(A work in progress, I hope. This is the version of June 25, 2008. This document consists of two web pages. The date given is the last date when either of them was modified.)
Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion. J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," (essay originally presented in 1938, and in revised form in 1947) pp. 31-99, in J. R. R. Tolkien, The Tolkien Reader. (New York: Ballantine, 1966). quote is from pp. 74-5.
Table of Contents
the attraction
Fëanor, Galadriel and the Silmarils
It is interesting to contemplate what Tolkien, himself, would have thought of Tolkien as produced by Jackson. Obviously, we can't be sure. However, in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine, 1966), Tolkien's seminal essay "On Fairy-Stories," first presented in 1938, and, with some additions, in 1947, is reprinted. In it he wrote:
Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be, visibly and audibly acted. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. . . . Drama has, of its nature, already attempted a kind of bogus, or shall I say at least substitute, magic: the visible and audible presentation of imaginary men in a story. That is in itself an attempt to counterfeit the magician's wand. To introduce, even with mechanical success, into this quasi-magical secondary world a further fantasy or magic is to demand, as it were, an inner or tertiary world. It is a world too much. (pp. 70 - 72, emphasis in original.) Tolkien did not, of course, imagine cinematic special effects of the kinds used in Jackson's movies.
The Attraction
Clearly, Tolkien, and Tolkien as interpreted by Jackson,
have made a large impact on the consciousness of the English-speaking world.
What's all the fuss about? What has attracted people to Tolkien? Are there
any dangers in reading (or watching) Tolkien?
People are attracted to the breadth of Tolkien's imagination. There are other attractions, of course. Some people are attracted to Viggo Mortenson, Elijah Wood, or other stars of the movies. No doubt some people are attracted by the violence of the movies. Lots of imaginary gore is shed, but there are other movies, with assault rifles and crashes of large vehicles, that are more efficient at messing people up. Not many people are attracted to the movies, or the books, by sexual activity. There is hardly any of that. It must be the imagination, or, if you please, the plot and the setting, that are the main attraction.
So what is the plot? In a simple phrase, the books are about the conflict between good and evil. That wouldn't seem to take much imagination. By itself, it doesn't. But Tolkien's setting attracts. So do the details of Tolkien's plot. Tolkien's imagination produced a conflict between good and evil that spanned thousands of years, hundreds of characters, and at least six species of intelligent beings. Of these, there are a number of divisions of men, and a mind-boggling complexity of types of elves. He was serious about his creation, and that shows, even in The Hobbit, which has little direct reference to the entire span and scope of Tolkien's imagination. Tolkien's son, Christopher, edited and published several volumes of his father's work, mostly set before the trilogy and The Hobbit. The Silmarillion (First US edition Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977) is one such volume, and the most readable. The breadth of Tolkien's imagination has more scope for expression in this book than in the four more popular volumes.
I will attempt to explore at least some aspects of Tolkien's setting in the rest of this document.
The best Internet reference to the characters, cities, etc., of Tolkien's world, besides the Wikipedia, seems to be the Encyclopedia of Arda , by Mark Fisher. These web pages have broad coverage, but it is not usually deep. For more depth, see Suite101's Tolkien criticism page.
Sub-Creation and Escape
Tolkien was an academic. His specialties were medieval languages and
literature. As an academic, he wrote on these subjects. One of his essays,
"On Fairy-stories," is perhaps as good a job as anyone has ever done at
explaining the writing of fantastic literature. Tolkien said: "What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful
'sub-creator.' He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it,
what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore
believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the
spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed." J. R. R. Tolkien,
"On Fairy-stories," in Tree and Leaf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, pp.
3 - 73. Quote is from p.37. Tolkien practiced what he preached. He did, indeed,
produce a sub-creation that the mind can enter.
What kind of sub-creation?
First, in describing Tolkien's sub-creation, it is clearly pre-modern, with an exaltation of nature. There are no internal combustion engines, and no firearms. Jackson had to cut some things out of the books. He did not use some parts of the trilogy that accentuate the longing for the outdoors, and a desire for communication with nature. One such part is the chapter in Fellowship on Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. There are brief sections about the elves, who were attuned to nature as humans can never be, that didn't make it to Jackson's movies. If Tolkien wanted to express a love for nature and the primitive, he also wanted to express a dislike for the mechanical. The more complicated engines are clearly associated with evil. Both Sauron and Saruman create what we would call industrial pollution--pollution of water, air, and soil. Jackson did a good job in showing the damage caused by Saruman. Jackson was certainly aware of Tolkien's beliefs about this sort of thing. As he put it in an interview: "He hated the way that the English countryside had been destroyed by the industrial revolution in the mid 1850s."
The desire to go back to the past, and to cling to nature, can be a danger for the reader/viewer--trying to escape the real world. Here's what Tolkien had to say about that:
There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion engine. There are hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death. And even when men are not facing hard things such as these, there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape, and old ambitions and desires (touching the very roots of fantasy) to which they offer a kind of satisfaction and consolation. "On Fairy-stories," pp. 65-66.
Michael Martinez, who has written extensively about Tolkien's work, says that the original catastrophe to Middle-earth, caused by Sauron's superior, Morgoth, was to the land itself: "Tolkien implies in one essay that it was Middle-earth itself which required healing. It was tainted, stained by Melkor, and damaged by the War of Wrath." (The essay is in Morgoth's Ring, edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher, and I do not have access to that now. I hope to quote original material soon, and give a proper citation. Martinez' essay has also been published as Chapter 16 of his Understanding Middle Earth: Essays on Tolkien's Middle-earth, Poughkeepsie, NY: 2003, pp. 247-265. The quote is of page 251.)
I agree with Tolkien that escape may be valuable, and that there are things in this world that we would be better off without. However, escape, whether found in listening to music, watching TV, or reading Tolkien, can take you too far away from the real world.
There is a whole book, A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997, by Verlyn Flieger, which points out the importance of time to Tolkien's narrative. Part of Tolkien's use of time is as a way of escape. This is clearest in the episode in Lorien, when the Fellowship, after the loss of Gandalf, is admitted into this hidden realm, ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn:
" . . . Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there . . ." (Fellowship, pp. 365-6)
Aragorn . . . was wrapped in some fair memory; and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. . . . 'Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,' he said, ' and here my heart dwells ever . . .' (Fellowship, pp. 366-7)
Curiosities
Tolkien's world has a curious absence of females. Only one dwarf female,
out of many dwarves named, is mentioned. I have found no reference at all in
the books (or the movies) to female orcs. The only ents in the trilogy are
males, and the females have disappeared. All of the important hobbits, unless we count Lobelia
Sackville-Baggins, are male. True, there are two important female elves,
Arwen and Galadriel (Tolkien
described her as an Amazon who
took contested in athletic contests with male elves) and one
important female human, in the trilogy, and some important female humans,
elves, and female Vanyar or Maiar (angels or spirits) in The Silmarillion, but there is certainly an overall imbalance in Tolkien.
All nine of the Fellowship of the Ring are male. In an apparent attempt to
help right this imbalance, Jackson has Arwen, rather than a male elf (as
in the book) as Frodo's rescuer in the flight to the
Ford.
Tolkien's evil beings tend to be dark-colored, and the good,
light-colored. This includes men. Thus, another danger in entering Tolkien
is that prejudices from the real world may be reinforced.
Tolkien's fantasy world, like the real world he grew up in, has social classes. Sam is Frodo's servant, although he is also his friend. (See interview with Sean Astin) It is always clear, whether we are in Orthanc, Gondor or Rohan, that someone is the ruler, and who this ruler is. It is also clear that the vast majority of the rest of the characters have, as their main duty, to serve the ruler. It is curious that this kind of world is so attractive to so many. Perhaps it is an illusion, but most of us living in twenty-first century North American don't like to think that we have this kind of society, or seem to want it.
While we are on the curious, Tolkien apparently wanted us to believe that Middle-Earth, in its beginnings, was part of a flat world. This is changed to a spherical one between the second and third ages. Tolkien later regretted this, and wished he had used a spherical world from the beginning, according to page 5 of Morgoth's Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.) Another curiosity is made possible because of the longevity of the elves. I suspect that viewers of the Jackson films who haven't read the books will be amazed if they find out that Galadriel is Arwen's grandmother, on Arwen's mother's side.
Religion
Another curious property of Tolkien's sub-creation is that there is
almost no religion, or at least almost no overt practice of religion. This observation isn't original with me, of course.
Tom Shippey, who wrote J. R. R. Tolkien: Author
of the Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001) perhaps the best book on
Tolkien, is another who noted this about The Lord of the Rings: "It was
written by a devout and believing Christian . . . Yet it contains almost no
direct religious reference at all." (xxxii) There are a few examples of worship, all bad. Sauron instituted a terrible worship of Morgoth among
the Númenóreans. Gollum is said to have worshiped Shelob, the great spider,
and there is some other evil worship of Morgoth mentioned. Other than that, there are no priests, no temples,
no churches among the humans, the hobbits, and the elves. There is reverence
for the Valar among the elves and some humans, and these mighty beings, more or
less the equivalent of archangels, did occasionally communicate with elves and humans in
the times before the trilogy. There are allusions in the trilogy to being
chosen, or to something being meant to happen, by some superior being, but Tolkien doesn't say who is
doing this choosing or meaning. In spite of these phenomena, which are
quasi-religious, Tolkien's pre-moderns scarcely had a religion. (Other
authors of fantastic fiction have made religion a central part of their
sub-creations.
Robert
Silverberg is one such.)
William Dowie disagrees with Shippey and me, writing that there is plenty that is religious in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. ("The Gospel of Middle-Earth according to J. R. R. Tolkien" in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, editors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979, pp. 265-285.) He says that there is an unseen power, or powers, calling the Fellowship for their cause, that there is suffering, and that there are religious symbols, like trees, in the books. He is correct, in what he writes, but it is still true that there is almost no overt practice of religion.
Tolkien, himself, was a believing Roman Catholic. This is pointed out in several works, including Clyde S. Kilby's chapter, "Tolkien as Christian Writer," in his Tolkien and the Silmarillion (Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw, 1976. Note that the book was written before the publication of The Silmarillion, but not before most or all of it had been written, in several versions.) Kilby, a professor of English at a Christian college, had several conversations with Tolkien. He argues that Tolkien's fiction is essentially Christian. Sometimes the arguments are a little far-fetched, but sometimes he seems to be on target. Kilby also has Tolkien's own testimony to go on:
"Professor Tolkien talked to me at some length about the use of the word "holy" in The Silmarillion. Very specifically he told me that the "Secret Fire sent to burn at the heart of the world" in the beginning was the Holy Spirit. (p. 59)" and:
A major parallel between the Bible and The Silmarillion is a great Fall, in both cases premeditated if not actually begun in heaven and descending finally to a vast and devilish opposition against everything heavenly. The curs and its aftermath upon the Noldor suggests the Old Testament motif of disobedience and its dire results. (pp. 60-61)
Shippey quotes a letter from Tolkien: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." (p. 175) Then Shippey, disagreeing with Tolkien, points out some of the things that aren't there that you would expect in a fundamentally Catholic work. For example, there don't seem to be any religious ceremonies associated with marriage or death among the hobbits.
If Shippey's book is the best single book on Tolkien, probably the best single book on moral and religious matters in Tolkien's writings is Matthew Dickerson's Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in The Lord of the Rings (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2003). As Dickerson indicates, Tolkien's writing both is and is not a Christian allegory.
Richard Purtill, in his J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003) sees more religion in Tolkien than many others, although he sees types and examples, not religious practice. For example:
Yet in many ways Frodo's journey to Mordor is an echo, conscious or unconscious on Tolkien's part, of Christ's journey to Golgotha. . . . Partly, the attachment of Gollum to Sam and Frodo as their guide and helper is a preparation for the final betrayal by Gollum: to taste the depths of suffering, Frodo must be betrayed by one in whom he put his trust, as Christ was betrayed by Judas. (pp. 74-5)
Greg Wright, of Hollywood Jesus, finds a number of Christian truths in Tolkien's work, even after Jackson's changes. He is mostly an apologist for Jackson, and states that Jackson does not claim to be a Christian, which, as Wright says, is not the same as saying that Jackson is not one. (An earlier version of this page was mistaken on this point. I thank Wright for finding this page, and taking the time to read at least part of it, and sending me a corrective e-mail on 2/15/04.) Here's a link to a sample, on the idea of stewardship.
The Wikipedia article on Tolkien's short story, "Leaf by Niggle," (in The Tolkien Reader, New York: Ballantine, 1966) says that story is ". . . about Tolkien's profoundly religious philosophy of Creation and Subcreation. True Creation is the exclusive province of God, and those who aspire to Creation can only make echoes (good) or mockeries (evil) of truth. The Subcreation of works that echo the true creations of God is one way that mortals honor God."
Tolkien's influence was one of the reasons that C. S. Lewis, one of the great Christian apologists of the 20th Century, became a believer. (David C. Downing, Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, p. 30. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.)
Ralph C. Wood ("Conflict and convergence on fundamental matters in C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, Summer 2003 v55 i4 p315+) writes that Tolkien ". . . lacked Lewis's urgency to bring people into the Kingdom by argument, despite the venerable tradition of apologetics that animates much of Catholic theology." Betsy Matthews has written: "If a reader perceived the truth, Tolkien was pleased; however, he did not write myth for the sole purpose of communicating the gospel."
(There is an article, entitled "The
Passion According to Tolkien" that deals with
this topic, and with the next one, Good and Evil.)
One aspect of
Tolkien's creation, the creation myth of Middle-Earth, is laid out in some
detail in the first part of The Silmarillion. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1977) There is a high god, who made lesser beings, but these
lesser beings, the Ainur, also called Valar, had some role to play in the
creation of the world. Some of what was made was not in accord with the
high god's plan. Melkor, the most powerful of the Ainur, also called
Morgoth, marred some of the original creation.
Certain of the Ainur
were responsible for various parts of the creation. Varda, a female
spirit, made the stars (Morgoth's Ring, p. 71). One of the most
surprising aspects about the creation of the world is that years according
to the sun (which they created) would be in synchrony with years according
to the light cycles of the two great light-giving trees. But they weren't.
Thus, the world was not perfectly made, and not because of evil purpose,
but because of a mistake in
creation.
But the Moon and the Sun proved more wayward and slower in passage than the Valar had intended, . . . and a year of the Sun is somewhat longer than was one tenth of a Year in the Days of the Trees. (Morgoth's Ring, pp. 50-51)
Good and Evil
Tolkien's theme is one of the oldest, and simplest, good versus evil. The
orcs, and some other evil creatures, don't seem to have a choice in this.
They seem to be all evil, without any choice in the matter. Most other
beings seem to be able to make choices. As Dowie puts
it:
Behind the whole struggle against the forces of Mordor and the internal struggle to fulfil personal tasks is the implication that there is such a thing as good and evil. The men of the West can go to battle with such fierce intensity against the orcs and the winged Nazgûl because while they are set in their course of power and destruction, they are wholly evil, given over to their own self-love and the service of their Dark Lord. Because he opposition is stark, violence is necessary and good. War in Faërie, unlike war in reality, possesses no ambiguous shades of gray. However, it is by this contrast between good and evil that Faërie affirms the presence of the antinomy in real life as well. Neither values nor morality are relative in Middle-Earth. As Aragorn tells Éomer, "Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among elves and dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house" (II, 41). William Dowie, "The Gospel of Middle-Earth according to J. R. R. Tolkien" in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, editors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979, pp. 265-285. Quote is from page 276-7. II refers to The Two Towers.
Purtill writes, in chapter 9 of his book, "Frodo, Fëanor, and Free Will," that Tolkien presents characters in pairs, facing similar problems, handling this problem in two different ways, one right, and one wrong. He proposes Frodo and Gollum, Gandalf and Saruman, Theoden and Denethor, Faramir and Boromir, and Galadriel and Fëanor as such pairs. He recognizes that Gandalf and Saruman faced more than one problem, or a complex problem, whereas the basic problem for Frodo and Gollum, and also for Faramir and Boromir, was what to do with the ring. Theoden and Denethor also had a relatively simple choice, namely what to do with their kingship (or stewardship, in Denethor's case). See link in this paragraph for a discussion of Galadriel and Fëanor.
In Tolkien's world, the possibility of choice went back to almost the beginning. Morgoth/Melkor was originally one of the Valar, the highest of beings created by Ilúvatar. In pride, he chose not to serve, but wanted to be served, and, thereby, became evil. This choice was made, and its effects began, even before the appearance of elves, humans, and dwarves. In his choice, he influenced other beings to choose evil as well, including several Maiar, beings a little less powerful than the Valar. These included Sauron, and the beings who became the Balrogs. (In Fellowship, it was a Balrog who destroyed Gandalf. Gandalf was restored and sent back in Towers.)
(C. S. Lewis--see above--wrote this about pride in his classic Mere Christianity, Macmillan, New York, 1978: ". . . it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. . . . Pride always means enmity--it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God." pp. 110-111, emphasis in original.)
In the book version of Fellowship, Tom Bombadil, who is not in the movie, chooses to help Frodo and his hobbit companions. (Eugene C. Hargrove, who wrote the essay "Who is Tom Bombadil?" has been one of the pioneers in academic environmental ethics. To my surprise, he presents evidence that Bombadil does not represent a nature spirit, but is one of the Valar or Maiar.) Boromir chooses to try to take the ring from Frodo, although he repents of this choice as he dies. His brother Faramir chooses to let Sam, Frodo and Gollum continue on their way to Mordor, although he knows that he could have taken the ring to his father, as Boromir wanted to do. Saruman, like Gandalf a being sent to Middle-Earth to help the elves, men and dwarves who live there, chooses to succumb to Sauron, and also chooses to seek the ring, to devastate the forests around his stronghold, and to breed orcs for evil purposes. Frodo chooses to go to Mordor to destroy the ring. Sam, Merry and Pippin choose to follow him. The King of Rohan chooses to reject the advice of Saruman's spy, Wormtongue, and listen to Gandalf. Even Gollum struggles to make moral choices, and not always for the bad. (See interview with Andy Serkis)
One episode that Jackson does not include in Towers is a pivotal confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman. (For more on this, and some complaints about other things that Jackson and co-writers left out, see Douglas Charles Rapier's review, mostly of Return, in the Tolkien section of Suite101, or Ralph Wood's discussion of how the adaptation took out moral messages in Christianity Today. For comments on good versus evil in the movies by Walsh and Boyens, who collaborated with Jackson on the script, see this interview.) In the book, Gandalf asks Saruman to give up evil and come back to doing good. Saruman is tempted, but finally rejects Gandalf's offer.
There are many other examples of moral choices in the books, and the movies. Other goodness appears, as does evil. Jeffrey Overstreet says that "The Christian virtues of humility, sacrifice, and faith filter through. The triumphant epilogue offers tangible hope rather than mere Hollywood sentiment."
Clearly, one aspect of doing evil, for Tolkien, was the destruction of trees. In the first age, perhaps the most evil thing that Morgoth did was to destroy the two trees of Valinor. One of the greatest evils done by Saruman and his orcs is the destruction of trees around Orthanc, his tower. Saruman also has trees, including Bilbo's party tree, cut down in the Shire. It is also clear that some types of manufacture were used as symbols of evil by Tolkien. Morgoth's realm, Mordor, Saruman's realm, and the mill in the shire, when the hobbits return there, are all evil places because of the smoke and other waste that they produce. Fëanor produced the Silmarils, and the Palantíri, objects of craft, in the first age. Although not evil in themselves, these objects led to evil in the world, as Fëanor claimed the Silmarils for himself, and as Saruman, and Denethor, looked into Palantíri, and were ensnared by Sauron. The nine rings for men, and the seven for dwarves, forged by Sauron, were meant to ensnare their bearers in evil. Sauron tried to turn the three rings, crafted by Celebrimbor, Fëanor's grandson, to evil, but failed.
Another aspect of evil, for Tolkien, is seeking power. The rings are referred to occasionally as rings of power. In Galadriel's and Boromir's choices concerning the ring, clearly the main temptation was power. Drout and Wynne examine the issue of power in Tolkien, and refer to several other authors who have also done so. "Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and a Look Back at Tolkien Criticism since 1982." Michael D. C. Drout and Hilary Wynne. Envoi 9.2 (Fall 2000), pp. 101-167.
Perhaps another aspect of evil for Tolkien is having life extended, although extending your life is itself an aspect of having power. Gollum's long life has clearly become a burden to him. Bilbo's has, too. The Númenóreans were tempted to evil because they sought to extend their lives. On the other hand, being able to decide the time of your death appears, in Tolkien's world, to be good. Aragorn, certainly a good character, decides when his own life should be ended. (See reference in first part on time in Tolkien's work. Anna Mathie has written an essay on mortality in Tolkien's writing.)
Other effective approaches to the Good and Evil discussion included those of Christopher Garbowski, whose "Eucatastrophe and the 'Gift of Ilúvatar' in Middle-earth" discusses religion, ethics and the desire for eternal life, noting that Tolkien is somewhat conflicted about this desire. On the one hand, desire for (unlawful) eternal life brings about the downfall of the Númenóreans. On the other, Tolkien himself longed not only for the eternal life promised after death, but also for the deathless, unfading life of the elves. Michael D. C. Drout and Hilary Wynne. (see above) Quote is from p. 110.
Drout and Wynne use a word which is important in understanding Tolkien. That word is eucatastrophe.
to part two
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