Ambiguous diction

The scholar of English literature Steve Walker states that Tolkien's prose leaves ample freedom for the reader through its ceaseless ambiguity in many dimensions, such as in diction,^[2] in balancing psychological reality against "imaginative possibility",^[3] in description of characters and landscape,^[3] in tone,^[4] between past and present,^[5] and between the ordinariness and almost pantheistic animation of nature.^[3]

Tolkien deliberately introduces ambiguity in many places with words of various parts of speech – including adjectives, verbs, and nouns – that hint at uncertainty, strangeness, or chance.^[2]

In his tone, Tolkien achieves an ambiguous balance by offering alternative views or opinions, such as when the Elves Galadriel and Celeborn meet the ancient Ent Treebeard near the end of the book.^[4]

Ambiguous description

Some of Tolkien's critics, like the Beowulf translator Burton Raffel, have been in two minds about The Lord of the Rings. Raffel liked the book, but in the words of the historian and Tolkien scholar Nils Ivar Agøy "reached the weird conclusion that it was 'not literature'." Taking the passage describing Frodo's awakening after meeting the Elf Gildor Inglorion, Raffel calls the prose "brilliantly adequate, straightforward, just starched enough to have body, resilient enough to catch the echoes of speech, not a super-charged instrument, nor one with great range, but very competent". Agøy describes Raffel as being "in two minds" on Tolkien's descriptive powers.^[6][7] Raffel wanted Tolkien's descriptions to be precise, with "particular objects in particular relationships with the characters", and without all the ambiguity and uncertainty that Tolkien had created.^[6] Agøy contrasts Raffel's reaction with Walker's, noting that Walker describes Tolkien's prose as "sensuous, the landscape tangible". He adds that Walker also states that Tolkien is "less concrete than he seems", his writing full of a "generalized quality" (with archetypes in place of individual characters), causing critics like Raffel to react against the book.^[6] Tolkien's ambiguity further explains why The Lord of the Rings has been seen in so many different ways.^[8]

Agøy finds that while Tolkien does sometimes describe people, places, and objects such as utensils, swords, and staves, he just as often makes the descriptions "general ... almost generic", leaving plenty of room for the reader's imagination: "If we see cosy Bag End in vivid color and high definition, the colors and details are added by us, the readers, to a framework provided by Tolkien."^[9] Agøy adds that in his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien states in a footnote (Note E) that "illustrations do little good to fairy-stories", since "every hearer of the words will have his own picture" of what a piece of bread, a hill, or a river is like. ^[10] Accordingly, Agøy summarizes Tolkien's view as being that authors should "not unnecessarily constrain the reader's 'own picture'", in other words favouring "quite vague descriptions."^[10]

Ambiguous titles

The Two Towers is an intentionally ambiguous title, as Tolkien did not wish to give away too much of the volume's story. He initially had four towers in mind, and three pairs of these (Orthanc and Barad-dûr, Minas Tirith and Barad-dûr, or Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol, black lines) could have been the two indicated by the title.^{[T 5]} But his cover illustration showed a different pair (red line), with Orthanc and a fifth tower, Minas Morgul.^[11]

Tolkien took care to make the titles of his volumes, books, and chapters ambiguous, so as not to give away too much of the story. When his publishers decided to bring out The Lord of the Rings in three volumes, rather than six books as Tolkien had hoped, they agreed on the ambiguous title The Two Towers for the middle volume. It was unclear which towers this meant, as five towers are named in the narrative. Tolkien initially had four of the towers in mind – Orthanc, Barad-dûr, Minas Tirith, and the tower of Cirith Ungol, forming three possible pairs that made sense to him.^{[T 5][T 6][12]} However, his illustration for the volume's cover showed a different pair: Orthanc and a fifth tower, Minas Morgul. This was still suggestive and ambiguous as the design did not name the towers in English, but it resolved the ambiguity pictorially, for those who could understand his symbolism.^[11][13]

Echoes of Christianity

Catherine Madsen, writing in Mythlore, describes the contradictory quality of The Lord of the Rings, "religion without revelation", in which "all triumphs are mixed: every victory over evil is also a depletion of the good."^[14] She sees "echoes" of Christian imagery in the book, but "precisely not witnesses to the Gospel", arguing that if Elbereth has something of the Virgin Mary about her, it is her "starriness that crosses over into Faerie, not her miraculous motherhood or her perpetual virginity."^[14] Tolkien had in Madsen's view a strong allegiance both to Christianity and to the "laws and form of the fairy-story". She argues that he wanted to show "a world on its own terms" where "both catastrophe and eucatastrophe developed from natural facts, because these carry a weight which the supernatural cannot."^[14]

Moral ambiguity

Tolkien's Cracks of Doom scene has been likened to "Aeneas' morally ambiguous killing of Turnus".^[15] 17th century painting by Luca Giordano

Madsen notes the "immense moral ambiguity" of the book's Cracks of Doom scene where Frodo and Gollum struggle for the One Ring; far from some simple good triumphing over evil, good "depends on evil to deliver it."^[14] The classicist J. K. Newman calls the scene the book's "morally ambiguous climax", likening it in Classical terms to "Aeneas' morally ambiguous killing of Turnus" at the end of Virgil's Aeneid.^[15]

Imagination and orthodoxy

The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger notes that The Lord of the Rings has constantly attracted conflicting analyses, such as those of neo-pagans and evangelical Christians. Tolkien replied ambiguously to questions, or gave conflicting statements of his own view.^[16] Flieger states that he "trimmed his sails to meet winds from different directions", noting that the book offers "richness and multivalent texture", enabling every reader to take what they personally need and want.^[17] In her view, Tolkien was trying to "harmonize his work’s originality and his own imagination with Christian orthodoxy, and to situate his often unorthodox views within the narrower confines of his religion without abandoning either."^[17] Flieger quotes Judith Thurman's remark that "A coherent personality aspires, like a work of art, to contain its conflicts without resolving them dogmatically",^[18] stating that Tolkien had the advantage of being inclusive enough to achieve this.^[19] Flieger ends by stating that the book is "not a story about good and evil but a story about how good can become evil, a story whose strength lies in the tension created by deliberately unresolved situations and conflicts... [tapping] into that 'reservoir of power' below the visible world."^[20]

Metaphors and metonyms

The Lidless Eye, a metonym for the Dark Lord Sauron, an embodiment of evil power in The Lord of the Rings

Joanna Podhorodecka writes that Tolkien revives numerous familiar and seemingly linguistically dead metaphors for evil in the book, ambiguously treating them both as familiar phrases, and hinting that they are (perhaps) literally true of the shadowy presences such as the Dark Lord Sauron and his deadly servants, the Nazgûl or ringwraiths, that he is describing. Among Tolkien's metaphors are the Lidless Eye, the symbol of the evil land of Mordor, metonymic for Sauron; the hand, stretching out to control; and shadow, denoting Sauron's power.^[21]

Evil: nothing, or powerful

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that shadow is "Tolkien's distinctive image of evil".^[21][22] Podhorodecka adds that describing evil as dark is inherently ambiguous, as this could mean simple absence of light, or "the Unlight", an actual and substantial enemy. ^[21] Tolkien's ambiguous account of evil is "an attempt to reconcile two views", which Shippey describes as "both old, both authoritative, both living, each seemingly contradicted by the other."^[23] These are the Boethian view that evil is nothing, it does not exist but is the absence of good; and the opposing view, tending towards the Manichaean, that evil is equal and opposite to good, and ceaselessly battles against it. Thus, Shippey notes, Frodo states the Boethian view directly while he is in Mordor: "the Shadow ... can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own";^{[T 7]} similarly, he writes, the Ent Treebeard states that "Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy ... in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves".^{[24][T 8]} But, Shippey writes, evil felt real enough during the Second World War and the Holocaust when Tolkien was writing. So, Shippey argues, the Ring behaves inconsistently, being both an inanimate object and definitely evil, since it "betrayed" Isildur to his death, "abandoned" Gollum when it had no more use for him, and in Frodo's words "perhaps it had tried to reveal itself in response to some wish or command that was felt in the room"^{[T 9]} in the Prancing Pony inn at Bree, when the Ring advertises its presence to the watching spies by slipping itself onto Frodo's finger, making him suddenly invisible.^[24]

Bilingual puns

Pierre H. Berube suggests in Mythlore that Tolkien used punning names to hint at their meaning in a second language, such as English or Greek.^[25] He comments that Mordor and Númenor weakly suggest the verbal associations "murder" and "numinous". More strongly, he notes that Avallonë and Atalantë remind readers of the Arthurian Avalon and Plato's Atlantis; the latter was acknowledged by Tolkien as a happy coincidence.^[25]

The name of the tower of Orthanc is unique in that it is explicitly stated to be a bilingual pun in The Two Towers: Tolkien gives the two meanings as "Mount Fang" in Elvish (Sindarin), and "Cunning Mind" in the "language of the Mark of Old". Tolkien had chosen to represent Rohirric, the language of Rohan/the Mark as Old English,^[25] where orþanc means "intelligence, understanding, mind; cleverness, skill; skilful work, mechanical art" as a noun, and "ingenious, skilful" as an adjective.^[26] Tolkien was thus admitting that he was using Old English to represent Rohirric.^[25]

A different case was Beleriand, which Tolkien had earlier named Broceliande, another Arthurian reference, this time to the magical forest Brocéliande. Since Tolkien had dropped that, Berube suggests that he wanted to find a different allusion, and chose the obscure Belerion as his target. This was the name given to Cornwall, or perhaps more specifically to the tin-mining region near Land's End, by the traveller Pytheas of Massalia in around 240 BC. Berube comments that few readers can have made this association.^[25] One pun that Tolkien dropped, fortunately in Berube's view, was "Gnome" for the Noldor, a group of Elves distinguished by their knowledge and skill; the intended association was with "gnosis", from the Greek, meaning "knowing"; but Tolkien was persuaded not to use the name because of its trivial popular usage.^[25]

Building double meanings

Walker writes that Tolkien makes his words "work overtime", weaving double meanings "into the essential texture of the prose".^[27] Some of these are explicit, like Aragorn's epithet "Estel" which is stated to mean "Hope"; Tolkien then freely puns on this in a sustained way throughout the novel with phrases like "hope dwelt ever in the depths of his heart" or that by his efforts "hope beyond hope was fulfilled".^[27] Other cases are lighter, as when the Elvish boats (craft) given to the Fellowship are called "crafty", meaning "clever as well as seaworthy", or when the evil battering-ram Grond is wound about with "spells of ruin" which, Walker suggests, are "both ruinous and runic".^[27]

Further, Walker states, much of Tolkien's punning attends so closely to the situation that it could be called "mimetic diction", painting a word-picture of whatever is happening. When describing the evil Old Man Willow, the words become treelike: his heart is called "rotten", his strength "green", his wisdom "rooted".^[27]

Equivocating about fantasy

Shippey writes that Tolkien made multiple equivocal statements about fantasy itself, both in "On Fairy-Stories" and in his poem "Mythopoeia". In Shippey's view, Tolkien was expressing his conviction that "fantasy is not entirely made up", but was at once what Tolkien called "the Sub-creative art in itself" and "derived from the Image", existing like Tolkien's beloved Old English words before any philologist (such as Tolkien himself) began to study them. So Tolkien was lucky enough to be able in his fiction to "balance exactly between 'dragon-as-simple-beast' and 'dragon-as-just-allegory', between pagan and Christian worlds, on a pinpoint of literary artifice and mythic suggestion."^[28]

Some degree of sentience

Tolkien never makes it quite clear how close to sentient the trees in the Old Forest may be.^[29]

Cynthia Cohen comments that Tolkien is steadily ambiguous about an Old Forest character, Old Man Willow/"old Willow-man", interchanging the two terms, and so hinting that he might be "a tree-like man, a man-like tree, or something in between."^[30] She writes that Tolkien is equally vague about the difference between Old Man Willow and the rest of the trees in the Old Forest; they may just be trees but who are somewhat sentient, as they are "under its dominion" (though Frodo refers to Old Willow Man as "he" not "it")^[30] and watch the intruding Hobbits with hostile "emotion and intent", indeed seeming to have a "vindictive will".^{[31][T 10]}

Tolkien's trees range from being simple, natural, primary world plants through to fully-sentient and mobile Ents, with Huorns (who can be stirred up to walk by the Ents) and Old Forest trees in between. Cohen comments that Tolkien carefully crafts an account that preserves "the inner consistency of reality", moving from vague feelings about "queer" trees though to progressively more sentient and hostile beings as the Hobbits travel deeper into the Old Forest. She notes Tolkien's use of phrases that indicate ordinariness as well as the Hobbits' feelings of discomfort: "It seemed [her italics] that the trees became taller, darker, and thicker"; they had "writhing and interlacing roots", which might be familiar metaphors for real-world trees, or might be a literal account of dangerous and threatening beings.^[29]

Lost ambiguity in film

The flaming of the stars on Aragorn's battle standard can be imagined in many ways by a reader, but anyone presenting the standard in a film has to choose just one appearance for it.^[32]

Scholars such as Michael D. C. Drout and Estelle R. Jorgensen state that Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings reduces the complexity and ambiguity inherent in Tolkien's story.^[32][33]

Drout writes that even the most detailed prose description inherently retains "a certain ambiguity". He gives as an example the long sentence detailing the symbols on Aragorn's battle standard, commenting that no film director can hope to preserve the ambiguity of a statement like "And the stars flamed in the sunlight, for they were wrought of gems by Arwen daughter of Elrond". ^[32] Drout states that the director has to "choose which gems (which colors, what kind of faceting, etc.) and arrange them in some way."^[32] Thus, Drout concludes, even a director who was trying to represent a book literally would reduce or eliminate the text's ambiguity.^[32]

In Jorgensen's view, one of Tolkien's many metaphors, that of the journey, takes over as "the single and definitive idea" in the film.^[33] The drawings by Jackson's conceptual artists Alan Lee and John Howe, along with Richard Taylor's costume and set designs, drove Jackson's visual presentation, creating an "authoritative" picture of the story.^[33] The film version, Jorgensen writes, "becomes one version of what ... might be multiple imagined versions", overriding viewers' own ways of seeing the story.^[33]

Ambiguity preserved or lost in music

A musical adaptation may in Jorgensen's view be better able to preserve Tolkien's ambiguity better, generating the sort of wonder that could match the feelings evoked by Tolkien's mythic narrative. Music may hint at the story's "transcendence, profundity, ambiguity, narrativity, and an aesthetic and didactic character that arouse awe, mystery, and a heightened sense of the human condition."^[33]

Johan de Meij's 1989 Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings" is programmatic (with movements explicitly named "The Mines of Moria" and "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm"), but Jorgensen suggests that "music's very ambiguity suggests an array of possible other scenarios that listeners, without intimate knowledge of the program [of de Meij's symphony] (or even with it) might construct for themselves."^[33]

Howard Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings film series, however, is "pervasively orchestral and tonal", and Tolkien's songs for the Hobbits and for the Elf-lady Galadriel are missing. Instead, Shore uses leitmotifs representing the various cultures depicted, such as the Shire for the Hobbits. The result, in Jorgensen's opinion, is that that the music "is swallowed up by sight", as viewers pay attention to the films' unambiguous visible action.^[33]

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