My hurried response below got me to thinking of some parallels that, unlike the
ones NZ Strider brings up, are likely not there at all (but it won’t be the
first—or last—time I've chased phantoms…).
Since I have only a simplistic understanding of the concepts I'm going to talk
about here, I will probably oversimplify (and thus miss the point) of what I'm
going to suggest—so apologies in advance to those of you more schooled in this
area (and who've read Derrida more recently than I have).
In literary criticism, deconstruction is the re-examination of binaries we live
by, in a sense, as we try to examine or defend a point. So in the act of
deconstruction, we define—and re-define—those binaries until they become so
thin they cease to have meaning (since they are most profoundly defined only in
reference to each other), and thus the work collapses in on itself.
Even Derrida suggests that deconstruction is NOT only a literary/linguistic
act, but that gestures, acts, choreography, etc. can be deconstructed.
Everything is a text.
So when Frodo comes back to live in the Shire, presumably to come home, feel
better, even return to the comfort of the womb (using metaphors that have been
used for "home" before), and then he is unable to live there as he once did
(and, one might argue, unable to "live" there at all) because he’s been "too
deeply hurt," is his inability to find solace/home in the Shire akin to the act
of deconstruction? Especially given that his main source of sustained
interaction for a long time (and, one might argue, sustenance, though Rosie and
Sam were tangentially there, too) was a book, the red book that Bilbo began,
and he continued? In a sense, has Frodo become so stretched that he is
unable to exist on this plane anymore? Has he
deconstructed?
Not all those who wander are lost.
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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, speak a few reasonable words.
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
