A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, First Edition. Edited by Stuart D. Lee.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evil

Christopher Garbowski

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One of the more striking features of Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings – from the nov-elistic The Lord of the Rings to the mythopoeic “Silmarillion” corpus in its various published editions – is the depiction of the earnest struggle between good and evil at various levels. On the one hand, this theme has likely been one of the reasons for the great popularity of Tolkien’s work; on the other, it is also a reason why his work has not been taken seriously by critics (see ch. 25). The literary embodiment of the conflict as “fantasy” has quite evidently been part of the problem: with its often highly externalized and overtly grotesque form the less sympathetic casual reader or less attentive critic can be forgiven for perceiving a seemingly simplistic Manichean world (the title of Edmund Wilson’s 1956 review is quite telling – “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!”). Even upon penetrating the form, literary critics have had problems because in the largely disenchanted world of criticism serious reflection upon evil has rarely been undertaken. This may seem odd considering the ubiquity of evil in the twentieth century. It is hardly a wonder that pondering the Holocaust upon the conclusion of World War II philosopher Hanna Arendt claimed, “the problem of evil will be the fundamental question of European post-war intellectual life” (Dews 2005, 51). For various reasons this was not to be the case – in Europe or elsewhere – and literary critics were not alone in side-tracking the weightier implications of the problem. It is only early in the twenty-first century that one of them, Terry Eagleton, wrote a somewhat longer essay on the topic (2010). Most serious Tolkien scholars have dealt with the problem of evil in his work, but these have had to draw upon philosophy or theology in a manner not typical for literary scholars.

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In this study of the theme of evil in Tolkien’s oeuvre, a number of issues will be of special concern. The question of genre is one key issue: how the fact that the author chose the mode of fantasy to present the theme impacted on its content and form will be examined. Fantasy is closely connected with what Tolkien himself called sub-creation. The term itself is significant, implying as it does theological concerns in which the artist as a Secondary Creator imitates God the Primary Creator (see ch. 5). Indeed, Tolkien’s religious worldview is partly implicit in the portrayal of evil in his fiction (see ch. 30). Another major influence on how the author understood evil was his experience of war, particularly World War I, in which he personally fought on the front (see ch. 31). War had a diverse impact on numerous writers and their understanding of evil during the twentieth century. Reflecting on World War II, for instance, Anthony Burgess felt the Augustinian view of fallen human nature had been vindicated; from this perspective he accused the Bloomsbury group of Pelagianism, that is, an overly optimistic view of human nature. Similarly, an Augustinian view of human nature in this pessimistic sense can be detected in Tolkien. However, as we will see, it is offset by his robust view of the good life, especially in The Lord of the Rings, and thus the struggle between good and evil gains all the more urgency.

Tolkien and War

In the course of correspondence with his son Christopher during World War II Tolkien made a telling disclosure about his motivation for writing. He had been discussing his progress in writing The Lord of the Rings and now responded to an element of his son’s war experience by recommending writing as a kind of therapy:

I sense amongst all your pains (some merely physical) the desire to express your feeling about good, evil, fair, foul in some way: to rationalize it, and prevent it just festering. In my case it generated Morgoth and the History of the Gnomes. (Letters 78)

Tolkien was referring to his experiences of World War I and how they motivated his mythopoeic writing thematically at the primal moral level that experiencing war forced him to deal with. Most specifically, he refers to the legendarium incorporated in The Book of Lost Tales, which would later evolve into his “Silmarillion” mythology. But it is not hard to discern how those themes engrossed much of his mature work.

That the experience of war, in combination with his Catholicism, might have confirmed in him the largely Augustinian understanding of human nature evident in his work is quite possible, but is largely a matter of conjecture. Although it is gener-ally accepted that the Great War affected Tolkien’s view of heroism and that this is perceptible within his work, a pertinent question is how the experience more specifi-cally impacted on the development and depiction of evil. John Garth, the author of the near definitive study of Tolkien and World War I, persuasively points out that in

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his creative work the author was able to generalize the horror of war: “Orcs and Elves do not equate to the Germans and the British, they distil the cruelty and the courage he saw on both sides, as well as more general qualities of barbarism and civilisation” (2003, 299–300).

The long-lasting nature of this feeling, expressed in his mythopoeic work initiated during the course of World War I, was unexpectedly expressed a couple of decades later when he published The Hobbit in 1937. During his narrative explanation about the Goblins he could not refrain from adding – quite an odd aside in a children’s book of the period – a literal description of such a sentiment: “It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines always delighted them” (H 59).

Garth cogently argues that a number of fantasy elements in Tolkien’s work can be understood as symbolic treatments of wartime experience: “The war imposed urgency and gravity, took him through terror, sorrow, and unexpected joy, and reinvented the real world in a strange, extreme form” (2003, 309). One could add to the list the counterpoints of the inner struggle against evil: despair and hope. A passage in The Lord of the Rings which illustrates the poignant transition from one to the other is Sam’s sight of a star breaking through the clouds during the dreary journey across Mordor:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. (RK, VI, ii, 1206)

The experience is incorporated into the Middle-earth mythology – Sam is moved to reflect on the impermanence of the “Shadow” – but an existential perception is also captured in the passage. That an experience of the sublime in nature could give a ray of hope to people in the desperate circumstances of war is documented by psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, who describes similar situations in his memoir essay “Experiences in a Concentration Camp” (1984, 59–60).

Among the conclusions of his study Garth asserts that “Without the war it is argu-able whether his fictions would have focused on a conflict between good and evil; or if they had, whether good and evil would have taken the same shape” (2003, 309). It is the literary “shape” of this struggle that will be examined next.

Sub-creation and Evil

As mentioned above, Tolkien understood fantasy as sub-creation. Before looking at this aspect more closely, we will examine fantasy and evil in more generic terms. Fantasy in its most common narrative mode consists in a combination of the romantic mode and elements of the fairy-tale. A critic like Northrop Frye may balk, but it is

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not an uncommon combination. Among its salient features, according to Lesley Brill, “As in dreams and nightmares, reality mixes with projections of desire and anxiety” (1988, 6). More in line with our theme, Brill adds, “Good and evil figures embody radically competing world views. Frye characterizes the conflict as a struggle to main-tain ‘the integrity of the innocent world against the assault of experience.’ ” The latter is a succinct, if not particularly nuanced, description of the conflict in The Lord of the Rings.

In keeping with the genre, in his rendition of evil figures or beings Tolkien often resorts to the grotesque or monstrous. He himself reflected on monsters in his cele-brated 1936 British Academy lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” The monster serves various functions in the fantastic narrative, depending on the needs of the tale. In the case of Beowulf, the dragon acts as “a personification of malice, greed, destruction (the evil side of heroic life), and of the undiscriminating cruelty of fortune that distinguishes not good or bad (the evil aspect of all life)” (MC 17). Tolkien rec-ognizes that at one level confronting the monster is an externalized version of an internal struggle for the hero. This meaning is further developed by the author in his own The Lord of the Rings, in which, as Jane Chance argues, “[t]he hero must realize that he can become a monster” (2004, 200). Frodo matures in the first part of the trilogy to the point where he realizes he himself can be a monster, before he can become a true hero.

According to Alison Milbank, Tolkien’s monsters have another aspect: “the mon-sters of Tolkien’s art are facts of Middle-earth life that the reader does not fully com-prehend; and in so acting, they dramatize the unknowability of its universe” (2009, 67). In this sense, she continues, one of their functions is evoking a sense of wonder. If accepted, the perception can be connected with an observation previously made by Ursula Le Guin: “Those who fault Tolkien on the Problem of Evil are usually those who have an answer to the Problem of Evil – which he did not” (Curry 1997, 101). The dark core of the problem of evil in the last century has proved most resilient to disenchantment, that is, to rational explanation (cf. Dews 2005): monsters in Tolkien’s fantasy are symbolic of the ultimate unknowability of evil in rational terms.

To reiterate, for Tolkien fantasy was primarily the product of sub-creation, in which the artist as a Secondary Creator imitates God the Primary Creator. One of the features of this kind of fantasy is its evocation of the “inner consistency of reality” (OFS 59) in the created world. In order to achieve this quality, the sub-creator should avoid irony, which indicates the artificiality of the Secondary World. As he writes in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”: “if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away” (OFS 33). The author quite evidently adhered to this rule in creating his Middle-earth fiction. It can also be noticed how this rule applies to the presentation of the conflict between good and evil in the sub-created world: it cannot be treated ironically or it dissipates, nor was Tolkien inclined to do so.

Another issue connected with sub-creation is that of narrative form. Unquestion-ably its most successful instantiation for Tolkien is in the form of a novel, The Lord

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of the Rings. The theme of the struggle between good and evil is also most profoundly treated in the work, but it also works at a dramatic level. What makes it compelling for the reader, according to Brian Rosebury, is the delight which is evoked by Middle-earth itself, in which sufficient empathy is aroused in order to deplore the thought of Sauron laying it to waste. “Vital to the achievement of this response is the contrast between the diversity of good and the sameness of evil,” argues the critic. “The benign societies of Middle-earth have few uniform features,” while “evil tends to homogene-ity” (Rosebury 2003, 42, 45). This is also close to the core of the source of strength to overcome evil, as will be discussed later.

Power and Domination

Power and domination is the theme of The Lord of the Rings most clearly linked with the conflict between good and evil. Before examining the theme’s instantiation in that work, it is useful to explore the link with Tolkien’s conception of sub-creation. This is best illustrated in one of the most theological of the author’s works incorporated in the “Silmarillion” mythology. The “Ainulindalë” is a creation myth that structur-ally resembles the Christian creation myth: Eru Ilúvatar is the godhead, the Ainur resemble the angels, while Melkor becomes a fallen angel like Lucifer. In Tolkien’s myth, as Rosebury observes, the angels are “sub-creators” that participate in the crea-tion of the Middle-earth universe together with Ilúvatar, and Melkor’s rebellion is also as a sub-creator, who wishes to create outside of the godhead’s consent:

Melkor begins as an impatient creative spirit; as the myth proceeds, his activity becomes progressively more destructive, because it has been tainted from the beginning with pride of power and self-glorification: his desire to create other beings for his glory rather than for delight in their independent life degenerates into the desire for servants of his will, and finally into hatred of all other wills and all products of others’ creativity. (Rosebury 2003, 189)

This process of the degeneration of sub-creation continues into The Lord of the Rings, where Sauron, the servant of Melkor/Morgoth, is the eponymous Lord of the Rings. Although his roots are supernatural, he is no sub-creator, but a mere craftsman, who forges Rings to dominate others. Power and domination are now the only aims, and what is left of creativity – craftsmanship of itself is a good that Tolkien regarded highly – is subordinated to that end.

The One Ring is a fetish, in accordance with folklore traditions an object in which the eponymous Lord has incorporated something of himself (Milbank 2009, 81); in this case his power to dominate. Putting a fetish in the foreground also means the Dark Lord himself is never physically present. In this sense Bradley Birzer is partially correct when he asserts:

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By placing evil in the background of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien has created an evil that is outright ominous, for it seems to be everywhere, pervading the entire landscape of Middle-earth, surrounding the Fellowship of the Ring on all sides. (Birzer 2002, 91)

Sauron is only seen only once, indirectly – through the Palantir – otherwise his pres-ence is felt through a disembodied eye or his agents: most monstrous, some initially disguised as benign. The Ring, however, throughout the entire novel until its climax is in the hands of the good characters and is the agent by which the hero can become a monster, if not worse, at any moment. Thus an essential plane of the conflict between good and evil is internal: either internal to the hero or his community.

If drawing upon folklore and fairy-tale traditions together with the medievalism of the setting gives The Lord of the Rings a nostalgic feeling – part of its charm for many readers – critic Tom Shippey (2005, 154–157) notes a decidedly modern theme at its core: the conception behind the Ring’s danger to its user, no matter how benevolent, is that “power corrupts.” The theme is modern since before the eight-eenth century it was believed the person of virtue can wield power, whereas in The Lord of the Rings virtue is no guarantee against the Ring’s corruption. Moreover, along the lines expressed in Lord Acton’s maxim, “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely,” the most powerful are even more susceptible to the Ring’s cor-ruption. What is more, it is addictive when used, which is why Gandalf wisely advises Frodo against its use. The attitude toward power of a given character decides whether or not he or she is likely to come under the Ring’s sway or not: “The very desire of it corrupts the heart,” Elrond warns (FR, II, ii, 348), and this is demonstrated in the novel.

The implication that power can corrode virtue is not far removed from a similar theme that Ralph Wood detects in The Lord of the Rings: “Over and over again, [Tolkien] demonstrates his fundamental conviction that evil preys on our virtues far more than our vices” (Wood 2003, 62). The possession of this knowledge, according to the critic, is the reason why Gandalf and Galadriel avoid the temptation of taking the Ring for themselves when it is offered to them.

In contrast to the Rings of Power there are the Three Elven Rings. “[T]hey were not made as weapons of war and conquest,” Elrond informs Glóin at his council, “that is not their power. Those who made them did not desire strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained” (FR, II, ii, 350). Nancy Enright points out that power described in the above passage is in distinct contrast to “traditional, male oriented power.” She further argues that what Tolkien attempts to illustrate in his work is not simply that the right spiritual qualities are necessary to combat evil, but that an alternative type of power exists: “If The Lord of the Rings shows anything about power, it makes clear the fact that true power for anyone comes from renouncing earthly dominance, and from giving oneself for the healing and love of others” (Enright 2007, 99, 106).

Enright associates this with a Christian understanding of power implicit in Middle-earth; Douglas K. Blount makes a similar point, but also indicates a perhaps

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unconscious polemic on the part of Tolkien with Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power by offering a compelling picture of its opposite:

Strength . . . manifests itself most clearly not in the exercise of power but rather in the willingness to give it up. . . . Abnegation, the subordination of one’s will for the sake of others – that, according to the portrait Tolkien presents, is what characterizes a life well lived; and, given its obvious beauty, such a portrait needs no argument to defend it. (Blount 2003, 98)

While there is a power or strength for the good that comes from a person’s ability for self-transcendence implied in the arguments above, Wood argues Tolkien recognized the need for the proper use of force to counter evil (2003, 95). He contrasts the broth-ers Faramir and Boromir; the latter relishes military engagement, the former makes clear he is willing to use force only when necessary:

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, not the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise. (TT, IV, v, 878)

Active Evil vs. Evil as Privation

Numerous critics focus on various aspects of the theme of power and domination in The Lord of the Rings; nevertheless, the theme itself is evident enough to evoke little controversy. Among the more debated questions is the actual nature of evil within the created world.

The seminal arguments concerning the ontology of evil were forcefully laid out by Shippey (2005, 159ff.). The critic indicates the importance of the orthodox Christian, or Augustinian, view of evil for Tolkien, arguing the possible mediation of Boethius, an important author for medievalists, for whom “evil is nothing.” The implications of this philosophy are that evil cannot create, only imitate and pervert the good. Consistent with this perspective, Elrond proclaims: “nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so” (FR, II, ii, 349). Likewise Gandalf exhorts the Lord of the Nazgûl at the gates of Minis Tirith: “Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master” (RK, V, iv, 1085). Signifi-cantly, evil is often referred to as a “Shadow.” On the other hand, another Christian view, proffered by King Alfred in Anglo-Saxon times, is that evil is real and must be actively resisted. King Alfred had the advantage of realism; as Shippey puts it, “In the 1930s and 1940s Boethius was especially hard to believe” (2005, 161). The danger with this view lies in its tendency to slip toward Manichean dualism, wherein evil is virtually an equal force to the good. For Shippey, the characteristics of the Ring

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portray the tensions between the view of active evil and evil as privation. “Tolkien saw the problem of evil as in realities,” concludes Shippey, “and he told his story at least in part to dramatise the problem; he did not however claim to know the answer to it” (2005, 164). Although not all his arguments were original, coming as they did in a seminal work of Tolkien criticism Shippey’s views have been the center of the ongoing polemic on the topic, with salient points presented below.

Among later critics, Shippey has not been isolated in his dualist thesis, which he actually strengthened in another work (Shippey 2000). Some have claimed there is a strong dualistic tendency in Middle-earth, others simply agree with Shippey’s original claim that Tolkien’s work is not conclusive on the matter (cf. Kerry 2011, 28–29). It seems greater support has been garnered for the view of the primarily Augustinian underpinnings of Tolkien’s world, perhaps on account of the issue being of keen concern for authors of religious interpretations. Tim McKenzie (2008, 93), for instance, argues Shippey’s fundamental error lies in equating the Boethian view on evil with that of Augustine. For Boethius evil was indeed illusory, preying on our internal weaknesses; alternately for Augustine, although evil was a privation, “evil conse-quences and actions in the world are not illusory but very real.” Moreover, Augustine’s viewpoint attributed greater potential for evil to those with greater resources. Evil has gradations; consequently, “[t]he Augustinian viewpoint allows us to sympathise with Gollum and Boromir and Denethor.”

A number of philosophers have examined Tolkien’s portrayal of evil in The Lord of the Rings and likewise tend toward an Augustinian conception of evil in the work. Scott A. Davison (2003, 101) refers specifically to Shippey and rejects his explanation that the Ring demonstrates active evil, “since it is animated by Sauron’s will and power.” He further explains that in Augustine’s view the source of evil is inordinate desire, concluding: “Sauron’s evil lies in his desire to usurp God. As St. Augustine would say, this kind of desire is the root of all evil.” Thomas Hibbs, on the other hand, studies the role of Providence in Middle-earth, and claims that according to the Augustinian conception, if evil were to be an independent force it would rule out Providence. Evil is first and foremost privation; nevertheless, the philosopher adds, “Augustine and Tolkien try to reconcile this teaching with the psychological experi-ence of the seeming existence of evil” (Hibbs 2003, 174).

In her analysis, Milbank (2009) argues that the evil as privation metaphysics applies to most of the monsters of Middle-earth, but admits the existence of Shelob, not to mention Ungoliant before her, is more problematic. Nihilism is evident elsewhere in the created world, but Shelob “represents it and embodies it as if she were an arachnic black hole” (78). Nevertheless, monstrous nihilism does have a positive function, in that it “serves to show up the goodness of being by contrast and vice versa” (80). In a similar manner, argues Milbank, as in the case of Gollum, Saruman, and Gríma Wormtongue:

the evil and truly monstrous are spared by the forces of good so that they may go on to cause their own downfall. Both in their original monstrosity and power, and in the

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way that power draws upon itself its own destruction, they witness to the Good. (Mill-bank 2009, 71)

The critic also observes that some of the evil characters are Manicheans. This point can be extended into arguing that it matters what attitude the characters or heroes of the created world hold toward evil. The heroes who hold an Augustinian view are more apt to extend mercy to the evil characters, because they understand that the latter were not always evil, and that there is at least a chance of their redemption, as Gandalf famously argues on behalf of Gollum.

Although Rosebury is among the critics against a Manichean interpretation of The Lord of the Rings, he nonetheless suggests that within Shippey’s depiction of the Ring lay the alternative methods for dealing with its threat: passive forbearance and active resistance. These tactics must be used together:

Frodo and his friends must resist the temptation to use the Ring’s corrupting power; yet if they attempt to hide it, Sauron will recover it sooner or later. They must both renounce it and actively seek its destruction, using courage and guile to outwit its master. (Rosebury 2007, 250–251)

Summing up the ontological argument the critic also lays out its significance for the reader. Rosebury notes it is of secondary importance whether or not the reader is cognizant of the conceptual grounding: “the essential point is that the negativity of evil, and the intrinsic goodness of ‘the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation’ [a quote from OFS] are consistently and palpably maintained” (2003, 35). This con-trast, among others, will now be discussed in its relation to the resources available on the side of the Good in confrontation with Evil.

Polyphonic Good vs. Monological Evil

The creation story in The Silmarillion with its godhead implies the workings of provi-dence in Middle-earth. Providence is even recognized by its characters at a number of junctures of The Lord of the Rings, such as when Gandalf suggests that Frodo was “meant” to have the Ring (FR, I, ii, 73). However, the subtlety of its operations and the fact that often providence can only be detected in hindsight has moral and dra-matic significance in the narrative: “The mysterious, incomprehensible designs of providence underscore the importance of human effort, a sense that, in spite of the apparent odds, one must press on to do one’s duty in the fight against evil” (Hibbs 2003, 170).

The strength for this struggle comes partly from within, developing the appropri-ate virtues, as Wood argues below, but also from resources outside the self. A key component of the resistance to evil comes from a genuine alternative existing within a robust conception of the good life more or less collectively evident in the free peoples

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of Middle-earth. A salient aspect of this is the fact that benign characters are embed-ded in community. In The Lord of the Rings, Hibbs points out, “Tolkien gives us characters who can only understand themselves and their duties as parts of larger wholes, as members of nations and races, as participants in alliances and friendships for the good, and ultimately as part of a natural cosmos” (Hibbs 2003, 173). In the quote above, Faramir draws strength for the war against Sauron through his love of Gondor, a particular place, and all it represents.

Tolkien initially establishes the theme of community in the novel by presenting the Hobbits and their ways. These fundamentally simple people are full of joie de vivre. Patrick Curry observes that the sense of community is fostered by the Hobbits’ “decentralized parish or municipal democracy, their bioregionalism (living within an area defined by its natural characteristics, and its limits), and their enduring love of, and feeling for, place” (Curry 1997, 27). The Shire is relatively small, but even the more sophisticated and much larger kingdom of Gondor is essentially decentralized and quite diverse. Although a sizeable kingdom can hardly generate community span-ning its width and breadth, its various regions are nevertheless held together by ties of reciprocity. As Rosebury observes:

When the forces of the outlying regions [of Gondor] troop in to Minis Tirith in The Return of the King, they do so under their own captains, and are markedly differentiated from one another by their dress and gear: the people of the city hail them as friends, rather than taking their conscription for granted. (2003, 173)

If evil is a form of non-being, Good nurtures authentic being, which is diverse and polyphonic. The benign people have their various cultures, and these cultures tend to foster particular virtues. Among the intellectual virtues, the Hobbits possess a “capac-ity for disinterested curiosity” which makes them attractive (Rosebury 2003, 51). Morally, they are stoical in what seem to be hopeless circumstances. “They are deter-mined simply to slog ahead,” observes Wood (2003, 105), “to trudge forward no matter what, to ‘see it through,’ as Sam says.” The peoples of Middle-earth are all fallible, but the good characters are guided by human virtues that are completed by grace: “Tolkien the Christian imbues The Lord of the Rings not only with pagan virtues as they are classically conceived,” Wood (2003, 77) argues, “but also with the convic-tion that, when completed and perfected, prudence issues in holy folly, justice in undeserved mercy, courage in unexpected endurance, and temperance in joyful self-denial.”

These havens of virtues are largely in isolation from each other at the onset of the novel, and the different virtues are weakened on account of this. Part of the strategy of Sauron is to keep the different peoples and their strengths apart. The Dwarves and Elves are in enmity, for example. The Elf Haldir observes, that “in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him” (FR, II, vi, 453). Tolkien uses the motif of the journey, by individuals and fellowships, as a means of bringing these different moral resources

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together. Thus dialogue is a precondition for the survival of the free people who must overcome their isolation if they are to adequately deal with the danger facing them. This dialogue is a central feature of the Fellowship, with its diverse members, who develop a sense of purpose that unites them even when circumstances break up their physical proximity.

That Frodo, one of the heroes of the novel, succumbs to the power of the Ring, is consistent with Tolkien’s oft expressed conviction that “the power of evil is too great to be resisted by incarnate creatures without divine aid” (Rutledge 2004, 10). The Augustinian sense of fallen humanity is not only apparent in Middle-earth peoples, but it is also a significant factor that elevates The Lord of the Rings above a binary good versus evil tale: the best characters either realize that evil is not only in the “other” but also a potential within themselves, or they learn this at some point in the narra-tive. Instead of leading to pessimism, however, it is one of their strengths. It gives them an advantage of moral imagination over monological evil: whereas the pro-foundly evil forces cannot conceive of an action that is not based on self-interest, in this case the disposal of the One Ring, the good characters can imagine themselves as evil, which influences their strategy. In a related manner we have a major paradox in the Middle-earth epic: “The most paradoxical of all the redemptive actions in The Lord of the Rings makes use of evil’s capacity to defeat itself,” Milbank (2009, 205) observes regarding the final destruction of the Ring, adding: “Again and again, evil fails because it is so strong, so extensive and so highly organized.” Sauron, for all his power and malicious intelligence, “cannot imagine selflessness” (Rutledge 2004, 162), and this ultimately leads to his downfall.

Evil and History in Middle-earth

“One of Middle-earth’s cosmic conditions is the growth of legend into history,” claims Lionel Basey (2004, 192). Tolkien himself admits as much in the draft of a letter to Revd. Robert Murray concerning deeper themes of The Lord of the Rings:

[T]his story exhibits “myth” passing into History or the Dominion of Men; for of course the Shadow will arise again in a sense (as is clearly foretold by Gandalf), but never again (unless it be before the great End) will an evil daemon be incarnate as a physical enemy. (Letters 207)

The conceit in the letter is the same as in the introduction to The Lord of the Rings, in which the narrator connects Middle-earth with our own world, where Hobbits “still linger” (FR, Prologue, 3). But the mythical nature of evil in Middle-earth is clearly indicated, as well as the ongoing struggle against it in history. Conversely, reference to evil in the non-fictional world history is only obliquely suggested once in the novel, when the Shire is most peaceful, during the “marvellous year” after the War of the Ring has concluded:

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The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; and later they sat on the lawns under plum-trees and ate, until they made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on. (RK, VI, ix, 1339, emphasis added)

One of the rare instances the narrator engages in black humor. Meanwhile, the hero of the victory, Frodo, gains no rest nor glory, and spiritually exhausted eventually leaves Middle-earth.

The impermanence of any possible victory over evil in history is best articulated by Gandalf at a crucial juncture of the novel:

[I]t is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. (RK, V, ix, 1150)

This sentiment expressed by a major character proves Tolkien’s world is anti-utopian: in the context of a twentieth century that wrought great evil in the name of various utopias, that is saying not a little.

Alexandra Bolintineanu evokes the poignancy of Tolkien’s major work in its rela-tion to the theme under discussion:

The Ring is destroyed, and a great evil is banished from the world. The victory is neither permanent nor complete: much that is good and beautiful, not the least being the kingdom of Lothlórien, passes away with the destruction of the Rings of Power, and to some of the world’s troubles, like the plight of the Ents, the victory over Sauron brings no cure. But, though the achievement is alloyed with sorrow, its essential goodness abides. (2004, 270)

Returning to Tolkien’s own experience of history from which World War I casts its enormous shadow on his fiction: quite understandably in this personal context his early mythopoeic works are generally morose, and the good characters are wooden or overly somber. Aside from his children’s stories and some rare instances, it took decades for the author to portray evil without simultaneously at least partially devalu-ing the good. His major achievement, when it finally came in The Lord of the Rings, portrays a world in which the costs of confronting enormous evil are clearly evident, but – as the author quoted above puts it – the “essential goodness abides.”

Birzer, Bradley J. 2002. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.

Basey, Lionel. 2004. “Myth, History, and Time in The Lord of the Rings.” In Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited

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