On Alienation In The Lord Of The Rings

The thesis aims at a detailed analysis on J.R.R Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings from theories of alienation in Western Marxism. It focuses on the alienation of the characters and society as well as resistance of the alienation, which will be analyzed from three aspects. The first is the analysis of the alienated characters in The Lord of the Rings. Some typical individuals were deprived of the properties of being a creature for they lost their selfhood, presented morbid psychology and formed spiritual wasteland due to their blind worship for the great power. Thus they were reduced to the objects and tools by alienation. What's more, the Third Age of Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings tended to be alienated. This social alienation was embodied in three attributes. Firstly, the Third Age was historically discontinued. Then the society was saturated with the lust for founding a tyrannically untied society via the great power of the One Ring. What's more, the Middle-earth presented monotonous culture owing to the deficiency of belief, the depression of diverse ethnicities as well as the suppression of negation of the given order. However, those ethnicities not alienated yet formed an ally to eliminate the alienation via fighting against the dark power and destroying the One Ring. Consequently, as the two alienated phenomena -- lust-controlling and illusory requirements were uprooted, the new age followed.The ally of the Man, the Elf and the Wizard Gandalf, combined with the Hobbits' journey to destroy the Ring, contributed to the resistance and elimination of the alienation. The combination between the Man, representative of the common, with the Elf, the incarnation of art was powerful. However, these incarnations of art finally left Middle-earth to their own home, which meant that the art estranged from the common, acting as spiritual supervisors and critics. This dynamic relationship between the reality and art is one of the outstanding features of alienation in Western Marxism. And it is also the important feature of the English epic created by Tolkien.All in all, the elements of alienation in The Lord of the Rings are the same as that in reality. And the eucatastrophe of Tolkien's world brings enlightenment to the real world which is being engulfed by alienation. And the eucatastrophe expresses Tolkien's idea of returning to mythology, art, nature and belief as well as of the recovery of harmonious relationship among people, objects, society and nature.