Don Quixote de la Arnor

[Inderjit S]

Don Quixote was (amongst many other things) a satircization of the knight-errantry stories which were prevalent in Europe and Spain at the time. The characters, or heroes, tended to be one-dimensional i.e. handsome, brave prince and beautiful princess. I say tend to be-knight errantry is neither my favourite genre, nor one which I specialise in, so I cannot say if it was always so.

Yet how far do the criticisms put forward in Don Quixote apply to the Lord of the Rings? Are the heroes too wooden? Salman Rushdie levelled this criticism at The Lord of The Rings some time ago-are characters such as Elrond, Gandalf and Aragorn too wooden or do they have other more human traits? Authors such as Henry Fielding and Graham Greene were able to use Cervantes’s novel to parody certain societal traits-can this be applied to The Lord of The Rings? (Anybody read Bored of the Rings?)

 

[Dianora]

Well, many heroes in Tolkien's books represent the traditional type of heroism and are a bit wooden, maybe. Still there are also different kind of heroes in the books which I consider delightful. The hobbits, for example, are small, lively, simple creatures and yet they can find bravery within. Also the more traditional heroes like Aragorn and Gandalf, even Elrond, show signs of humanity: they have weaknesses which they admit and -that's important too- they have sense of humour.