Someday Handel is my official one-day-I-will-finish-this-thesis icon

[saya22]

I'm currently summarizing Campbell's monomyth theory for my thesis, and as I write down the stages, my mind kept flashing scenes from Lords of the Rings trilogy, with Frodo as the hero (since arguably, you can debate that there are several other 'hero' figures in LotR

Comments

[mylittlecthulhu]

Well, by my definition of hero, it's definitely Frodo. Because if Aragorn was THE main character I'd go "oh, he's Aragorn, he's got this secret destiny and blah blah blah, of course he can do it." Same goes for the rest. But Frodo? He actually doesn't seem like the sort of person who'd triumph at the end, and yet triumph he did. Therefore, in my book Frodo = the hero. XD

Which is totally off-topic from your post, I know. :p

Good luck on your paper! And, yeah. I think our choices for heroes kind of suck. I'd rather stick to, er, Pak Belalang than Hang Tuah (and hey, that story is pretty much a trickster story anyway).

[saya22]

Frodo is hero for me too, but there's actually a number of hero classifications (who knew?), so Aragorn is the classic hero, Bilbo is the hesitant hero (in the Hobbit), Gollum as the unintentional hero, and Tolkien even said that he looks to Sam as the true hero of the story (the common hero). Frodo is classified as the unwitting hero and to some, the failed hero (succumbed at the very last). But hey, the poor guy made it that far so give him a break man. He's also the wounded hero in the end, and cannot find peace upon the Return Stage of the monomyth