The Trickster in LotR
 

I've been reading The Quest for Merlin by Nikolai Tolstoy (Little, Brown & Company, ©1985)

(I don't know of any relation to the famous Russian author.)

Who in The Lord of the Rings does the following remind you of? I'm not going to reveal who it reminded me of; I'd prefer to avail you of the same opportunity to react to the text below the way I did, without someone else's notions to clutter your reading. Once you have made your choice, it might be interesting to compare and contrast which elements fit LotR, and which don't, and what that may mean in the context of LotR. (Sorry if this is beginning to sound like a college level English assignment, but I think it would be interesting to take a look at how Tolkien used this Trickster archetype, what he integrated and what he discarded or used in another way.) :p

I'll quote at length.

In a later chapter Tolstoy is writing about shamanism and says this:

These personalities can readily be listed: Til Eulenspiegel, Loki, Enkidu, Hermes, Pan, etc.

To summarize, Varuna has his Shiva; Lug has his Cernunnos; Odin has his Loki; Enkidu has his Humbaba; Jekyll has his Hyde.

So anyway, thanks for bearing with me through this somewhat long batch of quotation. I'm quite sure that Tolkien has made use of the Trickster in LotR; what do you think?

Hmm, an interesting find, LMP!

While I don't see any one character which encompasses every trait listed, there are a few which immediately come to mind for specific traits.

This made me think Saruman first, but now that I think about it, it can also encompass Morgoth, Sauron, and possibly Feanor. All were creators: Saruman less so, but he did breed orcs; Morgoth created the orcs in the first place; Sauron created the Ring; Feanor the Silmarils. All were also destroyers, although to different extents. Saruman was destructive in war; Morgoth was perhaps the most destructive being ever. Sauron and Feanor are interesting cases because their creations led to their downfalls. The Ring was used against Sauron, and if only Feanor hadn't made that silly oath, then he would not have died (at least, not fighting for the regaining of the jewels).

Now for the giver and negator: Sauron is Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. He gave the Nine rings to men and created the Nazgul, removing all humanity from them via his gifts.

The last bit of the above quote was what made me think of Saruman. He dupes others by means of his voice, but in his desire for power has foolishly convinced himself that he could go behind Sauron's back.

This made me think of Eru, although perhaps wrongly, since he does intervene on occasion for the side of good. Usually, though, he just stays aloof and watches. He is responsible for both good and evil, being the Creator, but not in a direct way.

Again, I think of Feanor. He dared to deny the Valar, and with his oath sank to a terrible level, ie: Alqualonde. The oath itself sealed the fates of he and his sons. Yet it cannot be denied that he was a master smith, and not always a bad person.

Here I think of Gollum. This is in a more subtle way, though. Gollum is a malevolant presence for much of the book, and he is willing to kill for the Ring. But, he has a small chance of redemption as well. He teaches Frodo pity, and in the end is partly responsible for the Ring's destruction. He leans in both directions, though I don't think he could be called a "culture hero."

This is much like Gollum and Smeagol, always at odds.

I look forward to reading others' views. :)

This kinda reminds me of Tom Bombadill, strangely enough.

Edit; Whoops, cross-posted with Elianna
The character who leaps to my mind for this archtype is Bombadil, This fits pretty well.
This is also represented in the text, though it is a little less obvious. It is obvious that he is responsible for good, through helping the hobbits, however at the council of Elrond Gandalf says he would not take the ring This seems to indicate he has no knowledge (or care, which is probably a better way of putting it) for 'good' or 'evil' as the outside world defines them. It could also be stated that he is responsible for evil, as he is Master of the Old Forest, an area feared as evil by the Hobbits.

Several of the Trickster's defining qualities are noticably missing from Bombadil, however. They show up quite nicely in Gollum, however, as Encaitare points out. Gollum also has the whole "responsible for both good and evil" thing going, although I wouldn't agree with the case that he doesn't know them. I also agree with Enca that Gollum doesn't count as a culture hero, though I guess that one's open to debate. In the context of LotR as a myth, Gollum has a pretty good hold on a trickster archtype. However, in the context of Middle-Earth itself, I still like Bombadil.

In the end, although Bombadil has many aspects of the Trickster, he is clearly a cleaned-up one. This makes some element of sense, as Tolkien's world is quite a bit more (can't quite find the right word...) socially acceptable than the sex-and-gore world that the Trickster largely inhabits in various cultural mythologies. Tolkien also (at least in LotR) takes some pains to delineate the boundary between good and evil, and someone so ambiguous as the Trickster archtype could not reasonably exist in all his full glory in the context of LotR. (IMHO, at least)

At first I was thinking of Sauron. However when it said I thought of Gollum. he doesn't think of right or wrong. He only follows his own desires, mainy his desire for the ring.
Also he truly is a trickster. he tricked the elves of Mirkwood who held him prisoner. He also tricked Frodo and Sam when he led them into Shelob's Lair.

I second, or rather, third the motion nominating Bombadil.

I also find some element of The Trickster in Bombadil's enigmatic nature.

However, I also agree with Encaitare that no character in the stories completely fits the bill.

Indeed the similarities with Tom Bombadil are striking. The parts that do not fit may be because we know this character too little, or they haven't had a chance to manifest themselves in the given situations.
Even the part about him not having control over impulses being a subject of his passions (notice that it says 'at times'). And impulses and passions don't necessarily have an evil connotation, so I can see Tom Bombadil behaving impulsively.

The only problem I see is that Tom appears too little in the story so that he could be perfectly equivalent to the Trickster character. Tricksters usually play a predominant role, and their actions lead to major events. While Bombadil just prefers to be out of the way and is unconcerned with 'greater matters' such as the Ring.
So I agree with Garen on this one:
In any case, it's strange how this very interesting quote could lead to comparing two so different characters such as Gollum and Tom Bombadil!

I think, as others have said, there are a few characters who manifest the Trickster archetype in LotR. In fact, if we take into account the early drafts, Bingo plays the role to an extent in his encounter with Farmer Maggot, wearing the Ring & drinking a mug of beer, & running off with the farmer's hat!

If we look at The Hobbit we see Gandalf playing the same kind of role when he turns up at the start & tricks Bilbo into joining the Quest of Erebor.

Its almost as if the Archetype 'overshadows' various characters at various times, rather than any one of them being The Trickster throughout. I wonder if its not misleading to look for a single character personifying any archetype in Tolkien's world. Chrysophylax plays something of the same role in Giles, as does Alf in Smith.

Perhaps the Archetype in its 'pure' form was too powerful & dangerous (as well as uncouth) a figure for Tolkien to be entirely comfortable with giving him his head. Bombadil very nearly got away from him, after all, & had to be carefully restricted to his own little land to stop him running riot. Tolkien was very careful in his use of the 'purer' mythological & psychological Archetypes - for instance, its very significant that in a mythology which makes such strong use of 'Northern' myth he carefully avoids the use of ravens. They pop up only in a minor way in the Hobbit, & this is probably because of all the incredibly dark connotations they have in Norse & Celtic myth.

I suppose Tolkien was walking a fine line in his own mind between recreating what had been lost, & producing what to him would have seemed something dangerously atavistic. The Archetypes had to be presented in a 'civilised' form, they had to be 'dealable' with for a modern audience, & principally they had to conform to his Christian worldview. The Trickster has no place in orthodox Christianity.....

I don't agree. I believe we do know enough about Tom's general character to make some comfortable assumptions about him, strange as that may sound. Can you picture him appearing with a *FLASH* *BANG* and ravishing young hobbit maidens, going on a looting spree of Bree, or leading an army of Huorns and Ent-wraiths to flatten the Shire?

Well, I guess there was that one time...

...and I think I just came up with a new crackpot theory about what happened to the Ent-wives.

This is an interesting question. I can see how Bombadil and even Gollum have some characteristics that fit this archetype. But my gut feeling is that Davem has put his fingers on the problem we face:

I agree Tolkien was very aware of such archetypes but was leery of using them in their full blown form. When I first read Littlemanpoet's question, I was reminded of several things Tolkien wrote about Celtic myth and the Arthurian legends from Letter 131. Here Tolkien talks about his desire to reconstruct a myth that would be dedicated to England:

The italics are mine. I think this is where Tolkien signals his intention to part from some traditional archetypes like the Trickster that do have a big role to play in something like Celtic myth. (Or at least I think they do. :rolleyes: I am no expert here at all.) He was aware of these archetypes, and they will influence his characters, but he softens them considerably in an effort to get away from the "gross". I think Davem is right in suggesting that Tolkien looks at archetype and even faerie through the mindset of his Christian beliefs.

In reference to the Arthurian legends, Tolkien also complained it was too "fantastical, incoherent, and repetitive". Maybe, this too suggests that he was determined to "tame" his archetypes to produce the pure, elusive beauty he wanted rather than having them appear in pure form. Certainly, the "trickster" in its original conception can rightly be labelled "fantastical".

Kuruharan -

I had to smile at your picture of Bombadil going on a rampage! The only way I could imagine him doing this is if he drank too much. Kind of like a northern Dionysius!

Some more interesting similarities...
 

Now, I know we've gone over the 'Tolkien and Eastern thought' thing a lot, most recently in A hint of Buddhism?
This bears some startling (albeit probably unintentional) similarities to Gollum's journey, especially if you subscribe to the opinion that he was redeemed by his mis-step at the Crack of Doom.

how I reacted to the quote...
 

Thanks for the fascinating responses, all.

Allow me to recap my thought process as I read the quoted text.

I immediately thought of Tom Bombadil, not least in context of the visible souls thread, which somehow devolved into yet another attempt to grapple with who and what Tom Bombadil was. It seemed to me that I had stumbled upon the best answer yet.

This validated my thought of Bombadil.

At this point I thought, "more or less yes to creator and destroyer (made a home for Goldberry and himself; destroyed Old Man Willow's hold on the hobbits, and later that of the Barrowwight on them); yes to giver and negator (he gave the hobbits shelter & safety & good stories); but no to dupe and duped. In fact, he proves to be quite immune to being duped; think of how Frodo put on the Ring and it didn't work with Tom. Well, if not Tom, then who? Gollum! Okay, he is a destroyer, and a negator, and does dupe and is duped. But only the negatives. Hmmm....."

The tame by comparison to the archetype, Bombadil can't help but dance and stomp, not to mention rhyme even in normal conversation, and can't help being devoted to Goldberry (which maybe takes on new meaning in the context of his Trickster identity). But this fits Gollum even better.

Okay, this doesn't work for Tom. Tolkien removed this part of the Trickster from him. On the contrary, Tom seems to be quite aware of both good and evil, but is affected by and responsible for good but not evil. Whereas Gollum knows good and evil, his appetite for the Ring overpowers.

Okay, this is less true of Tom but true of Gollum in terms of the Ring's power to overcome all other considerations in his life.

Indeed. It occurred to me that Tolkien's answer was to separate out the positives to Tom and the negatives to Gollum. What I find most interesting is that Gollum, of the two, is more amenable to the status of culture hero than is Tom; something that could only be true in our own age, I wager!

All three aspects of this are true of both Tom and Gollum in their own ways.

In the case of both Tom and Gollum, again, in different ways, quite.

Okay, this time we've moved away from Bombadil and find ourselves very much with Gollum, especially in terms of leading, if not teaching.

Ah. Gollum versus Sméagol.

It was this quote that sealed it for me: Tolkien had done the same thing with the Trickster in LotR: Tom Bombadil received all the positive traits, and Gollum some of the positive but all of the negatives.

I too found it startling to be comparing these two characters out of all of them in LotR.

If you have not read the two poems that make up The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, I assure you that they will only serve to cement the notion of Tom as Trickster.

I was interested to see the other characters some of you thought of, and I can see how you could have thought of them. For me, I decided to play the game of seeing which character(s) from LotR best fit the most aspects.

davem's gives us wise words of caution, and I agree in part; nevertheless, the two characters of Bombadil and Gollum succeed in filling out the role of Trickster in LotR. Indeed, I think that to understand Bombadil as Trickster, answers much of the puzzlement that we have about him. This answers how Bombadil is "oldest" - he is the oldest archetype.

On the contrary. Orthodox Christianity has long since adopted the Trickster as one of the primary manifestations of Satan. Think of Christ's 40 days in the desert and the three ritual temptations that followed. Since you've read the book, davem, I would have thought you'd maybe remember Tolstoy's comments about how the Christian "myth" dovetails so amazingly with the myths of Trickster, Three-fold Death, the god dying to himself for the sake of his people, etc.

Its a long time since I read the book. I can't argue with Tolstoy about the way the Church took up various 'Pagan' ideas (& even Pagan sites) & 'Christianised' them - there's a famous letter from Pope Gregory quoted by Bede which advocates the new Archbishop of Canterbury do just that: http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/mellitus.html

What I meant was that the Trickster in his pure formhas not been accepted into Christianity. The Trickster is not a 'moral' being, but he isn't evil per se. Having said that - & here I may be arguing against myself - in the early Church we do find 'The Lord of Misrule': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Misrule but he doesn't seem to have lasted very long, & was declared 'unChristian'

I think that attempting to define the Trickster is in itself difficult, maybe even impossible. The nature of the Trickster is shifting and unpredictable, it is the essence of its nature not to be defined. We can say what we think the Trickster is like, but once we think we have a finger on him/her/it everything changes again; it has to, or else it would not be the Trickster.

In this respect, both Gollum and Tom have elements of the Trickster, but neither of them are the Trickster. Tom Bombadil I would certainly say is not the Trickster of old. He is too good in his essence, and though he could be capable of malevolence or mishief or seemingly misplaced deeds, he does not do this in the text, and this really would be placing our own wishes onto him. If he is the Trickster, then he is a wholly sanitised version and the entirely dark and chaotic nature of Tricksters is missing.

The Trickster is common in folkore worldwide. The best known is probably Loki, and the Native American culture also has memorable Trickster tales. It can be seen in our own folklore in figures such as Will O' The Wisp, Boggarts and The Glaistig:

Tricksters are intangible and they have neither good nor bad intentions, they just have intentions, and we cannot fathom them out. I would say that the best exemplar of the Trickster is Fate itself as it just is, and we cannot explain why. The old gods are all somewhat capricious in nature, and the Trickster most of all. Tolstoy's definition is just one definition, and just one will not do when we are talking of Tricksters because if we think we know what it is then up it will come and change itself again just to spite us and to show us that we do not understand. I think they represent that wild, unpredictable side of life, in humans, animals and the environment, and in modern terms, such concepts as anarchy and chaos.

I was immediately struck by this, before Bombadil or Gollum came to mind. Gandalf's character in the hobbit is much more whimsical and in character with the idea of the Trickster than in LOTR. While he is in some cases the deus-ex-machina that allows the company to make it out of some desperate situation (the encounter with the Trolls), he is nearly as likely to just disappear and leave the dwarves and Bilbo more or less defenseless. He comes and goes seemingly without rhyme or reason (although this is filled out a little bit in other writings when the larger history becomes clear) and he is clearly mischievous and a little devious. Although you know that he is interested in seeing the mission to Erebor succeed, he vanishes before the crucial moment and isn't seen again until after the dragon is dead.

Anyway, very interesting topic.

Sophia

I think it is really neat that both Tom and Gollum can be applied to this definition.
They are completely opposite in their role in the books and yet they both seem to match the Trickster.

One thing thought. Tom Bombadil doesn't care about good or evil whereas Gollum doesn't know.

Though difficult to define, the Trickster is certainly recognizable and identifiable, or this discussion could not have even been begun.

Allow me to give evidence, from the Tom Bombadil poems.... (bolds mine)

Bombadil orders Willow-man to let him out. It starts raining. Badgers take him captive underground, saying they'll never let him out; he commands them to show him out and go back to sleep. They do, begging his pardon!

Then the barrow-wight gets loose at night and threatens Tom; Tom orders the bw back underground. Barrow-wight obeys. You don't have any sense in all of this for the gut wrenching fear of the hobbits, as is found in LotR.

Next day he captures Goldberry and takes her home. She seemed to be willing, since their wedding was merry, but it's like he commands and she obeys!

"Bombadil Goes Boating" has more of the LotR feel by comparison, although the whimsicality is still there. Yes, all the dark and negative and chaos has been removed; so Bombadil, as Tolkien's Trickster, is "scrubbed", as it were, and all that dark does appear to be cast off onto poor Gollum, the culture hero that has captured the imagination of the world, it seems, not least because of that movie...

...cutting out half of the Trickster. :p

Littlemanpoet -

You may be interested in this brief quotation from The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien by Currie and Lewis. In their discussion of Tom Bombadil, the question of the Trickster is raised:

So we're not the first to consider the twin possibilities of Bombadil and Gollum. The book The Individuated Hobbit does at least refer to a number of archetypes in passing (it's been years since I looked at it), but I can't remember if Trickster was among them.

For some time, I had tried to discover if Tolkien was personally familiar with the writings of either Jung or Joseph Campbell, or whether he simply understood so many of these things from his own studies of the actual myths. There's nothing in the Letters or other writings to answer this directly, as far as I know. My feeling is that any discussion of Trickster and/or other archetypes inevitably leads back to one of these two thinkers, if only to acknowledge their work with a brief nod of the head.

I recently ran into an interesting discussion on just this topic. The moderator of the Joseph Campbell Foundatin forum apparently wrote Verlyn Flieger, and received the following answer to the question of whether Tolkien was familiar with the writings of Jung and Campbell:

An interesting letter, I think. So it sounds as though JRRT definitely read Jung and probably read Campbell, but that his main understanding of such things came from his grappling with the original myths, which certainly isn't surprising.

For the link to the whole discussion, see the Campbell Foundation. A word of warning....these folk aren't Tolkien experts. There are a number of factual errors ranging from JRRT's birthplace to a discussion of David Day, but I have no reason to think the letter from Flieger wasn't real.

Sorry if this is too far off track, but the minute the word "archetype" comes up or a term like "Trickster" I can't help thinking of Jung.

least worst fit?
 

It's somewhat reassuring to learn, Child, that I'm not the first to think of this.

I'm not surprised that Tolkien was well versed in Jung, or knew Campbell.

Notwithstanding this rather self-confident statement of negation, I still think that the Trickster (in its positive elements) is the least worst fit for Tom Bombadil (more or less on a par with Churchill's statement regarding democracy, if you know what I mean). ;)

Don't know if Tolkien had read Campbell, but Campbell had read Tolkien:

(From an interview on TORN. Whole interview:http://greenbooks.theonering.net/tur...es/061304.html)

Petty also makes some very interesting points in regard to the issue we're discussing in the 'Dumbing us Down' thread on Movies. In fact, there's a link to another interiew Petty gave which I'll place on that thread....

I'm pretty confident that it was Anne Petty's article in a Mythlore magazine from some odd 20 years ago in which she outlined the plot structure of LotR along these lines. I'm interested in checking out her books. Thanks for the link, davem.

A domesticated trickster
 

What an incredible thread and so many very thoughtful and considered responses to lmp's hypothesis.

I think Lalwendë's observation that the Trickster figure is more than is contained in Tolstoy's list of attributes is well-taken, but still the attributes provide something to consider. I am a bit leary about some of the comments in the Tolstoy quotations, about primitive cultures and such, and the idea that the Trickster was most fully characterised in North American Amerind cultures. There are plenty of trickster figures in African culture, the Anansi or spider god in particular. It might be helpful to read over some the tales, including Loki tales, to help decide the 'fit' for Bombadil.

But I would like to return to one of the earlier comments which I think Garen Lilorien first suggested, that Bombadil is a cleaned up character.

I would not have first thought of Bombadil as a Trickster figure in fact because he is so 'cleaned up', yet thinking of this mythological archetype helps me understand why Tolkien stubbornly included Tom in LotR and defended him as an enigma.

If the moral universe of LotR is one where, as Tolkien suggested in one of his letters ( I am relying on memory here), the Christian mythology was absorbed into the symbolism of the legendarium, then an irrational character could not have god-like attributes. What is that famous line, that LotR is "consciously so [Christian] in the revision? At the very least, I do not read Eru as being irrational, nor the universe of LotR to be happenstance and chaotic. Even mistakes, errors of judgement, terrible events, become fortuitous at least. This is the aspect of eucatastrophe which Tolkien discusses in "On Fairy Stories."

Given a philosophical universe which is not haphazard, how could Tolkien have employed the Trickster god in his full nature as mischievous, malevolent, primordial? It seems to me that something had to change. Thus, we have a Bombadil who is this unusual, wily, unpredictable in some ways, but who is not part of the panoply of characters who clearly belong to the wrong side. Tom is, after all, master, as has been argued elsewhere, of himself. Thus, he is an expurgated Trickster of sorts.

Is this fair to say?

This is interesting, but thinking about the true nature of the Trickster, then it does not fit. I agree that Tolkien's universe is an ordered one, and therefore any Trickster figure would have to 'fit' into this, and in effect be 'expurgated'. Looking at it this way then Bombadil could be a kind of Trickster. But if so, then he is not a Trickster.

This figure is uncontainable and unpredictable and only 'fits' into a disordered universe. The Trickster was used to explain those events which were simply inexplicable, which is why I said that the closest thing to him in Tolkien's world is fate itself. Even with this I am not sure, as fate seems to be directed by Eru, whose existence, ordering things which happen within that world, would render the need for a Trickster obsolete. Tricksters seem to occur more in worlds with multiple gods, with shamanic forms of worship and more reverence for the chaos of nature; in worlds with a God, then they do not need to exist as the presence and direction of God explains away what the Trickster is there to explain.

I don't think there is a real Trickster in Tolkien's world. There are characters who show aspects of the Trickster, but to show just aspects is not to show the true nature of this figure.

Well, after sitting through a hilarious lecture on the Trickster the other day, this thread was a welcome find!

Looking back over my lecture, notes I noticed that the professor mentioned the way that Goethe used the archetype of the Trickster in the Mephistopheles character, as well as the title character himself, in wiritng his famous play "Faust." The main idea was that Faust does a kind of "demolition derby" on the proper order of things in his area of influence, and is encouraged and aided in this by Mephisto. Now, both Faust and Mephisto are generally baddies (I mean, Mephisto comes straight from Hell, that is pretty clear, and Faust is responsible for ruining Margarete's life), but they are also quite charming and provide much of the comic relief and insight. Not to mention the tiny little fact that Faust is actually redeemed in the end...So is he ultimately a bad guy... or not really? Or is he meant to be neither good nor bad, yet certainly somehow more human than another archetype?

I'm really not sure what Tolkien's opinions on Goethe were (though something tells me they might not have been very favourable... anyone want to prove me wrong?), but it would seem that in possibly exploring the Trickster archetype in his own work, Tolkien wanted to take things a few steps further than Goethe. If we are indeed to believe that Tolkien was keenly aware of the Trickster archetype and the way it related to the universe of his own creation, then he probably wasn't particularly fond of it. It's not just that the Trickster's machinations are often uncouth, it's that the general moral ambiguity didn't mesh with any of the themes Tolkien was exploring. It is as if Tolkien wanted to discredit the Trickster myth, if he indeed chose to include elements of it in Tom Bombadil and Gollum, as if saying that you can't really be both good and bad, a line has to be drawn. And Tolkien certainly wasn't up to exploring the comedy of the Trickster stories, being more somber in his treatment of this archetype than Goethe.

In general, it seems that if a taboo is broken in Tolkien's works, the consequences are never funny or ambiguous.

Also, littleman, you mentioned that Tolkien, in his usual style of purging the gross, chose not to pay any attention to the ravens of Norse myth. Well how about the fact that he also didn't mention the Norse goddess that fertilized the ground with her menstrual blood? ;) The Trickster certainly couldn't stand up to such a rigorous screening process and still remain intact.

Not having read Faust, I can't comment intelligently. I know, you'd think by now I'd have gotten around to Faust, but no. Sorry.

In general, yes. But a hobbit leaving the Shire for parts unknown is itself a taboo of sorts. So is entering the Old Forest. So is a strong desire to see Elves, or to disappear from before the eyes of 144 birthday party guests by the aid of a magic ring (or any aid, for that matter). So there are enough specifics to lead me to question your generalization.

As for the ravens, I think you may have your attribution wrong. That was in Regin's post, he quoting a Letter of Tolkien. Be that as it may, and me having never heard of the particular mythical instance you site, there is much in Norse myth that he never mentioned that had nothing to do with magic wielding Elves or Wizards. In other words, every writer is going to dip his ladle into the soup of story and come out with a different set of ingredients; that Tolkien has not used all of the elements of Trickster does not mitigate the fact that the Trickster can be discerned in LotR.

I have to defend the comment by Lush:

I think she is right, and the examples given here prove it:

Yes, they are all breakings of taboos, but they do lead to serious consequences. Very severe consequences. If a Hobbit had not left The Shire then a certain ring would not have been found. This indeed eventually turned out fortunate for Middle Earth, but I wonder would Bilbo or Frodo have thought that way?

Indeed, there is much that Tolkien could have included but did not. After all, he was creating his own myth, not merely rewriting old ones. So he would use essential elements of certain archetypes as he saw fit. He included something of the Green Man but did not include the female Sheela-na-Gig, perhaps as she was a little too crude. ;) But the fact that he used elements of certain figures makes me realise that yes, I can accept that elements of The Trickster are discernible. But I must still be contrary and say that not to allow the Trickster full reign is not to have a true Trickster.

But Faust is well worth a read (and another read, and another...), and I think Tolkien may have read it himself, as whether at a subconscious level or not, he drew elements of Faust into the creation of Saruman and possibly Sauron.

Okay, I'll give you that one...
 

because you have a built in choice between either funny or ambiguous. If it's not one, it's the other. Other taboos: Eowyn's disobedience, riding with the Rohirrim to Pelennor; Faramir not bringing the Ring to his father; I'm sure there are more.

Aragorn palling up with the deceased. The future of ME being decided by four short crumpet-lovers. A decided twinkle in somebody's eye methinks.

/because you have a built in choice between either funny or ambiguous. If it's not one, it's the other./

I do?

Hm. Sorry, can't quite understand.

I think that the above broken taboos still demonstrate a departure from the Trickster. An improvement even, if you will. Because the Trickster archetype is, from my understanding, meant to make us uncomfortable by its moral ambiguity. I don't see anyone doing just that in Middle Earth, except for maybe Gollum, but only up to a point (especially when I keep his death in mind).

Eowyn disobeys and the Hobbits wander into the Old Forest for specific reasons; Eowyn is out for death and glory and ends up slaying the Witchking in the process, the Hobbits are trying carrying a Ring that will decide the fate of the world. This isn't Trickster. There are echoes of Trickster, yes, of course, but I don't really see him there in his entirety.

And it's not that I'm saying that Tolkien had no sense of humour, but that it's markedly different from the kind of humour used in the Trickster myths I'm familiar with.

P.S. "Faust" is a great read. Though nobody has yet told me if there is any information on how Tolkien felt about Goethe. Any takers? :)

What I meant, Lush, was that some of the broken taboos in LotR lead to "not funny" stuff, and others lead to "not ambiguous" stuff. Some lead to both. None lead to neither (sorry about the triple negatives there). So between the two parts of your assertion, I say "yes, that's true".

But what about The Hobbit, or doesn't that qualify as Tolkien? :p

Bilbo tries to swipe Bill the Troll's wallet (at least I think it was Bill), and that sure as heck was funny. More Trickstery too, don't you think?

Oh, it's terribly funny, I agree. But that's what I would call an echo of the Trickster, not an actual true-to-archetype representation. If Bilbo was really acting the Trickster, he would first swipe that wallet, then take a poop in it, then provide us with some joking reference on the filthy nature of monetary transactions though without really giving a hoot as to what he's done, then... Well I best not go on.

Having said that, I'm no expert on the Trickster. I'm only familiar with the Native American and Chinese versions in any depth. So please feel free not to take me seriously. It's just that my instincts tell me that Tolkien wouldn't be all that fond of this archetype (then again, my instincts also once told me that "Saw" would make for a decent movie-going experience, so by all means...)

Yes, I agree, a very interesting thread. . .but I gotta say that I think, like davem, there may not be any 'room' in the moral fabric of Tolkien's world for a true trickster figure.

As has been mentioned here several times, one of the definitive components of the trickster is that he is amoral: neither moral nor immora; neither evil nor good. One of the great sources of depth and thematic texture to Middle-earth is the fact that is it so clearly and tangibly a moral universe, in which good and evil are present in all acts, actions and people (even places and things). This is not to say that everyone and everything is divided into two camps of Good versus Evil, but that everyone and everythign is defined by the conflict/contrast between good and evil within them.

This is just not suitable ground for the trickster to flourish in. He (or sometimes she) by virtue of his only brushing association with human society is removed from the norms of that society -- even immune to them. In Tolkien's universe, there is no one-remove from morality that anyone can get to. Bombadil is an interesting suggestion for this, insofar as he in untouched by the power of the Ring, and unmoveable to direct action in destroying it, but he is still clearly on the 'side' of Good insofar as he keeps the Barrow Wights at bay, laments for the dead woman who was brought under the shadow, saves the hobbits from Old Man Willow, helps them on their journey, and is a friend to Gandalf -- none of which is counterbalanced by similar acts or associations with evil. Were he a true trickster figure he would be equally comfortable with Sauron, invite wights over for tea, and be as like to ensnare the hobbits as help them on their way.

Ultimately, the trickster is a chaotic figure: or, more properly, a figure of chaos. He makes things happen that are interpreted or received as good by some, and as bad by others. But as we can see time and again in Tolkien's universe, there is no such force of possibility for chaos -- the One, Eru, is in charge; Providence is guiding events along. Sure, there is uncertainty and room for individual action, but the sense of history as being a story moving toward an End precludes the real possibility of chaotic action. The prospect of someone or something other than Sauron or Eru coming along to knock the whole works for a loop is just not there.

All of which is not to say that the legacy of the trickster is not present in the text: I think that Bethberry's post about the "expurgated trickster" is wonderful and will only add a "hear hear" to it. To this extent, I realise that I'm not adding anything new to the thread, but perhaps we can say something about Tolkien's moral universe:

Having realised that not only is there no trickster figure, but no POSSIBILITY of a trickster figure, does that not point to, perhaps, a certain limitation to that world? A narrow view, even, in which the possibility of chaos is being consciously removed from the tale? Chaos -- as the absence of good and evil -- is a possibility in the primary world, even for those who don't believe that the world is chaotic, their lived experience will bring them into contact with other people who believe that chaos is the state of existence. But in M-E there is no-one and nothing to give this thought voice or dramatic form. It is a world in which the thought of chaos has been suppressed by a dynamic, fluid and wonderfully dramatic relation of good and evil.

And that, Fordim, is possibly why we all like Middle Earth so much! Our own world is entirely unpredictable, entirely subjective and filled with grey areas. Middle Earth has grey areas too, but we know what good and evil are there, and what actions are right and wrong, so that could be why we all like the place. But then I wonder how long many of us 'modern folk' would last there with our subjective and personal ideas.

Let us for a moment consider Gollum as the Trickster. He alone of all characters in ME seems to me to have the moral ambiguity neccessary to pull off this role. Indeed, by using Lmp's criterion at the beginning of this thread, he fits almost to a T
What put me off of calling him the trickster from the beginning is that he is not of the same ilk as Coyote, Loki, Ananzi, etc. He is no god-figure, and no culture hero. He is clearly a mere creature like everyone else. His trickeries are not of the 'stealing the sun' variety, but small mischiefs. He falls under the dominion of others, notably Sauron, in a way that my reading of an archtypal trickster never would. The Trickster is almost definable by his independance from any power, whereas Gollum is almost definable by his subservience to one (the Ring). Yet for all that, I think, for the excellent reasons posted above by Fordim, Davem and others, that he may be the closest thing Tolkien will let us have.
He is a small trickster and in the whole history of ME, he is too small a character to fill these archtypal shoes. But in the context of LotR alone, he is a giant character, one of the more distinct and talked-about characters, who majorly influences everything he comes in contact with. In this limited context, he could be the Trickster.

Fordim makes some excellent points about the nature of Middle earth precluding the existence of a true Trickster figure, but I wonder whether Tolkien, like Blake's analysis of Milton 'was on the devil's side without realising it'. He does introduce characters like Saruman who in a way wants to break free of the clearly defined rules & make up his own. He desires to 'break the Light'. Maybe he simply finds the 'rules' too restrictive & is trying to introduce chaos into the ordered world & find his own kind of freedom? Bombadil seems not to take the rules into account either, & simply go his own way. He certainly doesn't seem to live according to any pre-defined philosophy & simply lives out his own nature. I'm not sure he thinks of OMW or even the Barrow wight as 'evil' more as nuisances who need to be dealt with because they bother him.

Certainly he is not a typical Trickster - if there is such a thing - but he isn't 'good' by choice - he isn't aligned to the Good as such, he just happens to do good to the Hobbits he meets.

I don't know where I'm going with this...

davem:Excellent observation. Don't know what to make of your Saruman comments, though.

I also appreciate Garen's ideas. Fordim's points are certainly on target, but I still wouldn't go so far as to say there's nothing there.

Me neither. I just wonder whether, as a Maiar, bound forever within the circles of the world, he envied Men's freedom. Men are not bound by the Music 'which is as fate to all things else' - which probably means that within Arda things will happen & those bound within it cannot leave it & so are bound to live with its fate. Perhaps Saruman simply wants freedom over his life, freedom from destiny. I wonder if this was what originally inspired Melkor.

Its not much fun, being bound to fate, living within a controlled universe. Maybe Saruman just wanted to be allowed to 'grow up' & make his own choices? He makes the wrong ones & suffers for them, but he is something of a 'free-thinker'. He is a rebel against authority who is brought low & destroyed by his hubris - more & more like Milton's Satan, proudest, wisest & most beautiful of the angels destroyed in the end by his refusal to serve & his desire for freedom.

Perhaps in Tolkien's universe, like Milton's, the is no room for the Trickster only for the servant of, or the rebel against, The Authority...

I think there is considerable truth in these words.

I don't know quite how to put this but much of Tolkien's world is so "moral'. There are definite choices to be made, and these choices have consequences. Saruman, as you indicate, is a clear example of this. He is no Trickster.

I am not quite sure what to make of all this. Let me ramble for a minute. I don't think I have any answers, but I do have a lot of questions.

Many of the archetypes identified by Jung have a certain moral ambiguity about them. This is particularly true of the figure of the Trickster. He is a character who poses challenges that can't always be answered in moral terms (good or evil) but rather must be met with cleverness, wit, and sheer chance. Tolkien can't exclude such elements from his universe because these are definitely part of faerie and also of our own world, even if in a more veiled form. Indeed in the world of Faerie from which Tolkien draws so many of his motifs, archetypes are central. To exclude such elements would be to offer an "untrue" picture of the world to the reader. But was JRRT really comfortable with archetypes in their pure forms? I would say "no" but then the figure of Bombadil pops up. Whoever he was, it's hard to know what to do with him.

It's interesting that Bombadil is so unaffected by the moral choices posed by the Ring. Why is that so? Is his nature so innately good that he is "above" conscious moral decisions? Or, more likely, as some sort of reflection of nature, does he operate on another plane where "good" and "bad" are essentially meaningless? Yet we do know he can only exist in a world where goodness exists. Tolkien makes that very clear. He never sees his personal choices in those terms, but he can interact with beings who do. He can not interact with those who have chosen evil, because they would deny him the freedom he must have. Frodo and company, for example, have no trouble relating to him and appreciating the things he offers. A bit of Bombadil seems to rub off on them. I am always reminded of the picture when they are running naked through the grass. That is not typical hobbit or typical Shire. There is a different feeling about it than, say, the earlier bath scenes which presumably involved nudity as well. Only in the latter, the nudity was not stressed. I can not think of anywhere else in the books where nudity is portrayed with such joy. It stands in sharp contrast to Frodo's nakedness before the Orcs.

At the end of the tale, when the moral combat has ended at least temporarily, Gandalf feels compelled to go visit Bombadil, presumably because of something he can find there that he can get nowhere else. This has to be telling us something about ourselves and perhaps about archetypes or the natural world, but I can't quite lay my finger on it. Any help out there?

So much of myth is shot through with archetypes---to a far greater degree than Middle-earth. I am always struck by this when I read the Mabingion. Could this possibly be one reason that Tolkien calls Celtic myth "gross" in his Letters and confesses that they fail to have that cool and high air he is seeking? Is morality a requiremen opf that high air? Is Tolkien's attitude towards archetypes and the Trickster influenced by the views of the Church? I don't know if this is a fair depiction, but I've always felt traditional Protestantism (not the liberal variety) was highly suspicious of archetypes. Somehow the Catholics, although suspicious, were able to live with a bit more of that ambiguity, witness their historical readiness to draw in the "older" practices, albeit in a sanitized form. Is this one of the things that Tolkien is doing with Bombadil?

davem: I used to conclude that Tom Bombadil must be a Maiar too, but now I'm not so sure that TB doesn't simply defy definition (which doesn't contradict my sense that aspects of the Trickster are discernible in him, by the way). As Child says, TB seems more like some kind of being at home and at one with nature, or at least his little corner of Middle Earth.

Child:Given that the Trickster is the first, and most primitive archetype, it doesn't really come as a surprise that s/he is the most morally ambiguous. Neolithic man's greatest concern was survival, around which all the qualities of the Trickster seem most apt. By comparison, humanity seems most in need of a good moral compass (and has seemed so for the last six or so millenia), such that later archetypes are less morally ambiguous.

Given also that the 20th century was an era in which moral ambiguity made a repeat performance, as it were, it is fascinating to me that the most popular written work of that century (LotR) is NOT morally ambiguous, and that its figures with any discernible Trickster attributes are recast in the persons of Tom Bombadil who, as Child said, needs the good, in order to be free to be what he is; or in the person of Smeagol, enslaved to that Ring that renders its servants ontologically ambiguous (I think that's what I mean).

I don't know if I can help, but maybe this question can spur some more thought for you, Child: Is being a stone that rolls as compared to someone that stays in one place, the only, or even the most significant, difference between Gandalf and Tom Bombadil? I wonder.

It occurs to me that Gandalf, finally free of his quest, may now actually enjoy the life he has from Eru, and this is as good as any way to express that, not to mention quite ready to hand.

I never took this notion of "gross" versus "high" as having to do with "immoral" versus "moral". Tolkien's myth strikes me as more Northern than the Mabinogion. Colder. More pristine. Purged; but not in a moral sense so much as (and here all kinds of terms come to mind only to be tossed out, such as Victorian; Edwardian; Christian, etc.), well, of the gross element. Not much help, I suppose, eh? Well, I'm thinking that it's really a matter of aesthetics more than anything else. No flattulence (sp?), for example; none of that stuff that is, well, low-brow in terms of taste.