Heroism in The Lord of the Rings

His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.

[1] The warhorns of the Riders of Rohan exemplify, in Shippey's view, the "heroic Northern world", as in what he calls the nearest Beowulf has to a moment of Tolkien-like eucatastrophe, when Ongentheow's Geats, trapped all night, hear the horns of Hygelac's men coming to rescue them; the Riders blow their horns wildly as they finally arrive, turning the tide of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields at a climactic moment in The Lord of the Rings.

The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns writes that the theme of courageous action in the face of inevitable loss in The Lord of the Rings is borrowed from the Nordic world view which emphasises "imminent or threatening destruction".

Frodo is given his sword by his "uncle", Bilbo – Flieger comments that the uncle-nephew relationship is also traditional for pairs of heroes, such as Cuchulainn and Conchobar, Tristan and Mark, Roland and Charlemagne, Gawain and Arthur, and Beowulf and Hygelac.

Unlike Frodo's acquisition of Sting, the transformation of Narsil to Andúril is directly heroic; but both weapons, like the magic swords of medieval legend, shine with their own light in the presence of enemies.

[T 2][5] Patrick Grant, a scholar of Renaissance literature, interpreted the interactions of the characters as fitting the oppositions and other pairwise relationships of Jungian archetypes, recurring psychological symbols proposed by Carl Jung.

But the fairy tale happy ending comes to Aragorn, marrying the beautiful princess (Arwen) and winning the kingdom (Gondor and Arnor); while Frodo, who returns home miserable, with neither Ring nor appreciation by the people of the Shire, gets "defeat and disillusionment—the stark, bitter ending typical of the Iliad, Beowulf, the Morte D'Arthur".

[5] The Tolkien scholars Thomas Honegger and John D. Rateliff write that this "important" argument of Flieger's was so convincing that it remained unchallenged until in 2000 George Clark pointed to Sam as the "true hero".

[T 5] Tolkien admired heroism born of loyalty and love, but despised arrogance, pride and wilfulness, notes the scholar Elizabeth Solopova.

[10] Ben Reinhard writes in Mythlore that Aragorn and Frodo lack one traditional component of heroism, indeed of the heroic romance that Tolkien was popularising: knightly chivalry.

In place of the powerful and noble knight errant, we have (on the one hand) the modern, bourgeois, and above all small hobbits or (on the other) the half-wild, mistrusted rangers.

"[11] Reinhard observes that this allows the Catholic Tolkien to express the Christian vision as described in the Magnificat of "put[ting] down the mighty from their seat, and exalt[ing] the humble and meek".