[On April 16th
my younger son turns 9 years old. He, his brother, and I have spent a good bit
of the last few months engrossed in the world of The Lord of the Rings, so for this birthday special post I wanted
to highlight a few takeaways from Tolkien’s texts for AmericanStudiers. Add
your Tolkien takeaways in comments, please!]
1)
Cross-Cultural Transformation: In recent years
Tolkien (like his peer
and friend C.S. Lewis) has been critiqued for his portrayals
of non-European societies and cultures, and rightfully so; Middle-earth’s
darker/southern men are frustratingly under-developed and one-dimensional in
comparison to his northern societies. But at the same time, the characters and
relationship that undergo one of the most significant changes in the course of
the story are Gimli and Legolas, a dwarf and elf who begin with the typical
antipathy those races feel toward one another and end the best of friends. And
characters like Boromir and his father Denethor, who focus solely on their own
city/nation (Gondor) and its needs, are proven time and again to be dangerously
narrow-minded and myopic. Cross-cultural
transformation for the win!
2)
Democracy, Ultimately: One of the questions that
came up again and again from the boys as we read through the series was why Sam
calls Frodo “Mr. Frodo”; the boys understood that Sam began the series as
Frodo’s employee (his gardener, specifically), but still couldn’t get why, once
they were on their journey together, he continued to address his friend as his
boss or superior. There’s no doubt that Sam
begins the series as a simple man who is in social status but also
perspective and identity below Frodo, and perhaps he remains there in some ways
throughout. Yet at the same time, I would argue that the series’
culmination—both in the final stages of Frodo and Sam’s epic journey and in the
multiple aftermaths that follow it—both depends on Sam’s actions and heroism
and comes
to focus on him as the embodiment of the Shire’s and Middle-earth’s future.
Tolkien might have begun his world-building with a sense of English prep school
elitism, that is, but he ended it with a genuine and inspiring vision of
democracy.
3)
Gollum and Empathy: In one of the series’ most
famous exchanges (and one of the moments that the film versions got exactly
right, even though they shifted its setting entirely), Frodo expresses regret
that Bilbo did not kill the creature Gollum when he had the chance, and Gandalf
disagrees, noting both that “it was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand” and that
this pity might decide the fate of all. Given Gollum’s prominent role in the quest’s
denouement, it’s easy to focus on the second point, but I would argue that it
is in fact the first which drives Tolkien’s development of his most complex and
interesting character. And I would go further, arguing that it is not just pity
but also and most importantly empathy that the series shows toward the seemingly
monstrous Gollum. Tolkien certainly depicts a world with clear powers of good
and evil, but also one in which many characters occupy a grayer area between
those two extremes, include layers of identity that defy any one categorization
and demand empathy if we are to understand them. That’s a very valuable
takeaway indeed.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Tolkien takeaways you’d share?
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