Somme And Mordor

Very often emotional bond exists between person and place, environmental psychology calls this occurrence place attachment. Just as the Somme for the British, Mordor for the peoples of Middle-Earth can be seen as the geographical manifestation of Evil. Both the Somme and Mordor made a significant psychological impact on those who survived the horrors of these places. The Great War devastated the life of soldiers: returnees often were tormented by the condition called shell shock, which these days is known as post-traumatic stress disorder. Shell shock affected the lives of men on multiple levels. Besides the psychological symptoms like re-living their experiences of combat, there was the problem of reintegration into society. Soldiers, especially

How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back?” (RTK, LOTR bk.6 ch.9) asks Frodo. Like the soldiers returning to Britain, Frodo feels that things have changed, the evil he endured made him a different person, and it changes the way he perceives life in Hobbiton. As the returnees, Frodo also experiences isolation: he is almost an outsider, he spends most of his time alone, writing his book at Bag End. But it is not only the invisible that Frodo suffers from: The Witch-king of Angmar stabbed Frodo with his Morgul-blade, leaving a wound that would never heal fully. It constantly torments Frodo, making him relive the experience repeatedly. Having this comparison in mind, we can say that Tolkien was aware of the damage that the shell shock caused his countrymen, and either consciously or unconsciously he wanted to commemorate those who lived to tell the

This is a quite evident reference to the aforementioned tendency. Tolkien himself claims that: “My ‘Samwise’ is indeed largely a reflexion of the English soldier...the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War”(Carpenter L.187). However, Sam shared the burden with Frodo - being the Ringbearer for a short time - he is not that deeply affected by the evil of Mordor. At the end he successfully fits into the society, what is more, he is elected as the mayor of the Shire for seven consecutive 7-year terms. (LOTR,