'LORD OF THE RINGS' Tolkien themes

The 'Lord of the Rings' writer gives his characters many chances to change their ways.
By ROBERT K. ELDERand MAUREEN RYAN
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
In "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," Joseph Campbell observed the striking similarities of heroic tales in various cultures. He didn't mention anything about furry feet, however. Author J.R.R. Tolkien's consummate skill at sketching out humanity's defining principles in his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy has made the citizens of Middle-Earth seem utterly real to generations of readers all over the world.
This month, director Peter Jackson wraps up Tolkien's epic battle between good and evil in "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King." With Hobbits Frodo and Samwise nearing the end of their quest to destroy the One Ring, the ultimate symbol of evil and corruption, the armies of Middle-Earth are banding together against the evil Sauron.
Looking back over the novels, we asked Mike Foster, an Illinois Central College English professor, North American representative of the Tolkien Society, to help articulate the themes in "The Lord of the Rings," their origins and why they sustain such cultural resonance.
NATURE VS. MACHINE
In Tolkien's saga, even the trees themselves rise up against Saruman and the Orcs, which symbolize a mechanized world and the death of nature. Published in 1954, Tolkien's text reflects the postwar industrialization of England. Frank Herbert's "Dune" (1965) shares similar messages of environmental preservation.
"Oxford went from the city of dreaming spires, which Tolkien had fallen in love with when he came down to study in 1911, to kind of the Detroit of England -- it had become an automotive manufacturing center. The noise and the stench of industry offended Tolkien," Foster says. "He was always mistrustful of technology. He had seen what the machinery of war could do in WW I."
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE FOR REDEMPTION
Everyone, from Saruman and even Gollum, is given multiple opportunities to redeem himself. Not all of them take it.
"I think it was probably central to Tolkien's own beliefs, his own religion," Foster says. "He failed his first examination to go down to Oxford on scholarship. He got a second chance. I think he probably felt, when he lived through the war, that he also had a second chance."
His characters are given many, many opportunities to reform and change their ways. "Boromir, who attempts to claim the ring and then repents, later dies a hero and he's basically absolved by Aragorn," Foster says.
THE PRIMACY OF FREE WILL
In a key moment in "Return of the King," Tolkien changed Frodo's words from "cannot do" to "I do not choose" in his hand-written manuscript. This speaks the importance of choice -- not fate or destiny -- in Tolkien's work, Foster says.
In the final installment, elf princess Arwen has to choose either immortality and a life with her family or mortality and sharing the fate of the man she loves, Aragorn.
Time and again, characters are shown choosing their fates, even if their choices appear to lead them to doom. Whether his characters triumph or die, Tolkien shows that their freedom to choose their fates is the most important thing.
"I think it permeates the text," Foster says. "Not only free will, but free will with very difficult choices, without any easy options. The fate of the ring depends on the free will of a humble Hobbit who is altogether unprepared for such an enormous responsibility."
THE VALUE OF FELLOWSHIP
We live in the age of the Army of One, the rugged individualist, the solo performer -- but that sure ain't the Hobbit way. Friendship and group efforts remain paramount within the series. Without his best pal, Sam, Frodo never would have made it to the mountaintop. The four central Hobbits, including Merry and Pippin, also hold together two fronts against evil.
"Tolkien said that he modeled Sam on the enlisted men he met in World War I," Foster says, but Tolkien's own friendships influenced his career track.
"He [was among] four close high school friends, and of the friends, two of them died in the war (Rob Gilson and G.B. Smith). That was one of the reasons he gave himself to writing. He felt a calling to write the kind of works they enjoyed, the northern heroic works like the Norse mythologies. He was fulfilling the call of his departed friends, especially Smith, which was to write this great epic."
ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY
Both the wizard Gandalf and princess Galadriel rejected the One Ring, knowing its power would overwhelm them. Already feeling the pull of the ring, Frodo discovers his fate as the ring bearer in "Return."
Foster references Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey's theory that the Ring represents addiction. "Some characters, like Sam, can be around the ring and not be mastered by it," Foster says. "But others succumb to it." absolutely, to their own destruction."
ANYONE CAN EFFECT CHANGE
As Galadriel says, "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."
Tolkien not only drives this point home in his first installment, "Fellowship of the Ring," with diminutive hero Frodo, but Gollum proves it definitively in "Return of the King." Loathsome though he may be, his role turns out to be pivotal in the saga.
"In not only this story, but in Tolkien's minor writings a single character often turns out to be the agent of fulfilling the quest," Foster says. Tolkien seems to affirm the fact that every single soul counts in the final wash. That being said, the point of the 'Fellowship of the Ring,' is that it is a fellowship."