New Republic Article

[Thingol]

This is a very interesting article with some very valid points. However, many of Mr. Jenkyns criticisms are fundamentally incorrect.

"Tolkien, in sum, was unable to develop his hero. Frodo has learned nothing: he is essentially the same person that he was when the adventure started, except that now he is depressed."

From the change of tone from The Fellowship of the Ring to The Return of the King alone any reader can see that Frodo and the rest of the hobbits have grown as characters. As for the claim that the language and description in The Lord of the Rings is tedious and simplistic, that is just plain wrong. Mr. Jenkyns seems to think that Frodo's character must experience some sort of sexual or metaphysical revelation and reject some form of ingrained conviction that he had previously held in order to have grown as a character. The fact is that such a revelation has no place in Middle Earth. Mr. Jenkyns' problem is that he is arguing from the point of view of a critic of the modern novelist. The Lord of the Ring's is not a Naturalist or Existentialist novel where the main character comes to accept some grand Emersonian oversoul or comes to the realization that there is no God. Tolkien's Middle Earth is not an accurate depiction of the world as it was during Tolkien's time any more than Paradise Lost was a depiction of Milton's world or Don Quixote a depiction of Cervante's world; yet that does not change the fact that these novel's are tremendously important and complex works of art. Frodo's character does grow, but not in the modern sense that Mr. Jenkyns obviously feels that he should. Tolkien is in his own category and such a distinction as the best novel of the century has little significance. Comparing Tolkien’s works with the modern authors that Mr. Jenkyns obviously prefers is as useless as comparing apples to oranges.

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: Thingol ]