Homework WK 7

    The movie trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” follows certain archetypes and myths common in literature and movies as described in Linda Seger’s “Creating the Myth”. In her work she describes “hero” stories in which the hero overcomes adversity and wins in the end while we root and cheer for them feeling a part of ourselves in them. She also describes stories called myths which are “more than true” due to the fact that we can all can relate so much to them and in the trilogy, Frodo is the hero we associate ourselves with and he lives this myth of adversity that we see our lives being like.

                The Lord of the Rings follows the hero myth absolutely. Frodo lives a normal life in a normal, peaceful place surrounded by peaceful people. Then the One Ring suddenly pops into his life and begins the story even though Frodo does not necessarily want there to be a story. Sam helps him at the start of the journey all the way to the end and he also receives help from all the other races as well. People like Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas. There are many obstacles on the journey but the hero prevails turning into someone stronger and better until he nearly dies when he runs into the Nazgul. Frodo then takes up the mantle and decides to be the one who does what must be done even thought the original deal is that he only has to take the One Ring to Rivendell. The journey ends with the One Ring being destroyed, Frodo, the hero, barely surviving and his transformation complete. Another archetype the trilogy has is Sam, who is the classic “helper” who helps the hero and gives advice.

                Just because there is a stale archetype and the building blocks of the story are all familiar to us does not mean that it can’t be great. This is proven by The Lord of the Rings. Even though the story of it is similar to others it is still an amazing piece of art.