ppoli61

@ppoli611674629039 · 19 Nov 2020

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Ambivalence and Polarization

#tolkien #fantasy

After Gollum, the most powerful symbol of ambivalence is represented by Saruman's clothes.

When he was still the wisest of the white Istari council, Saruman wore a white robe. At the time of his betrayal, his robe appears sprinkled with many iridescent colors. Saruman, as he was White, is on the way to becoming Black, like the dark Lord, as he meditates on betrayal.

Gandalf says:

“I looked than and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were known so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered. “I liked white better”, I said. "White!" he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. The white cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken. " "In which case it is no longer white", said I".

And white, totally white, in the opposite direction, will become Gandalf's dress after the fight with the Balrog and his resurrection.

Far from not recognizing the existence of ambivalences, Tolkien invites us indeed to identify them in order to destroy them. He does not agree with the compromises: if the blank page is covered with writing, it is no longer white, if you come to terms with evil, you are no longer on the side of good. Perhaps Tolkien can be accused of having too rigid a morality, but it cannot be said that he does not recognize the ease with which evil creeps in even the most positive characters.

Manlove complains that Tolkien's characters are never actually tempted. This is not true: Galadriel, Gandalf, Aragorn, Faramir, Frodo, must make an effort to remain true to their fundamentally good nature. They have to kill their Gollum day after day. Manlove seems to forget Frodo’s final fall and Bilbo’s outburst when Gandalf asks him to take off the Ring. There are "good guys" who succumb to temptation, like Boromir and Frodo, or who allow themselves to be led astray, like Saruman, Denethor and Theoden.

Middle Earth is not an idyllic world threatened by a dark force, it is, on the contrary,

"A decidedly post-lapsarian world, whose inhabitants, in addition to giving examples of loyalty, honesty, value, constancy, also show that they are easy prey to human passions, while nature itself often shows itself in its harshest hostile aspects." (E. Giaccherini)

The Lord of the Rings is not a world easily understood by children, who are able to understand only the sharp divisions.

In The Hobbit, a book definitely for children, even geography respected these precise divisions. There were places "of danger" and places "of refuge". In this respect, The Lord of the Rings is much more ambiguous, the forest of Fangorn, for example, is both a dangerous and a welcoming place; some of the characters settle there, others feel a sense of suffocation and annoyance.

At a first level of reading, we have the fairy tale, where the characters are good or bad, with no possibility of mixing between genres. At a second level of interpretation, however, filaments and shades branch off from the clear-cut distinctions, which break up the contours of the precise colors. Gollum, Saruman, Boromir and above all the dystopian county at the end of the book, show us how easy human nature is to be corrupted: "the white dress can be dyed".

"Some critics object that the trilogy presents too simple a vision of good and evil, but though Tolkien follows convention in associating light with good and dark with evil, hand images reflect a morality that is no more black-and-white matter - both the black hand of Sauron and the white hand of Saruman represent evil, and the hands of the good characters hurt as well as heal - (the healing hand should also bear the sword) M. Perret

The same hand can therefore contain evil and good, the Ring of Sauron and the vial of Galadriel.

To the category of critics who bothers the strongly polarized symbology of The Lord of the Rings, belongs Chaterine Stimpson, who claims that

"Tolkien's dialogue, plot, and symbols are terribly simplistic. A star always means hope, enchantment, wonder; an ash heap always means despair. "

As we have seen, due to the symbolism linked to the image of the hand, this does not happen. Stimpson does not understand that the great Tolkien fairy tale needs, beyond the complexities of the modern novel - which, we repeat, also exist - of pure and crystalline symbols. They indicate which side is the good, the eternal, absolute one, the one that, as Aragorn says, “is the same for Ents, Elves, Dwarves, Men and Hobbits”, in short, the one subjected by Tolkien to a recovery process.

Tolkien has always claimed not to proceed by symbols. His is a narrative made up of things. The elements of his books have value in themselves and not because they stand in the place of something else. A star is not hope but it gives hope, while remaining, indeed precisely because it is, a wonderful star.

In Tolkien's fairy tale the symbols are one with the thing they symbolize. The symbolism springs from the very nature of the objects that are inserted in the narration, as an integral and indispensable part of it. The object always remains, above all, itself.

At the first level of reading, that of the fairy tale, there are Evil and Good, distinct and clearly indicated by the symbolism of light and dark, of black and white. Tolkien created easy-to-read signage. It tells us which way we should look and how we should behave. However, he, a man of the twentieth century, can only recognize the conflicting essence of our existence, where opposites tend to mix rather than separate. This is why, at the second level of reading, that of the modern novel, the symbols are no longer so precise, and ambivalences begin to shine through.

At first glance, Middle Earth is a fairytale world, ideally divided into good and bad, a utopia that shows us how beautiful and easy it would be if good and evil were clearly distinct and identifiable. On closer inspection, however, from this polarized secondary world, a reality transpires that is not polarized, and which is the same as that of our primary world.

The structure of the tale has become for Tolkien a lively and effective means of presenting, by dramatizing it, a complex research of an ethical and inner nature. The quest model becomes the tool to highlight the characteristics of the characters.

Frodo's anti-quest object is transformed into a psychic amplifier, the Ring becomes a field of fatal attraction, a continuous temptation that wears and puts even the most positive characters to the test.

The monsters, which the heroes must fight along the way, take on the character of powerful allegories of absolute evil.

In particular, one of these monsters, Gollum, is clearly an Id monster, a deformed and repulsive image of the protagonist Frodo (almost a portrait of Dorian Gray) capable of showing him what he's really made of.