8.9
Myth, Melancholy, and Abiding Passion
The Fellowship of the Ring
by J.R.R. Tolkien
8.9 | Myth, Melancholy, and Abiding Passion
The Fellowship of the Ring |
The work of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien towers over the landscape of contemporary fantastic literature like a mother continent sloughing off a great archipelago of descendants. Shannara, Midkemia, the Forgotten Realms, and all their kin are islets in the seaward shadow of Middle-earth. The Lord of the Ringsis not truly the first, and it is arguably not the best, but it is the one that stands tallest and casts its influence the farthest. The Lord of the Rings cycle is the twentieth century's fantastic Vesuvius. This is the one that blew its top. The best of its emulators tap deep into its still-hot veins of meaning, while the worst merely shift the ashes of its explosion into little piles and proclaim their works mountains.
"As a guide I have had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving," wrote the author, "and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault."1 The old gentleman was astutely aware of the conflicting reactions his work aroused in the critical fraternity. Some of his contemporaries (C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden spring immediately to mind) adored The Lord of the Rings,and an equal number seem to have been galvanized by its publication into fits of predictable loathing. The deep and lasting popularity of the books is a complicating factor in the ongoing attempt to judge the veracity of its critics. Is there, as its supporters often claim, a hardwired bias against the popular at the most rarified levels of literary judgment? I honestly don't know, and if there is, Tolkien's work is neither the first nor the last to encounter it.
I can, however, tell you that there is another sort of bias very clearly at work here. What has struck me more than anything else in my review of almost fifty years of criticism is that Tolkien's detractors are, in the main, a very generalistic lot, more eager to strike out at the imaginative mindset than to engage in a critical duel with the mechanics of his prose and characterization. They are reflexive scoffers and weary cynics,2 characterized by Edmund Wilson (the revelatory title of his 1956 review of Tolkien's cycle is "Ooh, Those Awful Orcs") who once said, "certain people--especially, perhaps, in Britain--have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash."
The quintessential Tolkien detractor, I'm sorry to say, sneers without knowing (or bothering to explain) why. "What's all this fantasy nonsense, eh? What's all this crap about elves and dwarves?" he asks, peering nervously around the room for supporters, unable to define precisely why it's all "nonsense" and "crap." Germaine Greer, an otherwise fascinating feminist author, couldn't have known that she would someday become my very model of a Tolkien detractor when she wrote:
| "Ever since I arrived at Cambridge as a student in 1964 and encountered a tribe of full-grown women wearing puffed sleeves, clutching teddies and babbling excitedly about the doings of hobbits, it has been my nightmare that Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century. The bad dream has materialised." |
Greer has since expressed pithy disbelief at the (in)famous Waterstone's poll in which the book-buying public of the United Kingdom placed The Lord of the Rings on a pedestal as the "Book of the Century."
Even Michael Moorcock, who could by no means be termed an enemy of imaginative fiction, tsks-tsks Tolkien from a remote distance for his "nursery tone."3
We get much closer to actual criticism of the work with Harold Bloom, who wrote: "The Lord of the Rings seems to me inflated, over-written, tendentious and moralistic in the extreme. Is it not a giant Period Piece?" Although the smug Bloom "edited" (a word used very loosely in these instances) two fairly aimless volumes of Tolkien criticism (this one and this one), he seems confused about the proven contemporary popularity of The Lord of the Rings and determined to allow only The Hobbit a place in posterity, so long as it is clearly labeled "Children's Literature" and made to wear the metaphorical six-pointed star with, one imagines, a pink unicorn in the center.
What is actually wrong with Tolkien's work, on a mechanical level, on a prose level? Although a few references will be made to the other volumes of the cycle, the direct criticism here will be mostly contained to The Fellowship of the Ring.I deeply respect the fact that Tolkien intended the cycle to be one large uninterrupted text, but the division of the cycle into three volumes allows people like myself to keep their analyses at sensible lengths. The winner is you, dear reader, the winner is you. Trust me.
"But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story," Tolkien wrote, "there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others especially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence..."4
There is indeed much here that I would term "blemish." Tolkien's prose style veers without warning from torchlight tones of the ninth century to the dulcet tones of the fourteenth; Beowulf becomes Le Morte d'Arthur between paragraphs. Meanwhile, the author's genteel and knowing asides to the reader in the early portions of the cycle are pure nineteenth century (as are the hobbits of the Shire). It seems that Tolkien's mental Wayback Machine skipped from the halls of the medieval age to the drawing rooms of the Victorian without stopping to pick up anything from the ecstatic, bloody literary heights of fellows like Shakespeare and Milton.
Almost without exception, the characters of the cycle, though vividly drawn, are presented as the tips of cultural icebergs rather than protagonists for protagonism's sake (if protagonism is a neologism, I offer it up with tongue firmly in cheek). Legolas, Elrond, Glorfindel, Galadriel, et al (to rashly seize upon the elves as an example) are not the self-motivated5 protagonists expected in contemporary fantasy so much as they are prisms through which the reader can gaze upon elf-lore, elf-history, elf-song, and, most importantly, elf-language. The cast rarely encounters a situation which it does not react to with songs, oaths, and parables from an earlier and presumably better time. As such, they are more walking spring-loaded history lessons than anything else.
Tolkien's dialogue often comes perilously close to the sort of ridiculous parody of speech for which Mark Twain rightly castigated James Fenimoore Cooper. Gimli the dwarf (though he has a bold and expansive heart, bless 'im) is perhaps the most frequent victim of Tolkien's drive-by exposition attacks:
| "Moria! Moria! Wonder of the Northern World! Too deep we delved there, and woke the nameless fear. Long have its vast mansions lain empty since the children of Durin fled! But now we spoke of it again with longing, and yet with dread; for no dwarf has dared to cross the doors of Khazad-Dum for many lives of kings..."6 |
What arouses my ire more than anything else is Tolkien's habit of ending chapters by knocking out hobbits. This is a literary device called "false interiorization," and the term is not used politely. It denotes a point in the story where an author, apparently too timid to tackle the descriptive requirements of a scene, inflicts the viewpoint character with a sudden case of blindness or unconsciousness. Readers of The Hobbit will recall that Bilbo Baggins was knocked unconscious at the height of the Battle of the Five Armies (..."he fell with a crash and knew no more."). All well and good, once, but then Frodo collapses unconscious just the Black Riders are defeated at the Ford ("He heard and saw no more."7) in Fellowshipand Pippin gets caught beneath a falling troll in the middle of The Return of the King("...his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more."8). I might even go so far as to include the scene in the middle of The Two Towers where Pippin falls asleep on Shadowfax's back as a cousin to these scenes. Cliffhangers are a fine thing, but time and time again, hobbits "see no more" just as the action reaches its height, and damned if it doesn't get tiresome. What is most puzzling about this phenomenon is that Tolkien doesn't need this device as a crutch-- his battle scenes are unrelentingly vivid and surprisingly mature. Are hobbits simply hard-wired to pass out at moments of great emotion or exertion? The questions this raises about the difficulty of hobbit reproduction are sticky, to say the least.
What precisely is it that keeps this overblown hobbit travelogue from stinking up the place?
The Fellowship of the Ringis a novel that I have read several times, both casually and critically, and the most curious thing about it is the fact that it never fails to enchant despite its obvious stylistic deficiencies. Time and time again, I find myself shaking my head as I close the book, having deducted 50 points out of 100 for the meandering plot, false starts, stylistic burps, jarring songs, etc. and yet by the time I look at the bottom of my score sheet I find that all of these somehow add up to a final score of 90.
There is something at work here beyond the obvious, some shadow of grandeur in motion deep beneath the surface of the prose, and I think it more than fortuitous cultural resonance, more than marketing, more than novelty. Readers and critics have often wondered what great unseen gulf separates Tolkien from his latter-day emulators, and I say without hesitation that it is a gulf of passion.Tolkien's prose bleeds his love for the work at hand. Take your fingers away from the page and they will be sticky with melancholy, red with the stain of his quiet obsession. Tolkien did not merely like his work, Tolkien livedhis work. By sheer force of sincerity he rescued it from the gravity of its own dryness and narrative incompetence.
Plot, prose, characterization... while almost all of these elements strike me as grasping for adequacy with varying degrees of success, one thing that hits the reader with unprecedented weight and intensity is the lovely, atmospheric sadnessof it all. Make no mistake, Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age is experiencing the last dying gasp of true wonder, as every place the Fellowship passes through gives the reader the deep impression that they are seeing ancient things in their hidden glory for the very, very last time. Behind the backs of Frodo and company, doors are closing, shadows are falling, spirits are dimming, and more and more of the rare and beautiful things are packing up for the Grey Havens (or the nearest equivalent). Whether or not Sauron is cast down and defeated, the world that emerges from the War of the Ring will be mellowed in magnificence, a colder and quieter place lying fallow for the coming smoke and strife of Industrial Man.
The Fellowships's sojourn in Lothlorien is the crux of Tolkien's emotional articulation; these scenes more than any others in The Fellowship of the Ringdisplay genuinely beautiful prose. The sentiments expressed raise a longing wince on the reader's face as the pages turn. Here is a place, one feels, that was once as solid as the bones beneath one's skin, a world that once lay beneath the light of the very same stars as ours, filled with beings we are only allowed to meet as the author is finally saying good-bye to them in his heart:
| "There in the last end of Egladil upon the green field the parting feast was held; but Frodo ate and drank little, heeding only the beauty of the Lady and her voice. She seemed no longer perilous or terrible, nor filled with hidden power. Already she seemed to him, as by men of later days Elves still at times are seen: present and yet remote, a living vision of that which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time."9 |
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"Lorien was slipping backward, like a bright ship masted with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and leafless world.
"Even as they gazed, the Silverlode passed out into the currents of the Great River, and their boats turned and began to speed southward. Soon the white form of the Lady was small and distant. She shone like a window of glass upon a far hill in the westering sun, or as a remote lake seen from a mountain: a crystal fallen in the lap of the land. Then it seemed to Frodo that she lifted her arms in a final farewell, and far but piercing-clear on the following wind came the sound of her voice singing. But now she sang in the ancient tongue of the Elves beyond the Sea, and he did not understand the words: fair was the music, but it did not comfort him."10 |
Once we have parted the great silk curtain of melancholy that hangs above the page, what else remains to be praised? Much, I am glad to report. Another positive aspect of Tolkien's work sometimes lost upon his emulators is his reliance upon rather common folk to carry the great evil of his Ring and see it disposed of. In most of the classical mythology and folklore which Tolkien cherished, this sort of quest was not the province of Frodo and Freda Average, rather, it was the established purview of kings and demi-gods and divinely-touched adventurers, of Perseus, Gilgamesh, Hildebrand, Sigmund and company. Aragorn is the only real throwback to this root archetype, though Gandalf is teleported into the story from the august company of Vainamoinen, Lemminkainen, Joukahainen and all their Kalevala buddies. The other members of the Fellowship, despite their bravery and their skills, are more or less "merely" above-average representatives of their respective races, there by duty's call (as well as friendship's) and not by divine decree.
Although I might seem to have been very hard on the cast of the novel, let me expand upon my earlier points. The understated heroism preferred by Tolkien in his characterizations directly complements the superabundance of melancholy found in his setting. The characters are none the weaker for their role as ferrymen upon the great river of Tolkien's invented history and geography. I simply feel it is important to label them as they truly are, in light of what we know of Tolkien from his numerous letters. If Middle-earth is the stage upon which his drama plays out, the characters would not be the actors-- I would instead describe them metaphorically as the stage lighting, which serves to illuminate the lore and the atmosphere which are the twin real stars of the proceedings. I readily admit that this is hair-splitting which need not affect how the characters are perceived by the casual reader.
It would be irresponsible of me to catalog the good points of Tolkien's work without making reference to his philological abilities. Simply put, J.R.R. Tolkien possessed a level of linguistic skill and a devotion to that craft which is all but alien to the early twenty-first century. I imagine that if he had been trapped underwater an ancient Norse or Teutonic text would have sustained him more readily than a tank of oxygen. No fantasy writer since Tolkien has brought such great linguistic arts to bear within their work, and I think it obvious that no writer since Tolkien has possessed his gift for tongues and scripts. The study of his invented languages is a difficult but undeniably sexy pastime among the bookish set, as you can see for yourself.
Despite these undeniable good points, what remains most clear when the survey of The Fellowship of the Ring is complete is this: no work of fantasy written since its publication has yet managed to recapture its atmosphere of longing or its ardent melancholy. Although Tolkien may easily be surpassed by the characterization, dialogue, and narrative skill of the current and coming generations of fantasists, it is almost entirely due to his crystallization of sadness that his work still stands tallest among them. The Fellowship of the Ringintroduces us to a battle for a world which is already in the days of its passing; if not for this, Middle-earth would be little more than an intricate curiosity, a two-dimensional dumb-show with all the emotional power of a book on stamp collecting. It is because of this ingrained sadness that I see the shadow of Middle-earth in the forests and snows of my native Minnesota. It is because of this that Middle-earth is the eidolon of eidolons, a ghost world by which the real world is so often judged and found wanting.
Dork Cynic, December 2001
Score Breakdown
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Prose Style: Characterization: Invention: Structure: Soul: Lasting Impact: Average: Final Critical Bias: Final Score: |
7.0 7.1 9.9 6.8 9.9 9.8 8.4 +.5 8.9 |
Beautiful high points and aggravating low points of pandering cliche. Adequately vivid. Not a particular strength of the work. A masterpiece of emotional and intellectual creativity. Redefines "meandering" for half its length. If Tolkien wasn't sincere about all this then "never was man true." I will probably think of this work on my deathbed, if I get the chance. Dented by its flaws but still a pretty damn impressive thing . A whole noticeably greater than the sum of its parts. Justly celebrated as great fantastic literature. Now go forth and improve upon it! |
Footnotes
1. This is from the author's own gently grumpy but very useful foreword to the Ballantine Books authorized editions of his Lord of the Rings cycle. All references to the text of the cycle here are from my own battered copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, seventy-fourth mass-market paperback printing, dated August 1981.
2. Tolkien zinged them himself long before I appeared on the scene, in his foreword: "Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."
3. It would be crass not to point out that Moorcock also takes the time to praise Tolkien as an individual.
4. This is also from Tolkien's foreword to the Ballantine Books editions of The Lord of the Rings.
5. Please understand that I use this term very gingerly and relatively. I say "self-motivated" because one of the lasting effects of modern and post-modern literature, even on Tolkien emulators, is the expectation of a richer inner landscape from characters on the page, and more revelation of "the human heart in conflict with itself." I wish I knew who coined that admirable phrase. Tolkien, of course, farted in modernism's general direction, and I can't say I fully blame him.
6. From "The Council of Elrond:" Book II, chapter 2, page 316.
7. From "Flight to the Ford:" Book I, chapter 12, page 286.
8. From "The Black Gate Opens:" Book V, chapter 10, page 186.
9. From "Farewell to Lorien:" Book II, chapter 8, page 483.
10. From "Farewell to Lorien:" Book II, chapter 8, page 488.