The Pattern of Three in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and Other Stories

Do you know what all of these stories have in common?

• Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

• The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

• The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoesvsky

• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

• Percy Jackson's Greek Gods series

• The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis

• The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

• Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynn Jones

• The original Star Trek series

• Brandon Sanderson's series, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Even if you're only familiar with some of these, all of these stories have something in common

They all follow a similar pattern

The Bible, Magic, and Fairy Tales(link opens in a new window)

That pattern is based on the three main characters in the stories (LOTR is an exception, and I'll explain that below).

The main character is either a friend of both of the other secondary characters, or at least tolerates those two other characters. Those two characters start out not getting along with each other AT ALL and may even be enemies, but that changes by the end of the story. They end up uniting under the hero character and successfully conquer the villain in the story.

Each of those three characters also represents a part of a human being. Two are representing the mind, and the third represents the body. The intellect and will are both of the mind, and the passions are of the body.

• The character that represents the passions allows the passions to rule

• The character representing the intellect is often shown to be brilliant in an academic sense, but isn't very "wordly"

• The character representing the will is the one who reconciles the relationship between the other two, and leads them towards their destination in the end

  
  

Here are some examples of this:

Intellect	Will	Passions
Samwise	Frodo	Gollum
Legolas	Aragorn	Gimli
Gandalf	Frodo	Aragorn
Hermione	Harry	Ron
Dumbledore	Harry	Snape
Snape	Dumbledore	McGonagle

Both of these stories (Harry Potter and LOTR) include multiple instances of this triptych, and some of the characters have multiple roles in that within the storyline. It's very unusual, since most stories that use this have a character in only one triptych.

The Roles of the Parts

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This approach is derived from Thomas Aquinas's view of the unity of the body and soul, which is derived from Aristotle.

Within Christianity, there is the concept that human beings have both a soul and a body. When we die, the soul is separated from the body, so the immaterial soul goes to its final resting place and the material body corrupts and decays. We believe at the end of time, the soul will reform the body so that body and soul are once again united as they were always intended to be.

What many authors have done, beginning with Dostoevsky, is to emphasize the role of those three parts by assigning them to three different characters, as is seen in the chart above.

The passions are bodily and are focused on bodily needs and actions. This character is focused primarily on bodily things, typically food, fighting, and mating.

The intellect is part of the soul and has no material component, but it's orientation is to the truth. This character is always seeking the truth even when it's brutal.

The will is oriented towards the good and this character takes the passions and intellect into account and makes the final decision on the best course for all three and their final goal. The passions and intellect are often at war with each other, until they are united under the will.

Lord of the Rings

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One of the things that's so interesting about LOTR, is that Tolkien also takes a specific character, and breaks that character into those three parts and then separates those three parts. This is of course, the character of Sauron!

That’s possible partly because Middle Earth is part of the world of Faerie, where impossible things can happen and and partly because his soul: intellect and will, continued to exist. The reason his eye is the only physical part of him that continues to exist in this world is because:

• In LOTR, Tolkien allows Sauron’s body to be destroyed prior to the story, but his intellect and will continue to exist

• His intellect is in the giant eye that he’s been reduced to, which is trying to look for the magic ring

• The ring’s power comes from Sauron putting his will into the ring

• If he gets the ring back, his intellect (eye) and will (ring) are then reunited and his soul is once again intact

• The soul is the form of the body

• Once his soul is intact, his body will re-form and he will be a whole being once again

At that moment when Sauron’s intellect and will are reunited and his fragmented soul becomes complete again, he would then begin to wreak havoc, enslave everyone, and rule over all of Middle Earth.

Harry Potter

Rowling has a similar trope, in that a character (Voldemort) has separated his soul into seven parts. Each part of his soul has a different container so that if one part is destroyed, Voldemort will continue to live.

When his body is destroyed before the beginning of the first book, everyone--including his followers--thinks that Voldemort is dead.

He's not, he's just looking for at least one of the pieces of his soul so that he can re-form his body. That would allow him to become incarnate again and resume his reign of terror.

For Voldemort, Rowling uses a different trope than Tolkien used for Sauron, since she keeps the parts of the soul together in her villain where Tolkien divided up the soul into the intellect and will.

So Why Does All this Matter?

The way that these three characters act in stories shows us how we act and think through our ideas and choice of actions. When we read stories, we temporarily suspend some of what we know in order to follow the story line in a coherent manner. We are also identifying with a particular character in the story, and go on the journey throughout the story with that character. It's usually the main character, but sometimes people favor a secondary character instead.

This allows us to experience the story through that character's eyes and mind, and we go through the same roller-coaster ride of ups and downs that the character goes through. Sometimes it's more than one character, if you re-read the story or if it's a series with recurring characters.

This happened after the sixth Harry Potter book was released, and kids and adults all around the world were mourning the death of Dumbledore! They were caught up in the story and felt like the characters were their friends (spoiler alert: it's ok in the end), so they mourned the death of their friend.

Something similar happens in A Christmas Story by Charles Dickens, when Tiny Tim dies. How can you NOT cry when that happens? (another spoiler alert--he ends up ok, too!)

There are several planned courses on LOTR, Narnia, and Harry Potter

The first one, Magic in LOTR, Narnia, and Harry Potter, is currently available here on my Payhip site.

The rest will be listed here as well as they become available

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