Psychological depth in Tolkien's characters

[Aiwendil]

Eurytus wrote:

Of course it is also the basic plotline for a million "odd couple" cop films, buddy movies......This ones short and fat, this ones skinny. This ones Mr confident, this ones Mr neurotic. This ones starchy and set in his ways, this one doesn't mind bending the rules to get his collar. And ad infinitum.

Since when did the popularity of a device make that device bad?

Sure, the "friendship between opposites" thing has been used a lot, and (like anything that is used so often) it has often been used poorly.

A lot of popular songs use string ensembles, and in about 95% of these cases the result is schmaltzy, over-sentimental, and generally disgusting. Does that make "Yesterday" or "Eleanor Rigby" bad? Does it make genuine string quartets bad?

As a matter of fact, I think that the popularity of the device seen in the friendship between Legolas and Gimli stems largely from the fact that it is an effective device. Alas, such easily recognizable and easily implemented devices are often used as a desparate measure by poor writers. But that does not diminish the effectiveness of the technique itself.

Is it "psychologically deep"? That depends entirely on one's definition of "psychologically deep".

Mister Underhill wrote:

I think part of the problem here is that you’re trying to box your definition of “psychological depth” into a very narrow concept, one that I don’t think can be so neatly separated from other aspects of characterization.

This is what I was trying to get at before. You can certainly define psychological depth in any way you like, but you must then ask how useful that definition is. I think that a much more interesting concept than psychological depth (as defined by The Saucepan Man) is characterization.

Of course, you can analyze psychological depth as a technique used in characterization. This is perfectly valid and, I think, very interesting. But you must then face the difficulty that there is no clear line between this aspect of characterization and others.

I think he’s off-base when he classifies LotR as a story that’s primarily concerned with “milieu”.

I quite agree. There are, I think, stories in which the milieu is at least as central as the plot (for example, Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet or More's Utopia - if you can call that a story). But LotR seems to me to be primarily about things that happen - that is to say, plot.

Also, note that he emphasizes that all four elements are present in any story to some extent. You can’t just say that a story of 500,000 words is “event-driven” and leave it at that.

Yes. But I think that the important thing to take away from Card's distinction is that we ought not to judge a story based solely on one of these criteria - and, moreover, no one of these is universally more important than the others. I think that modernists have a tendency to think that characterization ought to be, universally, the most important aspect of the book and part of their general dislike for LotR arises simply because it does not treat characterization as the most important element.