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MODES OF THE HEROIC


THE HUMBLE HERO


                    Tolkien addresses an existential question which has gained uncanny relevance with the emerging technologies of the 20th century. Does the mere ability to do something also justify doing it? Does Frankenstein's ability to replicate "life" make the creation of the monster a moral thing to do? Does wielding the power of the Ring to destroy Sauron make it essentially less evil or corruptive? The weight given by Tolkien to this distinction implies the wider scope of the question above. Acting for Good means understanding and consciously rejecting Evil; it means altruism and it sometimes means jeopardising oneself, and the motivation for doing so will always be beyond the comprehension of evil and corrupted minds. Indeed, the very loss of those motives is at the heart of their corruption. The fact that the Quest is based on the recognition of corruptibility and the renunciation of (unbridled) power is exactly why Sauron, for all his wisdom and cunning, could not have foreseen his greatest threat. It is a Quest of humility. Frodo may not be as wise as Gandalf, as fierce in battle as Boromir, as great a leader as Aragorn, but his heroism lies in the sustained choice of good over evil, (unbending resistance and self-sacrifice regardless of the odds) - a choice which is repeated with every hardship of the Quest until his entire being is spent in the struggle against the Ring. He did not take up the Ring in personal greed like Gollum, nor to gain power like Boromir would have, nor as a trophy, an emblem of strength, like Isildur did. Frodo accepted it with humility, resolved to renounce it, and this is a crucial difference.
                    Another approach to Frodo as hero is by juxtaposing him with the heroic patterns laid out in the monomyth. The theory of the monomyth, as proposed by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is based on comparative studies of hero figures across the world. The monomyth should be regarded as a synthesis of recurrent motifs in heroic quests of varying mythological traditions. We enter the story at a stage when order has been disturbed and the equilibrium of earlier times must be re-established. In terms of genre, a challenge must typically be overcome, or some dire threat looms over the land. The structure dictates that elements of chaos must be dissolved or unified in order to regain a state of balance. Joseph Campbell outlines the basic formula (separation - initiation - return) thus: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man"41 .
                    Contained within these stories is of course the medieval formula of the Quest narrative. In brief: a hero goes far and wide through great peril, achieves his goal and brings back with him the fruits of victory for the good of society or humanity. Often the journey entails a passage into an other-world in which the hero represents order amid chaos, virtue vs. vice, in short the culture of Man vs. untamed natural (or preternatural) forces. Incidentally, that particular motif is also closely related with the stages of initiation in ancient shamanic tradition. Although Tolkien’s epic tales are undoubtedly coloured by medieval sentiment and form, they are crafted on a unique level of complexity. The traits adopted from this generic tradition have been thoroughly explored by W.H. Auden in his essay "The Quest Hero". As he points out, the basic notion of the quest can be extended and elaborated beyond its medieval application and cover more profound existential processes: "human 'nature' is a nature continually in a quest for itself, obliged at every moment to transcend what it was a moment before" 42 . Indeed, Tolkien's use of the Quest motif and its concept of travel sheds important light on the narrative construct of his fiction. What is particularly interesting, however, is what he either avoided or completely remodelled in order to transcend the limitations of the basic Quest.
                    Frodo's Quest deviates from the generic formula first and foremost because it is not a mission for power, or retrieval of lost artefacts, but a hopeless journey toward the destruction of the very artefact of power. This effectively makes Tolkien's rendition an anti-Quest – a subversion of traditional patterns which at the same time signifies a complex and essentially modern view of power. Tom Shippey notes that the popular phrase which has aptly been applied to LotR, "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" reflects not medieval or mythical ideas of power, but a distinctly modern view. "This adage was first stated … in 1887 by Lord Acton" who continued the phrase: "Great men are almost always bad men…"43 . The concept of power itself as a corruptive force was alien to medieval thought, indeed it only emerged close to the beginning of the 20th century. The disturbing acknowledgement of human corruptibility and how power plays a part in this is found in contemporary authors such as George Orwell and William Golding, not in Beowulf or the Volsungasaga! Browsing through ancient views on this, Shippey concludes that "the nearest thing to Lord Acton's statement in Old English is the proverb 'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants' and what this means is that power reveals character, not that it alters it."44    Shippey uses this observation in his compelling revaluation of Tolkien as an author of the century, "responding to the issues and anxieties" of his time. Corresponding to the anti-Quest, the character of Frodo, who faces the combined might of Sauron, the armies of Mordor and the blood-curdling Black Riders, epitomises the most unlikely hero imaginable: indeed a distinctly modern anti-hero45 . Again, Tolkien not only recontextualises his mythic sources, his use attaches entirely novel implications to the echoes of the ancient, adding new layers of meaning and depth.
                    In comparing the traditional Quest with Frodo's anti-quest, the following discrepancy can hardly be stressed enough. The anti-quest is not, in fact, completed by the hero, but is achieved indirectly through other means. After innumerable hardships Frodo arrives at the Mountain of Doom, the heart of Sauron's evil "where all other powers are subdued". In this place, at the last moment, Frodo is finally mastered by the Ring. Again, Tolkien veers from the path of earlier Quests to seek out new ground and redefine heroic ethos. The question of Frodo's "failure" has always been open to debate. The fact remains that, physically and mentally drained and when the Ring was at its strongest, Frodo's will finally collapsed under its burden. This may or may not constitute failure, depending on one's definition. Tolkien's reflections on this problem certainly deserve mention:
Frodo undertook his quest out of love - to save the world he knew from
disaster at his own expense, if he could; and also in complete humility,
acknowledging that he was wholly inadequate to the task. His real contract
was only to do what he could,  to try to find a way, and to go as far as his
mind and body allowed. He did that. I do not myself see that the breaking
of his mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a
moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been - say, by being
strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.46
                    Indeed, the true reflection on Frodo's character is his selfless endurance and spiritual growth, implied by his mercy in sparing Gollum's life. This mercy effectively produces the situation in which Gollum's later intervention may indirectly (and inadvertently) destroy the Ring. In order to fully gauge Frodo's predicament, though, one must first seek an understanding of the nature of Evil and the truth about his burden.

  41Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, FontanaPress HarperCollins, London, 1993, p. 30  back
  42Isaacs & Zimbardo, op.cit. p. 40.   back
  43Shippey, J.R.R.Tolkien: Author of the Century, p. 115  back
  44Ibid. p. 115  back
  45Which, in relation to his role as mythic mediator discussed above, lets Frodo mirror the conflict of both medieval and modern heroism and old and contemporary theories of power.  back
  46Tolkien, J.R.R., Letters, p. 327  back

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