The Lord of the Rings and the Hero’s Failure
There is cutting irony in how J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has become synonymous with safe, conservative, morally black-and-white fantasy. It has been lumped in with Harry Potter, it has been called immature and one-dimensional, and it has even been read as an allegory of World War II despite Tolkien’s defiant dislike of the very concept of allegory. Game of Thrones has become a pop culture phenomenon, drawing such large ratings that there is nothing strange about it appearing in a Bud Light commercial at the Super Bowl, by pointedly subverting the classical fantasy tropes typified by The Lord of the Rings. It has attained a reputation as a show where anyone can die. While author George R.R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire books that were adapted into Game of Thrones, is a Tolkien fan, both his books and the show have received credit for boldly going beyond Tolkienesque fantasy.
However, The Lord of the Rings, despite its simplistic central struggle between good and evil, is nuanced and existentially challenging not only compared to its image in popular culture, but compared to more ostensibly mature fantasy epics like Game of Thrones. While the storyline of Aragorn becoming a worthy king and ascending to the throne of Gondor fits neatly into a well-worn trope, his story is ultimately subordinate to that of Frodo, an adventure-seeking hobbit who burdens himself with destroying the One Ring and vanquishing the evil Sauron. At first, Frodo’s storyline seems to also fall into a common trope, but two factors separate him from the stereotypical plucky hero adventuring into a dark, dangerous land. The first is the toll the journey takes on him. While Harry Potter and Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender also suffer immensely, that they will overcome their suffering is never in doubt. The toll their great journeys take on them is a step in the development of their characters. It is not the point of their stories.
The other factor differentiating Frodo is his failure. While Sauron is defeated, and peace is restored to Middle-Earth, it is not because of Frodo. If Gollum does not bite off Frodo’s finger before becoming so overcome with ecstasy at reclaiming the One Ring that he leaps into the fires of Mount Doom, Sauron wins. Frodo does not triumph because his will is strong enough to overcome the pull of the Ring. He triumphs because of a sudden, miraculous turn of fate, what Tolkien called a eucatastrophe. This does not mean Frodo isn’t brave or determined. If he hadn’t been both, he would have faltered long before reaching Mount Doom. It also doesn’t mean Frodo is not indirectly responsible for the Ring’s destruction. At the start of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is distrustful of Gollum, but he soon realizes Gollum has an important part to play in this quest. Throughout his journey, he constantly intervenes on behalf of Gollum. If he had not, Frodo would have, like Isildur before him, doomed Middle-Earth. His mercy on behalf of Gollum, which seemed foolish, is revealed to be wise.
However, that Frodo, despite his boundless courage, lost the internal battle for his soul is sobering.
It is not supposed to happen. Temporary defeats are palatable because they are viewed in the context of later victory. Harry Potter fails to stop Voldemort from being revived at the end of The Goblet of Fire, but this only makes his triumph over Voldemort in The Deathly Hallows more satisfying. Aang fails to stop Be Sing Se from falling at the end of the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but this only makes his defeating Firelord Ozai at the end of the third season more satisfying. The nadir is a dip in the path leading directly from the start to the glorious finish. This extinguishes the pain of defeat. However, only when that pain is allowed to linger can the defeat be lucid and meaningful.
Great art does not support the illusions of its audience: that good and evil are always diametrically opposed and easy to discern from each other, that grief is simple to overcome, that great figures will emerge from the aether and singlehandedly vanquish villainy, that a relationship between two people who love each other is destined to succeed, that decent and caring people can’t be complicit in atrocities. Mediocre art aspires to shield these illusions from an indifferent world. Great art shatters them. It doesn’t escape from truth. It transcends simple factual reality to reveal greater truths that are blocked by the perfunctory, illusion-drenched bustle of everyday life. As Tim O’Brien said, fiction is “for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” Harry Potter, despite its poignant moments, heartfelt character work, and frequently clever writing, does not do this in its climax. The Lord of the Rings does.
Indeed, the permanent toll Frodo’s journey takes on him is another kind of failure. The archetypical hero buries their trauma and revels in their victory. Harry Potter marries his high school sweetheart and has three healthy kids while attaining a high position in the government and remaining famous and successful. His two closest friends marry each other, with one becoming the leader of the magical government. Aang is not a perfect father, and he dies fairly young, but he still marries the girl he fell in love with at the age of twelve, has three healthy kids, and founds Republic City. That Frodo is permanently scarred by his experiences means he has, by the expectations associated with heroism, failed at being a hero.
If he had died in the fires of Mount Doom after destroying the Ring, he would have been a different kind of respected hero: the sacrificial hero. Like the wholly successful hero, this heroic archetype is largely unobjectionable. Whether the sacrifice was necessary is rarely questioned. Jack dies in Titanic to protect Rose. Captain Miller dies in Saving Private Ryan after completing his mission. Even the T-800 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day dies for the good of mankind. Sacrificing oneself to help others has a cleansing, even saintly aura about it. In the West, this owes to how many of these stories have roots in Christianity, which emphasizes the martyrdom of Jesus, but other cultures and traditions take their own paths to the same destination: the fervent lionization of self-sacrifice. Frodo’s resolve failing at Mount Doom would not have necessarily disqualified him from being a traditional hero had he died in Mordor. Instead, he lives, only to discover he will never be whole again.
The adventure-loving hobbit who left the Shire is gone forever. In his place is a broken creature. Frodo didn’t volunteer to destroy the Ring because he was excited to embark upon a quest he thought might kill him. The journey to Rivendell was more than enough adventure for him. No, Frodo volunteered because he was afraid no one would if he did not. If Frodo had died after achieving victory, that would not have been tragic. That would have been expected. His story is tragic because he survives, only to find that his life cannot return to normal. When Sam speaks of how he had thought Frodo would live a long, joyful life in the Shire, Frodo responds, “So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.”
The war that most affected Tolkien’s writing was not World War II, but World War I, which he fought in. Though the murky amorality of World War I bears little resemblance to the simplistic morality of The Lord of the Rings, a book which is significantly less anti-war than A Song of Ice and Fire (George R.R. Martin applied for and received conscientious objector status during Vietnam), Frodo’s mental state after he returns from Mordor bears more than a passing resemblance to how a generation of young men returned from World War I with what was then called “shell shock.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder was not non-existent before World War I, but “The War to End All Wars” amplified its extent and its intensity. This was the first modern war, and its most enduring symbol- the trenches- epitomizes how completely it transformed the perception of warfare.
The most famous book written about the war, All Quiet on the Western Front, portrayed a nihilistic battlefield that produced no glory or decisive victory- only death and misery. Millions of men were sacrificed on the altar of imperialism. Europe’s era of relative peace ended abruptly. World War I has been described as a war with no great villains, but that’s hardly the case. There was no shortage of villains, from the Russian Empire, where Tsar Nicholas II’s ignorance and belligerence led to the deaths of millions of Russians, to the Ottoman Empire, which committed genocide on the Armenian people. However, there were no great heroes, which is a major reason why it is the subject of far fewer movies than World War II.
When it ended, those who were lucky enough to survive were expected to pick up the lives they had before the war. Some could, but others couldn’t, and those who couldn’t found little help from an uncaring society. This was the environment in which Hemingway and Fitzgerald turned their misery into masterpieces, but both were consumed by their drinking. Tolkien, the antithesis to these modernists in both temperament and writing style, kept his personal life out of his writing. Along with his friend C.S. Lewis, Tolkien was behind the literary times when The Hobbit was published in 1937, and he was even more out of place in the post-World War II literary climate dominated by the likes of J.D. Salinger and Samuel Beckett. Nonetheless, Tolkien’s PTSD-tinged depiction of Frodo’s failed attempts to adjust to life after Mordor belies the notion that he was too obsessed with traditional mythology to critique its tropes and ideas. If Tolkien was fundamentally conservative, he was nonetheless capable of recognizing the impossibility of reestablishing the status quo.
Popular stories are once more approaching Tolkien’s ideas of the failed hero. With both the Cold War-era political climate and the nearly two decades of economic prosperity that followed naught but memories, the hero who easily overcomes their failures is waning in popularity. Korra in The Last Airbender’s sequel series, The Legend of Korra, and Luke Skywalker as of The Last Jedi both suffer trauma that leads them to abandon their traditional heroic roles. However, while the misery these characters endure is taken seriously and not presented merely as a stepping stone to success, both characters ultimately, with help from those around them, move past their trauma. Luke gets a heroic sacrifice, and Korra emerges as a stronger and wiser person. Even in The Hunger Games trilogy, wherein protagonist Katniss Everdeen is unable to move past her trauma, she raises a family with the man she loves.
Frodo, conversely, departs Middle-Earth after realizing he will never be able to find peace there. For a book considered the epitome of traditional fantasy, it is a most unconventional ending, and it drapes the entire narrative in a more transgressive light.
