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I've recently been re-watching Fullmetal Alchemist, and around episode 40 or so began to be struck by some similarities in characterization, themes, and even plot developments surrounding one of its characters and one from Lord of the Rings.
If you click on the cut, you will be spoiled for the entire run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a series with a great many clever plot twists. Do not click unless you've already watched the whole thing. Also spoilers for Lord of the Rings.
That would be the parallels between Wrath and Gollum. I remember![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yhlee watching the series and thinking, "Don't feel sorry for Wrath! Kill him before he kills you!" Of course I couldn't say anything at the time for fear of spoiling her, but that's the exact same reaction I think most people have to Gollum the first time they encounter LOTR.
Here's two characters who are at once menacing and pathetic, child-sized and with a child's desperate, irrational, monomaniacal passion, and yet with adult malice and an adult's capability for damage. They're both parodies of humanity (OK, hobbitry) who exist in a fallen form, but demonstrate tantalizing flashes of a capability for redemption. And they both remind us why immortality is not necessarily a good thing. (In these sorts of stories, it never is.) They are a living reminder of the terrible things that happen when people give in to temptation.
A lot of that could apply to the other homunculi, and it's probably Wrath's physicality and obsession with Sloth that made me think of Gollum in relation to him. ("Mommy!" started to sound quite similar to "Precious!") But there's a fascinating plot parallel that applies best to him of all the homunculi.
So why shouldn't Frodo and Sam have killed Gollum?
Morally, because there was a point when he could have been redeemed; because pity stayed their hands, as it should; because (Gandalf puts this better) self-defense is one thing, but when you start killing people pre-emptively because they deserve it, or because they might be dangerous to you later, you've strayed into playing God, and possibly also into playing murderer.
The plot agrees with them: if they had killed Gollum, no one would have destroyed the ring, and either Frodo would have become the Dark Lord (unlikely) or Sauron would have retrieved the ring and won. Which would have been bad. So it turns out that everything that was done was necessary-- the long slog to Mordor, the diversion by Gondor, Sam refusing to leave Frodo when the Fellowship broke up-- and the foolish act of mercy was the most necessary of all. The fallen image, the parody of Frodo completed the task that Frodo, the hero, could not.
Tolkien can be simplistic-- even if you take the orcs as allegories of the evil in humanity, they're still a far more black-and-white image of evil than the homunculi-- but the destroying of the ring by Gollum rather than Frodo opens up a multitude of interpretations. It was mercy that stayed everyone's hands-- by that point any number of people have been tempted to kill Gollum and decided not to-- but you could also argue that if Gollum hadn't given in to temptation in the end, that mercy would have been useless. It was the dark side that, albeit accidentally, saved the day.
Going back to Wrath, a very similar plot twist occurs, with similar motivation. As obsessed with protecting Sloth, his mother-figure, as Gollum is with the ring, Wrath grabs the box containing part of Trisha Elric's body (I think a lock of her hair), which is the only weapon that can enable Sloth to be defeated, and hides it inside his body. Later, in a frenzy to possess and be possessed by the object of his love, Wrath merges his body with Sloth's, forgetting about the box-- and paralyzes her, enabling Ed to kill her.
It's not so clear-cut in this case that Wrath's survival is necessary for the task to be accomplished. After all, Ed did have the box already. Later Wrath delays Envy when Envy's fighting Ed-- but not enough to make a difference. Or maybe he does make a difference, but not an obvious one-- I'll get to that in a moment.
Unlike Gollum, Wrath does not die. He loses the arm and leg that weren't his to begin with-- and Winry outfits him with automail! (The movie was not in the works when the series finale was written, as far as I know, so I'm going to treat the series ending as an ending-- it's a perfectly satisfactory one, loose ends and all.) Tolkien wraps up all the loose ends, but Seiji Mizushima and Shou Aikawa prefer not to, and also not to underline that letting Wrath live was definitely the right decision without which the ending (which is bittersweet, as is Tolkien's) could not have occurred as it did.
The concept of Equivalent Trade deserves a master's thesis, let alone a post, all to itself, as it's defined and redefined and questioned and merged and broken as metaphor and science. But we do know one thing: we never see anyone successfully revive a human being until both Ed and Al do so at the very end. Everyone else fails, loses a part of their body, and creates only a homunculus. Ed loses his arm and leg and place in the world, and Al loses his memories-- but they both survive, and both succeed.
Hohenheim, who granted is an extremely ambiguous character, suggests that the trade was the sum of everything Ed and Al did in those four years-- not just Al's memories, but the way that Ed and Al affected the world-- which was the price paid for their resurrection. If so, it's the only time that the price was not something the alchemist had to give up, but something-- both good and bad, though I think mostly good-- that the alchemist added to the world. We don't know whether Ed was right to save Wrath and kill Sloth, because the plot refuses to tell us so. All we know is that the sacrifice was accepted.
LOTR ends with far more finality than FMA. Gollum dies in the form, if not the intent, of a ritual sacrifice, Frodo and others sail off to the Gray Havens, and even without the appendices we can tell that everyone else will live happily until they die, and then the age of Man will come. You could not have a living Gollum skulking off into the shadows and still have the end read as it does: a closed book. Fin.
The ending of FMA is a book with the last pages forever unwritten. Wrath's survival underlines this. He is part of the sum total of everything that Ed and Al's actions added to the world. Was it right to let him live? Is he going to cause more trouble down the road?
In FMA, the road goes ever on.
If you click on the cut, you will be spoiled for the entire run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a series with a great many clever plot twists. Do not click unless you've already watched the whole thing. Also spoilers for Lord of the Rings.
That would be the parallels between Wrath and Gollum. I remember
yhlee watching the series and thinking, "Don't feel sorry for Wrath! Kill him before he kills you!" Of course I couldn't say anything at the time for fear of spoiling her, but that's the exact same reaction I think most people have to Gollum the first time they encounter LOTR.Here's two characters who are at once menacing and pathetic, child-sized and with a child's desperate, irrational, monomaniacal passion, and yet with adult malice and an adult's capability for damage. They're both parodies of humanity (OK, hobbitry) who exist in a fallen form, but demonstrate tantalizing flashes of a capability for redemption. And they both remind us why immortality is not necessarily a good thing. (In these sorts of stories, it never is.) They are a living reminder of the terrible things that happen when people give in to temptation.
A lot of that could apply to the other homunculi, and it's probably Wrath's physicality and obsession with Sloth that made me think of Gollum in relation to him. ("Mommy!" started to sound quite similar to "Precious!") But there's a fascinating plot parallel that applies best to him of all the homunculi.
So why shouldn't Frodo and Sam have killed Gollum?
Morally, because there was a point when he could have been redeemed; because pity stayed their hands, as it should; because (Gandalf puts this better) self-defense is one thing, but when you start killing people pre-emptively because they deserve it, or because they might be dangerous to you later, you've strayed into playing God, and possibly also into playing murderer.
The plot agrees with them: if they had killed Gollum, no one would have destroyed the ring, and either Frodo would have become the Dark Lord (unlikely) or Sauron would have retrieved the ring and won. Which would have been bad. So it turns out that everything that was done was necessary-- the long slog to Mordor, the diversion by Gondor, Sam refusing to leave Frodo when the Fellowship broke up-- and the foolish act of mercy was the most necessary of all. The fallen image, the parody of Frodo completed the task that Frodo, the hero, could not.
Tolkien can be simplistic-- even if you take the orcs as allegories of the evil in humanity, they're still a far more black-and-white image of evil than the homunculi-- but the destroying of the ring by Gollum rather than Frodo opens up a multitude of interpretations. It was mercy that stayed everyone's hands-- by that point any number of people have been tempted to kill Gollum and decided not to-- but you could also argue that if Gollum hadn't given in to temptation in the end, that mercy would have been useless. It was the dark side that, albeit accidentally, saved the day.
Going back to Wrath, a very similar plot twist occurs, with similar motivation. As obsessed with protecting Sloth, his mother-figure, as Gollum is with the ring, Wrath grabs the box containing part of Trisha Elric's body (I think a lock of her hair), which is the only weapon that can enable Sloth to be defeated, and hides it inside his body. Later, in a frenzy to possess and be possessed by the object of his love, Wrath merges his body with Sloth's, forgetting about the box-- and paralyzes her, enabling Ed to kill her.
It's not so clear-cut in this case that Wrath's survival is necessary for the task to be accomplished. After all, Ed did have the box already. Later Wrath delays Envy when Envy's fighting Ed-- but not enough to make a difference. Or maybe he does make a difference, but not an obvious one-- I'll get to that in a moment.
Unlike Gollum, Wrath does not die. He loses the arm and leg that weren't his to begin with-- and Winry outfits him with automail! (The movie was not in the works when the series finale was written, as far as I know, so I'm going to treat the series ending as an ending-- it's a perfectly satisfactory one, loose ends and all.) Tolkien wraps up all the loose ends, but Seiji Mizushima and Shou Aikawa prefer not to, and also not to underline that letting Wrath live was definitely the right decision without which the ending (which is bittersweet, as is Tolkien's) could not have occurred as it did.
The concept of Equivalent Trade deserves a master's thesis, let alone a post, all to itself, as it's defined and redefined and questioned and merged and broken as metaphor and science. But we do know one thing: we never see anyone successfully revive a human being until both Ed and Al do so at the very end. Everyone else fails, loses a part of their body, and creates only a homunculus. Ed loses his arm and leg and place in the world, and Al loses his memories-- but they both survive, and both succeed.
Hohenheim, who granted is an extremely ambiguous character, suggests that the trade was the sum of everything Ed and Al did in those four years-- not just Al's memories, but the way that Ed and Al affected the world-- which was the price paid for their resurrection. If so, it's the only time that the price was not something the alchemist had to give up, but something-- both good and bad, though I think mostly good-- that the alchemist added to the world. We don't know whether Ed was right to save Wrath and kill Sloth, because the plot refuses to tell us so. All we know is that the sacrifice was accepted.
LOTR ends with far more finality than FMA. Gollum dies in the form, if not the intent, of a ritual sacrifice, Frodo and others sail off to the Gray Havens, and even without the appendices we can tell that everyone else will live happily until they die, and then the age of Man will come. You could not have a living Gollum skulking off into the shadows and still have the end read as it does: a closed book. Fin.
The ending of FMA is a book with the last pages forever unwritten. Wrath's survival underlines this. He is part of the sum total of everything that Ed and Al's actions added to the world. Was it right to let him live? Is he going to cause more trouble down the road?
In FMA, the road goes ever on.