Excerpts from "Tolkien: Archetype and Word" by Patrick Grant

"The Lord of the Rings embodies an "inherent morality....and many Jungian archetypes... illustrating the journey of individuation, or Selfhood, through many temptations of power, loyalty, fear, desire, friendship, courage, good and evil, etc. In traditional terms, it is a search for redemption and personal fulfillment, and confrontation with the shadow or primitive side of human life, and with wisdom embodied both male and female.

http://www.crosscurrents.org/tolkien.htm

Exerpts.

Tolkien's theory finds full embodiment in The Lord of the Rings. The trilogy is set in Faery, in this case the imaginary world of Middle-earth, at a time near the beginnings of man's ascendancy in the history of the world. Middle-earth is often dreamlike: a world of shifting contours and of magic, of nightmarish fear and exquisite ethereal beauty. Helpful and treacherous animals work for the powers of good and evil, and landscapes become sentient embodiments of human fears and desires. It is a short step to the appearance of nature spirits, like Tom Bombadil, or to the magic of the Elves, and, as we move closer to those who possess more than human wisdom and power, the contours of time and space themselves begin to blur. Although controlled by the narrative art and by basic structural oppositions such as those between light and dark, good and evil, the story moves basically in a world where forms and images blend and flow and interpenetrate, and where the eye of the beholder determines fear and terror, beauty and glory. All this has the very quality of that "interior space"

[14] which Barfield names as Jung's special province.

For Jung, certainly, fairy stories and dreams are characteristically inhabited by helpful and treacherous animals and monsters, and landscapes, especially when they involve woods and mountains, are favorite representations of the unconscious. [15] Jung also talks of a common figure, the "vegetation numen,"[16] king of the forest, who is associated with wood and water in a manner which recalls Tom Bombadil. Magic too is important, and Jung explains how "the concentration and tension of psychic forces have something about them which always looks like magic,"[17] He stresses also a "contamination" of images, by which he means a tendency to overflowing contours--"a melting down of images."[18] This, says Jung, may look like distortion and can be terrifying, but can also be a process of assimilation and a source of great beauty and inspiration. His perception applies precisely to the viewpoint technique of The Lord of the Rings: "The melting process is therefore either something very bad or something highly desirable according to the standpoint of the observer."[19] Jung also points to certain characteristic formal elements in dreams and fairy stories, such as "duality," "the opposition of light and dark," and "rotation (circle, sphere),"[20] but insists that they should not be considered apart from the complex flowing energy of the psyche. Moral choices are not simply a matter of black or white. Jung stresses "the bewildering play of antinomies"[21] which contribute to higher awareness. Good may be produced by evil, and possibly lead to it. This process, which Jung calls "enantiodromia,"[2] is also of central importance in the art of Tolkien: a broad opposition of light and dark, and of good and evil, becomes confused in the trilogy as we enter the minds of individuals in process of finding their way on the quest. Though Gollum bates light and loves shade, Frodo's relation to Gollum is extremely complex, and throughout the trilogy the minds of the men in particular are continually ambivalent.

That Jung and Tolkien isolate such similar motifs from fairy stories, dreams, fantasy, and myth, need hardly be surprising, but in The Lord of the Rings the inner drama corresponds also with particular fidelity to the details of the psychic process which Jung calls "individuation." This is, basically, the "realization of the whole man"[23] achieved in a balanced and fulfilled life when "consciousness and the unconscious, are linked together in a living relation."[24] The process involves a journey to the Self, which Jung describes as "not only the center" of a person's psyche but also "the circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious."[25] Characteristically, the Self is represented in dreams and mythology as a mandala--a square within a circle, or circle within a square, or in figures which are spherical or contain the idea of quaternity,[26] representing wholeness.

Jung insists that individuation, or Selfhood, is not mere ego-consciousness. As the short-sighted ego responds to the demands of inner growth, the way is indicated by representations of archetypes, those primordial and recurring images in human experience which express the basic structures of the psyche, and which become increasingly numinous, impressive, and dangerous as they emerge from the deeper levels of the unconscious. First, and nearest to the surface, so that we can become aware of it by reflection, is the shadow. The shadow is the "personal unconscious" and, among the archetypes, is the "easiest to experience."It represents the elements which a person represses as incompatible with his chosen ideal--"for instance, inferior traits of character and other incompatible tendencies."The shadow is ambiguous--it contains morally reprehensible tendencies, but can also display good qualities, such as normal instincts which have been repressed but "are needed by consciousness." In dreams, it is represented as a figure of the same sex as the dreamer, and, in accord with its ambiguous status, may be a threat which follows him, or a guide. It turns dangerous when ignored or misunderstood.

Further from consciousness is the anima/animus archetype. These are representations of the feminine side of a man's unconscious, and the masculine side of a woman's, respectively. The anima (the more important for Tolkien) is, like the shadow, ambivalent. She is both the nourishing and the destructive mother. On the one hand, she is Dante's Beatrice, the Virgin Mary, the Muses who inspire man to create, the dream girl of popular fantasy and song. On the other hand she is a witch, poisonous and malevolent, or a Siren who, however beautiful, lures a man to his death and destruction. For Jung, "the animus and the anima should function as a bridge, or a door, leading to the images of the collective unconscious."

More profound, and often presented with the anima as friend or protector is the archetype of the hero. He is often represented in a dangerous situation or an a difficult quest, which "signifies the potential anticipation of an individuation process which is approaching wholeness. ' The hero often has an aura about him of the supernatural, which offsets his vulnerability, another essential trait, for he is both semi-divine and child. "This paradox . . . runs through his whole destiny like a red thread. He can cope with the greatest perils, yet, in the end, something quite insignificant is his undoing." The hero archetype is often accompanied by strange and numinous events: "dragons, helpful animals, and demons; also the Wise Old Man . . . all things which in no way touch the boundaries of everyday. The reason for this is that they have to do with the realization of a part of the personality which has not yet come into existence but is still in the process of becoming."

The deepest archetype on the journey towards the Self is the figure Jung mentions above in relation to the hero, namely the Old Wise Man, a helpful figure who, "when the hero is in a hopeless and desperate situation . . . can extricate him."He is the magician, the Guru, a personification of wisdom. He seems not to be bound with time, and is strongly endowed with numinous power, for instance, of magic. Also, "apart from his cleverness, wisdom, and insight, the old man" is "notable for his moral qualities. But he, like the other archetypes, is also an ambivalent figure. He is like Merlin, and in him the enantiodromia of good and evil can appear most paradoxically.

In The Lord of the Rings the theme of a quest involving a ring, symbol of binding and wholeness which must be preserved from the powers of darkness and evil by the powers of light and goodness, suggests the beginnings of a typical journey towards individuation: the promise of a "true conjunctio" which involves the threat of dissolution, or "false conjunctio." Within the quest, Frodo, at the beginning, is childlike, and must. endure the terrors of monsters, dragons, and the underworld. Aragorn, his companion, who equally undergoes such trials, is of strange and royal origins, protector of a noble lineage, and a semi-divine figure with the magic power of healing. Frodo and Aragorn represent different aspects of the hero--Frodo his childlikeness, Aragorn his nobility and power, and each must support and learn from the other. The Hobbit, for good reason, as we shall see, receives foremost attention, and the story is in a special sense his. As it proceeds, Frodo puts off more and more the childlike ways of the Shire, and assumes the lineaments of heroism, acquiring, at the end, a truly numinous quality. Moreover, as his understanding deepens, Frodo moves through a process equivalent to Jung's individuation, which is charted by the main action of the book. He encounters the shadow (Gollum), anima (Galadriel), and Old Wise Man (Gandalf). Each archetype has a good and bad side, the good leading to understanding and fellowship, the bad to death, isolation, and the loss of identity or Self. So Galadriel is opposed by Shelob, the heroes by the Ringwraiths, and Gandalf by the evil magician Saruman. Gollum is, by nature, ambivalent. He is the shadow, or personal unconscious, and we will deal with him first.

At the beginning, Frodo does not realize his shadow personality, or that he is being pursued by Gollum. He knows only a vague uncomfortable feeling which increases as the story develops. As the fellowship sets out for Lothlorien, Frodo feels "he had heard something, or thought he had. As soon as the shadows had fallen about them and the road behind was dim, he had heard again the quick patter of feet." The others do not notice. Soon after, Frodo is startled by "a shadowy figure," which "slipped round the trunk of the tree and vanished" (1,360). Again, he alone sees Gollum who has been pursuing the ring, moving in the dark because he fears light.

Significantly, Gollum is of the same race and sex as Frodo, which, for a shadow figure, is appropriate. He is a hobbit, fallen into the power of the ring and debased to a froglike, emaciated, and underground creature of primitive cunning and instinct. He is certainly a threat, and one which Frodo must learn to acknowledge as representing a certain potentiality in his own being. To ignore the shadow, as Jung indicates, is to risk inflation of the ego. The relationship between Frodo and the repulsive Gollum therefore must become one of mutual acknowledgment, even if disapproved by others. Sam, to his own consternation, sees the peculiar link between the two: they "were in some way akin and not alien: they could reach one another's minds" (II, 225). So Frodo insists on unbinding Gollum and trusting his promise, and the shadow, ever ambivalent, becomes a guide, though without ceasing to be dangerous. Gollum leads Frodo first to Shelob's lair, but also saves him at the last moment from a fatal inflation of pride which would mean the destruction of the quest: "But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. . . . So let us forgive him!" (Ill, 225) .

Frodo has confronted Gollum before the party arrives at Lothlorien, but only after the encounter with Galadriel can he bind and release the shadow. The meeting with Galadriel is an overwhelming experience for the entire company and not only for Frodo. Although she deals more with him than with the others, she is not bound to Frodo in such a particular way as Gollum. Her significance is less in terms of the personal unconscious than the collective unconscious. She is a striking representative of the anima, a figure which, Jung says, is often "fairy like" or "Elfin," and Galadriel is, indeed, an Elf. She is also a bridge to the deeper elements of the psyche, and can reveal hidden contents in the souls of the company. "None save Legolas and Aragorn could long endure her glance" (1,372) as she shows to each one the dangers of the quest and the personal weakness each brings to it. In her mirror she shows to Frodo "parts of a great history in which he had become involved" (1, 379), and he responds with awe and terror. The numinous power characteristic of the anima almost overwhelms him, so that he even offers her the ring. Galadriel replies in words which clearly indicate the dangers of fixation on the anima, and warns of the anima's destructive aspect:

"You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. . . . All shall love me and despair! (1,381).

Frodo instead must use Galadriel's knowledge and wisdom to further the quest: she is a bridge to the darkness of Mordor, to which the hero must still journey. So Frodo carries with him the influence of Galadriel's fairy-like, timeless, and magically radiant beauty, and it serves to protect him. Symbolically, she gives him a phial of light to bear into the darkness. The light not only shows Frodo the way, but helps him against the Ringwraiths, and, most important, enables him to face Shelob.

If Galadriel is the anima in its beneficent aspect, Shelob the spider-woman is the destructive anima who often poisons to kill. Gollum talks of a mysterious "she" who may help him win back the ring, and he means Shelob--"all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness" (II, 332). As Frodo meets her, he holds up the light: "'Galadriel!' he called, and gathering his courage he lifted up the Phial once more" (II, 330). Galadriel's light and Shelob's darkness, the principles of life and death, of nourishment and destruction, contest for Frodo who must meet them both--the anima in both aspects, beneficent and malevolent.

Other anima figures throughout The Lord of the Rings present a similar appeal to that of Galadriel. Mainly we think of Arwen, another Elf, whose "loveliness in living thing Frodo had never seen before nor imagined in his mind" (1, 239). She is destined to marry Aragorn, and their Limon represents the "syzygy," the ideal union of anima and animus in which, says Jung, "they form a divine pair." The Self is often represented by the marriage of such a "divine, royal, or otherwise distinguished couple." Less fortunate than Arwen, however, is Eowen, whose love for Aragorn cannot be reciprocated, with the result that she becomes the victim of her own animus. When Aragorn leaves her, as he must, Eowen becomes, in disguise, the warrior Dernhelf, who "desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle" (IV, 242). Eowen, in Jungian terms, is possessed by the negative animus (often represented as a death-demon) which in this case drives her towards suicide. Such a possession often results, says Jung, in "a transformation of personality" which "gives prominence to those traits which are characteristic of the opposite sex. Only through the love of Faramir does Eowen change--"or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her" (III, 243).

The heroic figures of The Lord of the Rings are, as we have said, Aragorn and Frodo. One is a king in exile, preserver of a noble lineage, who passes through the paths of the dead, fights a crucial turn in the epic battle, and proclaims a new dispensation. The hero, as Jung says, is a "greater man . . . semi-divine by nature," who meets "dangerous adventures and ordeals," and encounters the Old Wise Man. Significantly, the numinous quality of the semi-divine hero is not immediately obvious in Aragorn who appears first as the ranger Strider, suspected by the party and by us. Only when we pass more deeply into the quest do we learn of his noble lineage, of his destiny and his power of healing. He grows in our minds in stature as he looks into the magic palantir, passes through the paths of the dead, and is received, finally, as king. Aragorn is very much the traditional quest hero, but we observe him, primarily, from the outside.

Frodo, though his birth is peculiar among hobbits, is not a born hero like Aragorn, and we observe him more fully from within, often sharing his point of view. As the story opens, we find in Frodo the vulnerability of the child which, according to Jung, often compensates the hero's powers. But Frodo gradually develops away from his early naiveté, from the diffident hobbit wondering why he was chosen and thinking to destroy the ring with a hammer (1, 70). Growth into higher consciousness is painful, yet, as Frodo carries the burden his power increases, and as he passes through the dark experiences which lead to the Council of Elrond, the numinous aura and magic of the hero archetype adhere increasingly to him. He finds he can see more clearly in the dark. In Galadriel's mirror he sees the depths of the history in which he is involved, and becomes the bearer of the magic light into the perilous realms. Slowly he acquires wisdom and a nobility comparable to that of Aragorn, so that, as we accompany Frodo's development and participate in it, we come to understand Aragorn himself more fully. As the tale ends, Frodo has achieved a heroic sanctity verging on the otherworldly.

The heroes throughout The Lord of the Rings are opposed by the Ringwraiths. As each archetype has a negative aspect, so the hero, says Jung, is especially threatened by dissolution "under the impact of the collective forces of the psyche." The characteristic challenge is from "the old, evil power of darkness" which threatens to overwhelm the hero and the self-identity he is striving to bring about. The power of Sauron the Dark Lord is exactly such an old and evil force, and in The Lord of the Rings his representatives, the negative counterparts of the heroes, are the Black Riders. The menace they present balances perfectly the power that emanates from the heroic Aragorn, while their dissolution in Sauron's old and evil darkness, representing the loss of Self, is indicated by the fact that the black riders have no faces.

The heroes must resist such loss of Self and grow towards wisdom, a spiritual quality represented by the profound archetype of the Old Wise Man. He appears in the trilogy primarily as Gandalf. More mysterious than the heroes, Gandalf's part in the quest is often beyond the reach of the story, and his knowledge remains unfathomable. When we first meet him, he seems more an old clown than a powerful magician. The interpretation of wisdom as foolishness is a traditional error of fools. In this case, it reflects the naiveté of the comfortable hobbits: Gandalf's "fame in the Shire was due mainly to his skill with fires, smokes, and lights. . . . To them he was just one of the 'attractions' at the Party" (1, 33). But Gandalf, like Aragorn, grows in stature as we, like Frodo, learn more about him. He is continually ahead of the quest, exercising a strange, almost providential control. He reproves Frodo for many mistakes, and seems to know the whole story in detail, even though it happened in his absence. "You seem to know a great deal already" (I, 231), says Frodo. We do not question Gandalf's knowledge, but believe simply that its source is beyond our ken.

Gandalf has a knack also for appearing when he is needed. At the ford he sends a flood in the nick of time as Frodo's will fades. His wisdom leads the armies to Mordor, and circumvents the trap set by the enemy who possesses Frodo's clothes. His eagles rescue Frodo and Sam at the last moment, and in the final episode of the story he makes sure (though we do not know how he knows) that Merry and Pippin will accompany Sam on his ride home, after Frodo departs for the Havens: " 'For it will be better to ride back three together than one alone' " (III, 310). Here Gandalf provides, as he does throughout, for the deeper need, and there is a touch of magic in his doing it.

For Jung, the Old Wise Man, as we have seen, appears especially when the hero is in trouble: "In a situation where insight, understanding, good advice, determination, planning, etc., are needed but cannot be mustered on one's own resources." He often, moreover, adopts "the guise of a magician," and is, essentially, a spirit archetype. Thus, the Old Man is sometimes represented by a " 'real' spirit, namely, the ghost of one dead." Tolkien, interestingly, has described Gandalf as "an angel," and we are to believe that he really died in the struggle with Balrog, reappearing as Gandalf the White, as embodied spirit, and a figure of great numinous power. Also, the Old Wise Man "gives the necessary magical talisman," which, in Gandalf's case, is the ring itself.

The Old Man, however, has a wicked aspect too. Just as Galadriel has her Shelob, and the heroes their Ringwraiths, so Gandalf has his antitype, the magician Saruman. They meet on equal ground, and between them the great struggle for self or dissolution of self is once again fought: "Like, and yet unlike" (II, 183), says Girnii, pointedly, as he observes the two at Isengard. Their contest is based on a symbolism of light: Saruman is at first White, and Gandalf, as the lesser magician, is gray. But Gandalf becomes white as Saruman falls to the powers of darkness and his robes become multi-colored, "woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered" (1, 272). Saruman's multi-colors, like the facelessness of the riders, indicates a dissolution of identity. White is whole: fragmented, it is also dissipated.

The final, and most elusive, archetype is that of the Self. Perhaps Tolkien's trilogy as a work of art which is more than the sum of its parts is the most satisfactory representation of this archetype, for the whole meaning is activated within the reader, who alone can experience its completeness. But the most effective mediator between the ordinary reader and "whole" world of Middle-earth, the character who is in the end closest to ourselves and who also must return to ordinary life, is Sam Gamgee. Sam has become, in the process of the story. Samwise, but he is less removed from ourselves than Frodo or the other characters. As he leaves, Frodo says to Sam: "You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do" (III, 309). The commendation of Sam's wholeness, and the directive to return to the ordinary world, bearing that wholeness with him, is also a directive to the reader: ripeness is all. But such wisdom as Sam achieves is not easily come by, as the entire book indicates, and there is no case for critical denunciation of Tolkien on the grounds that his hobbits are simplistic or escapist. The shire is not a haven, and the burden of the tale is that there are no havens in a world where evil is a reality. It you think you live in one, you are probably naive like the early Frodo, and certainly vulnerable.