Mortaine’s Blog

I had this dream last night in which I was in The Lord of the Rings, only it was much darker– a lot fewer friends and allies for our hobbit friends. In the dream, I was trying to swim across a lake, and the Dark Lord (or whatever represented him in the dream) was chasing me, or trailing me, and making it a very perilous journey indeed. I realized (even in the dream) that this passage was very much like Dante’s crossing the lake in the Inferno, and that it was also similar to passages in the Aenead of crossing a lake or waterway to get into the underworld. I realized that this represented a journey into the afterlife– a journey from which mortals are not meant to return.

When I woke up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would actually make a pretty decent scholastic paper topic: the structural similarity of The Lord of the Rings to other classic works involving a trip into the underworld. In a way, the visits to the elves are not unlike Dante’s experiences with the less disturbing tenants of Hell– they are in Limbo, and even their departure has a sense of resolution, as it results in the reader feeling that, at long last, they can rest. The obvious parallel of the trip to Mordor (which means “murder” in Anglo Saxon) to the inner circles of Hell has probably been made, and I wonder if the entire journey of the hobbits is in fact a structural parallel to that of Dante. Heck, they even have the Guide in Gandolf.

If this is the case, then I also wonder if the moral points made in the Inferno also parallel in The Lord of the Rings. Certainly, the ultimate evil in both is someone who betrayed a trust, and both of those evils are, in many ways, paralyzed and remote– Satan is encased in ice and completely paralyzed from motion, while the Dark Lord can only mobilize his forces– he himself cannot step onto the field and bring down Aragorn or Gandalf or even Frodo. In the “underworld” passages we are most sympathetic to, the elven kingdoms, there are sins from Dante as well. For example, two lovers who wanted nothing more than to be together forever are, in fact, bound together for all eternity in Hell– this is not unlike Arwyn, who gives up her immortality to be with her love Aragorn. Also, Dante has a pope who “made the great refusal,” who he puts into Hell– this is a pope who decided to abdicate for a more hermetic life. Dante is very critical, because being pope is a life-long commitment. Aragorn, too, has made the great refusal, in turning his back on his birthright, and his quest is to return from that sin and take up his responsibilities again.