Tolkien's characters

[Lizlizardx15]

What are your opinions on J.R.R. Tolkien's characters in the Lord of the Rings? Do you believe that they are very well developed and dynamic, or are rather flat? I feel that the characters are very well developed, but need something more to make them somewhat unique. They just seem to all share many of the same characteristics

[Iain Sparrow]

I'd say they seem a bit stiff, only because Tolkien populates Lord of the Rings with archetypal characters... each has a role to play in the tale. I agree with you that it would have been nice if Tolkien made his characters a bit more dynamic, and less predictable. But I loved LotR just the same, so I'm not over critical of its failings.:)

[Poetaster]

I think they are pretty mediocre. They have their stories, but they don't have 'personality' in the same way real people seem to have them. Most of the time, anyway.

[Anymodal]

Not mediocre at all.
To me Tom Bombadil is the best character, "the fatherless", older than rain, he is beyond the power of Suaron (the only being in middle earth the Ring doesn't affect).

You asked about LOTR, but thinking in the whole work I can recall many good characters: Gandalf, Tuor, Turin Turambar (the Blacksword), Gollum, many elven kings like Fëanor, Melkor himself... the list is long.
Some of them are very developed, some little, but they are all good.

[hannah_arendt]

Tolkien`s characters aren`t mediocre. I would choose Thorin and Aragorn but there are many more that could be mentioned.

[Ecurb]

Psychological complexity and moral ambiguity are unknown in Middle Earth. The good characters are good; the bad characters are bad. Nobody is shocked when Boromir is tempted by the Ring -- he's the type who would be. Gollum vacillates -- but it's all about what constitutes his own self-interest.

Instead of "character development", LOTR is driven by the quest for knowledge, power, and a return to the past. The Elves long for Erresa, the men for Numenor. In a way, literary novels and LOTR-type fantasy novels represent two different ways of looking at a child's growth into adulthood. In literary novels, the characters must develop and learn about themselves (just as children must learn what kind of adults they are going to be). In LOTR, characters must learn about the world and how to cope with it -- about the power of the Ring, about the perils of Mordor, about the glories of Numenor (just as children must learn about history and science).

This is not to say that the characters in LOTR are uninteresting -- it's just that they're very different from those in literary novels. There are no Hectors in the service of Sauron. Thorin calls himself, "Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King Under the Mountain". He is defined by his fate, his history, and his heritage, and wants only to be his true and unambiguous self.

[Poetaster]

Psychological complexity and moral ambiguity are unknown in Middle Earth. The good characters are good; the bad characters are bad. Nobody is shocked when Boromir is tempted by the Ring -- he's the type who would be. Gollum vacillates -- but it's all about what constitutes his own self-interest.

Instead of "character development", LOTR is driven by the quest for knowledge, power, and a return to the past. The Elves long for Erresa, the men for Numenor. In a way, literary novels and LOTR-type fantasy novels represent two different ways of looking at a child's growth into adulthood. In literary novels, the characters must develop and learn about themselves (just as children must learn what kind of adults they are going to be). In LOTR, characters must learn about the world and how to cope with it -- about the power of the Ring, about the perils of Mordor, about the glories of Numenor (just as children must learn about history and science).

This is not to say that the characters in LOTR are uninteresting -- it's just that they're very different from those in literary novels. There are no Hectors in the service of Sauron. Thorin calls himself, "Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King Under the Mountain". He is defined by his fate, his history, and his heritage, and wants only to be his true and unambiguous self.

I think this is right.

[Eiseabhal]

Characterisation in Tolkein? A dwarf is a dwarf is a dwarf. Except in the film when they become mysteriously Scottish poison dwarves. Perhaps that's what's called character development.

[Sarabande]

I have neither read LOTR nor seen the films but I have taught "The Hobbit" to 14 year olds. The novel bored me rigid, even though I attempted to envisage the opening chapter and sequences in the Baggins 'Hobbit hole" as some kind of satire of the English gentry. The episodic nature of the novel, the unremarkable and unearthly characters just felt like wading through wet clay; I didn't even complete the reading of it and had to get the students to tell me what happened. Unprofessional, I know, but they did well enough with their understanding of it to complete an assessment task.

I'll never understand the fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien!!

[Pompey Bum]

I'll never understand the fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien!!

Me neither, nor the lack of interest in actual accounts of great clashes like Thucydides' Peloponnesian War or Ammianus Marcellinus' The Roman History. I read The Hobbit when I was about 13 and liked it. I read The Fellowship of the Ring at around 16 and was utterly bored. I never even considered reading the others of the series--it was that bad. Decades later I made the mistake of seeing the movies (all three because my wife dragged me). They were even more tedious than I remember The Fellowship of the Rings being. I didn't bother with The Hobbit movie because I do have a happy (if vague) memory of it, and I'd rather not have it turned into a mindless blockbuster in my memory.

I've got nothing against readers who enjoy Tolkien, though. To each his own. And Gollum was a little like Uriah Heep, right? :)

[Calidore]

I read The Hobbit when I was about 13 and liked it. I read The Fellowship of the Ring at around 16 and was utterly bored. I never even considered reading the others of the series--it was that bad. Decades later I made the mistake of seeing the movies (all three because my wife dragged me). They were even more tedious than I remember The Fellowship of the Rings being.

Funny, I also read The Hobbit and LOTR at about the same ages as you, and felt the same way about both. I actually tried reading LOTR several times over the next 15-20 years, and only once made it through the first book, but that time I came to a crashing halt soon into the second. The difference is, I absolutely loved the Fellowship movie, and when I tried the trilogy again after seeing that first one on screen, I sailed right through it. I've read it again since and still enjoyed it, thought I definitely liked the cinematic experience better overall.

[Ecurb]

I definitely liked the cinematic experience better overall.

Boo! Hiss! Boo! Hiss! I read all the books (except The Silmarillion and those that followed) by the time I was 12 or so and loved them all. So when I compared the character development in LOTR to that in literary novels, I wasn't denigrating LOTR -- just stating the facts of the case. Although The Iliad and The Odyssey do offer the reader some moral ambiguity and ambivalent characters, some other epics do not. Roland, Renaldo and Ogier would fit right into Middle Earth.

The movies were horrid -- one battle scene after another, each more interminable than the one before. The sight of Frodo rolling his eyes up in his head as if the One Ring were a dose of main-lined heroin was enough to make me wish I could shoot up right there in the theater.

The fact that LOTR DIFFERS from literary novels certainly suggests that some fans of literary novels may prefer that kind of reading. Indeed, they do. Others may prefer LTR and genre novels (as I did as a kid). Obviously, liking both (like I do now) gives the reader more enjoyable options.

[Sarabande]

It's good to know people out there enjoy the writings of JRRT and that they derive much pleasure from this: I just don't understand the fascination, that's all. I was in Wellington, New Zealand, at the time of the world premiere of "The Hobbit" (a co-incidence and the crowds were annoying!) and spoke to a journalist in the hotel lift. I asked him did he realize that Tolkein was satirizing a level of English society with this book and he said he did not; I explained how this worked and his eyes glazed over. He made no mention of this at all in his newspaper review which I read the next day. Anyway, New Zealand is very proud of its Tolkein films and the work of that director - whose name totally escapes me. I've only ever seen snippets of the films and these were mostly computer-generated shots of creepy creatures in a slime-sodden environment.

There needed to be some point to the epics themselves, rather than a series of 'adventures' with creatures from another planet. Ecurb has described the situation perfectly - tedious, interminable. When it comes to Rings I prefer Alberich from Wagner's "Ring" and all the consequences with follow from that opening in "Das Rheingold". But, horses for courses...!!