Just saw this the other day. Great discussion.
Horatius, and all the great heroes of the past are greater than we are. Or so, at least we each must fear. Would we have held the bridge? Would we flee? Would we at least grab an axe and help to cut the bridge down?
Most of us don't know. So, the heroes of the past always seem mightier than us. We have not been tested, and we don't know how mighty we might or might not be.
This is a very insightful observation,
@Flammifer ; I know for myself when I study history, I look at the people in the American South organizing to end segregation in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, or the people who harbored escapees from slavery in the 19th century, or harbored Jews in Nazi-controlled parts of Europe in the 30s and 40s - and I ask myself if I would have the courage to risk imprisonment, torture, and even death the way they did. I suppose we never know for sure until we find ourselves in such a situation, but most of the time I suspect I wouldn't.
And, indeed, we see the protagonists in
Lord of the Rings explicitly compared to the great heroes of previous Ages. I'm especially thinking of the Hobbits, such as the way Elrond thinks Frodo will be remembered alongside legendary elf-friends like Beren and Turin, or how Sam's prowess in fighting off Shelob is at one point compared to the might of Turin Turambar. Most saliently to this discussion, I'm thinking of a scene, I think it's in book 4, where Sam compares his and Frodo's situation to Beren sneaking into Morgoth's fortress to steal a Silmaril, noting that Beren's peril was even greater than their own. Sam knows that what Beren had to contend with was objectively worse than what he and Frodo are facing; but of course, they and well also know that they are not larger than life heroes, as Beren appears in hindsight. (Also, the fact that Beren prevailed in the end, kinda, doesn't change the fact that his chances of success were microscopic. Just because it happened once doesn't make the odds against Frodo and Sam succeeding any lower - especially since they have no Luthien to ride in to their rescue.)
However, I'm not convinced that's the reason the
Lord of the Rings works so well, despite the heroes being lesser than the ones who already vanquished the villain last time. The references to the Elder Days in
Lord of the Rings are mostly vague and ephemeral, giving them a mythological feel even in-universe. Whereas the Last Alliance is described in more specific detail, making it more historical and less mythological in-universe (I'd say still mythological to an extent, but less so). And, indeed, up until just a few years ago I presumed the victory of the Last Alliance was a very close thing. Like in a straight up battle of force vs. force, Sauron's side would've crushed them nineteen times out of twenty, and this happened to be the one remaining time where they (barely) defeated him.
I have no idea why Tolkien decided to tell his story this way, but I suspect the reason it works for us so well, despite the heroes being less mighty than their predecessors who defeated Sauron in the past, is indirectly pointed to in that scene with Sam musing about Beren and the quest for the Silmaril. I contend the weakening of the antagonistic force vis-a-vis its earlier incarnations is balanced out by the weakening of the heroes.
When it comes to hooking in a reader, the most important point is to establish a sympathetic bond with someone or something (or things) in the story, and then establishing the antagonistic force as a credible threat to that someone or something. The more dire the threat, the greater the tension, and the more the reader will be drawn in. The secret is that the direness of the threat actually has very little to do with the absolute values of the antagonists' and the protagonists' respective powers, but in how well they are
calibrated against each other.
Sauron may be less powerful than before, but he still has the ability to cover the world in a second darkness, so his threat is still great, and the heroes are in a much worse position to fight him than were their predecessors. Throughout the trilogy, Tolkien does a masterful job (better than most of his literary descendants) of demonstrating for the reader how overwhelming Sauron's power is in relation to the heroes, and how puny their own is against him. Power on both sides may have decreased in absolute terms since the last confrontation, but Sauron's power relative to the free peoples has greatly increased, making the tension even greater.
This point about the relative strengths of protagonists and antagonists occurred to me some years ago, when contemplating another incident from
Lord of the Rings - I trust few will be surprised it also involved Sam Gamgee. Specifically, I've always thought one of the greatest and most emotionally affecting moments of heroism in all of Tolkien's Legendarium (one which the Boyens-Jackson-Walsh trilogy portrayed superbly) is Sam carrying Frodo up the slope of Mount Doom in Book 6, when Frodo becomes too weary to continue on his own.
Looked at in terms of absolute power, this is hardly a remarkable feat. Apart from Merry and Pippin, any other member of the Fellowship could accomplish the task with little effort, as could most of the friendly people they meet outside the Shire over the course of the trilogy, except for Bergil, since he's only 10 years old. But that doesn't matter, because none of them are in a position to carry Frodo, only Sam is, and the fact that it's an incredible undertaking
for Sam (rather than it being an incredible undertaking
for anyone), is one of the things which gives this part of the story such immense narrative impact.