Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Masculinity

🧝🏻‍♂️When you think of the LOTR characters, who comes to mind first? Frodo? Aragorn? Legolas? 🏹 

Tolkien's positive view of masculinity offers a unique lens through which to analyse each of these characters. Plus who WOULDN'T want to talk about the absolute badassery these dudes demonstrate. Join us for a discussion about the marvellous men of Middle-earth, and let us know which one's your favourite!🌋

Transcript

 hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamppost Podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlyn. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature.

And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer. Today is our first episode about Lord of the Rings. And you might be thinking now, hang on a second. That doesn't sound like the Handmaid's Tale. Well, dear listener, you are correct. We did promise that we'd be doing The Handmaid's Tale next.

We are skipping the dystopia because we just don't like it. You did not like it in general? I don't really like dystopia. Yeah. Like I always avoided it. I like. Some, but I don't know. We recorded the episode, but we just weren't happy with it. We realized that every book we'd done before we'd really enjoyed and that show through in our episode, but we found The Handmaid's Tale just a bit grim.

And that emotion came through basically the very salient point that the book makes. And thus, the main idea of our episode was taking away human rights from women is bad. Government run by fundamentalist religion groups is bad. And if you didn't get that from reading the book yourself, you probably won't get that from us.

Well, there you go. There's your Handmaid's Tale episode. And then we decided to just take a little bit of a break, , at the end of the year, but we are back. We are excited and we have some. Really good books in the future. Now you might have caught there, we said first episode. Yes, this is our first episode of three on Lord of the Rings, and we will come back to that in a moment.

So strap in because it's going to be an interesting journey that we take along with Frodo.

So Lord of the Rings is one of those books I grew up kind of in and around. I read The Hobbit in ninth grade then I tried to read Lord of the Rings. I borrowed the books from the library and I got stuck about halfway through the first book before I just gave up because I don't know, the story just didn't grip me.

But I had lots of friends who read it. One of my best friends in high school and I, um, Maggie, if you are listening, you might remember this. Um, we had a code name for somebody that was End Draft, which requires some explanation, which I will not go into right now.

And there was also Kely and Philly, which were two dwarfs.

Keely and Philly. 

Which are two dwarfs of the Hobbit, which were code names for you and Morgan. 

I feel like I remember that. Yeah. Which one was that? Keely? I don't remember. I don't remember.

We just named you two. Keely and Philly. That's so cute. Oh, I had a, I had a lot of the rings code name. You did? Wait, how old was I when this 

Um, I think I was probably about 15 or 16. 

Oh my goodness. So you like 12 or 13. That's actually so cute. 



. So I kind of knew the story, uh, vaguely. , It was a struggle though to get through it. I kid you not, I can name four separate times. I started on the book and gave up somewhere between the first and second books. Got very familiar with the first half of the first book. And then when Josh and I started dating, , he made me watch the extended movies.

So all nine hours, like we did it in three separate weekends, like three hours per weekend. It was hard, man, but it kind of helped me get a picture of the world, which I think was one of the reasons I was struggling with it. I was, he's not a very descriptive scenery writer, so I had a hard time kind of picturing the world.

, And that's why I think I was getting stuck. But once watching the movies, that really helped. . And then finally a year ago, I forced myself to finish them via audiobook, and it was narrated by Andy Circus, who's the voice of Gollum in the movies.

And so it was like, wait, does he talk like Golum when he's reading Gollum? Yeah. And so you get the authentic Golum experience. It's pretty cool. 

Huh? Me on the other hand, I don't know, it's one of those book series like I've always heard about, but I was more of a n fan and like I knew CS Lewis and Tolkien wrote together and their books are kind of like the start of the whole fantasy genre.

But I just never really got into Lord of the Rings and really knew nothing about it other than in year nine, people would tell me that I looked like Lego Lus , because I would pin some of my hair back and leave the rest down, and it was like long and straight and fine, and my ears would stick out and yeah.

I, I read The Hobbit for the first time when I was like 18 or 19, and I've had Lord of the Rings on my tubie red list for like five years, but only now I've gotten around to it because of the podcast. And, um, Caitlin and Josh gave me the first one for Christmas, and I've only managed to read the first one before needing to record this.

So our episodes aren't necessarily based on each, like three books, but more of like over encompassing themes. So over encompassing, is 

that a word? I 

don't think that's a word. I'm sorry. 

It's a word today. Over encompassing. 

Over encompassing themes. Um, so it's gonna be interesting. I might have a few gaps, but Yeah, I'm sure we'll manage.

I'm here for the ride. I. I do. I did find it really interesting though. I struggled with all of the place names and I was constantly flipping to the map in the front to try and find like what they were talking about. And I did manage to follow them and I was also googling the characters to see what they looked like in the films.

And I really wanna watch the films now when I have a free nine hours in my life, which I don't. 

And what's actually cool is today on the day of recording this, my husband Josh is in New Zealand at Hobbiton. 

That's crazy. Like right this second, 

well he was three hours ago. I dunno. I was stalking him on the map and I was like, 

oh, he's at Hobbiton.

That's so cool. I want to go,

anyway, so just a quick story summary. It's. A very detailed involved plot, but basically the Lord of the Rings book follows a hobbit named Frodo, who is tasked by a wizard Gandalf, with the very important task of taking a super powerful but very dangerous ring to the place of its creation, which is a volcano in the treacherous land of Mor to be destroyed.

Frodo is accompanied by his faithful friend Sam, as well as two other hobbits, um, Mary and Pippin. They join up with an elf, Lego loss, a dwarf gimli, and a Ranger named Strider. And we'll kind of discuss each of these characters in more detail later. Um, it's a very rich, very thoughtful, detailed plot, not something you can really race through.

, Because there are three books, we will be doing three episodes, but we will not be going book by book.

Instead, we will be covering three central ideas that span the trilogy and covering don't you mean over encompassing ideas? We will be covering three over encompassing ideas that span the trilogy taking on one of these per episode. 

Today we will be covering the way that Tolkien addresses masculinity.

In the second episode, we'll cover femininity. And the third we'll discuss good versus evil and tyrannical governments. 

So in this first episode, like we said, we will be talking about the way that talking writes about masculinity. And you might ask why as we, why as we, why is we, why we as women are talking about masculinity?

Well, I'm married to a man for one, really? So I feel like, so I feel like that gives me kind of a right to talk about masculinity given it's something that I experience daily. Most women have men in their lives.

So learning about masculinity is important. , And so while we don't have personal experience being masculine, like most women, we interact with masculinity daily. 

Also, there's an argument to be made that both men and women can demonstrate both masculine and feminine traits as defined by society.

So it's an important conversation to have. 

The majority of characters in Lord of the Rings are actually male. And in fact, in The Hobbit, there wasn't a single female character, which put me off Signifi significantly when I read it in high school. 





I think there might be one or two in the movies, but not in the books. 



Yeah. And in Lord of the Rings, there are also very few female characters.

Like there are, there are a few and there there important, but in the, the main, the main characters,

well, like there's nine main characters. They called the, the Walking Company.

I don't remember that. No, the Company of Walkers, that's it. The walking company was a is a shoe brand of America. No, the company of Walkers. And. They're all men. And I'm reading this like, like, where am I, where are my boss? Girlies? Like, I don't know. 





So a good place to start is defining what we mean by masculinity.

The Oxford Dictionary says masculinity is the qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of men or boys. And there's a writer that I came across, Scott Rebath, who says There is of course a difference between being male and being manly or masculine. The former indicates biological sex. The latter refers to performative gender roles.

And there's a bit of debate about whether masculinity is a fixed quality that has always been, has never changed, or whether there's different interpretations or versions of masculinity in different cultures. 

. So it might be helpful to answer this question by looking at a real life example, Athens versus Sparta in ancient Greece. I'm sure that you have all heard something about these two um, societies

in Sparta, to be a man meant to fight, to be a soldier, um, to be able to survive brutal and dangerous conditions. Um, minor infractions were severely punished and it was common for young boys to die due to these punishments or the harsh training conditions because they started training them when they were quite young.

On the other hand, expectations in Athens, a neighboring Greek city were very different. Uh, masculinity was defined much more in terms of democratic and domestic leadership. The quote unquote manly ideal was for men to get married, have children manage their household, and manage their estate and slaves.

So both cultures had this idea of masculinity as a concept, but different ways of interpreting it. And I think that this example gives support to the idea that there are lots of different types of masculinities rather than just one.

Just a note on the idea of toxic masculinity. We have established that masculinity means different things in different times and cultures as such, we can acknowledge that some forms of masculinity can be toxic. And the same goes with femininity, and we will cover that next week. Um, but there's a lot in the news about toxic masculinity, especially connected to like the podcast bros.

Ah, yes. Because podcasts are the ultimate fountain of wisdom. Yes. As we prove on a daily basis here at literary lamppost. 

Oh, yeah. Well, it's more like a monthly basis now, however, using the phrase toxic masculinity is not describing all masculinity as toxic.

Rather, it's being used to label certain harmful interpretations of masculinity. 

In Lord of the Rings, we see an incredible demonstration of multiple, completely different, yet healthy masculinities demonstrated by the hobbits, the elves, and the human men. So let's start off with the hobbits.

I want to be a hobbit. 

Hobbits are small human-like beings about the size of children. They have hair on their feet and they like to live in holes in the ground. 

I don't want hair on my feet, but I do want to live in hole on the ground. 

They have a fondness for food and song and storytelling.

Uh, 

they're 

like 

the ultimate cottage core creature. Oh, and something I found hilarious is they come of age when they're 33 and they call the twenties the tweens, which, um, are their irresponsible adolescent years. And this book was written in like, um, 1954, I think, long before the research came out. But last year I think new studies showed that it wasn't.

Till about 33 that our frontal lobes fully develop, not 25, which I find incredibly rude as someone who is excited to turn 25 for the main reason to have a fully developed frontal lobe and cheaper insurance. But I digress. 

I have to say I am kind of relieved because now at 27 I do some really stupid stuff sometimes and it's like, dang, if this is me, it fully developed.

That's not very encouraging. So sometimes it's nice to know I have, I have a little bit more time. 

You are still a tween, my dear. You are in the or irresponsible adolescent years. Yes. Anyways, there are four main hobbits in Lord of the Rings. Um, actually there's five 'cause Bilbo, so Bilbo's kind of there.

Bilbo is the protagonist of the 

Hobbit. Yeah, he's like Frodo's he's Frodo's. Uncle. Uncle, yeah. Okay. He is, that's right. Anyways. So yeah, the four main ones, the young ones who the story is about is Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and 

Mary. So Pippin is short for Peregrine. Peregrine took, and Mary is Short for Mary a Doc, and I can't 

remember 

his 

last 

name.

Something Token did that really confused me. Like normally writers will pick a name and they stick with it, but Tolkien will sometimes switch. And at the first I was like, okay, we've got Pippin. And then he'd be talking about Peregrine and I'm like, wait, who's that? So it took me a while to figure that out.

But anyways, they all accompany Frodo throughout this long journey to return the ring to its final resting place, if you will. 

So we have these four main hobbits, and I personally think they show a very healthy, grounded type of masculinity in a way that you don't really see all that much in most media.

Uh, one characteristic that's very prominent is loyalty and courage and determination. I guess you could sum that up by saying moral fiber, maybe. 

Yeah. 

Um, so Sam, who goes with Frodo on this journey, It's this really treacherous journey. And they dunno if they're gonna make it back home, okay?

And there's times when Frodo tells Sam to go back home and Sam said, I made a promise, Mr. Frodo a promise. Don't you leave him, Sam Wise Gaji. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to. Um, and then also this moment towards the end of the book where the ring is just getting really heavy for Frodo and really, really hard for him to carry, and really hard for him to keep going.

And Sam says to him, come Mr. Frodo, I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So I'm gonna tear up saying this. So up you get. Come on Mr. Frodo. Dear Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go and he'll go, 

oh, I love Sam. He refuses to leave Frodo despite great personal cost.

And you know that, you see that in the first book too. 'cause I haven't gotten to that bit, which Caitlin is now crying about.

So Sam refuses to leave Frodo despite great personal cost and leaving the woman that he loves,

who's the woman he loves? Rosie. She's not mentioned in the first book. Oh, well, surprise.

, And the fear of never getting home, never actually being able to return.

But he has this sense of he's made this promise and he has to keep it. 

Mm-hmm. 

And then towards the end of the journey, Sam says to Frodo, it's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered full of darkness and danger. They were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing. This shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out. The clearer. I know. Now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back. Only they didn't.

They kept going 'cause they were holding onto something that there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and that it's worth fighting for. Oh, have you heard this quote before? Yeah. Yeah. This is a super famous quote and I feel like it really demonstrates the character of Sam.

All of these examples demonstrate this character of Sam, the loyalty, the courage, determination, the willing to sacrifice for doing the right thing that we see in Sam. And I just think that that's super valuable. 

Yeah. And it's really beautiful. Sam says he loves Frodo. Like despite his flaws, he cries, he expresses emotion.

They call each other, my dear. That's so cute. And like other hobbits also weep for joy, for grief from despair. There's none of this must suppress my emotion to be a man nonsense. Like in a way it. It makes them stronger because they're able to show those emotions. It makes them real, it allows, um, people to connect with them.

It allows the reader to connect with them. 

It allows you to see how much they care about what's happening. And in the schools, like when, as a teacher, the kids are always talking about being nonchalant and half the time, I don't think that they know what that word means. Yeah. I think 

it's gonna be one of those words where the young people take it and the meaning changes.

But I think the idea is unbothered don't care. 

Yeah. 

I don't, I don't care about anything. Everything's, it's just like chill and cool as a cucumber. Nothing, nothing really matters to me. And the hobbits are like the complete opposite of this. 

Yeah. I 

once had a student, um, who wanted to leave class for something and I wanted to send somebody with him to do something, and I chose one of the kids.

And the others were like, oh, don't pick him. He's too nonchalant. I'm like. Huh. You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means and, and they're like, oh no, miss, that's, that's what he is. He's too nonchalant. And I'm just like, yeah.

Yeah, they, yeah. Okay. They have 

a completely different meaning. I think what 

they meant is that he didn't care about class and so he wasn't gonna come back anyway. Hobbits are not nonchalant. They are the opposite of nonchalant. And this depth of emotion, I feel like just makes them so much more relatable and such real characters in a way.

Yeah. Like 

not, they're not MPCs, as the kids would say,

and it's like sharing these emotions with each other, builds community between them, and you kind of get this sense that they're really in the world. They're like living rather than stoically, holding back. . You know what else is great about the Hobbits? they like food. 



Food is very important for the hobbits. It's like the main priority. Who 

can't relate to that? Honestly? I 

know right? 7:00 AM is a B breakfast and 9:00 AM is a second breakfast. 11:00 AM is elevens, which I really want to instill at my workplace.

And the other day I set it into the silence of my office space and nobody responded. So, 

Hmm. 

I'm gonna work on it. 1:00 PM they have. Luncheon, not lunch. Luncheon 4:00 PM afternoon tea. Also a great idea. I'm a big advocate of afternoon tea. 6:00 PM is dinner and 8:00 PM is supper. 

There's this quote from the Hobbit that you know, obviously talking also wrote.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a mariot world. 

Hmm 

Uh. There's another quote that shows just how much hobbits prioritize food. We are playing quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. They make you late for dinner.

That's great. 

There's this moment after Pippin and Mary are captured by Orks and they eventually escape. You don't think you've read that yet? You will. Nope. It's funny. So they escape and then the first thing they do is get into the cellar and they just start eating. And then there's this rescue party that rocks up to try and rescue them.

And they just find them there just eating happily and well fed much to them to say, that's funny. Sam also knows how to cook. We love a man who knows how to cook. Oh, 

yes. 

And Sam especially cooks potatoes. , So there's this quote in the book around the time when Sam is cooking or wanting to cook potatoes and he's talking to Golum whose original name is Smeal. So I'm gonna see if I can do Andy C's Golan voice.

Oh yes. Smeal won't grub the roots and carrots and TERs. What's t's Es a? What's potatoes said Sam, the gaffers delight and rare good ballast for an empty belly.  , But you won't find any, so you needn't look. But be good smigel and fetch me some herbs and I'll think better of you.

What's more, if you turn over a new leaf and keep it turned? I'll cook you some TERs. One of these days I will fried fish and chips served by es gaji. You can't say no to that. Yes, yes, we could spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now and keep nasty chips. Oh, you are hopeless. Said Sam. Go to sleep.

I wish I'd recorded that. I could put it on the Instagram.

It was good. 

 So funny. 

Did you enjoy that? That was so good. Oh my goodness. No, I am. Does 

do they reconcile with Goum? It's complicated. I, and not relevant to this episode. Okay. So I will leave that for you to discover anyway.

There's also a famous movie quote, which Josh quotes at me every time. We are making potatoes, potatoes, boiler, mash em, stick 'em in a stew like literally every time we have potatoes. Josh says that. 

That's excellent. I feel like I need to add that to my what excellent boiled potatoes quote 

from pride and prejudice.

But what I love about this whole characterization is that there's no aversion to cooking. There's no sense of, oh, cooking is beneath you. It's a woman's job. All of this, uh, being able to feed yourself is a basic human skill, which somehow has been made into a woman's job to the point where I've seen clips of those annoying podcast bros saying they can't cook.

The hobbits would never stand for that. I'm telling you, they would never. 

So as you can see, the hobbits portrayed of masculinity that is very kind, very hearty, emotionally warm and open, and very food motivated. 

So we found some great quotes on Pinterest. , So. Listen up. Me age 15. I want to marry someone like Legos. Hot and, uh, hot Me age 22.

I wanna marry someone like Aragon. Hot, rugged, competent, commanding, total badass, me age 30, banging pots and pants, Sam Wise, gaji, iss, ultimate husband goals. 

That same post is followed up by another post by the same person who says, Sam, I made a promise.

Mr. Frodo a promise. Don't you leave him. Sam Wise Gaji. And I don't mean to, and then me choked up. 

I need me a freak like that. Good job, hobbits. 

All right, so let's move on to the elves. The 

elves, 

when we're talking about elves in Lord of the Rings, these are not the little miniature North Pole toy makers.

The elves in Lord of the Rings are very human-like they are described as tall and beautiful and graceful and strong with long flowing hair. 

Was talking the first to write about elves in this way. Like now we have, um, AAR and all of these modern romantics with the elves that are like this.

Well, I 

think the Aara and all that is more like Fay. 

But the elves, 

it's kind of the same vibe, isn't it? Are like 

Faye. It 

is. It's, it's basically the same genre of creature, just with a slightly different name. I don't know, there wasn't actually a lot of fantasy written. 

Well, yeah, no, exactly. Talking and CS Lewis kind of started fantasy books.

Like there were stories, there was one always had the Folk 

Tales, but there was one book, I think the first fantasy book is called The Princess and the Goblin by George McDonald, I wanna say, and I have not read that , 

anyways, they were pretty big in the starting of the genre as like an official genre of literature.

'cause before they were just stories, I guess. Yeah. Does that make sense? 

Yeah. 

Anyways, yeah, there is, you know, Lego loss. He's the main one who goes with them. But then on their journeys, they meet a lot of various elves. And there's this one elf that they meet named Galadriel.

Is that how you say her name? Yep. Um, and Sam says about her beautiful. She is, uh, lovely. Sometimes like a great tree and flower, sometimes like a white dapper down dilly, small and slender, like hard as diamonds, soft as moonlight warmer sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far off as a snow mountain.

And Mary as alas I ever saw with daisies in her hair at springtime. 

Such a wonderful description of masculinity. 

I know. 

No, we will be talking about Gala Moore next week, but that's just a general description. I mean, it's a description of gala, but it also kind of captures what the elves are like in general.

Um, so the elf that people do know best is Lego Lus. And here's one description of Lego Lus that I found. Um, Frodo looked up at the elf standing tall above him as he gazed into the night seeking a mark to shoot at. His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind.

Now we don't know as much about his appearance from the books. I was hunting down quotes about his appearance on all these random blogs. And there was like all this, I guess you could say, fan fiction and all this, like sleuthing of these little bits and pieces trying to put together what he looked like from random sentences.

We don't actually get a good description of what he looked like,

But in the movies, he's played by Orlando Bloom with long white flow, not white, like white, blonde flowing hair. Um, but in the books he's described as graceful, slender, live, swift strong.

Um, so in general in Tolkien, the elves are more androgynous, meaning there's less clear divisions between the males and females. They're more kind of both in between. Um, and I really like the movie portrayal of Lego us, and I think a lot of girls do. Um, despite the fact that you could argue that Lego loss in the movie is more unquote feminine with his delicate facial features and long hair.

Yeah. At first I was like offended when people told me that I looked like Lego loss. I was like, what? You think I looked like a man? And then I looked him up and I was like, yeah, no, I'd be fine to look like him.

So in the Elvis society, the men and women were much more equal, , except for in childbirth. But gender roles are not really a thing. So you get female warriors and male healers, et cetera. 



The elves show that masculinity isn't tied to rigid gender roles or to normal male expectations of beauty, 

and that's really valuable. 

Yeah, it is. 

I think that the humans in Lord of the Rings are really, really good role models. And we're gonna talk about three of them. So let's start off with Aragon. Here's quote unquote the essence of good masculinity.

Like, is that in the book? No, that's, I kept seeing that quoted over and over and over. Like I was reading, I was Googling like, Lord are the Rings, masculinity. And I just kept seeing Aragon, Aragon, Aragon, Paragon of masculinity and all this stuff. , There's so many sources that discuss this. So here's a couple reasons why.

First off, he protects those who are weaker than him. He is the first to join Frodo and Sam to keep them safe. And in the movie there's this iconic line where they're about to set off and he says, you have my sword. And he's the first to join them. It's just, it's kind of cool. He also supports and encourages the women in the story. He has this sense of leadership and authority, but he's always kind and respectful. He never wields his leadership in harmful ways. And he's also got this sense of strength and courage that I think is something that can be really looked up to.

He says in sorrow, we must go on, but not in despair, but hold. We are not bound forever. To the circles of the world and beyond them is more than memory. So yeah, he's a warrior, but he doesn't make it his whole personality that he's a fighter.



He's a Pinterest quote, which sums it up pretty well. Every so often I think, of how the Lord of the Rings movies managed to cast a guy's Aragon, who is simultaneously, yes, very masculine, very action hero.

And also someone who, as a woman, I would 100% feel safe being alone with in any situation. Not one cynical alpha male smirky   appeal to the jerk bros in the audience. Fiber in his body. Just thinking about Vigo Mortenson's, Aragon makes me feel a little calmer, absolutely outstanding. 

. And Vigo Mortenson is the actor who played Eric Gordon in the movies.

So no wonder he's held up as this amazing standard of masculinity 'cause he really is brilliant. Yeah. Then there's Bo me. So Bora me is a human man from the kingdom of Gondor. 

Can I just say, when I looked up the characters. Like Aragon and Boromir from the moon. They look like the same person.

They have the same hairstyle and beard and like face. 

Yeah. But Boromir is the one who is known for the one does not simply meme because the whole phrase is one does not simply walk into Maor. And that just became this huge mean after the, like that was like one of the first memes. I remember when I got onto the internet on Google Plus, on Google Plus that meme was circulating like 2013.

He's a complicated character. For most of his presence in like the book, he's, he's doing the wrong thing.

He's angling to get the ring 'cause he wants to use it to benefit his kingdom. Godo 

and his character really. Goes through a lot of growth in the short amount of time that we have him. He realizes that he's wrong for trying to take it by force, and then he ends up sacrificing himself. He dies trying to protect the hobbits from Orks.

Yeah, I haven't gotten that yet. 

So he does the right thing in the end. And then there's this line, Aragon knelt beside him. Bom opened his eyes and strove to speak. At last slow. Words came. I tried to take the ring from Frodo. He said, I'm sorry. I have paid his glance straight to his fallen enemies. 20 at least lay there.

So he's dying. And in his dying moments, he just expresses remorse. He expresses that he was wrong. And I think that that's really, really important. And what's more is in many ways, he made up for that by making such a huge difference in. Oh, it's complicated because he doesn't actually stop them from getting captured, but he tried and that's what's important, you know?

Mm. Yeah. 

Um, and 

like, as a result, like 

is he remembered? He's remembered with honor and grief rather than being remembered as a traitor. 

We like men who can admit their mistakes and grow from them.  So, yeah, I was, I was reading a little bit about these two characters and, , I think like Tolkien wrote these two men for a purpose. Like, Aragon represents the hero we all want to be. And Bo me represents.

The hero that we actually are. We're, we're flawed because we're human. You know, we're affected by greed and jealousy. We, we want what's best for us and not for others, but, but he's also a hero. So like, we can also be heroes despite our humanity, despite making mistakes along the way. What matters is what you do with that, like how you learn from your mistakes.

And so, so Bora me actually has a younger brother who you have not met. Nope. His name is Faramir and he's very different from Aragon as well, but he's also very different from Boer and he's not as well publicized as a standard of masculinity. I think probably because he's actually less stereotypically masculine because, I mean, Aragon is still stereotypically masculine despite it being healthy.

It's still kind of a well known thing that appeals to a lot of people. Faria is really gentle and loving. He loves his brother. He's constantly trying to win his father's approval because Baria was his father's favorite, , and he's an honorable person. He had mercy on Gollum even when Gollum was doing the wrong thing and really should have been killed for what he was doing.

And he's got this moral struggle once he joins the fellowship of the ring, and he's clearly tempted by the ring. But unlike Boromir. He says, I would not take this thing if it lay by the highway. , Not where Tith falling in ruin. And I alone could save her. So using the weapon of the dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs. And Minister Eth is one of the cities. And there's a bit of back and forth like he has to say out loud a couple times, no, I'm actually not gonna do this.

No, I'm actually not going to chase the ring. Try to get the ring. So there's clearly this struggle, but he's able to overcome it in a way that Bo me was not. Mm. , He also has this really beautiful love for AO Win Who you will meet in one of the following books, you know? She is not an elf. 

Oh, a name.

You're thinking of Arwin. 

Well, a name just sounds elf like. Yeah, so, um, no, she's a human woman and she actually has a big crush on Aragon for much of the book and he is engaged to an elf, so that was never gonna happen. Poor o win. , But Faria falls in love with her and he says. To her then Eoin of Rohan.

I say to you that you are beautiful. . In the valleys of our hills, there are flowers, fair and bright and maiden's fair is still, but neither flower nor lady have I seen till now in gondor.

So lovely and so sorrowful. It may be that only a few days, a left ear darkness falls upon our world. And when it comes, I hope to face it steadily. But it would ease my heart. If while the sun yet shines, I could see you still for you. And I have both passed under the wings of the shadow.

And the same hand drew us back. Damn, 

 this guy's a poet. 

So A is after Aragon, and she thinks that Faria pities her, and he initially did pity her, but he comes to love her after that. . And the passage about this in the book goes and Aan looked at Faria long and steadily and Fariah said, do not scorn pity.

That is the gift of a gentle heart, a oan. But I do not offer you my pity for you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself one renowned that shall not be forgotten. And you are a lady beautiful. I deem beyond even the words of the Elvin tongue to tell. And I love you once I ped your sorrow.

But now you were sorrow less without fear or any lack were you the blissful queen of gor. Still, I will love you Aon. Do you not love me? 

I would literally die for man said that to me. Nowadays I just get ghosted

 that Is that twice this year, might I?

It's fine. 

So as you can see, Faria. Is a really different type of masculinity from Aragon, but still really, really, really, really, really,

but still a really solid dude, right? He's a really good guy. You can see it. He's gentle, he's loving, he's kind. And those things are different from the rugged, badassery of Aragon. But I actually think that Faramir is underappreciated as a standard of masculinity

there's this quote about farrier that I think that is worth including when he's talking to Sam and there's a Pinterest user, , Dan Ris Beauty that sums it up really well.

They write one line from the Lord of the Rings. Films that really gets me is Faramir. The Shire must truly be a great realm, master Gaji, where gardeners are held in high honor,  not soldiers, not kings, not wizards, gardeners, because a country where gardeners are beloved is a country without war with peace.

And that is what the series repeatedly shows we are meant to aspire to. Mm, 

I love that. And I guess we didn't really touch on that. We kind of focused on the food, but , Sam Gaji is also a gardener and he loves. He loves gardening, 

he loves cultivating the earth and nurturing and all of that. So yeah, that's really cool too.

There's one character we haven't touched on, and that is Gimli, which is the dwarf that's a part of the company now. There's this old animosity that sims between the ELs and the dwarves. I'm not sure why because I haven't finished the books.

But safe to say, they hate each other and each blames the other one. And I think Tolkien does a really good job at like not taking sides as the writer and writing in a way that the reader doesn't take sides. But you really see the perspective of both. Like both have been wrong, but both have wronged. And I think what's really interesting is that Lego lass and gimli form this really strong bond on the trip, like the Hobbits and the men have each other and they're kind of the odd ones out and they become good friends.

And that's actually something that I've just thought of that I'm just gonna add to our script. Yeah, and that's actually something that you can see all the way through here that the male characters, whether they be Hobbit or Elf or Dwarf or Wizard. Or human, whether they be hobbit or elf or dwarf or human, they form these really strong bonds with each other.

And I think that these days guys can sometimes feel a little bit nervous about forming strong emotional bonds with each other. . I think that society pushes men away from forming strong emotional bonds with each other. Mm-hmm. And I think that Lord of the Rings does a very good job of showing us what that looks like when it is done and it's healthy. And men have these friendships and almost family-like relationships that they support each other in.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

So there we have it, these very different types of, , male characters, , with all this variation between them, but still each in their own way.

Examples of healthy wholesome masculinity. 

Masculinity exists in so many different forms defined by culture and society, and it doesn't have to be toxic. There are so many other more interesting options. 

One last Pinterest quote from Iona Rights. Every generation should read the Lord of the Rings and learn that men are allowed to show affection.

That power corrupts, and that happiness does not come from being a ruler, but from baking potatoes and snoozing in an armchair by the fire in your cozy  📍 hobbit hole. 

And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Literary Lamppost. ,

Please, please, please leave us a rating or comment. , It lets the algorithm know, please, please,  it lets the algorithm know that you like this show and it helps other people find it.

And we promise we read every single one of your comments. They make us get so few, they make us. So happy to hear from you.

Share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy and stay tuned for our next episode in which we will be talking about the Women of Lord of the Rings and the way that talking tackles femininity, 



Make sure to follow us on Instagram at the literary lamp post, as well as hitting that subscribe button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

We're on like 10 different ones to make sure that you don't miss any of our new episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next time. 

Can we go watch the movies?

 This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ibit for exclusive use by the Literary Lamppost podcast.



  What did you think of Lord of the Rings, by the way? Um, I was surprised because everyone was like, even you, it's slog. And I found it quite easy, 

  📍  hi, and welcome to the Literary Lamppost Podcast, where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlyn. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature.

And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer. Today is our first episode about Lord of the Rings. And you might be thinking now, hang on a second. That doesn't sound like the Handmaid's Tale. Well, dear listener, you are correct. We did promise that we'd be doing The Handmaid's Tale next.

We are skipping the dystopia because we just don't like it. You did not like it in general? I don't really like dystopia. Yeah. Like I always avoided it. I like. Some, but I don't know. We recorded the episode, but we just weren't happy with it. We realized that every book we'd done before we'd really enjoyed and that show through in our episode, but we found The Handmaid's Tale just a bit grim.

And that emotion came through basically the very salient point that the book makes. And thus, the main idea of our episode was taking away human rights from women is bad. Government run by fundamentalist religion groups is bad. And if you didn't get that from reading the book yourself, you probably won't get that from us.

Well, there you go. There's your Handmaid's Tale episode. And then we decided to just take a little bit of a break, , at the end of the year, but we are back. We are excited and we have some. Really good books in the future. Now you might have caught there, we said first episode. Yes, this is our first episode of three on Lord of the Rings, and we will come back to that in a moment.

So strap in because it's going to be an interesting journey that we take along with Frodo.

So Lord of the Rings is one of those books I grew up kind of in and around. I read The Hobbit in ninth grade then I tried to read Lord of the Rings. I borrowed the books from the library and I got stuck about halfway through the first book before I just gave up because I don't know, the story just didn't grip me.

But I had lots of friends who read it. One of my best friends in high school and I, we had a code name for somebody that was End Draft, which requires some explanation, which I will not go into right now.

And there was also Kely and Philly, which were two dwarfs.

Keely and Philly. 

Which are two dwarfs of the Hobbit, which were code names for you and Morgan. 

I feel like I remember that. Yeah. Which one was that? Keely? I don't remember. I don't remember.

We just named you two. Keely and Philly. That's so cute. Oh, I had a, I had a lot of the rings code name. You did? Wait, how old was I when this 

Like 12 or 13. That's actually so cute. 



. So I kind of knew the story, , . And then finally a year ago, I forced myself to finish them via audiobook, and it was narrated by Andy Circus, who's the voice of Gollum in the movies.

And so you get the authentic Golum experience. It's pretty cool.

Me on the other hand, I don't know, it's one of those book series like I've always heard about, but I was more of a n fan and like I knew CS Lewis and Tolkien wrote together and their books are kind of like the start of the whole fantasy genre.

But I just never really got into Lord of the Rings and really knew nothing about it other than in year nine, people would tell me that I looked like Lego Lus , because I would pin some of my hair back and leave the rest down, and it was like long and straight and fine, and my ears would stick out and yeah.

I, I read The Hobbit for the first time when I was like 18 or 19, and I've had Lord of the Rings on my tubie red list for like five years, but only now I've gotten around to it because of the podcast. And, , Caitlin and Josh gave me the first one for Christmas, and I've only managed to read the first one before needing to record this.

So our episodes aren't necessarily based on each, like three books, but more of like over encompassing themes. So over encompassing, is 

that a word? I 

don't think that's a word. I'm sorry. 

It's a word today. Over encompassing. 

Over encompassing themes. , So it's gonna be interesting. I might have a few gaps, but Yeah, I'm sure we'll manage.

I'm here for the ride.

Anyway, so just a quick story summary. It's. A very detailed involved plot, but basically the Lord of the Rings book follows a hobbit named Frodo, who is tasked by a wizard Gandalf, with the very important task of taking a super powerful but very dangerous ring to the place of its creation, which is a volcano in the treacherous land of Mor to be destroyed.

Frodo is accompanied by his faithful friend Sam, as well as two other hobbits, , Mary and Pippin. They join up with an elf, Lego loss, a dwarf gimli, and a Ranger named Strider. And we'll kind of discuss each of these characters in more detail later. , It's a very rich, very thoughtful, detailed plot, not something you can really race through.

, Because there are three books, we will be doing three episodes, but we will not be going book by book.



Today we will be covering the way that Tolkien addresses masculinity.

In the second episode, we'll cover femininity. And the third we'll discuss good versus evil and tyrannical governments. 

So in this first episode, like we said, we will be talking about the way that talking writes about masculinity. Most women have men in their lives.

So learning about masculinity is important. , And so while we don't have personal experience being masculine, like most women, we interact with masculinity daily. 

Also, there's an argument to be made that both men and women can demonstrate both masculine and feminine traits as defined by society.

So it's an important conversation to have. 

The majority of characters in Lord of the Rings are actually male. 

There's nine main characters. They called the, the Walking Company.

I don't remember that. No, the Company of Walkers, that's it. The walking company was a is a shoe brand of America. No, the company of Walkers. And. They're all men. And I'm reading this like, like, where am I, where are my boss? Girlies?



So a good place to start is defining what we mean by masculinity.

The Oxford Dictionary says masculinity is the qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of men or boys. And there's a writer that I came across, Scott Rebath, who says There is of course a difference between being male and being manly or masculine. The former indicates biological sex. The latter refers to performative gender roles.

And there's a bit of debate about whether masculinity is a fixed quality that has always been, has never changed, or whether there's different interpretations or versions of masculinity in different cultures. 

. So it might be helpful to answer this question by looking at a real life example, Athens versus Sparta in ancient Greece. I'm sure that you have all heard something about these two , societies

in Sparta, to be a man meant to fight, to be a soldier, , to be able to survive brutal and dangerous conditions. , Minor infractions were severely punished and it was common for young boys to die due to these punishments or the harsh training conditions because they started training them when they were quite young.

On the other hand, expectations in Athens, a neighboring Greek city were very different. , Masculinity was defined much more in terms of democratic and domestic leadership. The quote unquote manly ideal was for men to get married, have children manage their household, and manage their estate and slaves.

So both cultures had this idea of masculinity as a concept, but different ways of interpreting it. And I think that this example gives support to the idea that there are lots of different types of masculinities rather than just one.

Just a note on the idea of toxic masculinity. We have established that masculinity means different things in different times and cultures as such, we can acknowledge that some forms of masculinity can be toxic. And the same goes with femininity, and we will cover that next week. , But there's a lot in the news about toxic masculinity, especially connected to like the podcast bros.

Ah, yes. Because podcasts are the ultimate fountain of wisdom.

Oh, yeah. , However, using the phrase toxic masculinity is not describing all masculinity as toxic.

Rather, it's being used to label certain harmful interpretations of masculinity. 

In Lord of the Rings, we see an incredible demonstration of multiple, completely different, yet healthy masculinities demonstrated by the hobbits, the elves, and the human men. So let's start off with the hobbits.

I want to be a hobbit. 

Hobbits are small human-like beings about the size of children. They have hair on their feet and they like to live in holes in the ground. 

I don't want hair on my feet, but I do want to live in hole on the ground. 

They have a fondness for food and song and storytelling.

, 

They're 

like 

the ultimate cottage core creature. Anyways, there are four main hobbits in Lord of the Rings. , Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and 

Mary.

They all accompany Frodo throughout this long journey to return the ring to its final resting place, if you will. 

So we have these four main hobbits, and I think they show a very healthy, grounded type of masculinity in a way that you don't really see all that much in most media.

, One characteristic that's very prominent is loyalty and courage and determination. I guess you could sum that up by saying moral fiber, . 

Yeah. 

, So Sam, who goes with Frodo on this journey, It's this really treacherous journey. And they dunno if they're gonna make it back home, okay?

And there's times when Frodo tells Sam to go back home and Sam said, I made a promise, Mr. Frodo a promise. Don't you leave him, Sam Wise Gaji. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to. , And then also this moment towards the end of the book where the ring is just getting really heavy for Frodo and really, really hard for him to carry, and really hard for him to keep going.

And Sam says to him, come Mr. Frodo, I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So I'm gonna tear up saying this. So up you get. Come on Mr. Frodo. Dear Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go and he'll go, 

oh, I love Sam. He refuses to leave Frodo despite great personal cost.

And you know that, you see that in the first book too. 'cause I haven't gotten to that bit, which Caitlin is now crying about.

So Sam refuses to leave Frodo despite great personal cost and leaving the woman that he loves,



, And the fear of never getting home, never actually being able to return.

But he has this sense of he's made this promise and he has to keep it. 



And then towards the end of the journey, Sam says to Frodo, it's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered full of darkness and danger. They were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing. This shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out. The clearer. I know. Now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back. Only they didn't.

They kept going 'cause they were holding onto something that there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and that it's worth fighting for. Oh, have you heard this quote before? Yeah. Yeah. This is a super famous quote and I feel like it really demonstrates the character of Sam.

All of these examples demonstrate this character of Sam, the loyalty, the courage, determination, the willing to sacrifice for doing the right thing that we see in Sam. And I just think that that's super valuable. 

Yeah. And it's really beautiful. Sam says he loves Frodo. Like despite his flaws, he cries, he expresses emotion.

They call each other, my dear. . And like other hobbits also weep for joy, for grief from despair. There's none of this must suppress my emotion to be a man nonsense. Like in a way it. It makes them stronger because they're able to show those emotions. It makes them real, it allows, , people to connect with them.

It allows the reader to connect with them. 

It allows you to see how much they care about what's happening. And this depth of emotion, I feel like just makes them so much more relatable and such real characters in a way.

Yeah. Like 

not, they're not MPCs, as the kids would say,

and it's like sharing these emotions with each other, builds community between them, and you kind of get this sense that they're really in the world. They're like living rather than stoically, holding back. . You know what else is great about the Hobbits? they like food. 



Food is very important for the hobbits. It's like the main priority. Who 

can't relate to that? Honestly? I 

know right? 

There's this quote from the Hobbit that you know, obviously talking also wrote.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a mariot world. 



. There's another quote that shows just how much hobbits prioritize food. We are playing quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. They make you late for dinner.

That's great. 

Sam also knows how to cook. We love a man who knows how to cook. Oh, 

yes. 

And Sam especially cooks potatoes. , there's a famous movie quote, which Josh quotes at me every time. We are making potatoes, potatoes, boiler, mash em, stick 'em in a stew 

that's excellent. I feel like I need to add that to my what excellent boiled potatoes quote 

from pride and prejudice.

But what I love about this whole characterization is that there's no aversion to cooking. There's no sense of, oh, cooking is beneath you. It's a woman's job. All of this, , being able to feed yourself is a basic human skill, which somehow has been made into a woman's job to the point where I've seen clips of those annoying podcast bros saying they can't cook.

The hobbits would never stand for that. I'm telling you, they would never. 

So as you can see, the hobbits portrayed of masculinity that is very kind, very hearty, emotionally warm and open, and very food motivated. 

So we found some great quotes on Pinterest. , So. Listen up. Me age 15. I want to marry someone like Legos. Hot and, uh, hot Me age 22.

I wanna marry someone like Aragon. Hot, rugged, competent, commanding, total badass, me age 30, banging pots and pants, Sam Wise, gaji, iss, ultimate husband goals. 

That same post is followed up by another post by the same person who says, Sam, I made a promise.

Mr. Frodo a promise. Don't you leave him. Sam Wise Gaji. And I don't mean to, and then me choked up. 

I need me a freak like that. Good job, hobbits. 

All right, so let's move on to the elves. The 

elves, 

There is, you know, Lego loss. He's the main one who goes with them. But then on their journeys, they meet a lot of various elves. And there's this one elf that they meet named Galadriel.

, And Sam says about her beautiful. She is, , lovely. Sometimes like a great tree and flower, sometimes like a white dapper down dilly, small and slender, like hard as diamonds, soft as moonlight warmer sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far off as a snow mountain.

And Mary as alas I ever saw with daisies in her hair at springtime. 

We will be talking about Gala Moore next week, but that's just a description of gala, but it also kind of captures what the elves are like in general.

, So the elf that people do know best is Lego Lus. And here's one description of Lego Lus that I found. , Frodo looked up at the elf standing tall above him as he gazed into the night seeking a mark to shoot at. His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind.

Now we don't know as much about his appearance from the books.

We don't actually get a good description of what he looked like,

But in the movies, he's played by Orlando Bloom with long white flow, not white, like white, blonde flowing hair. , But in the books he's described as graceful, slender, live, swift strong.

, So in general in Tolkien, the elves are more androgynous, meaning there's less clear divisions between the males and females. They're more kind of both in between. , And I really like the movie portrayal of Lego us, and I think a lot of girls do. , Despite the fact that you could argue that Lego loss in the movie is more unquote feminine with his delicate facial features and long hair.

Yeah. At first I was like offended when people told me that I looked like Lego loss. I was like, what? You think I looked like a man? And then I looked him up and I was like, yeah, no, I'd be fine to look like him.

So in the Elvis society, the men and women were much more equal, , except for in childbirth. But gender roles are not really a thing. So you get female warriors and male healers, et cetera. 



The elves show that masculinity isn't tied to rigid gender roles or to normal male expectations of beauty, 

and that's really valuable. 

Yeah, it is. 

I think that the humans in Lord of the Rings are really, really good role models. So let's start off with Aragon. Here's quote unquote the essence of good masculinity.

So here's a couple reasons why.

First off, he protects those who are weaker than him. He is the first to join Frodo and Sam to keep them safe. And in the movie there's this iconic line where they're about to set off and he says, you have my sword. And he's the first to join them. It's just, it's kind of cool. He also supports and encourages the women in the story. He has this sense of leadership and authority, but he's always kind and respectful. He never wields his leadership in harmful ways. And he's also got this sense of strength and courage that I think is something that can be really looked up to.



He's a Pinterest quote, which sums it up pretty well. Every so often I think, of how the Lord of the Rings movies managed to cast a guy's Aragon, who is simultaneously, yes, very masculine, very action hero.

And also someone who, as a woman, I would 100% feel safe being alone with in any situation. Not one cynical alpha male smirky   appeal to the jerk bros in the audience. Fiber in his body. Just thinking about Vigo Mortenson's, Aragon makes me feel a little calmer, absolutely outstanding. 

. And Vigo Mortenson is the actor who played Eric Gordon in the movies.

So no wonder he's held up as this amazing standard of masculinity 'cause he really is brilliant. Yeah. Then there's Bo me. So Bora me is a human man from the kingdom of Gondor. 

Boromir is the one who is known for the one does not simply meme because the whole phrase is one does not simply walk into Maor. And that just became this huge mean after the, like that was like one of the first memes. I remember when I got onto the internet on Google Plus, on Google Plus that meme was circulating like 2013.

He's a complicated character. For most of his presence in like the book, he's, he's doing the wrong thing.

He's angling to get the ring 'cause he wants to use it to benefit his kingdom. Godo 

and his character really. Goes through a lot of growth in the short amount of time that we have him. He realizes that he's wrong for trying to take it by force, and then he ends up sacrificing himself. He dies trying to protect the hobbits from Orks.



So he does the right thing in the end. And then there's this line, Aragon knelt beside him. Bom opened his eyes and strove to speak. At last slow. Words came. I tried to take the ring from Frodo. He said, I'm sorry. I have paid his glance straight to his fallen enemies. 20 at least lay there.

So he's dying. And in his dying moments, he just expresses remorse. He expresses that he was wrong. And I think that that's really, important. And what's more is in many ways, he made up for that by making a difference . Oh, it's complicated because he doesn't actually stop them from getting captured, but he tried and that's what's important, you know?

He's remembered with honor and grief rather than being remembered as a traitor. 

. So, yeah, I was, I was reading a little bit about these two characters and, , I think like Tolkien wrote these two men for a purpose. Like, Aragon represents the hero we all want to be. And Bo me represents.

The hero that we actually are. We're, we're flawed because we're human. You know, we're affected by greed and jealousy. We, we want what's best for us and not for others, but, but he's also a hero. So like, we can also be heroes despite our humanity, despite making mistakes along the way. What matters is what you do with that, like how you learn from your mistakes.

So Bora me actually has a younger brother his name is Faramir and he's very different from Aragon as well, but he's also very different from Boer and he's not as well publicized as a standard of masculinity. I think probably because he's actually less stereotypically masculine because, I mean, Aragon is still stereotypically masculine despite it being healthy.

It's still kind of a well known thing that appeals to a lot of people. Faria is really gentle and loving. He loves his brother. He's constantly trying to win his father's approval because Baria was his father's favorite, , and he's an honorable person. He had mercy on Gollum even when Gollum was doing the wrong thing and really should have been killed for what he was doing.

And he's got this moral struggle once he joins the fellowship of the ring, and he's clearly tempted by the ring. But unlike Boromir. He says, I would not take this thing if it lay by the highway. , Not where Tith falling in ruin. And I alone could save her. So using the weapon of the dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs. And Minister Eth is one of the cities. And there's a bit of back and forth like he has to say out loud a couple times, no, I'm actually not gonna do this.

No, I'm actually not going to chase the ring. Try to get the ring. So there's clearly this struggle, but he's able to overcome it in a way that Bo me was not. Mm. , He also has this really beautiful love for AO Win Who you will meet in one of the following books, you know? She is not an elf. 

no, , She's a human woman and she actually has a big crush on Aragon for much of the book and he is engaged to an elf, so that was never gonna happen. Poor o win. , But Faria falls in love with her and he says. To her then Eoin of Rohan.

I say to you that you are beautiful. . In the valleys of our hills, there are flowers, fair and bright and maiden's fair is still, but neither flower nor lady have I seen till now in gondor.

So lovely and so sorrowful. It may be that only a few days, a left ear darkness falls upon our world. And when it comes, I hope to face it steadily. But it would ease my heart. If while the sun yet shines, I could see you still for you. And I have both passed under the wings of the shadow.

And the same hand drew us back. , 



So A is after Aragon, and she thinks that Faria pities her, and he initially did pity her, but he comes to love her after that. . And the passage about this in the book goes and Aan looked at Faria long and steadily and Fariah said, do not scorn pity.

That is the gift of a gentle heart, a oan. But I do not offer you my pity for you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself one renowned that shall not be forgotten. And you are a lady beautiful. I deem beyond even the words of the Elvin tongue to tell. And I love you once I ped your sorrow.

But now you were sorrow less without fear or any lack were you the blissful queen of gor. Still, I will love you Aon. Do you not love me? 

I would literally die for man said that to me.  Nowadays I just get ghosted

 that Is that twice this year, might I?

It's fine. 

So as you can see, Faria. Is a really different type of masculinity from Aragon,

but still a really solid dude, right? He's a really good guy. You can see it. He's gentle, he's loving, he's kind. And those things are different from the rugged, badassery of Aragon. But I actually think that Faramir is underappreciated as a standard of masculinity



There's one character we haven't touched on, and that is Gimli, which is the dwarf that's a part of the company now. There's this old animosity that sims between the ELs and the dwarves. I'm not sure why because I haven't finished the books.

But safe to say, they hate each other and each blames the other one. And I think Tolkien does a really good job at like not taking sides as the writer and writing in a way that the reader doesn't take sides. But you really see the perspective of both. Like both have been wrong, but both have wronged. And I think what's really interesting is that Lego lass and gimli form this really strong bond on the trip, like the Hobbits and the men have each other and they're kind of the odd ones out and they become good friends.

and that's actually something that you can see all the way through here that the male characters, , whether they be hobbit or elf or dwarf or human, they form these really strong bonds with each other.

And I think that these days guys can sometimes feel a little bit nervous about forming strong emotional bonds with each other. . I think that society pushes men away from forming strong emotional bonds with each other. Mm-hmm. And I think that Lord of the Rings does a very good job of showing us what that looks like when it is done and it's healthy. And men have these friendships and almost family-like relationships that they support each other in.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

So there we have it, these very different types of, , male characters, , with all this variation between them, but still each in their own way.

Examples of healthy wholesome masculinity. 

Masculinity exists in so many different forms defined by culture and society, and it doesn't have to be toxic. There are so many other more interesting options. 

One last Pinterest quote from Iona Rights. Every generation should read the Lord of the Rings and learn that men are allowed to show affection.

That power corrupts, and that happiness does not come from being a ruler, but from baking potatoes and snoozing in an armchair by the fire in your cozy  📍 hobbit hole. 

And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Literary Lamppost. ,

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Share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy and stay tuned for our next episode in which we will be talking about the Women of Lord of the Rings and the way that talking tackles femininity, 



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Can we go watch the movies?

 This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ibit for exclusive use by the Literary Lamppost podcast.



  What did you think of Lord of the Rings, by the way?  Um, I was surprised because everyone was like, even you, it's slog. And I found it quite easy,