The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy Analysis

Lord of the Rings trilogy is a trilogy which contains 3 episodes, “The Fellowship of the Ring”, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King”, which is composed by J.R.R. Tolkien. It has both movie and novel versions. These stories are based on Joseph Campbell’s “Monomyth theory” and Carl Jung’s views on individuation process. To have a better understanding of the structure of The Fellowship of the Ring, we can try to see the similarities between the movie and ideal structure of hero’s journey offered by Campbell, and search for Jungian elements in that structure. Frodo, the main character of the story, reaches the first treshold, and passes it in The Fellowship of the Ring according to Campbell’s structure. Also according to Jung’s elements,

Strange things, like his uncle becoming invisible, starts happening, and his ordinary everyday life starts to change with extraordinary events. This is the way of destiny calling hero to adventure, which makes these strange events significant. Frodo’s adventure starts at this point. We recognize The Ring at the “call to adventure” stage. Main character is usually called to adventure by an outside person, an object or an event according to Campbell’s monomyth theory. The Ring is the source of all evil in the middle earth, which accidentally has fallen into hands of Frodo’s uncle, Bilbo Baggins. After some events which seem to be by coincidences, The Ring has chosen Frodo to be it’s carrier. And we realise that, all events which happens, like The Ring choosing the Frodo, are actually the destiny of Frodo complete his path of beating his super ego, ego, and his ID according to Campbell, and to complete the path of self-individuation process to be a real hero, according to Jung. Frodo meets the wise old man, Gandalf, for the first time also at that stage. According to Jung, the wise old man is someone who guides the potential hero to be an actual hero, with his wisdom and knowlage. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the wise old man, Gandalf, is also the supernatural aid in most cases as the story progresses. The Actual “call to adventure” happens at the scene where, after some research on the legend of The Ring, Gandalf

At that stage, Boromir, a member of The Fellowship of the Ring, is temptated by The Ring, and wants to possess it. That shows us how much temptating shadows can be, because tthey contain the actual power. After Frodo escapes from Boromir, Boromir understands that he makes a big mistake. On the way of escaping from forest, Frodo almost gets killed by some Uruk-Hai, and faces the third transformation stage. He survives by the sacrafice which Boromir makes with his life. Frodo, who sees The Ring temptating his surrounding friends, decides to continue alone. Being able to make that decision proves that Frodo breaks his ego there, because he understands that his mission is only for himself, and he is alone on the way of completing it. He takes one more step further in the way of reaching the collective unconscious. But Sam, who is actually the Frodo’s pure good side, don’t leaves him alone. And that is not aganist the Frodo beting his ego, because Sam and Frodo is actually the same person according to Jungian