SUMMARY OF ONE RING TO BIND THEM ALL
Literary Criticism, 124 PP.
One Ring to Bind Them All: Tolkien’s Mythology is a doctoral dissertation which mainly
focuses on the literary structure of The Lord of the Rings (LotR) and how that relates to
the classic mythic structure.
Petty structures her book into three sections to coincide with the three major sections
of Joseph Campbell’s hero journey, but with a short prologue and epilogue.
The “Preface” is quite short; it mainly tells the intentions of the book, which are to
show the reader the “process of mythmaking” and to increase the readers’ “awareness
of its manifestation” in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially LotR (ix). Directly
following this is the “Introduction.” In this section, she talks about the enormity of
scholarship that has followed the first printing of the book. She draws attention to a few
notable works on Tolkien and then talks about what the critics have said, in general, and
her own interest in Tolkien’s role as a mythmaker. The “Prologue,” then, goes on to
show the role of the mythmaker as well as a brief outline of Petty’s work as a whole.
Part One of the book is entitled “Departure.” This section has three chapters; the first
is “The Mythic Impulse.” In this chapter she states that after receiving the “call to
adventure… the only access to the return threshold is through the mythic cycle of our
particular quest” (9). Petty then goes on to try and describe what she calls the “mythic
impulse” (“the urge to seek unity and completion in the universe” (9)) and tell who is
most greatly affected by it. She then explains the mythic structure in the terms of
Campbell, Vladimir Propp, and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Chapter 2 discusses the importance of The Hobbit as a “necessary prelude” to LotR
(17). She uses The Hobbit to introduce the style and methodology she will be using to
later explicate LotR. Her major themes for this chapter are the importance of The
Hobbit’s subtitle “There and Back Again” as being of crucial importance to the mythic
impulse and of the continuing theme in Tolkien’s works of evil defeating its own
purposes. In the last chapter of this section she finally looks at LotR. Here she explains
the artist’s role in relation to subcreation and introduces the three mythic heroes of LotR:
Gandalf, Aragorn, and Frodo. For each of the heroes she outlines the call to adventure
and his acceptance of it.
Part Two is titled “Initiation.” The first two chapters of this section are composed of
her outlining the next steps that the heroes take on their hero quests. Using a fairly
complex list of abbreviations, she outlines the majority of LotR. The last chapter talks
about the binary oppositions present in the novel.
Part Three is the “Return,” which Petty has argued the importance of throughout. As
might be guessed, this section primarily deals with the return home after the completion
of the quest. She talks about the reception of the heroes and their reactions to it. From
there she talks of the patterns in the story as well as some deeply embedded symbols.
She argues how techniques like giving immense power to names and having characters
as the personification of powers are mythic traditions that Tolkien does not forget.
The Epilogue wraps everything up, extolling Tolkien as a true mythmaker.
EVALUATION OF ONE RING TO BIND THEM ALL
One of the major strengths of this book is its easy formatting. The book is wellorganized and free from streams of tangential information crowding the main points; it is
a focused work. The subtitle claims that the book is about “Tolkien’s Mythology,” and it
is. Another of its strengths is its conciseness; this is a fairly short book with only pertinent
information included. Her introductory material was highly fascinating. The “Mythic
Impulse” she talks about is made easily understandable to the casual reader, as is most
of her writing.
There were times when I was willing to dismiss the book as a whole because of what
are a few minor errors. One of the things that initially caught my attention and grated on
my nerves was her insistence on calling LotR a “trilogy.” Technically, it was published in
three parts, but it has become common knowledge that they were never intended to be
separate books and any serious scholar should know that. Another error that made me
doubt her credibility was when she refers to Éowyn as Théoden’s daughter. The last of
the errors that diminish this work is the fact that she does not utilize Tolkien’s accent
marks. It is almost jarring to not see them there.
Aside from these points, the major weakness for the casual reader is in the structural
analysis. While I will not dispute the accuracy of the analysis, it does get quite confusing
trying to keep track of the myriad symbols present. As I read, I was forced to constantly
flip to the first appendix to remind myself of the difference between A6 and U neg. There
were far too many symbols to keep accurate track of them all.
In a review of this book in the June 1979 edition of Best Sellers, Paul Granahan cites
the book’s downfall as its overreaching ambition. He says,
The basic flaw of this study is that it tries to accomplish far too much in its
rather limited space. The author should have perhaps restricted herself to
applying the theories of only one of [the men discussed: Campbell,
Propp, and Lévi-Strauss]. As it is, the three lines of thought don’t always
quite mesh and sometimes seem to be thrown together almost
gratuitously.
Quite simply, the book is just too complex to be fit into 124 pages.
The weaknesses are fairly minor to the work as a whole and they mostly fall under
the category of annoyances rather than major errors. This is a fairly easy read (barring
the symbols) and gives a lot of insight into how Tolkien fits with the mythic tradition. In its
first printing, it was definitely one of the earlier works of Tolkien scholarship, but should
not be discounted from the canon for that reason alone. It is writers like Petty who have
made Tolkien scholarship a respectable field.
HIGHLIGHTS OF ONE RING TO BIND THEM ALL
One of the really interesting points this book makes is the importance placed on the
return home. Petty thinks that it is one of the reasons that LotR has become so popular.
It follows a tradition that is deeply embedded in the human psyche; it is the return that
makes an arduous journey bearable and, more importantly, complete.
Another theme she brings out that is very worthwhile is one of evil defeating itself.
Petty shows how time and time again in both The Hobbit and LotR the forces of
darkness crush their own ends. It is the trolls’ bickering that keeps them outside long
enough for the sun to turn them to stone, it is after Wormtongue throws the palantír at
Gandalf that Sauron believes his foes are far off, and Saruman is killed by his own
lapdog (Wormtongue). She definitely makes the point that evil defeats itself at every
turn; it will never flourish in Middle-earth because it is always trying to commit suicide.
The most fascinating chapter in the book was the one on the binary opposites within
LotR. Although the chapter is a short one, it has many insights into the structure and
balance of Tolkien’s world. In this chapter, Petty talks about the importance of the
analogy of story within Middle-earth; LotR is of course a story, but the fact that the
characters are constantly referring to their plight as being in the middle of a never-ending
story is significant. It is pointed out that “malevolent and benevolent forces clash in
confrontation in the Third Age of Middle-earth; yet it is not for the first time… nor for the
last” (79). The shadow has come before and it will come again. But above this, it is quite
intriguing how Petty brings up the interdependence of the opposites in the book; for
example, when the ring is destroyed, the elves are expelled from Middle-earth as surely
as Sauron is. Along these same lines, many of the characters are paired with a foil;
Gandalf and Saruman, Frodo and Gollum, Faramir and Boromir, Théoden and Denethor,
etc. Even within Gollum is the opposition of “Slinker and Stinker.”
All in all, this is most definitely a work concerned with the literary structure of LotR.
Only someone who is interested in the detail of the story-structure of an epic work
should bother reading from cover to cover. However, even if that is not your forte, there
are still many good points made regarding the elements of classic myth found in
Tolkien’s masterpiece. It is one of the earlier works of Tolkien scholarship, but still a
worthy read.