Whose story is LotR, anyway?

[bakedweasels]

So I was re-reading The Lord of the Rings the other day (really, the other several days) and I'm interested in who people think the story is really primarily meant to be about--understanding that it's about all of these characters and more, but whose story is the "core" of the books, however the individual cares to define that? Maybe what I mean

Comments

[tirinian]

I think it's Frodo and Sam's story, and they're too closely intertwined to separate it into one or the other as the "main" character.

I think in some ways Tolkien *wants* it to be Aragorn's story - he's the one who gets the classic-hero-narrative, as you point out. But he's just not central enough or emotionally developed enough to be convincing as the star, to me. The movies do a better job of that, actually, and I think there's more claim that he could be the main character of the movies.

Gollum and Sauron are pretty much off the table for me. Gollum's an interesting character, but clearly an antagonist, rather than a protagonist, and you never actually see Sauron at all, he's just the mysterious force in the distance. Gandalf is more plausible, but I think he doesn't get enough "face time" to really work. I don't think he's who Tolkien *intends* to be the main character, in any event.

[bakedweasels]

The whole reason to ask this question is the fact that Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion, which reads like an outline of a world history book. Given that his world is so fully-defined, I think it's an open question whether Tolkien wanted to tell his BIG story to a wide audience (but knew nobody wanted to read his blueprints for a fantasy world, so inserted some little characters into it to give it a narrative) or whether he really had a fancy to tell the story of Bilbo/Frodo. I kind of think it's the former. I would certainly agree that if the books stood unaccompanied you would have to conclude that it was a story about Frodo and Sam (at least if you had to pick one thread).

[countertorque]

If the question is about what Tolkein actually wanted to do, I've heard it explained that what he really liked was inventing languages and cultures. He only wrote a fantasy war so that there was a story. How else do you explain all the songs and poems?

I don't think this is the same question you asked in your original post.

[bakedweasels]

Maybe not, but I meant it to be--or rather, I meant to ask the question in the OP without revealing my own thoughts on the matter fully. I think the original question is kind of trivial to answer unless you have the perspective I outline in the 2nd post, which doesn't so much change the question ("Whose story does Tolkien most want to tell?") as explain my thinking in asking it.

And I think you're right that what he really liked was inventing the world (with all its trappings)--hence the question.

Of course, it's entirely reasonable to look at all this and still say, "It's Frodo's/Frodo and Sam's story." I think really that's where I come out too. I just wanted to write down some of my thoughts on the issue and thought LJ was the place to do it.

[psychohist]

I think that at the core, the story is not about any person, but rather about the one ring and its demise. The closest thing the story has to a protagonist is Frodo, but there are substantial portions where he doesn't appear at all, such as all of book 5. Pretty much all of the story is about the ring, though.

Of course, that's not the question you asked. You asked whose story Tolkein wanted to tell, not whose he ended up telling. I think the person whose story he wanted to tell was Arwen: Tolkein is more interested in the elves, who are passing away, than the humans, whose fourth age is coming, and Arwen makes the greatest sacrifice of anyone in the story.

[bakedweasels]

Does she? That's a really interesting proposition, and one that is really hard to discuss online given the breadth of issues you have to address to come to a conclusion.

I'll disagree that Tolkien really wanted to tell Arwen's story the most. If so he certainly has a strange way of showing it. Arwen gets a lot more airtime from Peter Jackson than she does from Tolkien. I totally agree that the Luthien/Beren love story is really, really important to Tolkien personally and the mythology of Middle Earth. I could even believe that the story of Arwen and Aragorn is the most PERSONALLY important story in the books to Tolkien. I just don't know that that means he wanted to tell her story to others the most.