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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.
