Text of a lecture given by David (Lord) Alton at the Catholic Society of Bath University and Bath Spa University College on Thursday 20th of February 2003
The Fellowship of the Ring: J.R.R. Tolkien, Catholicism and the use of Allegory
To view the lecture along with slides made for the accompanying PowerPoint presentation, click here.
Introduction:
Politicians often get by on precious little knowledge about the subjects that they have been asked to address. Usually they rely on knowing marginally more than their audience. This lecture is a particularly risky endeavour as I can guarantee that most people here will have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Middle Earth and its origins. The younger the audience the riskier it gets.
At Christmas last I had a
salutary reminder of the perilous journey on which I am about to embark. As we
left the cinema, my twelve-year-old son gave me a blow by blow account of the
discrepancies between the text of The Two
Towers and Peter Jackson's magnificent screen adaptation.
The Lord of the Rings, which was first published in 1954, has made
Tolkien's a household name. More than 50 million copies have been sold
worldwide. Much to the chagrin of
Tolkien's many critics the public voted it Best Book of the Century in 1997 in a
survey carried out by Amazon.com and then again in a survey carried out by
Waterstone’s and Channel 4.
As a teenager I had read The
Hobbit but it wasn't until my early twenties that I bought The Lord of the Rings. I was 23 and had just contested my first
General Election in an inner city area of Liverpool.
On the back of a three-day-week
and a struggle with the trades unions Edward Heath had gone to the country
asking the question "Who runs the country?" The uncertain result of an
almost balanced Parliament failed to answer the question and it would only be
another eight months before a second General Election would be staged. It was
over those weeks that I read The Lord of
the Rings.
It had been a difficult time for
me personally. Elected as a student I had served for two years on Liverpool City
Council representing an area where half the homes had no inside sanitation,
running hot water, or bathrooms. Half the streets were still lit by gas lighting
and the massive slum clearance programme meant that day by day many desperate
people came to me with acute social and housing needs.
I had just survived an attempt
to expel me from my then political party for bringing to light corrupt attempts
by a colleague who was trying to rig housing grant applications. I had also
received a letter from the then leader of my party telling me to desist from
attacking my Socialist opponent, the sitting member. I had exposed his
parliamentary record and his failure, over 30 years, to speak or campaign in the
House of Commons about the appalling hardships of his constituents.
I had run up against the Establishment. The MP was a friend of
my leader and I was told to lay off or lose financial support and the leader's
endorsement. I had accepted the second option.
The Lord of the Rings was
therefore a very welcome distraction from all of this.
Much later I read The
Silmarillion and Tolkien's short stories, my favourite of which is Leaf
by Niggle.
I also came to Tolkien as
someone who as a child, and again as a student wrestling with his faith, had
been captivated by C.S.Lewis.
As an eleven-year-old, the lady
who ran our public lending library pointed me at The Narnian Chronicles and encouraged me to read them. Later I
devoured The Cosmic Trilogy - and still believe that the third book, That
Hideous Strength, - has a powerful and prophetic message for our times.
Lewis' Christian apologetics, especially Mere
Christianity and The Problem of Pain,
helped me to deepen and articulate my Christian faith.
Lewis' friendship with Tolkien and with Owen Barfield and the other Inklings, is the sort of camaraderie out of which creative genius can flow. It also underlines how friendship on the journey of understanding helps us all "to go deeper and to go higher" as Lewis memorably puts it.
When the Inklings gathered at
Oxford's Eagle And Child (the "Bird and Baby") or in Lewis's rooms to
read aloud their latest writings were they simply embarked on a literary or, in
the case of Tolkien a philological endeavour, or was there something else at
work here?
I want to divide my talk into
four themes:
1.
Allegory or more?
2.
The Christian Narrative.
3.
The Political Narrative; and
4. What it means for us now.
Allegory or More?
According to the Collins English
dictionary, allegory is where “the apparent meaning of the characters and
events is used to symbolise a deeper moral or spiritual meaning”.
Nineteen Eighty-Four or Animal
Farm by George Orwell, or Lewis' The
Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe are good examples of both political and
religious allegory. Tolkien did not actually much care for The Narnian Chronicles for this very reason.
Tolkien generally spurned
allegory as an art form – he even professed to hating it – so it seems
unlikely that his works were intentionally and fundamentally allegorical.
Indeed, in his Foreword to The
Lord of the Rings instead of allegory he said
"I much prefer history, true
or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of
readers. I think that may confuse "applicability" with
"allegory"; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader and the
other in the purposed domination of the author."
In his letters he is less
emphatic, admitting that,
"…any attempt to explain
the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language." (And, of
course, the more "life" a story has the more readily will it be
susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate
allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)."
If we were simply to read The
Lord of the Rings as an allegory we would be missing its point. Just as
Jesus used parables to take us to a deeper truth, so Tolkien weaves his stories
to take us ever deeper. It is like peeling off the snake's skin as stories are
revealed within his stories: each one challenging us, sensitising us, inviting
us. And what is it he wants us to discover?
Humphrey Carpenter's collection
of Tolkien's letters (Allen & Unwin 1981) gives us Tolkien's own answer:
"Of course, Allegory and
Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth."
In 1925, G.K. Chesterton had
published The Everlasting Man - which
was to have a direct effect on C.S.Lewis's conversion. In a chapter entitled "The
Escape from Paganism" Chesterton takes us directly to the Truth:
"Nothing short of the extreme
and strong and startling doctrine of the divinity of Christ will give that
particular effect that can truly stir the popular sense like a trumpet; the idea
of the king Himself serving in the ranks like a common soldier. By making that
figure merely human we make that story much less human. We take away the point
of the story which actually pierces humanity; the point of the story which was
quite literally the point of a spear."
Chesterton adds that faith:
"…is not a process but a
story….The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the
same is true even of the story of God.
The Catholic faith is…a story and in that sense one of a
hundred stories; only it is a true story. It is a philosophy and in that sense
one of a hundred philosophies; only it is a philosophy that is like life."
Tolkien echoes this in his
remark (ibid.):
"So the only perfectly
consistent allegory is a real life; and the only intelligible story is an
allegory…. the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it
can be read 'just as a story'
Of the New Testament he says
that "The
Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all
the essences of fairy stories."
This is different from all the others because it has "entered
history" Unlike the other stories "there is no tale ever told that
men would rather find true…to reject it leads either to sadness or to
wrath"(Lecture at St.
Andrew's University, 1937).
Perhaps prefiguring the way in
which Tolkien will tackle his epic tale, Chesterton observes that "Every
story does truly begin with creation and end with a last judgement."
All the elements, from the genesis and "the great
music" of The Silmarillion to the
awesome climax at Mount Doom, take us from alpha of creation to the omega of
judgement. This is a story that exists for itself.
Tolkien tell us that:
“The Lord of The Rings is of
course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously at first, but
consciously in the revision”. Elsewhere he states "I am a Christian (which can
be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic" (ibid.).
In 1958 he wrote that The Lord of the
Rings is "a tale, which is built on or out of certain 'religious' ideas, but
is not an allegory of them."
So this is more than allegory,
much much more; and what were those "certain 'religious' ideas" that
inspired Tolkien?
The Christian Narrative
I will turn in a moment to the
thematic concepts that Tolkien develops in his work. Before doing so let me
register some of the obvious parallels that can be drawn with particular
characters and events, while recalling Tolkien's words that “The Incarnation
of God is an infinitely greater thing
than anything I would dare to write".
In the lady Galadriel the reader
can be allowed to hear an echo of the Virgin Mary "Our Lady, upon which all my
own small perceptions of beauty, both in majesty and simplicity is founded"
(letter to Fr. Robert Murray SJ); Galadriel's grand-daughter, Arwen, also has a
Marian role, saving both Frodo's life and soul as she utters the words "What
grace is given me, let it pass to him. Let him be spared."
Interestingly, these words were
not in the original text but crafted by Peter Jackson, who in his use of the
word grace makes a more explictly religious statement than even Tolkien himself.
Galadriel bestows upon the
Fellowship seven mystical gift, which are surely analogous to the seven
sacraments, and as such are real signs of grace, and not mere symbols (and hence
this is a specifically Catholic feature of the book). The gift giving is sadly
missing from the screen version but can be seen on DVD
(so I am told!).
Gandalf or Aragorn (and even possibly Frodo) may be seen as Christ-like: with Aragorn the king entering his kingdom, the return of whom everyone is expecting; the apparent “resurrection” of Gandalf after he dies fighting the Balrog they meet on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum; or Boromir's surrender of his life for his friends in order to save his companions (made all the more remarkable because of his earlier attempt to seize the ring by force and by his subsequent repentance); or Frodo's willingness both to serve and to carry his burden. Or, in the provision of lembas, can we not see the Eucharist. Before the Fellowship depart from Lorien they have a final supper where the mystical elvish bread lembas is shared, and they all drink from a common cup. Given Tolkien's remark that "I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again" some comparison with the Last Supper is inevitable. And it would be strange if Tolkien's tryst with the saving bread was not somewhere replicated in his great saga.
Beyond these individual
instances are far deeper stories with the story.
The nature of good and evil.
Perhaps the most obvious of
these is the struggle between good and evil. This never-ending struggle is
clearly defined by Tolkien's faith. In 1956 in a letter to Amy Ronald he wrote:
"I am a Christian, and indeed
a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect "history" to be anything but
a long defeat - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and
movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory."
As the ring bearer struggles
towards his destiny many die before the evil forces of Sauron are at last
subdued; and even then Saruman remains at large in the Shire.
Frodo's self-sacrifice and
willingness to take on seemingly impossible odds reflects a central tenet of
Christian belief. The constant presence of Sauron that is felt throughout the
book also reminds us of the constant threat of evil in our own lives. Frodo and
Gandalf both understand that if they use the ring to overcome the Dark Lord then
they too will become enslaved by evil. For the Christian the use of evil to
overcome evil is a frequent temptation.
The general weakness of humanity
(which can be taken to cover not only mankind, but all creatures in The
Lord of the Rings) reminds us that humanity is fundamentally good, but that
those who fall turn to evil. All
that is evil was once good – Elrond says, “Nothing was evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.”
We can see the concept of the fallen human in the orcs – which were
themselves once men and elves – as well as the concept of temptation, which
causes someone to fall.
In The Hobbit the travellers are warned as they enter Mirkwood, don't
drink the water and don't stray from the path. How like all of us, the
descendants of Adam, who when urged not to eat at the forbidden tree or not to
stray from Him who is the Way we so often follow our own path.
The temptation of the Serpent is
reflected in Boromir’s temptation by the Ring, as well as in Gollum’s.
In Gollum we also see the idea of a conscience – he fights with
himself, and with his conscience while he is being tempted.
The theologian Colin Gunton was of the opinion that the way in which the
Ring tempts people to use its power is analogous to Jesus' temptation by the
devil.
Other aspects of evil also recur
in the book. The destructive nature
of evil is there in the Scouring of the Shire, and in the way in which
Saruman’s troops destroy the trees and the timeless quality of Shire life,
something especially abhorrent to Tolkien. The orcs themselves are cannibals,
and are hideous – showing how evil corrupts. The dark and barren lands of
Mordor are the very face of evil.
Connected with this is the
self-destructive nature of evil.
After Gollum falls to the power
of the Ring, he is consumed by its power, and he becomes weakened to such an
extent that he can no longer resist it. Even getting close to evil has a
subverting effect: take Bilbo's reluctance to give up the Ring, and its
disappearance from the mantle piece and reappearance in his pocket. Or, despite
his epic and heroic journey into darkness, Frodo ultimately fails to throw the
ring into the furnace. Here is the powerful mixture of the intoxicating allure
of the forbidden with our human weakness and frailty.
In this part of the narrative we
are also reminded of the Christian virtue of mercy. Sam would have gladly
disposed of Gollum whom he sees as a threat to Frodo. Gandalf commends Frodo for
showing mercy and invokes the belief in providence, that even Gollum may one day
have his moment. As the ring is committed to the depths that providence comes to
pass.
Tolkien's narrative also dwells
on unlikely victories over seemingly intractable and daunting odds such as at
Helm's Deep. Even when evil appears to be triumphing – such as when Saruman
gloats over what he considers to be the foolhardiness of Aragorn’s troops as
they march towards Mordor, he is defeated by them.
Evil also brings with it
desolation and barrenness.
Contrast the destruction of
Isengard, and the brutality of the orcs, with the simple homely life of the
Shire - so resonant of Chesterton's Merrie England. Contrast the creativity of
Iluvatar, the One, and his first creations, the Ainur, the Holy Ones, with
Melkor, "the greatest of the Ainur" who, like Lucifer, falls as he
succumbs to the sin of pride and seeks to subvert both men and elves (The
Silmarillion). William Barclay said "pride is the ground in which all
other sins grow, and the parent from which all other sins come."
Tolkien presents another side of
evil too – the fact that inherent in evil is the desire to dominate, rule and
have power over others.
There are other images in the book, which,
while not being specifically Christian, are certainly images of good, or of bad.
One fundamental image that Tolkien repeatedly uses is that of dark and
light. Compare and contrast, for
example, The Shire and Mordor (“where the shadows lie”) – The Shire which contains so much
of the England Tolkien loved, and Mordor, the dark and sinister land where
Sauron and Mount Doom are to be found, and which contains so much of the England
that Tolkien hated. Compare also
the man-eating trolls and orcs with the elves – the disfigured (fallen)
creatures and the beautiful and immortal elves, who eat the lembas, the mystical bread - the bread of angels which nourishes and
heals. Lembas "had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone, and
did not mingle it with other goods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to
endure." This allusion reminds us of the manna that fed the people
of Israel and of saints such as Theresa Neumann who survived by eating nothing
other than the holy Eucharist.
Even in his use of names
Tolkien's sign posts take us to places and people that seem good or bad – Galadriel,
Aragorn, Frodo and Arwen are
beautiful-sounding names, whereas Wormtongue,
the Balrog, Mordor and Mount Doom
are unlikely to be forces for good.
Tolkien is too good a
storyteller to reveal the end of the story too soon. Just like John Bunyan's
Christian the pilgrim must steer his way through good and evil and although
learning as he travels that evil is powerful, that it is not all-powerful, and
it cannot but fail in the end.
Death and Immortality.
There are of course many other ways in which the Christian message is voiced in The Lord of the Rings; another is in the depiction of mortality and immortality.
In 1958, in a letter to Rhona
Beare, Tolkien wrote:
"I might say that if the tale
is 'about' anything it is not as seems widely supposed about 'power.' …It is
mainly concerned with Death and Immortality."
One of the great temptations of
today - represented in the battles over euthanasia, genetics and the immortality
craved for through genetics and cloning - is the powerful temptation (shared by
some of the men and elves of Tolkien's realm) to artificially manipulate our
allotted span of life and to usurp the role of the Creator.
The Ring Rhyme that opens each volume of The Lord of the Rings reminds us of the order of Creation and that
we cannot cheat our maker:
"Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their
halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to
die…"
The Benedictine monk who told
his audience that the purpose of Catholic schools was to prepare its charges to
meet death was not overstating the obvious. Each of us is "doomed to
die". Because our relationship with the Creator has been fractured, this
becomes for many an event to fear rather than the Christian moment of
reconciliation. The Silmarillion puts
it like this:
"Death is their fate, the
gift of Iluvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy. But Melkor has
cast his shadow upon it, and confounded it with darkness, and brought evil out
of good and fear out of hope."
The purpose of the quest is to
ensure the triumph of good over evil and hope over fear.
It would be too simple to say that in The Lord of the Rings men are mortal and that elves are immortal –
since elves can either die in action or of grief, and they “pass to the
West”, to a sort of Utopia across the seas, so perhaps it is not quite true to
say that they are immortal (in any event it seems to be a bone of contention
among Tolkien fans so I am doubtless straying into dangerous waters).
Tolkien's decision not to invent
an eternal destiny for the elves or orcs or dwarves helps him avoid creating a
new theology. Men do have a destiny beyond the grave (and there is no reason to
suspect that this is not a similar destiny to that which Christians believe
comes after death). Tolkien does
not put the elves on a par with God. Here, surely, are the angelic hosts, the
cherubim and seraphim, who make up the heavenly order and whose history
sometimes meets our own. Lothlorien is their domain: and here "no blemish
or sickness or deformity could be seen…On the land of Lorien there was no
stain."
Mortality is not shown as being
undesirable in comparison with immortality – whereas mortal men are “doomed
to die”, elves are “doomed not to die”, not, at any rate, until the earth
itself ends. In the Silmarillion, we are told that each passing year is more sorrowful
for the elves, and that men, being themselves mortal, have the “gift of
freedom”, which is itself a gift of God.
The men of Numenor illustrate an
interesting aspect of the divide between mortality and immortality.
They begin to become jealous of the elves and their immortality, but they
are told that their mortality was divinely ordained, and that they should accept
what they have been given. They do
not heed this warning, and try to achieve immortality, but all they can succeed
in doing in preserving the flesh of those who have died, and they become more
and more fearful of death, and build tombs where “the thought of death was
enshrined in the darkness”. And while they were still alive, they turned to
decadent ways, “desiring ever more goods and riches” – a cautionary tale
if ever there was one. Here are the
living dead who have eaten the forbidden fruit. Think also of Gollum whose
endless and pathetic wanderings through countless ages are at last ended in his
death.
Surely, as Joseph Pearce says in
his book “Tolkien, Man and Myth”, the author was encouraging us in the
Christian belief that death “is
not the extinction of life, but the fullness of life”; and none of us
can ultimately cheat it. The story seems to me to be about escape from death
through death, and this is the heart of the Christian narrative.
I was recently in Hanoi.
In a large mausoleum in the
centre of the city they keep the mummified remains of the communist leader Ho
Chi Minh. His embalmed body attracts many secular pilgrims. It reminded me of
the glass coffin in Red Square which houses the earthly remains of the equally
dead Lenin. These coffins are a parody of Christianity.
The whole point of Christianity is that the tomb is empty, there is no body within. The secular religion of Marxism - and, indeed, all the stories contained in the other competing ideologies - offers no hope beyond the grave. Tolkien's hope was in the resurrection of every man and woman.
Resurrection, Salvation, Repentance, Self-Sacrifice, Free Will and
Humility.
Resurrection is one of the
underlying currents in The Lord of the
Rings – Gandalf dies and then comes back again even stronger as Gandalf
the White.
Another of the currents is the
idea of salvation. The very future of Middle Earth is at stake, and the
Fellowship wins salvation for Middle Earth, although not without cost, including
self-sacrifice. How potent are the
words of Jesus as we think of Boromir or Gandalf that “Greater
love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends”.
Repentance should also be
considered here; it is clear that the Christian notion of repentance does exist
in Middle Earth. Boromir is rewarded for his repentance by dying a hero’s
death by an orc’s arrow, and being given a hero’s funeral. All of the fallen characters are given a chance to repent,
although most of them, unlike Boromir, do not – such as Wormtongue, Gollum and
Saruman.
Tolkien shows the sin of pride
very clearly; indeed it is the Ring itself, which portrays the sin of pride.
As Pearce says in an interview, “The
possessor of the Ring is possessed by his possession and, in consequence, is
dispossessed of his soul”. Gollum
is clearly proud of the ring, and is obsessed with it, and as such is debased
and corrupted. Pearce also says
that Frodo’s fight to resist the powers of the Ring “is akin to the Carrying
of the Cross, the supreme act of selflessness”.
Providence and free will are
also main tenets of Christianity. Catholic
teaching on free will has always rejected pre-deterministic Calvinism, where no
one has any influence over their destiny. The free men of the Middle Earth and
the hobbits of the Shire are greatly in evidence in The Lord of the Rings.
Each of us has a destiny and we
are free to embrace it or to reject it.
Cardinal John Henry Newman put
it well when he said that there is some unique task assigned to each of us that
has not been assigned to any other. Elrond
tells Frodo that it is his destiny to be a ring bearer; but this is no
pleasurable occupation. Throughout
the quest Frodo's strength in increasingly sapped by the burden he carries and
which he seeks to be rid of. His stumbling approach to Mordor, under the Eye of Sauron,
are like the faltering steps of Christ weighed down by his Cross as he
repeatedly falls on the path to Golgotha; and, like Christ, Frodo is tempted by
despair.
Indeed, Frodo does succumb. His
free will, hitherto so strong in resisting the powers of the Ring, gives way to
the power of the Ring, and he cannot bring himself to throw it down into the
fires of Mount Doom. Despite all his inner strength Frodo gradually succumbs to
a dark fascination with the ring and he loses his free spirit and free will the
closer he comes in proximity to Mount Doom – a point made by Stratford
Caldecott in his essay Over the Chasm of
Fire: Christian Heroism in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.
Enter, stage left, Samwise Gamgee.
Sam is central to a religious
understanding of The Lord of the Rings.
Sam is Frodo’s loyal and humble companion. Sam is like Barnabas, the
encourager (Barnabas means
"son of encouragement"), who quietly encouraged Paul in his epic
journeys. In a world of so much
negativity encouragement is oxygen to the soul.
Tolkien said that he had modelled Sam on
the private soldiers he encountered when he served as a second Lieutenant in the
Lancashire Fusiliers at the Battle of the Somme in 1916: "My
Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and
batmen I knew in the 1914 War, and recognised as so far superior to
myself."
Sam’s humility turns him into the
greatest hero in the book. Although
he is only Frodo’s gardener, it is he who saves Frodo and ultimately the
Shire. Of course, Mary Magdalene in her first resurrection encounter with the
Lord mistakes Him, too, thinking that he also is only a gardener. So often we
miss what is important about the people we meet, what matters most.
Like Simon of Cyrene, Sam shares the
Master's burden. He realises Christ's promise that those who take up the burden
and follow Him will find the burden lightened.
Sam's burden is lightened as he is transfigured.
Stratford Caldecott quotes Tolkien as
saying that the plot is concerned with ‘the ennoblement (or
sanctification) of the humble’ - and the meek Sam certainly inherits
the earth. It is, at bottom, a Christian
myth, in which ‘the first will be last
and the last will be first’. Sam
is a ‘humble man’, close to the earth, without pretension.
For him to leave the Shire, out of love for his Master, involves a great
sacrifice. It is fidelity to that
sacrifice, and to his relationship with Frodo, that remains that guiding star
throughout.
The plans of the Wise and the fate of Middle Earth, however,
are never Sam's concern. He only
knows he has to play his part in helping Frodo, however hopeless the task may
seem. At a crucial moment in Mordor
he must carry the Ringbearer, and even the Ring itself.
He moves from immature innocence
to mature innocence: and finally, in
his own world (that is, in Tolkien’s inner world of the Shire), this
‘gardener’ becomes a ‘king’ or at least a Mayor.
The fact is that Frodo could not have fulfilled his task without the
continuing presence of Sam, and he relies utterly on him; yet Sam remains humble
always and faithful to his master.
There is also something here of a Catholic
love of order, of tradition and a longing for restoration of that which has been
lost. There are glimpses in the shire folk of the Catholic recusants - bravely
clinging on to their persecuted faith and longing for its restoration.
During the 16 years he was compiling his
trilogy Tolkien stayed regularly at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire - the heart
of "the sacred county" and home of the recusant Shireburn family. He
worked in one of the guesthouses and in one of the classrooms, writing and
drawing. One of his sons, Michael, taught classics at the Jesuit school and
another, John trained there to become a Catholic priest. Although Tolkien draws
on many influences - not least those of his childhood Worcestershire and the
Midlands - a walk along Shire Lane and a detour to Woodlands where Michael
planted a copse in his father's memory, are well repaid. Look to the distance
where Pendle Hill, associated with the occult and witch trials, dominates the
landscape. At Mass in St. Peter's
Church Tolkien would have encountered the descendants of the never wavering
recusants who still toil the land and live with simplicity and humility.
Justice, the Suffering Servant, Fellowship, Authority and Healing
It is apparent that the Christian idea of
justice is at the heart of Tolkien’s book, and that everyone gets what they
deserve in the end. For instance, Saruman starts off as Saruman the White, but
following his fall, ends up as Saruman of Many Colours. The order of “rank”
in the wizard hierarchy holds white as the highest, followed by grey and then
brown; they almost sound like orders of monks and friars. Conversely, after his
fight with the Balrog, Gandalf, initially Gandalf the Grey, becomes Gandalf the
White. Justice is done.
Another compelling image is that
of the Suffering Servant, who bears much and gives himself so that others may
live. Frodo is clearly
representative of this, and he does pay with his life in the end. Frodo has a
metaphorical cross to bear, and yet he does it willingly and humbly.
Although he is only one small hobbit, he nevertheless overthrows the
powerful and mighty Saruman, with his amassed forces – which chimes in with
the Christian idea of the large and the powerful being overcome by the seemingly
small and insignificant and weak. There are echoes here of The
Magnificat, and it resonates with the teachings of St.Francis - the humble,
little man of Assisi -, with the life of the little flower, St.Therese of
Lisieux, who taught that to become greater we must become smaller - and with the
works of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Fellowship itself is also part
of Catholic culture. The Fellowship and their allies hold together as
responsible individuals banding together in free communities. Contrast this with
the homogenous orcs and uruk-hai, which are almost ant-like in their lack of
individuality and in their collective nature, so much so that they appear not to
differ from each other even by sex or age.
In the Shire and other lands
where the “good” live, there is a social hierarchy, and, some might argue,
even a sort of papacy in the wizard Gandalf – after all, he acts as leader to
the free and faithful people, and he even crowns kings, as did popes of old.
Tolkien himself said of the papacy: "I
myself am convinced by the Petrine claims…for me the Church of which the Pope
is the acknowledged head on earth has as chief claim that it is the one that has
(and still does) ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honour,
and put it (as Christ plainly intended) in the prime place. "Feed my
sheep" was his last charge to St.Peter."
There is the further thought
that along with the papal colour of white, the name of the Holy Father's summer
residence, Castel Gandolfo, is translated into English as Gandolf's Castle.
Perhaps it means nothing; perhaps it is another hidden clue.
Like Gandalf, Aragorn also
points us towards Christian ministry.
Aragorn has Christ-like
qualities; he has a kingdom to come into, a bride to wed. One image that is very
powerful is that of the “Hands of the Healer” – in the Houses of Healing,
Aragorn, the King, has the ability to heal people by touching them with his
hands. Another King had the touch that healed Jairus daughter, the centurion's
servant, the lepers, the blind man and the sick who were lowered through the
roof at Capaernum. Every
Christian's journey towards perfection is a struggle to become ever more Christ
like.
As we endeavour to read
Tolkien's runes and riddles we stumble across other clues to the deeper meaning
of the story.
For instance, the day on which the Ring is finally destroyed in Mount Doom happens to be 25th March. Tom Shippey, in his book The Road to Middle Earth, says that in “Anglo-Saxon belief, and in European popular tradition both before and after that, March 25th is the date of the Crucifixion”, and it is also the date of the Annunciation. Days to recall beginnings and endings.
Arguments against The Lord of the
Rings representing Christianity.
A non-Christian reading of The
Lord of the Rings often points to the rather violent and occasionally gory
nature of the story, with the numerous battle scenes. The vivid and gratuitously
bloodthirsty orc-slaying by Legolas and Gimli might offend a pacifist but as
part of a just war against the invasion and devastation of Middle Earth by the
evil forces of Sauron they provoke us to ask legitimate questions about the
licit use of force; and, indeed, the nature of warfare. These are highly
relevant questions in the days of precision attacks by cruise missiles, aerial
bombardment of cities, and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Tolkien never leaves us in any
doubt that the elves, men and especially hobbits are not by their nature warlike
creatures – the idyllic surroundings of Hobbiton and the Shire are not the
breeding grounds of warriors (which contrasts so markedly with the hellish orc
pit where Saruman creates his troops). It is Sauron who initiates the violence
and what follows is self-defence against tyranny.
Another objection is raised
against interpreting the text as a Christian narrative because of the existence
and use of magic.
If magic were used to harness and use the supernatural in the natural world, and uses malevolent forces, it would certainly fail to meet the test of Christian orthodoxy. Only the forces of evil use black magic in a bad or harmful way. By contrast, Gandalf's power comes from the One who sent him to Middle Earth
There have also been complaints
that The Lord of the Rings is really a
masculine work – some have even gone as far as to say that it is sexist or
racist: with the BNP declaring The Lord of
the Rings essential reading..
The role of women such as
Galadriel, Eowyn and Arwen are by no means irrelevant.
Look at the character of Luthien in The
Silmarillion – the daughter of the Elf King, who follows her lover Beren
on his dangerous voyage, and, indeed, rescues him using her elvish powers –
hardly the passive woman. Indeed,
the role of women proves to be crucial.
In any event, Tolkien was, among
other things, celebrating the deep kindred of male fellowship. Cardinal Basil
Hume once said, "we
need to reclaim the idea of friendship - friendship for its own sake."
The Lord of the Rings does that. The
breaking of the fellowship perhaps also recalls the saddening consequences of
the fracturing of friendship and community.
St. Thomas More mourned the consequences of the Reformation, not because
he was opposed to renewal and reform (quite the reverse) but because it broke
"the unity of life". Tolkien's writing celebrates this unity and
reflects on the weakened condition of Middle Earth when the old alliances and
unity are broken. Not for nothing
did Christ pray that "they might all be one."
As for the charge of racism:
Tolkien does indeed celebrate the "northern" heritage, but the bad
news for the BNP is that Tolkien detested Hitler and his Nazism and the Aryanism
he promulgated. As the fantasy writer Ursula LeGuin aptly remarked: "No ideologues are going to be happy with Tolkien unless they manage it
by misreading him."
Once again, it is Tolkien
himself who tells us what he was trying to achieve:
“I have not put in, or have cut
out, 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”.
Joseph Pearce, whose own
conversion to Catholicism came when he read G.K.Chesterton while he was in a
prison cell serving a sentence for inciting racial hatred, views he subsequently
renounced, believes that Tolkien's sub-creation was a religious world:
“In the eternal sense with which Tolkien is principally
concerned it is a Christian world created by the Christian God who has not, as
yet, revealed himself in the Incarnation and Resurrection.”
I want to also say a word about
the political narrative that is also concealed in this story.
Although Tolkien denied that
Mordor was directly analogous with the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany we can once
again take him at his word - the word applicability
rather than allegory - and consider
the world in which he was writing and, indeed the world in which we live now.
How could we do other than apply
his narrative to the sombre and chilling surroundings of Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen,
to the gulags and concentration camps, to the war machines that had pummelled
European civilisation into the ground? Tolkien hated tyranny and he looked to the Free Peoples of
the West - men, dwarves, hobbits and elves - to confront it.
The evil brews of Mengele's false science and today's eugenics, genetic manipulation, human cloning and the rest are all worthy of Sauron. But the narrative is more penetrating than this. It is also an account of lost innocence and a cry against rapacious modernity and materialism. It reflects the sensitive understanding of a man who knew that although there were moments when nations had to defend their liberties, war itself could be cruel, brutalising and corrupting.
Even as victory is being
celebrated the realisation dawns that life will never be the same again in the
Shire. Sauron has been
conquered but Saruman remains. Isn't Tolkien reminding us that victories
are short lived and that in every generation new Vikings will be at the gate?
After the Scouring of the Shire
by Saruman’s forces, the Shire undergoes a startling transformation.
Gone are the cosy hobbit-holes, and the pubs and parties, as well as the
freedom that the hobbits enjoyed. In
its place are the grim, faceless, concrete blocks so beloved of the centralised
State. Stark buildings are erected, pubs are taken away, and “rules” appear
which the hobbits have to abide by.
Politically Tolkien was of a
piece with Chesterton. The latter had been an old fashioned Gladstonian Liberal
who had become disenchanted with its Edwardian heirs, particularly as they
slipped into a creed of social eugenics. Attacks on Catholic schools, the
corruption of government, brought to a head by the Marconi scandal, and the lack
of radicalism in combating state socialism by encouraging a fair and just spread
in the ownership of property, all contributed to Chesterton's refashioning of
his political outlook. Influenced also by ground-breaking Catholic encyclicals,
such as Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo
anno - with their calls for Catholic political action, social justice, and
for workers to be given a share in the rewards of their endeavours -
Chesterton's Distributism was a creed that was immensely attractive to Tolkien.
He would also have been familiar
with the writings of Jacques Maritain, the French Catholic philosopher, whose
political interpretation of Natural Law was so influential in the 1930s.
Maritain, the proponent of personalism
said that the challenge for post-war Europe would be to create
"a truly human life." If barbarism were to be avoided,
society had to recognise the centrality of the human person, not the old forms
of 'anarchic individualism' or the collectivism of Fascism or Communism.
Maritain wrote that it should be "the
age of the people, and of the man of common humanity - citizen and co-inheritor
of the civilised community - cognisant of the dignity of the human person in
himself - builder of a more human world directed towards an historic ideal of
human brotherhood". He wrote that "man
must be recognised as a person, "as a unity of spiritual nature…made for
a spiritual end." In Christianity
And Democracy he asserted that the pagan empire was seeking "to
liquidate Christianity and democracy at the same stroke…freedom's chances
coincide with those of the evangelical message…The Christian spirit is
threatened today in its very existence by implacable enemies, fanatics of race
and blood, of pride, domination and hate ".
Is this not also the message of The
Lord of the Rings?
In many respects Tolkien was
also the first Green and would doubtless have been a member of today's
Countryside Alliance. He had an especial hatred of the deformation of our
natural environment and the assault on our ecology.
His love of the trees, and the wondrous creation of the endangered Ent,
is a clarion call against the decimation of our countryside. The bulldozers and
chainsaws hack down the forests and woodlands, the aircraft spray their
defoliants, the factory ships ruthlessly deplete fish stocks, and the
prospectors extract minerals while destroying flora, fauna and anything else
that stands in the way of the bottom line. We have the effrontery to call this
progress. Imagine a forest where half the trees are dead or dying; or lakes that
as so badly polluted that fish can no longer survive; or great buildings that
have all survived pillage, sackings and war, but are now crumbling away from the
effects of air pollution. Imagine all this and worse. It is not Tolkien's grisly
world of fantasy but the reality of modern Europe.
Imagine a country that allows a
baby with a disability to be killed as it is being born; where 600 unborn are
clinically eliminated daily or a million human embryos have been destroyed or
experimented upon; or where human embryos may be created so that they can be
plundered, disembowelled, discarded and destroyed, and you have an accurate
picture of contemporary Britain - which defeated Sauron but failed to see the
Saruman in its midst. Who needs
Orcs in this culture of death?
Schumacher, another of the heirs of these political ideas, the author of Small Is Beautiful, and a convert to Catholicism, would have recognised in the Shire the elements of a society where the personal, the community, the small scale and the sustainable stand in defiance of globalisation. Small is certainly beautiful in the realm of the hobbits. Schumacher was staggered by the social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. He read these before becoming a Catholic but commented, "here were these celibates (the Popes) living in an ivory tower.....why can they talk a great deal of sense when everyone else talks nonsense.."
He would undoubtedly have
approved of the municipalism of Sam Gangee who becomes the directly elected
mayor of the Shire and turfs out those who have wreaked such havoc. Subsidiarity
- a word familiar to the readers of Catholic social encyclicals -, the
principles of "the common good" and the Disraelian belief that "centralisation
is the death blow of democracy" all form the basis for good governance in
the restored Shire.
Long gone are our once lampooned
but secretly rather "respected knights of the shires" MPs - men who
had often returned from the battlefields of two wars with an idealistic and
patriotic determination to defend the rule of law and to uphold our liberties
and cherished freedoms. In their place is a new breed of compliant politicians,
drowning in the detritus of spin, and creating a remote elite detached from both
the shires and the urban areas. Political Correctness rather than Political
Courage are its hallmarks.
Cynicism with our institutions
and with our political leaders is creating the circumstances in which many new
forms of evil can enter in. The nihilism that simply sets out to destroy and
deride is taking its toll. Thoreau once said, in a phrase of which
the Ents would have approved, "if you cut down all the trees there
will be nowhere left for the birds to sing." If we go on cutting down our
institutions - parliament, the church, the royal family, the judiciary, and
public figures - we too will be left with a barren landscape with nowhere left
for the birds to sing. Tolkien wants his readers to understand the importance of
defending their institutions and way of life against such attrition.
Tolkien's writing is both religious and political. Beneath the fantasy is a manifesto for radical change and an attack on the modern world. He knows that only the coming of the Kingdom will bring true victory, and that "history is one long defeat" - but with glimpses of the final victory which we can help achieve by our own actions. The Lord of the Rings is a call to engagement, a call to action. Life in a private hobbit hole may be a very happy private existence but even that can be threatened by events outside our private world - by a Saddam Hussein or Al Qu'eda; or by a despot like Kim Jong-il in North Korea. It is then that we need a Gandalf to come and summons us out of our private complacency and into engagement, both spiritually and politically.
Conclusion
The Lord of the Rings then is a story with many stories concealed
within it. Tolkien's subtlety is that he lays a trail of clues for his readers.
It is up to us whether we choose to "go higher and to go deeper."
Beloved by the travellers of the New Age and grandees of Celtic revivalism, by
the churched and unchurched, and by the most extraordinary cross-section of society,
The Lord of The Rings has the power to be evangelical if only the reader
scratches beneath the surface; but it is evangelical with a subtlety that I find
deeply attractive.. When fantasy becomes Christian fact the reader is faced with
the same stark choices as Frodo and Gandalf: to collaborate, to conform, or to
contradict.
The final clue in this epic
journey is the word Tolkien invented to describe what he saw as a good quality
in a fairy-story – and that word was eucatastrophe,
this being the notion that there is a “sudden
joyous ‘turn’” in the story, where everything is going well, “giving
a fleeting glimpse of Joy”, whilst not denying the “existence
of dyscatastrophe – of
sorrow and failure”. It also reminds us that catastrophe can be
reversed. Hatred and fear need not win; violence need not have its day;
destruction doesn't have to triumph. Eucatastrophe is the hosanna for the Prince
of Peace, the King of Joy, the Lord of Life - who enters the stable on the back
of a donkey and departs for his Kingdom on the back of another.
Tolkien thought that a story containing eucatastrophe was a story at its highest function – and that the Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of human history.