Spiritual Depth in Lord of the Rings
A visit with Tolkien (III of III)
From my third novel, Above All Shadows Rides the Sun.
London
June 20, 1971
Riis offers up a new topic. “Tell me about Sauron and the Ring.”
Tolkien looks back at Riis. “Sauron is the main representative of Evil – of blatant brute force. The Ring was made for coercion and is animated by a malicious will.”
Riis nods. “That’s evil for you. Coercion.”
Tolkien nods. “Coercing other wills. Power exerted for domination. The desire for power for the corrupted motive of dominating. Wanting to be master over other wills. Power, when it seeks to dominate other wills and minds, is evil. Imprisoned in self-worship, in selfish purposes, one becomes malicious and cruel.”
Riis reflects for a moment. “In The Lord of the Rings, as I read it, all sins begin and end in self-worship.”
“That’s right, Riis. When Sauron began he considered the economic well-being of his fellow inhabitants of Earth and he desired to order all things according to his wisdom. But then he went the way of all human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination.”
Riis grins. “So we elders must become wizards like Gandalf?”
Tolkien grins. “The Lord of the Rings is about the achievements of ordained individuals, inspired and guided by an emissary to ends beyond their individual education and enlargement. Wizards are emissaries from the supernatural order. Wizards train, advise, instruct, and arouse the hearts and minds of those threated by Evil to a resistance with their own strengths.”
Riis nods. “Who but Gandalf could push Bilbo and Frodo out the door?”
Tolkien smokes a couple more puffs. His eyes wander the room.
Bronwyn leans in. “I’ve heard that you have spent decades developing a profound story, and that it was a very long story before you began writing The Hobbit.”
Tolkien looks at her. “I’d been working on The Silmarillion – a myth of Creation and elves – since the 1910s. The Hobbit was meant as a children’s story, to amuse my own children, not intended to have any connection to the mythology.”
“Interesting,” says Bronwyn.
“I began work on a sequel to The Hobbit, but by the third chapter the story had escaped my control and taken an unpremeditated turn. It became a long, complex, and terrifying story, quite unfit for children. The Silmarillion is about elves. The hobbits are like humans. The stories merge in Lord of the Rings.”
Bronwyn nods. “Would you call it an epic fable?”
“Perhaps. A basic passion of mine ab initio was above all for heroic legend, of which there is far too little in the world for my appetite.”
“It’s a work of invention, scale, scope, power, depth, grandeur, and enchantment,” Bronwyn tells him.
“I am delighted that it pleased you,” Tolkien responds.
I rejoin the conversation. “How did you write it?”
Tolkien gives me a firm look. “This large and embracing tale is written in my lifeblood. My stories seem to germinate like a snowflake around a piece of dust. Such a story as The Lord of the Rings grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind, out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. The labor has been colossal.”
Bronwyn nods and smiles. Tolkien looks at her again. “Who is your favorite character?”
“Galadriel.”
“Why so?”
“She mirrors people’s minds back to them, with honesty, helping them face their inner demons. Then she imparts forgiveness, consolation, love, and hope. And with her silver basin filled with water, she helps people see that they are involved in an immense story.”
Tolkien smiles at Bronwyn. “The elves represent the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the humane nature – raised to a higher level than is actually seen in men.”
“And this is your theme?” I ask.
Tolkien turns back to me. “One theme is the relation of ordinary life – breathing, eating, working, begetting – and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the longing for elves and sheer beauty.”
“And we can recover that here on Earth?” I ask.
Tolkien looks at me and nods. “The theatre of my tale is this world in which we now live. Recovery is a re-gaining of a clear view, seeing things as we are meant to see them. We need to clean our windows, so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness.”
Bronwyn nods and smiles. “We see the world transfigured, which evokes our sense of discovery and wonder, and then we see our world more clearly than ever before. And it all feels like a sort of homecoming.”
Tolkien’s eyes fix far away, as if his mind is roaming the plains and mountains of Middle-earth. “If we do not aim at the highest, we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. But the best stories do not deny the existence of sorrow and failure. They give us glimpses of joy – joy beyond the walls of this world – and the sudden turns which pierce us with joy because they are glimpses of Truth.”
His words rush out in an enthusiastic flood. His spirts are high, his body restless, his mind lively.
Tolkien keeps looking at Bronwyn. “I find the ennoblement of the humble especially moving.”
“Yes,” Bronwyn responds. “Humble souls rise to do heroic things. It’s a book about the good life – what it is and how to live it. It’s about living from the virtues: courtesy, respect, duty, loyalty, courage, prudence, wisdom, honor –”
“—Mercy,” Riis adds, “charity, humility, friendship, fellowship, and self-sacrificing love.”
Tolkien smiles. “God created us incomplete. And the kind of creature that can only be perfected by its own choices – and so through Quest and trial – is glorious.”
“That’s what I got out of the book,” I tell him. “To relinquish the will to power and attend to each other’s well-being. To rise each day to meet the main challenge of our lives: to discern from pure motives the right thing to do – ‘which way do we go?’, ‘what now?’ – and deciding to do it and exercising the will to do it.”
Tolkien rests his gaze on me and makes me feel I’ve said something worthwhile. “The moral of the whole story is that we need the high and the noble as well as the simple and the humble. Both can be heroic.”
Bronwyn warms to the theme. “Every heroic soul craves the Good, the True, and the Beautiful – and acts with selflessness to win the world for all three. We give up our desire for comfort – our addiction to being comfortable – and move beyond our trifling concerns and our safe, small life. We become engaged with the ultimate realities of human life. Through all the hard choices and suffering, we give our entire being to the Quest. We let the Quest transform us into the people we were meant to be, and we realize our potential.”
Tolkien listens attentively to each of us before he responds. “The theme is the place in the world of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, the ungreat, the forgotten – in the places of the Great – great good as well as great evil.”
Bronwyn nods. “We are invited into a universe that it is meaningful – which it is. The world is trying to show us our role in this larger story. We try to read and confirm our roles in the larger story.”
“Selflessness is the way things ought to be,” I add.
“And victory and defeat have nothing to do with right or wrong,” Riis concludes. “Even in a world controlled by evil, a hero never changes sides.”
Tolkien darts a glance at me, which I take as my cue. “I agree that The Lord of the Rings is a work of great meaning.”
Tolkien pauses for a moment. “If one sets out to address mentally adult people, they will not be pleased or moved unless it’s about something worth considering, more than mere danger and escape. There must be some relevance to the human situation, so something of the teller’s own reflections and values will inevitably get worked in.”
I nod. “It’s a spiritual work.”
Tolkien doesn’t immediately agree. “On what grounds do you base your view?”
I don’t hide my surprise. “Do you not hear this on a regular basis?”
“Only a few weeks ago I had a letter from a lady making a similar point. I will try to answer your question, but I fear I might disappoint you.”
“I doubt you could possibly disappoint me.”
Tolkien thinks for a few moments before he responds. “If I might elucidate, I have deliberately written a tale which is built on or out of certain spiritual truths. There are hints of the highest matters. This is how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. My goal as a writer was the elucidation of truth and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, through the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments.”
“Shine light on essential truths,” I reply. “Embody spiritual meaning. You did both. And you are a Christian, yes?”
“I am grateful for having been brought up since I was eight in a faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know. I am a Christian and of course what I write will be from that essential viewpoint.”
I turn even more serious, hoping I don’t make Tolkien uncomfortable. “You’re not acting as a theologian, an apologist, or an evangelist. There’s no Christian table-thumping. It’s a story, not a sermon. But you see the world from a Christian perspective. Christian presuppositions are embedded in your story at its core, as its essence. Your faith is everywhere in Lord of the Rings, not explicitly but implicitly, as light from an invisible Source. God’s Divine Light, like the sun, is never absent, is always present, in Lord of the Rings.”
Tolkien nods his head. “I am not preaching. But inevitably one’s own tastes, ideas, and beliefs get taken up. Of course God is in Lord of the Rings, and it is of course a fundamentally Christian work. The religious element is absorbed into the story.”
I ask him, “Why did you choose not to make your faith explicit?”
“I gather you do not share my view. The Arthurian world contains the Christian religion explicitly, and that seems to me fatal. Myth, as all art, must reflect and contain elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit.”
In fact, I do love Arthurian legends. Doesn’t seem the time to say so. I keep pressing. “But you still see it as a work of faith?”
“I do not know if I make myself clear. It is a monotheistic world of natural theology. I don’t feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief. What do you find in it of our Christian faith?”
I reflect. “A spiritual, supernatural world, charged with meaning and infused with eternal Truth and Goodness and Beauty. A world loved into being by a benevolent Creator. The world as a gift, invested in Providential care. A world in which Divine Goodness is in play, with creatures with free wills who can turn away from God or conjoin with God. The whole cosmic story is God’s Story and we inhabit it while longing for Heaven. Within the order of good and evil, we fulfill our soul’s destiny by practicing Christian virtues, especially the virtue of self-sacrifice. And when we do this, no matter how ordinary we think we are or how flawed, God can turn us into heroes and into agents of Divine glory.”
Now Tolkien seems pleased. “You are getting nearer the central point. We are made in the image and likeness of a Maker. With God supporting us, nourishing us, we are placed so as to face, or be able to face, God. For any one of us, and according to our capacity and by all the means we have, the chief purpose of life is to increase our knowledge of God and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.”
Tolkien looks over at Yale. Bronwyn smiles and places her hand on Yale’s shoulder. “When he finished reading Lord of the Rings when he was ten, Yale cried for much of the rest of the day.”
“So meaningful,” says Yale.
Tolkien seems a bit taken aback. There’s a long pause before he replies. “I am in fact a hobbit in all but size,” he tells Yale. “I do not travel much. I like gardens, trees, and farmlands. I smoke a pipe, I am fond of mushrooms, I like good plain food, and I even dare to wear ornamental waistcoats. I go to bed late and get up late when possible. I have a very simple sense of humor.”
Yale grins. “I’m a hobbit too. I love their joy and kindness and friendships.”
Tolkien chuckles and nods and smiles. “Who’s your favorite hobbit?” he asks Yale.
“Frodo.”
“Why so?”
“He’s noble. He endures and endures. He’s afraid but he fights with courage. And he is full of love.”
Tolkien nods again. “I’ve always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.”
Yale nods. “But why does Frodo give in?”
“Frodo did not endure to the end,” Tolkien says. “He failed as a hero. The pressure of the Ring reached its maximum, past the limits of Frodo’s natural strength. Frodo endured months of increasing torment, starvation, and exhaustion. Frodo did all that he could do under that demonic pressure. Frodo was in a complete trap. The situation demanded powers beyond his utmost limits, and his will and his mind broke.”
“I think I understand,” Yale replies.
“Frodo deserves all honor,” Tolkien tells Yale. “He went as far on the road as his strength of will and mind and body allowed. He spent every drop of his power. But we are finite, incarnate creatures, with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure.”
“How true,” says Riis.
Tolkien smiles. “Always remember, Yale, you are inside a very great story.”
It is true that Frodo is an unusual hero. He both fails and succeeds. And though other heroes might be helped by, say, a friend busting them out of the dungeon, the reliance he has on Sam Gamgee and even Gollum for brief bits is rather distinct. It's not easy pointing the finger at any one thing and saying, "Frodo is the hero for x, y or z reasons." Apart from bearing the burden in the first place. And yet few would disagree that he is a hero.
Who is your favorite hobbit?