The Poignancy Of Tolkiens Four Letter Word Analysis

The Poignancy of Tolkien’s Four-Letter Word J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic novel The Lord of the Rings showcases his affinity for what is small and how its measure contradicts its significance. Tolkien crams undetected, potent potential into unlikely vessels—vessels that seemingly lack the capacity. The reader sees this in Tolkien’s protagonist and antagonist, the hobbit and ring respectively. The measure of each conflicts with its significance. With a closer look, the reader also sees this in Tolkien’s word choice. In his essay â€Å"On Fairy-Stories,† Tolkien claims â€Å"How powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent.† Throughout The Lord of†¦show more content†¦They seek comfort in food, friendship, and folklore as well as a good pipe with each. They do not wish to learn more than they already know, residing in the Shir e—their â€Å"bubble†Ã¢â‚¬â€ where they stay to themselves, shut off from the world. They are a race that lived in Middle-Earth for many long years before other folk were even aware of them. Their smallness and dullness go unnoticed as perhaps the word pale may to a reader. In contrast to other more impressive adjectives from which Tolkien could have easily chosen (surely his repertoire was quite large considering his affiliation with the Oxford dictionary) such as cadaverous, bleached, bloodless, sallow, anemic, even doughy, the word pale is plainly dull, and its full capacity in terms of Tolkien’s text could easily be skimmed over by the reader. Similarly, many of Tolkien’s characters—the hobbits, Lady Eowyn, even Strider go unnoticed at first glance for their full potential. The hobbits are over looked due to their size, Eowyn due to her gender, and Strider due to his choice. Each, however, rises to a significance far greater than their measure. Like these characters, pale is more than it seems, more than is expected. The word pale is most often associated with fading, with loss. If it were a sound, it would be an echo—the gradual fading of what â€Å"once was.† In The Lord of the Rings the word pale echoes the fading