The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy

by Gregory Bassham

  In the terror of the Green Chapel, Gawain’s unexpected reprieve is experienced as astounding grace, utterly unexpected. It is precisely a eucatastrophe in Tolkien’s sense. And Gawain is Tolkien’s primary model for Frodo. Like Gawain, Frodo accepts the burden and quest that no other knight can undertake. Like Gawain, despite his resolve, Frodo also finally succumbs to temptation and puts on the Ring (just as Gawain put on the girdle). And like Gawain, Frodo ends up with a wound and scar that forever mark his human imperfection. But the Green Knight’s test is not primarily a lesson in morality: rather it is an encounter with the divine, as refracted in the perilous Nature of Faërie-magic. What Gawain experiences in the Green Chapel is a foreshadowing or glimpse of salvation at the end of time.

  An Epic Fairy Tale

  Tolkien’s primary goal in The Lord of the Rings was to create a fantasy for our time with the same eucatastrophic power that Gawain’s fantastic tale had for fifteenth-century Britons, and this is what gives his trilogy its encompassing religious mood. Thus the history of Tolkien’s world up to The Lord of the Rings is a history with a providential design, unfolding from within towards its transforming end. As Gunnar Urang writes,

  The Lord of the Rings, as history, is more than day-to-day ongoing history. It is the history of the end: it is eschatology. And despite Tolkien’s many debts to “Northernness,” the shape of this eschatology is not that of Norse mythology but that of the Christian tradition. Tolkien’s myth of the end is no Ragnarök [in which all the gods of Valhalla die in the last battle against the forces of chaos]; the twilight is not for any gods but for Sauron and his forces.16

  This is right, as long as we qualify Urang’s statement by noting that even within Tolkien’s secondary world, the end of Sauron and his realm is not the ultimate end, but only another crucial turning point, another anticipatory echo of that final greatest and last chord in which the Music of the Ainur ended and was complete.

  Understanding Tolkien’s conception of fairy tales and their central function sheds much light on The Lord of the Rings. Robert Reilly, one of the few commentators to appreciate the importance of Tolkien’s essay on Faërie, rightly argues that the “proper genre” of the trilogy is “the fairy story mode as Tolkien conceives it.”17 In explaining his trilogy to W.H. Auden, Tolkien alludes to his essay, “On Fairy-stories,” and explains that he sees the modern connection between children and fairy stories as “false and accidental,” spoiling those stories both in themselves and for children. Tolkien therefore wanted to write a fairy story that was not specifically addressed to children at all, and that utilized “a larger canvass” (L, p. 216).

  As the remark indicates, it was part of Tolkien’s purpose to write an epic: in scope and depth, The Lord of the Rings covers the sort of vast conflict and journey we find in works like Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. This may seem puzzling, since fairy tales and epics are different genres for Tolkien: epics concern the struggles of heroes against the forces that threaten all life, in the process of which they discover and develop their unique identities (thus epics often involve a descent into an underworld as a figural descent into self or journey of self-discovery).

  But as his letters make clear, The Lord of the Rings grew directly out of the stories making up The Silmarillion: it was a development of the last segments of his encompassing epic narrative. The earlier stories making up The Silmarillion were conceived primarily as parts of an epic: its main episodes all concern developments of the self in a hero’s quest against what appear to be impossible odds. For example, in the central narrative around which the whole Silmarillion was conceived, Beren and Lúthien descend into Morgoth’s fortress and succeed, “where all the armies and warriors” of the elves have failed, in retrieving one of the stolen Silmarils (the greatest jewels ever made). As Tolkien emphasizes, their story anticipates Frodo’s and Sam’s, since it shows that the fortunes of world history “are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, [or] even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak” (L, p. 149). So The Lord of the Rings acquired the epic form of The Silmarillion.

  However, although The Silmarillion is a work of fantasy, it does not meet all of Tolkien’s requirements for a fairy story, since its unfinished sagas contain no true eucatastrophe. Even though the Valar come to overthrow Morgoth, every elven realm is destroyed, and this sorrow is irredeemable. No divine intervention, we feel, could ever make up for the beauty lost in the fall of Gondolin, or give meaning to the destruction of Nargothrond, or explain the tragic deaths of the children of Húrin, or console the endless sorrow of the Fifth Battle (which is perhaps Tolkien’s version of the Battle of the Somme, in which he participated). This ultimate battle begins with Fingon, High King of the Noldor, declaring “Utúlie’n aurë! The day has come!” (S, p. 190). But it ends with Fingon’s death, followed by his friend Húrin’s last stand, and his desperate cry, “Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!” (S, p. 195). Húrin’s hope can only foreshadow a possible eucatastrophe to come.

  By contrast, The Lord of the Rings is meant to combine the epic quest narrative with the eucatastrophic (or indirectly eschatological) significance of the true faërie tale. One can see why such a combination appealed to Tolkien: no story in the British and Germanic mythologies that he loved so much had perfectly melded these models into a eucatastrophic epic: so this would be a tremendous literary achievement. This synthesis of the epic mode, which tends towards tragedy and sorrow, with the eucatastrophic consolation of the fairy tale, helps explain what several commentators have recognized as the paradoxical “joy-in-sorrow atmosphere [that] pervades the Rings” trilogy.18 For, as Gunnar Urang put it, “‘Inside’ or ‘outside’ the story, the main question is whether or not a happy ending is possible; allegorically, whether or not there are, in the battle against evil, any grounds for hope.”19 Despite his poignant lament for all the life and beauty lost to evil in our world, Tolkien still means to say that there is hope after all.

  Tolkien’s Eucatastrophes

  Does The Lord of the Rings achieve this distinctive goal of crowning an epic quest romance with a eucatastrophe worthy of the greatest fairy stories? I think it comes close, and this helps explain much of the power of this work, which has moved generations of readers. Although there has been some disagreement about it, Tolkien clearly intended the eucatastrophe to come at the end of the chapter “Mount Doom,” when Frodo’s iron will to achieve his Quest finally falls under the One Ring’s power at the very Cracks of Doom, and he puts on the Ring, claiming it for his own. After enduring so much hardship and struggle, and the loss of everything that formerly defined their lives, it seems that Sam and Frodo are destined to fail at the end. The Dark Lord will regain the Ring and triumph, destroying all the beauty that is left in Middle-earth, and Frodo will become another Gollum, Sauron’s broken slave.

  But then the great “turn” comes: Gollum returns unexpectedly, fights Frodo and bites the finger from Frodo’s hand, and then falls into the Cracks of Doom, taking Sauron’s Ring with him. Here is the crucial moment of grace, the reprieve unlooked for. Only because Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam have all shown Gollum mercy, has he survived to this moment to bring Sauron down to ruin with him. Yet their mercy and care could not by itself achieve the victory: Fate must answer them. We experience this moment of saving grace through Sam’s eyes. He witnesses the tremendous collapse of Barad-dûr, but without any sense of triumph. And then comes perhaps the most poignant moment in the whole text. Sam sees Frodo,

  pale and worn, and yet himself again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will, nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away. There was his dear master of the sweet days in the Shire.

  “Master!” cried Sam, and fell upon his knees. In all that ruin of the world for the moment he felt only joy, great joy. The burden was gone. His master had been saved; he was himself again, he was free. (RK, p. 241)

  In Sam’s joy, which is pure because his unconditional love for Frodo is so selfless, there i
s more than just a glimpse of evangelium. If we have come to love Sam and Frodo while reading their epic story, then at this moment we too will feel the piercing “joy, poignant as grief,” which is Tolkien’s goal.

  In this event, we also see Tolkien’s point that a true eucatastrophe is humbling, and thus precisely the opposite of the vengeful spirit of triumph that Nietzsche saw in Christian eschatological hope. Frodo’s deliverance is like Sir Gawain’s: he is saved, but with a wound that marks the mortal limits he showed when he put on the Ring. And in this respect, he is obviously to be compared to Beren in the The Silmarillion. For at the end of his quest to retrieve the Silmarils from Morgoth, Beren loses a hand, just as Frodo loses a finger. The miracle of the outcome astonishes and moves us, but without encouraging any of the spiteful self-righteousness that can mar more conventional “good beats evil” endings. Even if Frodo and Sam had not been rescued by the eagles, and instead had died a more Beowulfian death on Mount Doom after the Ring was destroyed, this would still have counted as a “happy ending” in Tolkien’s sense.

  Yet while it is the most central to the overall plot, Gollum’s final fulfillment of his destiny is not the only moment in The Lord of the Rings where we find something like a eucatastrophe, a miraculous restoration beyond any hope that mortal beings could provide by their own power. As Urang suggests, the denouement on Mount Doom is anticipated by a series of unexpected rescues, of “lesser ‘happy endings’ figuring forth the ultimate triumph,” including Frodo’s escape at the Ford of Bruinen, Gandalf’s return from death, and the victory at Helm’s Deep.20 And the destruction of the Ring is also followed by other eucatastrophic moments as well.

  One of these is the moving scene at the end of the seven days that Faramir and Éowyn spend together in the Houses of Healing. As Faramir is falling in love with her, Éowyn remains caught in her grief, for Aragorn, her first love, is away at the final battle before the gates of Mordor. When they see from afar the collapse of Sauron’s realm, they do not know for sure what has happened, but Faramir feels it in an upwelling sense of joy and love: “‘Éowyn, Éowyn, White Lady of Rohan, in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure!’ And he stooped and kissed her brow” (RK, pp. 259–260). Still, Éowyn remains torn between Aragorn and Faramir, but finally he confronts her grief directly and asks for her love: “Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her. ‘I stand in Minas Anor, Tower of the Sun,’ she said; ‘and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer . . .’” (RK, p. 262). Here the turning is an inner one, like Théoden’s reawakening from Wormtongue’s spell. But this inward turn towards Faramir is pregnant with that sense of transcendent response, or divine fulfillment of hope, that makes for eucatastrophe. Éowyn’s healing, her restoration to her true self, is one with the land’s return to health.

  We find a similar symbolism after Aragorn is crowned king, and Gandalf takes him up to a “high hallow” on Mount Mindolluin, where it is still snowy, to show Aragorn his realm, and to give him hope. In answer to Aragorn’s worries, Gandalf says:

  “Turn your face from the green world, and look where all seems barren and cold!”. . .

  Then Aragorn turned, and there was a stony slope behind him running down from the skirts of the snow; and as he looked he was aware that alone there in the waste a growing thing stood. And he climbed to it, and saw that out of the very edge of the snow there sprang a sapling tree no more than three foot high. (RK, p. 270; emphasis added)

  Aragorn finds a sapling of Nimloth, the White Tree of Númenor, scion of the tree in Gondolin, which in turn came from a seed of Telperion, the White Tree of Valinor. Its appearance is like a sign from the gods. Here again we find the language of “turning,” the unexpected miracle, and with it a profound joy, a sense of fulfillment and completion. However, this is not a separate eucatastrophe, but rather the final piece of the larger “turn” from winter to spring. When the new king replaces the Withered Tree with the new sapling, the glory, hope, and vitality of Gondor are renewed.

  The themes we have reviewed are sufficient to explain why Tolkien thought of The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” even though he intentionally omitted “practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism” (L, p. 172). If it were only an epic romance, Tolkien’s story would not necessarily have been religious, but as a fairy story for adults, it concludes with an essentially religious message that evil cannot stand forever, that its misappropriation of divine power and right destroys itself in the end. But this does not come about without our participation, our willingness to sacrifice, and our faith (beyond all rational hope) that our mortal efforts will be met with the ultimate response, and day will finally come again.

  _____________________

  1 Patricia Meyer Spacks, “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings,” in Neil Isaacs and Rose Zimbardo, eds., Tolkien and the Critics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), p. 82.

  2 See J.R.R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” in Christopher Tolkien, ed., The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 5–48. I would argue that Tolkien’s work is also deeply inspired by the Arthurian legends and the larger cycle of British national mythology. The very first story Tolkien wrote about his fictional world, “The Fall of Gondolin,” has clear links to the Fall of King Arthur.

  3 Spacks, “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings,” p. 83.

  4 Ibid., p. 86.

  5 Reprinted in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine, 1966), pp. 3–73. All references to the essay will be to this edition, but you can also find it in Tree and Leaf (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967). In his letters, Tolkien refers frequently to this essay, suggesting its importance to friends and relatives, trying to draw critics’ attention to it (with little success), and expressing great frustration that the collection in which it first appeared (C.S. Lewis, ed., Essays Presented to Charles Williams [New York: Oxford University Press, 1947]) had gone out of print.

  6 Ibid., p. 31.

  7 Ibid., pp. 13–15.

  8 Ibid., p. 25.

  9 Ibid., p. 26.

  10 Ibid., p. 53.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Ibid, p. 68.

  13 Ibid., p. 71.

  14 See Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979).

  15 J.R.R. Tolkien, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p. 97.

  16 Gunnar Urang, “Tolkien’s Fantasy: The Phenomenology of Hope,” in Mark Robert Hillegas, ed., Shadows of the Imagination: The Fantasies of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), p. 104.

  17 R.J. Reilly, “Tolkien and the Fairy Story,” in Tolkien and the Critics, p. 129.

  18 Clyde S. Kilby, “Meaning in The Lord of the Rings,” in Shadows of the Imagination, p. 73.

  19 Urang, “Tolkien’s Fantasy: The Phenomenology of Hope,” p. 103.

  20 Ibid, p. 105.

  The Wisdom of the Philosophers

  Lao-tzu (born c. 604 B.C.E.)

  “Compassion leads to courage.”

  Buddha (560–480 B.C.E.)

  “When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.”

  Confucius (c. 551–479 B.C.E.)

  “The strength of a nation lies in the integrity of its homes.”

  Pythagoras (flourished c. 532 B.C.E.)

  “What is the most just thing? To sacrifice.”

  Heraclitus (died c. 510–480 B.C.E.)

  “Nothing is permanent except change.”

  Protagoras (c. 481–411 B.C.E.)

  “Man is the measure of all things.”

  Socrates (470–399 B.C.
E.)

  “How many things I can do without!”

  Plato (428/7–348/7 B.C.E.)

  “It is natural for a man who is no fool to be afraid, if he does not know and cannot prove that the soul is immortal.”

  Diogenes the Cynic (c. 412–323 B.C.E.)

  “Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?”

  Chuang-tzu (c. 399–295 B.C.E.)