Character pairing in The Lord of the Rings is a literary device used by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, to express some of the moral complexity of his major characters in his heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings. Commentators have noted that the format of a fantasy does not lend itself to subtlety of characterisation, but that pairing allows inner tensions to be expressed as linked opposites, including, in a psychoanalytic interpretation, those of Jungian archetypes.
Major pairings include those between the hobbits Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, the three of them linked by the Ring, by friendship, and by bonds of loyalty and of oath. This enables Tolkien to portray the good and evil sides of Frodo's character. The unheroic Frodo is further contrasted with the plainly heroic Aragorn. Among the kingly figures, the unhappy Steward of Gondor, Denethor, is paired both with the future king Aragorn and with the bold king of Rohan, Théoden. Pairings operate, too, among supporting characters, such as that between the elf-queen Galadriel and the giant spider Shelob, light opposing darkness.