Myth, Monomyth and Middle-earth

the sake of her Internet Service Provider) wrote a full Sunday column following the premiere of 'The Two Towers' wherein (s)he expressed confusion and dismay that anyone might consider LOTR as anything more than a childish source of amusement - a fairy tale, more D&D/sword & sorcery nonsense. That was all that (s)he had come away with after viewing the film. (S)he, very typically and very ineptly, attempted to decipher what she had assumed was an allegory. 'Was the Ring the atomic bomb and Sauron Adolf Hitler?' - or words to that effect.

Clearly, (s)he had missed the boat. It could be argued that (s)he never even found the pier. Or the harbor. But for very good reasons. The writer of that article admitted to having never read any of Tolkien's works nor even to have seen the first movie of Jackson's trilogy. While (s)he might well be admonished for writing an article based on a self-confessed and total ignorance of the topic (s)he had chosen to lament and lambaste, the writer cannot be faulted for his/her confusion. After all, long before (s)he had seen the film (his/her only exposure to Middle-earth) or written a word of the article, (s)he had precluded that fairy tales - and presumably myths and legends - were trifles of the nursery.

That was the boat she missed: myths and legends, fairy tales and tall tales are not triflings. Rather, they are the enciphered instructions for social behavior and the encoded primers for healthy psychological and emotional development if the symbols, the code can be deciphered and understood.

More on that later...

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