Lord of the Rings: Tragic Destiny

The role of choices, courage, and tragedy in Lord of the Rings

Jude: After talking about the plot of Dune last time, today we’re going to talk about the plot of Lord of the Rings. With Dune, we discussed the fact many readers see Paul as conventional hero, active and triumphant, but Frank Herbert intends him to be seen as a tragic hero who is trapped by his fate. For Lord of the Rings, I think that instead of reading one protagonist in different ways, readers find themselves with a choice of protagonist.

Thomas: Yes, and as we said when talking about the popularity of Lord of the Rings, I don’t think Tolkien meant for readers to have a choice. He wants hobbits to be the modernist viewpoint that help us access the mythic world of Gandalf, Aragorn, and so on. For all of Fellowship of the Ring it seems crazy there are four hobbit characters—to the point that Elrond even complains about it from within the story—but Merry and Pippin eventually split up in Return of the King to mediate Rohan and Gondor for us.

Jude: But there are other options. Even within the text, you can argue that Sam ends up being the protagonist. It’s mostly his efforts that move Frodo to the end of his quest. He gets the last lines of the book and the most unambiguously happy ending.

Thomas: True, though I think readers today have some real issues with Sam. Lots of people read Fellowship of the Ring and feel a little uneasy about him even if they don’t quite put their finger on the fact that, although he doesn’t have a title, Frodo lives the life of a rich nobleman. He’s in an agrarian society but appears to do no physical labor and in fact doesn’t appear to produce anything of any kind. His Sackville-Baggins relatives are said to want his house, but perhaps they really want the rents that tenants are paying him to support his lifestyle. Sam’s slightly obsequious servitude is a nagging reminder that there’s a huge class divide between not just Frodo and Sam but between Frodo and nearly every reader.

Jude: There’s no denying some amount of early twentieth-century British class consciousness is intruding on the narrative with Sam, but I think it’s important that he isn’t ordered to go with Frodo. He volunteers, and not just at first when he doesn’t know what he’s getting into. He repeatedly passes up opportunities to avoid danger and it’s clear he’s motivated by genuine friendship with Frodo.

Thomas: Eventually it’s friendship, certainly, but I’d call his motivation for much of the story something much more like loyalty. People are pretty suspicious of loyalty these days and even more sensitive to power imbalances. We prefer to imagine friendship as best expressed between equals. The less mutable classes of Tolkien’s childhood probably made unequal friendships make more sense to him and people who read it at the time of publication.

Jude: Anyway, I think that as a hero, Sam still fits into the story in a similar way to Frodo. He is better rewarded than Frodo since he gets the family he wanted and becomes a leader of his community, but like Frodo, he succeeds through courage and endurance. He’s not special, he’s not of noble blood, and he isn’t some kind of great fighter.

The alternative protagonist I want to consider is Aragorn. I think Tolkien meant Aragorn to be more of a mythic ideal than a full-fledged character. He has no real flaws and doesn’t meaningfully grow or change over the course of the story. Hollywood considers this unacceptable: characters must face inner obstacles that mirror the external challenges they struggle against, so Peter Jackson tries to give him a lack of confidence, a fear that he’ll repeat the mistakes of Isildur…but it doesn’t really amount to much even in the movies.

Thomas: Now that the movies leaned pretty hard into Aragorn as an invincible action hero, it hard to get that out of our heads, but I think in the books he’s a bit more of a wise leader who is decent but not extraordinary at sword-fighting. He fights beside Boromir and then Eomer and does fine, but he himself is essentially a human Macguffin, a plot coupon who can be traded in for a King at Minas Tirith (and having a King instead of a Steward means +10 to Gondorian soldier morale, I guess).

Jude: If you put it like that, I guess he’s also a plot coupon for the Paths of the Dead. Redeemable for one army. But the point is that Tolkien doesn’t invest him with much inner conflict or depth because he’s just supposed to be a moral exemplar.

Thomas: Yeah, for some crazy reason Tolkien seems to have thought that readers couldn’t empathize with a character who has the wisdom of a hundred-year-old scholar, has the athleticism of rookie NFL player, is widely praised for his lifelong career of unappreciated heroism (bit of a paradox there), is the secret heir to the throne of a great kingdom, and has a girlfriend who everyone agrees is, at minimum, one of the two or three hottest people on the planet.

Jude: When you put it like that, I do start to see a lot of myself in this guy…

Thomas: You joke, but while Tolkien was a smart man in a lot of areas, he doesn’t seem to have understood that everyone is, in their own minds, super-smart, potentially super-athletic if they had a need to apply themselves, and completely unappreciated by the dim bulbs around them. Maybe they don’t have the hottest significant other possible and they aren’t universally acclaimed as rightful ruler of all free people…yet…but if they did and were, it would be no less than they deserve! It’s obvious everyone is going to gravitate toward Aragorn and not Frodo “extremely short, weak, prone to fainting” Baggins.

Jude: Frodo is at least rich.

Thomas: He is, but he doesn’t enjoy it enough. It’s not really clear what Aragorn does with all his time prior to the start of the story, but we’re repeatedly told it’s valuable and helps defend the unknowing townspeople of Eriador. Very selfless, but he also has time to frequent the Rivendell party scene and hang out with his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Frodo goes for walks and looks pensively off into the distance.

Jude: Yeah, and since we’ve been talking about Dune, it’s worth noting Paul Atreides is clearly an Aragorn-type figure, not a Frodo or Sam.

Thomas: Exactly. Paul Atreides is absurdly special, yet readers still root for him and see at least a little of themselves in him.

Jude: And the fantasy genre books that followed in Tolkien’s footsteps jettisoned the Frodo archetype almost from the start. For example, Garion and Rand al’Thor, protagonists in David Eddings’ Belgariad (1982) and in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (1990), are humble people who turn out to be from kingly bloodlines.

Thomas: Let’s throw Luke Skywalker in there too since those authors probably had him in mind. In fact, I’d argue that these characters aren’t as elevated as Aragorn. He seems humble, but unlike them he knows his ancestry at the beginning of the book. The Luke Skywalker farmboy template is the innovative idea that a hero should start out as Frodo, or maybe even Sam, and then over the course of the narrative they discover that—phew, what a relief—they aren’t Sam at all but are Aragorn instead.

Jude: Am I right that there’s more than a little judgment in your discussion of Aragorn-as-protagonist? Sophisticated people like you and Professor Tolkien appreciate Important Literary Themes and thus appreciate Frodo’s tragic journey, whereas the benighted masses want simple stories about Aragorn becoming king and winning the hand of the fairy princess.

Thomas: No, I’m a man of the people. It was only last week that I unleashed the scorching hot take that tragedy is lame. I’m not saying I’m perfectly consistent, but it’s going to take longer than seven days for me to forget and contradict myself. The Aragorn-centered halves of Two Towers and Return of the King are way more exciting and more fun than the Frodo halves. Are you going to pretend to disagree?

Jude: I…I guess not. I want to like the Frodo storyline more, but the Aragorn storyline is much more fun. But I don’t think that’s because Frodo is a tragic hero and Aragorn is a conventional one. After all, we said Sam is also a more conventional hero and he’s right there in every scene with Frodo.

Thomas: Sure, but he’s not declaring his ancestry, impressing local noblewomen, and leading armies of both the living and the dead.

Jude: I think what I’m saying is that Frodo’s storyline is much more interesting in theory. It’s got way more psychological depth and nuance. Even the dialogue is more impressive, I’d say. Frodo, Sam, and Gollum each have a unique voice. You would know who’s speaking even if the dialogue wasn’t attributed.

Aragorn’s obstacles are easier to appreciate. They’re visible and external: armies of orcs, corrupted allies, even a spooky path. There’s lots of sympathetic characters there helping him, people like Gimli, Legolas, Eomer, Merry, Pippin, and Eowyn. Gimli and Legolas aren’t all that distinct in the book, actually, but Eomer, Eowyn, and the two hobbits all offer interesting contrasts. Oh, and of course there’s Gandalf, the only reliable source of information in what otherwise is a wide and confusing world. People gallop this way and that, battles with thousands of people are fought, we get to see several distinct societies, including one that’s a small number of talking trees. It’s all just…fun.

By contrast, Frodo’s chief obstacles are either more abstract (like the increasing “weight” of the Ring) or more prosaic: there’s a mountain range in my way, we ate our last food, and so on. There’s some cameos from Faramir and some orcs but basically there’s just three characters locked in an unpleasant friend-triangle. And one of them is Gollum, who is a microcosm of the whole storyline: a very interesting psychological portrait but in practice quite tiresome.

Thomas: I’d also say that the Shelob sequence is probably the most frightening thing in the story by a good measure. That could be a benefit or a detriment, depending on your tastes. The paths of the dead sequence is, let’s be honest, way less successful. It should be a big moment, but it’s pretty dull on the page. Being told in flashback doesn’t help.

Jude: The books present it in flashback to preserve the twist of the appearance of the corsair ships becoming Tolkien’s “eucatastrophe”, the suddenly good outcome. That moment is amazing and really works well, so I think it’s worth abandoning any dramatic tension that you might have felt following Aragorn to Erech without the flashback structure (very little, by the way, no one would believe some random zombies are going to do in Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli at that point).

Shelob being a terrifying spider is unpleasant, but that’s only in a few scenes. I think the bigger issue is that there’s this pall of despair over the entire storyline. It seems impossible that Frodo could succeed, and Frodo himself is a real downer. Is it accurate to say he’s struggling with an ever-deepening Ring-induced depression? It’s just not a fun time.

Thomas: So maybe all this is an intentional effect. It’s like those old movie theaters that tried to make movies more immersive by blowing wind in the audience’s faces during horseback riding scenes. Frodo’s chapters inspire the same feelings of hopelessness, threat, and claustrophobia in the reader that Frodo himself is feeling. The reader struggles to turn the page just as Frodo struggles to keep taking steps. Then, when the Ring is destroyed, both Frodo and the reader feel an exhausted relief.

Jude: I’m not sure that’s true, but maybe you’re right. Certainly it’s written in a very different register than the Aragorn storyline, that much must be intentional. Maybe that’s why Tolkien didn’t interleave the chapters. Doing that, as the movies do, makes everything kind of average out. I guess Tolkien really was a literary genius!

Thomas: If “genius” means “intentionally wrote a very tiresome set of chapters”, then, sure. Congratulations. But I’d rather read fun stories, not the intentionally unfun stories.

Jude: I guess it’s worth saying here that we both read Lord of the Rings for the first time two and a half decades ago, so our impressions of the experience of reading Frodo’s story is almost entirely coming from rereads. It’s a little odd to say this because I don’t think of Tolkien as someone who does M. Night Shyamalan twists, but Frodo’s storyline does have something of a twist ending. How can he possibly get himself to the mountain, you wonder, and even if he makes it, it’s clear he’s too far gone to throw the ring away himself. Tolkien has an ingenious solution to this, but when rereading you probably remember it so that source of suspense isn’t present.

Thomas: You might be right about that. Almost everything else about the story holds up really well on reread. It’s been a really long time, but I’m pretty sure that the significance of what happens to Frodo after throwing the Ring into the fire is something I didn’t really appreciate on the first read. I certainly picked up on the very bittersweet tone of the concluding chapters, but I think I didn’t really grasp why it wasn’t ending like every other story I knew.

Jude: Yes, like Paul Atreides, Frodo has a tragic destiny. Through great heroism, he brings the Ring to the fire, but the process of getting there has left him unable to resist claiming it for himself. It’s only through a lucky break of sorts that the quest doesn’t fail. Except it’s not really “luck” when Gandalf has several times broken the fourth wall to muse that “his heart tells him” Gollum still has “some part to play”. Checkov’s Gollum comes down from the mantle and fires. Or bites, I guess.

Thomas: I have to note here that it’s actually not just Providence that saves Frodo.

Jude: Yes, yes, Frodo chooses to spare Gollum. He shows mercy and therefore is shown mercy himself.

Thomas: Also true, but I actually mean something else. When they first accept Gollum as a guide, Frodo doesn’t just trust blindly. He extracts an oath:

‘No, I will not take it off you,’ said Frodo, ‘not unless’ - he paused a moment in thought - ‘not unless there is any promise you can make that I can trust.’

‘‘We will swear to do what he wants, yes, yess,’ said Gollum, still twisting and grabbling at his ankle. ‘It hurts us.’

‘Swear?’ said Frodo.

‘Sméagol,’ said Gollum suddenly and clearly, opening his eyes wide and staring at Frodo with a strange light. ‘Sméagol will swear on the Precious.’

Frodo drew himself up, and again Sam was startled by his words and his stern voice. ‘On the Precious? How dare you?’ he said. ‘Think!

One Ring to rule them all and in the Darkness bind them.

Would you commit your promise to that, Sméagol? It will hold you. But it is more treacherous than you are. It may twist your words. Beware!’

Gollum cowered. ‘On the Precious. on the Precious!’ he repeated.

‘And what would you swear?’ asked Frodo.

‘To be very very good,’ said Gollum. Then crawling to Frodo’s feet he grovelled before him, whispering hoarsely: a shudder ran over him, as if the words shook his very bones with fear. ‘Sméagol will swear never, never, to let Him have it. Never! Sméagol will save it. But he must swear on the Precious.’

Gollum swears not to allow Sauron to have the Ring, even though Frodo warns him the Ring will twist his words. Later Frodo notes that with the Ring, he can command Gollum:

"In the last need, Sméagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command."

And then on the slopes of the volcano, Gollum attacks Frodo and we can infer he does put on the Ring and command him:

…and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.

‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’

So when Frodo gets to the fire and seizes the Ring for himself, Gollum’s oath to protect it from Sauron activates (even with the Ring, Frodo isn’t strong enough to prevent Sauron from taking it from him, Tolkien said later in a letter). But Gollum’s oath twists against him: he takes the Ring from Frodo, but then the curse Frodo put on him activates and he is cast into the fire. Gollum’s betrayal of his word is his doom, but it’s the Ring’s own power that causes itself to be destroyed.

All of which is to say that if you are reading carefully, Frodo uses the Ring to destroy Gollum and, by extension, the Ring itself. Maybe the twisted oath part is fortunate, but Frodo insists on the oath and even notes before Gollum swears that it will be harmful to Gollum. His command later is clearly intentional.

In another book, this would all be placed at the forefront and celebrated as clever spellcasting. Tolkien puts it there but really doesn’t emphasize it. To him, I think, it’s not at all laudable and actually shows how corrupted Frodo has become. Using the Ring to force someone to do anything is a huge sin for Tolkien, no matter how well-intentioned. The fact it makes Gollum incinerate himself makes it a lot worse. Some of Frodo’s later trauma may be guilt over doing this, and his pacifism a sign of growth and repentance.

Jude: That’s a great example of the subtlety and craft of the Frodo storyline that is very admirable and really makes me wish I liked it better than reading about Aragorn fighting orcs. It’s also something I bet hardly anyone catches on their first reading. But the overall theme of the story is consistent: Frodo and Sam are heroes who save the world by being courageous amid hardship and steadfastly doing the right thing.

Thomas: That’s the way it’s very different from Dune, where first Leto and then Paul are trapped in the same manner as tragic heroes have been trapped by fate going all the way back to ancient Greek drama. Paul frets and peers into the future, but all his choices lead to jihad.

Jude: The nature of the tragedy is also very different, to the point that we should probably be using a different word. Frodo isn’t a tragic figure like Oedipus, he’s a tragic figure in the colloquial sense of the word. He ends up so scarred and traumatized by his experiences that he never can live a normal life. I don’t think it’s too absurd to say he has literal PTSD, in fact, even though the medical concept hadn’t been invented yet. Tolkien presumably drew on what must have been firsthand observations of the psychological aftermath of the world wars in soldiers.

Thomas: “Shell shock” as they said in the first World War.

Jude: Right. But I was saying that not only is Frodo not a prisoner of fate, he heroically saves the world and though of course the world is still a declining place, it’s vastly better off thanks to Frodo’s efforts. But the price of that victory falls on to Frodo.

Thomas: Not entirely on Frodo. Tons and tons of random people die during the story. Think of poor Grimbold, the Rohorrim commander who dies at the battle of Pelannor Fields! He probably left behind a family who miss him terribly.

Jude: Okay, but you know what I mean. Frodo has made the world a better place, but he personally is worse off. That’s almost the reverse of what happens to Paul Atreides. He ends Dune as Paul Maud’dib, messiah and emperor. Just from a quality of life perspective, he’s doing great. It’s the world that suffers as the jihad rages. Even the Fremen themselves are worse off, both in the moment as tons of them die on campaign, and then later as their culture gets effectively destroyed by Paul’s tyrannical successor.

Thomas: And since we’ve said personal courage is such a big theme of Lord of the Rings, it’s worth noting that courage seems almost completely absent from Dune. It’s plans within plans, big social forces, terrible purpose, inevitable jihad, and so on. No sense that staying strong in adversity is all that valuable.

Jude: The Fremen’s plot-important peerless fighting stems from their adverse conditions. I guess it takes a certain amount of courage to live in the harsh desert conditions.

Thomas: But they don’t have a choice. The moment they have any ability to choose, they want to terraform Arrakis and get rid of the deserts.

Jude: I guess to sum things up, while some form of Providence is looking out for him, Frodo achieves his destiny through his own choices. And while he’s particularly negatively impacted, the bittersweet ending shows us every character, even the mighty King Aragorn, ages and passes away. That’s their tragic destiny, and ours.

Thomas: Wonderful. Glad we’re ending on such an uplifting note.

Jude: Sorry, but next time we’ll lighten the mood a little bit with some irreverent commentary on famous quotes from these books. Just to switch things up, we’ll start with Lord of the Rings quotes and then look at Dune.