I often quote Montaigne in memoir writing courses: "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."
Hume's view resonates with Jerome Bruner's "Self-Making Narratives." Bruner shows (persuasively, IMO) how we can never sever identity from our audience. We're always narrating the self in negotiation with what we want to believe about ourselves (and what we can accept/admit), as well as what we think others expect from us. I've been weighing an essay on creating a narrative persona, because the self we construct as essayists is not "us," exactly, but a performance, a pose. I think Bruner is right that we are always negotiating our internal and external audiences, always constructing and reconstructing the self.
Another interesting metaphor: is the self more like a matryoshka doll (series of hollow nesting shells, with emptiness at the center) or more like growth rings in a tree (a solid core with steady expansion each year)?
Thanks, Josh. I'm not familiar with Bruner, so I'll have to check that out. And concerning the metaphors: Hume would say the doll, and Tolkien would say the tree ;)
By the way, do you remember which essay that Montaigne line is from? I love that and want to read the context.
Interesting point from Bruner (now I have to go read him!). Suggests we really ought to be extremely careful to curate the right community/audience. Substack groups like this, for example.
John, fascinating article and research as always. I have always been drawn to Gollum for the truth he represents about the fractured self. In my teenage years I experienced some significant trauma that caused me to show one face to others while dealing with an interior self that I didn't quite recognize. I think to some degree all of us have this double identity of what the world sees and what is within. I am reminded of a Thornton Wilder quote, "There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head." In truth, I believe we all battle with competing interests within, the fractured and broken self. Which of those gets shown to the world often depends on which is the stronger and more powerful impulse within us. Great stuff. Thanks.
Such a brilliant line from Wilder. I also feel that sense of a fractured self when I read my journal from, say, twenty years ago, or even ten. Who is this person? It's certainly not me.
Thanks John for another set of great insights into LOTR. Aristotle said that anyone who lives a life separated from society must either be a god or a beast. And so I think of Gollum as the result of being ravaged by so many years of solitary living. He's been driven mad not only by the Ring, but by unnatural loneliness.
One of my favorite Stephen King short stories is called The Jaunt. A device that can teleport you from place to place has been invented (like in Star Trek), but you have to inhale a gas that puts you to sleep while your particles are disassembling and then reassembling. A young boy fakes inhaling the gas and at the other end he emerges as a wrecked creature doing all sorts of horrible things to himself. By not taking the gas, he's experienced a few million years of time in solitary consciousness, an unimaginable torture.
So I've always thought of Gollum as wrecked by loneliness.
Wonderful article, John. Your article delves deep into some deeply human experiences. I like the attention you brought to Gollum's sense of identity, or lack thereof, because of his isolation from society, in contrast with how intimately bonded Sam and Frodo are. Of course, Faramir is the best character. I agree with your analysis of how he is able to resist the Ring. It's why I believe studying history and the classics is paramount to living a more meaningful life; it gives our experiences context and a blueprint from which to frame our experiences.
Thanks for this post. There have been times when watching LOTR when I fast forward through scenes with Gollum. I thought it was because of his physicality-he is hard to look at-but as I participate in closer reads, it is the externalization of the “bundle” that I can’t watch. I’ve been at war with myself at different seasons of my life. Sometimes journaling helps me through the wreckage and at other times it culminates in possessing something (retail therapy)before it subsides. Either way it always involves looking back. In the Hobbit, Gandalf is “looking ahead and looking back” which helps him to stay present and support the tribe in whatever way he can. Connection to the past shines light and hope on the future of the quest. Good stuff!
Thanks, Kathleen. Yes, it's hard to maintain that perspective, and we all fall into chaos of self sometimes. I suppose that it's a matter of having techniques to pull us out of it. I'm still working on mine...
It seems to me that Faramir is selfless. When he discovers Frodo is carrying the ring he reminds him of the oath he had previously spoken, as if there was no question that he would honor it even under the changed circumstances. While this shows his honor, I think it also suggests a strange sort of removal of himself from the picture. His choice to release Frodo although it might forfeit his life is another such moment. Faramir is going to do what he believes is right for his people, regardless of the consequences to himself (or misguided orders to the contrary). The line about not taking up the ring even to save Minas Tirith suggests to me that he is aware that this would ruin what the city represents. Like the elves, Faramir seems to prefer an unsullied identity, even if it cannot continue to exist in the present day.
Great piece, John, and in line with some of my own thoughts about the construction of meaning out of fractured perceptions. I've been pondering the human qualities of self-narratives a lot because of my worries about generative AI. If presenting a coherent sense of self is always something of a performance for an audience, what does it mean if ChatGPT or another bot does most of the writing (and self-construction) for us? I fear the answers are not happy ones, leading us away from the deep learning and sense of history of a Faramir to the lonely hatred of Gollum, who no longer remembers where he began. Joshua D. also brings up the issue of constructed personas in personal essays and other nonfiction (with that great reference to Jerome Bruner, whose writing about self-presentation I'd forgotten). Thanks, all!
I’ve been thinking about this in relation to AI as well, Martha. We are allowing others (or the algorithm) to shape our understanding of ourselves. That does not bode well.
To the extent that "writing = thinking", a la Niklas Luhmann or Sönke Ahrens, generative AI seems to have the potential to allow us to rob ourselves of that opportunity to think.
I have just finished Two Towers today, a little behind but catching up as best I can.
I cannot thank you enough for your weekly reflections. Reading LOTR again (last time was about 40 years ago) it brings such an insight that I am eagerly anticipating each week. This week you bring the discussion of perceptions which is just so interesting.
Firstly to Gollum/Smeagol - I think we all have those little voices/devil on either shoulder that play inside our mind. Therefore we all relate in some capacity. Having just finished book two today, I am swimming in Sam’s loyalty which never fails to move my emotions and wonder what that says about my perceptions? He is an understated hero for sure.
However, it is your attention given to Faramir, a highly underrated character in my view, that I applaud. I was fully appreciative of your reflections on his perceptions and role played. Bringing into play Tom and Hume’s ideologies just enriches my reading and reflections so much more. Tolkien brings either ends of the spectrum in Boromir and Faramir and how the latter is a reflection of one of the underlying themes of the book - collective over individual. Also his understanding of the past to provide context of current and future is really quite advanced.
I look forward to the final instalment. Thank you once again for such engaging and rich reading.
I often quote Montaigne in memoir writing courses: "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."
Hume's view resonates with Jerome Bruner's "Self-Making Narratives." Bruner shows (persuasively, IMO) how we can never sever identity from our audience. We're always narrating the self in negotiation with what we want to believe about ourselves (and what we can accept/admit), as well as what we think others expect from us. I've been weighing an essay on creating a narrative persona, because the self we construct as essayists is not "us," exactly, but a performance, a pose. I think Bruner is right that we are always negotiating our internal and external audiences, always constructing and reconstructing the self.
Another interesting metaphor: is the self more like a matryoshka doll (series of hollow nesting shells, with emptiness at the center) or more like growth rings in a tree (a solid core with steady expansion each year)?
Thanks, Josh. I'm not familiar with Bruner, so I'll have to check that out. And concerning the metaphors: Hume would say the doll, and Tolkien would say the tree ;)
By the way, do you remember which essay that Montaigne line is from? I love that and want to read the context.
I believe it's from the first essay in this collection. The essay is fittingly titled "The Inconsistency of Our Actions": https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/montaigne1580book2_1.pdf
Interesting point from Bruner (now I have to go read him!). Suggests we really ought to be extremely careful to curate the right community/audience. Substack groups like this, for example.
John, fascinating article and research as always. I have always been drawn to Gollum for the truth he represents about the fractured self. In my teenage years I experienced some significant trauma that caused me to show one face to others while dealing with an interior self that I didn't quite recognize. I think to some degree all of us have this double identity of what the world sees and what is within. I am reminded of a Thornton Wilder quote, "There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head." In truth, I believe we all battle with competing interests within, the fractured and broken self. Which of those gets shown to the world often depends on which is the stronger and more powerful impulse within us. Great stuff. Thanks.
Such a brilliant line from Wilder. I also feel that sense of a fractured self when I read my journal from, say, twenty years ago, or even ten. Who is this person? It's certainly not me.
Yes to all of this.
Thanks John for another set of great insights into LOTR. Aristotle said that anyone who lives a life separated from society must either be a god or a beast. And so I think of Gollum as the result of being ravaged by so many years of solitary living. He's been driven mad not only by the Ring, but by unnatural loneliness.
One of my favorite Stephen King short stories is called The Jaunt. A device that can teleport you from place to place has been invented (like in Star Trek), but you have to inhale a gas that puts you to sleep while your particles are disassembling and then reassembling. A young boy fakes inhaling the gas and at the other end he emerges as a wrecked creature doing all sorts of horrible things to himself. By not taking the gas, he's experienced a few million years of time in solitary consciousness, an unimaginable torture.
So I've always thought of Gollum as wrecked by loneliness.
Yes, he is wrecked by loneliness and the fact that it is self-imposed because of his greed must eat away at him even more.
Thanks, David. I'm not familiar with that story, but I'll definitely check it out.
It's one of King's nicer conceits — equal parts sentimental and nasty.
Wonderful article, John. Your article delves deep into some deeply human experiences. I like the attention you brought to Gollum's sense of identity, or lack thereof, because of his isolation from society, in contrast with how intimately bonded Sam and Frodo are. Of course, Faramir is the best character. I agree with your analysis of how he is able to resist the Ring. It's why I believe studying history and the classics is paramount to living a more meaningful life; it gives our experiences context and a blueprint from which to frame our experiences.
Thanks, Tiffany. I agree; I just wish this argument would work with university administrators!
If only public schools would switch to classical education as well..
Love this, John. I often say to my students: So what? Why are we reading this or why are you talking about xyz in this paper...and WHO CARES?
You're showing us the so what in LOTR on such a deep yet accessible level.
Thanks, Kate. That's such a fruitful approach to take with students.
Thanks for this post. There have been times when watching LOTR when I fast forward through scenes with Gollum. I thought it was because of his physicality-he is hard to look at-but as I participate in closer reads, it is the externalization of the “bundle” that I can’t watch. I’ve been at war with myself at different seasons of my life. Sometimes journaling helps me through the wreckage and at other times it culminates in possessing something (retail therapy)before it subsides. Either way it always involves looking back. In the Hobbit, Gandalf is “looking ahead and looking back” which helps him to stay present and support the tribe in whatever way he can. Connection to the past shines light and hope on the future of the quest. Good stuff!
Thanks, Kathleen. Yes, it's hard to maintain that perspective, and we all fall into chaos of self sometimes. I suppose that it's a matter of having techniques to pull us out of it. I'm still working on mine...
It seems to me that Faramir is selfless. When he discovers Frodo is carrying the ring he reminds him of the oath he had previously spoken, as if there was no question that he would honor it even under the changed circumstances. While this shows his honor, I think it also suggests a strange sort of removal of himself from the picture. His choice to release Frodo although it might forfeit his life is another such moment. Faramir is going to do what he believes is right for his people, regardless of the consequences to himself (or misguided orders to the contrary). The line about not taking up the ring even to save Minas Tirith suggests to me that he is aware that this would ruin what the city represents. Like the elves, Faramir seems to prefer an unsullied identity, even if it cannot continue to exist in the present day.
Great piece, John, and in line with some of my own thoughts about the construction of meaning out of fractured perceptions. I've been pondering the human qualities of self-narratives a lot because of my worries about generative AI. If presenting a coherent sense of self is always something of a performance for an audience, what does it mean if ChatGPT or another bot does most of the writing (and self-construction) for us? I fear the answers are not happy ones, leading us away from the deep learning and sense of history of a Faramir to the lonely hatred of Gollum, who no longer remembers where he began. Joshua D. also brings up the issue of constructed personas in personal essays and other nonfiction (with that great reference to Jerome Bruner, whose writing about self-presentation I'd forgotten). Thanks, all!
I’ve been thinking about this in relation to AI as well, Martha. We are allowing others (or the algorithm) to shape our understanding of ourselves. That does not bode well.
To the extent that "writing = thinking", a la Niklas Luhmann or Sönke Ahrens, generative AI seems to have the potential to allow us to rob ourselves of that opportunity to think.
I have just finished Two Towers today, a little behind but catching up as best I can.
I cannot thank you enough for your weekly reflections. Reading LOTR again (last time was about 40 years ago) it brings such an insight that I am eagerly anticipating each week. This week you bring the discussion of perceptions which is just so interesting.
Firstly to Gollum/Smeagol - I think we all have those little voices/devil on either shoulder that play inside our mind. Therefore we all relate in some capacity. Having just finished book two today, I am swimming in Sam’s loyalty which never fails to move my emotions and wonder what that says about my perceptions? He is an understated hero for sure.
However, it is your attention given to Faramir, a highly underrated character in my view, that I applaud. I was fully appreciative of your reflections on his perceptions and role played. Bringing into play Tom and Hume’s ideologies just enriches my reading and reflections so much more. Tolkien brings either ends of the spectrum in Boromir and Faramir and how the latter is a reflection of one of the underlying themes of the book - collective over individual. Also his understanding of the past to provide context of current and future is really quite advanced.
I look forward to the final instalment. Thank you once again for such engaging and rich reading.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I have greatly enjoyed reading your comments, and I look forward to your thoughts on Return of the King.