• Reader's Guide to Fellowship of the Ring

    Author(s):
    Patrick McEvoy-Halston (see profile)
    Date:
    2017
    Group(s):
    CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century, GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature, GS Speculative Fiction, TC Cognitive and Affect Studies, TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature
    Subject(s):
    Fantasy literature, Affect (Psychology), Criticism--Psychological aspects, Psychoanalysis and literature
    Item Type:
    Essay
    Tag(s):
    j.r.r. tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, object relations, identification, Theories of affect, Psychological literary criticism
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/a0yf-rp82
    Abstract:
    Delineates how much of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Fellowship of the Ring" is about preparing Frodo especially so that if caught out alone, he'd never dare venture a decent listen to anyone who might attempt to sway him to consider the due fate for the Ring, other than according to Gandalf's specifications. Positions the text as one that bates the reader with the allure of calling authority figures to task, of possibly borrowing on their own leadership, what they themselves have thought or done, to impel fully attending to them at times, only so as to persuade them that the consequences for doing so are likely far more formidable than they could ever possibly manage. Called out like that, drawn out like that, it's a text designed to leave the reader to entwine ever-deeper within themselves a sense of severe scolding on any pleasure in acting in any personal good faith. It teaches one to be less able to see flaws in those you believe you can't live without, even when ever-more incrementally encroaching and accumulating before you. What they don't want you to see, you never will. What they expect you to do, but which arouses guilt if expressed forthright, you'll pluck out of the air and assume your own decision or choice. "Lord of the Rings" becomes a vile road, that requires an outside critic as guide, to thwart all that Tolkien and the likes of his Gandalf, would have of you.
    Notes:
    Second part of a short series on "Lord of the Rings" that develops my own personal interest in how a text, how an author, lifts or suppresses us; exploration of it as a site which draws us out, in this instance, our hopes for ourselves, leaving us at some subliminal but substantial level either elevated or flattened. Text as almost always a wrestle with something important, however at a surface level deemed light or more or less inconsequential.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial
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