rides at the head of his troop of warriors as they near the city and provides a noble and inspiring example for them to follow:

Arise, arise …
Fell deeds awake fire and slaughter!
spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

(LR, 3:137)

The alliterative verse echoes the Old English heroic lines of “The Battle of Maldon” in both its form and content.

Aragorn differs from Théoden in his role as Christian king because of his moral heroism as a healer rather than his valor as a destroyer.³⁴ Ioreth, the Gondors' wise woman, declares, “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known” (LR, 3:169). In “The Houses of Healing” (chapter 8), Aragorn carries the herb kingsfoil to the wounded Faramir, Eowyn, and Merry to revive and awaken each of them in highly symbolic acts. Also known as athelas, kingsfoil brings “Life to the dying”: its restorative powers, of course, transcend the merely physical. It represents life itself juxtaposed with death, similar to the restorative powers of the paradisal Niggle in “Leaf by Niggle.” Indeed, when Aragorn places the leaves in hot water, “all hearts were lightened. For the fragrance that came to each was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory” (LR, 3:173). In awakening Faramir, Aragorn awakens as well knowledge and love so that the new steward to the king responds in words similar to those of a Christian disciple: “My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?” (LR, 3:173). In contrast, instead of responding rationally to the king, Eowyn awakens from her deathlike sleep to enjoy her brother's presence and to mourn her father's death. Merry awakens hungry for supper. The revival of self witnessed in these three incidents symbolizes what might be called the renewal of the three human faculties: rational, appetitive, and sensitive.

Structurally, Tolkien supports his thematic contrasts and parallels. The House of Healing presented in chapter 8 is positioned back-to-back with chapter 7's House of the Dead, in which Denethor commits fiery suicide. More than physical, Denethor's death is chiefly spiritual. Both a spiritual and physical rebirth follow Aragorn's laying on of kingsfoil in the House of Healing. This ritualistic and epiphanic act also readies the narrative for the final symbolic Christian gesture of all the free peoples in the last two chapters of book 5. In “The Last Debate” (chapter 9) they decide to sacrifice themselves, if necessary, out of love for their world in the hope that their action will distract Sauron long enough for Sam and Frodo to reach Mount Doom. As an entire community of “servants,” they each alone act as freely, spontaneously, and charitably as did Merry or Eowyn toward Théoden earlier. Aragorn declares, “As I have begun, so I will go on. … Nonetheless I do not yet claim to command any man. Let others choose as they will” (LR, 3:192). Even the title of “The Last Debate” portrays the egalitarian spirit of the group.

In contrast, in the last chapter (10), “The Black Gate Opens,” only one view—that of the Dark Lord, voiced by his “Mouth,” the Lieutenant—predominates. Sauron too demands not voluntary service but servitude: the Lieutenant “would be their tyrant and they his slaves” (LR, 3:205). Finally, the arrogance of Sauron's “Steward” functions antithetically to the humility and love of the good “servants” and stewards. Mocking and demeaning them, Sauron's Lieutenant asks if “any one in this rout” has the “authority to treat with me? … Or indeed with wit to understand me?” (LR, 3:202). The Lieutenant's stentorian voice grows louder and more defensive when met with the silence of Aragorn, whom he has described as brigandlike.

Although this “attack” of the free peoples on the Black Gate of Mordor seems to parallel that of Sauron's Orcs on the Gate of Gondor in chapter 4, it differs in that this attack on the Black Gate, from Tolkien's point of view, is not so much a physical attack as it is a spiritual defense by Gondor. In this present instance, when the peoples realize that the Lieutenant holds Sam's short sword, the gray cloak with its Elven brooch, and Frodo's mithril-mail, they almost succumb to despair—Sauron's greatest weapon, as witnessed in the siege of Gondor. But Gandalf's steely self-discipline and wisdom so steady their nerves that they are buoyed by his refusal to submit to the Mouth's insolent terms. Well that he does, for Sauron then surrounds them on all sides, betraying his embassy of peace. They are saved from physical destruction by the eagles as deus ex machina and from spiritual destruction by Frodo, Sam, and Gollum as they near Mount Doom in book 6.

The Ring finally reaches its point of origin in the first three chapters of book 6. Initiating the romance idea of “Return,”³⁵ this event introduces tripartite division of the book in narrative and theme. In chapters 4 to 7 Aragorn returns as king of his people, after which his marriage to Arwen, in addition to Faramir's to Eowyn, symbolizes the renewal of society through the joining of different species, Man and Elf, and of different nations, Rohan and Gondor. A later marriage will represent a more natural form of rejuvenation, when Sam the gardener marries an appropriately named Rosie Cotton, as if to illustrate further the imminent fertility that will emblazon the reborn Shire, and they conceive Elanor, whose Elven name sums up the equivalent of grace. Finally, in the third part (chapter 8), Frodo and his Hobbits return to the Shire, where the false “mayor” Sharkey is ousted and a new one, Sam, elected. In the last chapter Tolkien hints at more supernatural forms of return and rebirth. On one level, those chosen few “return” to the Gray Havens, where they seem to acquire an immortality reminiscent of Christianity. But on another level, others of a less spiritual cast must return to the duties of the natural world. So Sam returns at the very end, a “king” who must continue to serve his “people,” his family, and his “kingdom,” the Shire, by remaining in this world: “‘Well, I'm back,’ he said” (LR, 3:385).

Throughout the first part of book 6, before the Ring has been returned and Sauron similarly “returns” as gray smoke (in contrast to the Gray Havens reached by Frodo and Gandalf at the end), Sam exemplifies the ideal Christian servant to his master, Frodo, in continuation of the Christian-king-as-servant theme enunciated in the last part. Physically Sam provides food for Frodo as he weakens, offers him his share of the remaining water, carries him bodily over rough terrain, and lifts his spirits. But spiritually Sam serves Frodo through the moral character that reveals him to be, as the most insignificant Hobbit and character in the epic, the most heroic.³⁶ Sam will become an artist by the work's end, but even during the trek across Mordor his sensitivity to spiritual reality is expressed by his understanding of the beauty beneath the appearance of waste, of light beyond darkness, of hope beyond despair.

This insight is triggered by the appearance of a star above, an instance of divine grace that illumines understanding and bolsters hope: “The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. … Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's ceased to trouble him” (LR, 3:244). Strangely, Sam remains the only character who has worn the Ring but who is never tempted to acquire it by overpowering his master. Yet like Frodo earlier, Sam refuses to kill the detested Gollum when an opportunity arises because of his empathy for this “thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched” (LR, 3:273). Having borne the Ring himself, Sam finally understands the reason for Gollum's wretchedness. This charitable refusal permits Gollum, as a foil for the good servant, to serve his master and Middle-earth in the most ironic way imaginable. When Frodo betrays himself enough to keep the Ring at the last moment, Gollum bites off both Ring and finger only to fall into the furnace of Mount Doom, the most ignominious “servant” finally achieving the coveted role of “Lord of the Rings.” The least dangerous adversary finally fells the most dangerous—Sauron.

In the last two parts, the reunion of the entire Fellowship and all the species, the coronation of the king, and the double weddings mark the restoration of harmony and peace to Middle-earth. Symbolically the Eldest of Trees blooms again to replace the barren and withered Tree in the Court of the Fountain (LR, 3:308-9). A new age—the Age of Man, the Fourth Age—begins. Even in the Shire rejuvenation occurs: note the domestic and quotidian image implied by the title of chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire” (my emphasis).

In a social sense the Shire must be washed and purified of the reptilian monsters occupying it. Once Sharkey and Worm have disappeared, Sam the new Mayor as gardener can replenish its natural stores as well. After he plants the seed given him by Galadriel, new trees, including a mallorn with silver bark and gold flowers, burst into bloom in the spring. The lush growth introduces a season or rebirth in Shire year 1420 through sunshine, rain in moderation, “an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among Hobbits. The fruit was so plentiful that young Hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream. … And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass” (LR, 3:375). Sam as gardener becomes a natural artist who fuses together the Niggle and Parish of “Leaf by Niggle.”

The ending of this epic may seem optimistic. But as the Second Age has passed into the Third, so now the Third passes into the Fourth, a lesser one because dominated by Man, a lesser species than the Elf. Also, as Sauron replaced Morgoth, perhaps an even Darker Lord will replace Sauron in the future. Yet Tolkien's major interest does not lie in predicting the future or in encouraging Man to hope for good fortune. He wishes to illustrate how best to conduct one's life, both privately and publicly, by being a good servant and a good king, despite the vagaries of fortune, the corruption of others, and the threat of natural and supernatural death.

So this epic constitutes a sampler of Tolkienian concepts and forms realized singly and separately in other works. The critic as monster depicted in the Beowulf article reappears as Tolkien the critic in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings, a “grown up” version of Tolkien the narrator in The Hobbit. The hero as monster finds expression, as it has earlier in Bilbo, in Frodo, who discovers the landscape of the self to be a harsher terrain than that of Mordor. The series of monsters typifying the deadly sins—Saruman, Shelob—ultimately converge with the evil Germanic king of the trilogy—Denethor—combining ideas of the “King under the Mountain” in The Hobbit with the idea of the Germanic lord presented in “The Homecoming” and other medieval parodies. The good Germanic lord, hero-as-subordinate, too, from The Hobbit and the medieval parodies, converges with the Christian concept of the king-as-servant from the fairy-stories, in the last two volumes of the trilogy.

In addition, the genres and formal constructs that Tolkien most loves reappear here. The preface, lecture, or prose nonfiction essay is transformed into the foreword; the “children's story” for adults is expanded into the adult story of the epic, also for children; the parody of medieval literature recurs not only in the epic or romance form used here but also in the presentation of the communities of Rohan and Gondor; the fairy-story with its secondary world of Faërie governed by a very Christian Elf-king is translated into Elven form here.

Thus, all of Tolkien's work manifests a unity, with understanding of its double and triple levels, in this respect like the distinct dual levels, Germanic and Christian, of Beowulf first perceived in Tolkien's own Beowulf article. So the Tolkien reader, like Bilbo in The Hobbit and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, must return to the beginning—not to the Shire, but to the origin of the artist Tolkien—in “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”

Notes

1. Randel Helms, Tolkien's World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 21. For the entire analysis of the parallels, see chapter 2, “Tolkien's Leaf.”

2. For its medieval (and classical) linguistic, literary, and mythological sources, influences, and parallels in general, see, for example, Caroline Whitman Everett, “The Imaginative Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien” (master's thesis, Florida State University, 1957), chap. 4; Alexis Levitin, “J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings” (master's thesis, Columbia University, 1964), chap. 2; John Tinkler, “Old English in Rohan,” in Tolkien and the Critics, ed. Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo (Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), pp. 164-69; Sandra L. Miesel, “Some Motifs and Sources for Lord of the Rings,” Riverside Quarterly 3 (1968): 125; E. L. Epstein, “The Novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and the Ethnology of Medieval Christendom,” Philological Quarterly 48 (1969): 517-25; Lin Carter, Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings (New York: Ballantine, 1969), passim; Kenneth J. Reckford, “Some Trees in Virgil and Tolkien,” in Perspectives of Roman Poetry: A Classics Symposium, ed. G. Karl Galinsky (Austin, Tex., and London: University of Texas Press, 1974), pp. 57-92; Charles A. Huttar, “Hell and the City: Tolkien and the Traditions of Western Literature,” in A Tolkien Compass, ed. Jared Lobdell (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1975), pp. 117-42; and Ruth S. Noel, The Mythology of Middle-earth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).

   For the source and genre of LR as northern saga, see especially Gloria Ann Strange Slaughter St. Clair, “The Lord of the Rings as Saga,” Mythlore 6 (1979): 11-16; St. Clair's earlier “Studies in the Sources of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,” Dissertation Abstracts International 30 (1970): 5001A (University of Oklahoma); and more recently, St. Clair, “An Overview of the Northern Influences on Tolkien's Works” and “Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies,” in Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, Keble College, Oxford, 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. Goodknight, Mythlore 80 and Mallorn 30 in one volume (Milton Keynes, England: Tolkien Society; Altadena, Calif.: Mythopoeic Press, 1995), pp. 63-67 and 68-72.

   On the conflict in The Lord of the Rings between the Germanic pessimism that lif is læne (life is loaned) (from Old English literature) and the medieval Christian idea that submission to God's will provides hope in a transitory world without meaning, see Ronald Christopher Sarti, “Man in a Mortal World: J. R. R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings,” Dissertation Abstracts International 45 (1984): 1410A (Indiana University). On the similarity between Unferth (in Beowulf) and Wormtongue, see Clive Tolley, “Tolkien and the Unfinished,” in Scholarship and Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon, May 1992, Turku, Finland (special issue), ed. K. J. Battarbee, Anglicana Turkuensia, no. 12 (Turku: University of Turku, 1992), pp. 154-56; on the influence of Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon on Tolkien's epic, see George Clark, “J. R. R. Tolkien and the True Hero,” in J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth, ed. George Clark and Daniel Timmons (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 2000), pp. 39-51.

   Tom Shippey analyzes the indebtedness of “Orcs,” “Ents,” and “Hobbits” to Old Norse and Old English etymologies in “Creation from Philology in The Lord of the Rings,” in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Story-Teller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979), 286-316. For analyses of the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew antecedents of Tolkienian names, see Dale W. Simpson, “Names and Moral Character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth Books,” Publications of the Missouri Philological Association 6 (1981): 1-5. Note that Shippey also traces the influence of Old Norse and Old English on detail used by Tolkien in the trilogy, such as the word “fallow” as an epithet for an Elven cloak, names of characters, and place names. See also Tom Shippey, Road to Middle-earth, 1982, rev. ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1992).

   On Frodo compared to Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, particularly in relation to the loss of innocence and understanding of self, see Christine Barkley and Muriel B. Ingham, “There But Not Back Again: The Road from Innocence to Maturity,” Riverside Quarterly 7 (1982): 101-4; see also Roger C. Schlobin, who looks for parallels between the characters of Sir Gawain and The Lord of the Rings, in “The Monsters Are Talismans and Transgressions: Tolkien and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in Clark and Timmons, pp. 71-81.

3. For religious, moral, Christian, or Roman Catholic aspects of the trilogy, see Edmund Fuller, “The Lord of the Hobbits: J. R. R. Tolkien,” Books with Men behind Them (New York: Random House, 1959), pp. 169-96; Patricia Meyer Sparks, “Ethical Patterns in The Lord of the Rings,” Critique 3 (1959): 30-42, reprinted as “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings,” in Tolkien and the Critics, ed. Isaacs and Zimbardo, pp. 81-99; Levitin, “Inherent Morality and Its Concomitants,” chap. 5 of “J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,” pp. 87-106); Sandra Miesel, “Some Religious Aspects of Lord of the Rings,” Riverside Quarterly 3 (1968): 209-13; Gunnar Urang, “Tolkien's Fantasy: The Phenomenology of Hope,” in Shadows of Imagination: The Fantasies of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, ed. Mark R. Hillegas (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), pp. 97-110; Paul Kocher, “Cosmic Order,” chap. 3 of Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972); and Richard Purtill, Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1974). Other references will be cited where relevant.

4. Sparks, pp. 83-84.

5. For The Lord of the Rings as traditional epic, see Bruce A. Beatie, “Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,” in “The Tolkien Papers” (special issue), Mankato Studies in English 2 (1967): 1-17; as fantasy drawing upon epic, chanson de geste, and medieval romance, see Carter, pp. 96-133; as fantasy, see Douglass Parker, “Hwæt We Holbytla …” (Review of Lord of the Rings), Hudson Review 9 (1956-57): 598-609; as fairy-story, see R. J. Reilly, “Tolkien and the Fairy Story,” Thought 38 (1963): 89-106, reprinted in Tolkien and the Critics, pp. 128-50; as a genreless work, see Charles Moorman, “The Shire, Mordor, and Minas Tirith,” in Isaacs and Zimbardo, Tolkien and the Critics, pp. 201-2.

6. The most satisfying genre may be that of the romance, drawn from medieval or Arthurian antecedents. Characteristic of romance are its symbolism, quest themes of search and transition, the sense of death or disaster, and the maturation of the young. But Tolkien inverts the romance structure so that Frodo relinquishes his quest at the end and the heroes peacefully overcome death. See George H. Thomson, “The Lord of the Rings: The Novel as Traditional Romance,” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 8 (1967): 43-59; Richard C. West, “The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings,” in Lobdell, A Tolkien Compass, pp. 77-94; Derek S. Brewer, “The Lord of the Rings as Romance,” in Salu and Farrell, pp. 249-64; and David M. Miller, “Narrative Pattern in The Fellowship of the Ring,” in Lobdell, A Tolkien Compass, pp. 95-106. See also, for the influence of French and German Arthurian romance (and the Perceval story) on Tolkien in LR, J. S. Ryan, “Uncouth Innocence: Some Links Between Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach and J. R. R. Tolkien,” Inklings-Jahrbuch 2 (1984): 25-41: and Mythlore 11 (1984): 8-13. For a tracing of the Fellowship's journeys through various kinds of landscape in LR, see the fifty-one maps in Barbara Strachey, Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J. R. R. Tolkien's “The Lord of the Rings” (London: Harper Collins, 1998; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

7. For Aragorn as hero, see Kocher, Master of Middle-earth, chap. 6; for Frodo, see Roger Sale, Modern Heroism: Essays on D. H. Lawrence, William Empson, and J. R. R. Tolkien. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1973); and for Aragorn as the epic hero and Frodo as the fairy tale hero, see Levitin, pp. 60-76. Because heroism and ofermod are incompatible, it is difficult to choose “the Hero” of the work; see Miesel's brief mention of this idea in “Some Religious Aspects of Lord of the Rings,” p. 212; further, real heroism depends more on service than mastery, making Sam, who resembles Niggle in “Leaf by Niggle,” the best choice for hero: see Jack C. Rang, “Two Servants,” in “The Tolkien Papers,” pp. 84-94. See also Flieger's concept of the split hero, in four individuals, which she identifies with the multigenre form of The Lord of the Rings: for Frodo as the fairy-tale hero, Aragorn as the epic hero, Gollum as the Beowulf monster (who combines Grendel and the Dragon), and Sam Gamgee as the loyal servant Wiglaf in Beowulf and Bedivere in Morte d'Arthur, see Verlyn Flieger, “Medieval Epic and Romance Motifs in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,” Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1978): 4157A (Catholic University of America); and the article that epitomizes her argument in “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero,” in Tolkien and the Critics, ed. Isaacs and Zimbardo, pp. 40-62.

8. For other views of structure in the trilogy see, for example, Helms, “Tolkien's World: The Structure and Aesthetic of The Lord of the Rings,” chap. 5 of Tolkien's World.

9. Quoted from a letter by J. R. R. Tolkien appended to Everett, p. 87.

10. In addition to the innovative millennium edition (London: Harper Collins, 1999), The Lord of the Rings has also been published in a single-volume, “India paper” deluxe edition, with slipcase, by Allen and Unwin (London, 1968); again, without a slipcase and on regular paper, in 1991 (London: Harper Collins); and in quarter-leather with a slipcase and in limited numbers (London: Harper Collins, 1997). That these formats change the way the reader understands The Lord of the Rings is important in grasping Tolkien's intentions.

11. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 3 vols., 2d ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 1:231.

12. See David Callaway, “Gollum: A Misunderstood Hero,” Mythlore 37 (1984): 14-17, 22.

13. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Richard Green (Indianapolis, Ind., New York, and Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), p. 97 (book 4, poem 6). On the Great Chain of Being, the “fair chain of love,” and the Renaissance concept of discordia concors (also found in Hugh of Saint Victor) and its influence on order in the trilogy, see Rose A. Zimbardo, “The Medieval-Renaissance Vision of The Lord of the Rings,” in Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981), 63-71: there is a place for all beings and things in Middle-earth, so that evil arises when one being or thing seeks its own desires without regard for the whole. For the Boethian reconciliation of Providence, Fate, and free will, as a source for the conflicting statements Tolkien makes in the trilogy about chance and intentionality in the universe, see Kathleen Dubs, “Providence, Fate and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in The Lord of the Rings,” Twentieth-Century Literature 27 (1981): 34-42.

14. For an incisive discussion of the origins, kinds, and natures of the rings, see Melanie Rawls, “The Rings of Power,” Mythlore 40 (1984): 29-32.

15. For a classification and discussion of good and/or evil species, see Rose A. Zimbardo, “Moral Vision in The Lord of the Rings,” in Tolkien and the Critics, ed. Isaac and Zimbardo, pp. 100-108; Thomas J. Gasque, “Tolkien: The Monsters and the Critics,” in Tolkien and the Critics, ed. Isaac and Zimbardo, pp. 151-63; Robley Evans, J. R. R. Tolkien (New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1972), chaps. 3 to 5; and Kocher, Master of Middle-earth, chaps. 4 to 5.

16. The insignificance and ordinariness of Tolkien's heroic Hobbits are glossed in several of his letters, particularly 180, 181, and 246: see J. R. R. Tolkien, Letters, selected and edited by Humphrey Carpenter, with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), pp. 230-32, 232-37, and 325-33.

17. For a discussion of the descent into Hell in the second book and its traditional implications, see Huttar, “Hell and the City,” in A Tolkien Compass, ed. Lobdell, pp. 117-42.

18. On Old Man Willow and Tolkien's empathy with trees, see Verlyn Flieger, “Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-Conflict in Middle-earth,” in Clark and Timmons, pp. 147-58.

19. On Tom Bombadil as an embodiment of the classical and medieval god of nature (or human nature), drawn in part from John Gower's Confessio Amantis, see Gordon E. Slethaug, “Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, and the Creative Imagination,” English Studies in Canada 4 (1978): 341-50. On Tolkien's theology of nature and grace, see also Colin Duriez, “Sub-creation and Tolkien's Theology of Story,” in Battarbee, pp. 133-49.

20. On the names of the Dwarves, see Patrick J. Callahan, “Tolkien's Dwarfs and the Eddas,” Tolkien Journal 15 (1972): 20; and for their connection with Norse mythology, see Brunsdale, “Norse Mythological Elements in The Hobbit,” Mythlore 9 (1983): 49-50; and Lynn Bryce, “The Influence of Scandinavian Mythology in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien,” Edda 7 (1983): 113-19.

21. See also, for Tolkien's Paradise, U. Milo Kaufmann, “Aspects of the Paradisiacal in Tolkien's Work,” in Tolkien Compass, ed. Lobdell, pp. 143-52; and for Valinor as based on the Earthly Paradise, Gwenyth Hood, “The Earthly Paradise in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,” in Reynolds and Goodknight, pp. 139-56.

22. On the Roman Catholic and religious features of The Lord of the Rings, see Miesel, “Some Religious Aspects of Lord of the Rings,” pp. 209-13; Catherine Madsen, “Light from an Invisible Lamp: Natural Religion in The Lord of the Rings,” Mythlore 53 (spring 1988): 43-47; and Carl F. Hostetter, “Over Middle-earth Sent unto Men: On the Philological Origins of the Earendel Myth,” Mythlore 65 (spring 1991): 5-8.

23. On the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic heroism of Frodo, see George Clark, “J. R. R. Tolkien and the Hero,” in Clark and Timmons, pp. 39-51.

24. The emphasis on sight and seeing is often linked in the trilogy with the palantíri, one of which Saruman has and that Sauron uses to control him, so that Frodo's “sight” here atop the Hill opens up new vistas and visions beyond his capability: see J. R. R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), pp. 421-33.

25. For the two towers of this volume as central symbols, see also Tolkien's own unused designs for the cover, in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), pp. 179-83. The two towers were used recently on the cover of a Harper Collins reissue, for the second of the three volumes (London, 2000).

26. Ancrene Wisse treats the deadly sins as animals, as we have seen previously. Tolkien himself links propensities to different sins among different species—sloth and stupidity, with the Hobbits; pride, with the Elves; envy and greed, with the Dwarves; a type of pride (“folly and wickedness”), with Men; and a more dangerous form of pride (“treachery and power-lust”), with Wizards, in letter 203 (Tolkien, Letters, p. 262). On deadly sin in The Lord of the Rings, as well as The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, see Charles W. Nelson's recent discussion, “The Sins of Middle-earth: Tolkien's Use of Medieval Allegory,” in Clark and Timmons, pp. 83-94. See also, for a comparison of the battle between Sam and Frodo and Shelob and the battle between the Vices and Virtues in Prudentius's Psychomachia, J. S. Ryan, “Death by Self-Impalement: The Prudentius Example,” Minas Tirith Evening Star 15 (1986): 6-9.

27. Genesis 11:1-4, The Jerusalem Bible, ed. Alexander Jones (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 26. Tolkien participated as a principal collaborator (one of twenty-seven) in the translation and literary revision of this Bible.

28. For parallels between The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and Milton's Paradise Lost, see Debbie Sly, “Weaving Nets of Gloom: ‘Darkness Profound’ in Tolkien and Milton,” in Clark and Timmons, pp. 109-19.

29. On the Ents, Treebeard, and Old Man Willow, and Tolkien's indebtedness to the Green Knight, see Verlyn Flieger, “The Green Man, the Green Knight, and Treebeard: Scholarship and Invention in Tolkien's Fiction,” in Battarbee, pp. 85-98.

30. For information about the Wizards, see Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, pp. 405-20.

31. For the theological concept of the Word of God (=Jesus Christ, his Son, or the incarnation of God's love), as the basis for Tolkien's literary aesthetic, see S. T. R. O. d'Ardenne, “The Man and the Scholar,” in Salu and Farrell, p. 35. Just as the combination of adjective and noun in the Anglo-Saxon kenning gave the Anglo-Saxon scop with his wordhord control over the thing described, so kennings allow Tolkien to create his own world, through the compounds and epithets for the One Ring, the Ring of Power, the Ring of Doom, Gollum's Precious, etc. Tolkien's constructed languages also give insight into the peoples who use them: Dwarvish is Old Norse; Quenya and Sindarin, High-Elvish and Common Elvish, as languages of song mirror Faërie's desire for good; Black Speech is suited to a race whose dentals consist of fangs and is therefore not a good language for song. See Anthony J. Ugolnik, “Wordhord Onleac: The Medieval Sources of J. R. R. Tolkien's Linguistic Aesthetic,” Mosaic 10 (winter 1977): 15-31. In this case, “Sauron,” as a name that describes his being, derives from the Greek for “lizard.” See Gwyneth E. Hood, “Sauron as Gorgon and Basilisk,” Seven 8 (1987): 59-71.

32. For Rohan as Old English, see Tinkler, “Old English in Rohan,” in Tolkien and the Critics, ed. Isaac and Zimbardo, pp. 164-69.

33. My translation of lines 92-93. See the original in The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, in vol. 3, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (Morningside Heights, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1936).

34. For Aragorn as a healing king, and the medieval and Renaissance antecedents of the concept, see Gisbert Krantz, “Der Heilende Aragorn,” Inklings-Jahrbuch 2 (1984): 11-24.

35. For a related discussion of the implications of return and renewal in the last book see Evans, J. R. R. Tolkien, pp. 190-93.

36. See also Jack C. Rang, “Two Servants,” in “The Tolkien Papers,” pp. 84-94.