Stranger Rings

Spoiler alert for all 3 seasons of Stranger Things.


This week we read "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."  Separated from his master, Sam searches the Orc hideout in the hopes of finding Frodo before it's too late.  It's an interesting chapter, not least because Sam is the main character throughout.  However, this week I want to do something different.

While we’ve been reading Lord of the Rings to try to shine light on our own lives, one could also use it to shine light on other works.  One’s enjoyment of Star Wars is enhanced if you’re familiar with samurai films.  The Lion King proves a good introduction to the seeminglydense Hamlet.  Art informs art.

When I finished the third season of Stranger Things, I was struck by the parallels to Lord of the Rings.  For those who have chosen not to watch Stranger Things, here's a very brief synopsis:

• In the first season: Will Byers is a young boy who is attacked by an evil monster that was unleashed by government inter-dimensional testing.  The monster uses Will as a conduit to our own world.  Eleven is a talented young girl who is taken from her family and trained by the government to hone her Jedi-like powers.  Flashbacks show her fighting the monster that attacked Will.  Through the season they become friends and at the end of the season Eleven faces the monster, which has completed the interdenominational jump, and sends it back.
• The second season is less remarkable.  Though free from the monster, Will retains a connection with it, and can sense when it is active in its own world.  Eleven tries to find and reconnect with her family.
• In the latest season, the monster returns.  This time it takes over Billy, the school bully.  Will and Eleven fight him.  Eleven, in a mental/Jedi struggle with Billy, learns he developed into a bully because he had an abusive father.  In the final battle at the mall, Billy finds Eleven and restrains her so the monster can get her.   Unbeknownst to him, Eleven has mysteriously lost her powers, and is not the threat she once was.  Anyway, Eleven reveals to Billy what she knows about him and, and this inspires him to sacrifice himself against the monster.  Meanwhile, the adults are in an underground Russian bunker trying to close the inter-dimensional gate.  When they succeed, the monster ceases to exist in our world.

OK - to analysis!  Will and Eleven, like Frodo, are both reluctant heroes.  They are given special powers only due to their contact with evil forces (The monster, the government, and the Ring).  They rise to the challenge, but none wish it had come.

El also has something in common with the Elves.  At the end of the third season she has lost her powers.  A new era has come.  And just like the Elves must fade (or accept mortality), so must El accept normalcy (Though of course I fully expect her to regain her powers in the next season).

Billy is like Boromir.  He’s corrupted by the evil power, but clearly despises evil.  But he was always a jerk, even without the evil.  But just as meeting Denethor gives us some insight into why Boromir was so proud, so does meeting Billy’s dad give us understanding into how he became a bully.  But Boromir, for his flaws, was honorable.  In the end, Billy also stood up to the evil that was trying to control him.  Boromir and Billy were both jerks whose fear of weakness made them susceptible to corruption.  But it’s hard to make the argument either of them were outright evil.

Another similarity I saw was the nature of the climax.  The battle at Starcourt Mall was exciting and noisy and heroic.  But that battle was just a delaying tactic.  What mattered was deep underground, at the Gate.  Similarly, the battle at the Black Gate is big and showy, but the only struggle that matters is Sam and Frodo’s.  Both stories show us that what’s on the surface can be superficial.  It’s the smaller struggles deep underground/in enemy territory that matter.

OK, but so what?  One can draw a lot of similarities between a lot of art.  The Hero’s Journey is an archetype that covers thousands of stories.  But the story of Odysseus, Moses, Luke Skywalker, and Ariel are all radically different, too.  What does it matter?

Art informs how we view the world.  What we see should reflect real life - otherwise what's the point?  We connect to art when we see ourselves.  And how we see ourselves can be both superficial and deep. We all know someone - and we may be someone - who was shaped by a poor relationship with an authority figure.  But whether Billy, Boromir, or Luke or Ariel resonates most with you is important, too.  Billy responded by trying to be above it all and "cool".  Boromir responded by doing everything he could to win his father's respect.  Luke is regularly betrayed by the authority in his life.  Obi-Wan and Uncle Owen lie to him about his father.  Darth Vader tries to get him to join the Dark Side.  And when Luke himself is the authority he ends up betraying Ben Solo - he cannot break the cycle.  Ariel has a yet different conflict with authority: What she wants is forbidden by her father, but she pursues it regardless.  The archetype is similar but the details remain important.

Learning the lessons of Lord of the Rings is a laudable goal unto itself (At least I hope it is!).  But once we familiarize ourselves with the underlying archetypes, we can use the similarities we see between it and other works to quickly see beneath their surface, too.  Art informs art.

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