Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature: Tolkien, Rowling, and Meyer by Lykke Guanio-Uluru (review)

If one had to distill the central thesis of Lykke Guanio-Uluru’s extremely rich and complex book into one sentence, it might be this: Excavating the values expressed by a work of literature is an enormously complex task that requires careful attention not only to the conscious choices made by a story’s cast of characters, but also to revelations provided by the work’s aesthetic features. For example, the selection of focalizer(s) (one, two, many), recurrent symbols (trees, shape-shifters, blood), and even the adjectives used to describe a landscape all carry weight in inviting readers to trust or distrust a narrator, or to find a world, and its values, appealing or repellent.

Guanio-Uluru singles out for analysis the sprawling fantasy texts of J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer in part because of their enormous recent popularity, which “makes their reflection (or refraction) of cultural values relevant to understanding contemporary Western society” and suggests “that their formative ethical influence is significant, perhaps globally” (1). The sheer scale of the texts under examination (some seven thousand pages in all), and the daunting volume of critical literature that they have already generated, make close ethical examination of them a herculean task. Guanio-Uluru adds further challenge by situating each text within the framework of James Phelan’s rhetorical theory of narrative, as well as by drawing on the concepts of contemporary philosophical ethical theory—consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics—in order to understand their normative commitments. As if this were not enough, she also invokes religiously based world-views—Old Norse, Judeo-Christian, Mormon—to help unpack a text’s ethical orientation. And at some points she even resorts, rewardingly, to her own personal reflections.

It’s difficult to distill the overall arguments of the book in any clear and crisp way, as, particularly in the opening section on Tolkien, there are so many discrete insights offered that the reader can begin to feel a bit lost in the forest, although dazzled by each particular cluster of trees. Also, Guanio-Uluru cites such an impressively vast range of theorists, and references them with such conscientious thoroughness, that at times this makes for somewhat dense prose. But as she turns from Tolkien to Rowling, and especially as she engages in a comparative analysis of the two, the analysis she offers on every page is consistently brilliant and rewarding.

For example, in her linkage of form and value she analyzes the recurrent symbol of the tree in The Lord of the Rings, linking it both to the narrative structure of the text, which with its multiple focalizers “branches out like a tree” (157), and to what she takes to be its “deep ecological” value orientation, whereby “the fight against evil is made necessary . . . because the life and health of the earth itself hangs in the balance” (150). The consistent focalization of the Harry Potter series through the character of Harry, by contrast, allows for frequent instances of mistaken identity and deceptive appearances, which neither Harry nor the reader fully understands until the seventh and final volume. In addition, the “central archetypal symbol of the shape-shifter is reflected in a shape-shifting or metamorphosis of the series’ genre” (158; italics in original), from a children’s fantasy in the opening volume into a more complex adult novel at the series’ end.

The tone changes markedly as Guanio-Uluru turns her attention to Twilight. Her examination of ethical values at play in Tolkien and Rowling is more analytic than evaluative. In those first two sections she devotes herself to disentangling intertwined strands of ethical theories that are in tension within each text: for example, contrasting views of evil in The Lord of the Rings (powerless shadow versus powerful force) that have their source in differences between Judeo-Christian and Old Norse cosmology (80), as well as contrasting attitudes toward pacifism in the face of total war as...