Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - Tolkien and his Characters
 

In the Fantasythread there is a small subset of discussion about the effects of war on Tolkien’s characters, and perhaps more importantly on Tolkien himself. Searching the Barrow-downs I did find one thread on Frodo and PSTD Shell-shocked Frodo .... or .... PTSD in LOTR but nothing else.

While I am not suggesting that Tolkien himself suffered from PSTD or that any of his characters were written as having PSTD, I do believe that examining the effect war had on his characters and himself could be helpful.

So to start this discussion off I am going to quote some posts from Fantasy (apologies if I miss anybody’s or if somebody didn’t want their post quoted here):

Post #83
Post #85
Post #88
Following quote courtesy of Ibrin for looking it up and posting it in Post#113
J.R.R. to Christopher, June 1944

and my response to this quote in Post#132
Post#132
So......Thoughts?
Think I’m completely off my rocker? Think a character other than Sam or Frodo experienced PSTD? Want to add more about Tolkien’s reaction to the World Wars?

The only thing I ask is don’t turn this into an argument about whether the view of war is realistic in LotR. If you want to argue about that, we welcome your thoughts in the Fantasy thread.;)

My father simply does not discuss actual combat in WWII. He will reminisce about how fun being stationed in Honolulu was, how being on a ship made him sick (and island hopping offered plenty of nausea), but beyond that....nothing. And I don't believe he suffers from anything like PTSD, although he does have this eccentric habit of complaining about how bad TV is, while watching it for hours -- and I mean full-blown arguments with an inanimate object. *shrugs*

As far as the story, I would definitely say that Frodo had lingering mental affects that went beyond any recurring physical pain. He is the prime example of a war veteran who "can never go home", and perhaps Tolkien is referring to similar WWI vets he knew who returned to England after the war but still felt displaced.

Sam? He, Merry and Pippin seem resilient in the stolid Hobbitish manner. If he did have any pain it was in sympathy for Frodo, and not for himself.

There is no quotable proof of it, but I have wondered if "the Black Breath" that struck down so many who had fought the Enemy in LotR was symbolic of "shell shock" or "battle fatigue" in the old parlance, PTSD in today's terminology. It is presented in the "magical" context of Tolkien's subcreation, but some of its defining symptoms -- tremendous despair, physical and mental exhaustion, disturbed dreams or even delerium following an intensely traumatic event or series of events -- are quite similar to some of symptoms of PTSD. Would that real PTSD were as easily dismissible as breathing athelas steam and having a gifted healer call the victim back from the brink!

I must think about this before I comment more fully. It's a very personal subject for me, and I want to be sure I'm considering it with a clear mind and not just responding with long-ingrained knee-jerk reactions.

But an interesting matter to ponder.

Indeed, as it is also a personal matter for me, as I explained in my PM to you, I think I'm going to wait until I've had the chance to think and perhaps review my pyschology textbook before I comment indepth. I simply felt that this discussion is far too valuable to remain buried in the Fantasy thread forever.

The only thing I'm going to say is that sometimes I think that readers become so involved in a story that we forget that the author was a mere human like us, and therefore had his own feelings that deserve respect.

Frodo had to face something none of the other Hobbits had to, indeed, none of the other Fellowship: his sense that he had failed, that at the last moment he would not relinguish the Ring and only chance/fate/eucatastrophe saved the day. Tolkien has written that Frodo should not be faulted, that he did what he set out to do, to put in place the events and situation which would lead to the destruction of the Ring. Yet that fact that Frodo is not healed suggests that Frodo himself cannot accept this interpretation, that he lives haunted by the knowledge that he accepted the Ring.

I don't know much about PTSD and so cannot comment on its applicability to LotR. What I say here about Frodo does not apply to the description of PTSD given in this thread. But Frodo's burden seems to me a much heavier burden to carry. Frodo has not only seen the face of horror and darkness that is war, as have the other members of the Fellowship, but he has looked upon it in almost complete solitude, with only Sam as support and sometimes not even Sam. And when Frodo looks inward, to his own psychological awareness, he sees that he had succumbed to that darkness. For all the terrible fighting which Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn, Eomer faced, none of them came so close to the heart of darkness that they saw it within themselves. None of them know the self-loathing that Frodo, one surmises, might feel.

This is supposition, of course, as a way to explain the difference between the post war experiences of the Hobbits.

I recall that years ago Child of the Seventh Age had a thread about why Frodo cannot find healing, although not within the context of PTSD. Perhaps if I have time I will try to find it. It might offer some interesting insights for this thread.

The other character who might be considered here would be Eowyn. Perhaps another might be Celebrian, who of course we only read of.

EDIT: Here's Child's thread: Frodo's Sacrifice

I'd agree with Bêthberry that Celebrían's an obvious example - she passed into the West in the year after her traumatic experience, so obviously she couldn't bear to live with it any longer.
Another character who came to my mind in this context is Gwindor of Nargothrond from the Silmarillion. His life-story is one of the most poignant in the whole Legendarium. First he has to watch his brother being maimed and hacked to pieces by the Orcs at the beginning of the Nirnaeth. Then, when he allows himself to be provoked into leading a premature charge by this atrocious act, he is captured alive and dragged to Angband to endure sixteen years of slavery as Morgoth's thrall - an experience from which he never recovered.
When Beleg found him after his escape, he was but a bent and fearful shadow of his former shape and mood, and his own people in Nargothrond didn't recognize him, because he looked like one of the aged among mortal Men (sorry, no literal quote - I'm re-translating from my German version of the Silm). What does it take to make an immortal Elf look like that? I'm certain the damage done to him was more than merely skin-deep. Actually, now I think about him a little closer, I picture him like the Middle-Earth equivalent of a survivor from Auschwitz, and I'm pretty sure he awoke screaming from nightmares of Angband every other night during the rest of his life.
And as if all that was not enough, he had to watch Túrin ruining his home, his love and whatever else remained of his former life that was precious to him. Death in the Battle of Tumhalad must have come as a relief to him.
Poor guy. I hope he found healing in the Halls of Mandos.

Interestingly, PTSD can have an opposite effect to avoiding thinking about the events survived, it can lead to near pathological obsession with that type of event. For some time after my car accident (I like to think of it, grimly, as carnage) I was quite obsessed with watching anything about road accidents, these police programmes, news reports, even rubbernecking like crazy if I chanced upon a real one. I'm not saying I went as far as what JG Ballard writes about :eek: but in my own way, I was trying to find reasons for why this thing had happened to me.

It could be that Tolkien, through undertaking this enormous writing project, was dealing with this obsessive aspect of PTSD.

And for what it's worth, yes, I do think it's likely he suffered this to some extent, though not in a debilitating one, and he certainly knew enough about it to create Frodo who certainly displays the condition.

Certainly this passage, referring not exactly to the Black Breath but the aura and cries of the Nazgul, was informed by what Tolkien observed in the trenches: