[The Saucepan Man]

Some great replies and much food for thought. I have been meaning to come back and reply to some of the points that have been made for some time now, but I haven’t been able to set aside the time needed until now. Mind you, responding to posts on a topic like this is a bit like trying to catch a slippery eel. Just when you think that you have covered the points that have been made, someone goes and makes another post.

Before I start, however, let me echo Mister Underhill’s words and ask everyone to make sure that the discussion stays polite and even-tempered. People have differing opinions on issues like this, and I would ask that everyone respects those expressed by others. There is nothing wrong with courteous and well-reasoned argument but please, as Mister U says, avoid baiting, personal attacks, sarcasm, belittling the views of others etc. This is the first topic that I have been able to get past 10 or so posts, let alone on to a second page, and it seems to me that there’s plenty of life in it yet. So let’s not get it closed down, please.

First, I think it is worth thinking a little about what is meant by “psychological depth”. As I said, I have not read Pullman’s books and cannot say for sure what he meant by this. But, on the basis that the word “psychological” adds something to the phrase, I would guess that he is talking about something more specific than depth of characterisation. There are many aspects to the characterisation of characters in a story, ranging from their appearance, style of speech and actions, through to their background, their character traits and their inner thoughts and feelings. It is this latter aspect of characterisation, the “inner life” of a character, which I think Pullman was talking about (and this doesn’t have to involve turmoil, although those who are struggling inwardly will generally make psychologically more interesting characters and might therefore be described as having greater psychological depth).

The discussion on this thread has widened to take in other aspects of characterisation. For example, Aiwendil, I see much of what you used to illustrate Tolkien’s characterisations of Beren and Hurin as character traits, descriptions and actions. Similarly, the recent discussion initiated by lindil concerning whether the characters in LotR can be appreciated more deeply from reading the Silmarillion and other background materials, deals largely with the characters’ back stories, their histories, rather than their psychological make-up (Galadriel is an exception here, since I think that we do directly learn a lot more about her persona, as opposed to her power, from Unfinished Tales).

Now these other aspects of characterisation can tell us directly about the inner thoughts and the feelings of the characters, because (as Aiwendil has shown in relation to Beren) we can get a good idea of what they are feeling inside, what their motivations, their hopes and their fears are from the character traits that they are given, from their background and history and from their actions. But we rarely get direct access to Tolkien’s characters, and I think that this is what Pullman meant when he made that comment.

I very much like the extract quoted by littlemanpoet from Orson Scott Card’s book. I had not really given any thought to analysing books by reference to these four factors before, but they do make a lot of sense to me. And I would agree that LotR is primarily either a milieu story or (as Aiwendil argues) an event-driven story. Both of these aspects are to the fore in LotR. Characterisation is less so.

That of course is not to say that Tolkien does not develop his characters and that we cannot perceive any psychological depth in them at all. As I have said, Tolkien gives us very little direct access to his characters’ thoughts and feelings, and so, in most cases, we have to work out these out for ourselves from the actions of the characters, their background etc. In some cases, this leads to some very fine character development. As I said in my earlier post, I believe that Denethor and (to a lesser extent) Boromir both have substantial psychological depth to them, yet we never have access to their thoughts. And I agree with Estelyn that we can learn something of Aragorn’s “inner persona” from his outward actions and his interactions with characters like Eowyn, Merry and Ioreth. But there is less psychological depth here because, as I said earlier, noble characters who have no inner turmoil are less psychologically interesting than those who are struggling inside (note that does not necessarily make them less interesting characters, just less psychologically interesting).

While on the topic of Aragorn, I find the question of whether he is a believable character to be an interesting one. I agree with you, Aiwendil, that he need not necessarily be realistic in our real world terms as long as he is believable within the context of Middle-earth. but is a character like Aragorn truly believable in a world where there are also Men like Denethor, Boromir and Wormtongue? Perhaps Aragorn is believable on the basis that the story can handle one thoroughly noble, kind and valiant hero from the Race of Men. But what of Faramir? I have some sympathy for Eurytus’ point that Faramir is a character who is “too good to be true”, especially as we already have one such character in the story, one who is far more central. Certainly, in my view, there is less psychological depth to Faramir than there is to other characters in the same way that there is less psychological depth to Aragorn. Yes, Faramir struggles between his duty to his father/his country and his instinctive acceptance that Frodo is doing the right thing in taking the Ring to Mordor, but he hardly (in the book, at least) struggles for very long over this. To my mind, neither Aragorn nor Faramir is as psychologically interesting as Denethor or Boromir, and they are therefore psychologically less deep. That is not to say that they have less depth as characters (bearing in mind all the other aspects of characterisation that I mentioned). They are simply less psychologically deep.

There are, of course, characters whose thoughts we do have access to. Pullman mentioned Gollum, and clearly we do get a good idea of the struggle going on inside his head. The other characters (other than, rather strangely, a fox [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ) whose thoughts we have access to are the Hobbits. Child of the 7th Age said:

I don't see how anyone could argue that we don't get inside Bilbo's head.

And I don’t either. Bilbo must be the character in Tolkien’s works that we learn most about through our direct access to his hopes, fears, thoughts and feelings. Although I wouldn’t necessarily say that Bilbo is psychologically deep (he is a children’s character after all), his character’s persona is well drawn. The same can be said, although to a lesser degree, of the Hobbits in LotR, particularly Sam. We do, at times have direct access to his thought process and this, combined with his traits, actions, background etc allow us to build up a very good picture of his persona. With Merry and Pippin, the insights into their thoughts and feelings are there too, albeit rarer, and so we rely more on their deeds, actions and interactions to build up our picture of them.

What I find strange is that the Hobbit who I think we learn least about, at least in terms of his “inner self”, is the one who is supposed to be the main “narrator” of the story: Frodo. We learn about his character, as with the others, through what he says and does, but only very rarely do we get glimpses of what is going on inside his head. We know that he is struggling with the Ring, but we see the struggle as if we were a bystander, like Sam. We do not see his thought patterns as the Ring tries to tempt him, as we do with Sam. To an extent, we are privy to Frodo’s feelings following the completion of the Quest, but this is only limited. We know that he is psychologically scarred by what he has gone through and that he can no longer remain in Middle-earth. But we do not really learn the extent of the damage from Frodo’s own thoughts. Rather, it is the very fact that he has to sail West that tells us just how badly damaged he is and how much he needs healing.

So I do see Frodo as the one Hobbit about whom we learn the least, and I find this rather curious given his central role both in the story and as the supposed author (or recorder) of much of it.

I feel, therefore, that Pullman does make a reasonably good point. Tolkien’s characters do have depth (of character) and, in some cases, they have psychological depth. Mostly we see this through external factors such as their backgrounds, actions and words (Denethor, Boromir, Frodo) and occasionally we see it directly through having access to their inner thoughts (Gollum, Bilbo, Sam, the fox [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] ). But, ultimately, I do think that Tolkien’s characters lack psychological depth, in comparison with other writers.

Now, as many have pointed out, that is not necessarily a criticism of Tolkien. Perhaps the word “lack” is slightly emotive, suggesting as it does that there is something lacking in Tolkien’s works. But, going back to littlemanpoet’s quote from the book by Orson Scott Card, it is fair to say that Tolkien was not writing a character driven novel. The fact that he does not imbue each of his characters with immense psychological depth cannot therefore be a failing, for that is not what he was setting out to achieve. Hilde Bracegirdle, Lush, and Evisse the Blue all make excellent points, therefore, when they say:

It doesn’t seem correct to speak on whether an approach is right or wrong, for a book should be judged on how effective it is, does the method employed work? (Hilde)

Was Tolkien good at creating psychologically believable characters? Personally, I'd say, not really.

But I didn't pick up the LotR expecting to find some fascinating Freudian parallel contained within Aragorn's relationship with his sword. (Lush)

I find it interesting that some of you feel like 'defending' Tolkien by arguing that his characters have as much depth as any. But by agreeing that Tolkien's strong point was not characterization, but creating a certain atmosphere, the milieu from littlemanpoet's quote - you don't undermine his quality of a writer. (Evisse)

Finally, I just want to touch on this issue of whether an understanding of the source material leads to a greater appreciation of LotR. And it seems to me that there can be no correct or incorrect way to read the book. Granted, someone who has read the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales will have a greater knowledge of the history of the world in which the story in LotR is set. They will even have a greater understanding of some of the characters (Galadriel, in particular, as I said earlier). But I do not think that you can judge objectively whether they will derive any greater pleasure from it than someone who has just picked up the book to read because they liked the films. Personally, since joining this forum, I have developed a much greater appreciation of Middle-earth, its peoples and its history. I had not even read the Silmarillion, before I joined. Now, when I read LotR, I can appreciate many of the details that passed me by before. But, for all that, I do not think that, however many times I now read it, I will ever recapture that sense of utter wonder and magic that I felt when I first read the book aged 11. In other words, even though there may be greater characterisation, and possibly even greater psychological depth, to be discovered in this source material, it does not follow that we have to seek it out before we can truly enjoy LotR.