I’ve heard a lot of people say that Tolkien’s work is way over-analyzed. That it is what it is: a book. That’s it’s just a great story.
Did Tolkien have any subtle or not-so-subtle themes within his work? I really think he did. I think Tolkien was disgusted with the industrialization of the earth. I think the books were meant to teach us all about the depravity of man and ultimately, the determination of man to overcome “evil” (for lack of a better term). What do ya’ll think?
Well, Tolkien himself said that he abhorred allegory… But then again, he also wrote “Leaf by Niggle” as an example of “This isn’t an allegory, really, it’s an, um, fairy tale! Yeah, that’s it!”. So it’s quite possible that there are allegorical themes in LotR, but if so, they’re probably accidental or subconscious, and in any event, the Professor himself would have/did deny them.
Well, how about this? Christianity teaches salvation by grace, which means that no mortal can ever be good enough to earn salvation on his own and must rely entirely on God. However, most Christians agree that this doesn’t give you carte blanche to commit all the sins you want and be forgiven later. So, that means you have to **do ** something to get saved. But how is that compatible with grace? In LOTR. Tolkien (as a Catholic) shows us his take on the subject. When Frodo reached the Crack of Doom, he fell to the Ring’s power and had to rely on an act of Divine Providence to be saved. However, in order to get to the Crack of Doom, he had to make the choice to resist evil and endure to the end.
Tolkien denies that any of LotR is at all allegorical in the Foreword, but it’s clear that some parts of the book – particularly The Scouring of the Shire, do relate to his abhorrence of the industrialization of England. There’s a few other parts of the book that I think were influenced by his beliefs.
I’ve always thought that Tolkien had some moral reason for keeping Gollum alive. Gollum does more evil than good, and his final act is, I think, a justification for whatever reasons Tolkien had for not allowing him to be killed. There are justifications for allowing Gollum to live throughout the book:
With Pity, and Levity – The Hobbit is a children’s book, and Tolkien admits that he had to make some changes to it later; for example, in early editions, Gollum gives the Ring to Bilbo, rather than Bilbo finding it. But Bilbo still uses the Ring several times without knowing of its power – and seems to suffer relatively little from it. Such things as using the One Ring to escape the Sackville-Bagginses, which were acceptable when LotR was still a children’s book, would not be acceptable later in the book, and would have led to far direr consequences than feeling like butter spread too thin on a slice of bread.
The scene when Frodo decides not to destroy the Ring seems rather artificial – there are several scenes where Frodo demonstrates that he is able to overcome the Ring’s ‘will’, and it’s strange that he would wait until he reached the very end of his journey to claim the Ring for his own.
Strangely, Gandalf does not appear to have said “Even Gollum may have something yet to do”, as Frodo says he did in the last paragraph of Mount Doom, and it seems like dialogue of sufficient importance to record. I think it’s further justification for the Pity and Mercy that prevented Gollum from being killed.
Other themes in LotR that may have been motivated by Tolkien’s morals and religious beliefs probably include the departure of the Elves from Middle-Earth, and all the many scenes that portray Men as being boorish and disrespectful of nature. And the theme of just and righteous kings, and the nature of Men who are ruled by legitimate monarchies (i.e., Gondor) versus Men who are not (e.g. Bree, and the Dunlendings, and the Southrons.
Incidentally, while the Valar are mentioned in LotR, Ilúvatar is not; from knowledge of LotR alone, one might think that Elbereth is the most powerful supernatural entity. Even so, Tolkien was working on the mythology that led to the Silmarillion well before he began work on LotR, and I cannot imagine that a devout Catholic would have created a polytheistic mythology without having a single, supreme Creator from the beginning. Why, then, is Ilúvatar absent from LotR? Perhaps Tolkien was uncertain that readers would be interested in Elven mythology (which is why the Silmarillion was never completed), and chose to keep it to a minimum.
ricksummon summarizes it pretty well. JRRT also pointed out that it was Frodo’s pity for and mercy towards Gollum that played a role in his receiving grace.
…Stumped at last for a riddle to ask, he cried out. as his hand fell on his snub-nosed .38, “What have I got in my pocket?” This Goddam failed to answer, and growing impatient, he paddled up to Dildo, whining, “Let me see, let me see.” Dildo obliged by pulling out the pistol and emptying it in Goddam’s direction. The dark spoiled his aim, and he managed only to deflate the rubber boat, leaving Goddam to flounder. Goddam, who couldn’t swim, reached out his hand to Dildo and begged him to pull him out, and, as he did, Dildo noticed an interesting looking ring on his finger and pulled it off. He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage…
It’s Bilbo’s “pity and mercy”, not Frodo’s, that Gandalf mentions…
Here’s the part where Gandalf says (basically) that Gollum may have something yet to do:
I’d be very interested to see whether that existed from the earliest drafts, or whether it was added later, but I’ve lost my copy of “The Return of the Shadow” (the proto-FotR). The Foreword says that “The Shadow of the Past” is one of the oldest parts of the stories, in denying that LotR is an allegory of World War II. It seems to me, though, that Chapter 2 of FotR has a very different style and tone than the surrounding chapters. Gandalf, for example, is a children’s-book wizard in Chapter 1, but a very serious, grave Istari in Chapter 2. Which reminds me of my favorite sentence from the whole of the translated Red Book of Westmarch:
Frodo didn’t get the quotation exactly right, which is understandable considering how long it had been and all he had been through, including the recent loss of the Ring to Gollum, but he’s clearly referring back to his conversation with Gandalf in “The Shadow of the Past” where Gandalf is talking about Bilbo’s pity for Gollum:
… and please note, just because the story isn’t allegory doesn’t mean that it can’t have deep and significant themes. Like good vs evil, like the nature of evil, like the importance of even the most “insignificant”, etc etc.
Tolkien mentions this explicitly in some of his letters. Letter 131 is an example (where he also mentions his feelings about allegory):
How many books are there? What’s this Shadow of the Past?
I didn’t want to ask without checking first, so I googled it and this – http://www.perpetualstroll.org/lotp/fotp.html – was the first site to come up. Lord of the Peeps?
I thought there were three books, plus The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion (sp). Are there more books about Middle Earth and the Ring?
“Shadow of the Past” is the second chapter of “The Fellowship of the Ring”.
“The Return of the Shadow” was, if I remember correctly, the original title Tolkien intended for the first part of LotR. The book with that name is a collection of early drafts and unfinished partial manuscripts for “The Fellowship of the Ring”.
Northern Piper: You’re right… I found the original conversation after I made the first post. It’s entirely understandable that Frodo wouldn’t remember Gandalf’s exact words. I’m just wondering what Gandalf said about Gollum in earlier drafts of FotR.
Not that strange. He’s performed a miracle of endurance to get as far as he has while still resisting the lure of the Ring, despite having even put it on as recently as Boromir’s attack and actually threatening to use it against Gollum; he is scant hours from starving to death and grievously sick from his journey, and the Ring has been growing ever more powerful with every step in Mordor that has brought it closer to its place of forging. With that in mind, what could be more natural or more dramatically satisfying than for Frodo’s will to crack half a minute too soon - and for Gollum to fulfil Gandalf’s prophecy and, albeit accidentally, redeem all the evil of his life by doing what Frodo could not?
I always find it so interesting that Tolkien’s “manly” men are not manly in a stereotypical way…sure they wield swords, gnash their teeth and beat their breasts, but the most respected men are also wise, gentle and learned - such as Aragron and Faramir. They also respect and love nature, like Tolkien himself I guess.
…no point, just a thought. 
I’ve said before, that the encounter with Gollum atop Mount Doom, and Frodo’s failure, is a necessary thematic resolution on many counts.
First, we’ve been imagining Sauron as Evil Personified – grand and magnificent, some sort of arch-supervillain, suave and powerful, sitting in his incredible palace, directing minions from afar. It’s almost a “desirable” picture of Evil. The ultimate confrontation, however, is not with that magnificence, but with the low, snivelling, petty, greedy, Gollum. It’s Tolkien’s way of saying that true Evil is NOT glorious, but disgusting and nasssssty.
The same theme appears in the “Scouring of the Shire” chapter. For all his power and magnificence, Saruman also turns out to be cheap, petty, sordid and nasty. To Tolkien, Evil is not anything glamourous like Milton’s fallen Satan; evil is slimy and nasty.
PS - I’m putting a spoilers title on this, although I suspect almost everyone in the world knows the outcome of the books. And, one hopes, the movie-to-come, although one never knows.
My son has actually hypothesized that Peter Jackson may be forced to change the Mount Doom sequence slightly. While it makes wonderful book, the don’t make movies in which the hero fails at the end but the world is saved and the villain destroyed by pure dumb luck…
GAAAAAHHHHHHHH . . .
That’s the worst news I’ve heard in a long time, Dex.
Can’t say it’s surprising, but nothing pisses me off more than subjorning a great story to make it fit the conventional (ignorant) mass’ expectations.
I think I’m officially done with this whole PJ LOTR.
Maybe in 50 more years someone will do it right.
For those in the thread that are interested in the variations the LOTR manuscript went through, just in case you aren’t aware of this:
Christopher Tolkien (JRRT’s son) has published “The Return of the Shadow (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One) (The History of Middle-Earth - Volume 6)”. As you can see from the parenthetical subtitles, he has a series of these books about LOTR, which in turn are part of a larger series of books about Middle Earth in general.
What he does in this book, is show all the significant versions of the manuscripts that he can find, and talks in detail about the changes, and how they came about. His information about the changes are based on his memories and conversations with his father, letters from his father to him, Tolkien’s agent, and others, as well as the evidence of the various drafts themselves.
If you are really interested in when various elements got added to the storyline, this is the book (or rather, these are the books) for you. (Mind you, I don’t actually have a copy of it handy anymore, so I unfortunately can’t use it to answer the question of when the elements about Gollum were added.)
CKDH–I can’t believe Peter Jackson would change the ending–it is, as you say, integral to the theme. He might cut out a lot of the wrap-up that happens afterwards in the books, however (which is probably why the scouring of the Shire is not likely to make the cut).
Well, sorta. Sorta in a way that makes a Tolkien geek drool. And despair.
Tolkien, unlike his buddy CSLewis, was not a publishing machine. JRRT wrote and rewrote his backstory and worked on his language (probably the main event to him–the Hobbit and LOTR were just spin-offs, so to speak). There were tons of drafts and rewrites and abandoned bits. He drove his publishers to despair too (especially after his success when they were desperate to get more books out of him). The 10 (and counting?) volume History of Middle Earth (HOMES) being edited by his son Christopher assembles all of these drafts and therefore gives lots of alternate readings of various issues (such as whether the elves were reincarnated and how many times elves and men have intermarried). There are also JRRT’s collected letters. There are also his academic writings, and some poetry, Leaf by Niggle and a few other things I’m forgetting. IMHO, however, the Hobbit and LOTR are really the only finished, internally (mostly) coherent stories about the ring. The Silmarillion is mostly finished but much shortened from what JRRT may have originally hoped to publish.
On preview, NE Texan helps with the HOMES stuff too:).
Now, Misery, don’t get too worked up yet. While I agree with you that it would be a horrible thing to change the ending like that, Dex didn’t say that he had definite news that was happening - he clearly stated that it was a hypothesis of his son’s. Personally, I try to limit the things I get worked up over to those that have actually happened.
While Jackson has done one or two things that annoy me (for example: what’s with that whole “Aragorn over a cliff into the river” thing?), in general, I think he’s doing a pretty good job, and I’m enjoying the movies.
Thank you for the responses. I have the first book but haven’t started it yet, because I didn’t have the other two books and I wanted the editions to match. (My Fellowship is kinda old.) So I had to shop. Found the other two in New Zealand, which was kind of appropriate.
I’m really looking forward to getting into these books, and these threads are like a seminar, only much more informative and entertaining than most seminars.