Dreams and visions in The Lord of the Rings

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J.R.R. Tolkien repeatedly uses dreams and visions in The Lord of the Rings to create literary effects, allowing the narrative to transition between everyday reality and awareness of other kinds of existence.

Context

Detail of manuscript of the medieval dream vision, Le Roman de la Rose, with illuminated drawing of the dreamer

J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English; he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford.[1] He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and for the posthumously published The Silmarillion which provides a more mythical narrative about earlier ages, influenced by ancient, medieval, and modern literature.[2]

The dream vision or visio is a major literary device in early medieval literature, especially but not only in the genre of visionary literature.[3][4] Amy Amendt-Raduege writes that medieval dream visions, such as those of Geoffrey Chaucer, or those in the Chanson de Roland, the Roman de la Rose, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are intensely visual.[5] Further, she writes, the dreamer often goes to sleep troubled by something, and the dream takes them to an ideal place where they meet a figure of authority, such as Virgil in Dante's Inferno. She comments that many dreams in The Lord of the Rings "follow the same conventions".[5]

In his essay "On Fairy-Stories", Tolkien discusses the function of dreams in fantasy, stating that[6][T 1]

in dreams strange powers of the mind may be unlocked. In some of them a man may for a space wield the power of Faërie, that power which, even as it conceives the story, causes it to take living form and colour before the eyes.

— Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"

Coming later in English literature is in Deirdre Greene's words "a tradition of visionary writing which strives toward national epic", from the early modern Edmund Spenser and John Milton, through to modern times with the rather different approach of William Blake and, argues Deirdre Greene in Mythlore, also Tolkien.[7]

Narrative

Sean Lindsay, writing in Mythlore, lists the overt descriptions of dreams or mentions of dreamlike states in The Lord of the Rings (not including dreamlike or visionary passages). By volume, he identifies and quotes 25 dreams in The Fellowship of the Ring; 10 in The Two Towers; and 10 in The Return of the King.[8]

Thus for example in "The Council of Elrond", the protagonist Frodo exclaims "I saw you", explaining to the wizard Gandalf: "You were walking backwards and forwards. The moon shone in your hair." The narrative goes on "Gandalf paused astonished and looked at him. 'It was only a dream', said Frodo, 'but it suddenly came back to me. I had quite forgotten it...'"[8][T 2]

At the end of the novel, Frodo has a different vision, one presaged in another dream[T 3] hundreds of pages earlier:[9] "until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dreams in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."[8][T 4]

Other beings have dreams; Tolkien's "Song of the Ents and Entwives" depicts the male Ents doing little in summer except dreaming, in contrast to the Entwives for whom summer was a busy time.[10]

Analysis

Lindsay writes that dreams may simply indicate a mental state, such as of weariness; it may denote a dreamlike state, such as when Frodo listens to Elvish music in Rivendell; and it may mean a full-valued vision of some reality, distant in space or time.[11]

Guidance

Karl Schoor, in Mythlore, writes that dreams are not limited to the hobbits. Faramir, a man of Gondor, repeatedly sees Númenor, the island kingdom that was Gondor's predecessor, drowning under a "great dark wave... coming on, darkness unescapable".[12] Faramir repeatedly has a different dream, one that Schoor calls the most important in the novel, where a voice declaims "Seek for the sword that was broken: In Imladris it dwells; ..." Schoor comments that Faramir's father Denethor, Steward of Gondor, correctly interprets this as a summons to a Council of Elrond at Imladris (Rivendell).[12][13] Tolkien stated that he personally had the recurring dream of the coming wave.[T 5]

Visions

It seemed to Frodo that he was lifted up, and passing over he saw that the rock-wall was a circle of hills, and that within it was a plain, and in the midst of the plain stood a pinnacle of stone, like a vast tower but not made by hands. On its top stood the figure of a man. The moon as it rose seemed to hang for a moment above his head and glistened in his white hair as the wind stirred it. Up from the dark plain below came the crying of fell voices, and the howling of many wolves... A mighty eagle swept down and bore him away. The voices wailed and the wolves yammered.

"In the House of Tom Bombadil"[T 3][8]

Nick Groom comments in his book Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century that the descriptions of dreams in The Lord of the Rings take up a remarkable amount of space. He writes that the dreams at once create a feeling of "unreality and insecurity", and lend an additional dimension to the narrative. Taking the example of Frodo's seeing Gandalf atop Orthanc, he comments that the account implies that the vision is true, and that Middle-earth is home to something like panpsychism, more than just material reality. Descriptions of dreams provide hints of the guiding power of the godlike Valar, transcending ordinary reality.[14][15] Paul Kocher writes that Frodo's visions "set him apart as unusual even before he leaves the Shire".[16] He dreams of the Misty Mountains,the direction he needs to take to begin his quest. He dreams of the sea, where he will one day take ship on his final journey. Kocher comments that some of the great, like Aragorn and the Elf-lords, have "true hunches about coming events"; but those are not in dreams. Frodo, then, "seems gifted with a power possessed only by the greatest among other races."[16]

False images

Greene writes that the evil characters in The Lord of the Rings are able to place "false images in the minds of men, or to cause men to perceive true images in a false structure". She gives two examples: Sauron's ability to deceive Denethor to despair by means of the visions he sees in the seeing stone, the Palantír; and the "visual scenario" created by the fallen wizard Saruman's voice as he paints a word-picture to Gandalf of how he and Gandalf could benefit by falling in with the evil of Sauron. She compares Tolkien's "angry distrust of the making of heterodox images" to that of Spenser in The Faerie Queene and Milton in Paradise Regained.[7]

Dreamland

See also: Time in Tolkien's fiction
Earthly Paradise: Lothlórien has been compared to the place dreamed of in the Middle English poem Pearl.[17] The miniature from the Cotton Nero manuscript shows the Dreamer on the other side of the stream from the Pearl-maiden.

A special case is the otherworldly Elvish land of Lothlórien, which resembles the dreamland of the medieval poem Pearl;[17][18] Tolkien was working with that text while he was writing The Lord of the Rings. Amy Amendt-Raduege notes that lórien indeed is the Quenya for 'dream'.[18] As well as the dreamlike nature of the place, with the "celestial colors" of its forest, accessible only "by crossing a river", and ruled by a female guide-figure, Galadriel, the land contains a fountain, the Mirror of Galadriel, which supplies visions to those permitted to look into it. Frodo's vision, of the demonic Eye of Sauron, is evidently evil, but under Galadriel's guidance is handled safely. Amendt-Raduege comments that "the vision gives Frodo the insight he needs to complete his quest: the ability to look inside another's heart and read its temptations".[18]

Elvish waking dreaming

Kocher notes that Tolkien describes the extremely un-Mannish sleep and dreams of the Elf Legolas, as he and his companions follow the trail of the orcs: "he could sleep, if sleep it could be called by Men, resting his mind in the strange paths of elvish dreams, even as he walked open-eyed in the light of this world."[19][T 6]

Paradise

See also: Christianity in Middle-earth

Keith Kelly and Michael Livingston write in Mythlore that descriptions of visions give "the clearest glimpse into Tolkien's depictions of Paradise."[9] They note that Frodo's two visions of the "far green country", near the start and again right at the end, suggest a kind of frame for the novel, bracketing the quest with hints of paradise. They comment that this view of Tolkien's plan is reinforced by a letter he wrote in 1944 while he was writing The Lord of the Rings. In it he stated that "the final scene will be the passage of Bilbo and Elrond and Galadriel through the woods of the Shire on their way to the Grey Havens. Frodo will join them and pass over the sea (linking with the vision he had of a far green country in the house of Tom Bombadil)".[9][T 7]

References

Primary

  1. ^ Tolkien 2008, pp. 27–84
  2. ^ Tolkien 1954, Book 2, ch. 2 "The Council of Elrond"
  3. ^ a b Tolkien 1954a, Book 1, ch. 7 "In the House of Tom Bombadil"
  4. ^ Tolkien 1955, Book 6, ch. 9 "The Grey Havens"
  5. ^ Carpenter 2023, #180 to Mr Thompson, draft, 14 January 1956
  6. ^ Tolkien 1954, Book 3, ch. 1 "The Riders of Rohan"
  7. ^ Tolkien 1992, p. 53

Secondary

  1. ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 111, 200, 266.
  2. ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 187–208.
  3. ^ Kabir 2001, p. 78.
  4. ^ Amendt-Raduege 2006, p. 45.
  5. ^ a b Amendt-Raduege 2006, pp. 45–46.
  6. ^ Lindsay 1987, p. 7.
  7. ^ a b Greene 1996.
  8. ^ a b c d Lindsay 1987, pp. 10–14.
  9. ^ a b c Kelly & Livingston 2009.
  10. ^ Olsen 2008.
  11. ^ Lindsay 1987, p. 8.
  12. ^ a b Schoor 1983, p. 21.
  13. ^ Kocher 1974, p. 124.
  14. ^ Van Dyke 2024.
  15. ^ Groom 2023.
  16. ^ a b Kocher 1974, pp. 107–108.
  17. ^ a b Shippey 2001, pp. 198–199.
  18. ^ a b c Amendt-Raduege 2006, pp. 49–50.
  19. ^ Kocher 1974, pp. 90–91.

Sources

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