The Lord of the rings: the role of the Everyman

The art of storytelling, whether we are talking of literature, movies or theater, is a very complex one. And, if we restrict to ourselves to what has unfairly been called “commercial” storytelling, we must agree that it bases itself on the premise that there must be a certain structure, certain formula that helps the audience to connect with the story by the means of easy recognition of said formula. That formula, in action, adventure or epic stories is generally known as the hero’s journey.

Campbell’s study of mythology that resulted on this “hero’s journey” is nothing more than a standardization of the narrative structure that lies behind every mythological story told since the beginning of time: from the story of Isis in ancient Egypt to every story in the Bible, passing through the legends of King Arthur and most of the literature that derives from it. Therefore, it’s only logical that a story that aimed to become the true Anglo-Saxon mythology would loosely follow this structure even if at the time it was written, Campbell was very far from its conception.

“The Lord of the rings” was written by J.R.R. Tolkien between 1937 and 1949 and was first published in 1954, divided into three books: “The Fellowship of the Ring”, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King”.

The most interesting aspect in regards to this is the fact that, as it was written and structured intuitively (unlike many scripts that were made after Campbell published his theory) it creates a story were different journeys are incased one inside the other. We all can agree that, as a protagonist, Frodo leads the main journey, but there is also Aragorn’s hero’s journey, and Faramir’s, and many others. This gives the story a veracity that helps create this feeling that you are reading a legend that is thousands of years old.

I’m going to try to clarify this: stories like “Star wars”, “The matrix”, “Harry Potter”, created after Campbell’s big revelation, follow almost step by step his theory. The result, although very entertaining, is also very contrived. I base this far fetched statement in one single argument: the role of the everyday man. In these stories these is far too forced and contrived, especially when compared to a story like Tolkien’s.

I started off this essay by saying that in adventure or epic stories it is needed a recognizable structure to capture the audience. But there is one thing that is even more important: the audience needs to connect with the characters and the story, and to do that he need to relate to our protagonist. Because of this, in this heroic stories, the hero tends to respond to the figure of the Everyman.

The Everyman is the narrative equivalent to the ordinary person. It’s the figure of the average, which calls to almost everyone in an audience because most of us don’t have superpowers or are incredibly brave and courageous. We are nothing but ordinary, and, therefore, we want our protagonist to be nothing but ordinary, at least at the beginning.

This is especially clear in stories like “Harry Potter”, where our main character is absolutely ordinary, it even has the most ordinary name in the Anglo-Saxon world. He has nothing special about him, except that he is a wizard. But even then, he is not the best wizard nor the bravest. He is nothing but average.

In “Star Wars” there is also something like that, but it’s not so blatant: Luke is the Everyman in the sense that he is nothing but a farmer with no special powers. But, unlike Harry, as his adventure advances he abandons the role of the ordinary man to become extraordinary, and that is maybe the reason why I prefer “Star Wars” to “Harry Potter”. But I’m going to try to stay out of such diatribes.

"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future" - The Fellowship of the ring

The thing is: I’ve made my point clear: there is the need of the figure of the Everyman for the audience to connect with our story through our protagonist.

And “The Lord of the rings”, as expected, even though it’s not as formulaic as these other stories I’ve mentioned, it does use the figure of the Everyman. 

Tolkien’s work is a huge, heavy-detailed high fantasy epic, filled with characters. But at the same time, it’s the story of a little Hobbit named Frodo Baggins. It’s a high fantasy epic, but it’s also the story of the Everyman.

In this case, the figure of Frodo helps the audience to connect with the story, for in the middle of this fantasy, there’s a character that, to a degree, it’s recognizable.

But here, unlike in other stories, the set up for the introduction of the Everyman into the adventure works much more natural.

More often than not, it is very difficult to put the Everyman into the protagonist slot because: what does the Everyman have to do with the doings of war and heroes? Some storytellers go to great lengths to put that Everyman into the coveted slot of the protagonist.   Our main character always ends up being the product of some predetermined Messianic prophecy; someone comes and tells them they were the chosen one all along (Dune, Harry Potter, Star Wars). Or sometimes, the set up is just stupid: the main lead just happens to have a mark in their skin that happens to be the map to anywhere important or something like that.

But the set up of the ring actually works very naturally for Frodo. He is the only one who can carry it to Mordor because if any of the great heroes or powerful characters, like Aragorn or Gandalf or Galadriel, are the ones to carry the ring, they can become something terrible, like Sauron or a Ringwraith. On the other hand, if it’s Frodo who takes it, in the worst case can become like Gollum. And this is precisely because he is the Everyman, he is ordinary, he doesn’t matter and has no say in the big schemes of the world. He has no power at all. So, because of the powerful and corrupting nature of the ring itself, only a non powerful and unimportant person can carry it.

And it is something as stupid as this what gives the extra point of credibility to this story. The Hobbits, as described by Tolkien, are the most similar to the average men we have in middle earth. And precisely because of it they are described as small folk who always stay out of everything. They do not take part in the comings and goings of their world. They are humble and contempt themselves with what they have. Frodo never dreams of becoming a great warrior, nor does he want any glory for himself. His wish is more human: he wants to keep the Shire green and safe, so Hobbits can continue being the way they are. He knows he is not Aragorn; brave and kingly, neither is he Legolas: bold and graceful, nor is he Gandalf: old and wise. He is Frodo Baggins of Bag End.

The key of this lies behind a line voiced by Galadriel in “The Fellowship of the ring”; even the smallest person can change the course of the future. This is clearly an idea deep engraved behind Tolkien’s trilogy. And that is exactly the reason why they couldn’t use the excuse of the Messianic prophecy to force our character into the adventure. The moment this card is played, our character stops full filing the role of the Everyman and becomes  a Messianic figure. 

That is why Harry, despite J.k Rowling’s efforts, isn’t really the representation of the Everyman. By marking him and turning him into “the one who lived” he becomes something else. He is marked as superior from the rest. As seen here, this setup doesn’t really respect the notion of the Everyman.

The case of Luke Skywalker in the Star wars trilogy is really similar. Luke is never the Everyman, not even in his days in Tatooine. He is his father’s son, and therefore he is destined to become, to a certain extend, a Jedi. Therefore, what we get is a non average character who has lived his youth as the Everyman and after a certain external element enters his life (R2-D2 and C3PO) he is forced to return to the life he was predestined to. Again, we find another “false” Everyman figure.

The main difference is that in “The Lord of the rings” Frodo is not marked nor predestined to anything. He is a simple Hobbit who lives a simple life. And when the story begins, he is thrusted into a world that is not his own, only to end up returning to his usual normal world and live for the rests of his days as the Everyman.

In the other two examples, what we find is two characters who were being forced into the Everyman slot out of a tragedy that befell on their parents and they are eventually restored to the world they were born into; in Harry’s case is the magic world, and in Luke’s case is the Jedi Order.

And so, I rest my case. The role of the Everyman is almost vital to high fantasy or big adventure stories, and it’s set up is something really complex due to its inner workings. Despite that, Tolkien’s work, does a great job at introducing it and finds a perfect excuse to make something really transcendent within the story itself.

This is Tolkien’s greatness (amongst other things), to take a world created completely out of his imagination and find the way to anchor it in our reality by constructing a really great link with the readers (or audience) through the reestablished role of the Everyman.