The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [230]
As, like other Voyage and Return heroes, they come back transformed, we can also see in the change that has come over Frodo and Sam, now called `Sam the Wise, a version of the Rags to Riches story. The essence of this plot is that an outwardly unremarkable little figure, treated as of little account by those around him, should eventually reveal a much deeper and more extraordinary self within. This is precisely what has happened to Frodo and his companion. Initially they are very ordinary little characters. But as the story progresses they reveal undreamed-of depths of courage, ingenuity and steadfastness, until by the end they have been transfigured into great heroes.
By its nature The Lord of the Rings cannot be centrally a Tragedy. But certainly we see the basic plot of Tragedy unfolding in the fate of one character, the `dark wizard' Saruman, Gandalf's alter-ego, who had once been endowed with great magical powers for good but then perverted by the influence of Sauron. As the story develops we see this immensely powerful figure becoming more and more frustrated, until, in the nightmare of his master Sauron's overthrow, he journeys to the Shire to make a last pitiful bid, as Avenger, to create havoc. Here he is finally turned on and killed by his sly companion Wormtongue, who in the nick of time has made the switch from `dark' to `light.
Thus six of the seven great themes we looked at earlier can all be seen unfolding simultaneously in the main plot of The Lord of the Rings. But we may then note two odd things about the story.
The first, very unusually, is that it is a Quest explicitly not to win some great prize, but to get rid of something, to throw something away. The explanation of this lies in the nature of the `treasure' which has to be thrown away, the ring. The whole point of the ring - as in that other pseudo-mythic story centred on the appeal of a magical ring which confers enormous power on anyone who possesses it, Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen - is that, despite its immense value and magical properties, it is ultimately a very dangerous and dark object.4 Not only is it intimately connected with the `Dark Lord' Sauron, but if he can get hold of it, the world is lost. It is in fact a symbol not of wholeness but of the ego, tempting anyone who possesses it to dreams of infinite power. No one realises this more clearly than those two great figures of `light' in the story, Gandalf and Galadriel, the Wise Old Man and the Anima. Both are themselves momentarily tempted to possess the ring, although each has enough self-knowledge to recognise just how disastrous this would be. Frodo alone has been chosen to carry the ring, despite his frailty, because he is sufficiently awed by the solemn task which has been laid upon him not to fall prey to such temptation. And when the ring is finally returned to the depths of the earth whence it came, the world is restored to life and wholeness because the ego has at last merged back into union with the Self.5
The other odd thing about Frodo's story is that when his Quest is concluded there is one supremely important element missing. There is no heroine, no `Princess; no `other half' to make him whole. This is part of the reason why he cannot ultimately seem a complete character, and why there is a strong sense of something missing about the story in general and his character in particular. He remains somehow unfulfilled, not fully developed, a hobbit rather than a man.
Nevertheless it would be surprising, where an author's imagination has been so profoundly stirred by so much of the basic material out of which stories are spun, if this enormously