Visible souls....

[littlemanpoet]

Now Gollum I always think of as a 'special case'. Much more than a mere 'monster', he cannot be defined squarely as evil, nor can he be said to be good, and he is the one character we truly get into the head of, often distressingly so. - Lalwendë

This has been bugging me since I first read it. I don't think it's accurate. I don't ever remember reading any thoughts of Gollum or Sméagol that weren't actually spoken by him.

I'm close to being motivated to a re-read of LotR just to take special note of this one aspect! What characters does Tolkien "get into the head" of? We know this happens with Gandalf once, at Rivendell, as has been pointed out on this thread, but Gandalf's thinking about Frodo rather than revealing much about himself. The instance with Sam is similar. So do we actually "get into the head" of any character at all in LotR? I don't think so. I'd be happy to see some evidence to the contrary, if anybody has it handy.... - LMP

[Firefoot]

Some quick research has shown a couple places where we can get inside of the characters' heads. Not many, but not none, either.

In the chapter The Uruk-Hai:

'Now,' thought Pippin, 'if only it takes that ugly fellow a little while to get his troop under control, I've got a chance.'

In the chapter Minas Tirith:

Pippin looked at him [Beregond]: tall and proud and noble, as all the men that he had yet seen in that land; and with a glitter in his eye as he thought of the battle. 'Alas! my own hand feels as light as a feather,' he thought, but he said nothing. 'A pawn did Gandalf say? Perhaps; but on the wrong chessboard.'

At the start of the chapter The Houses of Healing:

Slowly the lights of the torches in front of him flickered and went out, and he was walking in a darkness; and he [Merry] thought, 'This is a tunnel leading to a tomb; there we shall stay forever.'

Same chapter:

'I'll never get him there,' thought Pippin. 'Is there no one to help me? I can't leave him here.'
...(Pippin talks to Bergil)...
'I'd better wait here,' thought Pippin.

At the end of the chapter The Black Gate Opens:

Blackness and stench and crushing pain came upon Pippin, and his mind fell away into a great darkness.
'So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thought said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off at last all doubt and care and fear. And then even as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above:
'The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!'
For one mormnt more Pippin's thought hovered. 'Bilbo!' it said. 'But no! That came in his tale, long long ago. This is my tale, and it is ended now. Good-bye!' And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more.

Interesting how most of these are Pippin, the exception being one of Merry. Also, most of them come from Book 5. There are places where Sam is talking to himself, at the end of Book 4 and the beginning of Book 6, but I don't know that you could call that getting inside of his head - he is revealing his thought processes, but vocally.

[davem]

Lalwende has already pointed out that we do get inside the heads of various characters - principally Frodo - through their dreams. Yet these 'dreams' seem mostly not to be the workings of their unconscious mind's, working through old memories of the day, or due to the hopes & fears the individual characters may have, but almost to be 'communications' from another 'reality', or because of some 'echo' of past or present events the individual is tapping into. Faramir & Boromir's dream is an example of the first kind, Frodo's dream in Bombadil's house of the second. Of curse, there are examples of what we could call 'normal' dreams - Sam dreaming of the overgrown garden of Bag End & looking for his pipe for instance

It does seem as though the characters have very 'undeveloped' subconsciouses though. Its as if their conscious minds merely 'float above' the depths of what Jung called the Collective Unconscious, the realm of the Archetypes or 'gods. Yet the character's waking consciousness seems a seperate thing from the spiritual dimension in Tolkien's world. Tolkien clearly doesn't think of the Valar as having only psychological reality.

Perhaps this is one reason why their souls are so 'visible' - this is pre-Freudian psychology - closer to Jung but closest of all to Catholic theology. The Saints & Angel are not 'Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious', but living beings present & active within their own dimension.

This is not so much a 'fairy tale' view of the human mind as a medieval (& pre-medieval one. And perhaps its due to the fact that up to recent times we lived in greater harmony with our environment, & therefore knew who & what we are in our essential nature. The 'sub-conscious' with its mass of 'complexes, 'drives', hidden motives, etc, may be simply the result of the loss of our ability to live in harmony with nature. In fact, perhaps the existence of a subconscious of any kind is a symbol of what's wrong with us.

I suspect that the reason the characters in Middle earth have 'visible souls' is due to simple fact that there was nothing within them to obscure their souls.

Originally Posted by Fordim

The characters who think in terms of self-determination, or even self-improvement, are people like Saruman, Boromir and – most disturbingly – Sauron (with his obsession over the Eye/I). These are the real individuals in the text, in the modern sense, insofar as their identity is defined by what they want, what they desire, what they think of themselves, what they want others to think of themselves. The heroes of the book are just not individuals in the sense we think of individuality. They are not defined by their inner core, by what they are but by what they do.

I'm not sure I'd include Boromir in this, but Sauron & Saruman I wonder if these characters (& perhaps Gollum & Ted Sandyman as well) are victims of this new 'mental illness' of developing a 'sub conscious' because of their seperating of themselves from nature....

[Lalwendë]

'Tis time I explained myself!

Originally Posted by Me

Now Gollum I always think of as a 'special case'. Much more than a mere 'monster', he cannot be defined squarely as evil, nor can he be said to be good, and he is the one character we truly get into the head of, often distressingly so.

Originally Posted by lmp

This has been bugging me since I first read it. I don't think it's accurate. I don't ever remember reading any thoughts of Gollum or Sméagol that weren't actually spoken by him.

Originally Posted by lmp

What do you mean by intangible?

Firstly, I don't think we actually have to see a character's thoughts represented as they might appear in their own mind; we don't have to see "X thought that...." or "Y was thinking...". In the case of Gollum, we see through his behaviour how his mind works. If we are talking about characters with 'visible souls', then he above all other characters really does have a visible soul; his actions speak volumes about what is happening within his head/heads. Perhaps this is something to do with the tormented soul that he is, in that he cannot help but act on what his mind tells him to do, but we certainly get a deep insight into his mind and motivation.

By "intangible" I mean that we cannot quite 'touch' on the essence of his being, his purpose if you like. He is at once a monster but also ultimately (and unwittingly) acts as a hero; and by turns we see his potential for good and then are suddenly shown how this might not be the case. I think we are encouraged to question him, whether intentionally or not is another matter. Other characters do seem to have a clearly defined role or purpose, even where they exist in a morally 'grey' area, while the purpose of Gollum's existence is not as clear. Sometimes to me he seems to be a character 'apart', pursuing his own psychological needs while the rest of Middle Earth goes on about him.