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The Structure and Aesthetic of Tolkien's Volume 1 Issue 2 Article 2 January 1971 The Structure and Aesthetic of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Randel Helms Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Helms, Randel (1971) "The Structure and Aesthetic of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings," Mythcon Proceedings: Vol. 1 : Iss. 2 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro/vol1/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythcon Proceedings by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mythcon 51: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico • Postponed to: July 30 – August 2, 2021 Abstract Describes five “laws” underlying Tolkien’s Middle-earth and how the action of The Lord of the Rings proceeds logically from them: the cosmos is ultimately providential; the result of an action is influenced by its intent; moral and magical laws are as important as physical laws; states of mind influence physical reality; and experience is the realization of proverbial truth or romantic convention. Keywords Realism; Secondary Belief; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings—Structure This article is available in Mythcon Proceedings: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro/vol1/iss2/2 Helms: The Structure and Aesthetic of Tolkien’s <i>Lord of the Rings</i> The StRuctuRe ano Aesthetico~ 'lolkierrs LORb Of The RiNGS by Randel Helms The inlegrity of critical discussion of The Lord of the the quality of the action. 'nlis paper is an attempt to show Rings is dependent on one's accepting at the outset that the that the quality and value of the narrative in fantasy liter• aesthetic principles by which a fantasy world operates are ature is dependent upon the richness and complexity of the different both from the laws of our own world of common• interrelationships between the action, on the one hand, and sense reality and from the aesthetic principles of realistic the internal laws or structural principles of the created literature: if we do not allow this difference, we shall find fantasy world, on the other. By "internal laws" I mean ourselves praising fantasy for the wrong reasons, or attack• chiefly the physics and metaphysics of the Secondary World, ing it !or not being what it was not meant to be in the first and since every fantasy is a new creation, a new world lim• place. ited only by the imaginative powers of its creator, each work The world of fantasy is a world of desire fulfilled, of of fantasy must be Judged by its own internal complexities. beauty past descriplion, of goodness and wickedness past It follows that the critic of fantasy must discover and form• defiling or redeeming: reflection on this circumstance will ulate the internal laws of the Secondary World he is examin• quickly make clear that the lilerature of fantasy is always ing in order Cully to understand the narrative principles or in perilous danger of sliding into mere wish fulfillment and the fictional action and to judge the success with which it sentimentality. Por this reason among others the author of fulfills its aims. I begin this study of the structure and fantasy needs a self-disc1pline analogous to but opposite aesthetic of ~ Lord of !!!.!, Rings, therefore, with a list from thal r~ired of the author of realistic narrative. Of of what I take to be the internal laws of Tolkien•s own Sec• course realism (I use the term in the widest and most general ondary World, Middle Earth. sense) has 1ls own kind of sentimentality (that found in (l) The cosmos is ultimately providential. (2) The Socialist Realism, for example, which presenls character and result of an action is the product of its intent: Lhal is. action not for the1r own sake but for the sake of the cause Middle Earth's moral structure works according to a kind of the arlist serves), and the greater the sentimentality, the "truth table'·: (-+) x (-+)•(-+), (-) x (-)• (-+). A good action closer "realism" comes to being fantasy. Similarly, fantaay with a good intent will have a good result: an evil action is also subject to sentimentality, but of an opposite sort: with an evil intent will also have an ultimately good result. for just as realism can degenerate into fantasy, so fantasy (3) Moral and magical law have the stature and force of phys• can degenerate either into realism (in the case, for example, ical law. (4) Will. and states of mird, both evil and good, of the dream-frame or time machine which the author feels is can have objective reality and physical energy. (5) All neceaaary to "explain" how his story could have happened), experience is the realization either of proverbial trulh, or or into daydreaming (the "realism" of the self-indulgent of romance convention, or or bolh. These laws, of course, imagination). The point here is that the realistic writer overlap in their effects, and some may even be subsumed under must always make clear (however indirectly) how such-and-so others, but I have stated them separately for clarity. In could have happened, for realism is based on an implicitly tho rest of this paper I hope to show that the structure of recognized ontology that grants reality only on a basis of the fictional action in each of the six books of Tolkien's cause and effect sequences. Pantasy, on the other hand, has trilogy is dependent upon the workings of some or all of . a totally different ontology behind it, and the fantasy these laws: for things happen as they do in Middle Earth, as writer must always keep in mind that what happens in his work in our own world, in keeping with its physics and metaphysics. nust accord not with his daydreams, and not with our own I shall examine each book in turn. world's law of COllllllOn sense, but in accord with fantasy's own All the action in Book I, and consequently in the rest peculiar ontology. of the trilogy, stems from Bilbo's act of mercy a1d pity in Tolkien himself has introduced the beginnings of a crit• The Hobbit--his sparing of Gollum's life, an act which sets ical notion about the ontology behind fantasy in his essay \i'i)"the possibility of Frodo's inheriting and bearing the Ring. "On Fairy Stories". Here, in his discussion of Coleridge's The sense of an over-arching Providence is not strong in~ conception of romantic poetry and the necessity of the "will• Hobbit, appearing only at the end in Gandalf's remar~ to Bilbo ing suspension of disbelief," Tolkien counters Coleridge's tfi'i'tliis adventures were not "managed by mere luck": but in idea by saying that "What really happens is that the story• .'.!:!!.!!. Lord of ~ Rings th~ actions of. Providence are i;>as ic to maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Second• the fabric of the narrative, and begin to be felt quite early ary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he in the first book, when Gandalf tells Frodo that Bilbo "was relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. meant to find the Ring ... In which case you also were You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside." meant to have it. ··3 This really is where, as we say, the The reader or fantasy needs, in order to remain inside the ~thickens; for Gandalf's speech corresponds to that by Secondary World, says Tolkien, not a neqative suspension of Elrond in Book II, when he announces to Frodo that "this disbelief, but a positive form of "Secondary Belief•• that is task was appointed for you" (1, 355). Frodo' s response to thO product of the author's own art. For, Tolkien concludes, the challenges to his will and courage and fellow-feeling "The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken: the magic, given by the revelations of Gandalf and Elrond are indeed or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary the formative moments, the seeds, from which the actions in World aga~n, l°'l\tng at the little abortive Secondary World Books I and II develop: for Frodo's Hobbit courage and self• from outside." effacement provide the moral force that sees him through the The disciplined fantasist needs, therefore, in order to adventures of the first two books. In other words there are maintain Secondary Belief, to be always looking at the struc• chiefly two laws of Middle Earth at work in Books I and II: tural principles, the internal laws, of the world he is Law 1 (the cosmos is Providential), and Law 2 (the result of creating: for his is a delicate art, and perhaps more than an action is the product of its intent). any other has a set of limitations that must absolutely be The rest of Books I and II flows from the possibilities respected. But of course the advantages concomitant to the set up by these laws; and, since such laws are clearly part limitations are equally great, perhaps the greatest of these of a romantic rather than a "realistic" cosmos, the two books being the enormous range in the kind of experiences the fan• are likewise structured according to the conventional pattern tasia can present (fighting a dragon, becoming invisible.
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