The Lord of the Rings

From its publication (1954) until today, Tolkien’s “The Lord of The Rings” has aroused controversial opinions regarding the literary genre to which the work belongs.

Among those who considered it attributable to a specific genre and only that, the most important critic is undoubtedly Northrop Frye who in “The Secular Scripture” of 1976, within a re-evaluation and delimitation of the tradition of English “romance”, stated: “In the twentieth century, romance returned to fashion after the mid-1950s, with the success of Tolkien and the rise of what is commonly referred to as science fiction.”

Frye, therefore, considers both Tolkien’s works and those of science fiction writers as subgenres of romance, due to the presence of mechanisms typical of romance itself such as polarization (clear division between positive and negative characters), quest, the happy ending.

Edmund Wilson, in the famous article published in Nation (April 1956), “OO those Awful Orcs”, who made him the leader of a series of detractors, considered “The Lord of The Rings” a children’s book, attributing to this definition all the possible negative values. For Wilson, “The Lord of the Rings” was nothing more than a light and fatuous “fairy tale”.

In the wake of Wilson, a reviewer of the “Times Literary Supplement” predicted in 1955, moreover with poor divination skills, “This is not a work that many adults will read right through more than once”. He too relegated the work to the children’s room.

Other commentators, while inserting “The Lord of the Rings” in the genre of the fairy tale only, did not give this insertion derogatory value. Among these, Michael Tolkien, second son of the writer, who expressed himself in the “Daily Telegraph”: “I feel certain that it was, in the first place, on account of our enthusiasm for story told and invented by my father, that the inspiration came to him to put in permanent shape what he so rightly regarded as the type of fairy story real children really want. “

A work aimed at children therefore, but those who think and feel like adults.

An Italian contribution is the opinion of Oriana Palusci, according to which Tolkien made a “search through the materials of the fairy tale” to arrive at something different.

Another group of critics avoids inserting “The Lord of the Rings” into a specific genre, considering it a syncretic work that brings together characteristics of disparate genres.

“Legend and fairy tale, tragedy and chivalrous poem, Tolkien’s novel is actually an allegory of the human condition that re-proposes ancient myths in a modern key.”

Here is what you read on the cover of the Rusconi edition of The Lord of the Rings edited by Elemire Zolla, the Italian critic who most took Tolkien into consideration. Here, arbitrarily and confusingly, we speak of a “novel” which would have a “legend” as its subject but which can also be considered a “fairy tale”, or a “tragedy” (without considering that, due to the happy ending, the fairy tale excludes tragedy) or, finally, an “allegory” based on a “mythology” revisited in a modern key.

That there is a syncretism in Tolkien’s work is evident, but Zolla’s definition, while containing an undeniable core of truth, as it appears, generates more confusion than clarity.

Verlyn Flieger is more cautious and precise, he who, among the critics who have been interested in Tolkien’s work, has given, in our opinion, the most subtle, refined and comprehensive interpretations. This is his opinion:

“I do not propose to assigne The Lord of the Rings to a particular genre such as fairy tale, epic, or romance. The book quite clearly derives from all three, and to see it as belonging only to one category is to miss the essential elements it shares with the others. “

J. Mc Kellan’s opinion is similar to that of Flieger “The Lord of the Rings is a special kind of fiction, midway between medieval romance and modern novel.”

“A special kind of fiction”: this is the key to the interpretation of Tolkien’s work. The Lord of the Rings belongs to a new genre that arises from the union of characteristics of several genres, such as the popular fairy tale, the medieval epic, the novel (understood in its two subgenres of adventure novel and modern psychological novel) all held together and amalgamated by a modern spirit that gives importance to human problems and values.

A category of critics identifies this new genre in fantasy and builds a tradition of fantasy works into which Tolkien’s is inserted.

Thus Irwin unites Tolkien to his friends “Inklings”, C. Williams and C.S. Lewis, arguing that “All have (…) a way of absorbing variant straints of myth into a general Christian oriented pattern, which reveals a clear artistic, and perhaps also doctrinal syncretism.”

Manlove, after having given a very accurate definition of fantasy, and having identified other writers belonging to the same genre, unfortunately analyzes Tolkien’s work in a rather superficial way, and does not seem to reach an effective understanding of its fundamental significance precisely within the genre that he is identifying.

In turn, Patrick Grant builds an English tradition to insert Tolkien into, ranging from Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes to Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland to Kipling’s Jungle Books and states that:

“Fantasy in The Lord of the Rings has been pushed to its logical limits, beyond Kipling, and beyond Carrol too, finally presenting itself to itself as a peculiar combination of literary conventions.”

But what is Tolkien’s opinion? In 1950 he presented his book to publishers in this way:

“My work got out of my control and I produced a monster: an extremely long, complex, rather bitter and rather terrifying romance, unsuitable for guys (assuming it’s suitable for anyone)”

And again, in a letter to Manlove in 1967, he stated: “The Lord of the Rings was a deliberate attempt to write an adult fairy tale.”

These two definitions indicate Tolkien’s own uncertainty regarding the attribution of his work to a specific genre. This confirms the syncretic character of this work which uses styles, motifs and techniques of different genres. The second statement then contains a fundamental element for our research. “A fairy tale for adults” says Tolkien. From this definition we will start to see how this magmatic work can be considered a fairy tale and how Tolkien exploited the fairy tale material by addressing it to an adult audience. “The Lord of the Rings” is complex, multifaceted, it concerns existential values ​​of considerable depth, such as to bring the work closer to the modern novel.

The Lord of the Rings in relation to the fairy tale.

Vladimir J. Propp, author of a famous study on the popular fairy tale, “Morphology of the fairy tale”, from 1928, so defines it: “From a morphological point of view, we can define a fairy tale as any development from damage (x) or lack (x) through intermediate functions to a marriage (n) or other functions used for dissolution. Sometimes the endings, the reward (z), the removal of the damage or lack (Rm), the rescue from the pursuit (s) etc. serve as functions “

More specifically, Stith Thompson, in “The Fairy Tale in the Popular Tradition”, of 1946, uses the term “maerchen” to indicate a fairytale of a certain length, with a succession of motifs and episodes, which moves in an unreal world, without a precise definition of places and characters, full of wonderful things.

Bruno Bettelheim, in “The Uses of Enchantment”, of 1976, notes that a fairy tale is such only if it contains magical and supernatural elements.

Starting from the theories of these three famous fairytale scholars, we now propose our definition that summarizes all three. A fairy tale is such when:

a) at the morphological-structural level, we have a development from a damage or a lack, through intermediate functions, up to a final dissolution that involves the removal of the damage or lack or a reward

b) we move in an unreal world

c) places and characters are not well defined

d) the supernatural magical element is present

In particular, for the purposes of this study, we will consider the one having the monomitic structure of the quest as a “typical fairy tale”, as it was enucleated by Joseph Campbell in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, of 1949.

In this type of fairy tale, the initial damage or lack force the protagonist to leave in search of something (an object, a person, a place, etc.). The intermediate functions are represented by the obstacles and helpers that he encounters during the journey. At the end of the tale, the completion of the quest removes the damage or lack and causes a reward. Returning home is often difficult.

Before proceeding, we specify that we will draw many of our examples of fairy tales from the collection of “maerchen” by the Grimm brothers (even if not only from that one) both because we consider this collection one of the most typical expressions of the European fairytale tradition, and because it constituted one of the favorite readings of the author of “The Lord of the Rings”.

We will analyze “The Lord of the Rings” in parallel with a famous tale by the Brothers Grimm: “The Golden Bird”

The golden bird.

Damage or lack: the king orders his sons to bring him the golden bird and they set out in search of it.

Intermediate functions, obstacles: the inn entices them with its pleasures, difficult tasks are imposed on Bertrand (tripling of the object of the quest: bird, horse and golden princess and the requirement to clear a mountain in eight days).

Helpers (who overcome obstacles or provide magical items): the fox helps Bertrando level the mountain and gives him essential advice for obtaining the fairy bird, horse and princess.

Removal of damage or lack: Bertrando takes possession of the quest items.

Homecoming (difficult): Bertrando returns home incognito and unmasks the impostor brothers who had usurped his place.

The Lord of the Rings.

Damage: The Black Knights search the Shire in search of the owner of the Ring. Frodo sets out to destroy the Ring, save the county and all of Middle Earth.

Intermediate functions, obstacles: A tree holds hobbits in its roots. The ghosts of the Mounds attempt to kill them, the Black Knights wound Frodo, the snow and wolves prevent the Fellowship of the Ring from overcoming the mountains, the Orcs repeatedly attack the Fellowship killing Boromir, the lake monster wants to capture the Bringer, a Balrog kills Gandalf, Shelob stabs Frodo etc.

Helpers (who overcome obstacles or provide magical items): Gandalf helps the bearer with his experience, his magical powers, and his sacrifice in the fight against the Balrog, Tom Bombadil disenchants the killer tree and scatters the Moundwraiths, Bilbo gives Frodo the Sting sword, Elrond provides moral and material aids to hobbits, Galadriel gives Frodo a magic sword etc.

Removal of damage or lack: the Ring is destroyed and Sauron defeated.

Return home (difficult): the hobbits return to the Shire but must overthrow a tyrannical regime established by Saruman in their absence.

The Proppian functions of “prohibition”, “investigation by the antagonist”, “call of the hero”, “testing the hero”, “marriage and coronation of the hero” are also found in The Lord of the Rings, etc)

A remarkable morphological similarity emerges at the level of nodal functions.

Tolkien, himself an avid reader of fairy tales, does not deny that he used for “The Lord of the Rings” the fairytale model of the quest that he had already experienced in “The Hobbit” in an even more evident way.

“I now wanted to try my hand at writing a really, stupendously long narrative and see whether I had sufficient art, cunning or material to make a really long narrative that would hold the average reader right through. One of the best form for a long narrative is the adage found in the Hobbit, though in a much more elaborate form, of a pilgrimage and journey with an object, so that was inevitably the form I accepted. “

Probably, even more than from the Grimm fairy tales, the fairy tale model of the quest is filtered into Tolkien’s work through the medieval epic. As everyone knows, Tolkien, even before being a writer, was a distinguished philologist and one of the leading scholars of Anglo-Saxon literature. He was responsible for the revaluation of Beowulf, the translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “Pearl”, a remake of The Battle of Maldon and so on. Among his favorite readings, moreover, are the novels of William Morris and George Mc Donald. It seems clear, therefore, that motifs such as the quest for the Holy Grail or the search for the monster to kill were very familiar to him.

Finding the themes of the popular fairy tale within the myths of the medieval epic should not be surprising since, as Joseph Campbell demonstrated, myth, fairy tale, ritual and dream activity of man find a common expression in motifs that hide archetypes of the Jungian collective unconscious.

“The Lord of the Rings” is an example of a fairy tale with “two seekers”, who separate towards the middle of the narrative to each carry out one research. We have in fact two main heroes, Frodo and Aragorn. Frodo is the bearer of the ring and his quest coincides with the destruction of his own burden. Aragorn is the king in disguise, whose typical quest coincides with the reconquest of the kingdom and obtaining the hand of the woman he loves. The two seekers separate at the end of the first book to meet again only in the finale.

“The Lord of the Rings”, like the fairy tale, is set in a totally imaginary world in which characters who have no historical foundation move.

Among the elements common to fairy tales, also found in “The Lord of the Rings” we can list some kind of struggle with supernatural opponents who often come in the form of monsters: Sauron, Shelob, the Balrog, the Nazgul. They can be related to the countless dragons, orcs and evil witches of fairy tales. The presence of ghosts: the ghosts of the Ring, the warriors of the Paths of the Dead, the ghosts of the swamp, are the equivalent of the grateful or threatening dead of some European folk tales. Intelligent horses: Ombromanto, Nevecrino, etc, behave like Falada, the famous horse of “The Little Goose Guardian”. Magical powers: the powers of Gandalf, Sauron, Saruman, Galadriel resemble those of fairy tales and fairies. Magical objects: the door of Moria opens on command as the famous door of “Ali Babà and the forty thieves”; Galadriel’s vial shines with unquenchable light; the Ring makes you invisible; the Palantiri allow to see far; Galadriel’s mirror predicts the future; the Sting sword shines in the presence of Orcs. The extraordinary smallness: the dwarves and the little hobbits resemble the tiny elves of fairy tales.

The successes of the younger son: Faramir, the “Cinderella”, succeeds where his father’s favorite brother has failed. The prophecies: there are numerous prophecies scattered throughout the narrative, for example that concerning “the scourge of Isildur” (see the prophecy in “The three hairs of the ogre”).

Also present in “The Lord of the Rings” are typical characters of the popular fairy tale: elves, dwarves, wizards, trolls, orcs, etc.

The protagonists of popular fairy tales are usually common characters who, tested by the vicissitudes they have to face during the fairy tale, mature and obtain personal successes: Fiumetto, the woodcutter’s son, becomes king and inherits a fortune; the kids, swallowed by the big bad wolf, are saved and learn to take care of themselves; Biancarosa and Rosella marry two princes.

Bruno Bettelheim shows that, even when in fairy tales we talk about persons belonging to royal families, in reality the real protagonist is always the common man: Snow White is only a pubescent girl and the evil queen is only a mother who does not accept to be surpassed in beauty and youth by her own daughter. The king, the evil queen and Snow White are actually a father, mother and daughter in a typical Oedipal constellation that every child (and every parent) can identify with.

One of the main characteristics of fairy tales is therefore to present everyday characters with which the reader can easily identify. The reader of fairy tales feels that he too may be the object of envy from a brother or have to extricate himself in a difficult situation. Even in “The Lord of the Rings” some (not all) of the characters have precisely this characteristic of being everyday heroes.

The little hobbits are clumsy, they are not used to big events like the heroes of the myth. Merry and Pippin at the beginning of the story are carefree, kind-hearted and generous young hobbits, who have yet to test their courage and endurance. Eventually they will have grown in stature both in a physical sense (thanks to the water of the Ents) and in a moral sense. Suffering will have matured them within a year, making them suitable to take command of the Shire. They more than others will get personal achievements and rewards in the ending of the story. Aragorn also eventually ascends the throne and gets the hand of the elven maiden who was promised to him only on the condition that he regain the realm that was rightfully his. As for the style, Tolkien uses some techniques common to the folk tale. As Marion Perret states: “Tolkien prefers to suggest rather than spell out: he invites his reader to participate in the imaginative act of subcreation by his use of representative actions as well as by his use of generalized language”

Just as in fairy tales it is preferred to say “he sat up and wept”, rather than giving a detailed description of the desperate state of mind of the one who suffers, sometimes Tolkien opts for the hint and the symbol rather than the explicit description. At certain key moments he makes a close-up of a gesture or element.

“The close up technique permits him to substitute a significant detail for an elaboration of an emotional state; repetition of that significant detail abbreviates even more. “

So every time Frodo brings his hand to the ring, the reader understands that he is in the grip of a violent temptation; or every time Sam supports his master, his gesture symbolizes affection, dedication, fidelity, without losing narrative concreteness and plasticity. The reader must participate with the awareness of what the gesture has previously meant.

Often in fairy tales much of what is told is taken for granted. When it is stated that the protagonist met “the old woman of vinegar” and not “an old woman”, using the definite article, this assumes that the reader / listener of the fairy tale knows a priori of the existence of a specific old woman of vinegar. It is a technique that serves to give depth to the narrative and the idea of ​​something beyond the mere clipping of events that we become aware of. We have the impression of the existence of a fairy kingdom in which the old women of vinegar are natural and very common.

Tolkien claims to appreciate Grimm’s fairy tales for “that sense of antiquity and depth” that he finds in them. He uses the same technique. The sense of depth interests him much more than the storyteller, since he has set the creation of a “secondary world” as his main goal. Although the appendices explain everything there is to know about Middle-earth, they were only included in the work in 1966. And furthermore, they are precisely appendices, which a normal reader usually reads at the end of the book. Therefore, when the first elves are introduced as they chant “Ghiltoniel! Oh Elbereth! ”, Without a previous reading of the Silmarillion and without a knowledge of the elven languages, the average reader cannot know that they are singing a religious hymn in honor of Varda, the supreme among the Valar, queen of the stars, and that Elbereth is one of the names the Elves give her in Sindarin.

The reader plunges, from the first chapter, into a world that existed before he opened the book, profound, varied and very complicated. The events narrated in “The Lord of the Rings” have a precise dating and take place in a coherent world that is represented in minute detail. They refer — Tolkien himself confirms — to a bygone era of our land. However, we are not told how much time has passed since then or where exactly Middle-earth was.

“Those days, the third age of Middle Earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed but the regions in which hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger; the north west of the old world, east of the sea. “

This description leaves history in a limbo that has the vague flavor of “once upon a time beyond the mountains and the sea” but it can be referred to England too.

By examining the structure, components and some stylistic techniques of “The Lord of the Rings”, we have come to a first conclusion according to which there are undeniable structural similarities between The Lord of the Rings and the fairy tale. A first value to be attributed to the book is therefore the one that derives from the contribution of the popular fairy tale, and a first message will be the same as that of many fairy tales: that a fight against the serious difficulties of life is inevitable but that even the humblest can succeed if they do not withdraw in fear. As the little users of fairy tales, suffering and rejoicing with their heroes, manage to mature and become men, so Tolkien, an eternal child who has had fun with the Hobbit’s joke, through the fairy tale “The Lord of the Rings”, grows up as a man and as a writer. Together with Bilbo, he learns to accept old age and the proximity of death. Then, bearing day by day, with Frodo, the growing weight of the terrible Ring, he becomes a bitter writer who uses the fairy tale to convey profound messages.

Non-fairytale elements of “The Lord of the Rings”

Now let’s try to find out if and to what extent “The Lord of the Rings” moves away from the popular fairy tale to reach something different. The first difference is the fundamental concept of sub-creation.

We compared “The Lord of the Rings” with the folk tale based on our definition of this genre. We found remarkable similarities regarding the morphological structure, the unreality of the world represented and the facts narrated, the indispensable presence of the magical element.

We have purposely excluded the poor definition of places and characters in the fairy tale, since it will be the object of a more in-depth analysis here. It constitutes the first and most obvious difference between “The Lord of the Rings” and the folk tale.

Once upon a time there was a woodcutter who lived in a hut on the edge of the forest …

Thus begins a famous tale by the Brothers Grimm “The House in the Forest.” In this beginning the degree of specification of places, characters, chronologies, is almost non-existent. Once upon a time indicates at most that the action took place in the past but when it is not exactly said.

A woodcutter: we only learn two things about the first character introduced, namely that he is a man and that this man is a woodcutter.

That lived in a hut on the edge of the forest: some vague information accumulates, probably the man is poor and lives near the woods where he carries out his business. But which woods are we talking about? What nationality is the woodcutter? How old is he? Who were his ancestors? And in which edge of the woods does he live? And what language does he speak? All this is not told to us either at the beginning, nor during, nor at completion in the narrative. The story of “The house in the forest” has as its main protagonists the three daughters of the woodcutter, of whom just as little is said. In Proppian terms, the woodcutter is only the principal who starts the story. No one cares about him, his ancestors, his nationality.

Of all the characters of “The Lord of the Rings”, on the contrary, even the most summarily outlined, we come to know the physical description.

“Four tall men stood there. Two had spears in their hands with broad bright heads (…) green gauntlets covered their hands, and their faces were hooded and masked with green, except for their eyes, which were very keen and bright. At once Frodo thought of Boromir, for these men were like him in stature and bearing an in their manner of speech. “

The name and genealogy: at least the father is always named — “Gimli, son of Gloin”, “Frodo, son of Drogo”, “Eomer, son of Eomund” etc.

The spoken language (often reported directly): a significant example is the description of the language of the Ents. “As soon as the whole company was assembled, a curios and unintelligible conversation, began. The Ents began to murmur slowly: first one joined and then another, until they were all chanting together in a long rising and falling rhythm, now louder on one side of the ring, now dying away there, rising to a great boom on the other side. (…) “

“O erofarne, lassemista, carni mirie!”

Where he lives (and possibly where he lived before): “The poorest went on living in burrows of the most primitive kind, mere holes indeed, with only one window or none: while the well- to- do still constructed more luxurious versions of the simple diggins of old. But suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels (or smials as they called them) were not everywhere to be found; and in the flats and the low-lying districts the hobbits, as they multiplied, began to build above ground. “

This procedure derives to Tolkien from the study of medieval epics and sagas. In medieval novels, names and genealogies are fundamental; the reader is made aware of the name and lineage of heroes, horses, swords, and even monsters, as in a kind of pedigree.

Propp states that “When the hero loses his name and the story loses its sacred character, myth and legend are transformed into a fairy tale.”

Here we are witnessing the reverse process. The names are a real obsession for Tolkien. The name is one with the thing, it embodies the essence of the person, changing with the changes that occur in the life of the protagonists.

“I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, and I am called Elessar, the elf stone, Dùnadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor.”

The places are extensively described too. The book is accompanied by numerous maps, carefully traced, which also include sites of not immediate importance for the story. The narration is continually interrupted to make room for long descriptive-contemplative passages

“On the far side was a faint path leading up on to the floor of the forest, a hundred yards and more beyond the hedge; but it vanished as ssoon as it brought them under the trees. Looking back they could see the dark line of the hedge through the stems of the trees that were already thick about them. Looking ahead they could see only tree-trunks of innumerable sizes and shapes: straight or bent, twisted, leaning, squat or slender, smooth or gnarled and branched; and all the stems were green or gray with moss and slimy, shaggy growths.”

Manlove, in 1975’s “Modern Fantasy”, identified this descriptive technique as one of the main components of fantasy.

The chronology is also very accurate. The “cammina cammina” of fairy tales is contrasted in “The Lord of the Rings” with a profusion of details that indicate the position of the sun, the particular nuance of the sunset, the time of the first star rising, the weather conditions etc.

“White mists began to rise and curl on the surface of the river and stray about the roots of the trees upon its borders. Out of the very ground at their feet a shadowy steam arose and mingled with the swiftly falling dusk.”

To write his fictional book, Tolkien documented himself in a strict way: the phases of the moon described in the book come from the calendar of 1942, the speed of the characters’ marches is based on the figures reported in military manuals. All critics, even the most skeptical ones, are amazed at the care, the minuteness with which Middle Earth is made real, coherent, true.

Nothing remains unknown to readers about the history, traditions, language and customs of elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, ents, trolls, orcs. From the appendices and from the story itself we learn the stories of kings and rulers of all the dynastic branches of the various lineages of many human and dwarf races (the Silmarillion had already said all about the elven people). We are explained how they calculated the elves and hobbits years, complete with calendar reproduction, family trees dating back to thirteen and more previous generations are traced, we learn everything about pronunciation, accent position, different spellings of the two branches of the elven languages ​​(the Quenya and Sindarin) and the black orc language.

Many details of a philological nature escape the average reader. Only those who have a deep knowledge of the linguistic mechanisms and of the Welsh, Finnish, Old-English, Middle-English, Norse languages, etc — which inspired Tolkien’s invented languages ​​- can notice the common roots hidden in the words of the two branches of elven languages, or those common in the terms used by the two primitive peoples Wose and Dunlendings.

This leads us to a first banal observation: that the book is definitely aimed at an adult audience. Only a reader with an incredible linguistic, philological, mythological, historical culture can fully understand the allusions hidden in the book.

As an example, let’s consider the name Frodo. In a scholarly note of the appendices, Tolkien, who always presents himself as a mere editor and translator of “The Red Book of Western Borders” written by Bilbo and Frodo, states that the final -o of the name Frodo is only an anglicization of an -a in the hobbit language. From this we reconstruct an original form * Froda. Thus Frodo, the little hobbit of the Shire, bears the name of the mythical Froda, or Frothi, the wise king who brings fertility and peace. This is but one of the many half-hidden allusions scattered throughout the story.

As we have seen, Tolkien creates a world that is governed by the same laws that order our world, and is so coherent that it assumes a reality of its own beyond literary fiction. In his 1938 essay “On Fairy-stories”, Tolkien defined all this subcreation.

“The true narrator must aim at the creation of a secondary world, different from the primary one, full of wonders, but based on the simple things of our life. If the storyteller’s art is enough, within this world what he is referring to is true.” So “The story-maker proves a successful“ subcreator ”. He makes a secondary world which your mind can enter. Inside it what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough (…) To make a secondary world inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding secondary belief, will probably require labor and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished, then we have a rare achievement of art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode “.

The essay “On Fairy-stories” consists of a lecture on Andrew Lang given by Tolkien in 1938. There he elaborates his concept of sub-creation by applying it to the popular fairy tale. In fact, he considers the creative process of the storyteller to be “sub-creation”. But we are not of the same opinion. The rarefied atmosphere of the popular fairy tale in which neither characters, nor places, nor times are specified, has nothing to do with the art of subcreation, which, through the meticulous precision and coherence of details, aims at the creation of an alien secondary world but almost as real as ours. This ability (elven as Tolkien would say) is unique to fantasy art only.

In our opinion, those who proposed to Tolkien to give a lecture on the popular fairy tale, instead provided him with the opportunity to talk about his own work which, as we have seen, does contain elements of the popular fairy tale, but does not end there. Of our opinion is also J.S. Ryan, who argues that with “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien “Is concerned to describe the genre, fairy-tale, in a way that does not relate well to many examples of the form, but which does apply very closely to his own writing.”

On the morphological structure of the quest a lot of details are inserted that make “The Lord of the Rings” a work that amazes every reader who approaches it for the first time.

It is the matter of “The Silmarillion” that gives its unmistakable flavor to “The Lord of the Rings”. Frodo moves in a landscape where others have moved before him, where even the stones recall the passage of the Eldar in the First Age. This is why those who, like Ready, consider the appendices an amusement of the author or a bone thrown to the fans of Middle Earth, have not penetrated the spirit of Tolkinian “fantasy”.

As we have shown, “The Lord of the Rings” is structured on the fairytale model of the “quest”. It starts with a “status quo” of happiness that is threatened, so that a character must undertake the search for something that will remove the threat. Having overcome numerous obstacles along the way, we finally reach the goal and return home, restoring the status quo. Apparently “The Lord of the Rings” is just a very large and detailed development of this model. Instead, we will see that in this work Tolkien uses the quest model in a particular way. Some of the elements of this model are reworked in a modern key, others even dissolved in the course of the narration, so much so that we suspect we are not dealing with a simple “round trip” fairy tale.

Let’s see how Tolkien reworked three main elements of the quest model: the obstacles, the hero and the happy ending.

In “The Lord of the Rings” the obstacles encountered during the quest have a dual nature: physical obstacles, which give rise to nuclei of adventure, and obstacles of an inner nature.

The physical obstacles consist of the numerous and dangerous adventures that the characters face: the escape to the ford, the fight against Shelob, the fight against the Orcs in the dark mines of Moria etc. Such physical obstacles or “adventures” serve to move the narrative and bring “The Lord of the Rings” closer to a modern adventure novel, in which many of the events are supernatural. These physical obstacles, however (like those in fairy tales) can also have meanings on a spiritual level. They become symbols of the courageous struggle of the good protagonists against evil and, on a psychoanalytic level, they represent inner conflicts. Getting lost in a forest like the “Old Forest” or the “Fangorn Forest” has always been — since the time of Dante Alighieri — a symbol of descent into the unconscious.

The obstacles of an inner nature are made up of all those moments — and they are infinite — in which the characters are faced with complicated moral dilemmas: difficult choices, temptations, indecisions, fears. Such dilemmas are openly registered with the technique of the modern psychological novel. Often this recording — to which we will return later when talking about the nature of Tolkien characters — takes the form of the character’s dialogue with himself. This is an adaptation of the “stream of consciousness” technique to a fantasy novel in which even the inner dilemmas must somehow objectify and become as tangible as rocks and trees, without losing their strength and modernity.

“(Sam) could not sleep and he held a debate with himself. “Well, come now, we’ve done better than you hoped” he said sturdily. “Began well anyway. I reckon we crossed half the distance before we stopped. One more day will do it. “ And he paused. “Don’t be a fool, Sam Gamgee” came an answer in his own voice. “He won’t go another day like that, if he moves at all. And you can’t go on much longer giving him all the water and most of the food. “ “I can go on a good way, though, and I will.” “Where to?” “To the mountain, of course.” (…) “There you are!” came the answer. It’s all quite useless. He said so himself. You are the fool, going on hoping and toiling. You could have lain down and gone to sleep together days ago, if you hadn’t been so dogged. But you’ll die just the same, or worse. You might just as well lie down now and give it up. You’ll never get to the top anyway. “ “I’ll get there, if I leave anything but my bones behind”, said Sam. “And I’ll carry Mr Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart. I know stop arguing! “

The hero of the quest is also split in two. We have already mentioned the theme of the “two seekers”, Frodo and Aragorn. Of the two, only Frodo is the typical hero of the fairy tale, the common man who stumbles on adventure. Aragorn is the hero of the myth, he derives not from the folk tale, but from the Eddic poems and medieval epic literature. Ruth Noel, in 1977’s “The Mythology of Middle Earth”, highlights his similarities with King Arthur and Charlemagne.

The most surprising element, however, is that, as Verlyn Flieger shows, Tolkien crossed the motifs of the two types of hero, the mythical and the fairy. Aragorn, the hero of the myth, must complete a fairytale quest. At the end of the story he achieves a typical personal success: he ascends the throne and marries the princess. Frodo, the simple fairy tale hero, must instead complete a mythical quest to save a world in danger. Frodo’s personal success is minimal, his is an anti-quest aimed at “losing” a treasure and not looking for him.

“This crossing of motives adds an appeal which few modern readers find in conventional medieval literature, and that by exalting and refining the figure of the common man, Tolkien succeds in giving new values ​​to a medieval story.”

In the essay “On Fairy-stories”, Tolkien had stated that all fairy tales must have a happy ending, which he calls “eucatastrophe”. It is a glimmer of the true joy that will touch each of us: eternal life.

Now, even if in “The Lord of the Rings” the quest is completed and Sauron defeated, the book does not end in joy. First of all, according to Tolkien’s cyclical conception, any victory of the Good is only provisional. As Ready points out, also in Tolkien “After great hazard and suffering, even to the end, there is not so much a victory won, as time, time gained by the right order to recover from the loss and be more or less prepared for the next inevitable but unforeseen affray.”

At the end of the story everything returns to normal, but the joy of living certainly does not return. Frodo, the fairy-tale hero, the protagonist of the main “quest”, instead of ascending the throne, marrying a princess, becoming rich and famous, returns home exhausted by the ordeal, mutilated, tired of living. Nobody recognizes the value of his deeds. In the Shire it is Merry and Pippin who receive the most credit for what happened. As for Frodo, on the other hand, either he is not considered at all, or his heroism is misrepresented and he is thought to have accomplished great military feats. His true value, based on endurance, suffering, sacrifice, renunciation, no one understands. At home he is now a misfit and, after some time, he will sail towards the Immortal Lands of the West, leaving Middle-earth forever.

Northrop Frey states that “With the rise of the romantic ethos, heroism is increasingly being considered in terms of suffering, endurance and patience. (…) This is also the ethos of the Christian myth, where the heroism of Christ takes the form of suffering, of passion. “

The Christian interpretation of heroism is the most significant modification made by Tolkien to the traditional epic.

Frodo ends as the great tragic heroes of the myth end. The little hero of the fairy tale fights the last battle and loses, giving in to the temptation to claim the Ring. The end and the desperation of the mythical hero are reserved for him.

“It is not fair. And that, of course, is just Tolkien’s point. It is not meant to be fair. We are beyond romance, and beyond the fairy- tale ending. In the real world things seldom turn out as we would like them to, and the little man is as subject to tragedy as the great one. “

Furthermore, let us not forget that, with the destruction of the One Ring, the three elven rings also lose power, the triad that radiates life and beauty in Middle-earth and on which the survival of the beautiful elven district Lothlorien depends. At the end of the book, the Elves depart forever from Middle-earth and with them go the last vestiges of absolute, pristine beauty. In the Fourth Era, in the era of us human beings, a land remains as a legacy in which still many Grimas can find a Theoden ready to listen to them, other Sarumans can betray, without there being a Gandalf to unmask them. And most importantly, Sauron is not dead.

The little hobbits, the heroes of the fairy tale, have grown up and know how to get by on their own, but those who have known eternal evil can no longer live as before. Merry, Pippin and Sam make it, but Frodo, who wore the Ring for a long time and drank the cup of suffering to the bottom, is exhausted and leaves the world. “Even going back to the Shire” — Frodo says — “it will never look the same because I have changed.”

Here the Proppian model ends up dissolving: in Tolkien’s fairy tale there is no true return, since the vision of evil has transfigured the everyday. Irwin recognizes this as one of the characteristics of the fantasy genre: the victory of order is not a return to the “status quo ante” but to the everyday transfigured by vision.

The “quest” model is therefore reworked and dissolved from within. We start from the fairy tale, the idyllic Shire at the beginning of the book, and, through obstacles of an above all ethical nature, we come out of it. The heroes are not all fairytale heroes, the final eucatastrophe is temporary and crepuscular. In any case, beyond the happy ending, “The Lord of the Rings” remains a bitter, anguished book, full of terror and threat, almost materialization of the nightmares that haunt us all.

We mentioned the presence of typical characters of the popular fairy tale: elves, dwarves, trolls, wizards, orcs. Tolkien reworks these fairy-tale figures in a personal way.

In the first place, he restores to the elves the majesty and splendor that were their own in the myth and which they had lost over the years to reduce themselves to the little winged elves with antennas of popular fairy tales. Tolkien’s Elves are immortal creatures, bright, tall, proud, skilled.

Tolkien is an esthete who has a deep cult of beauty. While not giving up the sensational horror of fetid monsters and filthy ogres, he always purifies the myths of all that is vulgar and primitive. An example is the reworking of the Nordic myth of Earendil.

The evening star, Earendil, that is Venus, is said to be, according to Norse mythology, a frozen big toe of Earendil launched into orbit by Odin. This bad taste myth is transformed by Tolkien into the beautiful story of Earendil, the sailor, sailing through the sky with a Silmaril on his forehead.

But back to the Elves. All that is elven is a symbol and expression of pure, superb, melancholy and immaculate beauty. Lothlorien, their sweet land, is a springtime enchantment. A single hair of their sweet queen Galadriel “eclipses the gold of the earth, as the stars eclipse the gems of the mines”. How much Pre-Raphaelitism in this description!

Tolkien retains the ambiguous character that the elves had in myth and in certain folk tales. Galadriel, for Eomer, captain of the March of Rohan, is only the “dangerous witch of the golden wood”, while for Frodo she becomes a spiritual light of goodness and beauty that will illuminate his path, almost a sort of Jungian figure of the soul.

As for the dwarves, they retain some characteristics that they possess in folk tales: they are miners, they are greedy for riches, they are robust and bearded. However, those of Tolkien are not the dwarves with the shrill voice, almost human abortions or aged children, of “Biancarosa and Rosella” or “The Rumple Dwarf”, nor are the figures blocked at the preoedipal level that allow Snow White to live a period of latency and regression in their cabin in the woods; they are not even the Disney dwarfs of The Hobbit; if anything, they are close to the dwarves of the Norse myth. Tolkien makes it a people of individuals who have fathers and mothers (there are, in fact, even some female dwarfs, although it is difficult to distinguish them from males). This people has traditions, beliefs, a language and secret names, a pride and an impulsive generosity.

The trolls (“vagabonds” in the Italian edition) are present in the work only because they were part of “The Hobbit”. Tolkien seems unable to give up any element of his secondary world, however he realizes that the ugly stone men are not very credible so in “The Lord of the Rings” he limits their “use” to fleeting appearances.

Orcs have nothing to do with orcs in folk tales, who usually have human wives and feed on plump children. Tolkien’s is a prolific race, bred through genetic crosses as a war machine. Paul Kocher, in 1972’s “Master of Middle Earth”, strives to prove that Orcs are not completely evil. Trying to demonstrate this means distorting the book which aims at the representation of complete, embodied, operating evil.

In the Beowulf conference the Monsters and the Critics, of 1936, Tolkien had re-evaluated the mythical figure of the dragon as a powerful representation of absolute evil. Like the dragon, the orcs are not “fallen angels”, but lousy beasts that it is noble and right to kill. The murder of an ogre arouses the same remorse as the killing of a mosquito. Indeed, there is a considerable amount of complacency in the description of a massacre of Orcs.

In addition to having personally reworked the characteristics of typical fairy-tale characters, Tolkien filled them with human content. Usually, in fairy tales, we learn very little about the problems and inner conflicts of Cinderella’s fairy godmother, the wizard from “The Little Magic Book”, or Snow White’s dwarfs. In “The Lord of the Rings”, instead, each character, however schematic, has its own psychology.

Gimli the dwarf represents his race but also himself. A “man” who matures during the initiatory journey, renounces his own prejudices, learns to love the Elves, denies the greed of his ancestors: “over you gold shall have no dominion” predicts Galadriel.

Galadriel, the fairy, is not a saint, but a woman who fights a struggle against herself in order not to give in to the temptation to accept the ring that Frodo offers her.

“I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired what you offer. For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the great Ring come into my hands (…) and now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night! Fair as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain! Dreadful as the storm and the lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love and despair! She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo, seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! She was shrunken. A slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. “I pass the test”, she said. “I will diminish, and go into the west, and remain Galadriel”

Even the magician Gandalf, despite his powers and his proven righteousness, must fight with himself in order not to give in to the same temptation of which Galadriel is prey. Like Merlin, he is often overwhelmed by fears and worries, he gets impatient with those who know less than him, and has a special, sweet and fatherly affection for small defenseless hobbits.

Vladimir Propp argues that in the popular fairy tale the “functions” count more than the “actors” who perform them, that is, the core of the whole fairy tale lies in the plot.

In controversy with Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, in an intervention included in the Italian edition of “Morphology of the fairy tale” (Propp), instead believes that the characters of fairy tales are not arbitrary but fundamental in their uniqueness.

Tolkien is closer to Levi-Strauss than to Propp, since he gives a fundamental importance to the specific object, to the actor rather than to the function. We can summarize the Tolkienian operation in a formula: typicality plus uniqueness. The archetypal characters of popular fairy tales and mythology are reworked in such a way as to make them unique in terms of physical appearance and psychology, without distorting their traditional fairy-tale characteristics.

As Ruth Noel says “Tolkien was well acquainted with the potential of the creatures he described, and he gave them back some of the majesty they had before they decayed to babau and fairytale goblins. He also gave them reasons that can be understood by humans. “

Tolkien himself confirms that “The actors are individuals. They each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such. “

As we have seen, Tolkien, through the subcreative process, inserts the characters of the folk tale coherently into his imaginary world. His elves and his dwarves acquire consistency, their origins and spread on earth, their average height and build, dynastic families, history, traditions are clarified.

Tolkien performs what Northrop Freye, in his study of romance, defines “displacement”, that is, translation, explanation of supernatural events, their insertion into everyday life. The result is an impression of both familiarity and strangeness, which is one of the greatest sources of delight the book provides.

In “The Lord of the Rings” appear many objects of a magical nature common to the popular fairy tale: the ring, the palantiri, Gandalf’s staff, the vial of Galaldriel, the sword “Sting”, the elven rope, the door of Moria, Galadriel’s mirror, etc. All these objects, however, like the characters, undergo an operation of “displacement”. The origin of each of them is explained in order to insert it in a “natural” way within the world of Middle-earth.

“In most fairy tales, the inherent danger of the fairy half, or the questionable morality of the donor, does not (prevent) the hero from taking full advantage of it.” (G.Fink)

This does not apply to “The Lord of the Rings” where magical items also have spiritual value. They acquire greater or lesser power depending on who owns them. The fairy ring tries to betray its good owner to return to its evil master, the vial of Galadriel increases in brightness in the hands of honest characters.

In The Hobbit the ring “Is just a prop: a stage prop, like the marvelous devices common in fairy-tales or legends (there is a wish fulfilling ring in the Grimm’s” The King of the Golden Mountain “and a cloack of invisibility)” (T.S Shippey)

In “The Lord of the Rings” it transforms into the terrible Ring of absolute power. “One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them, one Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

Seen from the perspective of the magic rings of tradition, it behaves in an unnatural way: instead of serving it subjugates. The magic ring, which could save the protagonists from many dangers, must not be used. The end of the quest mentioned in the fairy tale is precisely the destruction of the magical object. This is very unusual when considered from the perspective of the fairytale tradition.

In practice, the theme of supernatural help is dissolved. The strength and success of the characters comes from their actual value and not from the casual possession of magical items. There are many fairy tales in which a simpleton of little intelligence and little courage manages to achieve great successes thanks to the possession of a miraculous object. The same is true of mythology. Even in the myth of the Argonauts, Jason surpasses the dragon only with the help of the magical arts of Medea, the sorceress of Colchis. “The Lord of the Rings” is a modern fairy tale that gives much more importance to man as such.

“The strength of the good characters comes from goodness itself rather than magic rings.” (M.Perret)

Galadriel’s mirror is also a magical object of a problematic nature. This is not a simple “viewer” to predict the future. The images it shows may come true but they may also not come true. Its predictions are deceptive; often, in fact, a misfortune can take place precisely if the person to whom it is foretold moves to prevent it. Galadriel’s mirror is a compromise between “Providence and free will”. It seems to tell us that “everything has already been written and yet everything is still to be decided” because the future always depends, in the final analysis, on the decisions of individuals.

Gandalf the magician, the supernatural aide, is kept as far away from history as possible. When the protagonists need him most, he is always somewhere else. After the fight with the Balrog he disappears from the scene for ten chapters and the Ring-bearer has to do without him for the whole book. He is a counselor in the first part of the book, a shining spiritual guide in the second, but he performs very few magic: some fireworks, the lighting of a reluctant fire and little else. Heroes, big or small, have to fend for themselves.

“I do n’t miss Gandalf ‘s fireworks, but his bushy eyebrows, and his quick temper, and his voice.” Frodo affirms, proving that human relationships are far more powerful than magic.

Furthermore, the magical object, even if used for a good purpose, has the power to force others to do what its owner wants. In conclusion, this is precisely the essence of evil: tyranny, compulsion, the two most evident symbols of which are Saruman and Sauron. In “The Lord of the Rings” tyranny is fought with force in all its forms: you fight against Orthanc and Barad-dur, the two towers of power, you destroy the magic ring to prevent anyone who finds it from turning into a tyrant absolute. It is strange that many critics have considered Tolkien a reactionary writer. There are even those who speak of “dangerous thinking”, and some openly label Tolkien as a fascist. There is no doubt that Tolkien considers kingship an almost divine right, despite this, this writer so loyal to the established power, wrote a book focused on the fight against dictatorship, made the famous voice of Saruman an unforgettable example of occult persuasion, exalted the sacrifice of the humble, wasted more than a thousand pages to bring about the destruction of the sign of total power. We find in all this even a strong anarchist-libertarian component.

Tolkien insists on the importance of free will. The “great”, the “powerful”, the “wise”, always try not to precipitate the decisions of others and even avoid giving advice even to those who know much less than them.

“Well, Frodo” said Aragorn at last. “I fear that the burden is laid upon you. You are the Bearer appointed by the Council. Your own way you alone can choose. In this matter I cannot advise you. I am not Gandalf, and though I have tried to bear his part, I do not know what design or hope he had for this hour, if indeed he had any. Most likely it seems that if he were here now the choice would still wait on you. “

Not even the future king, therefore, can order Frodo what he must do.

It is no coincidence that the good races that come together to fight the shadow of absolute power are called “The Free Peoples”. The Free People is therefore equivalent to The Good People. The good is identified with freedom.

The famous concept of “Recovery” enunciated by Tolkien in On Fairy-stories, is once again an expression of Tolkien’s evangelical anarchism. “Recovery” means looking at things as if it were the first time, removing that patina of banality that habit has spread over them. Habit comes from appropriation, what is too ours, what we know too well, no longer attracts us. “Recovery” means moving the world away from oneself, dispossessing things to love them more: what is free is more beautiful to contemplate.

The very idea of ​​magic as an element capable of increasing man’s virtues or distorting his mind is rejected by the author. The fairy tale “The Lord of the Rings” is based on magic to create wonder, amazement and amusement in the reader, but the author never relies too much on magic. His characters must remain active, true, human. Tolkien’s fairy tale always and above all speaks of the human being, his virtues and his weaknesses.

To the rarefaction of fairy-tale motifs, “The Lord of the Rings” opposes the technique of subcreation; it takes possession of the quest model only to demonstrate that — at the end of the research — there can be no true “return” since the quest itself constituted an exceptional formative experience for the seeker, such as to make him a different individual from the one he was at departure; he uses the traditional characters of popular fairy tales but transposes them in a modern sense, enriching them with human content; it ends with the traditional happy ending but it is not a real happy ending, but a melancholy, twilight ending and a partial victory.

Each new man has a new fight to undertake individually and the commitment must never be neglected: “I wish it need not have happened in my time” said Frodo. “So do I“, said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. “

“The Lord of the Rings” features fairytale heroes alongside heroes of myth and often weaves their motifs.

The hero of the Tolkinian fairy tale completes his quest by encouraging us to fight to survive and to do our duty anyway but he does not promise us fabulous weddings with fantastic princesses, legacy and personal success. Instead, it promises us the calm joy that comes from the awareness of having always done one’s duty and the maturity that comes from the complex ethical research carried out.

As for magic, it is accepted only as a means to make the story richer and more lively, but it is never allowed to stifle the work of the characters. Magic is used in such a way as to leave room for the free will, initiative, courage of the characters. It constitutes a perilous obstacle or a help on the path of the protagonists, but only the courageous individual commitment (“the burden is laid upon you”) or the solidarity of the group (“the hobbits must stick together”) can bring the company to completion the main undertaking of the book.

Tolkien disseminates various obstacles along the path of the seekers in compliance with the fairy tale tradition, but transforms many of them into proofs of a spiritual nature, so that the quest takes on the value of ethical research. Obstacles re-propose the moral dilemmas, doubts, anxieties of modern man and his feeling of being too small compared to insurmountable problems:

“Of course I have sometimes thought of going away, but I imagined that as a kind of holiday, a series of adventures like Bilbo’s or better, ending in peace. But this would mean exile, a flight from danger into danger, drawing it after me. “

There is an ideal path taken by Tolkien, an author’s “quest” in search of the structure and contents of his own work. We have completed the first part of this ideal journey, that is, we have explored the fairy tale discovering together its narrative possibilities. In order for the fairytale technique to still have value for modern and adult readers, it is necessary that — without destroying the enchantment that emanates and have always emanated from fairy tales — some changes are made to traditional fairytale techniques. These changes make the fairy tale current, transforming it into a useful means of conveying profound messages.

Beyond the fairy tale

Tolkien recovers the fairytale model making it suitable for an adult and modern audience. He uses the fairy tale because it is able to create “secondary belief”, to capture the reader’s interest, to fascinate him and to make his life richer and more fantastic. Once the reader has been captured in the fairy tale, he makes it an ethical research tool as well as an evasion tool. With this we do not want to diminish the value that the fairy tale has in itself for Tolkien, as a source of escape and fantastic enjoyment, however he also realizes that the fairy tale structure can become a powerful means of representing significant problems and values.

This does not mean making an allegory of the fairy tale. Tolkien has always detested allegory, which he considered cold and sterile. He preferred the concept of applicability (“applicability”) by which some elements of a narrative work, and not, are naturally “applied” by readers to situations in their life — almost allegories of it — without this being the primary intention of the author.

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations. (…) I much prefer history true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse “applicability” with “allegory”; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, the other in the purposed domination of the author. “

Between a burst of adventures and fantastic characters that entertain the reader and monopolize his attention, the “fairy tale” ”The Lord of the Rings” manages to develop profound and universal themes that make the book a work full of meaning. In this way it is transformed, through an internal evolution, into a genre that is a synthesis of fairy tale and modern novel.

Tolkien spoke for the fairy tale of “three mirrors”.

The fairy tale has a mystical mirror facing the supernatural, a magical mirror facing nature and a mirror of “scorn and pity” facing man. This third mirror is the lens that allows us to discover what we are really made of. In the “fairy tale” “The Lord of the Rings” this psychological component is considerably developed.

It seems to be a feature of “fantasy” literature to blend material of an adventurous and fantastic nature with psychological elements. Fantasy — while moving in a medieval-style world — is a modern genre that has its roots in twentieth-century culture. We disagree with anyone who traces fantasy back to a tradition of fantastic literature including Carroll or Kipling. Fantasy constitutes a separate strand of fantastic literature.

Fantasy was born in the Anglo-Saxon world, mainly thanks to Tolkien and the Inklings, a group of philologists and scholars of medieval literature. They tried to reproduce that medieval world of mythical and fairytale nature in which they found delight. Their narrative is set in supernatural heterocosms, of medieval style. It has as its argument perilous quests, undertaken by everyday heroes, on whose success depends the salvation of the whole world (see “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis) and whose failure would amount to the definitive victory of the demonic world.

Thanks to Tolkien’s success, in England and the United States his work has been imitated by numerous followers who have started a fantasy tradition.

Fantasy can only take into account the influence exerted in all fields by Jung and Freud, and the latest developments in fiction, with the enormous boost given to the psychological novel.

In “The Sword of Shannara”, by popular American fantasy writer Terry Brooks, the only talisman capable of defeating the terrible Warlock Lord, clearly a cast of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, is a sword, the property of which is to make known, to those who touch it, the truth about themselves. Coming into contact with the sword of Shannara means starting a process of introspection that for some is fatal. In fact, we are not always able to accept the truth about ourselves, that is, the full awareness of our fragility, our selfishness, our cowardice. By means of the sword of Shannara, all the Pirandellian masks that we have built for ourselves and which allowed us to believe ourselves worthy of respect and trust come to fall.

The One Ring of The Lord of the Rings, like the sword of Shannara, is a magical object of a psychological nature that shows us how Tolkien used fairy tale elements to introduce a problem that takes into account the anxieties of modern man.

The Ring can be considered a psychoanalytic symbol of ambivalence. It constitutes a center of fatal attraction, produces an addiction very similar to that given by heroin, arouses hate and intense love at the same time. With this double nature — evil and fascinating at the same time — it causes the personality of its owners to dissociate in a schizophrenic sense.

The Ring acts — like Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello — by appealing to the weaknesses of the characters. It brings out the dark side of each of us: Bilbo’s possessiveness, Boromir’s pride, Gandalf’s weakness, Frodo’s fear.

Only Gandalf is fully aware of the way in which the Ring manipulates the minds of its owners and, although he is in great need of the help it can give him, he refuses to use it to prevent his will and his heart from being corrupted. “Do not tempt me!”

Notice how many times the word “temptation” occurs in the novel.

“For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it “.

Another term to watch out for is “pity” mercy. We will soon see why.

The Ring also acts by distorting the positive feelings of people who come into contact with it, turning their good intentions into evil.

You never know if it is really the ring that is reluctant to leave the owner, or if it is the owner who, fearing to lose it, projects his possessiveness into it and does not let it go.

“Two possible views of the Ring are kept up throughout the three volumes: sentient creature, or psychic amplifier.” (T.S.Shippey)

The ring is a constant invitation to fall into temptation. It is also a symbol of the ego.

The One Ring is also the “Ring of Uniqueness”, of unbridled individuality. Putting on the ring means becoming invisible, that is asocial, separated from the rest of the world, monads closed in their own selfishness. Definitely arrogating the Ring, then, indicates absolute power and therefore maximum development of the ego.

Rose A. Zimbardo points out that Sauron’s nickname “Lord of the Eye” can also be read as “Lord of the I”, that is, lord of the unbridled ego.

“We are each of us “ Ring-bearers “, for the smallest but most important of the Rings” that the great Lord of rings holds is each creature’s idea of ​​self. “

If the Ring represents one’s individuality, no one can have the strength to throw it away on his own initiative. That’s why Frodo, right on the edge of the Sammath Naur chasm, where he arrived after fighting for a whole year, decides not to do what he went there for and to keep the Ring. Frodo’s fall is a pivotal moment in the novel’s economy. Nobody could have done more than Frodo and Tolkien knows this. This is why, on the top of Monte Fato, when all that was humanly possible to do has been done, providence intervenes in the form of Gollum.

Frodo represents the common man attached to his own individuality. He cannot spontaneously throw away the Ring of the I. Even for the most fervent of Catholics, in fact “The self is our only known life.” (R.A. Zimbardo)

Why should a man give up his individuality when he does not know if, beyond it, there is really something worth fighting and sacrificing for?

Even Gandalf the White, the envoy of the Valar, does not know the outcome of the battle against Sauron, he does not know, that is, if there is actually a providential plan that concerns us.

The Ring also becomes a symbol of the constant temptation to mistrust, to pessimism, to withdraw into oneself, to which the Christian is subjected.

Tolkien, while presenting providence in action, does not offer us, with the figure of Frodo, the image of an unshakable faith, but of a constant but hopeless moral commitment.

“All right, Sam”, said Frodo. “Lead me! As long as you’ve got any hope left. Mine is gone. “

Frodo is a “Christian” who, while not lacking in “charity”, has lost all “faith” and “hope”. The very Catholic Tolkien actually lives a problematic and suffered Catholicism.

This also shines through in the way he deals with the problem of death in the Silmarillion and in the appendices to “The Lord of the Rings”. It is clear, in fact, that he has not yet accepted the idea of ​​death which, in the Silmarillion, becomes the unwelcome “gift” granted by Ilùvatar only to the human race.

The traditional ambiguity of fairytale elves, which sees them now benevolent now evil towards humans, is exploited by Tolkien once again in a psychological sense.

Their land, the Golden Wood of Lorien, is a perilous district of which it is said that few of those who set foot in it leave it, but, as Sam says, “people carry their own danger with them and then find it again in Lorien because they took it with them. “

The queen of that land, Galaldriel, becomes the mirror of the soul of her interlocutors, “dangerous” to the extent that meeting her means discovering oneself. “If you want to know, I felt as if I had n’t got nothing on, and I did n’t like it” says Sam, expressing what he felt under the gaze of Galadriel. “She seemed to be looking inside me and asking me what I would do if she gave me the chance of flying back home”.

Galadriel’s mirror terrifies Frodo only because he shows him the eye of Sauron, the penetrating, alert eye, which searches in the recesses of the soul, upsetting it, perhaps, in reality, only the eye of conscience.

“The Lord of the Rings”, while taking the fairytale polarization into good and bad to its extreme consequences, also presents ambiguities that mirror the ambivalences and conflicts of the modern world.

In this way, alongside the typical fairy-tale characters, other types of characters coexist in the novel, creating an impression of syncretism. We are faced with a mixture of ancient and modern techniques.

First, in “The Lord of the Rings” we find characters who are actually “masks”. There are also well-defined “types” or fixed characters. These are mixed with real “characters”, who possess a certain psychological depth and can change with changing circumstances.

Finally, we have a specific ambivalent character who embodies the conflicts that today’s reader of novels is accustomed to.

The masks are made up of all those evil creatures that do not fall within the scope of the traditional evil figures of fairy tales like the Orcs. Tolkien’s masks of evil fully reflect the fairytale polarization and even exasperate it in an ethical function.

The Nazgul, the terrible winged creatures that, flying over the territories of the Free Peoples, strike a terror that freezes the blood and paralyzes the movements; the Ringwraiths, shapeless and hissing ghosts; the monster of the lake, of which only the long and sticky tentacles can be seen; Sauron, the Lord of the Rings, all concentrated in his one, frightening, watchful eyelidless eye; and, above all, the unforgettable Shelob, are all powerful embodiments of absolute evil.

For his new book that talks about a struggle of an eminently ethical nature, the scholar of Beowulf, the inventor of Smaug, Glaurung, Chrisophilax, this time does not use the dragon, but brings out a whole series of new, horrifying, creatures of evil, which exude hatred and gratuitous wickedness.

What terrifies us in Tolkien monsters, in fact, is not so much their monstrous appearance, but rather the hatred and inexplicable evil that emanates from them.

Shelob is a huge cupid spider who lives only to satiate the greed of his belly. Shelob has large horns, a short, stubby neck behind which sways an immense swollen body, a tumid overflowing sac between her legs, a black mass stained with bruises emanating a hideous stench, with curved legs, gnarled joints, shaggy hair like steel thorns and a claw at the end of each member.

The description of this being is therefore quite impressive, yet, even more terrible than the full vision of her body, it is the first image that the reader has of it: a tuft of eyes emerging from the darkness, full of irrepressible wickedness.

“Even as Frodo spoke he felt a great malice bent upon him, and a deadly regard considering him. Not far down the tunnel, between them and the opening where they had reeled and stumbled, he was aware of eyes growing visible, two great clusters of many-windowed eyes — the coming menace was unmasked at last. The radiance of the star-glass was broken and thrown back from their thousand facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began steadily to grow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape. “

The “horrid” elements in Tolkien, as well as aiming at “sensation”, have ethical value: meeting his evil monsters, his rotten-hearted trees, his cruel mountains, his “unnamed things”, is like suddenly finding oneself in the in the presence of Satan.

In the “Unfinished Tales” Tolkien tries to bring all evil creatures back to a single source: Morgoth, the devil. Fortunately, these unfinished tales did not make it into “The Lord of the Rings”, which remains so much more disturbing as much of the nature it contains is hostile and evil for no reason. Evil remains gratuitous and incomprehensible.

“There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have little love for those that go on two legs, and yet are not in league with Sauron.”

Tolkien’s creatures of evil are personifications of the wickedness that pervades the world, yet they are not cold allegories. The monsters of the Middle Earth are fantastic beings that enrich the world they inhabit and arouse in the reader wonder, emotion, curiosity.

Referring to his own childhood impressions of the monsters of mythology, Tolkien expresses himself in “On Fairy-stories”: “The world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir, was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”

The great heroes belong to the category of types: Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, Eowyn, Theoden, Denethor, Eomer, Imhrail etc. “Among the” types “or characters there are essentially men, who have, unlike allegories, a certain internal dynamics, are subject to change, make choices, fight with a precise final purpose, but both their certainties and their doubts trace well-defined forms, so that, for example, the “temptation” to which Boromir yields (when he tries to snatch the Ring from Frodo) is already entirely within the initial discourse pronounced in the Council of Elrond which identifies a “type” of warrior through a series of attributes. “ (O. Palusci)

Generally, these heroes have characteristics typical of the heroes of the Celtic and Germanic myths. They constitute fixed “types” as they follow traditional mythical typologies.

The real characters are the Hobbits. The Hobbits are a total invention of Tolkien, not being found in any fairytale tradition, as it happens instead for elves, dwarves, trolls, wizards.

Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin are characters of a certain depth who change and mature during the course of the narrative. Pippin and Merry, from carefree kids, are transformed into mature hobbits, able to place themselves at the head of the Shire. Sam, already loyal and affectionate, learns more and more the value of loyalty and tests his dedication to Frodo. He understands what his role is in the story: to be a follower to the master. Sometimes maturing also means realizing the limited scope of one’s actions: “I can’t help it. My place is by Mr Frodo. They must understand that — Elrond and the Council, and the great lords and ladies with all their wisdom. Their planes have gone wrong. I can’t be their Ring-bearer. Not without Mr Frodo. “

Together with Frodo, Sam discovers the value of pity. Tolkien stated that pity is a concept foreign to the infantile mind. Children want justice, they want to see Cinderella’s stepsisters and Snow White’s stepmother punished. Compassion as an end in itself is a feeling that only adults can conceive. “The Lord of the Rings” is also a study on piety. In this fairy tale it is an act of piety that determines the whole course of events.

In the first version of “The Hobbit”, when Bilbo found the Ring, he just ran away with his treasure. In the second version, this important scene is modified to accord it more to the spirit of “The Lord of the Rings”: Bilbo, on the verge of killing Gollum who chases him to take the Ring back, seized with compassion, spares him. In Gandalf’s account of this scene to Frodo, the concept of pity is first introduced.

After losing the ring, stolen from him by Bilbo, Gollum set out in search of him and ended up in the clutches of Sauron. Thanks to him, now the Lord of the Rings knows that a Baggins owns the One. When Frodo — in the first book — learns this, he blurts out: “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!”

But Gandalf interrupts him: “Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. Pity and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With pity “. “I am sorry” said Frodo. “But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum “. “You have not seen him” Gandalf broke in. “No, and I don’t want to”, said Frodo “I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you and the elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death. “

“He Deserves it! I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Than do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. “

In the second book Frodo meets Gollum face to face. Sam advises him to get rid of the vile creature but Frodo, remembering Gandalf’s words, does not have the courage to lower the sword on the miserable being.

“Very well”, he answered aloud, lowering his sword. “But still I am afraid. And yet, as you see, I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him. “

In the third book it will be up to Sam to spare Gollum, the very being he hates most in the world. The scheme is precise: the value of mercy is transmitted from Bilbo to Frodo and from Frodo to Sam. Both Frodo and Sam undergo identical development. Frodo does not understand Bilbo’s act but then behaves like him, the same happens to Sam who, at first, does not understand Frodo’s pity, but then fails to kill the wretched Gollum.

“Sam’s hand wavered. His mind was hot with wrath and the memory of evil. It would be just to slay this treacherous, murderous creature, just and many times deserved; and also it seemed the only safe thing to do. But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. “

The joint act of piety of Bilbo, Frodo and Sam, three bearers of the Ring, who spare the life of an insignificant and largely evil creature, proves to be providential. Bilbo, Frodo and Sam will be saved from the evil effects of the Ring, their hearts will remain pure. Gollum, then, has one last fundamental part to play in the story, it will be he who will allow the effective destruction of the Ring of Evil.

Hobbits are “all-round” characters who undergo transformations within the novel. Their thoughts are always recorded directly from within.

Tolkien adopted the technique of the circumscribed point of view. All the great events are filtered through the eyes of the hobbits, the little fairy-tale heroes. At least one hobbit is always present in the highlights. If one of the hobbits cannot be present at an event, this is not experienced directly by the reader but briefly told by the characters who took part in it. In this way, Tolkien renounces a fundamental scene such as Aragorn’s crossing of the Paths of the Dead, in order not to abandon the hobbit point of view.

The adoption of the Jamesian circumscribed point of view makes the “fairy tale” “The Lord of the Rings” a psychological novel in which the characters are analyzed from the inside and the events observed foreshortened, not from the perspective of the great protagonists of the myth — who are at ease in the epic and unreal atmosphere — but small, clumsy, awkward hobbits. It is as if, instead of witnessing the fight with Grendel through Beowulf’s eyes, we are witnessing it through the prosaic and disenchanted eyes of his wingman.

Hobbits are granted the greatest human characteristics, or rather, those that man should have: loyalty, tenacity, endurance, courage. Man is the hobbit, small in a big world, governed by incomprehensible laws. Like the hobbit, he sometimes knows how to rise to gigantic dimensions, to fight with his courage and his spirit of sacrifice.

Tolkien admits that he drew inspiration for his hobbits from the soldiers who were subjected to him in World War I, simple boys who, bravely, sacrificed themselves for their homeland in a war they didn’t want.

It is interesting to note how the hobbits, who, as we have said, most of all embody human psychological aspects, represent in the book all the ages of man: Pippin the adolescence, Merry the youth, Frodo the middle age and Bilbo the old age. In this way the stages of human life are presented.

Tolkien manages to summarize individual psychology with the collective psychology of race, lineage, age, giving us a rich and lively picture.

The psychological traits of hobbits emerge more from their dialogue than from the author’s descriptions.

The first description we have of Frodo comes from the comments of his fellowvillagers gossiping and the portrait that emerges is quite inconclusive, since talking about him are people who know him only by sight. The reader will fully understand Frodo only at the end of the book, after living all the trials with him, after seeing him overcome temptation or fall into it, help friends or feel the urge to flee leaving them in danger, fear or be confident. Frodo’s fall, his pardon of Gollum, his renunciation of arms, and his departure for the Gray Ports, are final brushstrokes given to a portrait that ends only at the end of the book.

On a genetic substrate of hobbit loyalty, goodness and tenacity, of “Baggins” fear, and “Took” resourcefulness, Frodo inserts contributions from the environment. His portrait cannot be painted at the beginning of the book by an omniscient author since Frodo is what he is at the end of the story only because of the vicissitudes faced, that is, the influence of the environment and experience.

The quest in the Tolkinian fairy tale is transformed into an educational experience that allows the characters to test their character, their moral strength, their courage. It brings out the virtues of the four hobbits that would otherwise remain hidden and unknown to their own owners. It can also bring out weaknesses and cowardice of which the protagonists were not aware.

Elrond refers to the quest as a formative experience, a reagent capable of highlighting the character traits of the protagonists of the fairy tale when he invites the members of the Company of the Ring not to swear:

“No oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road. “

The quest as a formative experience is characteristic of all folk tales.

The “The Golden Bird” quest helps Bertrando recognize evil even when he hides under a familiar face, the “The Eleven Swans” quest tests the protagonist’s love for her brothers.

However, in Tolkien’s works and in fantasy literature in general, this aspect is dramatically enhanced with a copious dose of explicit references.

Frodo’s journey takes on more and more the character of an inner ethical research. Frodo and his companions “descend” within themselves to seek the courage and will necessary to overcome all the tests.

In “The Lord of the Rings” there is a character whose characteristic is to be ambivalent by nature.

A very large part of the criticism has raged against Tolkien’s novel because it considers it too polarized. It is insisted that the good ones are too good and the bad ones too bad, that the symbolism of light and dark, black and white, is too obvious.

In our opinion, however, Tolkien has a clear perception of the ambivalences and contradictions present in everyday life. In writing a fantasy novel, however, he cannot make his protagonists complex, multifaceted, ambivalent characters such as a “Stephen Dedalus”, a “Moses Herzog”, or an “Anna Freeman”. In the economy of fantasy fiction this would be out of place. Tolkien must find a way to objectify even the ambivalent components of reality into symbols.

In Tolkien’s fantasy, just as there is a dragon to represent absolute evil, so there is a specific ambivalent character to represent internal conflicts. Instead of making Frodo too multifaceted, an alter ego is created, Gollum, perhaps the most fascinating character in the whole book, the one on which every critic dwells at least once.

Gollum’s mind was distorted by prolonged contact with the Ring. His possession of the One began with a murder and since then his wickedness has grown, making him a slimy, aquatic, cannibalistic, crawling creature, often associated with disgusting spiders and insects. Yet, in his mind there is still a corner of goodness, a glimmer of normality, and this is what tears him apart. He is a schizophrenic, whose nature is split in two.

The evil part, distorted and deformed by the obsession of the Ring, responds to the name of Gollum and always speaks in the plural with an abundance of hisses and gurgles, addressing himself or the Ring, “My Precious”. The still intact part retains the original name Smeagol, speaks in the first person and inexplicably grows fond of Frodo.

The linguistic fabric of the text also follows this split of the character, associating him from time to time with a DOG or a SPIDER.

One of the most moving moments of the book is the debate that the “two sides” of Gollum (meaningfully referred to by Sam as “Slinkler” and “Stinker”) hold between them in front of the sleeping Frodo. Gollum has to decide whether or not to betray the hobbit who does possess his “precious”, but who was kind and compassionate to him.

“Gollum was talking to himself. Smeagol was holding a debate with some other thought that used the same voice but made it squeak and hiss. A pale light and a green light alternated in his eyes as he spoke. “

“Gollum” tries to convince “Smeagol” that the only important thing is to take back the Ring. “Smeagol” whines that Frodo has been good to him and would not want to hurt him.

“Nice hobbit! He took cruel rope off Smeagol’s leg. He speaks nicely to me. “

In the end “Gollum” has the upper hand: “Each time that the second thought spoke, Gollum’s long hand crept out slowly, pawing towards Frodo, and then was drawn back with a jerk as Smeagol spoke again. Finally both arms, with long fingers flexed and twitching clawed towards his neck “

Gollum is a Tolkien study on obsession and damnation. More than disgust, he inspires pity, even in Sam, his archenemy: “Sam himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum’s shriveled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again.”

There is a similarity between Gollum and Frodo that Sam also notes: “The two were in some way akin and not alien: they could reach one another’s mind.”

Gollum is also of hobbit descent. Gollum is what Frodo could become if he let himself go to the power of the Ring, he is the double of Frodo, the alter ego.

In “The Lord of the Rings”, the dragon is renounced and, as Verlyn Flieger points out, a new type of “monster” is introduced. This too is proof of Tolkien’s syncretism that Flieger calls “modern medievalism”: modern conflicts are represented with ancient techniques of romance.

Frodo’s battle is psychological in nature, Frodo himself is the battlefiled, yet “The disrupted forces of darkness and inner conflicts must be represented by persons or objects outside the heroic characters.” (V. Flieger)

So Gollum, the madman, is introduced as “Today’s readers of a modern narrative, however medieval its spirit, may be reluctant to accept a truly medieval monster — a dragon or a fiend — but he is accustomed to accepting internal conflict, man warring with himself.”

Beyond the common struggle against Sauron, each of us must fight a personal struggle against our own Gollum, the dark, unaccepted part of us, the materialization of the unconscious.

Throughout the torturous journey through Mordor, Frodo virtually disappears as a thinking individual. All that remains of him is a body that becomes heavier and heavier to drag. His thoughts are known to us through the reasoning and actions of his companions: Sam, the good conscience, the super-ego that carries the ego on its shoulder to the goal, and Gollum, the shadow, the monster of id that pushes the ego to the brink of ruin, but, at the last minute, saves it, self-canceling itself. Gollum falls into the abyss: evil destroys itself.

After Gollum, the most powerful symbol of ambivalence is represented by Saruman’s clothes.

When he was still the wisest of the white Istari council, Saruman wore a suit. At the time of his betrayal, his robe appears sprinkled with many changing colors. Saruman, as White as he was, is on the way to becoming Black, like the dark Lord, as he meditates on betrayal.

Gandalf says: “I looked than and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were known so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered. “I liked white better”, I said. “White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. The white cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken. “ “In which case it is no longer white”, said I “.

And white, totally white, in a reverse path, will become Gandalf’s dress after the fight with Balrog and his resurrection.

Far from not recognizing the existence of ambivalences, Tolkien actually invites us to identify them in order to destroy them. He does not agree with the compromises: if the blank page is covered with writing, it is no longer blank, if you come to terms with evil, you are no longer on the side of good. Perhaps Tolkien can be accused of having a too rigid morality, but it cannot be said that he does not recognize the ease with which evil creeps even in the most positive characters.

Manlove complains that Tolkien’s characters are never actually tempted. This is not true: Galadriel, Gandalf, Aragorn, Faramir, Frodo, must make an effort to remain true to their fundamentally good nature. They have to kill their Gollum day after day. Manlove seems to forget Frodo’s final fall and Bilbo’s outburst when Gandalf asks him to take off the Ring. There are “good guys” who succumb to temptation, like Boromir and Frodo, or who allow themselves to be led astray, like Saruman, Denethor and Theoden.

Middle Earth is not an idyllic world threatened by a dark force, it is, on the contrary, “A decidedly post-lapsarian world, whose inhabitants, in addition to giving examples of loyalty, honesty, value, perseverance, also show that they are easy prey to human passions, while nature itself often shows itself in its most harshly hostile aspects.” (E. Giaccherini)

That of “The Lord of the Rings” is not a world easily understood by children, who are able to understand only the sharp divisions.

In “The Hobbit”, a book definitely for children, even geography respected these precise divisions. There were places “of danger” and places “of refuge”. In this respect, “The Lord of the Rings” is much more ambiguous, the forest of Fangorn, for example, is both a dangerous and a welcoming place; some of the characters settle there, others feel a sense of suffocation and annoyance.

At a first level of reading, we have the fairy tale, where the characters are good or bad, with no possibility of mixing between genres. At a second level of reading, however, filaments branch off from the clear distinctions, shades, which flake the contours of precise colors. Gollum, Saruman, Boromir and above all the dystopian county at the end of the book, show us how easy human nature is to be corrupted: “the white dress can be dyed”.

“Some critics object that the trilogy presents too simple a vision of good and evil, but though Tolkien follows convention in associating light with good and dark with evil, hand images reflect a morality that is no more black-and-white matter — both the black hand of Sauron and the white hand of Saruman represent evil, and the hands of the good characters hurt as well as heal — (the healing hand should also bear the sword)” M. Perret

The same hand can therefore contain evil and good, the Ring of Sauron and the vial of Galadriel.

To the category of critics who are annoyed by the strongly polarized symbology of “The Lord of the Rings”, belongs Chaterine Stimpson, who claims that “Tolkien’s dialogue, plot, and symbols are terribly simplistic. A star always means hope, enchantment, wonder; an ash heap always means despair. “

As we have seen, with to the symbolism linked to the image of the hand, this does not happen. Stimpson does not understand that the great Tolkien fairy tale needs, beyond the complexities of the modern novel — which, we repeat, also exist — of pure and crystalline symbols. They indicate which side is the good, the eternal, absolute one, the one that, as Aragorn says, “is the same for Ents, Elves, Dwarves, Men and Hobbits”, the one, in short, subjected by Tolkien to a recovery process.

Tolkien has always claimed not to proceed by symbols. His is a narrative made up of things. The elements of his books have value in themselves and not because they stand in the place of something else. A star is not hope but gives hope, while remaining, indeed precisely because it is, a wonderful star.

In Tolkien’s fairy tale the symbols are one with the thing they symbolize. The symbolism arises from the very nature of the objects that are inserted into the narrative, as an integral and indispensable part of it. The object always remains, above all, itself.

At the first level of reading, that of the fairy tale, there are Evil and Good, distinct and clearly indicated by the symbolism of light and dark, black and white. Tolkien created easy-to-read signage. It tells us which way we should look and how we should behave. However, he, a man of the twentieth century, can only recognize the conflicting essence of our existence, where opposites tend to mix rather than separate. This is why, at the second level of reading, that of the modern novel, the symbols are no longer so precise and ambivalences begin to shine through.

At first glance, Middle Earth is a fairytale world, ideally divided into good and bad, a utopia that shows us how beautiful and easy it would be if good and evil were clearly distinct and identifiable. On closer inspection, however, from this polarized secondary world, a reality transpires that is not polarized, and which is the same as that of our primary world.

The structure of the fairy tale has become for Tolkien a lively and effective means of presenting, by dramatizing it, a complex research of an ethical and inner nature. The quest model becomes the tool to highlight the characteristics of the characters.

The object of Frodo’s anti-quest is transformed into a psychic amplifier, the Ring becomes a field of fatal attraction, a continuous temptation that strains and puts even the most positive characters to the test.

The monsters, which the heroes must fight along the way, take on the character of powerful allegories of absolute evil.

In particular, one of these monsters, Gollum, is clearly an Id monster, a deformed and repulsive image of the protagonist Frodo (almost a portrait of Dorian Gray) capable of showing him what he is really made of.

Metanarrative

That there is a Tolkien quest in search of the narrative form that best suits the needs of his inspiration, is proven by the fact that “The Lord of the Rings” is always presented as a metanovel, a work in progress, a fairy tale that talks about itself. The metanarrative reflection unfolds throughout the book.

During the stop in Rivendell, Bilbo and Frodo meet and talk about the book that Bilbo is writing and which will be finished by Frodo and Sam. It concerns the War of the Ring and is none other than “The Red Book of Western Borders”, that same book which, “revised and corrected by Tolkien”, readers are reading in the form of “The Lord of the Rings. The debate between Bilbo and Frodo is Tolkien’s reflection on his own work. The writer talks to the character: “What about helping me with my book, and making a start on the next?” suggests Bilbo / Tolkien

“Have you thought of an ending?”

“Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant;” said Frodo. “Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after? “,” It will do well, if it ever comes to that “said Frodo.”

Tolkien is considering with the characters the possibilities of his own tale. What to do with it? A fairy tale with a happy ending, easy to read like “The Hobbit”? A mirror of real life where happy endings are few?

Up to Rivendell the novel follows in the footsteps of “The Hobbit” and is quite light. The first chapters, in particular, written immediately after “The Hobbit”, as its immediate sequel, have the childish tone of the prima materia hobbit.

“A long Expected Party” is very similar to “An Unexpected Party”. Gradually, however, the tone darkens, the infantilisms of hobbits diminish, the threat takes the form of a nightmare.

In essence, the first volume of “The Lord of the Rings” is very different from the other two because it is still drawn into the orbit of “The Hobbit”. During the first book Frodo grows up, from the passive hobbit, who must be rescued from danger by the servant Sam and freed from the clutches of the Willow Man, he becomes the enterprising hobbit who saves his companions from the specter of the Mounds.

In Rivendell, the story takes on a mythical dimension, the personal events of the small group of hobbits are placed in a historical context. Frodo accepts his destiny as the bearer of a universal mission. Bilbo’s young nephew, who in the first version of “The Lord of the Rings” was called Bingo, becomes Frodo, the Sage, the giver of peace and fertility, and Tolkien grows up with him.

It is with the awareness of the new value assumed by his own creature that Tolkien sees Frodo departing from Rivendell, meeting a destiny still uncertain in the writer’s own mind.

“Good … good luck!” cried Bilbo, stuttering with the cold. “I don’t suppose you will be able to keep a diary, Frodo my lad, but I shall expect a full account when you get back. And don’t be too long! Farewell!

The characters, especially Frodo and Sam, the heroes of the most difficult quest, the author dearest, never lose the consciousness of being “characters”. They themselves outline their essential characteristics in broad strokes and know from the outset what will be the main attractions they will exert on the reader:

“And people will say:” let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring! And they’ll say: “yes, that’s one of my favorite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn’t he dad? “Yes my boy, the famousest of the hobbits and that’s saying a lot.”

“But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. “I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far, without Sam, would he, dad?

You Sam were meant to be solid and whole, and you will be.

Almost Pirandello figures, the protagonists of “The Lord of the Rings” are looking not so much for an author, but for a literary genre in which to be inserted. “Who knows what kind of story we have fallen into?” Sam wonders. Will it be a fairy tale with a happy ending? A great myth to be sung in the years to come? One of the many stories never told because they end badly due to the untimely death, or desertion, of the characters?

Sam claims that he always believed that the protagonists of his beloved adventures had gone of their own accord to danger: “The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr Frodo: adventures as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folks of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. “

“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the minds. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually. Their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us; of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on. And not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same. Like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?

In the Italian version of the passage just quoted, the translator has omitted the line “the folk inside a story and not outside it”, condensing it into an anodyne “the protagonists” which greatly reduces the scope of Sam’s statement, which aims to a direct involvement of the reader in the story.

As before leaving Rivendell, the characters pause to discuss with their author the possible outcome of the story, so, before facing the decisive test of Monte Fato, they involve the readers in their reflections on themselves as characters, on the literary genre in which they are inserted, on the quality of the myth, on the value of the happy ending.

“I wonder”, said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take anyone that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad ending but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to. “

This is a clear warning to the reader: whoever recognized the model of the fairytale quest within “The Lord of the Rings”, can only be sure of the happy ending of the story, but this should not prevent him from fully understanding the atrocious sufferings of the characters, who do not know what kind of story they have ended up in and cannot foresee its happy ending. Having accepted the fairytale model of the quest with a happy ending does not mean taking away from the characters their human value, their suffering, their depth. Perhaps here Tolkien is really wondering if it would not be better to give up the happy ending so as not to belittle the characters, making them simple actors of fairy-tale functions. Tolkien chooses to take risks.

The model of the quest is the same for all the stories, so much so that they make one great story. Within this model, the characters change, they come and go according to the part assigned to them. However, for the brief moment in which they have life — a moment that is repeated at each reopening of the book — they are people and not characters, and they drink to the bottom the cup of bitterness or joy imposed on them.

“Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the iron crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that’s a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it. And the Silmaril went on and came to Earendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We’ve got — you’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the lady gave you! Why to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end? “No, they never end as tales” said Frodo. “But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later or sooner. “

We must remember here the similarity with the subsequent “The Neverending Story” by Michael Ende.

Sam wonders if he will end up in some written story or not. He is sure he is living a story, but not all stories are written: much heroism remains unknown.

“Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. “

Tolkien’s characters ask themselves: will we be able to see the book in which we are contained published? And again, will the author and readers allow us to know how it ends?

“We’re going on a bit too fast. You and I Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: “shut the book now, dad: we don’t want to read any more.”

As in Michael Ende’s famous fantasy novel, the reader is dragged inside the book by a game of mirrors, the reflection of which passes from the author to the character and from the character to the reader, sucking him into an “endless story”. Frodo and Sam belong to the same tale as Beren and Lùthien, we belong to the story of Frodo and Sam.

Even the most trivially polarized story in “good and bad” can be relative: “Things done and over and made into parts of the great tales are different. Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he thinks he’s the hero or the villain? “

“The hero or the villain?” who knows, it would be enough to look at the story from a different perspective and everything would be transformed.

Gollum, “the hero or the villain”, at the reader’s choice, has a moment of genuine goodness. He has just betrayed his hobbits, delivering them, like a Judas, into the hands of Shelob, yet when he finds them asleep together, innocent and simple in their sleep of righteousness, something moves in him, old memories of a past of normality, when he too he was a hobbit and had friends. So, “Slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee. But almost the touch was a caress. “

Gollum’s is a gesture of love, but Sam, awakened with a start, interprets it incorrectly. Gollum finally decides to abandon them to Shelob.

It is significant that this happens only two pages away from Frodo’s speech about the possibility for Gollum to be “the good” or “the bad” of the story. If Sam, “the hero”, hadn’t been so quick to condemn Gollum, “the villain”, the story, perhaps, could have been different. Or maybe not. The decision is up to the reader.

Tolkien, at the end of the story, no longer identifies with the fifty-year-old Frodo at the beginning of the book, but with old Bilbo. It has been fourteen years since Tolkien began writing the book. He is now in his sixties and there have been times when he has even feared that he is not, like Bilbo, able to see “the last chapters of his story”. Tolkien is now experiencing the irreversible experience of old age; he expresses it in the accentuated figure of the sleepy, confused old hobbit, unable to finish the book and even to tell the reason why he started it.

The metanarrative reflection continues with Bilbo / Tolkien talking about his great novel now running out:

“What’s become of my Ring Frodo, that you took away?” here “Ring” is clearly a synecdoche for “The Lord of the Rings”.

“I have lost it Bilbo dear”, said Frodo. “I got rid of it, you know!” “What a pity!” said Bilbo. “I should have liked to see it again. But no, how silly of me! That’s what you went for, wasn’t it: to get rid of it? But it is all so confusing, for such a lot of other things, seem to have got mixed up with it: Aragorn’s affairs, and the White Council, Gondor, and the Horsemen and Southrons, and oliphaunts — did you really see one, Sam? — and caves and towers and golden trees, and goodness knows what beside. “

and compares it to The Hobbit: “I evidently came back by much too straight a road from my trip.”

At the end of the third book, he mentions that even the eighty chapter of the red book is now complete, followed by a study on the possible titles of the Red Book; the one adopted provides an indication of the limited perspective chosen by the author: “as seen by the Little People”.

In conclusion, Tolkien seems to wonder throughout the book about the form this must take, about the quality of his characters, about the type of story he is writing. Practically “Frodo’s quest coincides with the author’s quest in search of his identity as a writer of fairy tales for adults” (O. Palusci)

By examining the structure, components and some stylistic techniques of “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien, we have come to the conclusion that there are undeniable structural similarities between this work and the fairy tale. Tolkien, however, reworks the fairy-tale material from the inside and then detaches himself from it. In fact, in order for the fairytale technique to still have value for adult readers, it must be transformed into a means capable of transmitting modern and current messages as well. Through an internal evolution, the Tolkienian fairy tale is enriched. It does not just tell a story that can be easily summarized in a series of functions, but creates a “secondary world”, thanks to the very particular subcreative technique. Then, by deepening the psychological analysis of the characters, it becomes a genre that is a synthesis of fairy tale and modern novel, or better still, a great fairy tale for adults. This, moreover, is the main feature of all fantasy literature, which derives precisely from the fusion of the fairytale world with the “realistic” narrative technique: “Fantasy, a new genre which used narrative conventions to remake the world of fairy-stories by way of realistic fiction.” (P. Grant)