RETURN
11. The Crossing of the Return Threshold - hero crosses the threshold of adventure and returns to the everyday world of daylight.
Amid the victory celebrations, Aragorn is crowned King of Gondor, and he marries his long-time love Arwen the daughter of Elrond.
Meanwhile however, Saruman has escaped his captivity and enslaved the Shire. But the four returning Hobbits raise a rebellion and overthrow him in the Battle of Bywater. Saruman’s throat is slit by Grima Wormtongue, his former servant, who is in turn felled with arrows from Hobbit archers. The War of the Ring thus comes to its true end on Frodo’s very doorstep.
Merry and Pippin are acclaimed as heroes and eventually become Lord of Buckland and Thain of the Shire respectively.
Sam uses his gifts from Galadriel to restore and beautify the Shire, and marries Rosie Cotton.
Frodo remains wounded in body and spirit and some years later accompanied by Bilbo and Gandalf, sails from the Grey Havens west over the Sea to the Undying Lands to find peace..
The story has been read as fitting the model of Joseph Campbell's "monomyth". – not totally the 17 stages or steps that Joseph Campbell description but more or less the stages are there in the story.
Applying Sculting Work
14 years ago
Thanks for doing this piece of research on the Lord of the Ring view from Joseph Campbell's Monomyth. With this understanding of the different stages of the Hero's journey, we can then examine our hero's journey and attempt to understand our story from this dynamic.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being a helper in my journey!
Elaine, I thought it is the other way round, you being my great helper, my Gandalf in lady disguise... Anyway, about your thanking me - you are most welcome. About the research I was so excited to use The Lord of the Ring, my favourite novel/movie because of Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Elrond and etc. Not to forget the love story of Aragorn and Arwen.
ReplyDeleteMelinda always leading one step ahead...
ReplyDeletehaiz.... arigato gozaimashita... :P
If you can be inspired by the monomyths structures imagine how your therapeutic dramatic role playing and the story making with your clients could also be equally be inspired and guided by such inspirations from within. Our everyday mundane stories are of proportions of our 'myths' and 'legends' when we begin to see the world through the magic ingredient of creative and imaginative mind where we do become heroes and not victims.
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