Scholars have described the narrative structure of The Lord of the Rings, a high fantasy work by J. R. R. Tolkien published in 1954–55, in a variety of ways, including as a balanced pair of outer and inner quests; a linear sequence of scenes or tableaux; a fractal arrangement of separate episodes; a Gothic cathedral-like edifice of many different elements; multiple cycles or spirals; or an elaborate medieval-style interlacing of intersecting threads of story. Also present is an elaborate symmetry between pairs of characters.
The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, has a different structure from the rest of the novel. It has attracted attention both for its sequence of five "Homely Houses", safe places where the Hobbit protagonists may recuperate after a dangerous episode, and for its arrangement as a single narrative thread focused on its protagonist, Frodo, interrupted by two long but critically important flashback narrative chapters.
Context
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
In 1954–55, The Lord of the Rings was published. In 1957, it was awarded the International Fantasy Award. The publication of the Ace Books and Ballantine paperbacks in the United States helped it to become immensely popular with a new generation in the 1960s. The book has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC in the United Kingdom, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the "Nation's best-loved book." In similar 2004 polls both Germany and Australia also found The Lord of the Rings to be their favourite book. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium." The popularity of The Lord of the Rings increased further when Peter Jackson's film trilogy came out in 2001–2003.
Overall structure
Tolkien scholars have noted the unusual narrative structure of The Lord of the Rings, describing it in a variety of ways, including as a balanced pair of outer and inner quests; a linear sequence of scenes or static tableaux; a fractal arrangement of separate episodes that successively elaborate upon recurring themes; a Gothic cathedral-like edifice of many different elements that combine to create a space with varying lights and vistas; or an elaborate medieval-style interlacing of intersecting threads of story.
Balance of outer and inner quests
The critic Nicholas Birns proposes that The Lord of the Rings consists of two quests, balanced against each other. The outer or main quest is the visible one, to destroy the One Ring, and it occupies the greater part of the book. The inner or moral quest is described in the book's penultimate chapter, "The Scouring of the Shire". This second quest is revealed when Frodo and the Hobbits return home to the Shire to find it despoiled and industrialised by Sharkey's men. The Hobbits, equipped by the outer quest to deal with such a crisis, raise the Shire and restore it to its rural perfection. Another critic, Bernhard Hirsch, notes the "considerable critical debate" around the chapter, and that Tolkien stated in his foreword that he had "foreseen from the outset" that the book would have as its formal structure a journey outward for the main quest and a journey home.
Linear sequence of tableaux, and a quest
The humanities scholar Brian Rosebury stated in 2003 that The Lord of the Rings is both a quest – a story with heroes and a goal, to destroy the Ring – and a journey, an expansive tour of Middle-earth through a series of tableaux that filled readers with delight; and the two support each other. Rosebury commented that much of the work, especially Book 1, is largely descriptive rather than plot-based; it focuses mainly on Middle-earth itself, taking a journey through a series of tableaux – in the Shire, in the Old Forest, with Tom Bombadil, and so on. He stated that "The circumstantial expansiveness of Middle-earth itself is central to the work's aesthetic power".
Alongside this slow descriptiveness is the quest to destroy the Ring, a unifying plotline. The Ring needs to be destroyed to save Middle-earth itself from destruction or domination by Sauron. Hence, Rosebury argued, the book does have a single focus: Middle-earth itself. The work builds up Middle-earth as a place that readers come to love, shows that it is under dire threat, and – with the destruction of the Ring – provides the "eucatastrophe" for a happy ending. That defines the work as "comedic" rather than "tragic", in classical terms; but it also embodies the inevitability of loss, as the elves, hobbits, and the rest decline and fade. Even the least novelistic parts of the work, the chronicles, narratives, and essays of the appendices, help to build a consistent image of Middle-earth. The work is thus, Rosebury asserted, very tightly constructed, the expansiveness and plot fitting together exactly.
Interlacing
In the second and third volumes of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien employed an unusual and complex narrative structure, interlacing or entrelacement, also called a "tapestry romance". Known from medieval French literature, it involves following one character or group of characters at a time, with no information about what all the other characters are doing until the narrative switches over to them. Interlacing enabled Tolkien to achieve a variety of literary effects: maintaining suspense; keeping the reader uncertain of what will happen and even of what is happening to other characters at the same time in the story; and creating both surprise and an ongoing feeling of bewilderment and disorientation. More subtly, the leapfrogging of the timeline by the different story threads allowed Tolkien to make hidden connections that can only be grasped retrospectively, as the reader realises on reflection that certain events happened at the same time, and that these connections imply a contest of good and evil powers.
The scholar of literature George H. Thomson wrote: "What must interest the student of the novel is the way Tolkien has been able to combine a very nearly complete catalogue of [medieval] romance themes (many of them extraordinary in the highest degree) with an elaborate, capacious, immensely flexible plot structure and make of the whole a coherent and convincing modern prose narrative."
+ Major interlacings of The Lord of the Rings across its 6 "books", with their original titles, showing contrasts, parallels, and prolonged gaps Character 1 The FirstJourney 2 The Journey of theNine Companions 3 The Treasonof Isengard 4 The Journey of theRing-bearers 5 The War ofthe Ring 6 The end ofthe Third Age Frodo,Sam travel toBree travel toRivendell the ninemeet up,go south travel towards Mordor travel to Mount Doom the friendsmeet again Hobbitsscour the Shire Merry awaken the Entsto Isengard swears fealty to Theoden;Battle of the Pelennor Fields Pippin swears fealty to Denethor Battle of the Morannon Aragorn meets the Hobbits travel to Rohan;Battle of Helm's Deep Battle of the Pelennor Fields Legolas,Gimli Gandalf advises Frodo,hurries off dies inMoria reappears;awakens Rohanto Isengard alerts allies Boromir dies atParth Galen Gollum (glimpsedin pursuit) pursues Frodoand the Ring pursues Frodo;destroys Ring, himself
Non-linear
The scholar E. L. Risden argued that Tolkien strongly resisted a linear structure for The Lord of the Rings. He writes that the work instead uses narrative techniques that he metaphorically calls "fractal" and "Gothic". Risden quoted the director of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Peter Jackson, as saying that The Fellowship of the Ring was the easiest to film, as it was mainly linear; the other two volumes, being interlaced, presented the filmmaker with much greater challenges.
Fractal
Scholars including Michael Drout and Risden have called the narrative structure "fractal". Drout was alluding to the multiple "stress and release" episodes, all different but repeating a pattern. Risden gave as an example of fractal description the work's combination of text with maps and a mass of names. These imply to the reader, he wrote, quoting Shippey, that Tolkien's approach indicated "that there is a world outside the story, that the story is only a selection" from Middle-earth's near-infinite undescribed diversity.
Risden wrote that "as fractal the narrative moves episodically or incrementally, guided by one or more 'strange attractors', unfolding, varying, gaining complexity." He saw Tolkien's development of Frodo's "Homely House" as a "fractal development": it begins as Bilbo's Bag End, a perfect home and base for an adventure, and "fractally" adapts to play the same role, but for Frodo and his quest. The Homely House reappears as the little Hobbit-house at Crickhollow, still much like Bag End and still inside the Shire, but now nearer to the wild. Its next incarnation is Tom Bombadil's house, again full of the comforts of home, but clearly one belonging to somebody else. The comfortable inn at Bree offers Hobbity bed and food and beer, but accompanied now by strange men and possibly half-Orcs, and increasingly obvious risks. Finally at Rivendell, having survived desperate danger, the "Last Homely House", now nothing like a Hobbit-hole, offers safety – for a time, and healing, in the house of a powerful figure, Elrond. Risden comments that "Friends, like enemies, come in many shapes and sizes", and the world contains a "charming and marvelous array of folk", concluding that "The varied [fractal] repetition expands the potentials of the world of Middle-earth"."
Gothic
As Gothic, according to Risden, the narrative "explores, cathedral-like, pacing, chiaroscuro, and artifice that expands and completes the world of the text." He notes that Gothic art has been described as relating "transcendental ideas and the finite world", in his view just like Middle-earth; and that Gothic sculpture, in the words of the French art historian Henri Focillon, "was the expression of piety" while also "cherish[ing] humanity; it loved and respected God's creatures as He loved them". He likens several story elements to parts of a cathedral, for instance, for Frodo's quest-journey:
+ E. L. Risden's Gothic cathedral "metaphor" Story element Cathedral component Frodo's path to Mordor Aisle Mordor Altar, place of sacrifice "Homely Houses" Side chapels for prayer and spiritual rest Suffering Stations of the Cross Way into Mordor Ambulatory, a covered passage Achieving the quest Eucharist Rescued by an Eagle The spirit, John the Evangelist
In Risden's view, Tolkien's use of classical and medieval literary structures, such as asides and descriptive episodes, "allow for the expansion of character and for the exploration of alternative sources of power and goodness in the world", providing a "sense of the romance of a world at the edge of our imagination but out of tangible reach".
Symmetry
Shippey writes that "one of the most undeniable ..., if least imitated qualities of ... The Lord of the Rings is the complex neatness of its overall design." He gives as an example the detailed parallels between the Fellowship's encounters with Théoden and with Denethor. The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance notes that the two leader's names are almost anagrams.