Course: Fantasy & Religion
Lecture #8: LOTR Religious Considerations
NOTE: Text in Highlight is Optional
CELTIC AND SAXON MYTH
The Lord of the Rings is certainly superficially neither Catholic nor religious, nor Christian. As Tolkien says, there is almost no hint of any religious feeling at all in the characters or in their societies, not even where one would be most likely to expect it.
The hobbits are devoid of any religious sanction for any of their activities. We know they get married and might suppose that they did so like Tolkien's own contemporaries. They have no churches, no hint as to who marries them.
The hobbits have elaborate genealogies, but apparently no tombstones or burying grounds, whether in church yards or not. The Dwarves have tombstones, for we see that of Balin son of Fundin, but all we are told is the dwarves have many strange beliefs, apparently in a kind of reincarnation.
RIDERS OF ROHAN:
The Riders of Rohan seem to have some sort of religion that is hinted at, which resembles something comparable to the English before the coming of Christianity. There is a Holy Mountain on the border of Rohan but we never find out who or what it was once holy to.
The riders are very scrupulous about burying their dead, both those killed in battle and their kings, all of them, "laid in a mound" as Theoden is after the battle of Pelennor. The Riders ride around his barrow singing a dirge.
There is a description of a burial in real history much like Theoden's and that is of Attila the Hun. Tolkien refers to this in a letter to his son Christopher. Unlike Attilas funeral though, the riders do not gash themselves or sacrifice the slaves with him. The Riders are obviously not Christians, but they are not proper pagans either.
GONDORIANS:
As I pointed out earlier, Tolkien made the Gondorians more like the ancient Egyptians. They have much more a sense of ceremony than anyone else in the story, with a custom before meals rather like that of saying grace--they turn and face the west, in memory not only of Numenor but "beyond to Elven-home that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be."
Frodo and Sam are clueless about what Faramir is talking about, nor is it explained, but the Gondorians do believe in the Valar, supernatural powers above the human but below the divine.
ARAGORN AND ARWEN:
The deepest sense of religious belief mentioned explicitly in Middle earth comes in an Appendix, in the "part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" told in appendix A (V). Here we have several death scenes including that of Aragorn's mother Gilrain, but they are noticeably lacking in what used to be called the 'comforts of religion'.
Gilrean dies declaring that she cannot face the "darkness of our time" Aragorn tells her "there may be a light beyond the darkness,' but she replies only with the riddling linnod in Quenya, " I gave Hope (ie, Aragorn) to the Dunedain, I have kept no hope for myself." whether this means-a hope of salvation or just a hope of winning the war is unknown.
Aragorn's own death scene looks a little further for Aragorn, talking to his elvish wife, says: “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! We are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!"
This does suggest that there is another world beyond Middle Earth and that the 'more than memory' may include a meeting in something like heaven. But the veiled promise has no effect on Arwen, who has sacrificed her elvish immortality to marry Aragorn.
Perhaps the saddest lines in the work are those of her own death in Lothlorien "and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and Elanor and Niphredi bloom no more east of the sea."
This is ambiguous but it seems to mean that though Arwen still lies in her grave and is utterly forgotten, nevertheless the world-change has not yet taken place; so there is something on the other side of 'until", something in our future as well as hers.
Tom Bombadil shares this belief for he tells the barrow wight to go "where gates are ever shut, / til the world is mended." The world will be mended, will be changed, and then gates will be open, and (perhaps) the dead will rise.
The wisest characters in Middle earth (Gandalf, Aragorn and Bombadil) have some idea of this future resurrection, life after death, but it is not overtly stated, and it is not shared by Arwen or Gilraen, still less by the hobbits.
Theoden, like Thorin in the Hobbit, has some sense of ancestor-worship, in which the dead go to their fathers, but this is felt only by the most aristocratic characters.
In this whole only slightly qualified absence of religion the societies of Middle Earth are unlike any human societies we know about; and in this sense Middle earth could rightly be called a "Never Never land." More religiously' in the catholic sense, Middle earth is a sort of Limbo, in which the characters, like unbaptized infants or the pagan philosophers of Dante, are counted as neither heathen nor Christian but something in between.
The Beowulf epic, recorded by Christians, makes the same kind of censorship by having Beowulf's funeral more like Theodens rather than like Attila the Hun. It also uses the same Christian word "Heathen" to condemn Danish devil-worshippers. This word is an Anglo translation of the Latin, Paganus which simply means those who live out in the countryside. Since these were the last to accept Christianity, the words came to mean "non-Christians.'
How were heroes who lived before Christian times to be judged. They must have been pagan. An early English Churchman, Alcuin, wrote the abbot of Lindisfarne monastery in the late 8th century, just before it was destroyed by Vikings, telling him angrily that he must stop his monks listening to stories about pagan heroes.
The writer of Beowulf was most likely as Christian as Alcuin but with a different opinion about the status of pagans, especially of pagans who had not rejected the gospel, indeed had never heard of it or done Christians any harm.
The whole poem of Beowulf it could be said, is a mediation between contradictory opinions, with strong similarities to The Lord of the Rings. Both works were written by believing Christians, but neither mentions anything specific to their belief.
The Lord of the Rings goes further in all but eliminating references to any form of religion al all. There is a faint hope for the future in the death of Aragorn, as there is in the death of Beowulf, but neither work brings this hope into clear focus, and both death scenes, while dignified, are shadowed by gloom and uncertainty about the future.
Beowulf contains references to shadow or 'the shadow', and hints of something very like the Valar. There are references to "those who must be doing God's will but who must be superhuman.' Both works present a heathen or pre-Christian world with intense sympathy, and with a sympathetic milieu with no slavery, no human sacrifices, no pagan gods.
The contradiction mediated in both works is that of the 'virtuous pagan': to be damned for inherited paganism or to be saved for personal virtue? In Middle earth this is a question which need not and in fact cannot arise.
EUCATASTROPHE:
This word was coined by Tolkien to express the notion as 'a good catastrophe', or the sudden and joyous turn. This was first introduced in his essay "On Fairy Stories". As he says in the essay:
In its fairy-tale --or otherworld--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. it does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of the deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is Evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
In The Lord of the Rings there is one moment where the Christian myth comes close to the surface and is explicitly alluded to, but it is a moment almost nobody notices.
In the chapter called "The field of Cormallen" this Eucatastrophic moment takes place. In the chapter before, Frodo and Sam (and Gollum) destroyed the ring. At the beginning of this chapter, the army of the West feels the realm of Sauron crumble, and sees the Sauron - shape stretching out 'a vast threatening hand' towards them. 'terrible but impotent.' But the shape was blown away by a great wind, and Saruman's wraith would be later on.
Gandalf calls the eagles to take him to Mt. Doom but Frodo and Sam have no knowledge of what has occurred outside. They have little hope of getting away and in the end, they fall unconscious, "worn out' or choked with fumes and heat, etc. While sleeping they are picked up and carried away by Gandalf and the eagles.
Two weeks later they regain consciousness, They have no idea what has happened. The first person Sam sees is Gandalf, whom he last saw dragged into the chasm of Moria by the Balrog, and whom he assumed dead. Sam wonders if he is dead. He asks Gandalf, Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?
Gandalf replies that 'a great shadow has departed' but it is not the great shadow. Gandalf however goes on very carefully to tell Sam what day it is:
"The fourteenth of the New Year...or if you like the eighth day of April in the Shire Reckoning. But in Gondor the New Year will always now begin upon the twenty fifth of March when Sauron fell, and when you were brought out of the fire to the King."
This is missed, but he intended it to be obscure. It was his personal mark of piety. Why? Because in old English tradition, the 25th of March is the date of the Crucifixion, the first Good Friday. Since Easter (and good Friday) are mobile holidays defined by the phases of the moon, the connection has been lost, except in Gondor where the New Year will always begin on 25th March.
This date, March 25th remains deeply embedded in the Christian calendar for in old tradition it is the date of the annunciation and the conception of Christ--naturally exactly 9 months before Christmas. It is also the date of the fall of Adam and Eve, whose disastrous effects the annunciation and crucifixion were to repair.
In his appendix B, December 25th is the day on which the Fellowship sets out from Rivendell. Thus, the main action takes place in the mythic space between Christmas and good Friday. Are we meant to see Frodo as a 'type' of Christ. Doubtful the differences outweigh the similarities. There is no promise of soul-salvation, he releases no prisoners (though he empties Saruon's dungeons), he does not 'rise from the dead'. He has no supernatural dimension at all. but he and Sam do have a 'eucatastrophic’ one.
Thus, The Lord of the Rings contains within it hints of the Christian message, but refuses just to repeat it. The myths of Middle Earth determinedly reject any sense of ultimate salvation. the Ring Trilogy makes it clear that the inhabitants of Middle Earth want to live on in the woods of the Shire or the forests of Fangorn or Lorien or in the valley of the Withywindle.
The Lord of the Rings seems to be full of 'alternative endings.' There is one in Frodo and Sam's experience. Though they are rescued by eucatastrophe and the eagles, there is a strongly realized moment when they think they are dead
Most the characters in The Lord of the Rings are staring universal final defeat in the face. Galadriel is sure that the elves will dwindle and she may mean they will physically shrink to become the little people or that they will dwindle in numbers.
The last we see of Galadriel and her company (other than the final scene enroute to the Grey Havens) is her, and Celeborn, sad Elrond and Gandalf talking after the hobbits are asleep. But one cannot really "see' or "hear' them. To the casual observer it would have seemed only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind."
The next day the people of Lorien leave, "quickly fading into the stones and the shadows.” A possible conclusion for the elves is that they do not all leave Middle Earth. Instead, they are absorbed into the landscape, becoming the 'grey figures, carved in stone', which dot English and Scottish folk tradition. it would not be an entirely sad ending. But it is the marker of an ultimate loss and defeat.
The closer the myths of Middle Earth approach to the Christian one, it seems, the sadder (because the more finally inadequate) they become. Tolkien's pre-Christian limbo contains no real heathens but it has no hope either for a Divina Commedia, a divinely inspired happy ending.
Some of the characters, and not only the failing ones like Denethor but also the victorious ones like Frodo or Fangorn, seem to be on the edge of a situation of existential despair. Yet, this is not the impression the work makes as a whole.
One of the reasons for its success has certainly been its good humor, its ability to balance loss and defeat with acceptance, optimism, even defiance.
TOLKIEN AND HOPE
What lifts Tolkien's work above mere popular fantasy fiction; what elicits a response beyond simple excitement and closer to authentic wonder, is a certain tone and a certain aura of significance which are felt to surround the fantastic figures and their adventures. These figures are archetypal and thus speak to us in deep, subconscious ways.
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For example, there is a symbolic tree in Minas Tirith, before the court of the fountain where once the White Tree grew. There has for years been only a withered tree, symbol of Gondor's decline. The newly crowned Aragorn, standing with Gandalf on Mount Mindolluin, desires a sign of hope for his reign.
Gandalf points t o a place at the stony edge of the snow where a lone sapling grows, bearing "one small cluster of flowers whose white petals shine like the sunlit snow." They both recognize it as " a scion of the Eldest of Trees."
Gandalf reminds Aragorn that "though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping thru many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake" it is clearly meant to have the import which most religions ascribe to trees, ie it is a symbol of the living cosmos, endlessly renewing itself.
Similarly, the huge black stone of Erech, where the dead gather, reminds us of the Black stone in the Ka'bah in Mecca and other great stones, many of them possibly meteorites, which have been taken to be sacred because they are "sent from heaven." A n appropriate place for a curse to be lifted by the dead coming to Aragorn's aid.
TOLKIEN AND HOPE
EVIL AS PERVERSION OF GOOD:
The dark things with which the members of the fellowship of the Ring are confronted; Sauron, the Ringwraiths, Saruman, and Gollum--represent aspects of moral evil. They are characterized as the opposite of everything desirable: shadow against substance, dark against light, etc.
Is the dark power an ultimate principle? even Sauron is only an emissary. Tolkien struggles against this Manichaean vision (That there is absolute evil fighting good). He has Elrond say: "Nothing was evil in the beginning, even Sauron was not so."
The Ringwraiths were originally men of Numanor, Saruman was "the white", the greatest of the wizards, before he was beguiled by Sauron and began to wear robes woven of all colors. Gollum was originally a Hobbit and now, "an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years."
Evil is presented as a perversion of good. Often it is even a parody. Treebeard points out to Pippin and Merry that Ores are only counterfeits of Elves. Evil represents, further, a privation of being. It is always the Dark Shadow; its blackness is the privation of light, its shadowiness the privation of substance. Its most fearful emissaries are the winged Nazgul, wraiths whose black robes cover nothingness.
Nevertheless, although it is not "real" evil is powerful. Its power lies in the evil will, and it is manifested in the several "falls" which are narrated or dramatized in the Ring Trilogy or in the appendixes.
One such fall has been alluded to and is stated more fully in an appendix. This is the fall of Numenor, aka, Atlantis. This occurred when Sauron convinced the king of Numenor to set foot upon the shores of Aman the Blessed, telling him everlasting life would be his who possessed the undying land.
The minute the king set foot on Aman the Valar laid down their guardianship and called upon the one, and the world was changed. Numenor was thrown down and swallowed in the Sea, and the Undying lands were removed for ever form the circles of the world. So ended the glory of Numenor.
The treachery of Saruman, the corrupting of Boromir, and the prideful rejection by Frodo himself of his mission of renunciation--these are other manifestations of the power of evil.
The core of the tale, as we have discussed the past several weeks, is of course the symbolism of the Ring. To summarize, the ring has to do with power, but with a specific kind of power, power over the wills and the destinies of other creatures. The "One Ring to rule them all"
To seek such power is to usurp a right that God itself relinquishes, that of overriding freedom; therefore, the ring is inherently evil, not merely capable of being misused. The one who does use the Ring, instead of being the possessor of its power, becomes possessed by the power that made it. There is only one thing to do--repudiate that kind of power absolutely. The Ring must go back to the primordial fire.
The important thing here is, as Aragorn said, that one must choose for or against the Enemy; for "none may live now as they have lived, and few shall keep what they call their own." Tolkien makes it emphatically clear that we are free to choose. Even wizards are forbidden 'to seek to dominate Elves or men by force or fear."
TOLKIEN'S THEOLOGY OF HISTORY:
There is a conceptual pattern in Tolkien that could be termed not a philosophy of history, but a theology. FIRST: there is clearly a providential design, a sense of the interrelatedness of all the elements in his "history" and of an ordering of all these elements to one end.
For example, Gandalf tells Frodo that there is "something else at work beyond any design of the Ring-Maker." Bilbo was meant to find the ring and Frodo was meant to have it. Even Gollum is an unwitting instrument of Providence.
When Gollum has overtaken the ring bearers, Frodo makes their relationship explicit saying: "it is my fate to receive help from you, where I least looked for it, and your fate to help me whom you long pursued with evil purpose.” (2, 248)
This raises the question of freedom and points to the paradox of providence, by which God creates freedom and yet dares to preordain the consummation.
Gollum is simply after his "precious" but without his guidance the Ring-bearers could not have reached Mt. Doom. When Frodo willfully refuses to throw the Ring into the flames, it is Gollum's equally willful act which brings the reign of Sauron to an end. "Let us remember", Gandalf had said, "that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend." (3, 89)
ESCHATOLOGY IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS:
The tale of the Ring is a tale of Hope. Critics who have recognized the eschatological dimension have assumed that since it has so many affinities of northern mythology that it is a recreation of that world view communicating a sense of predetermined downfall and calling for the heroic courage of despair.
There is some of this in Tolkien: Denethor's despair, the battle madness of Eomer, the sheer dogged courage of Frodo as he approaches Mt. Doom.
But the decisive battle brings not Ragnarok, the end of all the gods, but rather the end of Sauron and his forces. in Ragnarok, the gods are defeated, in the Christian conception god triumphs. Ragnarok means that the world passes on to its end; for the Christian/Muslim, God brings the world (or the age) to an end.
Thus, the theme is hope, not despair, and the eschatology is not "northern" but biblical. Tolkien's myth of the end parallels in many important respects, the sense of the end in the Biblical myths.
BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY, first of all, is continuous with the doctrine of Providence; that is, faith in the ultimate divine control over the whole of history issues in hope also for the consummation of all things.
Both beliefs presuppose certain notions about time. Each of the three ages constitutes a time of opportunity and fulfillment. Thus, history as a whole is not an impersonal process but a matter involving personal will and freedom, and it consists of a continuum of "times" each with its own specific character and significance.
By the time Frodo obtains the ring, the "weather" of the third age is already threatening. Gandalf hints at a decisive struggle of cosmic proportions. This is the imagery of Biblical eschatology.
Just as in the bible, the end is characterized by apostasy. Boromir, Denethor, and especially the traitor Saruman represent for Tolkien's myth this falling away. It is also a time of intense suffering for the faithful, who are often drawn toward despair.
In the language of Christian apocalypse Sauron is the "antichrist," the figure of a monster of iniquity, who will treacherously attack his weak unsuspecting neighbors but who will be smitten and destroyed by the power of God in resounding disaster.
This "resounding disaster" is the work of a composite hero made up of Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo. Gandalf has the power and Aragorn the kingly status of the rider upon the white horse of Revelation 19. Frodo's part is that of humble, redemptive suffering to save the world.
WIZARDS IN MIDDLE EARTH:
Even more significant as a basis for hope is the pattern of happenings which we see developing in a series of unexpected rescues, of lesser "happy endings" prefiguring the ultimate triumph. In these, despair is abruptly transformed to joy by a sudden and unexpected display of power most often and most dramatically seen in the wizard Gandalf.
The power at work in Gandalf performs one supreme, unheard-of miracle, and this becomes the sign of signs, the profound basis for hope. In Khazaddum the Balrog drags Gandalf down "far, far below the deepest dwellings of the Dwarves" where "the world is gnawed by nameless things" of which even Sauron does not know, for they are older than he."
Gandalf in turn pursues the Balrog to the highest peak, Durin's tower in the pinnacle of the Silvertime, and casts him down. Finally darkness takes him; Gandalf dies, but he comes back from the dead and after a time of healing in Lothloricn, reappears to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli -- This is the Biblical Wisdom myth.
"Gandalf", Aragorn cries, "beyond all hope; you return to us in our need!" "The Dark Lord has Nine: But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed thru the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads". (2,104)
This is the apocalyptic idea from Daniel of the Son of Man coming in power and winning a victory over the devil and his powers which Christians equate with Jesus’ sacrifice and defeat of Satan.
The Lord of the Rings speaks not only of the nature of the struggle against evil, the inescapability of involvement, the fact of freedom, the qualities of heroism, and the possibility for real loss. It also declares the viability of hope. It has a "happy ending"
Frodo and Sam, their Quest achieved, wake in the sweet air of Ithilien. They see Gandalf again, and their friends. They hear themselves acclaimed: "Long live the Halflings! Praise them with great praise!" They are seated upon the throne of Aragorn, and a minstrel begins to sing a Lay of Frodo and the nine fingers and the ring of doom.
The patterns of providential ordering and eschatological crisis are there. What is important religiously in this work is not a faith in a "God" who orders all according to his will but a faith that there is such a providential design; not a hope in God who at the end brings all things to their consummation but a hope that the happy ending will come.
Tolkien is, in fact, being careful to exclude from his "world" almost all the machinery of orthodox piety. Like the author of Beowulf, as pointed out by Tolkien in a 1936 lecture, he "repaganized" the writing with a special purpose. It shows the universal nature of good and evil. As Aragorn says at one point: "Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among men."
Lewis pointed out that "paganism is the religion of poetry through which the author can express, at any moment, just so much or so little of his real religion as his art requires." In this sense, the Ring Trilogy embodies much of Tolkien's "real religion."
Tolkien requires no "God" in the story but it is enough that he suggests in it the kind of pattern in history which indicates the "providence of god," that persuades us to have hope in our lives and history.
As to the theme of Hope--Tolkien does not commit himself to any propositions about the God who is the ground of hope. He is satisfied to work out a kind of "phenomenology of hope."
He suggests thru the images of fantasy, its "structure" in our experience. Hope as it "appears" to us, with other concerns. What is it like to face the approaching end and yet experience hope?
It is like encountering personal will rather than dealing with impersonal process. it requires involvement in events, not detached contemplation. It reckons with real, malignant evil, not merely ignorance or imperfection. it presupposes an ordering of the historical process to some end.
Thus Tolkien has created an imaginative framework--nothing more explicit than that-for the experience of hope.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS -- MYTH OR ALLEGORY?
LORD OF THE RINGS AS MYTH:
To say that the Ring trilogy is myth rather than allegory is to notice that it contains a good deal of "unassigned" imagery, in contrast to the one to one correspondence between symbol and concept toward which allegory tends.
Tolkien is known to have avoided allegory; he didn't like it. He has created a myth. The difference between myth and allegory is that a myth points, for each reader, to the realm he/she lives in most. It is a master key; use it on what door you like.
Tolkien, again talking about Beowulf, pointed toward the direction he was going to go when he said Myth means becoming largely significant-as a whole, accepted unanalyzed... it is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends; who presents it incarnate in the world of history and geography, as our poet has done...for myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.
Tolkien has done this precisely. Reading The Lord of the Rings, we are conscious first of a new world, of its geography and history, its inhabitants and its mysteries. But this world has a dimension of meaning.
One of the devices of allegory is the use of names which suggest conceptions to which the symbols refer, like Mr. Worldly, Wiseman, etc. In the Ring Trilogy names are important but they designate some attribute of a reality in which it participates. Orcs, for example, have names like Gorbag, elves are called things like Legolas and live in places like Lothlorien.
Variations in speech style also suggest the coexistence of many kinds of creatures and of several ages of history. even when "translated" into English there are variations between more rustic language and formal language of Gondor and Rohan.
Imagery communicates the mythic "feel" of this world. For example, here is Pippen trying to describe what it was like to look into the eyes of Treebeard the Ent.
One felt as if there was an enormous will behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their Surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake. I don't know, but it felt as if something that grew in the ground-asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between root-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years. (2. 66-67)
In this example we find imagery used not to personify concepts but to "humanize" an object i n nature or "naturalize" the quasi- human Ent.
The language creates a realm i n which there is traffic between the natural and the human, between the present and primordial time, between symbol and concept, just as there tends to be in the primitive myth-making imagination.
This elemental world and the events that take place in it come to us in a convincing way because they come largely through impressions which the hobbits receive. For example, when Tolkien wants us to share Frodo's suspicion, in Moria, that the Nine are being followed, he first carefully shifts our attention from things seen to things heard, then, more specifically, to the footsteps of the members of the party, and finally to the stealthy Gollum. (1, 325-326)
Middle earth and the War of the Ring are "alive" for us. Not perhaps in "every part" as sometimes the narration seems less than convincing: the journey of Pippin and Merry with their Orc captors, the too-lengthy celebration and homegoing, for example.
Sometimes Tolkien tries to hard for the heroic--and archaic--ring in the speech of the rohirrim. A framework of fantasy commits the writer to an emphasis on the objective and external rather than the subjective and internal, on force and overthrow rather than persuasion and transformation.
POWER:
Little can be intimated about the constructive use of power. The Kingdom is coming, not a-building. Power is something you submit to if it is good and resist if it is evil.
Technological power does not come off well in The Lord of the Rings. Treebeard complains of Saruman that "he is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment." (2,76)
One of the signs of Sauron's work (thru Saruman) which the returned Hobbits see in the Shire is the trees felled and the houses destroyed to make room for "the new mill in all its frowning and dirty ugliness:...(3, 296)
We can't expect to see in this story the gradual reformation of persons through moral choice and persuasive grace. Tolkien brings his story to a strange climax on Mt. Doom, when Frodo repudiates his mission and puts the ring on his finger. This is an affirmation of freedom, but it also shows the power of the ring, the absolute evil which it is, in that Frodo is not able to resist the temptation to want the power which the ring can give him.
Tolkien's literary statement of the possibility of hope is of necessity mythological and futuristic. It is not an already accomplished fact. This is to demand a radically different literary work.
CONCLUSION: WHAT TOLKIEN HAS GIVEN US:
What Tolkien has given us in The Lord of the Rings is, first, he has taken us into the enchanted world of Middle-earth and its inhabitants. That world lingers as sights and sounds in the memory.
The radiance and fresh, poignant colors of Lothlorien; the penetrating brown and green eyes of Treebeard; the Dead-"shapes of men and horses, and pale banners like shreds of cloud.. The snow white hair, gleaming robes, and bright piercing eyes of the returned Gandalf.
One continues to hear the muffled doom, doom of the mysterious drumbeats in Moria, the mad muttering of Gollum, the great horns of Rohan "wildly blowing.
These and many other things seen and heard by the imagination, also tease us with intimations of import, so that we begin to entertain various possibilities of meaning.
The thematic pattern that emerges is theological. Sauron, the One Ring, Aragorn and Gandalf, the Ring bearers, the moment of crisis at the black Gate and on Mount Doom--all these speak of such theological concerns as the nature of good and evil, the problem of power, human freedom and responsibility, and the resources of grace.
What the reader experiences is hope based on the conviction of a general providential pattern in events and the memory of certain unique "paradigmatic" events; and it is a hope for a "happy ending" in the future.
What Tolkien has created is not the rigid one-to-one allegory but a much "freer" experience of meaning, not easily formable propositions but haunting hints of significance. Meaning and belief are included in the reception of the vivid image which has been presented to the imagination.
CONCLUSION:
In his forward to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien specifically addressed the book to our world of waning hope, as he said: "to men of a later age, one almost as darkling and ominous as was the Third age that ended with the great years of the Shire long ago."
Our times have seen destructive concentrations of economic power, totalitarian regimes and in more subtle and socially acceptable ways people have used the powers of the mass media to manipulate human desires. Always in our minds lurks the nightmare images of the power of the atom. Virtually all leaders today stand on "the crack of Doom" preparing to put on the Ring.
The peculiar problem of our day, then, is the widespread death of hope, a prevalent feeling that the end of all things is indeed at hand, unrelieved by any faith. The gross misuse in our time of immensely augmented powers is simply a fact.
The widespread death of hope is also a fact. But so is the enthusiastic response to Tolkien's parable of Hope--whether one attributes this to persistent wishful thinking, to residual Christianity, or as one critic has put it, to a "lifelong appetite for juvenile trash." This juxtaposition of facts may itself be a "sign" of some sort.
Whatever the reason, this myth of the War of the Ring has captured the hearts and imaginations of this whole generation, and will most likely continue to exert power for years to come.