The Road and The Ring

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Greetings Lush – seen your posts all over this place, but our paths have never really crossed until now.

You raise a really good point, and one that I think I agree with. I think, though, that I would tweak what you’re suggesting just a bit. Rather than a model of narrative like epic=circular/Ring, and novel=linear/road (and I know that you are not really being this simplistic) I think that what’s at work is two different narrative forms that have developed in response to different kinds of hero.

The epic hero (Aragorn, Achilles, James Bond) moves very much in a straight line as he fulfills or brings about his identity. He is who he is at the beginning of the narrative, and the purpose of the story is to see that he brings recognition of that identity to others (Aragorn is Aragorn all along, it’s just that other people recognise him as Aragorn/Elessar/King/hero). The circularity of this narrative is a rather closed one, I think, insofar as we end where we begin (with Aragon as Aragorn). The fairy-tale hero (Frodo, Odysseus, Luke Skywalker) moves in a circle as he goes out of his safe place, changes/learns/grows and then returns to his safe place in order to transform it/change it/save in turn. In the modern world we don’t have much use for fairy-tale heroes so our modern narratives tend to celebrate the epic hero and the Road that he must take; but Tolkien presents us with both kinds of heroes and does so in a manner that shows us how they are completely interdependent: Aragorn’s Road to Minas Tirith cannot be successfully traversed without the commensurate success of Frodo’s circular journey to and from Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. Minas Tirith is saved by Aragorn’s epic journey to it; the Shire is saved by Frodo’s fairy-tale return to it.