Friendship and Masculinity in The Lord of the Rings: The Influence of World War I Evelien De Pauw Studentennummer: 01000777 Promotor: Prof. dr. Marysa Demoor Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels. Academiejaar: 2017 - 2018 De Pauw 2 1. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my promotor prof. dr. Demoor for allowing me to choose a subject that I thought was very interesting and helping me explore how to do that in the best way possible. I would of course also like to thank my parents for allowing me to study and pursue a university degree, and supporting me in every way possible. My brother and the rest of my family for their support. My dear friends who also support me in everything I endeavour. I would also like to thank my uncle Bart, who now dwells in the Halls of Mandos, and introduced me to Middle-earth as a little girl. De Pauw 3 Content 1. Acknowledgements 2. Introduction 3. Tolkien and the Great War 2.1 Tolkien during the Great War 2.2 The Great War and The Lord of the Rings 2.3 Sam and Frodo in Mordor 2.4 Orcs, Haradrim and Germans 2.5 War Without End 2.6 The Hobbits as Returning Veterans 2.7 The Passing of an Age 4. Masculinities in The Lord of the Rings 4.1. Constructing and Deconstructing Masculinity 4.2. Femininity in Relation to Masculinity 4.3. Masculinity in The Lord of the Rings 4.4. Masculinity as a Hierarchy: Aragorn, Boromir and Faramir 5. Friendship in The Lord of the Rings 5.1. Homoerotiscism 5.2. Master-Servant Relationships 5.3. The Common Quest 6. The Influence of World War I on Masculinities and Friendship in The Lord of the Rings 7. Conclusion De Pauw 4 8. Bibliography Word count: 22 480 De Pauw 5 2. Introduction In this dissertation I will discuss the themes of friendship and masculinity in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954 and 1955), and the influence of World War I. World War I had an enormous impact on Tolkien’s life and I thought it would be interesting to discuss the friendships and relationship dynamics of characters in his epic high-fantasy classic, The Lord of the Rings. Firstly, I will discuss Tolkien and the Great War, in which I will provide an overview of Tolkien’s history during the war. He was sent relatively late in 1916 because he was able to first finish his degree at Oxford University. There he met three friends whom would form a group with. Eventually all four of them were sent to war and only two returned, one of them being Tolkien himself. This would leave an enormous impact on Tolkien and could perhaps be an influence on his later work. I will also discuss The Lord of the Rings in relation to World War I. Certain clear parallels can be drawn between known war experiences and evidence from the text, like e.g. the landscapes from nightmares and the desolation of Mordor. Related to that would be Sam and Frodo making their way through Mordor, with the help of the creature Gollum. A comparison could also be made between the Orcs and Haradrim on one hand, and the Germans on the other. But Tolkien himself did not hate the Germans necessarily, but the Nazi propaganda and destruction was something that rightfully angered him, especially the glorifying of Nordic culture and heritage. The general sense hopelessness is also a theme that is present in The Lord of the Rings that was also present among British soldiers during the Great War. The Hobbits can also be seen as returning veterans, all of them coping in different ways with the De Pauw 6 aftermath of war and grief and loss. The Passing of an Age, at last is also a concept that is present in The Lord of the Rings. Secondly, I will discuss Masculinities in The Lord of the Rings. I will begin with trying to define what masculinity is through constructing and deconstructing it. It is a feminist post-structuralist goal to disrupt the inequality of gender roles and expectations through critical reflections of texts. By deconstructing how language constructs gender, readers may be able to question and challenge the inequalities that exist. It is suggested that, although the books themselves do not invite criticism of hegemonic masculine values, it can provoke multiple discussions about its various messages about masculinity. Masculinity cannot exist without femininity, so it is also interesting to take a look at femininity in relation to masculinity. It is a well-known fact that are a lot more male characters in The Lord of the Rings than female. The female characters also get a rather small role compared to their brethren. However, I will discuss the characters of Galadriel and Éowyn briefly. Both of these female characters possess traits that can be ascribed to femininity on the one hand, and masculinity on the other. The femininity is also present in the portrayals of the friendship between Frodo and Sam. I will also discuss masculinity as a hierarchy with the characters Aragorn, Boromir, and Faramir. Thirdly, I will discuss friendship in The Lord of the Rings. Friendship can be considered almost as a motif in the books. It is a very important element to the trilogy, since new friendships are made and develop further as the story progresses. Most friendships seem to follow the traditional views on friendship, but Frodo and Sam’s friendship seems to challenge those views. The question of homoeroticism arises. The physicality between Frodo and Sam seems to support such views. There are also several De Pauw 7 master-servant relationships present in the trilogy, Frodo and Sam’s being one of them, but also Merry and Théoden, and Pippin and Denethor. Another aspect that could help form the friendships in The Lord of the Rings is the common quest bringing them together. This is apparent in the relationship between Gimli and Legolas. They are enemies at first but become great friends later on in the story. And finally, I will try to bring all these arguments together in a chapter and try to answer the question: Has World War I influenced Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in friendships and masculinities? De Pauw 8 3. Tolkien and the Great War One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous and experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. (Tolkien, Foreword to The Lord of the Rings) In this section I will look at how the First World War had an influence in Tolkien’s life and work. Tolkien was born in 1892 and was a young adult during the Great War. In 1916, at the age of 24, he left to fight in France together with a group of friends he met while studying at Oxford. Nancy Marie Ott’s essay (2018) takes a speculative look at how J.R.R. Tolkien’s service in the British Army during World War I may have influenced his fiction, and particularly The Lord of the Rings. While it might not be an allegory of World War I, she points at a number of similarities between it and the war. Ott also makes the important statement that it is dangerous to assume that an author’s life experiences are directly reflected in his or her fiction. Tolkien is not a World War I writer in the sense that, say, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, or Ernest Hemingway are. These writers directly portrayed their war experience in their stories and poetry. Instead, Tolkien’s war experiences are sublimated in his fiction. They surface in the sense of loss that suffuses the story, in the ghastly landscapes of places like Mordor, in the sense of gathering darkness, and in the fates of his Hobbit protagonists. (Ott 2018) De Pauw 9 Tolkien himself stated that the war had a limited influence on his writing. In the Foreword to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien himself states that his work is not allegorical. But in a letter to his son Christopher he once wrote that he “took to ‘escapism’: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out.” (Letter 73, Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) Ott adds that World War I represented everything that Tolkien hated: the destruction of nature, the deadly application of technology, the abuse and corruption of authority, and the triumph of industrialisation. It interrupted his career, separated him from his wife, and damaged his health. Yet at the same time it gave him an appreciation for the virtues of ordinary people, for friendships, and for what beauty he could find amidst ugliness. (Ott 2018) 3.1 Tolkien during the Great War When World War I broke out in 1914, Tolkien was working on his degree in English Language and Literature at Oxford. He was unwilling to leave Oxford but joined the Officers Training Corps, which deferred his enlistment until after he had finished his degree.