Samwise the Brave....

[fajrdrako]

I've been reading One Ring to Bing them All: Tolkien's Mythology by Anne C. Petty. It's a new edition of an old book by an author who is probably feeling most chuffed that her obscure academic specialty is a big deal to everyone these days.

Anyway, there was a paragraph I really liked:

George Clark argues convincingly, in "J.R.R. Tolkien and the True Hero", that Tolkien's twist on the "heroic ethos of the old Germanic world" ultimately places Samwise Gamgee as the real hero who emerges at the end of the quest to save Middle-Earth.

I really like that.

Of course, I think the "real" hero of The Lord of the Rings is Aragorn and I'd willing to argue it at length - perhaps I should write my own monograph.

Naw. I'm sure it's been done. I have other things to write.

Comments

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that Gollum as a fallen creature who becomes the agent of fate in restoring the world has some sort of historical parallels too, but I can't offhand think of them!

Strangely enough, neither can I. It feels a very natural conclusion to me, but then I was raised on Lord of the Rings (literally - my father read it to me when I was four or five), so my perceptions are slightly skewed. Thus, I'm not sure if it feels "right" to me because it's something that the human mind has come up with over and over again, or because that particular story is so familiar.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I was fifteen when I first read Lord of the Rings - you were lucky to discover it sooner!

The resolution of the story regarding Gollum seems 'right' to me, too, but I think that might be just because Tolkien is such an utterly convincing writer. It's right because he made it feel right, and very deftly too.

I suspect there are parallels in medieval Christian stories - something Scandinavian? saint's lives? the lais? - but I really can't think of anything. I'll have to think about it. I don't even recall what Shippey has to say about Gollum in his book about the origins of Tolkien's characters.

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

The general concept of redemption fits with the Christian theme of it, as does the fact that even unwilling, Gollum serves the greater purpose right at the moment he thinks he's flouting it - which ties back to Illuvatar and Melkor right back to the beginning of the mythos, wherein Illuvatar says exactly that: that whatever the dark did, Illuvatar would be able to turn it and encompass it and weave it back into the proper music.

I admit most of my knowledge of Tolkien comes straight from his writing itself; I've never got into much of reading others' impressions, other than in discussions.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good point about Illuvatar. Yes, that seems to be the theme that Tolkien built the whole concept around: the dual idea that evil would always cause suffering but Iluvatar would turn it to good again ultimately - or at least, weave it back into the music.

Until last year I'd only read Tolkien's own works, but about a year ago I went on a binge: took an online course on Tolkien that studied LOTR, read Shippey's wonderful book, and a biography of Tolkien, and his letters, and his daughter's book, and so on. Reading this book is my first return to the subject since then.