Dark Ages: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Communication of Evil in Three Legendarium Stories

Submitted to Regent University

School of Communication and the Arts

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Mark A. Keuthan

December 2009

School of Communication and the Arts

Regent University

This is to certify that the dissertation prepared by:

Mark A. Keuthan

entitled

DARK AGES: J. R. R. TOLKIEN’S COMMUNICATION OF EVIL

IN THREE LEGENDARIUM STORIES

Has been approved by his committee as satisfactory completion of the dissertation

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Benson Fraser, Ph.D., Chair Date School of Communication and the Arts

J. Dennis Bounds, Ph.D., Committee Member Date School of Communication and the Arts

Michael Graves, Ph.D., Committee Member Date School of Communication and the Arts

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© 2010 Mark A. Keuthan All rights reserved

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to extend heartfelt appreciation to the members of my committee, who worked to make sure that this idea came to full fruition. Thanks to Dr. Michael Graves for helping me to see the power of narrative and rhetoric. Thanks to Dr. J. Dennis Bounds for guiding me through the muddy waters of critical theory. And thanks to Dr. Benson Fraser for believing that still something more could be mined from Tolkien’s compelling fiction.

Of course I must thank my family for putting up with the years of absence while I toiled through mountains of research. My wife and son have sacrificed much to allow me the opportunity to write this project, and for this I extend deep gratitude to them both.

Last, I must thank the Lord God Almighty, the Swift Sure Hand, for leading me on an exquisite journey of discovery into the wildlands of revelation. The road to epiphany has been arduous, breathtaking, humbling, and bone-deep satisfying. Stroking the last period on this work is only a new beginning. I look forward to where He might lead me next

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ABSTRACT

Understanding J.R.R. Tolkien’s early fiction holds the key to understanding his later major works: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The legendarium, published as The Silmarillion, is a rich treasure of the history of men and elves, of the legends of mighty and tragic heroes and heroines, and of the centuries of struggle against the ceaseless onslaught of evil in Middle-earth.

An examination of evil as it develops and manifests over the first three Ages of Tolkien’s world is the focus of this project. Tolkien wrote the first three stories of his legendarium immediately after his experiences fighting in World War I and returned to work on them through the rest of his life. These three stories represent three different, increasingly complex depictions of evil, which are placed in juxtaposed historical context with the three biographical periods in Tolkien’s life where new ideas about the nature of evil are likely to have developed. The three stories are critically analyzed to reveal what they communicate about Tolkien’s understanding of the nature of evil, in conjunction with an examination of certain elements which may have influenced his understanding of evil, namely World War I, Beowulf, and the Book of Job. Utilizing critical tools, including Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, McFague’s Parabolic Theology Model, and the

Augustinian doctrine of evil, yields the conclusions that Tolkien’s early stories indirectly communicate intricate, complex, and deeply spiritual ideas about evil. His ideas of evil then find their full fruition in his magnum opus – The Lords of the Rings.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION INVESTIGATION IMPETUS…………………………………………………………. 1 METHOD AND STRUCTURE………………………………………………………... 6 Writing The Silmarillion…………………………………………………. 6 Idea of Evil………………………………………..…………………….. 11 Theory and Theology……………………………………………….…... 17 Application of Theory and Criticism…………………………………… 25 MAJOR INFLUENCES…………………………………………………………….. 28 REVIEW OF PERTINENT LITERATURE…………………………………….……… 31 Tolkien Biographical…………………………………………………… 32 Tolkien in World War I……………………….……..………………….. 39 “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”…………...…………………. 41 The Lord of the Rings………………………………………...………… 48 The Silmarillion……...…………………………………………………. 68 Narrative Theology………………………………………….………….. 78 Narrative Theory……………………………….….…….………….…... 83 STRUCTURE OF INVESTIGATION…………………………………………………. 94 CHAPTER 2 – FAIRY TALES AND WAR OF LITERATURE, LEGENDS AND GREAT BATTLES……………………………… 98 OF ELVES AND KINGS AND FINER THINGS………………………………..…… 111 "The Fall of Gondolin": A Synopsis………………….....…………….. 113 A Parable in Practice……………………………………..…………... 120 Evil in the Parable of the "Fall of Gondolin”……………….………... 125 CHAPTER 3 – TOLKIEN AS SCHOLAR-KNIGHT JOUSTING WITH THE MONSTER CRITICS……………………………………….. 135 TOLKIEN IN OXFORD: THE EARLY SCHOLAR PERIOD………………………...... 140 Eschewing Modernism………………………………………………... 142 Iron-sharpening Friendships………………………………...………... 143 The Hobbit…………………………………………………………...... 147 EARLY SCHOLARLY SUCCESS………………………………………………….. 149 The Beowulf Lecture…………………………………………………... 151 Túrin Turambar……………………………………………………….. 153 OF ELVES AND DRAGONS AND DARKER THINGS………………………………. 156 The Children of Húrin: A Synopsis…………………………………..... 157 A Pair of Parables in Parallel: Beowulf………………………………... 161 Job…………………………………...... 172 Evil in the Parable of The Children of Húrin…………………….…… 175

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CHAPTER 4 – TOLKIEN AS MASTER STORYTELLER THE AGED BARD AT LAST…………………………………………………….. 187 Tolkien as Published Author…………………………………………. 192 Tolkien in Retirement: Accolades and Loss………………………….. 196 OF ELVEN JEWELS, EVIL RINGS AND STILL DARKER THINGS………………… 199 "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien”: A Synopsis……………..……….... 201 A Parable for Comparison: Novels As Parables………………………...... 206 The Lord of the Rings……………………...... 210 The One Ring………………………………… 213 Evil in the Parable of "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien"……………... 221 CHAPTER 5 – EVALUATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS EVALUATIONS: Tolkien as the Parabolic Model……………………………………… 228 Tolkien’s Life as a Mythic Narrative………………………………… 228 A Growing Understanding of Evil…………………………………… 236 CONCLUSIONS: Tolkien's Communication of Evil…………………………………….. 240 Evil in Broader Strokes………………………………………………. 246 For the Fourth Age…………………………………………………… 249 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………… 254

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Keuthan 1

CHAPTER 1 — INTRODUCTION

INVESTIGATION IMPETUS

The Battle of the Somme began on 1 July 1916. At precisely 7:30 a.m. British troops

“went over the top” and flung themselves at the German defenses. Fussell has written:

The planners assumed that these troops — burdened for the assault with

66 pounds of equipment — were too simple and animal to cross the space

between the opposing trenches in any way except in full daylight aligned

in rows or “waves.” It was felt that the troops would become confused by

more subtle tactics, like rushing from cover to cover, or assault firing, or

following close upon a continuous creeping barrage. (13)

The near immediate result was a sea of carnage. British troops suffered approximately sixty thousand casualties the first day, twenty thousand of which lay dead and abandoned in No Man's Land. Thirty thousand more men died the next day. Foolishly, rescues were attempted into No Man's Land, but the Germans continued to fire even on medical personnel and rescue troops. The numbers of dead and dying were simply too great in the field to recover so many bodies. Middlebrook reports that "there were so many seriously hurt mixed among the dead bodies that, in the darkness, some were even trampled to death or pressed into the mud and choked to death in the slime" (241).

Daytime attempts to recover bodies in No Man's Land continued to run the risk of drawing German fire, so most rescues were staged at night — a remarkably dangerous undertaking in the best of circumstances, but all the more dangerous on the Somme because the battle had left the ground pitted with large holes, scarred with deep trenches, and collecting pools of slimy water where the dead stared up with sightless eyes.

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Conditions in the trenches were just as horrific. By the time John Ronald Reuel

Tolkien's battalion was sent forward to the trenches two weeks later, the dead lay everywhere. Corpses of dead soldiers were piled in and around the trenches like cordwood, and rotting bodies lay in grotesque positions all over No Man's Land.

Thousands of the soldiers were left to decompose where they had been struck down.

Those few dead who had been retrieved from the field — or died before they could be evacuated — suffered the indignity of decomposing among their living comrades.

Middlebrook quotes a Pte. G. S. Young, who survived the first day of battle, "we propped the dead in rows at the back of the trench and sat the wounded on the fire step and we waited to be relieved" (242). John Garth's quintessential book on Tolkien and the Great

War states that the living quickly became accustomed to the "bloated and putrescent dead" (164) in the trenches alongside the soldiers and in the fields all around them. Of course, in addition to the horrifying proximity of the dying and the rotting corpses, trench warfare involved the constant threat of an enemy bombardment. A soldier like Tolkien could be blown to bits at any moment without any more warning than the terrifying scream of an incoming shell. Historians like Garth report that all battalions on the front were well within range of the German artillery, so that "only the trading area could be said to be truly safe" (Winter 205).

To make conditions in the trenches worse, the constant rains which came in autumn threatened to collapse the earthen walls at any moment. In a grisly attempt to shore up what little protection they had from the enemy, soldiers made use of femur and ulna bones from decomposed corpses to prop up the sagging walls and sandbags in the trenches (Amendt-Raduege 11). For Tolkien, the staring eyes of dead comrades and the

Keuthan 3 odorous horror all around him, as well as the imminent possibility of his own death at any moment, immersion baptized him in the slimy stinking water of the evil of war. After nearly five months at the front, Tolkien contracted trench fever and was eventually sent home to England to recover. The sickness probably saved his life; shortly before he would have been returned to the front for active duty, the Battle of the Somme ended and

Tolkien's battalion was moved to Ypres. Garth describes the decimation of Tolkien's battalion:

… on 27 May they bore the brunt of one of the fiercest bombardments of

the war, and the Germans’ third 1918 offensive. After two days of

fighting and falling back, they turned at bay to cover the retreat of the 74th

Brigade. Nothing was heard of them again. (247)

Of the nearly one thousand men who had originally comprised the 13th Lancaster

Fusiliers, only seventeen survived — Tolkien and sixteen others who had been kept in reserve.

World War I left long lasting personal effects on Tolkien — indelible images of the despised attributes of modernism: wanton destruction of nature, the deadly application of mass destruction technology, the abuse and corruption of dictatorial authority, and the terrible advance of industrialization. "It interrupted his career, separated him from his wife, and damaged his health" (Ott par.4). The War may have significantly contributed to Tolkien’s eschewing modernism and its manifestations. But more importantly, for the purposes of this project, I assert that Tolkien's experiences in

World War I awakened in him a new theological and literary consideration of the nature of evil. T. A. Shippey, John Garth, Humphrey Carpenter and other Tolkien scholars have

Keuthan 4 indicated that Tolkien began earnest work on his mythology in 1917 and 1918. These writings became the Book of Lost Tales, which eventually became The Silmarillion. The first contention of this project is that Tolkien's horrific experiences in World War I led to his first serious considerations of the nature of evil and its representation in literature. As he saw, smelled, heard, and felt death and destruction of an indescribable magnitude, the sensitive junior officer struggled to comprehend the chaos and evil that surrounded him.

The tales he began writing during the war became the "fixed tradition" (Carpenter,

Tolkien 165, 178) upon which his major fiction works would be built. These trench- begotten writings became Tolkien's personal myth, and as such can be seen as the seedlings for Tolkien's understanding of evil. They are essential to the future depiction of evil presented throughout his corpus of literature.

Understanding Tolkien’s lifelong pursuit — trying to understand evil — will lead to a critical understanding of the depth and complexity of his fiction. Addressing this question poses a complex and multifaceted problem, requiring an examination of: several elements of Tolkien's biography, what he may have meant by his professional lectures, as well as a close reading of his fiction, specifically, for the purposes of this project, of the three foundational stories in his legendarium (collectively later called The Silmarillion).

Additional materials will be examined, including his letters, some parts of the copious

The History of Middle-earth, and some of his shorter fiction, like “Leaf By Niggle.”

The approach of this dissertation is to look at the historical origins of what may have contributed to Tolkien’s understanding of the nature of evil by examining three of his “life milestones.” At least three times in his life Tolkien experienced life changing events: fighting in World War I, delivering the lecture “Beowulf: the Monsters and the

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Critics,” and publishing The Lord of the Rings. At each of these junctures in his life,

Tolkien exhibited an advance in his theological and literary understanding of evil, as evidenced by significant writings. Since his legendarium was written (and re-written) over the entire course of his adult life, extracting for critical examination pieces of this work that illustrate said advances, in juxtaposition with Tolkien’s life milestones allows a pivotal narrative understanding to emerge. For the first life milestone – Tolkien’s service in World War I (1915–17) — a story from The Lost Tales, “The Fall of Gondolin” best illustrates the author’s communication of evil at that time in his life. For the second milestone — Tolkien, as the young Oxford academic delivering his first big lecture to the

Academy (1937) — The Children of Húrin best illustrates Tolkien’s understanding of evil, especially because of the thematic parallels between this story and Beowulf. For the third and final important milestone in Tolkien’s life – the event of his novel The Lord of the Rings being published (1954–55) — the autobiographical story “The Tale of Beren and Lúthien” effectively illustrates Tolkien’s mature understanding of evil, especially as the symbolic representations of evil in The Lord of the Rings and “Beren and Lúthien”

(rings and silmarils respectively) form some close connections.

Tolkien intended for his fiction to communicate what he believed – the virtues of

Catholic Christianity, eternal truth woven into myth, and the offer of redemption and rescue from the sin and evil of the world. Presumably, the reason that Tolkien went to such lengths to saturate into the minds of his readers an understanding of the nature of evil in our world is so that we would seek a way to be saved from it. A drowning man looks for a savior, and a woman lost in the dark seeks the light. The effect is persuasively subtle. Tolkien's fiction knits into the subconscious an understanding that we live in an

Keuthan 6 evil, fallen world with a very real enemy intent on destroying us all, but he does so with such skill that the reader is not overwhelmed to the point of despair, but instead heartened into believing that salvation, redemption, the triumph of good, and eternal reward are possible, plausible, and available. Thus the reader of the three stories from the legendarium and all of Tolkien’s fiction develops the urge to seek out answers.

METHOD AND STRUCTURE

Writing The Silmarillion

The history and the writing of Tolkien’s legendarium is a confusing and lengthy story; so, to clarify what is meant by the published title The Silmarillion and how it came into its final form, an explanation might be apropos. The title The Silmarillion actually refers to a collection of Tolkien's mythopoeic works, a “wide-ranging, yet incomplete narrative that describes the universe and Middle-earth, edited and published posthumously by the heroic efforts of his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977” (Tolkien

Silmarillion forward). In its final form The Silmarillion includes five sections. The first part, “Ainulindalë,” is Tolkien’s origin of the universe myth and tells of the creation of Eä, the "world that is." “Valaquenta,” the second part, tells the story of the origins of the Valar and Maiar, the first and second beings created by Ilúvatar in the creation myth.

The third section, “Quenta Silmarillion,” contains the largest number of stories in the collection and chronicles in a non-contiguous manner important events before and during the First Age, including the tragic wars waged repeatedly over centuries to recover the stolen silmarils, which lends the book its title. Part four, “Akallabêth,” tells the heartrending story of the corruption and demise of the Númenórians, the first race of men, which takes place in the Second Age. The final part, “Of the Rings of Power and

Keuthan 7 the Third Age,” sets up the circumstances that lead to the time of The Lord of the Rings at the end of the Third Age.

While Tolkien was serving in the trenches of the First World War in 1916–17, he imagined a man named Eriol who came to the Cottage Of Lost Play, where Elves told him the legends of the Elder Days. Even though Tolkien eventually renamed and rewrote the Lost Tales and incorporated them into the larger collection, some legends were quite settled from the moment they were written and changed little or not at all from their initial envisioning. Over the next sixty years or so, until his death in 1973, Tolkien continued to work on this legendarium. Using these early stories as a kind of artist’s sketchpad where he could work out his ideas, Tolkien developed and refined the theological conceptions and mythological elements that emerged from his early casting of the stories as poetry; the result was an almost coherent storyline that became the foundation of the later Silmarillion.

Tolkien’s modus operandi when writing was to work in waves where he began a project, wrote to a certain point, stopped, and then revisited the work either by starting completely over or engaging in heavy revision, much to the constant chagrin of his publisher. The legendarium was created (and re-created) in four such waves (Nagy 608).

The Cottage Of Lost Play Period: The primordial mass of legend and story was written in longhand in notebooks. Surprisingly, many of these early stories were never changed substantially. The earliest stories are the darkest: the tragic life of Túrin, the ruin of Beleriand, the corrupting, bloody greed of those who covet the silmarils, are all set against a dark backdrop of constant war. These stories were envisioned and notes jotted in rain-stained notebooks by Tolkien as he literally sat in the trench barrack-holes

Keuthan 8 of the battle in France. As a result of Tolkien’s grisly, slimy, deafening surroundings, all of the legendarium leans toward the dark and tragic. The world at that time was a dark, tragic place, and war is a horrible experience, especially for a reputedly perceptive young man like Tolkien. As shall be explored more fully later, he experienced great personal tragedy in the loss of his dear friends. The only somewhat "happy" story written in this early period is that of Beren and Lúthien, famously inspired from Tolkien's own life. The

Silmarillion's theme is one of disaster, bad decisions, and betrayal: not unlike the feeling of those who survived the disastrous battles, bad decisions by leaders, and betrayal of the trust of soldiers by their leaders during the war (608).

The Lays or Poetic Period: During the first few years of his career as an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies, Tolkien's interest was in alliterative verse, a peculiar style of poetry found in Anglo-Saxon works like Beowulf and almost nowhere else.

During these years, 1937 being the pivotal year he delivered his seminal lecture on

Beowulf, Tolkien turned to writing his stories as lays (long epic poems or songs) in emulation of the Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. These long narrative poems may be the most daunting pieces of the Tolkien corpus to read, since this style is unknown to most people familiar with other forms of English poetry, and a more than passing familiarity with Anglo-Saxon literature and language is required. Little of the poetry composed during this period remains intact in The Silmarillion (609).

The First Silmarillion Period: In these years, approximately the same years that

Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings (1937–1954), he created a more compact and approachable form of the legendarium that is closer to its final version. While laboring through The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien used the stories of his legendarium as the

Keuthan 9 backdrop, the foundation, and the explanation for The Lord of the Rings. Thus, when

Aragorn explains to Frodo that he is singing a part of a longer piece, “The Lay of Beren and Lúthien,” that is the literal truth. Writing The Lord of the Rings also affected the

“Silmarillion” compendium in many ways: the themes and motifs that emerged in The

Lord of the Rings made necessary the revision of earlier stories, such as those involving the character of Galadriel and the One Ring itself. During the fourteen years of writing

The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien took time to work on some of the legendarium texts; new versions of the “Fall of Númenor” were written at this time, and though the history of

“On the Rings of Power” is unverified, it seems to have been in existence by 1948, which is not surprising, since Tolkien needed to work out the conception of the rings of power

(609).

The Post-Lord of the Rings Second Silmarillion Period: In the late 1950s, after the unexpected success of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien returned to his mythology with vigor, intending to finish and publish it, partly to his own satisfaction, and partly to provide information for readers who wrote him long letters inquiring about details of history, mythology, and language. He also realized that the foundational legends had to be made consistent with The Lord of the Rings. He apparently intended to make a final version of the “Silmarillion,” but what he actually wrote was another version of the

“Quenta Silmarillion” in about 1958, and another version of the “Fall of Númenor,” also by 1958, that finally became the “Akallabêth” (610).

American scholar Clyde S. Kilby visited Tolkien in the summer of 1966 to help with the work of arranging and organizing the vast morass that was the legendarium at that time, but Tolkien could not pull together the endless piles of manuscripts, notes, and

Keuthan 10 previous versions successfully in order to finish the comprehensive treatment of his mythology (Carpenter Tolkien 246–59). This was likely due to his doubts as to the setting and the presentation frame of the stories; the later revisions of the legendarium narratives show him meditating on the very foundations of the cosmology, being much more concerned with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the work than with the narratives themselves. He had developed doubts about some of the fundamental aspects of the legendarium, which caused him to rethink the earliest versions of the stories. Apparently, he felt compelled to solve these problems before he could produce the "final" version of The Silmarillion. In an attempt to work out his problems, Tolkien wrote extensively on such topics as the nature of evil in Arda (Middle-earth), the origin of Orcs, the traditions of the Elves, the nature and means of Elvish rebirth, the flat world idea, and the story of the Sun and Moon. However, with one or two exceptions, he wrought little change to the narratives during the remaining years of his life (Tolkien

Morgoth’s Ring forward).

At Tolkien’s death in 1973, the mythology consisted of huge piles of manuscripts or typescript versions of the individual stories. How all these stories fit together (if they actually did) comprised a nearly impossible puzzle, with no clear indication as to the final version of the stories, the canon of the “Silmarillion,” or the presentation frame. As the literary executor of Tolkien’s estate, Christopher Tolkien began the Herculean task of going through the manuscripts (with the assistance of writer Guy Kay) to attempt to piece together a continuous narrative from the heap for publication. The Silmarillion, as published in 1977, thus became a “compendious work not only in fiction but also in fact”

(Preface). In the preface, Christopher Tolkien described his work as “selecting and

Keuthan 11 arranging,” but as not all the relevant manuscripts were available or known to him at the time, the 1977 text still might not in all details represent Tolkien’s “last intentions.”

From 1984 to 1996, in twelve volumes called The History of Middle-earth,

Christopher Tolkien compiled in a scholarly and detailed fashion the creative work of more than half a century of his father’s work on the mythology. With the exception of

Volumes Six, Seven, and Eight, and the first half of Volume Nine, which deal with the history of The Lord of the Rings, the series presents earlier texts and various versions of the “Silmarillion” stories from the late 1910s to Tolkien’s death. The texts available in

The History of Middle-earth volumes make an enormous contribution toward the study of how Tolkien created and envisaged this extraordinarily complex structure of stories and make a more complete evaluation of the legendarium tradition possible (Nagy 610). On the tangled provenance of the legendarium, more detailed accounts are available in The

Road to Middle-earth by Tom Shippey (223–27).

The Idea of Evil

A panoply of Christian scholars, including Ralph C. Wood, Jane Chance,

Stratford Caldecott, and Joseph Pearce, have all stated that Tolkien's fiction conveys a picture of evil that illustrates and embodies the author’s Christian worldview, and it is in certain critical respects consistent with the Augustinian understanding of the nature of evil. Since Tolkien was by scholarship, and by choice, a medievalist and an enthusiast of ancient Northern European literature, in addition to being a devout Catholic, the writings and ideas of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas become highly germane.

Tolkien's interpretation of the nature of evil rests on an emphasis of the doctrine of Free

Will as the ultimate and temporal progenitor of evil, and on the nature of evil as privatio

Keuthan 12 boni (Davis 78). Privatio Boni can be loosely translated as "privation of good."

Augustine proposed a theological doctrine that good and evil are asymmetrical. More profoundly, he theorizes that evil is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading; it would be more constructive to speak only of evil as the lack of good.

Augustine wrote:

And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated

and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we

enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the

Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme

power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit

the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so

omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is

that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals,

disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a

cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—

namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell

elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a

substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance, —the flesh itself being a

substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is,

privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the

same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of

natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred

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elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist

anywhere else. (Enchiridion chap.5)

The manifestation of these ideas is myriad in Tolkien’s myth-world and was wrestled with in the construction of the legendarium. A fuller examination, copious illustration, and unique Tolkienian synthesis are forthcoming; in the case of the latter, Tolkien’s creation and use of “eucatastrophe” finds its exact provenance in the above Augustinian doctrine.

Tolkien’s legendarium provides the contextual prehistory for The Lord of the

Rings and is labeled a "unique, personal creation" and a "vast cycle of personal mythology" (qtd. in Davis 81). Because it is Tolkien's personal myth, the stories in his legendarium can be seen as communicating in fictive form his understanding of evil.

And because this thematic, theological communication is foundational, what Tolkien is trying to say about evil becomes essential to the picture of evil as it arises throughout all of his work (81). Tolkien’s mythological legendarium spins out a centuries-long story of the struggle of free creatures in the face of temptation and treachery by the powers of evil, personified repeatedly in the form of Melkor (later called Morgoth), and later still by his lieutenant Sauron. Woven into all the narratives, "Tolkien asserts that there is an absolute (read Augustinian) difference between good and evil" (Miller 55).

The origin of evil begins in the creation myth. One of the highest and most powerful Ainur, the aforementioned Melkor, as the harmonious music of creation is being sung by the other Valar, suddenly began injecting into the symphony "matters of his own imagining" which were “not in accord with the theme of the Ilúvatar" (Tolkien

Silmarillion 8). Melkor’s divergence results in discord and despair and the "Great

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Music" falters. No explanation for Melkor's behavior is offered; he simply chooses to rebel. The rest of the myth chronicles a story of the degradation, treachery, and tragedy brought upon Middle-earth by Melkor as a result of his unexplained anger, rebellion, and jealousy.

Tolkien explains in a letter that the fall of the Elves comes about because of the overly possessive motivation of Elves such as Fёanor and his sons for the silmarils. The enemy Morgoth (formerly called Melkor) uses this weakness to steal the gems, thus setting in motion millennia of strife, death, and betrayal — just the evil he was hoping to produce. The Elves defy even the Valar’s claim on the stones and wage centuries of self- destructive war upon Morgoth in an effort to recapture the silmarili. "The first fruit of their fall is war in Paradise, and the slaying of Elves by Elves, and this...dogs all their later heroism, generating treacheries and undoing all their victories" (Letters 148).

An important aspect of Tolkien's communication of evil is its insidiousness. Once evil begins its work, it has a lasting, subtle effect, which always culminates in tragedy, as per the schemes of the enemy. Concerning Morgoth's eventual defeat, Tolkien writes:

Yet the seeds that he planted still grew and sprouted, bearing evil fruit, if

any would tend to them. For his will remained and guided his servants,

moving them ever to thwart the will of the Valar and to destroy those that

obeyed them. (Tolkien Silmarillion 320)

Concerning the Enemy's perpetual influence on men in the Second Age of The

Silmarillion, Tolkien writes that even though Morgoth is imprisoned in the Timeless

Void, “... the lies that he sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not

Keuthan 15 die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days” (315).

The theological basis for evil, then, in Tolkien’s fiction is grounded in the significance of the Fall of Man. In fact, he sees the concept of the Fall of Man as central to any story with human relevance. The Fall of Man is both a historical, theological fact and a profoundly effective archetypal motif (Davis 89), as Tolkien explains in a letter:

... long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must

always reappear. There cannot be any "story" without a fall — all stories

are ultimately about the fall — at least not for human minds as we know

them and have them. (Letters 147)

Aspects of Tolkien's use of the Fall of Man are pertinent to understanding how he uses that event to comment on evil. The first of these is his absolute adherence to the free choice of evil. When Melkor conceived "matters of his own imagining," the free will sin of pride rises. Melkor exhibits "the idolatry of one's own beauty rather than the humility of seeing it within God's order" (Rogers 84). Ilúvatar does nothing to stop Melkor's free will choice toward rebellion in those first critical moments of the creation myth, thus irrevocably setting in place in Tolkien's universe the unquestioned ability of any of his imagined beings to make any choice for or against him, and for or against evil as per the absolute standard of free will. However, Tolkien doesn't actually address or replicate in any manner the Biblical Fall anywhere in his legendarium. According to Rogers,

As a believer, Tolkien does not go head-to-head with the Bible on any

point. The origin of the human race and the coming of the evil to that race

(Original Sin), for instance, are perfectly well covered in Genesis. But on

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matters where the Bible leaves vague, Tolkien's mythopoeic urge cried out

for light in the void. (79)

This might explain why the original fall of man is not addressed in any of The

Silmarillion’s Edenic stories.

So, the aspect of Free Will is an important part of Tolkien's theological understanding of sin and the Fall where it coincides with the Augustinian understanding of evil. For Augustine, the ultimate cause of evil is "an evil will" (On Free Will 3.17.48).

According to Tolkien, then, all evil originates from "the wrong choices of free rational beings" (Hick 65). The suffering, which the creation undergoes, results from Ilúvatar’s

(read God’s) “just judgment” on these wrong choices made as a result of free will

(Augustine Confessions 7.3.5). Tolkien confirms these convictions in a letter where he states that his emphasis on the Fall results from "misused Free Will" (Letters 194). Each successive fall in the stories of the legendarium, first by Melkor (and later Morgoth), then the Elf, and finally men, is the inevitable outcome of a free choice by some rational creature against the known and universally accepted ultimate good (Davis 98).

Crabbe proposes that Tolkien's Ilúvatar, like the Christian God, is the "source of all creation and yet is not responsible for the presence of evil" (131). Tolkien resolves this paradox by adhering to the Augustinian view of free will, thus indicating his acceptance of the power of the free will doctrine to explain the origin and perpetuation of evil in his tales.

The reader can see at this point that Tolkien permeates almost every story of his myth with his struggle to understand and communicate the nature of evil. In fact, I will contend as a major tenant of this project that Tolkien’s desire to communicate his

Keuthan 17 theological understanding of the nature of evil is the most important quality of his narratives. This project will argue that Tolkien acquired a keen understanding of the nature of evil and that he constructed his legendarium specifically in order to communicate in mythic narrative form a theological understanding of the nature of evil.

To be able to see his understanding of evil, we shall have to examine The Silmarillion with the appropriate theological and theoretical tools.

Theory and Theology

According to Martin and Ostwalt, the character of a narrative is intrinsically religious because the listener (in the case of Tolkien’s beloved Beowulf tradition of oral storytelling) or the reader (obviously in the case of his fiction) is taken to a place beyond typical daily life and given reasons or explanations for things that may take place in his or her own life – gentle epiphanies, if you will. Becoming immersed into Tolkien’s mythic world leads the reader into the realm of the sacred and in turn exposes the subconscious to the supernatural or sacred (3–6). Narrative of Tolkien’s caliber is unique in this ability.

Walter Fisher proposes the compelling idea that narrative is a tool of persuasion universally used by humans in all discourse. Humans evaluate communication as narratives based on narrative probability and fidelity (Stroud 416). According to Fisher, narrative probability is the “structure of a story:” the way thoughts are placed together and/or ordered. A reader/listener makes judgments on probability based on the way a story exhibits unity and coherence and whether a story contains contradictions or feels unbelievable (Human Communication 146–54). A reader/listener, then, develops narrative expectations in the first few pages (or minutes) of a story based on the

Keuthan 18 placement and order of certain story elements. Fisher reasons, “narrative fidelity involves truth qualities and logical reasoning” (Stroud 422). Readers/listeners make judgments on a narrative's fidelity based on how well the story corresponds with other stories believed by them to be true from their life, experience, and education (423).

The focus of this study, then, is to employ an analysis of the way in which

Tolkien used narrative to convey his ideas and convictions about the nature of evil in the world and as it is perpetuated in mankind. Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) is an effective lens through which we may examine Tolkien’s use of narrative as a universally human method of indirectly communicating truth. Tolkien is, as we shall see through the Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) lens, especially astute, yea even gifted, at utilizing the ancient human tradition of oral storytelling myths to communicate a disturbing, compelling understanding of evil.

Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) further proposes that narratives bring the reader/listener to a consideration of morals and ethics in human behavior (“Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm” 19). Christianity has traditionally also relied greatly on the innate power of narrative to transmit its messages and lessons. To whit, the Holy Bible has been viewed by narrative theology scholars, such as Stanley Hauerwas and Sallie McFague, as a collection of narratives that act as a guide for human behavior and actually communicate theology. Therefore, this project proposes that Tolkien’s narratives have the effect of communicating a Biblical message functioning to persuade the reader to understand certain theological ideas. As Tolkien well knew from his own meticulous research, the act of telling a story can be a form of persuasion; so using elements of narrative criticism is appropriate to analyze Tolkien’s fiction.

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Finally, Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) states that people are constantly sending and receiving messages through narratives. Additionally, people choose the narratives they want to believe. I maintain that one of the reasons Tolkien’s stories have so resonated with tens of millions of readers and film goers is because they both attack and support fundamental human beliefs, in much the same way as Biblical parables communicate the “kingdom of God” wrapped in a deceptively simple story of everyday life. The stories challenge established doctrines of evil in a logical way because

Tolkien painstakingly wrote stories that persuade the reader to re-evaluate his or her personal beliefs about of the nature of evil. An astute and culturally savvy, media- consuming population affects an artifact’s, such as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or

Jackson’s film adaptations of that novel, rhetorical function. Audiences' demands for probability and fidelity change somewhat over time and so, usually, must the packaging of a narrative. However, in the particular case of Tolkien, skillfully wrought mythic elements contained in a collection of narratives, such as The Silmarillion, will, and have, continue to resonate with a wide ranging world audience (Stroud 439).

One might naturally assume at this point that this project will utilize the considerable research that has been done to construct Myth/Archetype Theory, as per the work of Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell. However, consider that the thrust of this project is to examine three artifacts – the three stories from Tolkien’s myth legendarium mentioned above — to begin to understand Tolkien's conveyance of the nature of evil.

Myth is the vehicle Tolkien believed he could most effectively use to communicate the truth, as he understood it, about the nature of evil, and his over-arching life work on the

Middle-earth legends facilitated that exploration and communication. Indeed, Tolkien

Keuthan 20 scrupulously studied many northern European myths and legends with the intent of emulating that type of writing specifically because he believed that all cultures, across all times have constructed myths for the intended purpose of conveying truth. I realize that that statement aligns with Campbell’s concept of the universal “monomyth;” however, this study is not about archetypal characters, or myths as a particular structure per se, so

Frye and Campbell will not be useful.

Fisher's Narrative Paradigm Theory has not been without its detractors. In 1985, when Walter Fisher published his landmark essay “Narration as a Human

Communication Paradigm,” the essay invoked some criticism. The main criticisms against Fisher's ideas have included: that not all human discourse takes the story form; that Fisher hasn't specified how critics make choices as to what to stress: narrative probability or fidelity; that Fisher hasn't provided criteria and/or standards for testing narrative probability; that the critic becomes "a standard unto himself;" that traditional rationality, what Fisher calls the Rational World Paradigm, is “subsumed” with little to replace it; and that the storyteller as expert overshadows the notion of expert witnesses

(Wood 111–14). As recently as 2008, however, examinations of Fisher’s NPT have been conducted to assess theory’s continued use in cross-disciplinary research and thought.

Josh Hanan’s paper, “The Continued Importance of Walter Fisher's Narrative Paradigm:

An Analysis of Fisher's Extant Work,” delivered at the National Communication

Association’s annual gathering, delineated NPT’s ongoing usefulness and importance in communication studies. His paper analyzes the majority of literature currently available which discusses Walter Fisher's Narrative paradigm. Then, his essay concludes that most of the criticisms directed at the narrative paradigm are concerned with its methodological

Keuthan 21 usefulness and thus fail to meet Fisher on an equal playing ground, that of the paradigm itself. The essay advocates (as do I) a renewed exploration of Fisher’s theory and a more rigorous expansion of its application into other media especially film and television (par.

1).

Frankly, the specifics of individual criticisms and objections to Fisher’s theory do not detract from its usefulness to the investigation at hand. If the main tenants of the

Narrative Paradigm are true: that humans make order out of chaos through the formation of narratives and that humans universally across all cultures tell stories to impart truth, then NPT is highly applicable and useful as an examination tool to the life and fiction of

J. R. R. Tolkien. If even in some small degree humans communicate and receive communication in the form of narratives, then Fisher's Narrative Paradigm is a good fit for a critical examination of Tolkien's work.

Fisher states in his above-mentioned 1985 essay that he was inspired by a series of concepts and ideas proposed by Biblical theologians. He makes specific reference to

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, published in 1981, as the catalyst for his idea of the narrative paradigm. Fisher significantly quotes MacIntyre’s now infamous statement regarding the narrative character of man: “Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal” (“Narration” 1).

MacIntyre was writing in a tradition now known as Narrative Theology.

The root figures in the development of narrative theology are Karl Barth and H.

Richard Niebuhr. Both Barth and Niebuhr were dissatisfied with the Enlightenment's emphasis on “isolated, objective facts that seemed to privilege science and marginalize theology” (Jones par. 2). They turned, instead, to the significance of narrative as a way

Keuthan 22 of expounding theological convictions. The major ideas begun by Barth and Niebuhr provide for this investigation the theological groundwork that strongly underpins

Tolkien's work. Namely, narrative theology proposes to stand against Enlightenment rationality as a means of logical communication; imparting truth through ‘story’ puts this project in line with Tolkien's way of thinking (pars. 2–5). Tolkien did not want to be regarded as a modernist; he eschewed at every turn Enlightenment rationalist dogma as the most effective means of human communication. Tolkien, in fact, is aligned with narrative theology in two important ways: first, he believed, like Barth, that the Holy

Scripture should be considered as a narrative — as the narrative of humankind, the narrative upon which all other narratives are built. As such, all of Tolkien’s narratives are constructed as a reflection of the Holy Scriptures as a narrative, especially the Gospel narrative. This becomes remarkably obvious when one begins to look at Tolkien's creation myth in The Silmarillion. Second, he believed, like Niebuhr, that certain truths of Scripture could only be communicated, received, and understood through narrative.

Scholars, such as Sallie McFague, adhering to this tenant cite Jesus’ use of parables as a way to impart to the unlearned masses the deep, complex, and universal truths of God through simple stories. Tolkien repeatedly stated in his letters (73, 131) that he believed that the human heart must gather universal truth by “experiencing” a narrative.

Stephen Crites seminal essay “The Narrative Quality of Experience” has applied phenomenological philosophy to argue that there is a fundamentally “narrative quality of experience” (297). As specifically useful to this project, narrative theory has generated a widespread interest among Biblical scholars, both for the reading of specific passages and for the analysis of entire books of the Holy Bible. This line of inquiry reveals its own

Keuthan 23 wide range of interests, competencies, and proposals, ranging from the theological arguments of Eric Auerbach and Robert Alter, through the literary critical thinking of

Northrop Frye, to the social science work of Jacques Derrida and Fredric Jameson (Jones par.8). Partly because narrative theology is applicable in so many different disciplines and partly because narrative theology is still being explored in these different disciplines, the critical opposition to its major tenants does not keep it from being highly useful for the purpose of understanding Tolkien's work.

“If Paul Tillich is a borderline thinker, bridging philosophy and theology, then

Sallie McFague is a borderline thinker spanning theology and literature” (Wildman par.

3). McFague's work, in fact, will become critically important to this project. She effectively marries a thorough understanding of Biblical theology with a great love and respect for literature. A brief understanding of at least two aspects of McFague and theology are preliminarily important. First, “theology is to be carried out in service of the hearing of God's word” (par. 6). Here is where the theology of Karl Barth most strongly influences McFague's work. McFague believes that if theology fails in its mandate to make possible for all the hearing of God's word or, worse, if it inhibits that hearing, then it is not truly theology and has lost its reason for being. Second, in her doctoral work, entitled Literature and the Christian Life, McFague attempted to explain "the complex, tenuous relation which exists between theology and literature in a way which compromised the integrity and unique character of neither” (par. 7). Her doctoral work is richly informed by Eric Auerbach's Mimesis, which led to her further work, called

Speaking in Parables, in which she proposes a next developmental step beyond Fisher: not only do humans naturally think in narrative constructs, according to McFague,

Keuthan 24 humans also naturally think metaphorically. Metaphorical thinking is what allows the parables to impart to the reader/listener a special kind of theological knowledge. This project will make extensive use of McFague's ideas, as it is my firm conviction that

Tolkien's work is highly parabolic. McFague is further convinced, along with

Wittgenstein and other philosophers, that ‘humanness’ is intrinsically defined by the adoption, development, and use of language. According to McFague, at the very heart of human knowing and communication is the metaphorical thinking which is a form of knowing. Metaphor is not just a useful literary device which adds color and cleverness to the writing; rather, metaphors are "irreducible ways of knowing; they bring understanding and thus knowledge which could be had by no other means in precisely the same way" (par. 9). Here, McFague is also in agreement with Paul Ricoeur (cf. Ricoeur’s ideas about myth and symbol) that metaphor is undeniably powerful in communicating a unique brand of knowledge (par. 9).

The first reason that McFague's Metaphorical Theology will be useful for this project is that she bases her ideas on “models” in theology, undergirded by “root metaphors,” and functioning within standard storytelling paradigms. For example, the root metaphor of "Christ as the parable of God" constructs a model of God as a loving friend. It is McFague’s contention to allow Metaphorical Theology to be somewhat systematic and yet emphasize the content and form of the colloquial language of religious experience (par. 12). The second reason that McFague's Metaphorical Theology will be useful for this project involves her insights into the Biblical tradition, namely her belief that the parable is the chief literary genre of the New Testament. McFague proposes that parables are extended metaphors, examples of ordinary language, people, and situations

Keuthan 25 used to reveal insight into spiritual mysteries. Her ideas are clearly connectable and applicable to an examination of Tolkien's work, which could easily be verified as extended metaphors — undoubtedly his stories bring insight into the strange and significant. And the third reason that McFague's Metaphorical Theology is useful for this project concerns her admonition that we locate suitable sources for new metaphors of

Christian theology in literature written by authors like Dante, C. S. Lewis, Flannery

O'Connor, and Tolkien. In her book, Speaking in Parables, she especially draws attention to the literary form of myth, which she says utilizes the "language of coming to belief."

In fact, she chooses as a specific example to illustrate this point a critical examination of

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (par. 14).

It should be apparent by this point that McFague's Metaphorical Theology should provide a model for melding narrative theology with literary criticism. The fact that she advocates literary criticism within accepted procedural analysis paradigms also makes her a natural fit for joining together her ideas with Walter Fisher's Narrative Paradigm. Thus, we arrive at a theoretical framework within the theories of Walter Fisher and a theological framework within the ideas of Sallie McFague's narrative theology.

Application of Theory and Criticism

According to Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, audiences evaluate a narrative based on “good reasons” for beliefs and actions (“Narration” 9). Fisher’s theory suggests these reasons are reached using the standards of narrative probability and fidelity. Narrative probability is concerned with the perceived legitimacy of the story and its lack of contradictions. In other words, does the story exhibit a high degree of coherence?

Narrative fidelity reflects audience judgment as to whether the story could be true. The

Keuthan 26 narrative, to be persuasive, must be highly probable in the reasoning of the audience and connect with their life values. In other words, the narrative must resonate with pre- existing beliefs that an audience holds (10–14). Audience values are key, as these connect Fisher’s paradigm to Narrative Theology.

For reasons to be considered “good reasons,” they must be four-fold: First, reasons must be consistent with ideas an audience believes to be true. Second, solutions and situations contained within a narrative must be appropriate to the dilemma depicted in the narrative. Third, the narrative must promise certain effects for the audience. And fourth, the narrative must be consistent with audience values for conduct (Fisher

Narration 106,107). The three stories of mythic fiction selected for this investigation encourage particular actions and beliefs, thus reading the three legendarium stories invites the reader to participation in faith. Based on Tolkien’s considerable rhetorical skill, especially in the particularly difficult genre of myth, readers are persuaded to respond by adopting beliefs and values portrayed in his fiction. Writers of Tolkien’s skill level, passion, and convictions who appeal to a reader’s wants, needs, and values will likely have the greatest success in achieving their rhetorical goals and in turn experience greater reader response and critical artistic success (Stroud 56–58).

The germane biographical events that occurred in Tolkien’s World War I experience will be identified and analyzed. Historically, life-altering biographical events provide compelling provenance to literary texts; Tolkien’s own life narrative flows intellectually (not autobiographically) into the text of the three legendarium stories. The significant biographical events demonstrate that meanings exist within the narratives' fidelity. Since these events can be roughly traced to images, scenes, and ideas in

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Tolkien’s fiction, the biographical events correspond with the reader's prior knowledge of the life of Tolkien (58–61).

The narratives and theologies of St. Augustine of Hippo will be applied to the theological analysis in order to make connections between Tolkien’s beloved Catholic medieval theology and his theological representation of evil in three legendarium stories.

In the particular case of Augustine’s Confessions, for example, the practical workings of

Narrative Theology become exemplary. In addition, the unique medieval and postmodern qualities of evil, which stand in an odd dialectical literary tension with one another, are analyzed in the selected works to be examined from The Silmarillion. Due to the several radical changes in Tolkien’s life, his theological development, and his personal faith convictions, the way in which he depicted evil in his fiction has caused scholars to reconsider his grand narrative and its portrayal of characters in the telling of

Tolkien’s Grand Myth. This is due almost entirely to the publication of more and more of Tolkien’s drafts, letters, and other unfinished stories by his son Christopher, the most important of these publications being the massive compendium The History of Middle- earth. As previously stated, a model formula for theological/rhetorical success does not exist; therefore, perceptions of the fantasy genre (as Tolkien described his understanding of the term ‘fantasy’ in “On Fairy Stories”) have evolved to adapt to the changing expectations of probability and fidelity in a reader. A reader and/or film viewer can see theological rationale for personal behavior within characters with whom they identify in the narrative (Fisher 124–30; Stroud 63–68).

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MAJOR INFLUENCES

The complexity and meaning of Tolkien's fiction in The Silmarillion, if we adhere to the theories of Walter Fisher in seeing our life as a narrative, can only be ascertained in the context of the events, people, education, and convictions of Tolkien's own life narrative. I assert that four major influences consistently affect the creation and meaning of Tolkien's vision. First, as is widely understood from the writings of Joseph Pierce,

Verlyn Flieger, Ralph C. Wood, Humphrey Carpenter, and many others, Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic; therefore, the biographical events of his childhood in the acquisition of and adherence to Catholicism qualify as a major influence on Tolkien's life and writings. Biographers, especially quintessential biographer Humphrey Carpenter, have described the traumatic circumstances of Tolkien's childhood which begat his lifelong devotion to Catholicism. This project shall selectively examine those circumstances.

Second, according to the thorough and compelling work of biographer John Garth in his book Tolkien and the Great War, Tolkien's experiences in World War I had a critically important effect on the genesis of his mythology, particularly as it pertains to the representation of evil. Garth's work, as well as the canonical Tom Shippey’s in The

Road to Middle-earth, explains in astute detail the events and experiences Tolkien endured to produce the first stories, thus solidifying a direct correlation between Tolkien's war experiences and the genesis infusion of evil into his poetry and fiction. Chapter Two will expand this discussion.

Third, Tolkien's life was blessed with a number of significant personal relationships. This project shall examine some of those relationships as they pertain to

Keuthan 29 their effect on his development of the legendarium and its themes of evil. The most important of those relationships is, of course, with his wife Edith, who was the direct inspiration for many of the legendarium's stories, namely and especially "The Tale of

Beren and Lúthien" which shall be examined in Chapter Four. The friends that Tolkien made as he was attending King Edward school became a tight-knit cadre called the Tea

Club and Barrovian Society (T.C.B.S). According to biographers Humphrey Carpenter,

Daniel Grotta-Kurska, and John Garth, Tolkien's relationship to these men was profound, intellectual, and spiritual, so that when half of them were killed in the war, the devastating effect of their loss found its way into his writing. This project will establish that correlation by an examination of what knit these men together before the war and their poignant letters to one another during the war, which constituted for Tolkien a veritable mandate to write great mythological fiction in order to fulfill the potential of the lost men of the T.C.B.S. Then of course, Tolkien's friendship with the Inklings, especially C. S. Lewis, also had a profound effect on his writing. As has been documented by many biographers, including Humphrey Carpenter's book The Inklings,

Tolkien wrestled with Lewis as with no other human being on the moral, spiritual, and literary conundrum of representing evil in one's writings. Lewis’ influence on Tolkien's construction of the significance of the One Ring and how it portrayed evil cannot be overstated. The resulting re-work on certain stories in the legendarium, namely “The

Tale of Beren and Lúthien" can also be attributed to Tolkien's relationship to Lewis and will be further examined in Chapter Four.

Finally, perhaps the strongest influence on Tolkien's writing comes from his fascination and love, even from his earliest childhood, of ancient and medieval northern

Keuthan 30

European literature. While I will propose that Tolkien was especially gifted in the philological arts, he was, nevertheless, for some reason especially drawn to the languages of Germanic root, to whit, Old Finnish, Old High German (Gothic), Icelandic, and even some Celtic. So, in his sophomore year of undergraduate studies at Oxford, when he was advised to give up his study of the Classics and switch instead to English literature,

Tolkien was able to dive headlong into the literature and languages so dear to him.

Literary critics and Tolkien scholars, particularly Tom Shippey, have drawn the connections between the ancient literature Tolkien was studying and its place in the literature he was writing; we shall not duplicate that here. What this project shall do, however, is extract from the scholarship the particular relationship between the ancient northern European literature, its evil characters, themes, and events, and where some of these same ideas are translated to the three original legendarium stories. Through all of

Tolkien's life, he fervently studied the literature produced, as he said in his Beowulf lecture, "under our northern sky," and he believed that he could emulate the qualities of this literature in the mythology he was writing.

As Chapters Two, Three, and Four tell the story of Tolkien's writing of the three original legendarium stories and of the events which seem to indicate a significant forward movement in his understanding of the nature of evil, I will insert into the discussion the applicable influences discussed above where apropos.

Given the project organization suggested above, the organization of the Review of

Literature suggests itself naturally. The subheadings to follow will indicate a discussion of the reviewed literature in nearly the same order as the chapters of the project. First, sources that address Tolkien’s biography are delineated, as well as the sources that

Keuthan 31 explore his experiences in World War I. As per the discussion of Tolkien as a young academic delivering his first really important lecture, the next section will cover the scholars who discuss “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Then, because we will be exploring Tolkien’s experiences as a successful published author, the next section will discuss sources useful for the chapter on The Lord of the Rings. Finally, as the entire project is an investigation of the three foundational stories from The Silmarillion, the concluding sections will cover sources on said work of fiction and the Narrative

Theology and Narrative Theory scholars applicable therein.

REVIEW OF PERTINENT LITERATURE

Scholarship and other writings on Tolkien and his works have been prolific almost from the beginning of his career. For the purposes of this investigation, a review of the literature will concentrate in a few specific areas. Additionally, presentation of the literature reviewed will follow the proposed order of the argument of this investigation: a chronological consideration of Tolkien's life and work on the myth legendarium and what it has to say about evil. Then, to realize the effect of Tolkien’s work on The Silmarillion, we will briefly identify certain pieces of writing which obviously exhibit said effect, especially and specifically those works which have something to say about evil. The secondary examination will start with Tolkien’s experiences in World War I (1916–

1918), then skip forward to the event of his delivering the Beowulf lecture (1937), then finally jump forward to the publication of The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955). As an over-arching criteria, the scholarship which addresses the well-worn topic of good versus evil in Tolkien literature will be carefully culled to include only what is germane to the issues at hand, that is, the question of Tolkien’s understanding of the nature of evil only.

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Section One of the review will include biographical scholarship, particularly pertaining to

Tolkien's experiences in World War I, in order to support the contention that Tolkien’s serious consideration of the nature of evil began during his service in the war and to establish the provenance of the legendarium and, specifically, the three stories he wrote first. Section Two will review literature pertaining to Tolkien's lecture/essay entitled

"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Section Three will cover the sizable amount of writings devoted to scholars discussing The Lord of the Rings, again, as it pertains solely to our study of evil. Section Four will contain literature devoted to attempting to make some sense out of the myth legendarium writ large, and the three stories that form the focus of this project – “The Fall of Gondolin,” Children of Húrin, and “The Tale of Beren and Lúthien.” Included in the literature review, as the issue of evil is a particularly theological one where Tolkien is concerned, scholarship addressing Tolkien's intersection with St. Augustine of Hippo will be especially useful. Additional works by narrative theologians, narrative theorists and biographers will be included as well, as per the above criteria.

Biographical Literature

Tolkien did not grant many interviews until rather late in his life and not until after The Lord of the Rings had been published and had become a huge success, preferring instead the quiet life of his hobbits. In an interview published in 1966 as

“Tolkien on Tolkien," the author gives a lively account of Tolkien’s life and explains his reasons for writing as he does. This particular interview contains commentary that speaks directly to the issue of how his early life experiences informed his ideas about evil.

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In 1977, Humphrey Carpenter published Tolkien: A Biography. Carefully researched, it became the basis for all later biographies, though later scholars have corrected him on some points. Carpenter’s authorized biography provides detailed accounts of Tolkien's life, his personal and professional relationships, and his working habits. Carpenter had family permission to use Tolkien's letters, diaries, and their personal reminiscences. This biography is as much a look inside Tolkien's literary mind as a look at his life, and one of the most fascinating aspects of this work is that the reader is able to follow the development of Tolkien's creative genius and see the very elements that inspired him to write his three most well-known masterpieces: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Carpenter was able to meet personally with Tolkien before his death and talk with many of Tolkien's friends and family. Because of this,

Carpenter is able to present an unusually accurate, extremely reliable, and intensely personal biography. He is objective with his subject and treats Tolkien neither as a demigod nor an eccentric old man. The man who created Middle-earth was, by his own admission, rather like a hobbit himself, and Carpenter captures this well.

In addition to a biography of Tolkien, Carpenter was able to publish in 1981 a collection of Tolkien’s letters. For scholars of Tolkien’s stories, The Letters of J. R. R.

Tolkien ‘‘is a trove worthy of protection by one of his dragons’’ (Bruckner 7). Before

Letters was published, more than forty of Tolkien’s letters had appeared in books, newspapers, fan magazines, and, increasingly after Tolkien’s death, in auction catalogues

(Hammond 353–61). Some of these are republished in Letters, but most of the collection was previously unknown. Carpenter, assisted by Tolkien’s son Christopher, selected 354 letters from thousands he had read while researching Tolkien’s biography. While

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Carpenter’s selection of letters emphasizes the best-known works, there are also “fresh insights into everything Tolkien ever wrote” (Johnson 134–35). Many of these insights are achieved by Tolkien himself, commenting on his intentions, his methods, and even his mistakes.

A closer scrutiny of Tolkien’s enigmatic and mysterious legendarium was just barely underway when these letters appeared in print and provided researchers desperately needed clarification, analysis, and authorial intent by the author himself. The collection’s first letter, a long letter of 1951 to a potential publisher, meticulously summarizes the story of the entire legendarium that Christopher published as The

Silmarillion. The letter relates how Tolkien’s love of language and fairy stories inspired him to create a collection of legends possessed of “fair elusive beauty,” how The Hobbit was the mythology’s “mode of descent to earth” that led to The Lord of the Rings, and how the whole of his work “is mainly concerned with the Fall, Mortality and the

Machine” (143–61).

Letters is “vital to understanding Tolkien’s creativity” (Bratman 74–75), but for the purposes of this investigation, Tolkien's letters provide poignant evidence that the consideration of evil weighed heavily on his mind through the years. Consider this comment, from a letter written in the trenches in France in 1916: "that the T.C.B.S. was destined to testify for God and Truth in a more direct way even than by laying down its several lives in this war (which is for all the evil of our own side with large view good against evil)" (Letters 14). And then during World War II, Tolkien wrote to his son

Christopher the following:

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I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery

all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting,

wasting an unprofitable days — quite apart from torture, pain, death,

bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this

benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded

from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be

mainly evil — historically considered. (87)

Until more of his private papers are released, Letters is the best substitute for a Tolkien autobiography. One cannot overstate the usefulness of Tolkien’s letters as a primary source commentary on his own work.

In 1978 Daniel Grotta-Kurska published J. R. R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle

Earth. This biography includes the obligatory personal anecdotes, the facts of Tolkien's life, and descriptions of his surroundings, as well as historical details of his family background. This author also traces many characters and events in The Hobbit and The

Lord of the Rings to characters and events in Tolkien's life. Grotta-Kurska describes nineteenth and twentieth century British life in order to provide readers with a contextual background. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this biography is that it includes reminiscences from colleagues at Leeds and Oxford and quotations from previously unpublished letters.

Tolkien famously balked at the idea of a biography, but J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century is probably closest to what he would have agreed, since he believed that the best way to get a look inside an author's life was to examine his works. And Thomas A.

Shippey, as Tolkien's successor at Oxford, in a very real sense "speaks the language" that

Keuthan 36

Tolkien spoke. Shippey, an expert on Old English literature himself, has written a critical appreciation of Tolkien beyond the mere popular perception of him as the creator of The

Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The subtitle refers to Tolkien's unique ability to delve into prominent concerns of the twentieth century, such as evil, religion, and immortality, in stories that at first glance seem to be mere fantasy. Having taught the same Old English syllabus at Oxford that his subject once did, Shippey is especially well qualified to discuss Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon sources, notably Beowulf. Shippey also provides some of the first truly qualified commentary on The Silmarillion, as well as the shorter poems and stories. He convincingly argues that Tolkien deserves to be ranked as a major literary figure and proffers arguably the seminal criticism and analysis of

Tolkien's major works, uniquely blending biographical content with critical analysis.

However, not all critics are in agreement with Shippey’s assessment of Tolkien as it pertains to this project’s questions of evil. In a series of lectures delivered at Regent

College, Ralph C. Wood states forthrightly, “Shippey gets Tolkien dead wrong on his understanding of the nature of evil” (Gospel audio recording), a contention that shall be explored more fully in a later chapter.

Among the essential works of Tolkien criticism, Tom Shippey’s The Road to

Middle-earth remains the gold standard against which all other works of criticism must be judged. Shippey first demonstrates the deep interconnections between Tolkien’s obsessive work as a philologist and his mythic world-building, and he shows how, for example, difficult passages in works like Beowulf, passages whose interpretation is disputed or unclear, were often the catalyst for Tolkien’s creative imagination. Despite having published Road before Christopher Tolkien’s twelve-volume The History of

Keuthan 37

Middle-earth, Shippey’s analysis and conclusions have for the most part remained intact.

Ralph Wood further surmises that:

…perhaps in reaction to hyper-Christian readings of The Lord of the

Rings, Shippey makes Tolkien's Catholic Christianity a secondary rather

than a primary motive for his literary and philological pursuits. Yet one

need not be a relentless Christianizer of Tolkien's imaginative and

linguistic work to discern that "the identity of man and nature" is a claim

intrinsic to what Catholics call "natural theology"— the conviction, drawn

chiefly from St. Thomas Aquinas, that the human and the natural are

deeply “co-inherent,” and thus that the entire universe is a deep reflection

of its Maker and Redeemer. (“Recent” 588)

This indelible connection between “Creator and created, the Namer and named” (588), left over from the relationship lost with the Fall of Man also explains Tolkien's deep love for all things begot of nature and becomes a significant consideration in this project’s examination of evil.

According to Wood, however, while nearly everything else in Shippey's Road is solid analysis, he seriously misreads Tolkien's conception of evil. On the one hand,

Shippey rightly discerns Tolkien's debt to St. Augustine's revolutionary insight that evil is privatio boni, the privation or absence of true being, the perversion or corruption of the good. Since goodness and being are equivalent, no completely evil thing can exist. Not even Morgoth or Sauron were evil in the beginning. And the Orcs, as Shippey points out, have an elementary conception of fairness, although of course "they are comically unable to apply it to themselves" (Road 370). On the other hand, Shippey charges that

Keuthan 38

Augustinian doctrine reduces evil to “innocuous if not unreal by casting it in negative terms — as a turning away from the larger to the lesser good, as a worshiping of the creation rather than the Creator, and thus as something perhaps more harmful to the malefactor than to the victim" (142). Augustine, however, like Tolkien, “makes evil all the more monstrous and destructive by granting it no proper basis, no logical existence, no explicable source” (Wood, “Recent” 590). In other words, evil has no traceable origin, no last substance, and no true power to defeat its host, without destroying itself.

Wood rightly accuses Shippey of making an even more egregious error by asserting that Tolkien overcame the alleged limits of the Augustinian doctrine of evil by appropriating a heroic and Manichean doctrine of evil, by giving the One Ring absolute and sentient power. According to Shippey, Tolkien sets the forces of evil against the forces of good in a kind of mythic "dualism" (Road 256) of virtual equals. This assessment by Shippey could not be more wrong. Shippey is correct to interpret the One

Ring as finally overwhelming Frodo's will at the Cracks of Mount Doom — such, alas, are the limits of mortal resistance to the seductive coercion of evil. Yet Shippey completely misses a correct analysis in regarding Frodo's defeat as the result of any divine power accorded to evil. If Tolkien were a Manichean, he would have made

Ilúvatar into a coercive bully like Morgoth, much like the capricious gods of the Greeks and Romans. On the contrary, Ilúvatar consistently refuses to squash evil. He is determined, instead, to overcome evil with good — within the Christian doctrine of Free

Will entirely at work. As Tolkien makes abundantly clear, the Lord of the Rings is not

Sauron but Ilúvatar (Wood, “Recent” 591).

Keuthan 39

Shippey's rationalizing thesis is that Tolkien sought to bridge the deep chasm between pagan bravery in the face of certain defeat, on the one hand, and Christian hope beyond the walls of the world, on the other. There is no denying that Tolkien's major theme in all of the legendarium is death and the evil; the fallen state of the world instigates "its pain and its necessity, the urge to escape from it, the duty and impossibility of resignation" (Road 301).

Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien: Man and Myth focuses almost exclusively on a Catholic reading of Tolkien’s work, using Tolkien’s letters in copious examples as justification.

Through his interpretation, Pearce is successful in pointing out that Tolkien was concerned to find a way to make his work fit within the rubric of orthodox Catholic theology.

Tolkien in World War I

T. A. Shippey also provides for this investigation one of its strongest pieces of evidence that Tolkien’s war experience had a direct and lasting effect on his contemplation on the nature of evil in an essay Shippey delivered in 1992 at the Tolkien

Centenary Conference, entitled “Tolkien as a Post-War Writer.” Shippey proposes that

Tolkien, along with C. S. Lewis, T. H. White, George Orwell, and William Golding, was, as a direct result of their horrific experiences in WWI, troubled with attempting to understand the nature and origin of evil. The latter authors are today considered to be

“fantasy” writers like Tolkien, and they each tried, through fantasy literature, to explain why normally civilized humans could commit acts of nearly unspeakable brutality and cruelty. Shippey argues that while their explanations for this human characteristic – the tendency toward evil — differed, their concerns were the same and put them in a

Keuthan 40 different subset of Post-WWI writers from the more fashionable modernist writers who were their contemporaries. Shippey’s argument is rigorously supported with copious references to Tolkien’s actual text (Drout, “Shippey” 109).

John Garth, a London journalist making his first venture into Tolkien studies, writes his analysis of Tolkien's work in relation to the Great War. Ralph C. Wood enthuses that the tome is so well done that, along with Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien and Tom Shippey's The Road to Middle-earth, Tolkien and the Great War:

The Threshold of Middle-earth constitutes a third essential work for Tolkienian studies.

John Garth focuses less on Tolkien's World War I combat experiences than on his friendship with his schoolfellows of the T.C.B.S., relationships that tragically extended into their war service and culminated in the deaths of two of the group. Garth's thesis, that Tolkien's creative imagination emerged and matured in the crucibles of friendship and war, is supported by original research in the unpublished letters exchanged among the T.C.B.S. and in a close reading of the stories and poems in The Book of Lost Tales,

(which, remember, eventually became The Silmarillion). Garth argues that, while

Tolkien's grand legendarium found its genesis in his early immersion in the languages and literatures of the ancient North, it was also deeply affected by the horrors of the First

War. According to Garth, these four classically trained, poetically inspired men witnessed a fundamental change in Western culture at the Battle of the Somme. Military machinery was designed not to kill individual soldiers but to obliterate entire towns, to wipe the countryside clean of forests and farms, and to decimate almost every living thing (Wood, “Recent” 594). The connections between these terrors and Tolkien's early fascination with languages would seem difficult to make, yet Garth demonstrates that

Keuthan 41

Tolkien's philological propensities were a “soothing gift of sanity and moral and historical in timbre from the start” (9). Garth’s work on Tolkien and the Great War will find a fuller treatment in Chapter Two.

“The Great War and Tolkien's Memory: An Examination of World War I Themes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings” by Janet Brennan Croft was revised and expanded into Croft's book War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Starting with the observation that there is a “Tolkien-sized hole” running through Paul Fussell's study of

World War I literature, The Great War and Modern Memory (5), Croft systematically reviews some themes in Fussell’s work, such as pastoral longing, the heroic quest, and a sense of national character. Croft’s work is a detailed survey primarily focusing on the influence on The Lord of the Rings (and, to an extent, The Hobbit) of the two world wars that Tolkien lived through, with some consideration of how the morality of war is expressed in Tolkien's fiction. The book begins with a summary of Tolkien's war experience and a caution against some interpretations offered in the past, notably the unfounded claims that he glorified war and that he was a pacifist. Croft finds that Paul

Fussell’s themes identified in The Great War and Modern Memory as typical of World

War I literature are distinctively employed by Tolkien, thus re-classifying The Lord of the Rings into a delayed literary reaction to that war. Croft’s book addresses The

Silmarillion very little and, therefore, is not remarkably useful to this project beyond her ideas of what Tolkien may have thought about war and morality.

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”

On 25 November 1936, Tolkien delivered the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial

Lecture to the British Academy. Michael D. C. Drout maintains,

Keuthan 42

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” is the most important essay ever

written about Beowulf. Even if Tolkien had never published The Lord of

the Rings, his academic reputation would have been made with this one

essay.…the essay is more than a touchstone, and it is fair to say that

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” marks the beginning of modern

scholarship on Beowulf. (“Beowulf” 57)

The ramifications of this one lecture on the British Academy and medieval studies worldwide are still being felt. Because of this lecture, scholars re-focused their attention on the Beowulf poem itself as a work of literature in its own right rather than dissecting the work as merely a historical artifact. Drout and every other Anglo-Saxon scholar maintain that Tolkien rightfully set the monsters at the center of Beowulf criticism, and there they have remained.

Tolkien's lecture on Beowulf is a natural second stop in a consideration of the critical process he underwent to determine the nature of evil. As shall be indicated in

Chapter Three, Tolkien changed the name of this lecture from "Beowulf and the Critics" to "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and thereby significantly affected the focus and emphasis of his lecture from a mere castigation of historical critics of the poem to, instead, a rhetorically brilliant re-consideration of the importance of Beowulf; to whit, that the monsters and the evil they represent symbolically are unquestionably the central importance of the poem. Further, he went on to solidify (and explained even further in the "On Fairy Stories" lecture in 1939) that the reason the monsters were centrally important in Beowulf is because a Christian poet, utilizing pagan mythology and heroic figures, was communicating to a ninth century audience the universal conflict of all

Keuthan 43 humankind: man must spend his brief existence struggling to overcome the insurmountable evil which occupies this world. An aspect of my thesis is to assert that

Tolkien's changing of the title and the thrust of his lecture is a strong indication of his ongoing gradual epiphany concerning the nature of evil. Further, his ideas as espoused in the Beowulf lecture come to fruition in his fiction, especially in the version of “The Fall of Númenor” and “Of Túrin Turambar” (published in 2007 as The Children of Hurin) significantly revised at about the same time. Drout’s study (discussed below) of the early, recently discovered manuscripts, of the Beowulf lecture bring to light this critical adjustment in the title and the emphasis of the lecture.

R. W. Chambers, a fellow scholar of Old English literature and friend of

Tolkien’s, reviewed "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (in published form) in

1938. He criticizes Tolkien for hiding important and compelling information in the notes and appendices, but he lauds Tolkien's insistence that Beowulf be analyzed as art. A reader of Tolkien’s lecture would remember that Chambers is extolled as one of the few scholars of the Beowulf poem who did not relegate it to a mere historical record or an

Anglo-Saxon lexicon. Chambers did not see that the monsters were centrally important, but he perhaps did not have the powers of paradigm-shifting analysis that Tolkien demonstrated in his lecture.

In "Monsters Crouching and Critics Rampant: or the Beowulf Dragon Debated,"

Swiss scholar Adrien Bonjour agrees with Tolkien's interpretation of the dragon as a symbol of human-directed evil. Bonjour had already established himself as a Beowulf scholar with the publication in 1949 of his book The Digressions in Beowulf, in which he painstakingly examines the three battle episodes in Beowulf and proposes the idea of a

Keuthan 44 talented ninth century poet who skillfully married Christian moral values with pagan ancient oral literature tradition. Thus, after examining Gang's arguments attempting to refute Tolkien and considering the textual evidence, Bonjour extends and supports

Tolkien's argument with further evidence that the monsters in Beowulf represent different types of evil.

W. H. Auden, who attended Tolkien's lectures as an undergraduate at Oxford, was also an occasional correspondent and on friendly terms with Tolkien from the mid-1950s until Tolkien's death, sustained by Auden's fascination with The Lord of the Rings.

Auden was a consistent supporter of Tolkien's work, as evidenced by an article he wrote for Atlantic Monthly in 1957, entitled "Making and Judging Poetry," in which the great critic recounts some of the occasions in which he sat in Tolkien’s lectures on Beowulf.

Auden has been famously quoted as remembering that Tolkien, by the sheer power of his oratory, was able to turn a lecture hall into an ancient mead hall, with fires burning and the eminent evil of Grendel at the door. Significantly, Auden was drawn to both Old

English and specifically the Beowulf poem in its depiction of evil throughout the course of his professional career. Auden compiled his ideas about The Lord of the Rings in a book especially useful to this investigation called Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings published posthumously in 1993.

Bernard F. Huppe also places Tolkien’s ideas of the monsters in Beowulf and the evil they symbolize squarely in Augustinian doctrine in his 1959 book Doctrine and

Poetry: Augustine's Influence on Old English Poetry. Chapter Six, "Conjectures," observes, "Tolkien, with finality, has exposed the folly of the liberal-minded approach to the Beowulf with its air of entering a curio shop to look at the quaint, the simple, the

Keuthan 45 naive. He showed that the monsters in Beowulf have symbolic meaning…" (232).

According to Huppe, Tolkien did not expose Beowulf to what he calls the “direct light of

Augustinian tradition” (232) rigorously enough so that the meaning of the monsters might be defined in Christian terms. Huppe then follows his own advice and rigorously exposes the monsters in Beowulf to the Augustinian searchlight. Next, Huppe believes that

Tolkien facilitated a wider and long-overdue interpretation of pagan literature in

Christian terms. He concludes,

Until Beowulf is systematically studied from the tentative assumption that

the poet, in accord with Christian theory, was consciously restoring pagan

truth to its Master, the place of the epic in the Christian tradition cannot be

stated with any finality; that is, a systematic test should be made of the

assumption that Beowulf was written by a learned Christian, one for

whom the Bible, with its vast accretion of symbolic meanings, was central

in the interpretation of all events, even those of the mythical pagan past of

his race. There is more than a little to suggest that such study will reveal

the epic to be in the direct line of Christian tradition. (233)

These are exactly the main points of Tolkien's Beowulf lecture.

A detractor of Tolkien's lecture, Kenneth Sisam, in The Structure of Beowulf reminds readers that Tolkien’s "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" forever changed the critical view of Beowulf and has irrevocably influenced all subsequent criticism. He remarks Tolkien's "fineness of perception and elegance of expression that are rare in this field" (qtd. in Johnson 61), but questions Tolkien's view of Beowulf as an heroic pagan.

Sisam had been Tolkien's unsuccessful rival for the Oxford Chair of Anglo-Saxon forty

Keuthan 46 years prior to the publication of his book; consequently, he was not swayed by Tolkien's rhetorical magic in the Beowulf lecture. Sisam challenges Tolkien's view that one particularly gifted poet (presumably a Christian one, according to Tolkien) was responsible for the writing of Beowulf. By way of inference, then, Sisam was debunking

Tolkien's claim that the monsters are of central thematic importance to the poem, thereby essentially nullifying Tolkien's thesis that the poem was a brilliant representation of how a heroic man confronts evil.

In "Grendel, Gollum, and the Un-Man: The Death of the Monster as an

Archetype" Karen Corlett Winter writes in the now defunct journal Orcrist in 1967 that

Beowulf provides the folklore-based themes and structures of C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. By way of evidence, Winter proposes that certain elements in the narrative prove her thesis: the threat to the hero and his society of a monster which is a corruption of the hero's species (think in terms of Gollum as a corruption of a hobbit), the voluntary quest, the battle in an underground place, and the changes of kingship. Winter's ideas lead the reader to apply the Augustinian concept that evil is two things: a slow and deliberate corruption of what was originally good — think again in terms of Sméagol being corrupted by the One Ring so that he becomes Gollum

— and second, the eventual outcome of the corruption of evil as devolving into nothingness. Tolkien demonstrates this in both the Ringwraiths and the eventual demise of Sauron, a mere smoke blown away by the West wind. Without fully identifying it,

Winter comes remarkably close to understanding how Beowulf contributed to Tolkien's understanding of evil.

Keuthan 47

Rand Kuhl published in 1969 in the journal Mythlore a review of the newly republished text of "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," in an article entitled "Lore of Logres: Very Few Good Dragons." Kuhl pays special attention to Tolkien's comments about dragons and the power of myth over the human imagination. He insightfully understands Tolkien's attempt to show the Beowulf poet's merging of Norse heroism and

Christian nobility. Kuhl is impressed with Tolkien's style, stating: "He makes reading scholarship . . . enjoyable" (qtd. in Johnson 99).

From the 1970s until 2001, there was a dearth of scholarship that may have some usefulness for this investigation. While the scholastic debate concerning the minutia of

Beowulf raged gently on among Anglo-Saxon scholars, it seemed that all that could be said about Tolkien's main idea: the monsters are important, and they represent evil, had been said. That is, until Michael D. C. Drout went rummaging through some boxes at

Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Beowulf and the Critics, edited and compiled by Drout, is a detailed edition of two previously unpublished drafts of Tolkien's 1936 lecture/essay,

"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." The two drafts, labeled by Drout as "A" and

"B," are close in content to each other and the final version. Drout reproduces and interprets the two drafts meticulously, providing insightful explanatory and textual notes for numerous references and for every discernable change and correction in Tolkien's texts. The introductory material includes a description of the manuscripts, a history of the essay's composition, and a history of Beowulf scholarship, placing the essay in the contexts both of the criticism to which it responded and of its own influence on Beowulf studies. The history of earlier criticism is particularly useful for Drout's discussion of the

Keuthan 48 scholars whom Tolkien refers to in the essay, and his elaboration on their views and contributions.

The importance of Drout’s discovery is particularly useful to my thesis, and one brief example will serve to justify its inclusion herein. As Tolkien was constructing the

Beowulf lecture, he initially entitled it "Beowulf and the Critics." In its final version the lecture/essay title was changed to "Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics," thereby radically changing the emphasis and importance of the lecture. Putting the two titles side by side makes my point, that is, with the inclusion of the word "monsters." For some reason only hinted at in his letters and other works, Tolkien decided to make the lecture about the monsters, not just the critics. I think that he wanted to emphasize the monsters because he was taking the next important step in the critical process of working out his understanding of the nature of evil, which is an assertion proved by the examination of his fiction; he was writing The Hobbit at the same time he was writing this lecture and his story of Túrin Turambar from the legendarium indicates remarkable parallels to Beowulf, both in content and theme. A fuller exploration of this topic will be accomplished in

Chapter Three.

The Lord of the Rings

Tolkien's magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings, was published as three separate books: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in 1954 and The Return of the

King in 1955, despite the author's desire to publish the entire story as one huge book. In fact, Tolkien originally petitioned his publishers to package The Lord of the Rings together with The Silmarillion; however, Allen and Unwin was not sure that Tolkien's

“new Hobbit” would sell, and to tack on The Silmarillion in the same publication looked like publishing suicide, as it would have produced a book of some two thousand pages.

Keuthan 49

Additionally, The Silmarillion did not look finished to his publishers (as, indeed, it was not). In an unprecedented contractual arrangement, Tolkien would not see any royalties from the sales of The Lord of the Rings until after the publishing costs had been covered for an initial printing run of a mere 3,500 copies for the first of the three books, The

Fellowship of the Ring. After the print costs were covered Tolkien would be paid 50% of the royalties from the sale of this book (Sturgis 385).

The Lord of the Rings attracted the attention of scholars and lovers of literature immediately upon its publication. Both academic and popular interest in Tolkien’s body of work has been maintained and has continued to grow. Some reviews, from critics such as C. S. Lewis and former student W. H. Auden, were unreservedly enthusiastic about the

“resonating power and vision of the epic.” Other reviews, such as those from critics

Edmund Wilson and Philip Toynbee, were quite brutal about what they called “juvenile rubbish” (qtd. in Lobdell “Success” 390). Such vehement reactions drew public attention to the works, as did a 1956 BBC radio adaptation of the novels. Sales of the hardback volumes soared to the point that Tolkien regretted that he had not chosen to take early retirement from his position at Oxford University:

I gather that he [Sir Stanley Unwin] told Edmund Fuller that my books

were the most important, and also the most profitable thing that he had

published in a long life, and that they would certainly remain so after his

time and his sons’ time. (Letters 315–16)

By 1969, when Tolkien sold the subsidiary rights to The Lord of the Rings for what has been reported as a mere £10,000, total book sales of the three volumes had reached three million copies. The figure now stands at more than one hundred million; eleven million

Keuthan 50 in the United States alone in the year after the movie of The Return of the King (2003) was released (Lobdell “Success” 392).

The Lord of the Rings is arguably Tolkien's most important work, if for no other reason than it was one of the most widely read works of fiction in the twentieth century.

The work has never been out of print in more than fifty years and actually sells more copies now than it did when it was first published, certainly spurred on by the release of

Peter Jackson's movies. Additionally, The Lord of the Rings has been the subject of much scholarly debate and discussion. To date more than two hundred dissertations have been written about The Lord of the Rings and/or Tolkien, and countless books and articles as well. An entire journal is devoted to nothing but Tolkien Studies. To say that this book has had an effect on our world would be an understatement of biblical proportions. Following is a review of the literature, which addresses the intersections between The Lord of the Rings with The Silmarillion and Tolkien's understanding of the nature of evil.

Many newspapers in England, and indeed around the world, reviewed The Lord of the Rings as soon as it was published. Some reviewers understood on a first reading that Tolkien's treatment of evil was centrally important to The Lord of the Rings.

Maurice Dolbier writing for the Providence Sunday Journal on 28 November 1954 was one of those journalists who explored the theme of evil in his review "The Ring of Power and the Shadow of Evil." Robert E. Krieger writing for the Worcester Sunday Telegram on 5 February 1956 delved a bit more deeply into the conflict to overcome evil in his review "God-Men Vs. Demons" wherein he rightly saw Tolkien's Augustinian perspective on the characters that could be redeemed and those that were beyond

Keuthan 51 redemption. Other countries took note, as represented by reviewer Mahmoud

Manzalaoui writing for the Egyptian Gazette (Cairo) on 20 April 1956. Manzalaoui adds credence to the idea that Tolkien's understanding of Beowulf informed his treatment of evil in The Lord of the Rings in a review entitled "A Fantasy based on Ancient Myths."

Tolkien's close friend and fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis had an opportunity to review

The Two Towers and The Return of the King for a London newspaper, published on 22

October 1955. "The Dethronement of Power" pre-empted criticism by the now oft quoted Edmund Wilson’s 1956 review "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!" and later a 1961 review by Philip Toynbee who famously predicted that The Lord of the Rings would "pass into merciful oblivion." Lewis, who of course was integrally involved in the creation process, asserted that the characters of The Lord of the Rings could not be perceived as merely purely good or purely evil. Lewis warns the critics of reading The Lord of the Rings from a limited historical perspective; he understood that the great pervading sadness of

Tolkien's novel was that a momentary victory against evil cannot last. He intuitively suggests that one of Tolkien's main points is that man's real life has mythical and heroic qualities (“Dethronement” 1373–1374).

Michael Straight suggests that the events in The Lord of the Rings stem from

Tolkien's actual experiences, such as his service in World War I. "The Fantastic World of Professor Tolkien" published in New Republic on 16 January 1956, represents one of the first analyses to correctly identify the true depth of Tolkien's consideration of evil.

Straight, who regards The Lord of the Rings as one of the "very few works of genius in recent literature"(24), maintains that there is a dominant moral theme in the trilogy:

Keuthan 52 personal responsibility, as symbolized by Frodo and his relationship with the ring, by stating:

In the presence of limited good, and of corruptible man, what is the

responsibility of the ringbearer? Is it to use present evil on behalf of

present good and thereby to ensure the continuation of evil? Or is it to

deny present gain in an effort to destroy evil itself? Thus the work is not

escapist; it illuminates the inner consistency of reality. (26)

Straight convincingly argues that the plot of The Lord of the Rings has allegorical significance and uses the example of Sauron to illustrate "man's rebellion against

Providence" (26).

No review of literature on J.R.R. Tolkien would be complete without the most frequently cited negative criticism of Tolkien. Edmund Wilson’s "Oo, Those Awful

Orcs!" published in Nation on 14 April 1956, glosses the laudatory criticism of The

Fellowship of the Ring, but vehemently disagrees. Wilson finds Tolkien's fiction suitable for children and cites Tolkien’s own words as evidence: “It is a fairy story, a philological game” (312), and lambastes critics like Auden for ignoring Fellowship’s many shortcomings, including bad poetry and prose, and unrealistic terrors. Wilson suggests

The Lord of the Rings' appeal to adult readers lies in their "lifelong appetite for juvenile trash" (314).

Colin Wilson calls The Lord of the Rings uneven in "J.R.R. Tolkien," Chapter

Five in his book The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination first published in

1962. Wilson finds The Lord of the Rings' power in its sense of brooding evil and realism. He notes that unlike the power for evil in gothic novels, the One Ring's power is

Keuthan 53 evil in itself, thus raising questions of whether the One Ring is sentient and whether the nature of evil represented by the One Ring is Augustinian or Manichaean, a debate that continues to this day.

Clyde Kilby, in Tolkien and The Silmarillion, in his research for this book came across a now infamous letter to Father Robert Murray written in 1958. Kilby was the first person allowed to publish an important section of that letter which has been cited hundreds of times since as proof of Tolkien's intent in writing The Lord of the Rings (and by inference, all of his fiction):

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic

work; unconsciously so at first but consciously in the revision . . . For the

religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. (45)

Noreen Hayes and Robert Renshaw’s essay "Of Hobbits: The Lord of the Rings" for Critique in 1967 is one of the earliest and more scholarly treatments of the nature of evil in Tolkien's work. Hayes and Renshaw identify medieval mythology, the genre of

Tolkien’s considerable scholarship, as a vehicle for Tolkien's fairy tale. And by using the term "fairy tale," Hayes and Renshaw are entirely aware of what that phrase means to

Tolkien (cf. “On Fairy Stories”). Perceiving the depth and complexity of Tolkien's work,

Hayes and Renshaw argue that a dualistic interpretation of The Lord of the Rings is shortsighted and simplistic: It is not about just a single good and a single evil, but many

“goods and evils.” According to Hayes and Renshaw, only one character, Sauron, is totally evil. As The Silmarillion had not yet been published, Hayes and Renshaw could not know that even Sauron had not always been totally evil. They further theorize that a totally good character would be ignorant of dangers and motivation of evil; therefore,

Keuthan 54

Frodo becomes gradually acquainted with the slow corruption of evil as he carries the

One Ring. These two scholars believe that the theme of The Lord of the Rings is that good cannot completely destroy evil; instead one evil destroys another, and itself.

Another, related theme is that Frodo learns about evil and fights its effects as a result of understanding the meaning of humanity and responsibility. Hayes and Renshaw, however, see no theological implications — Frodo is simply Tolkien’s representation of the common man. Caught up in the pop psychology prevalent in the 1960s, Hayes and

Renshaw invoke Pavlov's stimulus: a Response Theory of psychology. According to this theory, the One Ring is an outside corrupting agent, not an illustrative representative of

Original Sin (58–66).

"The Moral Universe of J. R. R. Tolkien" in The Tolkien Papers: Ten Papers

Prepared for the Tolkien Festival at Mankato State College, October 28–29, 1966 has

David M. Miller stating that Tolkien's theme in The Lord of the Rings is the age-old moral dilemma of man having to constantly choose between good and evil and possessing free will to give in to temptation. Miller traces these themes of The Lord of the Rings through the appendices and miraculously summarizes The Silmarillion ten years before its publication. Miller honors Tolkien's admonition that his mythology is, in his words, a “history” (from the forward to The Lord of the Rings). Miller plots out the cyclic history of the Three Ages in the legendarium, with good and evil of Middle-earth coming together in the Fourth Age, the age of man and the age that was begun when

Frodo destroyed the One Ring. Miller, as it turns out, was at least ten years ahead of his time (51–62).

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W. H. Auden criticized The Lord of the Rings in a 1967 Tolkien Journal article,

"Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings," objecting to Tolkien's creation of sentient species that are intrinsically evil without possibility of redemption. His objection concerns Orcs and Trolls, whose creation as irredeemable creatures indicates to Auden the implication of two creators, one bad and one good. Nevertheless, he sees the strengths of The Lord of the Rings in the characters and the motivation of evil, theorizing that what defeats evil is its own lack of imagination about the motivations and actions of the good characters. Obviously, Auden did not have access to The Silmarillion, which would not be published for another ten years. If he had, he would have been able to discern that Tolkien's universe has one Creator and asks the firstborn of his creation, the

Valar, to assist him with their creations. Melkor, one of the Valar, attempts to create but cannot; he can only thwart and twist and corrupt what has already been created, thus leading to his "fall" into pride and anger. Therein lies the origin of evil in Tolkien's universe, but Auden makes a valiant attempt at trying to understand the complexity of

Tolkien’s communication of evil (5–8).

"Christian Themes in Tolkien" draws some perceptive Augustinian theological conclusions by suggesting that the reader can see good and evil and understand free will and predestination better after reading The Lord of the Rings. To support his thesis, Paul

Pfotenhauer points out the Christian themes of the temptations of pride, found for example in both Denethor and his son Boromir, and ample evidence of several characters with the Christ-like qualities of the suffering servant (13–15). Pfotenhauer quotes passages from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings demonstrating evidence of the

“strong but unseen and little mentioned power (God) in Middle-earth” (15).

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Very little published since 1972 has invalidated Paul H. Kocher's discussion of the moral stances and the nature of evil shown in The Lord of the Rings. Master of

Middle-earth: The Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien acknowledges that Middle-earth is an imaginary world, but one that becomes real and familiar to the reader as Tolkien blends familiar elements of our own world with the fantastic, especially with the natural presence of the invented languages. Kocher is yet another author who sees that Tolkien’s cosmology is revealed through the characters’ exercise of free will, thus adhering to the

Augustinian and Thomasinian theological underpinnings so important to Tolkien.

Kocher feels that evil is defeated in the end by its inability to comprehend the motivation of the “good” characters to choose good and by their ability to understand both good and evil. He, however, is only partly correct by stating that evil is equated solely with the desire to possess. Sauron seeks absolute power, for example, not just possession of

Middle-earth. Kocher has seen the ability of the One Ring to prescriptively corrupt.

Clyde S. Kilby’s essay, "Mythic and Christian Elements in Tolkien" included in

Edmund Fuller and John Warwick Montgomery's Myth, Allegory, and Gospel: An

Interpretation of J. R. R. Tolkien/C. S. Lewis/G. K. Chesterton/Charles Williams, convincingly argues for a Christian interpretation of The Lord of the Rings. By extensively citing examples from the text, Kilby provides comparative analogues to

Eden, Hell, the Fall of Man, the Virgin, and, most importantly, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. He discusses Tolkien’s symbolic use of black and white and contributes significantly to the ongoing Augustinian discourse on Tolkien’s appropriation of

Providence and Free Will. Kilby was also one of the first decidedly Christian scholars with an attraction to Tolkien’s early work in his legendarium, even though none of it had

Keuthan 57 yet been published. Undoubtedly, his interest can be traced to his attempt in the summer of 1966 to help Tolkien organize the corpus into some sort of publishable form. Kilby’s essay also discusses Tolkien's insistence that The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory, quoting Tolkien's statement to him: "I am a Christian and of course what I write will be from that essential viewpoint" (qtd. in “Mythic” 139) meaning that Tolkien did not want his work reduced to mere allegory (like Lewis), but that The Lord of the Rings must necessarily have allegorical qualities to it because he was writing from an undeniably

Christian influence.

Richard Purtill may be one of the first writers to understand the seeming paradox between Tolkien being a devout Christian and yet creating a pre-Christian fantasy. In his book, Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C. S. Lewis and J. R. R.

Tolkien, Purtill explores Tolkien’s thrusting aside of the content, themes, and practices of the modern writer and yet practicing traditional Christianity. Apparently having studied

Tolkien’s Beowulf essay, Purtill explains that Tolkien and the Beowulf poet both purposely avoid explicit Christianity because their stories are pre-Christian, which gives

Tolkien an unprecedented freedom to portray Christianity without the strictures of expectation. But Tolkien's theology behind The Lord of the Rings is deeply grounded in traditional Christianity, not the “prevalent modern existential stoicism in an absurd world” (119). Purtill sees that Tolkien is skillfully able to weave religious belief into The

Lord of the Rings but that allusions and hints are all the reader should expect. According to Purtill, The Lord of the Rings is not Christian allegory, but true Christianity in action and practice. Frodo is not Christ, but what a Christian is: one who imperfectly tries to pursue “Christ-likeness” (123).

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Bonniejean Christensen is one of the first writers to identify Tolkien's intentional use of characters who communicate the nature of evil. In "Gollum's Character

Transformation in The Hobbit," Christensen minutely tracks Gollum’s character changes between the first edition of The Hobbit (1937) and second (1951), necessitated by the developing storyline in The Lord of the Rings. She correctly identifies the theme of The

Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as the "nature of evil and the limits of man's response to it" (qtd. in Johnson 147). According to Christensen, The Hobbit uses an incremental series of confrontations with monsters — paralleling the structure and content of

Beowulf. Then, she proposes that The Lord of the Rings extends this method of communicating evil by a complex use of metaphor, abstraction and allusion (“Gollum”

9–28).

Mythlore first appeared in January 1969 under the editorship of Glen Goodknight, founder of the Mythopoeic Society. Early issues were fanzines, albeit with a serious and constructive bent. Mythlore was a quarterly refereed journal by 1989, and it became a peer-reviewed journal beginning in 1999. A number of prominent Tolkien scholars have published essays in this publication. Charles A. Huttar was a medieval scholar and a studier of ancient literature like Tolkien, so his essay, "Hell and the City: Tolkien and the

Traditions of Western Literature," draws on the author's academic training to assert that

Tolkien has also drawn on ancient mythic imagery and symbolism of heaven and/or the underworld to construct The Lord of the Rings. Huttar sees Frodo’s quest as a necessarily mythic archetypal journey to hell, which is not just a place of death, but the haunt of monsters, drawing heavily on Greco-Roman literature to include, of course,

Virgil's Aeneid. The author, for example, points to numerous episodes that take Frodo

Keuthan 59 into symbolic representations of the underworld, as when he gazes into Galadriel’s mirror. Consider, too, Beren and Lúthien’s decent into Morgoth’s hell to retrieve a silmaril in the legendarium’s “Tale of Beren and Lúthien.” Huttar believes that Tolkien's living creatures, as well as some inanimate objects, have a potential for both good and evil, which provides further evidence that Tolkien adheres to Augustinian theology. I would assert, however, that the One Ring, which is sentient, never represented, in any respect, any kind of good. Sauron poured his evil intent and malice into the One Ring when he forged it; thus, its purpose and intent was always evil. Huttar concludes that

Middle-earth is not a closed universe in which good and evil take turns winning; there is hope that ultimately good will triumph, as it has in The Lord of the Rings (115–140).

Again, this author is missing a very important underlying theme in Tolkien's work: good can only triumph for a while; in this world and in Middle-earth evil always returns.

"The Corruption of Power" by Agnes Perkins and Helen Hill correctly identifies one of the dominant themes in The Lord of the Rings as the corrupting effect of the desire for power, facilitated, of course, by the One Ring. Perkins and Hill categorize the major characters in one of the following groups: Those wholly corrupted by desire for the One

Ring's power, e.g. Sauron; those wholly unaffected by the One Ring, e.g. Sam; those who can wield the One Ring's power but choose not to, e.g. Gandalf and Galadriel; those tempted to try to use the One Ring to save Gondor, obviously Boromir; and those who gain heroic stature by determination to destroy the One Ring, undoubtedly Frodo. As per their respective interaction with the One Ring, Perkins and Hill convincingly suggest that there are at least three possible heroes of the book: Aragorn, Sam, and Frodo (57–68).

Verlyn Brown Flieger’s dissertation, Medieval Epic and Romance Motifs in

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J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, declares as her thesis that Tolkien appropriates the mythic archetype hero quest stages designated by Joseph Campbell: separation, initiation, return, and nine other steps, as per Campbell's popular book Hero with a

Thousand Faces. She also attributes to Tolkien's writings borrowed elements from

Beowulf, Malory, and French retellings of the Grail Legend (12). Tolkien would have agreed with Flieger that Beowulf and perhaps even Malory were indeed foundational to his work; however, he would have vehemently opposed the inclusion of anything French.

Tolkien famously railed against the Norman French medieval writers who appropriated the English folk legend of King Arthur and turned it into Romantic drivel. It must be noted here that Campbell's ideas of Monomyth or universal myth was the darling theory du jour for much of the 1980s and 1990s, as a rather superficial way to categorize and explain canonical literature and made its way to critical cinema literature as well; however, I would assert that Campbell’s oversimplifications, largely borrowed heavily from the well-grounded theories of Carl Jung, are simplistic and akin to pop anthropology.

Ruth S. Noel in her 1977 book The Mythology of Middle-earth describes the triple purpose of myth as being to “glorify history, explain the unknown, and hallow tradition” (introduction). Then she exhaustively outlines relationships between The

Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Scandinavian, Celtic, Arthurian, Biblical, Greek, and Germanic epics in terms of mythic themes, places, creatures, and objects. Mythology of Middle-earth, perhaps most importantly for this investigation, proposes that the geography and locales of Middle-earth's realistic details were not devised to fit the events of The Lord of the Rings but to seem to pre-exist them in the imagination of the reader,

Keuthan 61 which infuses a deep sense of history. The author points out as an example that Númenor is treated as historical presupposition, although the mythic stories of Atlantis and the

Great Flood lie intrinsically underneath.

John Ellison’s important essay "Images of Evil in Tolkien's World" examines only the evil characters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He divides these characters into groups representing humanity at different places on a continuum, none of whom are fundamentally wicked but who may be tempted to fall into evil. One group,

Ellison believes, is comprised of "static" non-human beings, which, despite Tolkien's

Augustinian theology, are effectively entirely evil from the beginning. Ellison proposes that the character groups on the left (evil) end of continuum are evil because they hunger for power for its own sake; Ellison sees Gollum's character development as the best demonstration of this evolution. Then, he sees the “static” group in The Lord of the

Rings as often hardly characters at all, skulking in the shadows and often, as in the case of Sauron, not speaking. This increases the terror they evoke (21–29).

While Bradley J. Birzer is not as rabid a Catholic apologist as Joseph Pearce,

J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth is, nevertheless, a diligently researched Catholic study of The Lord of the Rings with some tentative connecting consideration of The Silmarillion. Birzer places Tolkien’s work firmly in a moral and theological context, discussing at length the roles of salvation, heroism, and evil as significantly informing the structure and interpretation of The Lord of the Rings.

Then Birzer expands the scope of his book by devoting a chapter to the “Catholic humanist applicability of the book in the modern world” (qtd. in Johnson 309). Birzer situates his ideas in the context of Tolkien's devoted appreciation of myth and his

Keuthan 62 understanding of his authorial position as sub-creator. The sacramental allusions in

Tolkien’s work are only woven into Birzer’s major ideas in a cursory fashion.

Peter Kreeft’s philosophical essay "Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights

About Evil in The Lord of the Rings" focuses on using Tolkien's descriptions of evil to prop up his own highly Manichean views on evil in the “primary world,” effectively negating Tolkien’s stated position as adopting the more scriptural Augustinian view of evil as not being coeval with good – the Manichean perspective. His claims, for example, that Théoden’s virtue lies in avoiding Denethor's sin of acquiring too much knowledge and that Gollum speaks in the plural because the singular is associated with God, do not persuade as evidence of Tolkien's alleged Manichean theological position. Kreeft writes in a vehement tonal tradition of scholars intent on disproving Tolkien’s works as being

Christian, but rather, more adherent to the ancient mythic pagan tradition (217–231).

Anne C. Petty explores the traditional literary history of heroism in Tolkien's

Middle-earth with her book, Tolkien in the Land of Heroes, a mythological study of The

Lord of the Rings. Drawing from a background in comparative literature and mythology,

Petty includes Tolkien's major works: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The

Silmarillion, along with some short stories, a few academic essays, and a smattering of letters to situate his legendarium into her study of heroism. According to Petty, our nightmares produce the monsters that subconsciously represent evil to our conscious.

Tolkien's world is populated with horrifying and deadly beasts like the Dragons Glaurung and Smaug, Orcs, and giant spiders like Ungoliant and Shelob. Referring to Tolkien's essay on Beowulf, Petty explains that monsters are "the means by which the poem... achieves greatness of tone and spirit" (qtd. in Drout 705). Drawing comparisons between

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Beowulf and Frodo, Petty proposes that the hero must be tried and tested through the horrors of his worst fears so that the reader can gain a true understanding of the character's growing courage and strength. Petty surmises correctly that his World War I experiences inspired Tolkien to fill his stories with monsters who propel representative heroes like Frodo and Aragorn to what they think are their breaking points, and then each of them finds some way to persevere against their fearsome adversaries. Petty wants to demonstrate how monsters "push the story beyond mere sword and sorcery adventures and into the realm of myth" (705). Petty further explains that "One of the chief weapons of evil is despair," which explains why Tolkien mercilessly drives his characters to despair, with hope "a tenuous commodity" (705). Think of the long, long pages where

Sam and Frodo attempt to get through the Dead Marshes; Tolkien exhibits his skill as a story teller by having the reader maddened by the experience of reading through those pages so as to identify with Sam and Frodo’s ordeal. Even when evil threatens to overwhelm the heroes with monsters, terror, and ultimate defeat, the heroes fight on,

"hoping only to meet death with honor" (705). Beyond providing an addition to Tolkien scholarship, Petty's book offers reasons why she believes Tolkien's works have remained so popular after all of these years: His heroes find the ability to overcome, even as the evil world is falling apart around them.

J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion by Richard L. Purtill, first published in 1984, is actually a collection of disparate essays on various aspects of

Tolkien and his writings. The book is most valuable as a philosophical, rather than religious, discussion of sin and temptation in The Lord of the Rings. A chapter on The

Silmarillion criticizes its lack of formal religion, in strange contrast with the argument in

Keuthan 64 the author's earlier Lord of the Elves and Eldils that The Lord of the Rings is successful in presenting religion without formal institutions.

Scott A. Davison’s essay "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil" in The Lord of the

Rings and Philosophy correctly argues that the One Ring's evil is purely Augustinian, as demonstrated by the bearers addictive desire for power, control, possessions, etc.

Because Tolkien rejected Manichaeism outright as a theological and/or philosophical explanation of reality, Davison discounts the “evidence” by other scholars such as Kreeft and Chance that the One Ring facilitates two concepts of evil: Manichean and

Augustinian, as Tom Shippey argues in Road to Middle-earth (99–109). Davidson’s argument could have been strengthened by more rigorous scholarship and textual and primary source material support, but he is at least correctly characterizing the depiction of evil in Tolkien’s works and his communication of evil from the platform of the author’s strong adherence to medieval theology and his own faith convictions.

In The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings,

Episcopalian priest Fleming Rutledge proposes a bold claim: that the worldview portrayed in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings not only is Biblical but is an "almost exact replica" of the “apocalyptic worldview that informs many New Testament texts”

(qtd. in Spach par. 1). Rutledge acknowledges in the preface that she is "a Tolkien amateur" — someone who loves his work but is not a Tolkien scholar. Yet she convincingly demonstrates that Tolkien's Catholic faith inspired him to tell an implicitly

Christian story set in a world that is a Platonic mirror representation of the pre-Christian era of our own world. Rutledge rightly dismisses the oft-repeated and shallow analysis that Tolkien's epic depicts a mere struggle between good and evil. Rather, she contends,

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Tolkien portrays a battle in which there are three participant groups: God (hidden but perceived), creatures (races populating Middle-earth), and a powerful, malevolent, aggressive enemy (obviously Sauron and those enslaved to his will) (par. 4). The Battle of the book’s title refers to the struggle against the powers of evil as the "deep narrative" that lies beneath and profoundly shapes the "surface narrative" of Tolkien's tale (par. 6).

Framing her work as a running commentary on nearly every major scene in the Ring narrative, Rutledge mines the text for the Biblical underpinnings and theological insights that inform the plot and the character development. As the reader follows her commentary through the story, Rutledge spins out an exposé of Tolkien's skillful telling of the subtle ensnaring web that binds the will to the enemy one silken thread at a time, beautifully illustrating the slow corruption of the One Ring. She makes a compelling case that:

…through symbolism, suggestion and plot, and by steering clear of

simplistic moralism and pedantic allegory, Tolkien intended to convey a

New Testament vision of reality that invites readers to self-analysis in the

midst of God's battle against the powers that seek to enslave and destroy

us in this world. (par. 7)

Rutledge, as an admitted non-scholar, has most astutely understood the prescriptive nature of the evil the One Ring uses to entrap the bearer.

While good scholarship has been published for years in such journals as Mythlore and Orcrist, Tolkien scholarship took a significant step toward peer-reviewed legitimacy with the advent of the journal Tolkien Studies in 2004. Two essays from that journal will be useful herein.

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In “‘Tricksy Lights’: Literary and Folkloric Elements in Tolkien’s Passage of the

Dead Marshes,” Margaret Sinex proposes that this episode of The Lord of the Rings be read as a type of medieval horror story (93). Expanding slightly on a well-worn idea,

Sinex also suggests that Tolkien combines World War I battlefield imagery (corpses floating open-eyed in slime pools) with corpse-lights and other related grotesque themes from Icelandic sagas and European folklore (110). She has essentially delineated the fairly obvious connections between Tolkien’s sensory experiences of the battlefield with his vivid and horrific images in the Dead Marshes.

John W. Houghton and Neal K. Keesee attempt to define Tolkien’s view of evil in

“Tolkien, King Alfred, and Boethius: Platonist Views of Evil in The Lord of the Rings.”

Where Tom Shippey describes Tolkien as balancing two opposing views of evil: the

Manichean and the Augustinian, Houghton and Keesee seek to contradict Shippey with the Platonist supposition that evil is a nothingness, an absence of good rather than an active force (132). This, they state, does not contradict the mandate that evil must be actively resisted. They point out imagery suggesting that Tolkien’s evil characters irrevocably trudge toward a condition of nothingness; especially whoever bears the One

Ring is slowly corrupted down to an evil that is nothing more than a suggestion of shadow (135–142). The text may seem to support this idea: the Ringwraiths, as they descended into evil lost their corporeal bodies, and Sauron, upon his defeat, is blown away by the west wind into nothingness.

Ralph C. Wood’s The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in

Middle-earth was issued to coincide with the release of the final Peter Jackson film The

Return of the King in 2003. Using examples drawn from The Hobbit, The Lord of the

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Rings, and The Silmarillion, Wood first considers Tolkien’s cosmology. He believes that

Tolkien sees the universe as intrinsically good, a doctrine informed significantly by theological tradition grounded in St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine’s writings, and as such forms his own creation myth on the same foundation. Tolkien adheres religiously to Augustine’s idea that evil cannot be a positive reality, but a corruption of the reality the creator planned for the creature. Tolkien always depicts evil as a marring of what was made, with the exception, of course, being the One Ring. The one aspect of the One

Ring that I think Wood misses is the ring’s sentience. The One Ring is evil in a particularly subtle and prescriptive way – it corrupts what would normally be considered a virtue. This idea will be much more fully explored in Chapters Two through Five. In

The Silmarillion, the demonic Melkor first sins by thrusting his own dissonance into the angelic harmony instead of singing the part God (Eru) gave him. Wood states that according to Tolkien’s cosmology, rejecting one’s own created nature is the original sin.

Because he has bourne the One Ring, Gollum falls so far into an all-consuming possessiveness that he loses his true name and even his nature, no longer recognizable as a hobbit. Wood writes that Tolkien’s heroes use ancient weapons against evil: they strive for and often achieve the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Justice, in Tolkien’s world, is tempered with a mercy that the unredeemed of Middle- earth do not comprehend. Again and again, Gollum is spared his just punishment because of pity and mercy. At first, Frodo and Sam are as shocked by Gandalf and

Bilbo’s pity as the Orcs or Sauron would be, but in the end this virtue is the salvation of the quest when Gollum destroys the One Ring.

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As we have seen, the scholars who have attempted to understand Tolkien’s communication of evil in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings prior to 1977 have not had the benefit of reading the absolutely essential background material that Tolkien wrote in his working legendarium, what was published in 1977 as The Silmarillion.

The Silmarillion

Writing about The Silmarillion has traditionally been an enigmatic task. First, because Tolkien worked on the legendarium from around 1914 until his death in 1973, and in fact it was still not finished at his death. Thus, many versions, half versions, early, middle and late versions exist, which leads to the next problem: defining the work. It is not a novel and it is not a history per se, and even Tolkien could never really define it for himself. He called it a mythology or legendarium and perhaps that is what we should call the work. Scholars such as Ralph Wood, Paul Kocher, Clyde Kilby, Randall Helms, and

Verlyn Flieger have likened this work to the Christian Bible: a collection of stories, histories, poetry, wisdom, and remembrances, but all with a unifying purpose to communicate God to mankind. By the time Christopher Tolkien, his father’s literary executor, had sifted through, cut out, and edited down the vast pile of manuscripts, he was left with a collection of stories, legends, histories, myths, some poetry, and some wisdom – all knitted together with a unifying idea: to communicate God to Tolkien. It is my belief that Tolkien started his mythology and then continued working on it his whole life as a way to work out his own ideas about the nature of God, the nature of man, the effect of the Fall, and the inescapable struggle against evil. This belief can be sustained by a critical reading of his autobiographical short story “Leaf By Niggle.” By writing and rewriting about these mind-bending conundrums, Tolkien could begin to solidify a

Keuthan 69 metaphorical, theological knowledge for himself. Then, he could exercise his understanding by writing within the narrative structure he felt was best suited to communicate his “faith” – through myth and/or fairy tale (as he so eloquently defined it).

I will contend, then, that the legendarium, eventually published as The

Silmarillion, is the key to understanding Tolkien’s fiction. The stories and theology in

The Silmarillion lie solidly behind and underneath all of Tolkien’s other works. Further, unless one understands The Silmarillion, one cannot understand The Lord of the Rings. It would be like trying to understand Jesus Christ without ever reading the Bible.

Therefore, it becomes imperative to examine what The Silmarillion has to say about the nature of evil before we can understand in what superb manner Tolkien communicates the universal nature of evil in his other fiction and his academic work.

Philip Pettit makes a valiant attempt, even before The Silmarillion was published, to describe the cosmic and universal struggle to overcome evil in his essay, "Tolkien's

Good and Evil" in Cambridge Review in November 1973. Pettit correctly recognizes that

The Lord of the Rings, and especially The Silmarillion, is the "projection of a serious moral vision" (34). He further proposes that the source of evil in The Silmarillion is the desire for power, as evidenced by Fёanor and Morgoth’s centuries-long war over the

Silmarils, and which translates directly into the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings.

The title of Clyde S. Kilby’s book Tolkien and the Silmarillion, published one year before The Silmarillion was published, is misleading. Kilby has written a brief and intimate record of J.R.R. Tolkien from his experiences when spent the summer of 1966 hoping to help prepare Tolkien’s vast myth labyrinth for publication. Tolkien and the

Silmarillion is much more a portrait of the mythmaker than a critical assessment of the

Keuthan 70 then unpublished legendarium. Kilby states that he did not believe it would be completed during Tolkien’s life, which turned out to be true. Kilby’s task during his visit was to

“analyze and give critical judgment” (20) of Tolkien’s manuscripts. Kilby’s primary usefulness where this investigation is concerned involves his proving Tolkien to be a

Christian writer directly from Tolkien himself. Kilby’s elaboration on the word Eärendil, the most beloved star in Middle-earth, and its direct connection to Christ pulled directly from Cynewulf’s poem is an example of said proof. Similarly, Tolkien told Kilby explicitly that the Secret Fire mentioned in The Silmarillion was the Holy Spirit (29). In

1976, this information was a jolting revelation to Tolkien readers. However, as far as the critical examination for this project, Kilby’s book offers little revelation on evil in The

Silmarillion.

Paul Kocher has written several pieces on The Silmarillion, including "The Tale of the Ñoldor" published in Mythlore in the same year as The Silmarillion. He reminds the reader that the history of the Ñoldor in the Third Age is Galadriel's story: her refusal of the One Ring causes the Valar to repeal the prohibition of her returning to Valinor, thus illustrating one of the most tantalizing examples in The Silmarillion of evil being defeated in The Lord of the Rings.

Kocher’s Reader's Guide to the Silmarillion is less useful for the purposes of this project than the previous essay. First, the guide does a poor job of clarifying and defining the characters, events, and places in The Silmarillion. Instead, it is largely a paraphrasing of the stories of The Silmarillion in the author's own mediocre narrative style, with only a brief nod to thematic and source material. More importantly, Kocher’s book abounds with inaccuracies. The author has chosen to "characterize" characters like Maedhros and

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Beren, foisting upon the reader his own idea of what these characters may be thinking — characterizations that are unsupported in the text. Kocher can make such interpretations in terms of his personal understanding of the text, but they are not in fact explicit in

Tolkien's words. Literal inaccuracies also exist, such as "Elfin" for "Elven," and the assertion that none of Fëanor's sons were married. It becomes clear that the author is not familiar with Christopher Tolkien's exegeses, but even allowing for that, he has not represented the published Silmarillion text accurately. Further, the book sheds no appreciable light on evil in The Silmarillion.

"Frodo and the Cosmos: Reflections on The Silmarillion" begins by outlining the plot of The Silmarillion, and then observes that the book may be quite a shock for The

Lord of the Rings enthusiasts: "If the Ring trilogy competes for attention mainly with . . . medieval romances, The Silmarillion demands comparison with Hesiod and The Iliad,

Paradise Lost and Genesis" (qtd. in Johnson 176). Joseph McLellan also makes the case that the stories of The Silmarillion are the foundation of The Lord of the Rings and are what makes Tolkien unique as a twentieth century author: his stories believably live inside an immense and timeless world.

Aaron R. Davis’ essay "Holy Elven Light: A Religious Influence on The Lord of the Rings" is nearly impossible to acquire because it has only been published in Studies in Fantasy Literature, a magazine which ceased publication after only three issues.

Davis’ essay, unapologetically Catholic, starts by reading like a summary of Rutledge’s

Episcopalian appraisal of Tolkien in The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine

Design in The Lord of the Rings. Davis, like Rutledge, addresses Tolkien’s treatment of the Holy Sacraments, his purveyance of mercy as a dominate character motivation, his

Keuthan 72 subtle indication of the presence of Providence, and Tolkien’s brilliant use of the One

Ring as symbolic of temptation. But where Rutledge seeks the roots of The Lord of the

Rings in The Hobbit, Davis more astutely mines The Silmarillion, drawing from it an insightful discussion of the nature of evil, highly apropos for this research.

Perhaps the most important critical commentary written about The Silmarillion has actually come from Tolkien himself. After The Silmarillion, the next collection

Christopher Tolkien published of his father's works appeared in 1981 as The Letters of

J. R. R. Tolkien. Letter 131 was written to Milton Waldman of the Collins publishing house in 1951. Negotiations between Tolkien and his original publisher, Allen and

Unwin, were stalled over Tolkien's insistence that The Lord of the Rings be published together with The Silmarillion. Allen and Unwin had decided that the book would be too big, too unwieldy, and too unlikely to sell, and so, turned down Tolkien's request to have the two published together. As a result, Tolkien turned to Waldman. In this exhaustive letter, Tolkien goes to extraordinary lengths to explain the structure, meaning, thematic importance of The Silmarillion and its connections to The Lord of the Rings. He further attempts to justify the inclusion of The Silmarillion with The Lord of the Rings, stating that one is the provenance of and undergirds the other. Tolkien's own analysis may in fact be the best indication of the place of evil in the structure and content of The

Silmarillion.

Tolkien and the Silmarils by Randel Helms explores The Silmarillion’s Christian and theological contexts, but many scholars have found this literary study of The

Silmarillion rather thin. Helms seems bent on forcing the Bible into every aspect of the legendarium, while mentioning only in passing or not at all the “pagan” influences of the

Keuthan 73

Völsungasaga, the Nibelungenlied, the Völuspá, and classical myth. The agenda-driven study loses ground among academics for its attempt to find the Bible as The

Silmarillion’s sole source and interpretation. However, for our purposes, Helms has some important points to explore because, indeed, the Bible does figure prominently in

Tolkien’s design of his mythology.

One cannot really tell what John William Houghton 's article “Augustine in the

Cottage of Lost Play: The Ainulindalë as Asterisk Cosmogony” is about from the title.

But because the essay is found in Jane Chance’s collection of essays called Tolkien, The

Medievalist, one assumes that Houghton will bring Tolkien together with Augustine in some medievalist fashion. Indeed, this author does place Augustine and Tolkien in the proper medievalist context. The whole point of Chance's book is to solidify Tolkien as a fervent medievalist, and this essay helps the reader to understand Tolkien's conceptualization of his mythologized cosmogony within the framework of Augustinian thought. Houghton's essay facilitates recognition of Tolkien's understanding and use of

Augustinian theology to shape his medieval portrayal of evil in The Silmarillion.

"From Fёanor to Doctor Faustus: A Creator's Path to Self Destruction" by John

Ellison was first published in 1992 in the journal Mallorn. Ellison discusses the arrogance of Fëanor as creative artist, whose silmarils were at once a great achievement and the cause of ages of immeasurable tragedy. He proposes that Fëanor's story is a cautionary parable about the dangers of a “restless yearning for an unachievable perfection,” (3) and notes the correlation with Tolkien's own reluctance to complete artistic projects. Correlations to Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle” are unavoidable.

Ellison constructs a rather tenuous relationship between Fëanor's story and the Faust

Keuthan 74 legend, particularly in the form of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, whose protagonist, a composer, is like Fëanor: a grasping artist whose aspirations cause his destruction. While the parallels may be strained, Ellison’s discussion of Faust’s descent into evil pursuits provide further proof of this project’s thesis. Additionally, the reference to one of the stories in The Silmarillion as a parable provides a convenient segue into a discussion of

Tolkien’s work as having parabolic qualities, as described by Narrative Theologist Sallie

McFague.

The review of literature pertaining to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien could not possibly be complete without the inclusion of Christopher Tolkien’s monumental twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth, a longitudinal study of the development and elaboration of Tolkien’s legendarium through his transcribed manuscripts, with textual commentary by the editor, Christopher Tolkien. The publication dates of the twelve volumes are:

1–2: The Book of Lost Tales (2 vols., 1983–84)

3: The Lays of Beleriand (1985)

4: The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986)

5: The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987)

6: The Return of the Shadow (1988)

7: The Treason of Isengard (1989)

8: The War of the Ring (1990)

9: Sauron Defeated (1992)

10: Morgoth’s Ring (1993)

11: The War of the Jewels (1994)

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12: The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996)

David Bratman states that the term ‘‘History’’ in the title The History of Middle-earth has two applications: “the internal history of the secondary world of the legendarium, from its creation through to the War of the Ring and a little after; and the external history of the author writing about it” (“History” 273). These volumes are arranged by the external history and within individual ‘‘phases’’ by the internal history. The earliest materials in

The History of Middle-earth are various poems within The Book of Lost Tales dating from 1914; the main text of which was begun 1916–1917 as Tolkien was recovering from his illness contracted in the trenches in France. The last artifacts are philosophical and linguistic notes dating to around 1972, published in The Peoples of Middle-earth.

The History of Middle-earth is, first, an indispensible record of the more than sixty years of creative work that Tolkien put into his legendarium. The History of

Middle-earth finally shows The Silmarillion in its true form of multiple, often contradictory versions in different styles and levels of detail. The History of

Middle-earth lays bare all the minutia and deep background of history and mythology made manifest in The Lord of the Rings. Draft after draft, revisions and copious re- writings are available for close study, thus making available for any readers’ examination various works that, for reasons of stylistic incongruity or internal inconsistency, could not have been incorporated into The Silmarillion, thus effectively explaining why Tolkien never finished it.

Few of the stories and/or poems in the twelve volumes were ever actually completed: Tolkien would work on some stories in multiple drafts for long periods but would often move on to new approaches or other projects, sometimes returning to the

Keuthan 76 older material at a later time, but characteristically (and maddeningly for his publisher and his friends) reworking it from the beginning again rather than attempting to complete older unfinished texts. At different stages in his creative career, Tolkien concentrated on different parts of The Silmarillion. After nearly finishing The Book of Lost Tales by about 1920, Tolkien decided to take some of the major stories of the infant legendarium and convert them into verse. During the early 1920s, he composed, for example, “The

Lay of the Children of Húrin,” and in the later 1920s he composed “The Lay of Leithian.”

These two incomplete poems, along with a critique of the later poem written in 1930 by

C. S. Lewis, comprise the largest part of the third volume, The Lays of Beleriand. By the early 1950s, Tolkien tried yet another rewriting of “The Lay of Leithian,” which is also included in this volume.

In 1926 Tolkien prepared a ‘‘sketch of the mythology’’ as a kind of explanatory foundation for a friend reading the earlier lay, “The Lay of the Children of Húrin.”

Tolkien re-wrote and significantly expanded this poem over the next twelve years, creating a series of chronological annals and various texts of a narrative history eventually titled “Quenta Silmarillion.” These stories followed the same general narrative structure of The Book of Lost Tales, but Tolkien omitted the frame story and significantly restructured the tone, literary style, the details, and the significance of several characters and major plot events. All of these works, which together form the earlier texts of what may be referred to collectively as The Silmarillion, are published in the volumes The Shaping of Middle-earth and The Lost Road and Other Writings.

The title story of Volume Five, “The Lost Road,” was written from an inspiration for the legend of Atlantis which Tolkien decided to attach as a sequel to the developing

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Silmarillion legendarium. In 1937, he wrote both “The Fall of Númenor,” a brief account of a kingdom of men that existed after the age of the “Quenta” and the “Annals,” and the sketchy beginnings of a novel, confusingly also called The Lost Road, telling the mythic and/or spiritual parallels between modern men and the men of lost Númenor.

Unfortunately, after 1938 Tolkien set aside both existing parts of The Silmarillion legendarium to pursue his publisher’s suggestion to write a sequel to The Hobbit more seriously. This new book, which Tolkien placed in a yet undated distant past, contained important casual references to events of the legendarium as having taken place even further in its past. In writing the sequel, eventually titled The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien solidified and expanded the relationship between The Hobbit and the legendarium, thus necessitating the publishing of a revised version of The Hobbit in 1951.

Volumes Six through Eight and part of Volume Nine of The History of

Middle-earth describe its composition over the years 1937–48, and the four volumes bear the subseries title The History of The Lord of the Rings.

After finishing a draft of The Lord of the Rings in 1948, Tolkien again returned to what he called the “Elder Days” material. Texts written between then and about 1960 comprise Volumes Ten and Eleven of The History of Middle-earth, bearing the subseries title The Later Silmarillion.

Rarely is such a compendium of authorial material available for researchers to examine. The History of Middle-earth exposes Tolkien’s thought processes to such a degree that inferences may be strongly supported concerning his intentions, his goals, and his process of invention. However tempting it may be to delve deep into this gold mine, I will refrain from doing so as to not accidently long-forgotten trails of research. We will

Keuthan 78 mine The History of Middle-earth only for the nuggets that build the thesis case: What did Tolkien understand about the nature of evil?

Narrative Theology

This project will not require a significant background of sources to make use of narrative theology. In fact, I will utilize almost exclusively the work of Sallie McFague, as her work concentrates on the intersections between literature and theology. However, some explanation of the context in which McFague's work resides will qualify the almost exclusive selection of her theories for this project.

A literature review on narrative theology could not possibly be complete without

Robert Alter’s classic text The Art of Biblical Narrative. Alter begins his text by denigrating what he terms the largely "excavative" techniques of traditional Biblical criticism, whether it be the earlier source criticism or the current trend towards form criticism. He is equally disdainful of structuralism with its "elaborate taxonomies" or

"the contemporary agnosticism about literary meaning" (179). Alter’s book labors at the business of making connections between the Old Testament narratives and the theology it may be communicating: "With language God creates the world; through language He reveals his design in history to men" (112). Alter effectively clarifies the role played by certain devices much less common in Western literature in general: the extent to which dialogue often carries the major storyline, the role of repetition, and the prominent use of keywords in the development of a thematic argument. Alter’s concluding point is most apropos to our study of Tolkien's stories:

Subsequent religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the

Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the

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matter may well be that by learning to enjoy the Biblical stories more fully

as stories, we shall also come to see more clearly what they mean to tell us

about God, man, and a perilously momentous realm of history. (189)

Alter, as a trained literary critic, is also a Biblical scholar applying literary critical technique to the narratives of the Bible, thus providing future narrative theologians with literary critical tools.

Narrative and Power Toward a Theology for the Overdog by Greg Loving is an unpublished doctoral dissertation that describes the history and development of narrative theology from its origins in Karl Barth and Richard Niebuhr, splitting the branches of this tree into all into different sub-theories and various applications. Loving explicates and differentiates between the different appropriations and developments of narrative theology in the latter half of the twentieth century. His dissertation explores the history of narrative theology leading to a concentration on the work of Hans Frei and his interpretation of the narratives in Scripture as producing moral and ethical knowledge.

However, Loving’s work is revelatory for this project in the discovery of Sallie

McFague's work using the principles of narrative theology to apply to the understanding of literature perceived to communicate religious ideas. Loving’s dissertation has also identified the possible importance of some of the work on narrative and representation of evil from Paul Ricoeur.

Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer explores the intersections between Ricoeur’s philosophy, narrative theology, and literature. Although Paul Ricoeur’s writings are widely and appreciatively read by theologians, Vanhoozer’s book offers a critical account

Keuthan 80 of Ricoeur’s theory of narrative interpretation and its contribution to theology. Unlike many previous studies of Ricoeur, Vanhoozer argues that Ricoeur’s hermeneutics must be viewed in the light of his overall philosophical agenda, as a combining and continuation of the unfinished projects of Kant and Heidegger. Particularly helpful is the focus on Ricoeur’s recent narrative theory as the context in which he deals with problems of time and the creative imagination. Clearly, the narrative stands at the crossroads of

Ricoeur’s search for the meaning of “humanness” as well as his search for the meaning of texts, both scriptural and literary. Ricoeur’s theories accomplish much towards validating the analysis of literature in the light of certain abstract theological concepts.

Ricoeur places these considerations squarely in a historical/philosophical context and yet expands them into a reconsideration of narrative as offering a potential type of knowledge unique to our understanding of how stories communicate theology.

Sallie McFague's doctoral dissertation was later published as the book Literature and the Christian Life, which explores the relationships that exist between Christianity

(theology and doctrine) and literature. The book first defines the terms of the relationship

"Christianity" and "literature" with the intention of protecting each term’s individuality and by that protection discovering their relationship. In other words, she allows

Christianity to be what it is and art to exist in its own right without forcing them together in any way. Her thesis is that few literary and/or theological scholars have attempted to look at the nature and function of literature and then at the Christian faith in order to discover the relationship between them. McFague proposes a methodology for the examination of literature described by her as "existential" (preface). Thus, the usefulness of her book for this project is that it provides a framework, or methodology, for

Keuthan 81 examining literature specifically in the light of an intrinsic understanding of the Christian life and worldview.

McFague states in the introduction to Speaking in Parables that the "purpose of theology is to make it possible for the Gospel to be heard in our time" (1). She further states that theology in a postmodern environment could best achieve its function if it were to adhere to Jesus' parables as models of stories that could lead to theological knowledge.

According to McFague, "if theology becomes overly abstract, conceptual, and systematic, it separates thought and life, belief and practice, words and their embodiment, making it more difficult if not impossible for us to believe in our hearts what we confess with our lips" (2). Thus, she arrives at the title of her book, believing that there is a way to “do” theology, which historically begins with the Gospels and the apostle Paul, threads its way through Augustine and Luther to present-day theologians. She calls her concept

"intermediary or parabolic theology" (3). Her theories illustrate the wider narrative theological mantra of restoring the theological importance of narrative. Parables stresses the importance of narrative by proposing that theology which addresses the postmodern mind must rely on various literary forms — parables, stories, poems, and confessions — as a bridge from ephemeral religious experience to systematic theology. The rest of

McFague's book attempts to solidify her theory by promoting the idea that human beings not only think narratively, as Fisher has proposed, but also metaphorically, thus allowing us to see that Jesus is the living parable of God. McFague's ideas resonate soundly with

Tolkien's ideas about how certain types of literature may facilitate a way of axiomatic and epistemological knowing. In his "On Fairy Stories" essay, Tolkien states that meaning is not in the story it is the story. The parallels between McFague's ideas about

Keuthan 82 parables and Tolkien's ideas about fairy stories become obvious as their ideas are compared. McFague's theories and her critical methodologies, therefore, become seminally useful in analyzing Tolkien’s fiction.

According to Alexander Lucie-Smith, author of Narrative Theology and Moral

Theology: The Infinite Horizon, modern moral thinking is “stranded between the systematic minutia and the pluralistically universal” (introduction). Lucie-Smith appropriates Alasdair MacIntyre’s foundational work on narrative, discussed in his book along with that of other Narrative Theology founders Stanley Hauerwas and H. T.

Engelhardt, proposes to undo the perceived damage done by the Enlightenment by

“returning to narrative and abandoning the illusion of a disembodied reason that claims to be able to give a coherent explanation for everything” (6). Must we only think about morality in terms that are relative, bound by space and time? Lucie-Smith attempts to answer this question by examining the nature of narrative itself as well as the particular narratives of John Rawls and St. Augustine. It is Lucie-Smith’s contention that each narrative that points to a lived morality exists against the background of the “infinite horizon” of the title (9).

Tolkien scholars Stratford Caldecott and Joseph Pearce have established that

Tolkien's portrayal of evil adheres to the Augustinian medieval tradition; therefore, the

Augustinian doctrine of evil will be threaded through this investigation. Evil and the

Augustinian Tradition is theologian Charles T. Mathewes’ doctoral dissertation published later as a book, delineating for the reader what Augustine thought about evil. Mathewes believes that while recent religious scholarship has focused its attention on the difficulties that evil presents to religious belief and moral life, an examination of important historical

Keuthan 83 figures with something important to say on the topic have excluded Augustine.

Mathewes’ work examines the Augustinian tradition and its development in the writings of such luminaries as Reinhold Niebuhr. Mathewes argues that the Augustinian tradition offers us a powerful template for understanding and responding to the challenges of evil in our world. Evil and the Augustinian Tradition helps to make some significant connections between a historical philosophical stance on evil and its obvious manifestation in Tolkien's work.

Narrative Theory

Walter Fisher's place in this investigation, and the exposition of his ideas in narrative paradigm, has been explained above. But to place his work in historical context, herein is described the order in which his work has been developed and published.

Fisher first began to explain his narrative paradigm in an essay in 1984 entitled

"Narration As Human Communication Paradigm: the Case of Public Moral Argument."

In this first essay the rudiments of his paradigm are laid out, to include the most important tenant: man is naturally a storytelling animal (homo narrans). The critical opposition he faced after the publication of this essay was based on his proposition that perhaps man only thinks in terms narrative. In 1985, Fisher published two more essays in an attempt to further explain narrative paradigm: "The Narrative Paradigm: an

Elaboration" and "The Narrative Paradigm: in the Beginning." Then two years later,

Fisher coalesced all of his ideas into the book Human Communication As Narration:

Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, now having been refined in the crucible of critical response. Fisher has continued through the years to refine, expand,

Keuthan 84 and clarify his ideas on narrative paradigm with several essays: "The Narrative Paradigm and the Assessment of Historical Texts" (1988), "Clarifying the Narrative Paradigm"

(1989), "Narrative Rationality and the Logic of Scientific Discourse" (1994), and

"Narration, Knowledge, and the Possibility of Wisdom" (1995).

In Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (1987), Fisher explains the wide usefulness of the narrative paradigm in the interpretation of political discourse, literary texts, and philosophical treatises. The narrative paradigm grew out of two traditional strands of rhetoric – the argumentative or persuasive, and the literary or aesthetic. The narrative paradigm “implies that human communication should be viewed as historical as well as situational, as stories competing with other stories constituted by good reasons, as being rational when they satisfy the demands of narrative probability and narrative fidelity, and as inevitably moral inducements” (58). In other words, all people naturally and intrinsically judge stories and prefer stories they perceive to be true and correct. A “good reason” establishes the warrant for a belief, attitude or action. Its “goodness” rests in its relevance, consistency, and consequence, and the extent to which it is grounded in the noblest aspirations of a people (63). A good reason makes a pragmatic difference in one’s life and one’s community. The intention of this project is to utilize this theoretical framework proposed by Fisher's extensive development of the narrative paradigm and combine with it the literary critical capabilities of the identified strands of narrative theology in order to hold over Tolkien's The Silmarillion a unique magnifying glass with the intention of seeing specific elements, evil elements.

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William G. Kirkwood has written two essays that assist this project in their discussion of parables as a particular kind of storytelling communication strategy and as metaphors, in much the same way that McFague has suggested. In "Storytelling and

Self-Confrontation: Parables as Communication Strategies," Kirkwood has suggested that the purpose of telling parables — not just Jesus’ parables, but any parables — is to

"arouse both sympathetic and hostile listeners to recognize and overcome those thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions impede their spiritual growth" (58). Significantly for this project, Kirkwood suggests that parables have a unique ability to "move listeners to acts of self confrontation" (59), which naturally leads to a comparison of parables to fantasy literature. Consider that fantasy literature is the next step beyond the parable because both invite the listener into a world where the normal restrictions of belief are suspended.

Kirkwood’s stated thesis in this essay is that some stories are uniquely capable of

"challenging listeners’ established beliefs and attitudes," and at the same time also able to invoke "certain feelings and states of awareness significant in their own right as the ends, not mere means, of religious discipline" (59). Kirkwood further justifies an examination of parables by proposing that a critical examination of parables can "lead to more general analysis of the rhetorical strategies inherent in narrative discourse" (59). By association, then, Kirkwood's justification also qualifies an examination of Tolkien's literature.

Tolkien's skill in narrative discourse is well established; by placing a critical examination of parables in juxtaposition to Tolkien's early stories, the reader can begin to understand the persuasive rhetorical strategies he employs. Kirkwood further aligns himself with

McFague and Fisher by recalling David Tracy’s summary position on Paul Ricoeur: the parable has been described as "the conjunction of a narrative form and a metaphorical

Keuthan 86 process" (60). As we have seen, McFague's entire position is that storytelling animals

(Fisher) think metaphorically in order to gain ontological understanding of a theological nature.

Kirkwood is, however, too narrow in his understanding of what parables accomplish. He defines them as "brief, oral narratives told primarily to instruct, guide, or influence listeners, rather than to entertain" (60). I don't agree with his definition in several points. They don't have to be brief, are not necessarily told with the authorial intention to instruct, and are often entertaining. The fact is, human beings love a good story well told, which, of course, casts the role of the storyteller as entertainer. I have to believe that Jesus was an entertaining storyteller — he drew vast crowds to hear his parables.

Kirkwood sees that storytelling has historically been an instrument to help listeners see within themselves obstacles to spiritual progress and in a way to overcome those obstacles. He states that parables are particularly useful in this regard as a way to establish dialogues between storytellers and unsympathetic listeners (62), which could be especially useful in approaching those listeners hostile to the Christian faith. It is a way to confront an audience so that the listener does not feel condemned by the speaker, but, through self-revelation, prescriptive epiphanies bring the listener to self-examination. If this quality of parables exists as Jesus told them, than I can readily see that the same quality of confrontation can be identified in the works of such writers as Flannery

O'Connor and Tolkien. Kirkwood points out a couple of examples in the New Testament where confrontation with foolish people — think the episode of Jesus and the Rich

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Young Ruler; Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan — how the central objective is to offer an "existential challenge" (62) to all who "have ears to hear."

The real power of parables (and by association Tolkien's works) is explicitly delineated in the analysis from Stanley Fish:

A dialectical presentation... is disturbing, for it requires of its readers a

searching and rigorous scrutiny of everything they believe in and live by.

Is didactic in a special sense: it does not preach the truth, but asks that its

readers discover the truth for themselves.... (qtd. in "Storytelling" 63)

Fish could easily be describing exactly what Tolkien's works do to its readers. Whereas

C. S. Lewis' works do "preach," Tolkien's stories subtly and beautifully draw the reader to a self-examination of an extended and self-critical nature so that they discover the truth about themselves, for themselves.

Another important and apropos point that Kirkwood makes is that when a listener is being challenged to be persuaded to accept something, the tendency is to depend on what he calls "intellectuality." A story, by comparison, can have the ability to disarm

"intellectuality" in two ways: first, a tale may “evoke in listeners a brief experience of non-rational awareness, directly halting the otherwise incessant flow of their own intellectualizing" (64). Then second, a well told story may facilitate the listeners challenging his or her own beliefs about what is rational (65). Kirkwood in this last point echoes at least one stave of Fisher's Narrative Paradigm; that every listener to a story will accept its premise and the construction of an alternate world if it is built on rational probability. But compare a well-told story to, let's say, a sermon. A sermon or some other type of "argument" forces the listener into a defensive stance relying on Kirkwood's

Keuthan 88

"intellectualizing." A story, however, has the opposite effect, lowering barriers, relaxing the listener into merely letting the story in, thus setting up the possibility of a personal revelation. Kirkwood proposes that one of the real strengths of stories of parabolic quality is the ability to effectively confront these defensive states of awareness in listeners. He charges that in modern times "intellectuality" is an unavoidable habitual mental process. Modern humans constantly engage in "internal, verbal dialogue and an underlying rational activity which must be suspended temporarily if other states of awareness desired by the aspirant are to occur" (65). What I think Kirkwood is saying is that it's harder for the jaded, cynical, twentieth century consumer of fiction and film to willingly suspend disbelief so that other parts of our mind and heart can hear something spiritual. Kirkwood believes that modern man should take the effort to learn to suspend

"intellectuality" when approaching a narrative, but that this is only really possible after prolonged personal effort. But think what might happen (and does happen) when a reader immerses himself in 1,200 pages of an alternate world like Middle-earth. There lies the possibility of a prolonged exposure to a narrative that may facilitate the suspension of intellectuality, thereby making possible, again, a personal revelation — an epiphany.

Kirkwood further believes that for a narrative of this stature to accomplish the suspended thinking of rationality it must have a "shocking climax" (65), which would have to be of sufficient narrative power to "arrest for a few moments the listeners otherwise incessant intellectualizing" (65). McFague also states that any good parable has this shock value, and when we see in Chapter Two of this project McFague deconstruct Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son, the reader will see that often Jesus told

Keuthan 89 stories of a shocking nature with climaxes that set his listeners in mental disarray.

Additionally, I would assert that Tolkien accomplishes the same climactic shock value when, after 1,150 pages, Frodo does not throw the One Ring into the Cracks of Doom, but instead chooses to keep the One Ring for himself just like every other bearer who has come under its power.

Kirkwood asserts that a story of parabolic power affects a second stage response.

When the first, non-intellectualized response to the story subsides, it is often succeeded by extended and personal reflection on the possible significance of the tale. A story of parabolic power will, in fact, haunt the thinking of the reader/listener, perhaps for years.

It is this second stage long-term reflection that Kirkwood believes has the persuasive ability to introduce ideas, theology, and views of life which would otherwise have been rejected outright by the listener before they could create instead self-examination in the listener (68) and this is the point at which I see Kirkwood's ideas melding nicely with

Fisher's Narrative Paradigm. Parables (and stories like Tolkien’s) have the effect of provoking listeners to look for the hidden or not obvious ideas, which they very well could have rejected if those ideas had been expressed in a more obvious format, like a sermon. Because Fisher states that people tend to make order out of the chaos of their lives by looking for meaning in a story, readers and listeners will have introduced into their thinking a new view of life that they went looking for in this story because this is what humans do — we must make sense out of narrative. The power of Tolkien's storytelling begins slowly to come into focus when posing in juxtaposition the narrative theories of Fisher, the parabolic/literary qualities outlined by McFague, and the rhetorical power ideas proposed by Kirkwood.

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Kirkwood's second essay, "Parables As Metaphors and Examples," marries the rhetorical idea that parables facilitate metaphorical thinking in the hearer with McFague's work on parables as facilitators of metaphorical thinking that leads to theological knowledge. Both are fond of quoting and referring to Amos Wilder: "a true metaphor or symbol is more than a sign, it is a bearer of the reality to which it refers. The hearer not only learns about that reality, he participates in it. He is invaded by. Here lies the power and faithfulness of art" (qtd. in Kirkwood "Parables" 422). Kirkwood asserts that Wilder and other parable scholars like McFague have laid the groundwork for Michael Lev's observation that "many features of the metaphorical process are fundamentally rhetorical... the artwork directly and actively participates in the creation of meaning" (qtd. in Kirkwood "Parables" 422). The ideas in this essay become particularly applicable for this project because Kirkwood asserts that his ideas, which were originally only applied to the parables of Jesus, have now been widely applied to parables told by other speakers and writers as well — to include Tolkien. Kirkwood, in this essay, also makes solid connections between his ideas and Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm in that both believe that narratives are inherently ontological and moral constructs (423). Kirkwood further quotes Crossan, and in complete alignment with McFague, in agreeing that when parables function as metaphors, they are "irreplaceable, irreducible, and indispensable" (qtd. in

Kirkwood "Parables" 424). But perhaps Kirkwood's most direct agreement in illustration of Tolkien is found in his quoting Wilder again: "Jesus' speech had the character not of instruction and ideas but compelling imagination, of spell, of mythical shock and transformation” (qtd. in Kirkwood "Parables" 425). Wilder perfectly describes Tolkien's capabilities a storyteller; Middle-earth compels the imagination, casts a spell on its

Keuthan 91 readers, and transforms the heart and mind by means of mythical shock. Kirkwood,

McFague, and Fisher might, at this point, agree that Tolkien's work is parabolic.

Kirkwood also asserts that parables communicate in a particular rhetorical paradigm the actions of someone who might wish to behave in a Christ-like manner.

Characters in parables, he says, provide exemplary behavior: "It is not like the way one should serve God, it is the way" (430). Kirkwood supports his point by quoting Via: "It is not comparable to what one should do, it is exactly what one should do" (qtd. in

Kirkwood "Parables" 430). Critics of Tolkien fiction often claim that there is no indication of the presence of Christian ideals in his work, but Kirkwood, McFague, and

Fisher have led us to see that Tolkien's stories display the Christian faith in complex and metaphorical ways. Kirkwood, however, sees that parables have a weakness, that is that they do not confront all hearers with only one, unambiguous choice to be made. He sees parables as having a narrative weakness because listeners may discover any number of possible insights and respondent decisions in a given story — multiple interpretations as part of the intrinsic rhetorical nature of parables (434). I disagree with Kirkwood. The very prescriptive nature of parables in their ability to speak to the listener/reader on an individual level, pricking the heart and mind at precisely the point of need and conviction is one of its most powerful strengths.

Kirkwood concludes the second essay by stating that the study of parables, in agreement with Fisher and McFague, "illuminates the relationship between the ontology of narrative and its inherent in the moral nature" (436). His best example is that Jesus was able to tell a plausible story about the compassion of a Samaritan, which does not necessarily establish that people do behave like true neighbors, only that they could. He

Keuthan 92 thus concludes that the story of the Good Samaritan poses and "ontological argument" like all good parables. No reader of Tolkien's fiction will ever possess a magic, corrupting, sentient ring which we must destroy, but Frodo's and Sam's actions have seeped into our subconscious via the magic of narrative to speak to us in our naturally metaphorical thinking that we might find ourselves some day in Frodo's position, faced with the same decision, and choose to do as he did. Kirkwood's two essays provide considerable support and compelling ideas to provide this project, connecting an analysis of parables, metaphor, and intrinsically human rhetorical procedure with the ideas of

McFague, Fisher, and ultimately Tolkien.

Certainly one of the attractions to Tolkien's fiction is that it draws the reader into the nostalgic past, into a world believably populated by elves, heroes, dragons, and magic jewelry — in short, a place we would all like to go, a place of mystic folklore. Kathleen

Glenister Roberts’ essay, “Texturing the Narrative Paradigm: Folklore and

Communication” proposes the appropriation of Fisher's narrative paradigm to more effectively analyze the power of folklore literature. According to Glenister Roberts, although communication theory is often informed by other disciplines, scholarly connections with folklore have been few. As communication scholars become increasingly interested in narrative as a topic of study for the future, it seems important to return to the past: to folklore, and to Walter Fisher's work in communication that yielded the narrative paradigm. Glenister Roberts’ paper suggests ways in which new understandings of narrative in folklore and in Fisher's paradigm could complement each other and thereby enrich both disciplines. She suggests that many ideas about communication and the narrative paradigm can be empirically strengthened by the work

Keuthan 93 of folklore scholars. At the same time, communication scholarship informs folklore's attempts to merge aesthetic and social processes in folklore and encouraging the conversation between disciplines to continue. Glenister Roberts’ essay strengthens the contention that Fisher's work is still applicable and applies it in a unique way especially useful for this project. Frankly, I had not considered Tolkien's work as having elements of folklore, but Glenister Roberts’ ideas have opened up new ones for me.

“The Story Was Already Written: Narrative Theory in The Lord of the Rings,” written by Mary R. Bowman for the journal Narrative, is an essay which explores the meta-narrative aspects of The Lord of the Rings. These include characters' conversations about narrative (which are sometimes self-referential) and features of the novel's structure and narrative technique that illustrate some of the points made in the characters' conversations. But Bowman constructs her ideas about Tolkien’s use of narrative and inventive use of meta-narrative by reminding the reader how, by constructing an actual frame for his tale, Tolkien is able to incorporate meta-narrative into his work as an explicit statement in the mouths of his characters, not merely as an abstract theory but as a meta-comment on his own work. What Sam says about the events recounted in The

Lord of the Rings in relation to tales of the Elder Days, is equally true of the book that recounts them, The Lord of the Rings itself. The tales that Sam refers to in fact existed, in some version, as The Silmarillion, when Tolkien wrote this passage. One needs to consider Tolkien's expressed views about the goals of story-telling and the evidence of its success. In "On Fairy-Stories," he discusses the nature of "literary belief" or, as he coins the term, "Secondary Belief." One could easily substitute Fisher’s idea of narrative probability – Could the story have really happened? In the light of the Coleridgean

Keuthan 94 mantra: "willing suspension of disbelief," Tolkien argues that instead:

The story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator.' He makes a Secondary

World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it

accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you

are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken;

the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World

again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. (qtd.

in “Story” 60)

Bowman’s essay, by meticulously identifying the myriad instances of Tolkien’s construction of narrative, meta-narrative, and unimpeachable believability, confirms the applicability of Fisher’s narrative paradigm to Tolkien’s mythology. Fidelity, coherence, and probability – these ideas virtually define Tolkien’s writing.

STRUCTURE OF THE INVESTIGATION

The structure of this project is a historical/critical investigation of key periods in

Tolkien’s adult life as he wrote his legendarium, published posthumously as The

Silmarillion. Chapter One is the investigation introduced, described, supported, and justified. First, the investigation impetus is explained, leading to the proposition of the research question. Next, the first chapter describes the primary artifacts of this investigation – the three cornerstone stories that are part of the collection of stories published as The Silmarillion. Then, this introductory chapter describes the secondary artifacts: the letters and other peripheral documentation which describes Tolkien's World

War I experiences; Tolkien’s 1936 lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics," and of course, The Lord of the Rings. This chapter then describes the investigation’s procedures

Keuthan 95 and methods employed and the application of criticism utilized to facilitate discovery.

An explanation and justification, as well as the interaction between Narrative Theology and Narrative Theory, especially as applied by Walter Fisher's Narrative Paradigm, forms the critical foundation needed. Built upon the foundation is the added theological ideas concerning evil from St. Augustine of Hippo. Then, Chapter One introduces the four most prominent influences on Tolkien’s life and the writing of The Silmarillion: his deeply Catholic faith, his World War I experiences, his personal relationships with people like his wife Edith and C. S. Lewis, and lastly, his passionate study of Northern European mythic literature and languages. The longest part of this chapter is the review of pertinent literature.

Chapters Two, Three, and Four will each explore an important historical period in

Tolkien's life, so that we can explore in juxtaposition to the historical time period, a critical examination of the most important story Tolkien wrote (or revised) during said historical period, as it pertains to his communication of evil. The most important influences applicable to his life at this time will also become part of the discussion.

Chapter Two, will begin the historical investigation with Tolkien’s experiences in

World War I, from approximately 1914 to 1917. I have chosen to examine "The Fall of

Gondolin" from the Book of Lost Tales as a story with a significant representation of evil analogous to his experiences in the war. Then, this chapter will discuss the applicable influences of: the sensory and mental horrors of war, the loss of his friends in the war, his new marriage to Edith, and the two influences which are consistently applicable: his

Catholic faith, and the influence of his study of ancient Northern European literature.

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Chapter Three moves twenty years further into Tolkien's life to the year 1936, in which the young Oxford academic delivered his first groundbreaking academic lecture:

"Beowulf, The Monsters and the Critics." This chapter will discuss how Tolkien's lecture made the evil represented by the monsters in Beowulf the centrally important interpretive milieu upon which to base the true meaning of the poem. The story from The

Silmarillion, which will be examined in juxtaposition, is "Of Túrin Turambar" (published in a more complete form as The Children of Húrin in 2007) in which Tolkien treats the corruption and fall of man when faced with seemingly unconquerable evil. Tolkien makes bold statements about the results of yielding to the lure of evil in the tragic end of

Túrin, couched in a Job-like tale. The applicable influences discussed in this chapter are

Tolkien's Catholic faith and his intensive philological study of the ancient literature of the

Northern Europeans, but especially Beowulf.

Chapter Four brings the project to the historically important moment in Tolkien's life when The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954 and 1955. As has been copiously documented elsewhere, this novel has some very powerful things to say about the nature of evil. It is Tolkien’s Mozart-like Requiem on the topic. With the successful completion of The Lord of the Rings novel, Tolkien returned to his work on his mythology with vigor, hoping again to get it published as well. The story examined in historical juxtaposition is Tolkien's self-proclaimed autobiographical romance "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien." The reader may draw some well-founded inferences from

Tolkien's seedling treatment of the evil of material desire and possessiveness in "Beren and Lúthien" in the refined, mature treatment of the evil of power, possessiveness, and corruption in The Lord of the Rings. The applicable influences on this period in his life

Keuthan 97 include his unwavering devotion to Catholicism and his love of ancient Northern

European literature, as well as the critically important influence of his friendship within the Inklings, namely with C. S. Lewis. The chapter includes the influence of his marriage to Edith as well.

The final chapter will tie together the elements of the investigation into the analysis and conclusions that form the ratification of the argument. I maintain that

Tolkien is communicating his ideas about evil in specific and intended ways. Chapter

Five will tell the end of the story, how The Silmarillion was published after Tolkien's death, and how his son Christopher gathered together all extraneous versions and drafts of The Silmarillion and published them as The History of Middle-earth. Most importantly, however, the last chapter will draw some conclusions about what the three stories from The Silmarillion communicate about evil. I will infer what Tolkien is communicating about the natural state of mankind and pose possible theological and narrative implications from the investigation. Next, I will propose the possibility of further research into other narrative and theological ideas communicated by The

Silmarillion, as well as Tolkien's lesser works, especially his enigmatic short story "Leaf by Niggle." I will further propose that the results of this investigation could be applied to a fruitful examination of other writers of Tolkien's caliber, such as Flannery O'Connor,

Madeleine L'Engle, and Charles Williams. And finally, I will propose that the tools of narrative theology can find a new and compelling application to the critical examination of films and television.

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CHAPTER 2: FAIRY TALES AND WAR

OF LITERATURE, LEGENDS AND GREAT BATTLES

Written in the language of ancient myths and legends, Tolkien’s life could very well sound like he could be in one of those stories, especially the years before he went to

France to fight in the Battle of the Somme. His courtship of Edith Bratt reads like one of his beloved fairy tales – with Tolkien’s guardian Father Francis Morgan forbidding the young scholar to see the enchanting older woman until his twenty-first birthday, Edith might as well have been Rapunzel. Also, like the knights of old tales, Tolkien and his friends had formed a semi-secret society devoted to the pillaging of ancient languages and the rescuing of long captive stories. I believe that prior to being exposed to the shocking realities of war, Tolkien saw his life in the terms and language of one of the

Northern European stories that he had studied for years. It might read like this:

Once upon a time there lived a brave and handsome soldier named John Ronald

Reuel who had been locked away in the steadfast ivory tower called Academia until the time lock of his 21st birthday should release him upon the stroke of midnight. He had been locked in the mighty tower by his Father Confessor upon learning that the soldier had fallen in love with a raven-haired Elf-princess who had cast her spell over his heart with enchanted song and dance in the blythe wood. The Father Confessor knew that the young soldier had been chosen to become a mighty bard, perhaps the mightiest among the ancient bards of the Lonely Isle, and so his training must not be diverted by any enchantment, however lovely.

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For three long years the handsome soldier had pored over the manuscripts of the ancient tales of the northern kingdoms and grew strong in the language and the telling of the myths from before the foundations of the earth. His knowledge and skill rose in stature as the years progressed, and he became worthy of the calling of the warrior poet.

John Ronald Reuel also learned the arts of battle, to send forth messages in the midst of fighting, and he grew also in courage. For three eternal years the handsome soldier dutifully obeyed his Father Confessor and observed the forbaddence against any contact with the raven haired princess while his training continued apace, but she was ever foremost in his thoughts, and he longed for the day when he should be released to see her dance and sing once more in the blythe wood.

But the brave young soldier was not alone in his travail, for resident with him in the mighty tower were the sword brethren of his youth. This clan was known as the

TCBS, and together they strove valiantly in the pursuit of the ancient bardic tradition.

Together they felt stronger than when each faced a foe alone, and together, as iron sharpens the sword, they sharpened each other's minds and hearts. These three other sword brethren hearkened unto the call of the warrior poet just as young John Ronald

Reuel. The four would soon be called upon to test their mettle in the battle engaged by their country and kin, so they gathered to clash shields, practice mighty battle yawps, and bolster each other's courage with the ancient words both hale and hearty.

And lo, the time of the completion of John Ronald Reuel’s monastic vow, to abstain from any contact whatever with the lovely raven-haired princess, drew nigh with the advent of his 21st birthday. He made lofty plans to ride to her upon the very stroke of midnight, gather her into his arms, seal his devotion with a saintly kiss, and sue for

Keuthan 100 immediate betrothal. The day of his emancipation arrived; at the stroke of midnight he mounted his valiant motorcycle and roared forth to claim his bride.

O, dismayed heart! The fair princess had yielded to the entreaties of her guardian and accepted the suit of another young man! Is our brave young soldier too late? No, for see that he turns her heart yet again toward him with the ancient words both fair and sweet as they stroll together in the moonlit blythe wood. O, bliss divine! O, rapture complete! There in the moonlight the brave young soldier falls to his knee, takes her lily hand in his, and swears to her fealty and lifelong love and begs her to return her heart in kind. Silver light playing on ebony locks and a single crystalline tear are testimony to her ascent. O, bliss divine! O, rapture complete!

Upon his return to his bare lodgings in the ivory tower, young John Ronald Reuel is informed that he must gird himself in preparation for his entrance into the service of his country, to the great conflagration of men and machines in the ancient land of France against the Germanic hordes. His beloved and he decide to wed before his departure, and so, on a merry Wednesday John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and Edith Bratt are enjoined in holy matrimony in the sight of Holy Mother Church and God. O, bliss divine! O, rapture complete!

Relating the events of Tolkien's life prior to his entrance into the First World War, in the style of a legend that Tolkien may have read in his studies at Oxford, makes several important points. First, notice the contrast between the idealistic, idyllic, and even romantic state of Tolkien's life before his encounter with the death and destruction, grossness and horror, both bloody and psychological that characterized his life after his

Keuthan 101 four-month stint as a signal officer at the Battle of the Somme. The contrast is stark. It reads like Tolkien's much-studied Finnish epic the Kalevala prior to his battle experience and then like T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland afterward. This chapter will further expand the depth and breadth of the contrast because it leads to the creation of his first story in the legendarium — “The Fall of Gondolin” — and is the critical provenance of the whole of what would become Tolkien's mythology. Second, the way this chapter is introduced illustrates Tolkien's mind frame as he was beginning to conceptualize the literature he would write. He believed, after an intensive association with the four men of the

T.C.B.S., that he should be a poet, so he was thinking in the terms of poetry. Note for example the repeated lines: O, bliss divine! O, rapture complete! These lines perhaps caricature Tolkien's early efforts writing poetry, but a quick examination of his early poetry at least indicates he was thinking in these terms. His experiences in battle have, then, the added effect of abandoning poetry and turning instead to prose in the tradition and style of the great myths and legends he well knew. Third, I wanted to illustrate, by opening the chapter thus, that Tolkien was thinking and operating in the terms of Fisher's

Narrative Paradigm, which is to say that he saw his life as a great narrative being lived out in a grand time. The inference for this idea can be extracted from the fact that he took his own life narrative and literally mythologized it (although not allegorically) in the story that he wrote convalescing from trench fever, “The Fall of Gondolin.” The narrative parallel (as per Narrative Paradigm) between Tolkien's own life story and the stories he constructed in fiction for his burgeoning mythology will become more apparent through an examination of the three stories in this project. Finally, I would like to suggest by the storytelling at the beginning of this chapter that Tolkien, as a result of his

Keuthan 102 battle experiences, began to think not poetically but metaphorically, and therefore, parabolically, thus bringing into play McFague's parabolic theology and Kirkwood’s parable as persuasive rhetoric as a method of understanding what Tolkien was attempting to communicate about the evil he experienced in the war. But first, a brief examination of the key moments of Tolkien's experiences at the Battle of the Somme is in order.

Although Humphrey Carpenter first, and several other biographers afterward, wrote of Tolkien's experiences in World War I, John Garth's book Tolkien and the Great

War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, published in 2003, is widely accepted by Tolkien scholars Bratman, Shippey, and Wood to be the definitive treatment of Tolkien and

World War I. Therefore, his invaluable research shall be relied on heavily.

By February of 1916, Tolkien was still in England training and waiting to be shipped across to the front. He used much of his training time to work on the lexicon of his Elvish language. "It is curious — especially in contrast to his later, famous writings

— that Tolkien's own life is directly mythologized in these early conceptions" (Garth

127). Garth points up a clear indication of Fisher's idea that humans see their lives as narratives. In Tolkien's case, the narratives of his life become the groundwork for his mythology. The fairy tale nature of his life constructed narratives necessary to make sense out of the chaos and evil he will soon experience in war.

Having convinced Edith Bratt to abandon her engagement to another man and to become engaged to him, Tolkien realized that he could be ordered overseas at any moment. Given also that British officers did not have a high survival rate in France, the two decided to be married as soon as possible. Tolkien and Edith Bratt were married on

Wednesday, 22 March 1916 at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary Immaculate near

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Warwick Castle (134). Humphrey Carpenter and John Garth have both characterized

Tolkien in the role of the romantic suitor. Famously, Tolkien carried with him the image of his beautiful wife dancing and singing in a glade of trees for him during the brief years of their courtship. Now that he was married to his "elf-princess," his relationship to her rested on fairytale status — he had his happy ending. In fact, he never seemed to give up the romantic image of his wife as his archetypal female elf. As shall be discussed in later chapters pertaining specifically to the story of the Beren and Lúthien, she appears in various forms throughout his mythology. It is enough to say at this point that he carried his romantic image of his new bride into the horrors of battle, and it had the mythic ability to inspire and sustain him.

Tolkien received orders on Friday, 2 June 1916 to travel to Folkestone for embarkation overseas. He prophetically predicted "the terrors to come might serve him in the visionary work of his life — if he survived" (137). Late on Monday, 6 June 1916

Tolkien boarded a boat to cross the channel to France. He did not expect to survive.

"Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then...it was like a death" (qtd. in Garth 138).

Tracking every single move that Tolkien made during his time in France would be tedious and unnecessary. What will serve this project more efficiently is to make a note of the moves and experiences from which we can infer an effect on the stories that he wrote later. Tolkien was a second lieutenant signaler attached to the 11th Lancashire

Fusiliers. On Tuesday, 27 June 1916, he was moved forward from the coast of France to near the front in preparation for the Battle of the Somme, which began on 1 July (148).

Keuthan 104

Garth provides a graphic description of the first day of the Battle of the Somme (153), in which Tolkien was not a participant. However, this day, 1 July 1916, the first of the

T.C.B.S.-ites was killed, Rob Gilson. Tolkien would not learn of his friend's death for several more days (155), but it would be the first in a series of jolting blows to the romantic vision he had of his life, his friends, and the projected visions of greatness fostered by the T.C.B.S. Death is only a romantic idea until it takes one of your friends, then it becomes one of the cruel realities of war.

The brigade to which Tolkien was assigned was then moved to within three miles of the front on Monday, 3 July 1916. Here he had his first experience of coming under fire from a German field gun miles away. Tolkien began to see the wounded arriving from the front in hundreds to have their wounds dressed; some were horribly mutilated

(157). Reading of Beowulf ripping the arm from Grendel's shoulder with his bare hands is one thing shrouded in vaulted Anglo-Saxon poetry, but witnessing in person what a

German machine gun does to a human body is quite another. Waiting to go into battle,

Tolkien's battalion provided working parties to dig graves (158).

On Thursday, July 6 Tolkien was able to see fellow T.C.B.S., G. B. Smith, who had undergone a sixty-hour ordeal in battle. As a way to deal with their fear and horrors, the two discussed poetry and the future while walking through a field of poppies. This is how the sword brothers of the T.C.B.S. learned to deal with the cruelty and hardships of war — they turned to the training of their childhood and immersed themselves in the great literature of the past, thus aligning themselves with the narratives of other human beings who had undergone similar horrific experiences. The soldiers of the 11th

Lancashire Fusiliers who returned from the battle at La Boisselle (which Tolkien did not

Keuthan 105 have to fight) brought back with them stories of that town thick with the bodies of the dead, hundreds of them everywhere the eye looked (161). Tolkien would have heard these stories probably in gross detail.

Finally, on 14 July 1916, Tolkien was called to go into the trenches. Tolkien marched along a busy road with scorched stunted trees in every direction and got his first glimpse of No Man's Land, where bodies lay still unburied from the beginning of the battle on July 1. La Boisselle was now in British hands, so when Tolkien and his

Lancashire Fusiliers reached the German trenches, they found beautifully engineered walls and dugouts. As they passed through to Ovillers, Tolkien and his companions passed a broken down ambulance wagon, and he first came into personal contact with the

"lost of the Somme: heralded by their stench, darkly hunched or prone, or hanging on the wire until a stab of brightness revealed them, the bloated and putrescent dead" (162–63,

164).

Just before midnight on 14 July 1916, Tolkien and the Fusiliers engaged the enemy. His fellow soldiers went "over the top," while Tolkien stayed in the forward trench and wrestled with the poor communication system (165). This was his first field experience as a signaler. Daylight on Saturday, 15 July revealed the carnage of the night’s battle. Artist Gerald Brenan described it thus:

The ground between the two villages was torn up by shells and littered

with dead bodies, some of which had been lying around for three

weeks...in the first attack on 1 July it had been impossible to rescue the

wounded and one can see how they had crowded into shell holes, drawn

Keuthan 106

their waterproof sheets over them and died like that. Some of them —

they were North Country lads — had taken out their Bibles. (166)

The tangled labyrinth of barbed wire towards Ovillers was thick with bodies, their faces purple-black. “The flies were buzzing obscenely over the damp earth," Charles

Carrington, a member of the Lancashire Fusiliers, recalled. "Morbid scarlet poppies grew scantily along the white chalk mounds; the air was thick and heavy with rank pungent explosives and the sickly stench of corruption" (167).

The battle at Ovillers continued the next day, 16 July, which finally ended in

German surrender at the end of the day. By the time the last pockets of resistance were driven out the next day, Monday, 17 July, Tolkien had managed communication in the trenches for some fifty hours in battle (168). In addition to confronting the horror and exhaustion of battle and his first look at death, Tolkien, upon returning to Bouzincourt, learned of his friend Rob Gilson's death (170).

On 10 August 1916, Tolkien and the Fusiliers were moved to a village away from the front to rest. Tolkien and the other officers camped in huts in a wood on the northern edge of the village. For two nights, however, Tolkien sat out under the wet trees, deep in thought (173). Gilson remembered the inspirational conversations that the four of them had shared at the Council of London at his house in December 1914, and had written of his memories to Tolkien from the front lines, "I suddenly saw the T.C.B.S. in a blaze of light is a great moral reformer...England purified of its loathsome insidious disease by the

T.C.B.S. spirit. It is an enormous task and we shall not see accomplished in our lifetime"

(105). Tolkien took these romantic, prophetic words as a kind of great commission, especially weighted since Gilson was the first to die in the war. Garth projects that

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Tolkien may have considered as he sat in the dripping wood that Gilson had earned the greatness of the soldier’s sacrifice, but not the greatness of the sort that the young men of the T.C.B.S. had envisioned. In a letter he wrote to G. B. Smith, dated 12 August 1916,

Tolkien mourned, "The death of any of its members is but a bitter winnowing of those who were not meant to be great — at least directly" (Letters 5). The heated correspondence that followed between Tolkien and Smith concerning Gilson's death and

“squandered greatness” seems to have provoked a serious reconsideration on Tolkien's part as to what constitutes literary and/or legendary greatness (Garth 107-09).

Heretofore, their idea of greatness was of the romantic sort, all swords and superhuman strength; however, with the nearness of an actual death of a dear friend "greatness" must be redefined, and I believe this is exactly what Tolkien was struggling with as he sat out under the wet trees, deep in thought.

Tolkien would have heard battle stories from his friend G. B. Smith, who was an intelligence officer and therefore had the ghoulish duty of collecting letters and papers from the wounded and dead, some having been killed weeks earlier. The trenches that the British took from the Germans in the battles at Ovillers were literally choked with corpses, leaving Smith with a grisly chore (177). So even though Tolkien was not often

"in the thick of things" as the rest of the Fusiliers were and not as heavily as Gilson and

Smith, we can see from his stories, especially his first story, "The Fall of Gondolin," that he took it all in. It is not my intention to retell the overwhelming litany of deaths, blood, and the stench and images of decay, but instead to demonstrate that Tolkien experienced enough of the effects of war to last a lifetime and fill his imagination with the necessary

Keuthan 108 fodder to make his writings rich with the realism of battle, not just literary representation from ancient myths.

Tolkien and the Fusiliers returned to trench warfare on Wednesday, 27 September

1916. Tolkien was still running communications for his battalion headquarters; he had eight runners and other younger officers at his command. The British had launched a massive push forward with the field deployment of tanks on 15 September (191). In his letters, Tolkien often described World War I as being a fight between men and machines.

Tolkien's disdain for machinery is infamous, as they destroyed, sometimes irrevocably, his beloved countryside and especially his beloved trees. Garth's descriptions of what

Tolkien observed while he was in France include the destruction of the French countryside, especially the trees. Tanks represented to Tolkien the ultimate destructive machinery, able to destroy both man and nature. Tolkien’s encounter with tanks become manifest in his first story as an enigmatic machine/beast called "Dragon" used by the forces of Morgoth to bring fiery destruction to the beautiful elf city of Gondolin.

Tolkien and his brigade were relieved from the front lines after the successful battle to capture Regina Trench. For the first time in weeks, Tolkien was able to sleep under a proper roof; however, on Wednesday, 25 October, he felt weak and unwell, but did not report to the medical officer until Friday, 27 October with the temperature of 103.

He had contracted trench fever. He left the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers on Saturday, 28

October 1916, exactly four months after he joined them. On 8 November 1916, Tolkien boarded a hospital ship bound for England. It would be weeks and weeks before he was even remotely well (200–01, 205). Tolkien observed some of the other soldiers being shipped home, some suffering from what later came to be called Shell Shock. "They

Keuthan 109 trembled or twitched uncontrollably and had an otherworldly look" (205). The observance of these men may have contributed to Tolkien's view of evil as including the psychological effects of war.

On Wednesday, 29 November, G. B. Smith was hit by two bursting shell fragments fired from a German canon miles away, while walking down a road, back from some mundane task. After two days, he developed gas gangrene, causing his death on 3

December 1916 (209). In an oft-quoted letter written soon after he arrived in France,

Smith had pronounced the T.C.B.S.’s great commission to Tolkien, just as Gilson had:

My dear John Ronald, publish by all means. I'm a wild and wholehearted

admirer, and my chief consolation is, that if I am scuppered tonight — I'm

off on duty in a few minutes — there will still be left a member of the

great TCBS to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the

death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the

TCBS.... Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it

cannot put an end to the immortal four!...You I am sure are chosen, like

Saul among the children of Israel. Make haste, before you come out to

this orgy of death and cruelty...May God bless you, my dear John Ronald,

and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to

say them...." (118–19)

One cannot overstate the impact of the deaths of these two dear friends on Tolkien.

Gilson’s death had caused Tolkien to completely rethink his prep school conceptualization of greatness. Smith's death multiplied the effects of Tolkien's re- conceptualization. The four of them, together, were supposed to have written such

Keuthan 110 world-altering literature. Tolkien was now facing the prospect of fulfilling the boyhood

T.C.B.S. vision with half of the members gone. Christopher Wiseman, upon reading some of Tolkien's poetic efforts, wrote to him saying, "I am convinced that if you do come out in print you will startle our generation as no one has as yet...where you are going to lead us is a mystery..." (208). Tolkien did not at first share in Wiseman's convictions. The grief and loss of his friends made it impossible at this point to see how anything he could write would startle a generation. It was indeed still a mystery.

On Saturday, 2 December 1916, Tolkien was called before a military medical board. His temperature had been back to normal for a week, but he was still pale, weak, and beset with persistent aches and pains in his legs. He was given six more weeks rest to recover. This, of course, meant that he could now see his wife (207).

However, after six weeks Tolkien was not better. For almost a year he was in and out of hospitals, transferred to new locations in England, assigned and re-assigned to different jobs, and was occasionally able to perform "light-duty" jobs for the military. He saw his wife, and they reestablished their relationship, which helped Tolkien begin to heal from the effects of the war and the tragic loss of his friends. Together, they took long walks through woods and along seashores; but neither time, convalescence, nor walks with Edith could adequately resolve the trauma, the images, the smells and sounds, the exhaustion and pain, and the hollow feeling of loss. Only one way could provide the possibility of healing — he would have to write it down. Before the war, he would have written poetry, maybe even epic poetry. But, not now. Now only myths would do. And so, still convalescing in a hospital bed, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the first story of his grand legendarium: "The Fall of Gondolin."

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OF ELVES AND KINGS AND FINER THINGS

Tolkien’s writing of the tale, "The Fall of Gondolin," was a major imaginative turning point in his life. The long times of marching, or watching and waiting in the trenches, and then convalescing in bed, had allowed his ideas to ferment into fruition.

Finally free to write again, he did so with tremendous fluency. He later stated, “’The Fall of Gondolin’ came out of my head almost fully formed" (Letters 163, 165, 257). Taking advantage of the veritable explosion of creative power, Tolkien established the moral parameters of his developing world, thematically, theologically, and parabolically bringing to the forefront aspects of good and evil in fairy races and evil beings locked in perpetual conflict (Garth 214). Garth makes some connections between Tolkien's war experiences and his creation of this first story: "Parallels between Tolkien's life and his art are debatable, but the war certainly had a practical impact on him as a writer" (92).

Even the others in the T.C.B.S. saw that Tolkien's writing strength lay in prose rather than poetry. G. B. Smith wrote to Tolkien during the war, "It struck me last night that you might write a fearfully good romantic drama, with as much of the supernatural as you care to introduce. Have you thought of it?" (qtd. in Garth 105) Garth helps to justify an examination of Tolkien's early works by noting that there is a spiritual and religious dimension to Tolkien's world, “never absent though rarely blatant, that was notably pronounced in his original conceptions" (112).

The version of "The Fall of Gondolin" appropriated for examination in this project is not the version published in The Silmarillion and edited by Christopher Tolkien for that volume. I want to examine the version of this story written from Tolkien's hospital bed in 1916; therefore, all commentary and analysis will be based on the version

Keuthan 112 of the story that appears in The Book of Lost Tales, Volume Two. While it will not be necessary to explain the differences between the two versions of the stories, it is germane to discuss the version which places the story in the historical context of Tolkien's life narrative in 1916, immediately following his experiences in World War I, so that we can ascertain a proper understanding of what he may have been attempting to communicate in this first story. Further, it will be necessary to briefly place this story within the context of the larger mythic legendarium, which eventually became The Silmarillion.

Eventually, Tolkien constructed his world of Middle-earth into "ages." The First

Age starts with the creation of Arda (Earth) and concludes with The Great War of Wrath, in which Morgoth is finally defeated and imprisoned in a deep pit, chained with links forged by the Valar. The rest of the legendarium is divided into the Second Age, and the

Third Age. The reader of average acquaintance with Tolkien's work will know that The

Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place at the end of the Third Age. The defeat of

Sauron and subsequent crowning of Aragorn as King of Gondor is the occasion by which the Fourth Age is begun.

Gondolin was a hidden realm of the Elves during the First Age. The beautiful and thriving city was ruled by Turgon for four centuries until its location was revealed to

Morgoth through the treachery of Turgon's nephew Maeglin. Morgoth's forces destroyed

Gondolin — the last of the great realms of Beleriand to fall. But Turgon's grandson Eärendil survived, and it was he who convinced the Valar to defeat Morgoth in the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age (Houghton, “Lost Tales Book I” 68).

A brief synopsis of "The Fall of Gondolin" is apropos for two reasons. First, The

Silmarillion is not widely read even by Tolkien aficionados, but this earlier version of the

Keuthan 113 story of the destruction of Gondolin is even more scantily known, as it appears only in the second volume of The Book of Lost Tales. Second, a synopsis will reveal the important elements of the story necessary for analysis.

"The Fall of Gondolin": A Synopsis

The main character, Tuor, lived by the shores of Lake Mithrim hunting in its woods and learning lore from the elves. He is compelled to enter a cave through which a river runs, meets a couple of the Ñoldor (Elves), and comes through the cave into the Rainbow Cleft. Tuor spends many days dwelling on that beautiful shore until three swans encourage him to follow them; he does so because he had a great liking of the birds. Tuor follows the swans on a long trek south into even more pleasant lands.

Eventually, he reaches a land where a river empties into the sea. There, during the night, he is met by another group of the Ñoldor who guide him far inland, where he follows the course of the River Sirion north until he came to a beautiful valley of willows. In this region Tuor was content to live for quite awhile and fearing this, Ulmo, Lord of Waters, who had willed Tuor on this journey, came before Tuor in person, bidding him to seek the hidden city of Gondolin. This Tuor does, but soon the Ñoldor guides desert him, fearing the deadly reach of Morgoth's power. Only the Elf Voronwё remains with him, and together they find a way to the hidden city.

Tuor and Voronwё enter Gondolin, greeted with awe by its people, and are taken before King Turgon. Bestowed momentarily with the power and majesty of Ulmo's own voice, Tuor tells Turgon to gather his forces and attack Morgoth as the time for his overthrow has come. Turgon foolishly refuses this counsel. Tuor then predicts for him that both elves and men will suffer an evil fate before the Valar (semi-god-like beings)

Keuthan 114 can contrive another means of salvation. However, Tuor also voices Ulmo's alternate counsel as well, which is to leave Gondolin, travel down the River Sirion, build ships and sail back to Valinor, home of the Valar, The Undying Lands. Again Turgon refuses, assuring Tuor that he had every year sent messengers by boat over the sea, but no word had returned of their fate.

Tuor, nonetheless, is invited to remain in Gondolin. He learns music, lore, architecture, and culture — things that would otherwise have been kept secret from the race of men. Turgon had a suit of armor made for him and an axe, Dramborleg. During this time, he married Turgon's daughter Idril Celebrindal, and Idril bore him a son, critically important for the future defeat of evil.

Morgoth had been gathering an army of spies to discover the city of Gondolin, and they had finally found the tunnel, the Way of Escape, overcoming its protective magic to pass through. News of Morgoth’s spying was reported to Turgon, and he began preparing Gondolin for the inevitable assault. Idril then encouraged Tuor to dig a secret tunnel leading from their house far out under the plain of Tumladen, which surrounds the walled city of Gondolin, for Idril perceived that Maeglin, her cousin, was filled with evil intent. This Tuor did and, despite the hardness of the rock of Amon Gwareth, work began.

Maeglin, defying Gondolin’s law by searching for precious ore outside the protecting circle of mountains, was captured by Orcs spying in the region. In exchange for his life, he offered them much information on Gondolin, and Morgoth was well pleased by Maeglin’s willingness to betray his people. Together they conceived a plan for the capture of Gondolin, with Morgoth dangling the promise of the hand of Idril if

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Maeglin could slay Tuor and his son Eärendil. On Maeglin's advice, Morgoth had his smiths and sorcerers construct iron monsters in the likeness of Dragons, which might cross difficult terrain and carry inside them legions of Orcs across the open plain of

Tumladen.

Maeglin returned to Gondolin promptly so as not to arouse suspicion, and from that point on appeared increasingly light-hearted, though a shadow of dread laid upon him by Morgoth gnawed at him continuously. This new Maeglin, however, only increased Tuor and Idril's suspicion of him. Furthermore, Morgoth withdrew his spies, which Turgon and the people of Gondolin interpreted as Morgoth’s acquiescing to the impregnability of Gondolin and deciding against an assault. The watch on the mountains was relaxed. In that year, Eärendil was seven years of age.

As the Gondolindrim stood on the city walls to greet the dawn in celebration of the festival of The Gates of Summer, a red glow grew in the north, dying the snow on the mountains as blood. Riders fled over the plain bringing the tidings: Morgoth was upon them. The Gondolindrim were taken by surprise. Morgoth's forces came over the highest part of the Encircling Mountains north of the city where there were fewer guards.

The army included Orcs, Wolves, Balrogs, and Dragons.

As Morgoth and his horde approached, Turgon held a council of war. Tuor counseled that the city be abandoned as lost and to march forth in a mighty offensive upon the plains of Tumladen before the heat of Morgoth’s Dragons and his

Balrogs grew too great. Maeglin and Salgant alone counseled to stay in the city and to protect what they held — Maeglin out of guile and an attempt to make sure that none of the Ñoldor escaped alive, and Salgant out of fear. Maeglin stroked the king’s one

Keuthan 116 weakness, describing all the beauty of the city and the things crafted therein that they would have to leave behind. And Turgon was swayed, for Maeglin knew of the king’s great love of the wealth and jewels of Gondolin, and thus, the king decreed Maeglin’s plan.

Soon the battle was engaged. As the hosts of Morgoth, commanded by Gothmog,

Lord of the Balrogs, crossed the plain, Turgon's war machines opened fire, aided by the swift, sure arrows of the Houses of the Heavenly Arch and of the Swallow, both renowned houses of archers. However, for all their skill, they did little to slow the advance. Once Morgoth’s horde had reached the city, however, they found that they could not assault the walls because the slopes of Amon Gwareth were smooth and hard, and the fire beasts of Morgoth could not climb them. Therefore, Gothmog led an assault on the North Gate, using the iron monsters to break the gates. From the bellies of the

Iron Serpents, hosts of Orcs spewed forth, and the city’s mighty warriors were hard pressed to hold them back.

Now Maeglin had decided to bring his plans to fruition and approached Tuor's dwelling on the southwestern wall. Maeglin had found out about Tuor's secret excavation, and he thought to at long last seize Idril for his own and gain the secret passage, and thus escape the fire and slaughter, scheming also to cast the boy Eärendil into the flames of the Dragons at the base of the city wall.

Tuor flew home to bid farewell to his dear wife Idril and his son Eärendil and to speed them down the secret way with a bodyguard, ere he returned to the fight to die if he must. Arriving at his house, Tuor found a guard of Maeglin’s folk about the door — the worst that Maeglin could find in the city. Yet, they were not thralls of Morgoth and

Keuthan 117 would not aid Maeglin in his plan, but neither would they constrain him. Maeglin had

Idril by the hair and struggled to pull her to the battlement so she could see the fall of

Eärendil into the flames, yet he struggled with her, for all her grace and beauty, she fought like a tigress. Tuor gave a shout so great the Orcs heard it from afar and hesitated from the sound of it. Then the men of the Wing, though less in number, were upon

Maeglin’s men like a storm.

Maeglin tried to stab Eärendil with a short knife he had, but a hidden coat of cunningly crafted mail deflected the blow. Then Tuor was upon him, and his wrath was terrible to see. He seized the arm holding the knife, broke it, and then grasping Maeglin by the middle, he lifted him high over his head and cast him over the wall. Three times

Maeglin smote the slopes of Amon Gwareth as he fell, and he perished in the very flames he intended for Eärendil. All of Maeglin’s men were destroyed as well. Tuor then hastened back into the main battle, but left Voronwё and some other swordsmen with

Idril and Eärendil, to guard their escape down the tunnel.

At the North Gate, battle intensified as the Balrogs came against the valiant defenders. But Rog rallied his House of the Hammer of Wrath about him and made for a desperate charge, beating the enemy back from the gates and bringing the battle out onto the plain. There, however, he was slain, cut off from the city, and his house fell to a man by Morgoth’s horde.

Battle continued, and the forces of Morgoth made a fresh assault upon the western wall. There the Dragons had beat a way up Amon Gwareth and heaved against the wall, breaking a hole in it. Tuor and Ecthelion proved themselves mighty in battle, slaying Orc chieftains and Balrogs alike, but it was there that Ecthelion bought a wound from a

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Balrog's whip. There also a great Dragon appeared and trampled all those about it, Orc and Elf alike. But Tuor hewed its foot, and it fled, wrecking ruin as it went.

Slowly but surely all those Elf Houses that remained were driven back to the Square of the King. Now the Gondothlim made their final stand, reinforced by the presence of Turgon and the House of the King. They were hard pressed and soon what barricades they could erect were broken. Lord Gothmog of the Balrogs strode forth, and though grievously wounded, Ecthelion stepped up to face him. Gothmog disarmed him, ruining his right arm, but Ecthelion was not so easily defeated and drove the spike of his helmet into the chest of Gothmog, wrapping his legs around the demon's body and forcing him into the Fountain of the King where they both drowned.

Battle proved vain, and Turgon recited the words of Amnon the prophet: "Great is the Fall of Gondolin." As the Ñoldor were pushed back to the very Tower of the

King, Turgon repented of his foolish ignorance of Ulmo's advice, casting off his crown and bidding the Gondothlim follow Tuor from now on, and if they might, find a way to flee the city. With that Turgon climbed to the highest peak of his tower and declared, "Great is the victory of the Noldoli!" to which the Orcs sneered in derision.

Desperate council was taken, and Tuor now informed them of the secret tunnel

Idril had mined, advising as many as could to flee down the tunnel. This course of action seemed best, and so gathering what people of Gondolin they could find, Tuor led them toward his house. Idril waited with a great mass of people about her, but young

Eärendil could not be found, and Tuor feared he was dead. With mighty Glorfindel and his retinue protecting the rear, they moved quickly down the street called the Way of

Running Waters, with Dragons and Orcs in pursuit.

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They gained Tuor's house and there filed down into the tunnel, which was hot from the fires of the Dragons upon the plain and choked with bodies of those crushed by dislodged rocks. After a hot, choking struggle through the tunnel, the refugees came to the exit hidden in a dried pool shrouded by bushes. An argument ensued over the path to take, for though Tuor proposed the high pass of Cristhorn, others trusted rather to the tunnel called the Way of Escape, which was nearer. Therefore a split occurred, and those who chose the Way of Escape were caught by a Dragon that waited there and were slain.

In the dark before the dawn, Tuor's company followed Legolas of the Folk of the Tree far across the plain. But looking back, they witnessed six Elves on foot fleeing across the plain pursued by Orcs riding Wolves, and Tuor saw that upon the shoulders of one Elf was his son Eärendil. Gathering fifty men about him, he led them to the rescue of his son, swiftly destroying the Orcs and Wolves. So Eärendil was reunited with his parents.

Tuor and the refugees made it to the high Eagle's Cleft at Cristhorn and moved along the narrow pass, a cliff on one hand and a sheer drop on the other. They had already begun the passage when a hail of stones came from above, hurled by Orcs, and from behind a Balrog came upon them, set there to prevent escape from the city.

Glorfindel rose up and blocked the Balrog from reaching the refugees, and there ensued a great battle on the heights. Glorfindel hewed off the Balrog’s arm and wrestled with it, but finally to gain defeat over his foe. He forced his weight against the fire beast, toppling them both over the brink and into the abyss to their death. Then the

Great Eagles came, driving the Orcs off the mountainside, and so the column of exiles was saved. Glorfindel's body was borne up by the eagles, and a cairn was erected for him despite their haste. After this deed, the exiles escaped the ruin of Gondolin.

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A Parable in Practice

Before an analysis of Tolkien's story, a re-acquaintance with McFague’s Parabolic

Theology and how it might be used to understand Tolkien's story is in order.

Demonstration by example on an actual Biblical parable would best illustrate the methodology by which Parabolic Theology is useful.

The emphasis, according to McFague, is on detail. The crucial point is to persuade the reader that parabolic theology is not a theory applied to a story but a kind of reflection that arises from the story (9). Recall also that McFague believes a New

Testament parable is an extended metaphor, which does not mean that the parable is reduced to a mere point or teaches a lesson, but that the parable is in itself what it is trying to communicate. So to say that the Parable of the Prodigal Son is a metaphor of

God's love indicates that the story has meaning beyond the mere story of the human father and his wayward son, but that only through an examination of the details, the parable itself, is the reader brought to an awareness of God's love that has the power of the "shock of revelation" (5). McFague's ideas about gleaning meaning from parables in this manner has, I believe, a direct application to understanding Tolkien's literature because of her insistence on the existential, sensuous, religious reflection qualities of stories about human life and only by implication speaks of God (10). For reasons of its familiarity, the story of the Prodigal Son, found in the seventh chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, will not be repeated here.

According to McFague, the shocking revelation of this parable — the insight into fatherly love — is borne in the parable by the radicalness of the imagery and action. She sees this parable as "economical, tense, riven with radical comparisons and disjunctions"

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(12). The comparisons are extreme, and what is contrasted is the radicalness of love, faith, and hope within the world of the story. The setting is mundane but the frame of the story is radical. The radical contrasts create the context that disrupts the ordinary portrayal of the world and allows the reader to see it in a new light as it is reformed by

God's extraordinary love. What the reader understands, however, is not something

"spiritual" per se, but the familial and familiar in a new context, the context of radical, unmerited love. The power and ingenuity of the parable is that it communicates that love, and by association God himself, nowhere directly mentioned in the story. The new theological knowledge gained through a perception of divine love is communicated through "stretching the surface of the story with an extreme (binary tension) imagery of hunger and feasting, rejection and acceptance, lost and found, death and life" (12).

The consistent recurrence of extreme contrasts characterizes the entire parable.

Consider the father’s culturally shocking willingness to divide his property without question and the son’s equally shocking request for his part of the inheritance before his father’s death. The young man took "all he had" and went into a "far country" where he

"squandered his property in loose living." The father’s extraordinary reaction to the son’s return is perhaps the most shocking of all the details. The wording and imagery of life and death dominates the parable throughout: the radical dichotomies set the tone for the other extreme images.

At the outset of the parable, the son treats the father as if he were dead. McFague cites Günther Bornkamm who explains that a son has the right of disposal of property only after a father’s death (14). The extremism is also evident in phrases that emphasize absolutes: "he had spent everything," "a great famine arose," "no one gave him

Keuthan 122 anything." The job to which he is reduced, feeding pigs, also represents the extreme lower end of existence for a Jew, since it brought him into direct contact with unclean animals. He, however, was so close to starvation he would gladly have eaten the swine’s food. Verse seventeen is the crux of the parable and demonstrates an epiphany and an absolute change of heart ("but he came to himself"). His genuine repentance does not even consider any rationalizations. The surrealistic or radical part of the story, what gives the story its most parabolic quality, begins in verse twenty, with the undignified

(dignity means nothing when you have lost a son) and poignant (his loss is universal and real) image of the father recognizing the boy from a distance (how many times, we wonder, had he watched that road during those long months?) and running to embrace him (older Near Easterners did not run) (15). The “compassion” of the father is expressed in the distinctive New Testament usage of a word that means "love from the bowels" (13). When the boy starts to give his repentance speech exactly as rehearsed, the father does not even let him finish and exchanges the words the boy intended to say for their opposite: the son is not a servant, but an honored guest. The extraordinary love and graciousness of the father for the young man is entirely without foundation in anything the boy has done or said. McFague explains the symbolic details of forgiveness, acceptance and love:

Then in breathless succession more unmerited gifts are heaped upon the

prodigal: the best robe (the ceremonial robe which in the East is a mark of

high distinction), a ring (a signet ring is a sign of authority), shoes (a

luxury worn only by free men, not slaves), a fatted calf (in a land where

meat is rarely eaten). All of this happens because, and here the main

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imagery of the parable emerges again, the lost is found, the dead is alive.

(13)

The reader could reduce the meaning of the parable to some simple theological adage such as ‘God's love knows no bounds,’ but to do so would be shortsighted; we would actually miss what the parable reveals for our insight into such love. What is critically important here is not extricating an abstract concept but actually completely the opposite. By examining the details of the story itself, letting the natural human tendency toward intrinsic metaphorical thinking do its job of revealing something extraordinary, then insight, epiphany, the “shock of revelation” becomes possible. In this story of the

Prodigal Son is the interplay of the radical images that facilitates the possibility of new knowledge. Kirkwood would conclude that this is possible because the rhetorical wall of rationalization was lowered as the listener was drawn into Jesus’ story. McFague surmises that if the reader wishes to discuss what this parable has to say about God, he or she must do so in terms that do not extrapolate or dissect that fulcrum moment when the father, waiting lo these many months, finally sees his son. Instead, the reader must look at the parable in terms that allow the details of that moment to sink in, which makes the radical contrasts and the specific concrete images not mere narrative embellishments — they are the meaning.

As a result of his close relationship with the men in the T.C.B.S., and then their tragic loss, in addition to his own horrific experiences in World War I, Tolkien wanted his own life narrative to have some significant meaning, a distinctly Christian, eternal meaning. Therefore, he was driven in the construction of his own mythic world to communicate a deep, theological understanding of truth, life, death, and evil. I believe

Keuthan 124 that he was fully aware of what McFague describes that the "modern post-Cartesian split of mind and body is radically anti-Christian; meaning and truth for human beings are embodied, hence embodied language, metaphorical language, is the most appropriate way — perhaps the only way — to suggest this meaning and truth" (her emphasis, 14). A study of Tolkien's fiction indicates that he may have been the most skilled and gifted practitioner of embodied/metaphorical language to write in the English language in the twentieth century, which also makes him the most skilled and gifted at communicating meaning and truth. McFague asserts that only metaphorical language, in a story where the elements of the familiar are set in a new and many times unexpected context, always communicates more than just the merely familiar. For example, the Kingdom of God

(the unfamiliar and abstract) is like a coin (the familiar and concrete), which a woman lost and then found, or is a pearl of great price. New knowledge, theological knowledge, is communicated by making words mean more than they ordinarily do, which of course is the definition of “metaphor.” But realize, too, that we are describing indirect communication. The parables (and Tolkien's fiction) have no explicit statements about or images of God; everything is passed through the earthly metaphor or story:

The parables make ontological as well as existential "assertions" — they

tell us something about God as well as something about our life — but the

assertions about God are made lightly, indirectly, and cannot be extricated

finally and completely from the story which expresses or, better, "images"

them. (15)

Now we can more effectively examine the earliest story in Tolkien’s mythology.

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Evil in the Parable of the "Fall of Gondolin"

To follow McFague’s and Kirkwood’s example and consider Tolkien's story parabolically, thinking metaphorically affords the reader the ability to engage in theological reflection and thus come to some unique understanding of its meaning. The analyst must think in terms of details. Specifically, the reader should think in terms of the details that point to an understanding of what Tolkien was trying to communicate about evil. Additionally, this cannot be an exhaustive examination of this story, as the purpose of this project is not to exercise a literary critical treatise.

The first detail of the story, which points to an understanding of evil, is the character Melko, whose name was changed later to Melkor and then Morgoth. Morgoth is underneath and in the background of all things evil in Tolkien's mythology. Garth states plainly that, "Melko, the tyrant making war on Gondolin, is the devil himself"

(221). Interestingly, Melko did not apparently exist in Tolkien's mythology before his experiences in the Battle of the Somme. Tolkien wanted the devil to be a tangible entity in his world for men and elves to fear and fight, and, as he developed this corporeal entity of evil in his world, he borrowed heavily ideas from Milton, Norse legend, Greek mythology, and of course the Bible. But it should be stressed that Tolkien's creation of the Melko/Morgoth character is unique in literature. Perhaps Ilúvatar best characterizes

Melko/Morgoth in the earlier creation myth:

Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming

musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and

darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists

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and violent flame, cold without mercy, being born, and death without

hope. (Tolkien Silmarillion 12)

Garth notes that the characterization is "strikingly evocative of the Somme" (255).

Another detail about Melko is that his captives are afflicted by "a blinding terror" so that even when they are not near him "he seemed ever nigh them... in their hearts quite and they fled not even when they could." He casts a "spell of bottomless dread" (Tolkien

Silmarillion 19, 21, 23). This exemplifies some of the narrative acumen of Tolkien: evil in his stories is not communicated at a distance, but rather he instills a sense of personal dread. Melko is not just big, dark, fiery, and strong; he is even more sinister as a psychological evil, invading men's hearts and minds, bringing corruption to the soul more so than to the body. This is biblical, theological evil, and it sets apart Tolkien's communication of evil from almost every other Christian writer. This depiction of evil is recognized as universally human by readers who do not have to be Christian to see it.

More details about Melko include that he cannot be defeated, at least not until much later, and not without the help of the Valar. He enslaves, oppresses, and mutilates all with whom he comes in contact, which perpetuates evil in Middle-earth as a rebellion against Ilúvatar’s creativity. Again, if the reader reflects back briefly to Tolkien's creation myth (written of course after "The Fall of Gondolin"), Ilúvatar creates the world and its beings ex nihilo, an ability that Melko covets exceedingly but cannot have. As the millennia roll by, Melko/Morgoth becomes more and more enraged by this lack and becomes someone who can only do the opposite — mimic, corrupt, mutilate, enslave, and destroy. By Tolkien’s depiction of the effect of Melko on Middle-earth, the reader recognizes the same kind of evil at work in our own world, and, again, one does not have

Keuthan 127 to know any part of the Bible to be able to come to this foundationally theological understanding. Melko also causes the free peoples of Middle-earth to hide and live in fear – which constructs a kind of prison; therefore, Gondolin could be characterized as a beautiful prison.

The next evidence of evil comes in the form of a tragic decision. Tuor has come to Gondolin specifically with the purpose of warning the inhabitants that Melko will soon find them and want to destroy and/or enslave them. King Turgon decides not to follow the advice of the god Ulmo and flee Gondolin before Melko finds them. Tolkien does a masterful job of characterizing evil in the form of an evil tongue speaking words of temptation from the character Maeglin. Maeglin comes to his own destruction and corruption in much the same way that Melko eventually did. Melko started down the road of corruption and evil by first wanting something he couldn't have. That seed sprouted into more and more terrible desires until he became the devil, the Lucifer of

Middle-earth. Maeglin wants something he can't have: the right family, the right father, the perfect girl (taken from him by Tuor), and more wealth. This last desire took him outside of the protective encircling mountains and into the corrupting influence of Melko who, as the devil always does, recognized his weaknesses and exploited them to bring about not only Maeglin's destruction but also the destruction of Gondolin. Tolkien brings back the idea of an evil counselor with honeyed words more than once in his mythology.

The reader will remember Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings. Maeglin uses his honeyed words, his personal corrupted desires, and a knowledge of the king's weaknesses

— Turgon loves his material possessions too much — to convince the king that staying inside the protective walls of Gondolin is the right choice. Like all good lies, it sounds

Keuthan 128 like a good idea to stay inside the protective walls and fight for the beauty and wealth the eleves have built up for hundreds of years. Ultimately, Turgon fears Melko more than he trusts in the Valar.

The Elves of Gondolin have cast a magic spell which is woven about the mountains to “hide their land and weave about it inaccessible magic, that no tidings of evil come ever to their ears” (Tolkien, Lost Tales 161). The evil here is in the people trusting their own strength and not being willing to confront the truth of the coming of evil. Garth explains, “Tolkien’s first mythological story highlights the perilous complacency” (217) of the elves.

By far the most prolific details in "The Fall of Gondolin" are the images of the evil borrowed from World War I. Garth makes the connections explicitly:

The vivid extremes of the Somme, its terrors and sorrows, its heroism and

high hopes, it's abomination and ruin, seemed to have thrown his vision of

things into a mountainous relief. In this tale, Tolkien's mythology

becomes, for the first time, what it would remain: a mythology of the

conflict between good and evil." (217)

"The Fall of Gondolin” has masterfully written vivid descriptions of terrors, fire, terrible beasts, overwhelming enemy hosts, absolute destruction, death and dismemberment,

"corpse choked waters and smoke-filled claustrophobia" (218), and blood and heroism abound in this story. Garth further concludes, "’The Fall of Gondolin’ is...myth and moral drama....Tolkien took the confused moral landscape of the real world and attempted to clarify it into polarities of good and evil" (219). Relating the images and other sensory experiences that Tolkien encountered in World War I, as described in the

Keuthan 129 first part of this chapter, will make clear that his horrible experiences inform Tolkien's writing of this first story in his mythology. While Tolkien's imagination is unquestionably keen and deep and his descriptive powers considerable, his personal encounter with the mud, blood, exhaustion, fear, earsplitting noise, and gut-wrenching stench has without a doubt sharpened his ability to bring these representations of evil into his storytelling.

The last details for consideration in this story are the evil creatures in Morgoth’s army, many of them borrowed from Tolkien's deep scholarly knowledge of the mythology and language of northern Europe. First, Tolkien populated his evil horde with

Orcs, bred in the "subterranean heats and slime" (Tolkien, Lost Tales 161) by Melko.

Tolkien describes them thus: "Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal..." (161). The name “Orc” is taken from the Old English for “demon.” Tolkien would actually continue to bring Orcs (sometimes also called goblins) into his stories for the remainder of his life, honing their representation of evil into an art, gruesomely visualized in Peter Jackson's movies. Second, the evil forces of Melko include Balrogs. In Tolkien's language, the name means “cruel demon” or “demon of anguish” (Garth 224). These are Melko's flame wielding shock troops, cohorts of evil. Tolkien's conceptualization of Balrogs changed over the years. In these early stories, Balrogs were not the huge, fiery demons such as

Gandalf meets in Moria in The Lord of the Rings. For the battle to overthrow Gondolin,

Tolkien's early Balrogs are smaller and more numerous but much more deadly than an

Orc. Third, Tolkien brings to this story three kinds of Dragons. "From the greatness of his wealth of metals and his powers of fire" Melko constructs a host of "beasts like

Keuthan 130 snakes and dragons of irresistible might that should over creep the encircling hills and lap that plain and its fair city in flame and death" (Tolkien, Lost Tales 171). The work of

"smiths and sorcerers," these dragons merge together the boundary between mythical monster and machine, between magic and technology (Garth 220). The first type of dragons are Bronze Dragons. They move ponderously and open breaches in the city walls. The second type is Fiery Dragons. They cannot climb the smooth incline of

Gondolin’s Hill, but wreak havoc, death, and destruction once inside the city; the text indicates that these beasts are the closest to being fully biological. The third type is the

Iron Dragons, which carry Orcs inside them and move on "irons so cunningly linked that they might flow...around and above all obstacles before them" they break down the city gates "by reason of the exceeding heaviness of their bodies" and under bombardment, impervious to arrows "their hollow bellies clanged...yet it availed not for they might not be broken, and the fires rolled off them" (Tolkien, Lost Tales 177). Garth is bold enough to state that "The more they differ from the dragons of mythology, however, the more these monsters resemble the tanks of the Somme" (221). Tolkien would come back to the use of dragons as a representation of evil in his stories repeatedly. In fact, in Chapter

Three an examination of the Dragon Glaurung in the story of Túrin will form a critical understanding of how Tolkien used dragons to convey a complex understanding of evil.

Not all of the details worth including in this discussion of "The Fall of Gondolin" are evil. As a way of representing one of his most important, critically foundational thematic ideas concerning evil, Tolkien creates an archetypal hero called out and equipped to stand up against the overwhelming odds. Tuor is one of the first such

Tolkienian heroes. Like most of Tolkien's heroes, Tuor is a lover of nature, an

Keuthan 131 intelligent, brave, warrior-poet, and most importantly, he does not live in fear of Melko because he knows of a greater power. Tuor has a personal relationship with one of the

Valar, Ulmo, Lord of the Waters, thus he understands that no matter how overwhelming the forces of evil look, there is a benevolent power for good that is larger. The refinement of Tolkien's heroes, which would eventually culminate in the masterful characters Aragorn, Frodo, and even Sam, start with Tuor, Glorfindel, Túrin and even

Beowulf before they come to full fruition in The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien builds his stories so that evil looks like such an overwhelming tide that the puny forces that oppose it appear hopeless. So evil is rightly portrayed in Tolkien’s

Middle-earth as defeated, or at least thwarted or delayed, only for a time; evil always eventually returns. Tolkienian heroes fight on against all odds, exhibiting the faith, courage, tenacity, and adaptive opposition skills of the common man, so that the reader recognizes that this is the situation in his or her own life. Tuor, Aragorn, Frodo, and especially Sam could be us, should be us.

I believe that Tolkien communicates evil as he does in "The Fall of Gondolin" for four reasons. First, so that the reader becomes aware that there is an evil enemy in the world intent on enslaving, corrupting, and destroying us. Tolkien invents and fleshes out

Melko as a beast/god whose relentless objective is to thwart the plans of loving, giving, creative Ilúvatar. Tolkien’s Lucifer-like creature is so well depicted that even just reading about him is unsettling, disturbing. The reader can barely sit still through a reading of the scene where Melko contracts with the giant spider Ungoliant (a disturbing and sickening creature as well) to suck the life out of the Two Trees of Light (Tolkien,

Silmarillion “Of the Darkening of Valinor”). Melko/Melkor continues throughout

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Tolkien’s mythology to grow more deceptive, more cunning, more black, and more disgusting, so that when the scouts return from the mountains to report “Melko is upon us!” (“Gondolin” 173) a shiver of fear in the elves and the reader is unavoidable.

Tolkien’s Lucifer is a terrifying and repulsive evil presence that is woven into his world in such a way that a similar evil presence in the “Primary World” may very well come as a shocking revelation to the reader. Melko’s destructive actions sound too familiar to be overlooked as similar to the destructive actions of Satan in our world.

The second reason that Tolkien communicates evil as he does in "The Fall of

Gondolin" is that it is foolish to trust in the strength of men and to hide our heads in the sand in the vain hope of simply avoiding evil. Read the three stories discussed in this project and the reader will see that it is not possible in Middle-earth to avoid encountering evil. “The Fall of Gondolin” is all the more tragic because the warnings brought to King Turgon from the gods by a trustworthy messenger, Tuor, are foolishly ignored, trusting instead in the fortifications and the secrets of men. Evil came, secrets were revealed, walls fell, and destruction followed.

The third reason that Tolkien communicates evil as he does in his stories is to reveal that the ugly, noisy, stinking evil in this world is also inside all of us, making all of us capable of evil deeds and in need of being saved from ourselves. Consider Maeglin — he just wanted the beautiful girl (Idril). All guys want the prettiest girl. He just wanted to be liked, popular, respected, rich – too easy to see ourselves in those motivations. And when Melko captured him, he was not a hero, he just wanted to live. And when Melko tempted Maeglin with riches, position, power, revenge, and the king’s daughter, he gave

Keuthan 133 in to temptation and betrayed his own people. Maeglin’s actions are ugly, despicable, and evil. And they could very well be ours, too.

But the fourth and final reason that Tolkien communicates evil as he does in “The

Fall of Gondolin” is that even though the odds are overwhelming, evil should be opposed, should be fought against and possibly defeated — at least for now. In Tolkien’s world, for every evil betrayer like Maeglin, there are ten heroes like Tuor. Tolkien’s experiences in World War I taught him that fighting an evil oppressor-force was worth the sacrifice of life, if necessary. The Allies were faced with superior forces and machinery, but when the whistle blows, you still go “over the top” because evil must be defeated. The parallel manifestation in “The Fall of Gondolin” is obvious, even down to the digging of tunnels and the advent of tanks. Tuor and the Elves never give up; they keep fighting, until all strength is spent, all options are played, and all lives are lost – or escape is possible. Tuor is Tolkien’s hero not because he is the strongest or the bravest, but because exhibits the most unquenchable tenacity against insurmountable evil.

Tolkien offers him to the reader as a noble role model.

Some twenty years after Tolkien wrote "The Fall of Gondolin," he came to a newer, more complex understanding of the nature of evil while preparing a lecture on

Beowulf. Tolkien’s next step in his understanding showed him that evil could come unrelentingly and without explanation on a life and cause misery and pain to all who came in contact with him – like Job. His study also showed him that the cunning psychology of evil might reside in a dragon. What his study of Beowulf showed him brought him to write the next story, The Children of Húrin.

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CHAPTER 3: TOLKIEN AS SCHOLAR-KNIGHT

JOUSTING WITH THE MONSTER CRITICS

In the twenty odd years since he fought in World War I, Tolkien had lived some of his own happily ever after. He had been appointed to his dream job as Rawlinson and

Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, married his first love, become a devoted father of four children, and was widely reputed to be a brilliant philologist. In his post as lecturer at Oxford, he fervently continued to study the languages and the ancient myths and legends of Northern Europe, so it came as no surprise when he was invited to present a lecture at a prestigious gathering of his scholar peers in 1936. The lecture he gave on

Beowulf shook the world of Anglo-Saxon scholarship to its roots, and cemented

Tolkien’s reputation as a scholar of the first order. And, as twenty years earlier,

Tolkien’s life sounded like one of those Northern European legends. Like the heroes of the old tales, Tolkien and his Oxford friends had formed a social/scholarly group devoted to the pillaging of ancient languages and the rescuing of long lost stories. I believe that

Tolkien saw his life in the terms and language of one of the ancient legends that he had studied for years. It might read like this:

A growing restlessness rises up in the young Tolkien as, twenty years after his first terrifying battle in the Great War, where he survived the massive metal fire beasts, endured the reek and blood, stacks of human bodies strewn on the field and in the trenches, a new battle looms before him. The yeoman warrior-poet, now become the young scholar knight, training on the philological field of battle, has accepted the challenge thrown down by the monsters lurking for centuries in his own country. His

Keuthan 135 training in the warfare of rhetoric, wit, and ancient logic has instilled in him new skills; a new maturity came upon the warrior poet. His study has also refined the artist within, formerly beating wildly in the TCBS schoolboy hoping to burst forth, now wielding a firm command of his sword pen and the brazen shield of intellect. His tutelage of the last score of years has prepared him to accept the challenge: defend Beowulf as great poetry.

Tolkien has been challenged to take up arms against a sea of fellow scholars and by opposing end the centuries of ignorance, quelling the monster critics on their own field.

He will give a great lecture.

And so our young hero, come newly to the rank of the academic nobility, has retired his signaling gear and grown to manhood as a formidable scholar knight of the medieval order of the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Icelanders, and ancient Germanic tribes.

These years of our Lord 1926 to 1936 were great years in which his mighty pen was brought to joust in the Camelot of British universities — Oxford. In many arenas, the lowly classroom, the frequent gatherings of fellow knights, and in the lofty towers of scholarly translation, Tolkien had proved his prowess many times o’er. In the lonely and quiet nights, wrapped in the comforting darkness, poring away at his Elvish languages, wafted ages backwards into the misty hills of time to lands peopled by Golden Kings, raven-haired princesses, iron-armed Warriors, and black, fiery, evil sorcerers, Tolkien forged and sharpened his noblest gift, his brightest weapon — his imagination. But his mettle had not been tested in the grand tiltyards of scholarly lecture for his hoary fellows, a battle which would fast be thrust upon him.

Tolkien the scholar knight did daily battle against the insidious enemy of ignorance in the lecture halls of Oxford, which sharpened another of his skills: the

Keuthan 136 rhetorical voice. He crafted mighty lectures on the Beowulf, carefully hammering them into sharp blades each with its own name. His shield became embossed with the crest of northern courage; he grew comfortable with strapping it to his forearm so that it became a part of him. And his reputation as a skilled bard warrior soared. Sharp became his tongue. Witty became his rhetoric. Bold became his parry and thrust. Such was the training of a young scholar knight.

The litterateur knight and his lady fair had settled in Oxford and started a family, and it was to his progeny that the mighty Tolkien tried out his mock battles with wooden stories whittled for them and sharpened by them, to wit, the fairy tale The Hobbit. The tale was spun out in the time between times and gave Tolkien the opportunity to try the parry and thrust with a new blade. The Hobbit was a mere lark, truly, but it did yield from his bright imagination a cunning dragon, with which Tolkien intended to do battle.

When all those in his abode had succumbed to even breathing and the deep black of the sky beckoned to his admiration with crystalline points of light, then the young knight would cast off his daily armor, wrap himself warm and stand alone in the peace of his garden. Long would he stand and drink in the reviving power of ancient starlight.

Thus refreshed, his mind ablaze with the invigorating visions of ancient tales, Tolkien would ascend to the pinnacle of his house and feverishly scratch down his own ancient tales. Gondolin would fall again and again. Beren would woo Lúthien more sweetly o’er and o’er again until she became his eternal star. Silmarils would be cast, lost, fought for, and tragically lost again. And Túrin, like Job, would fight against impossible odds to live his life as heroically as possible until the dragon of his bitter fate is slain. The great

Keuthan 137 imagination warrior, Tolkien, could not sleep for fear that these mighty tales should pass away untold.

Ah, but what of the camaraderie and fellowship of sword brothers, gathered in smoky rooms, quaffing golden ale, and regaling each other with their newest tales? This was indeed Tolkien's favorite kind of sparring. For as iron sharpens iron, the young bulls of Oxford frequently gathered to clash shields in brotherly salute, challenge each other to raucous duels, and suck the very marrow of life from the bones of friendly contention. But among these knights, two rose up to become the champions of the mead hall: the stalwart Tolkien and now the deft and nimble Lewis. Young Tolkien discovered a worthy sparring partner in a knight of equal caliber in young C. S. Lewis. Tolkien could land the mightiest of blows, and his thrusts could cut any opponent to the bone, but he found in Lewis a warrior-poet who could meet him blow for blow, thrust for thrust, and then advance again with parry and thrust of his own. Round and round, hour after hour, Lewis and Tolkien would joust amid laughter, sparkling wit, and tankards of sweet ale. None could match them, but many gathered to cheer the fray. Sometimes Lewis arose victorious, sometimes Tolkien would win the day. But always these story masters reveled in each other's company and were roused to new heights of scholastic endeavor, wielding ever-sharper swords of wit and story.

Then one day Tolkien heard the clarion call to arms. The august clan of Anglo-

Saxon scholars past called him out to prove himself on the field rhetoric. At its yearly gathering this coterie would entreat one of the up-and-coming to a test of skill, bravery, and heroic words. They called Tolkien. And he answered. For a year and a day he had labored, written, rewritten, sharpened, cut, and refined his most important blade —

Keuthan 138

Beowulf was its name. He had taken the shards of this rusty poem and forged them anew into a blazing sword like none seen before. It glittered in the firelight of his imagination and was sharpened to a keen edge by the artist’s whetstone of scholarship so that it glowed blue when critic monsters were nearby. And when the blade was finished,

Tolkien took it up at the rising of the sun and practiced wielding it — parry, feign, advance, thrust, score a hit, retreat — over and over again, wielding and swinging the burnished blade flashing in the sun, until day’s bright orb was replaced by sparkling stars. Until he was ready.

Finally, the appointed day arrived: 25 November 1936. Tolkien approached the hall.

He was ready. The blade was ready. His skill was as sharp as it had ever been. He mounted the steps, crossed the stage, and stepped behind the podium. The hall was full of scholars from the ancient tradition; he was about to hew them to pieces. He drew in a deep breath and opened his mouth, "In 1864…”

The previous section attempts to emulate Tolkien’s writing style from the mid to late

1930s. His writing has become more mature, stately, less romantic; much like the literature he was studying so intensely, specifically Beowulf. This chapter will explore why this narrative poem had become so important to his work and extract ideas from a consideration of the tale which found their way into his own fiction. The introductory narrative to this chapter also illustrates that Tolkien continued to see his own life in terms of a personal narrative. His letters and his conversations with his closest friend, C. S.

Lewis, indicate that Tolkien envisioned his delivering of the confrontational lecture on

Beowulf as a sort of joust with the old guard. He had every intention of bringing them to

Keuthan 139 ground with his opinions about the evil in the monsters (Letters 25, 92). And the third reason that the chapter introductory narrative is illustrative concerns Tolkien’s relationship with the Inklings, but especially Lewis. The two of them were like knights- in-arms for many years, fighting their battles against scholastic ignorance and mediocrity and pressing each other to new heights of greatness. If this sounds a little like one of their Icelandic legends, it is because that is the way they saw themselves. The delivering of the Beowulf lecture is the pivotal event of this most scholastically productive period of his life, but it should be couched in its historical context to properly understand its importance in the structure and creation of his greatest tragic story: The Children of

Húrin.

TOLKIEN IN OXFORD: THE EARLY SCHOLAR PERIOD

When Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1925, most of his biographers report that it felt like he was coming home. Humphrey Carpenter reports that Tolkien had wanted to make his living as an academic in Oxford since he was a child (Tolkien 107–09). This second period of his life narrative could be called his scholarly maturing period because he poured himself heart and soul into the pursuit of academics, the excelling of his own scholarship, the establishment of himself as a worthy teacher, and the enrichment of his friendships among the brightest minds on campus. Indeed, he was successful in all of these pursuits by any measure (147–155). And, perhaps more importantly, as the introductory narrative of this chapter indicates, Tolkien still saw his own life story as the continuation of a mythical adventure. It cannot be overemphasized how deeply he immersed himself in the literature, language, and metaphorical thinking of his beloved ancient cultures, which, of course, led him to further develop the cultures he was writing.

Keuthan 140

The key event of this period leads us to a consideration of Tolkien's infamous

Beowulf lecture. I propose that he envisioned his delivery of this lecture as his first great test of skill in the kind of academic skirmishes in which Oxford dons were expected to engage. The discovery of the two draft manuscripts by Michael Drout and published in his book, J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf and the Critics, attests to the considerable preparation

Tolkien devoted to this lecture. But several important elements coincide with the first ten years Tolkien was a lecturer at Oxford: he delivered the Beowulf lecture (1936), wrote and published The Hobbit (1937), established a significant friendship with C. S. Lewis

(1932), and continued to work on the legendarium of Middle-earth, specifically for the purposes of this chapter, the story of Túrin Turambar and his family.

But his every day life also contributed to and influenced the construction of the story of Túrin Turambar. Both Humphrey Carpenter and, more thoroughly, Daniel

Grotta-Kurska surmise that Tolkien was deeply disturbed by the forward movement of modernism upon his much loved Oxford, which may have motivated Tolkien to retreat further into his own imagination. Additionally, he and Edith bought a house in the suburbs and began to rear their four children. And, significantly, the practice of Tolkien's faith remained a daily fixture (Grotta-Kurska 70–85). Famously, Tolkien and other

Inklings had a hand in bringing C. S. Lewis back to the Christian faith, thus creating a strong, unique relationship between Lewis and Tolkien, which facilitated a deeply considered theological environment in which his own beliefs were tested, perhaps strengthened, and absolutely widened. It does not seem unlikely to assume that Tolkien may have gone back to the catechism of his youth, and to St. Augustine in particular, to solidify what he believed about evil from a theological perspective.

Keuthan 141

Eschewing Modernism

According to Tolkien biographer Daniel Grotta-Kurska, the Oxford to which

Tolkien returned in the autumn of 1925 had been significantly altered by rapid industrialization, social upheaval, and economic uncertainty. Tolkien was shocked and dismayed to see whole woods cleared, open fields become villages, villages turned into suburbs, and suburbs incorporated into the city of Oxford (72). One of the very reasons

Tolkien had wanted to move his family to Oxford was so that he could give his children the experience of the English countryside that he had so enjoyed when he was a child.

Tolkien had always been enchanted by trees in particular and grieved when they were cut down merely for the purposes of modern advancement. As the College at Oxford grew, factories and industrial plants were built, and housing developments were laid out, thousands of workers, technicians, and professionals moved with their families from

London to find work in the rapidly growing town of Oxford. The ratio of university personnel to city residents not connected in any way with education gradually skewed until for the first time in its history, the university became secondary to the town (72).

The quaint, archaic character of Oxford, which it had maintained for centuries, now within the span of just a few years, became a sprawling, industrial town leaving much less of the charm that Tolkien had remembered.

The coming of the motorcar to England in the late 1920s may have affected

Tolkien the most severely, according to Grotta-Kurska. The open English countryside began to be fenced in, developed, and crisscrossed with roads, which led to "petrol stations" springing up. The new roads brought industry, increased population, and more and more building. Every year Tolkien watched the countryside and open farmlands

Keuthan 142 shrink more. Grotta-Kurska concludes that Tolkien's response to such drastic modern change was to "withdraw increasingly from the outside world and into himself" (72).

Roger Sale concurs,

He withdrew more completely from the modern world than any other

maker of the Myth of Lost Unity, and in his more dogmatic

pronouncements Tolkien had always spoken as though only madmen or

fools would contemplate the twentieth century without horror. (qtd. in

Grotta-Kurska 74)

Iron-sharpening Friendships

One of the most important aspects of Tolkien's Oxford life include the several profound friendships he established in the years after Tolkien returned to Oxford.

Professional and social relationships with minds like Hugo Dyson, Owen Barfield,

Charles Williams, and C.S. Lewis generated sharp thinking in all areas in and around scholarship. All of Tolkien's major biographers catalog the significant friendships in question. Most of these were gathered around a sort of club arrangement particular to the environment of scholars at Oxford. The first of these clubs to which Tolkien belonged was called The Coalbiters and was fused by the members' love of stories written in Old

Icelandic, the language of the great Norse sagas, and the foundational language of most northern European legend and mythology (Grotta-Kurska 79). The group would meet weekly over dinner, sitting around a fire in winter, each responsible for translating a passage from one of the sagas, out loud, impromptu. One of Tolkien's protégés, Nevill

Coghill, recalled, "I was allowed to do a paragraph. Professor Dawkins, who had a little experience of this sort of thing, was allowed to do a page. Tolkien did twenty pages. He

Keuthan 143 was completely fluent in this difficult language and translated easily in appropriate style, at speed" (79). Tolkien read these long-dead languages even in his spare time, indicating a passionate, philological joy in knowing them. This ability with language significantly set him apart from even the most skilled and talented philological scholars at Oxford, perhaps even worldwide. His gift for, as Lewis used to describe it, "getting inside language" also allowed him the unique ability to get inside a particular type of story, perhaps unlike any other person living in the twentieth century. Myths and legends in ancient languages were as familiar to Tolkien as reading the daily newspaper or talking to your dearest friend (79).

From the perspective of sharpening Tolkien's abilities, certainly his most compelling friendship was with C. S. Lewis. If Tolkien ever acquired a kindred spirit among his acquaintances at Oxford, it was Lewis. Like Tolkien, Lewis loved Oxford fervently, calling it "a refuge of the elect" (80). But most importantly for Tolkien’s development as a theological theorist, Lewis became a Christian who, like Tolkien, also loved poetry, fantasy, and mythology. Lewis described some of his most enjoyable times with Tolkien as "sitting up till the small hours talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea and pipes" (qtd. in Grotta-Kurska 80). Lewis was a good mental match for Tolkien because of their similar gifts. His memory was astonishing. He could quote long poems without a mistake, speak widely about almost anything in literature, philosophy, and theology, and his writing output was prolific, publishing more than forty books during his lifetime (80). Carpenter's biography states that anyone who really wanted to know about the kind of relationship Tolkien and Lewis contributed to each other's life should read Lewis' essay on friendship in his book The Four Loves

Keuthan 144

(147). The essay describes the friendship between these two men as not jealous, but seeking out the company of others. Lewis further writes that when deep and close friendships exist between men, the greatest pleasure in life is for a group of such men to share a good fellowship, perhaps after a hard days walking:

Those are the golden sessions, when our slippers are on, our feet spread

out toward the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world,

and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and

no one has any claim or responsibility for another, but all are freemen and

equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an

affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life — natural life — has no

better gift to give. (Four Loves 68)

At some point Tolkien began to trust Lewis enough to share his writings with him. Carpenter notes that Tolkien gave Lewis the typescript of the poetic version of "The

Gest of Beren and Lúthien." Not only did Lewis state that he thoroughly enjoyed reading the poem, but he also began the practice of including detailed critical notes (Tolkien 148).

The importance of this aspect of their relationship, for the purposes of this project, cannot be overstated. Lewis was uniquely qualified to evaluate the developing literature of one of the most brilliant literary minds of the twentieth century. Without Lewis’ encouragement and trusted criticism, Tolkien most likely would not have sharpened his writing to the keen edge needed to produce The Lord of the Rings. For a much more thorough and insightful discussion of the friendship between Tolkien and Lewis, you could do no better than Colin Duriez's 2003 book Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of

Friendship.

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After Lewis' conversion to Christianity in 1931, Tolkien began to read aloud to

Lewis from his legendarium. After every story, Lewis would vehemently urge Tolkien to press on and finish it. Lewis served as that critical ear so necessary to the creation and refinement of Tolkien's work; the visions were not just in his own head anymore or scratched on volumes of lined paper, Tolkien had spoken the stories out loud like the bards of old to an audience uniquely qualified to understand and appreciate them. If not for Lewis, Tolkien may have never seen his work published, much less finished.

Carpenter quotes Tolkien from a letter:

The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not “influence” as it is

ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only

audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be

more than a private hobby. (Letters 276)

The true importance of Tolkien's relationship to Lewis centered round their theological discussions. When Tolkien first met Lewis, he was an avowed atheist, having turned away from his Ulster Protestant upbringing many years prior. Tolkien, out of concern for his friend, literally spent years in lengthy theological discussions in an attempt to convince him that living as a Christian was the only logical choice in this life.

I have to conclude that as a result of these theological discussions, Tolkien's own personal faith grew and strengthened in its depth and knowledge. Specifically, because of his continued work on the legendarium and because of the rhetorical brilliance of the

Beowulf lecture, a logical inference can be concluded concerning some deep theological consideration of the nature of evil. Further, Tolkien's work during this period reflects a more complex, yea even Augustinian, understanding of the nature of evil. I believe the

Keuthan 146 more complex development of his understanding of evil is a direct result of Tolkien’s theological discussions with Lewis.

The Hobbit

Carpenter and Grotta-Kurska both treat Tolkien's creation of The Hobbit, but

Michael White's biography of Tolkien explains certain aspects of its generation, which are more germane to this project. Tolkien's son Christopher mentions that The Hobbit was read to all four children years before its 1937 publication, except that the ending had not been finished. Tolkien admitted many years later that his children proved to be excellent critics and a sound audience for his writing (155). Tolkien discovered that children have a way of being brutally honest about stories written for them, so he took their criticisms to heart and revised The Hobbit continuously over a number of years, but did not finish it.

White reports that as early as 1931, Tolkien gave a copy of the manuscript to

C. S. Lewis, again minus an ending. Lewis was immediately entranced, but more importantly he recognized The Hobbit as a unique story. In a letter written to his friend

Arthur Greeves in 1933, he enthused:

Since term began I have had a delightful time reading a children's story

which Tolkien has written. … Reading his fairy tale has been uncanny —

it is so exactly what we would both have longed to write (or read) in 1916:

so that one feels he is not making it up but merely describing the same

world into which all three of us have the entry…. (qtd. in White 156)

Lewis realized that Tolkien was living in his own mind in Middle-earth because his descriptions and familiarity with its characters seemed unquestionably real, not just

Keuthan 147 merely invented. So when the Inklings began to meet in the mid-1930s, the manuscript came out again and was read aloud again, and subjected to critical commentary again — but still not finished (160– 63). After refinements and many re-writes typical for

Tolkien’s completion process, The Hobbit was finally finished and published in both

England and the United States in 1937, enjoying both critical and commercial success.

Tolkien's work on The Hobbit was historically important for several reasons that apply to the discussion herein. First, this story allowed Tolkien the opportunity to invite a wide readership into Middle-earth for the first time. He had been discovering and creating Middle-earth for more than twenty years, and yet only a privileged few had ever read any part of the stories from his world. So to have the world and his friends so favorably and enthusiastically respond to a story from Middle-earth effectively opened the door to all the other stories. Second, by reading this story out loud to his children and his friends, Tolkien established a method by which he could write and refine his work so that it maintained an important quality of myth and legend: the oral quality. Indeed, the sense that Tolkien's stories feel like they are being told to a live audience by a skilled bard becomes a cornerstone feature of all fantasy literature after Tolkien. He and Lewis fully understood that the great Northern European literature that Tolkien was attempting to emulate had to have that oral quality about it, or it would not feel authentic. Thus,

Tolkien's ability to speak his work out to a live critical audience became a very important feature of his writing process. Third, the completion and success of The Hobbit convinced Tolkien that Middle-earth was a place that many more readers might want to come visit. White relates that with the great success of The Hobbit, Tolkien's publishers naturally requested a sequel (166–168). In fact, Tolkien was eager to produce a sequel,

Keuthan 148 which drove him back to newly intensified work on his legendarium. What could he mine from it to produce a sequel? The fourth important reason that The Hobbit was written at this time is that it coincides with the inclusion of a particular mythical element in three stories at the same time: a dragon. Tolkien was studying Beowulf to prepare lectures for his Oxford classes, and, of course, he made the central meaning of the

Beowulf poem in his British Academy lecture on the monsters, the dragon being the most important of these to Tolkien for the meaning of the poem. During the same years,

Tolkien’s work on The Hobbit shifts the entire tone of the story to consider the evil represented by the Dragon Smaug. But also during the same years, Tolkien went back to his legendarium to work out his ideas on evil with a dragon in the Túrin Turambar story.

These juxtapositions cannot be a coincidence. As this discussion progresses below, the importance of these juxtapositions and what the use of dragons may mean in a Tolkien mythology will be explored in more detail.

TOLKIEN’S EARLY SCHOLARLY SUCCESS

Another aspect of Tolkien's life at Oxford contributed to his understanding of evil as he developed it in the legendarium. Tolkien's early successes with the scholarly work on and the expert translation of pieces of Northern European literature not only established him firmly as a philologist of world-class caliber, but it also gave him an opportunity to dig even more deeply into the characters in those myths. In 1922, Tolkien published "A Middle English Vocabulary" to go with his former tutor Kenneth Sisam’s book Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose. Both works were highly successful in academic communities, and Tolkien established a solid reputation among English scholars for his brilliance and extensive knowledge of Anglo-Saxon (Grotta-Kurska 65).

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But the scholarly work that really established him as an international philological mind was the collaborative work he did with E. V. Gordon on Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight. This most famous of the Arthurian stories was originally written down by a

Midlands writer, probably a contemporary of Chaucer, and apparently highly educated and quite literate. As such, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an unusually sophisticated poem "colored with many foreign and English dialects, and utilizing an extensive vocabulary" (66). Tolkien was attracted to the poem for its Irish and Welsh mythic influences and the musicality of the language. Tolkien and Gordon's translation became the standard version of the famous poem still used today in most American and

British universities.

Tolkien's output as a scholar during the years he was a don at Oxford was not extensive, but it was impressive. He frequently wrote for The Review of English Studies,

The Oxford Magazine, and other literary journals. The articles he wrote for scholarly journals gave him an excuse to continue to study the philology of Northern European literature even more widely and meticulously. The bloody and tragic stories of Finland

(such as the Kalevala) and Old Iceland were his favorites. Other works published include a key study on the medieval English text Ancrene Wisse (White 120). Also, his paper on the dialects present in Chaucer's "The Reeves Tale" added to his reputation in the community of early medieval scholars as a philologist who could significantly contribute to their discourse. By the time he began his tenure as the Rawlinson and Bosworth professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, Tolkien could read, write, and/or speak most of the

Romance languages, as well as Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Finnish, Icelandic, German, Old

German, Gothic, and several other obsolete languages (Grotta-Kurska 63).

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Why is Tolkien's work in scholarly translation important? It can be reasonably inferred from his immersion in the languages and literature of the peoples of Northern

Europe that certain pieces influenced the content, thematic structure, and theological complexity of the stories Tolkien continued to write (and rewrite) for his own mythology.

Of particular purpose to this chapter is Tolkien's continued work on the tragedy of Túrin

Turambar and his family. Scholars such as Jane Chance have made connections between, for example, the character of Kullervo in the Finnish epic tragedy The Kalevala and

Tolkien’s character of Túrin Turambar (Tolkien’s Art 128–33). Discussion of these connections and inferences is forthcoming; suffice it to say that Tolkien ate, breathed, and dreamed these myths and legends, and he adopted some of the characteristics of the main characters for his own work. What these works had to say about the nature of evil necessarily, then, contributes to the formation of Tolkien's ideas about evil as they manifest themselves particularly in this story about the children of Húrin.

The Beowulf Lecture

If there was any doubt as to whether Tolkien worked long and hard on his lecture

"Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics," they were decisively put to rest when Michael

Drout published the two extensive, meticulous draft manuscripts of earlier versions of the lecture in his book, J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf and the Critics. Drout concludes that

Tolkien labored over this lecture for years:

…it is my contention — shared by many — that “Beowulf, The Monsters

and the Critics” is an important monument of literary history. Both texts

of “Beowulf and the Critics,” then, are essential for scholarship because

they illustrate the development of Tolkien's ideas. The full two texts of

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“Beowulf and the Critics,” taken together and compared, allow readers a

glimpse into the workings of a great mind engaged in a struggle with a

complex problem. (xi)

I believe the complex problem with which Tolkien was struggling in writing this lecture concerned the nature of evil. The evidence for my assertion comes in this simple observation: He changed the name of the lecture. Until Drout published the two earlier versions of the lecture, Tolkien scholars did not know that Tolkien had changed the emphasis of the lecture — away from the castigation solely of the critics to an examination of the monsters. This represents a critical shift in emphasis. I assert that he changed the name of the lecture so that he could use the opportunity of its delivery to expound his ideas about the intersections of man (represented by Beowulf) with evil in the world (represented by the monsters in the poem). So Tolkien did not just want to say to all of the critics of this poem ‘You all got it wrong — it's great artistic poetry,’ he wanted to explain what the poem really means. Drout lends some support to my hypothesis:

…the ideas that Tolkien first articulated in “Beowulf and the Critics” —

about the human value of a story about monsters, about the Beowulf poet's

technical virtuosity and the capabilities of Old English verse, and about

the essential value of “Northern courage” in the poem — obviously

continued to influence Tolkien's thought and writing throughout his

fictional and critical work. (6)

The place of the Beowulf lecture in Tolkien's life narrative looms large for at least two reasons. First, his deep love of the poem motivated him to examine it minutely and

Keuthan 152 ponder its possible meanings over a number of years, thus qualifying him as perhaps the scholar most familiar with the Beowulf poem in all of the Academy. He lectured on the poem; in fact, he performed the poem from memory in highly attended classes at Oxford, according to all of his biographers and many former students such as W. H. Auden

(White 116). All of his study of Beowulf, especially as he was surely aware of its supposed Christian authorship, allowed Tolkien the opportunity to extract the possible theological implications of the monsters and their different symbolic representations of evil. When the reader notices Tolkien’s use of the dragon in The Hobbit and The

Children of Húrin, it is natural to conclude that the theological presence of evil in

Beowulf could not have escaped him. Second, the actual event of the delivery of the lecture to the British Academy marked the advent of a new phase in his life: Tolkien established himself as a brilliant critic, a skilled oral rhetorician, a scholar of Anglo-

Saxon literature unequaled, and I think most importantly, a Christian theologist. To be succinct, the delivery of the lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters in the Critics" launched

Tolkien as one of the most important Christian thinkers of the twentieth century.

Túrin Turambar

The place of the Túrin Turambar story in Tolkien's Oxford life narrative has been somewhat of an enigma. The mystery was unraveled as best as it can be by his son

Christopher with the publishing in 2007 of the most complete version of the story of

Túrin, The Children of Húrin. Christopher provides an appendix, “The Evolution of the

Great Tales,” in which he explains his father's consistent return to the three great tales of

The Silmarillion. As indicated earlier, all three of these stories were first written down in some semblance of complete form shortly after Tolkien's service in World War I.

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According to Christopher, in the early 1920s, Tolkien began to turn the Túrin Turambar story into a long alliterative poem in the style and structure of Anglo-Saxon poetry, called

The Tale of the Children of Húrin. In fact, Tolkien attempted to turn all three of the legendarium’s foundation tales into this ancient English alliterative meter, The Tale of the Children of Húrin becoming the longest of these poems in this meter — well over two thousand lines. But Tolkien did not finish the poem, abandoning the story at the point where the Dragon Glaurung assaulted Nargothrond (Húrin 269). The following is a small taste of Tolkien's mastery of this difficult type of ancient poetry from The Tale of the

Children of Húrin written some time after Tolkien accepted his post at Oxford:

... they came to a country kindly tended; through flowery frith and fair acres they fared, and found a folk empty the leas and leasows and the lawns of Narog, the teeming tilth by trees enfolded twixt hills and river. The hoes unrecked in the fields were flung, and fallen ladders in the long grass lay of the lush orchards; every tree there turned its tangled head and eyed them secretly, and the ears listened of the nodding grasses; through noontide glowed on land and leaf, their limbs were chilled. (qtd. in Children 270–71)

Christopher Tolkien believes that his father ceased to work on this poetic version of the

Túrin Turambar story somewhere around the end of 1924 or early in 1925, but he is not sure why. Instead, Tolkien apparently turned to converting the story of Beren and

Lúthien to poetic verse. Before he also ceased work on this story in September 1931,

Tolkien had written more than four thousand lines for that story (273).

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At some point between 1926 and the early 1930s, Tolkien began to fold these three main tales into the larger work that he called the Quenta Silmarillion, which meant that Tolkien's alliterative verse versions of the children of Húrin story and the Beren and

Lúthien story were rewritten as prose (275). In 1937, as a result of the success of The

Hobbit, Tolkien's publishers were eager to see if he had anything else that could be published. He sent them the tangled mass of manuscripts of the three great tales in the

Quenta Silmarillion, as well as his alliterative verse versions of these stories. According to Christopher, with the prospect of more of his work being published, his father felt that the children of Húrin story held the greatest promise for publication, so he continued working on the narrative in prose form. However, on 19 December 1937, Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin saying: "I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits

– A Long Expected Party" (276). The work on the Children of Húrin story ended at the point that Túrin Turambar departed Doriath.

Tolkien returned to his work on the three tales after the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1955. Christopher Tolkien explains that his father returned to work on The

Children of Húrin in an uncharacteristic way: he started on the latter part of Túrin

Turambar's tragedy. For some reason, with his advancing years and all the work Tolkien did to write The Lord of the Rings, The Children of Húrin became for him the dominant story of the Elder Days, and for a long time, explains Christopher, he devoted all his thought to it (281). The place of this story in Tolkien's life obviously held prominence for many years. He kept thinking about it and coming back to it and refining it. Why? I have previously stated that I believe it is because this story gave him the opportunity to wrestle with a particularly complex, Jobian, aspect of evil, which he could never fully

Keuthan 155 rectify. This second greatest story of the Elder Days, with its dragon, its curses, and its

Hamlet-like tragedy has much to communicate to the reader parabolically and metaphorically about evil.

OF ELVES AND DRAGONS AND DARKER THINGS

For the purposes of my examination of Túrin Turambar’s tragic story here, the previously cited The Children of Húrin, published by Tolkien's son Christopher in 2007, is the best version of the story available. In the appendices to that book, Christopher explains in some detail his father's composition methods and the history of his continued to re-visitations the story of Húrin and his cursed family. In "The Composition of the

Text," he details the mistakes he believes he made in publishing less complete versions of the story in both the 1977 Silmarillion and the 1980 Unfinished Tales. He concludes then, that The Children of Húrin is the most complete and accurate version of the story in existence as composed by his father after the publication of The Hobbit in 1937 (269–

292). The selection of this version of the story is important because I want to examine

Tolkien's treatment of Túrin Turambar after he delivered the Beowulf lecture in 1936, so that we might determine if there are any connections between the Beowulf poem and The

Children of Húrin.

A synopsis of The Children of Húrin is apropos here for two reasons. First, not only is this story not widely read, but also other earlier versions of the story could be quite confusing, as they appear in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. Second, and more importantly, a synopsis will provide an opportunity to locate and examine the important elements of the story necessary for analysis.

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The Children of Húrin: A Synopsis

Tolkien wrote that the setting is intended to be our earth several thousand years ago (Letters 211). Middle-earth was populated by Mortal Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs, as well as by divine beings, Maiar and Valar, analogous in biblical terminology with angels. The story concentrates on Túrin Turambar, and his sister Niënor Níniel, who are cursed along with their father Húrin by the Dark Lord Morgoth (in earlier stories

Melko/Melkor). The events take place more than 6,500 years before the War of the Ring as described in The Lord of the Rings.

Under the history of the heavy circumstances of five hundred years of war between the evil forces of Morgoth and the armies of mortal men and elves, this story begins with the mortal man Húrin and his brother Huor coming to the hidden elf city of Gondolin. After living there for a year, they swear an oath not to reveal its location to anybody and are permitted swift passage back to their home country of Dor-lómin. Húrin marries Morwen Eledhwen, and she bears him two children, a son Túrin and a daughter, Lalaith. The story proceeds quickly with Túrin’s growing up, Lalaith's tragic early death, and Húrin's departure to the ongoing war with Morgoth.

In the disastrous defeat of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Húrin is unfortunately captured alive. Morgoth personally torments him, trying to force from him the location of Gondolin, but despite the torture, Húrin defies and even scorns Morgoth. For this,

Morgoth places a curse on him and his family whereby only evil and calamity become their lot in life.

In a rage at Húrin’s defiance, Morgoth commands his allies, the Easterlings, to over-run the land of Dor-lómin, of which Húrin was lord. Morwen, fearing that her son

Keuthan 157 will be captured, sends Túrin to the elf realm of Doriath for safety. Shortly afterwards,

Morwen gives birth to her second daughter, Niënor. In Doriath, Elf-King Thingol receives Túrin as a foster-son. In the years that follow, Túrin trains to become a mighty warrior, surpassing in skill and prowess even the mightiest of elves, save only his best friend Beleg Strongbow. However, one day Túrin in anger accidentally causes the death of one of Thingol's advisers, an elf named Saeros, who has jealously harassed Túrin for being a mere man. Believing himself to be criminal in the eyes of Thingol, Túrin flees

Doriath to the wild lands.

Túrin falls in with a band of outlaws, the Gaurwaith or "Wolf-folk," and soon becomes their leader. Meanwhile, Thingol learns of the circumstances of Saeros' death and pardons Túrin for the act, sending Túrin’s friend Beleg out to search for him. Beleg searches the wild lands for a year before he finds Túrin’s band of outlaws and pronounces the king's pardon. However, Túrin refuses to return to Doriath. Beleg then departs to return to his duties as guard of the north-marches of Doriath.

The outlaws, with Beleg returning some months later, change their tactics and vow to only fight Orcs and any other being associated with Morgoth, gradually becoming more daring and successful in their warfare. Morgoth sends a massive force to over-run the outlaw’s stronghold; Túrin is captured, but Beleg escapes.

In a daring maneuver, Beleg follows the company of Orcs. He finds Túrin sleeping, lashed to a tree and releases him from his bonds, but Túrin, thinking that an Orc had come to torment him, tragically slays Beleg before realizing who he is. Túrin is understandably frenzied with grief, but the elf Gwindor leads him into the wilderness, where Túrin regains his senses. Gwindor takes Túrin to the hidden elf fortress of

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Nargothrond where he gains the favor of King Orodreth and wins the love of his daughter Finduilas. Túrin believes that his life is cursed and cannot care whether he lives or dies, which makes him fearless. After leading the Elves in battle to numerous victories, he becomes the chief counselor of Orodreth and effectively commander of all the forces in Nargothrond. He convinces Orodreth not to hide in the underground fortress of Nargothrond, but to build a bridge over the chasm in front of the gate to the stronghold so that his troops might come and go more easily to fight.

Messengers sent from the Valar (gods) come to warn Túrin to hide Nargothrond from Morgoth, but Túrin, in his devil-may-care pride, believes Nargothrond to be strong enough to withstand assault. However, after five years Morgoth sends a great force of

Orcs under the command of the Dragon Glaurung, and defeats the army of Nargothrond, where both Gwindor and Orodreth are killed. Morgoth's forces cross the bridge Túrin built and sack Nargothrond, capturing or killing the elves. Túrin rises up in a rage to avenge his friends but comes face to face with Glaurung. Rather than kill him outright, the Dragon Glaurung enchants Túrin with his gaze and tricks him into hurrying to his home country of Dor-lómin to seek out his mother and sister instead of rescuing the elf- princess who loves him, Finduilas and other prisoners.

When Túrin arrives in Dor-lómin, he learns that his mother Morwen and sister

Niënor have fled for the elf-kingdom of Doriath weeks before. Realizing that the Dragon tricked him, an enraged Túrin incites a fight with the Easterling-chief, killing him and forcing him to flee once more. He tracks Finduilas' captors to the forest of Brethil, only to learn that she has just been slaughtered by the Orcs when the woodmen attempted to rescue her. Now almost broken by his grief, Túrin seeks sanctuary among the forest Folk

Keuthan 159 of Haleth, who maintain a tenacious resistance against the forces of Morgoth. In Brethil

Túrin renames himself Turambar, or "Master of Doom" in High-elven and gradually replaces the Chieftain Brandir.

In Doriath, Túrin’s mother Morwen and sister Niënor hear rumors of Túrin's deeds at Nargothrond and foolishly attempt to find him. Glaurung attacks them and enchants Niënor as he did Túrin with his hypnotic gaze so that she loses her memory.

Meanwhile, Morwen becomes hopelessly lost in an enchanted fog. Eventually Niënor finds her way to Brethil, naked and senselessly weeping on the grave of Finduilas, where

Turambar finds her. He has never seen his sister. Not realizing their kinship, they fall in love and marry, despite the counsel of Brandir.

After some months, Glaurung comes to exterminate the Men of Brethil, but

Turambar kills the Dragon by stabbing him from beneath while the Dragon is crossing the ravine. However, as Turambar pulls out his sword, Glaurung's poisonous blood burns his hand, the pain knocking him unconscious. Niënor, pregnant with his child, finds

Turambar lying unconscious, and the dying Glaurung cruelly returns her memory to her.

Realizing in horror that her husband is also her brother, she throws herself off the nearby cliff into the river Taeglin and is swept away to her death. When Turambar wakes and hears from Brandir that Niënor is dead, he kills him in wrath, believing that Brandir has lied, envious of Niënor's love and fearing the fulfillment of his own doom. However, after Túrin has learned the whole truth from Mablung, he falls upon his famous black sword Gurthang.

The main part of the narrative ends with the burial of Túrin. Christopher Tolkien added an epilogue from “The Wanderings of Húrin,” the next tale of Tolkien's

Keuthan 160 legendarium, which tells how Húrin is at last released by Morgoth and comes to the burial mound of his children. There he finds Morwen, who has also managed to find the place. With some last poignant words between husband and wife, she dies in the arms of her husband at sunset.

A Pair of Parables in Parallel: Beowulf

Before examining the children of Húrin story, a re-acquaintance with McFague’s

Parabolic Theology can be appropriated by looking at two stories with related parabolic qualities. In addition, these two stories with parabolic qualities share similar thematic meaning with the Túrin story, thus making an extraction of meaning from the Túrin story possible by stronger inference. An examination of the Beowulf poem within this parabolic framework seems profitable for at least two reasons. First, as previously stated,

Tolkien worked so hard on his lecture for the British Academy in 1936, that the necessary intense study of the Beowulf poem leads to a strong inference that Beowulf’s influence on the writing of the Túrin story appears certain. Tolkien's stated as much plainly, as shall be further discussed below. Second, as per McFague's designation of parabolic literature, the Beowulf poem exhibits strong parabolic qualities, which shall become apparent presently. Additionally, I believe that certain kinds of ancient literature, mythic literature, routinely exhibit strong parabolic qualities; and therefore, it is readily subject to McFague's Parabolic Theology method of interpretation and analysis.

The second story to examine in parallel is the story of Job. Job has remarkably similar thematic and theological power and meaning to the Túrin story. At first glance, both stories would seem to be about the capriciousness of fate. Both have been routinely misread in this manner. However, a closer look at the story of Job through the lens of

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Parabolic Theology may bring about the true import and meaning behind the suffering of

Job and the desired "shock of revelation" characteristic of a parable.

Remember that the path to understanding a parable, according to McFague, is along the lines of detail. Remember, too, that the imperative point is that Parabolic

Theology is not a theory applied to a story but a theological reflection that arises from the story (Parables 9). McFague believes a parable, specifically in emulation of a Biblical parable, is an extended metaphor, which does not mean that the parable can be reduced to a “point” or merely teaches an allegorical lesson, but that the parable is in itself what it is trying to communicate. So, to say that the Parable of the Beowulf and the Parable of Job are metaphors of man’s struggle against the evils and suffering of life indicates that the story has meaning beyond the oral telling of an ancient warrior and/or a suffering patriarch, but that through an examination of the details, the parable itself, is the reader brought to an awareness of life that has the power of the "shock of revelation" (5). For reasons of their familiarity, the stories of Beowulf and of Job will not be summarized here.

According to McFague, the shocking revelation is achieved in the parable by the radicalness of the imagery and action. She notes that a parable is, as stated in Chapter

Two, "riven with radical comparisons and disjunctions" (12). The radical contrasts in the details of the story create the context that disrupts reader/listener’s ordinary perception of the world and allows the reader/listener to see it in a new light. What the reader comes to know, however, is not something "spiritual" per se but the familiar and the customary in a new light. The power and inspiration of the parable is that in Beowulf and the Book of

Job the writer communicates a new understanding of evil and suffering, and by inference

Keuthan 162 a new understanding of God himself. The new theological knowledge gained through a perception of unexplainable evil is communicated through "stretching the surface of the story” (12) with an extreme binary contrasting imagery: prosperity and poverty, condemnation and acclaim, loss and more loss, death and life. For the purposes of this project, only the details from Beowulf and the Book of Job, which point to an understanding of evil, will be discussed.

As a work of literature, Beowulf stands outside of an easy genre classification.

The poem, from its original oral source, is a theological critique of the pagan world of

Northern Europe, but it is not in any regard a sermon. The poem stands on the doctrine of rightful kingship, but it is not a treatise on ancient political structure. The poem presents stunningly realistic descriptions of ships and weaponry, but it is not (contrary to the opinion of Tolkien’s audience for his Beowulf lecture) a history lesson. Nor is this superbly balanced Anglo-Saxon monster story merely a good folktale. The Beowulf hero, "the strongest man who ever lived in the days of this world," (line 147) is not merely a Nordic Heracles (Vinsonhaler par.1). The Beowulf poem, instead, is an interweaving of all these: legend, history, folktale, and parable.

The poem's interwoven, Anglo-Saxon “balanced opposition” design continually manifests a deep awareness by the skilled poet of the mysterious, multi-layered aspects of human experience (par. 3). Vinsonhaler describes, according to McFague, the first reason the Beowulf poem can be labeled a parable, because this describes what a parable is supposed to do. When skillfully performed out loud, this overlapping of genres creates a powerful contrapuntal effect, where two or more relatively independent elements are sounded together, creating harmony. Yet another reason Beowulf can be called a parable

Keuthan 163 is that its power is partially in the oral telling, which is why Tolkien performed it in his classes: so that it could be studied in its proper context.

Amidst all the intertwining of genres and multi-layers, most remarkable is the balancing of pagan elements (which magnify the heroic culture) with Christian elements

(which redefines heroic culture in terms of the Christ). Obviously, the poem's use of pagan and Christian elements represents an opposition of worlds: the laws of brute survival characteristic of this world’s ancient warrior differ radically from the eternal laws of righteousness and mercy that derive from the next world (par. 4). Of course, the radicalness of its extremes make it ripe for a Parabolic Theology consideration.

Vinsonhaler sees the parabolic quality of Beowulf: “like a reverse Good Samaritan parable, the poem uses the evil habits of an ‘out-caste’ nation (the Danes) to turn a light inward, to expose the raw vulnerabilities of the human soul” (par. 6). McFague would add that like any parable, Beowulf is not “about” the heroes or even the monsters per se; it is about the ontological end of reflection, after, as Kirkwood would assert, the reader/listener’s rational guard is down.

Beowulf’s poetic world is pagan, but the conviction of the poet is Christian.

Within those two extremes the poem lives. The poem functions beautifully, not through ambiguity, but through irony. The ingenuity of Beowulf lies in the portrayal of an “out- caste” pagan world painted with the brush of a deft Christian poet. Vinsonhaler clarifies the dynamic in modern literary terms: “It is not unlike that created by Flannery

O’Connor, whose ‘out-caste’ world of freaks ironically exposes the complacency of a post-Christian age that ‘believes in nothing.’” If we agree that Beowulf is not a “partially realized synthesis of pagan and Christian values,” we must also agree that it is not a

Keuthan 164 sermon, allegory, or essay. Because the foundational force of this poem is an

“unflinching, passionate theology,” (par. 8) we should identify the poem as a deft parable.

The most prominent details of this parable, which indicate a desire by the poet to explore the complexities of evil, are, as Tolkien rightly identified, the monsters: Grendel,

Grendel's mother, and the Dragon. Each of these monsters represents evil in a slightly different way, and the different ideas about evil are communicated parabolically/ theologically in a more complex and subtle manner as they interact with the main character Beowulf.

The first representation of evil in Beowulf, Grendel, communicates a particularly insidious type of evil for several reasons. First, consider the poet’s symbolic detail of hands. Grendel's hands take life. He carries no weapons. His hand “descends like the darkness of death” (line 689). This detail draws the listener to a specific concrete symbol

– parables create binary tension between the abstract (death) and the concrete (hands).

Significantly, to provide the Anglo-Saxon balanced opposition, Beowulf, using only the strength in his own hand (his claim to fame was that he had the strength of thirty men in one hand), does not rip off or crush Grendel's hand, but Grendel horribly rips his own body away from his hand. Beowulf never attempts to strangle Grendel or use a crushing death hug; he merely holds on. In this most primal of struggles, the monster and the hero are locked in nothing more vicious than a grip. No weapons, only flesh against flesh.

But Beowulf's gripping hand is the ontological opposite of Grendel's ripping hand. Of course, a human being would not be so horrified at being held, but Grendel is. The monster knows that "his body cannot keep life as long as Beowulf has him in hand" (line

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757). Rather than counter-attack with his other hand or grab any kind of weapon nearby,

Grendel focuses all his will in achieving escape from Beowulf’s iron flesh grip. Grendel

"heaves in desperate rage, wanting to go elsewhere, anywhere at all except the great hall

Heorot, into deep marshes, into the fen" (line 844). Vinsonhaler explains Grendel's abhorrence to being held: "The loneliness of Hell, its solitary, solipsistic essence, is revealed in the fact that Grendel's hand cannot bear even the grasp of another's” (par. 11).

Grendel's overwhelming desperation to escape is so great that the monster finally destroys himself, tearing his own arm out of its shoulder socket and leaving it in

Beowulf’s grip. In parabolic terms, Grendel's self destruction reveals an important

Christian principle informing the poem: The empty, gnawing insufficiency of a life of sin and evil is defined as that which is apart from God. To borrow from the Augustinian tradition, the emptiness of evil is its own undoing. This is the bloody crux of the parable.

In Grendel the skill of the poet is to create a new kind of horror: the idea of evil as a demonic force incarnate in the flesh. Grendel is somewhat man-like, but a grotesque, demon possessed, corrupted man. In this guise, evil is far more intimate than mere physical horror because the seed of evil festers within, and thus the reader/listener can more easily see the possibility of the seed of evil within himself (par. 12). Vinsonhaler’s analysis of Grendel points to an indication of the next step in Tolkien’s understanding of the nature of evil: The Great War displayed for him physical horror, but a study of

Beowulf taught him the “reeking blackness” (line 781) inside us all. Grendel is more terrifying than creatures from other mythologies because Grendel's demonic horror takes the human capacity for envy to its ultimate conclusion (par. 13). A good parable gets us to see the grotesque in ourselves.

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The complexity and genius of Beowulf as a parable lies in some regard with the poet's ability to have the reader get inside of the evil character of Grendel. He accomplishes this by portraying Grendel as the quintessential outsider, ostracized into the dark borders of civilization. The human condition naturally identifies in this outcast experience, characterized by a feeling of rejection or not belonging, and thus the reader/listener can experience some sympathy with the monster. Here the poet’s skill is that he leads the reader/listener to see himself in the monster and thus him as monstrous.

Utilizing the mythic archetype of the Outcast, the poem leads us to see and accept our own natural tendency toward envy and a rabid desire for inclusion (par. 14). This understanding derives from a Christian worldview which precariously balances both horror at Grendel's wild, bloody appetite with a sympathy concerning his damnation.

Grendel and Grendel's mother are both obvious representations of evil; however, the details of how the hero Beowulf confronts the representations of evil are more complex and subtle. Again, in keeping with the Anglo-Saxon poetic mantra of the balanced opposition, Beowulf comes to fight Grendel and his mother when he is a young man, and then, to balance it, the poet presents Beowulf's last battle in his old age against a much greater evil, motivated by different reasons. On a first reading, most would not say that the hero Beowulf represents any kind of evil; however, on closer inspection the

Christian poet has built into the last episode of his life aspects of the archetype mythic hero some parabolic qualities of evil.

As a young man, Beowulf, "the strongest man who ever lived in the days of this world," (line 147) came running to the aid of Hrothgar, not because the king and his men could not defeat Grendel themselves, but because Beowulf saw an opportunity to make a

Keuthan 167 great name for himself and win great renown — prideful ambition. In contrast to the

Christian knight, in, for example, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Beowulf does not serve God through his strength, but rather believes that he is favored by God because of his strength, much in the same way that Sampson saw himself. Like Daniel in the lion's den, Beowulf faces a demonic opponent unarmed and alone (Vinsonhaler par. 26). In contrast to

Daniel, however, Beowulf purposely lays aside his weaponry because he believes he can defeat Grendel with his bare hands, relying on his superhuman strength, and thus winning for himself even greater glory. Also unlike the prophet Daniel, Beowulf does not see himself as an actor through which God works. Beowulf's weapons would have failed the hero. Though Beowulf believes that he succeeds through his strength and courage, the poet shows us otherwise. Beowulf succeeds only when God works through him. We might say that the poet uses failed weaponry to show the "small measure" of man's might

(par. 29). This is like the story of Job: Man is a puny strength against the evil in this life.

He does not use his victory to sing unceasing praises to God. Rather, the poet reveals

Beowulf’s mind after the battle: "Beowulf was proud of his courage and his brave night's work" (line 851). This may seem like a minor distinction, but it sets up Beowulf's youthful sin of pride committed out of naïveté against the more mature sin of pride chosen by an aging king in his last days.

Vinsonhaler proposes that Beowulf's exploits in his youth fall into the narrative paradigm of folklore – meaning a story "of the common people, whose culture is handed down orally" (“folklore”). However, an aging king who single-handedly comes to do battle with the most powerful representation of evil in all of legend transcends into myth.

Simpson and Roud explain the distinction between folklore and myth:

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Myths are stories about divine beings, generally arranged in a coherent

system; they are revered as true and sacred; they are endorsed by rulers

and priests; and closely linked to religion. Once this link is broken, and

the actors in the story are not regarded as gods but as human heroes, giants

or fairies, it is no longer a myth but a folktale. Where the central actor is

divine but the story is trivial ... the result is religious legend, not myth.

(“myth”)

Mythology speaks to the unavoidable human mysteries of existence, mysteries that transcend the mere survival of a fight with a humanoid monster (Vinsonhaler par. 27).

As myth, Beowulf’s suffering and death leads to a contemplation of man's mysterious existence — as does the crucifixion of Christ or the sufferings of Job. The stakes are eternal and the parabolic meaning more profound.

Beowulf's last battle with the dragon is the poet's exemplary illustration of the corrupting evil of gold, much as in the tradition of many of the Gospel parables. In

Beowulf, gold is always associated with blood, violence, and death because gold, like weaponry, is also a symbol of raw power, a critically important attribute of the ancient warrior culture. As king, Beowulf is corrupted by these seductions in the last episodes of the poem. Beautiful weaponry can be justified for defense, and it may (like the sword of

Grendel’s mother) be an instrument through which God works; but its gold handle, jeweled guard, and bright keen edge is always a temptation, a source of corruption. At its best, the golden sword awarded to Beowulf is a symbol of the kingly guardian of a people; at its worst, it becomes a temptation to greed and/or envy. Its harvest is always sorrow. In this sense the poem is a parable about evil: The poet agitates both the

Keuthan 169 admiration for golden weaponry and the horror at Grendel's savagery, only to demonstrate that Beowulf's battle hand (with the strength of 30 men), for all its apparent glory, is simply man's version of the monster's bloody spiked hand (par. 32). The poet all but states it outright – Beowulf is a parable about evil. Tolkien, of course, knew this and exploited it to weave into his own stories. The poet portrays the seductive power of treasure in the dragon's ring hoard, for which Beowulf will choose to sacrifice his life and his kingdom: (par. 31) "Helmets lay heaped, old and rusted, and scores of arm rings skillfully twisted. How easily jewels, gold in the earth, can overcome anyone, hide it who will — heed it who can” (lines 1241–42)! In beautiful parabolic irony much in the tradition of the Gospels, the poet speaks volumes about the evils of desiring material wealth in the heaps of rusted armor. Perhaps even more symbolically, Beowulf will be buried at sea with things that will have no eternal use for him or anyone else. What a tragedy. What a lesson. What a parable.

The dragon in Beowulf is the easiest to identify as a representation of evil.

Tolkien said as much in his lecture on Beowulf. Jane Chance remarks that the dragon signifies the feond mancynnes, the enemy of mankind, and of God, so that the battle between Beowulf and the dragon on a more parabolic level points out that "the real battle is between the soul and its adversaries" (Tolkien, "Monsters" 73). Chance believes that the dragon "externalizes the evil within each soul" (Tolkien's Art 4). In a very real sense

Tolkien the Catholic had, since the readings of his youth, thought of dragons in satanic terms. Chance postulates that for Tolkien the dragon "less concretely realizes those allegorical personifications whom Milton portrayed as the offspring of Satan's mind in

Paradise Lost — Sin and Death. It recurs, in varying form, throughout Tolkien's works"

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(5). Indeed, in the very years considered in this chapter (from 1917 until1937), Tolkien studied and then wrote about dragons in almost all his writings. In the story examined in

Chapter Two, "The Fall of Gondolin," dragons were merely senseless war beasts. But by the time Tolkien becomes an Oxford teacher, he has accomplished considerable serious study of the dragon in Beowulf, as evidenced by the inclusion of a dragon in The Hobbit and the placing of a Dragon, Glaurung, as the central representation of evil in the Túrin story.

Tolkien further clarifies in his Beowulf lecture the role of the dragon as a symbol of evil. He proposes that the dragon is an anthropomorphication of malice, greed, and destruction or, ironically, the evil side of heroic life, as exemplified by Beowulf's motivation for fighting the dragon. The dragon symbolizes draconitas, "an abstract idea engineering to type rather than concretely depicted, individualized monster" ("Monsters"

65). Tolkien's understanding of the dragon and his use of dragons in his own literature reflects a mature consideration of them as complex representations of evil. He certainly seems to see them as useful in a parable:

A plain pure fairy story dragon should not be explained or it will die; so its

defender, like the critic, ...unless he is careful, and speaks in the parables,

...will kill what he is studying by vivisection, and he will be left with a

formal or mechanical allegory, and, what is more, probably one that will

not work. For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it

can be dissected. (63–64)

Tolkien must have seen the Beowulf poem in terms of a parable with the dragon a critically important element of the story, if the poet intended to convey some meaning

Keuthan 171 about evil. Here McFague’s Parabolic Theology lines up squarely with Tolkien: to dissect a parable into its parts is to kill it and lose its meaning.

A Pair of Parables in Parallel: Job

The story of Job is a difficult read. A righteous man is being physically tortured, has lost all his children, as well as his material possessions and all by the hand of his just and righteous God. Thematically, the story of Job is very similar to the story of Túrin. In fact, the overriding idea that a man can suffer evil through no fault of his own, which is the driving force of the narrative of both the story of Job and of Túrin, leads me to conclude that Tolkien may have had the story of Job in mind as he conceptualized and wrote (and re-wrote) the story of The Children of Húrin. And the story of Job reads very much like a parable, with its simple story but deep meaning, its compelling characters in whom the reader can identify, and its effect on the reader (as per Kirkwood) of a prolonged theological reflection, perhaps even "the shock of revelation."

The most prominent theme in the Book of Job concerns the difficulty of understanding why an all-powerful God allows good people to suffer. Job wants to find a way to justify God’s actions, but he cannot understand why evil people who “harm the childless woman, / and do no good to the widow,” are nevertheless rewarded with long, successful lives (Jerusalem Bible, Job 24:21). Job’s friends preach that God distributes outcomes to each person as his or her actions deserve. Adhering to this fallacious theology, they insist that Job has committed some wrongdoing to merit his punishment.

At the end of the story, God himself declines to present a rational explanation for the unfair evil that has come upon Job. When Job has the temerity to question God, He thunders at Job, “Have you comprehended the / expanse of the earth? / Declare, if you

Keuthan 172 know all this” (Job 38:18). God states that mere humans should not try to understand divine justice, since His power is so great that humans cannot possibly comprehend and/or justify His ways. One of the chief virtues of the poetry in the Book of Job is its rhetorical language, which produces a similar effect in the listener as a Gospel parable.

God’s onslaught of rhetorical questions to Job, asking if Job can perform the same things

He can do, overwhelms both Job and the reader with the sense of God’s unfathomable power as well as Job’s laughable human pride.

The most troublesome challenge to God’s being characterized as "good," however, is the existence of natural evil, which results in the undeserved destruction and pain humans often experience. The reader can see the parallel to the troubles Túrin and his sister experience in Tolkien’s story. The Book of Job directly questions God’s participation in natural evil. God allows Satan to pour out excruciatingly harsh punishments on Job for no other reason other than to prove to Satan that Job is a righteous man. The story implies that God sometimes uses natural evil as a rhetorical device — as a means of displaying His power or of proving a point in a world highly susceptible to human corruption. The reader is privileged to know of the challenge of

Satan and that God allows Job to suffer in answer to that challenge, but Job is never told of this. In the same manner, the reader knows that the suffering that Túrin, his sisters, and his mother endure is a result of a conversation between Morgoth and Húrin in which the evil lord pronounces a curse on Húrin’s family, unbeknownst to them. The parallels between Job and Túrin begin to become apparent.

Wayne Jackson offers the following answers concerning the evil of suffering in the Book of Job. First, man is unable to decipher the painful experiences of human

Keuthan 173 existence to arrive at a meaningful analysis because God’s workings are beyond man’s ability to fathom. Second, suffering is not always the result of personal sin. The erroneous conclusion drawn by Job’s friends is that suffering is always a consequence of sin. Job proves this is not true in his particular case. And third, suffering may be allowed as a catalyst to one’s spiritual growth. God allowed Job to suffer to prove to Satan what kind of man he really was (Copeland 5), and in the process Job also becomes a stronger, more blessed, more humble man. I would further suggest that the life shattering suffering that both Job and Túrin live through become stories for the consideration of unmerited evil. The natural tendency of man is to attribute to God the physical suffering man must endure and to think God is meting out capricious punishment, especially when life seems cursed with unending hardship. Every human being asks the question "What have I done to deserve this?" The desire of man, especially since the Enlightenment is to demand rational explanations for all circumstances and anomalies, and to become angry and shake a fist at heaven if God is not forthcoming with said explanations. In Job and

Túrin's case, the answer is nothing; Job is innocent and righteous and Túrin is under a curse that he knows nothing about. The Book of Job is a great parable because it causes the reader to confront the serious theological issues of suffering and evil with more than the rational circular logic of traditional theology. Remember Kirkwood’s admonition that parables uniquely accomplish this. The shock of revelation comes after reading either the story of Job or the story of Túrin and realizing that life is simply going to have suffering and evil.

Having posed in parallel the parables of Beowulf and the Book of Job and identified many of the details which mark the two stories as parables, with many

Keuthan 174 complimentary elements to the story of The Children of Húrin, we are now adequately prepared to discover what Tolkien may have to say about the nature of evil in the latter story, again utilizing McFague’s Parabolic Theology and Kirkwood’s ideas of the rhetorical effects of parables.

Evil in the Parable of The Children of Húrin

In much the same way that the story of Job is framed by a conversation between

Satan and God, the story of Húrin and his family is framed in evil by a conversation between the dark lord Morgoth and his captive Húrin. Túrin’s father Húrin, captured after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears but steadfastly refusing to collaborate with the

Great Enemy, is spellbound to watch helplessly while his wife and children suffer under

Morgoth’s curse (“Túrin” 681):

“Sit now there,” said Morgoth, “and look out upon the lands where evil

and despair shall come upon those whom you have delivered to me. For

you have dared to mock me, and have questioned the power of Melkor,

Master of the fates of Arda. Therefore with my eyes you shall see, and

with my ears you shall hear, and nothing shall be hidden from you.”

(Tolkien, Children 65)

The conversation where Morgoth curses Húrin's family with bitter lives of death and destruction, ruin and despair, establishes a Job-like tone to the story and gives the reader the same kind of narrative frame to explain why all these evil things happened to Húrin’s wife and children. Morgoth can only manipulate by fear, treachery, and the twisting of the fate of his victims, which is the context in which Túrin attempts to live a moral life

(Birns 193). The framing story establishes an immediate pathos, poses the same kinds of

Keuthan 175 questions about why evil things happen to people who do not necessarily deserve them, and establishes the story as a parable. The reader will, then, expect to find all the elements of a great parable to be in place and lead him or her to some new, profound knowledge.

In a letter of October 1914 to his future wife Edith Bratt, Tolkien expressed a desire to retell the tale of the Finnish hero Kullervo in a story modeled on the romances of William Morris, in prose with some parts in verse (Letters 7). The tragic character of

Kullervo was virtually invented by Dr. Elias Lönnrot by combining a number of traditional Finnish songs about unlucky heroes into one sequence in runos (poems) thirty- one through thirty-six of the national epic of Finland, The Kalevala, first published in

1835. Tolkien had for some years been attracted to the tragic qualities of the main character. Kullervo possesses the enormous strength and "northern courage" expected of a hero and his intentions are honorable, but by ill fate he is responsible for several deaths among his kin and friends. Kullervo and a sister he does not recognize unwittingly commit incest, and she drowns herself once she learns of their kinship. Finally, Kullervo, devastated by the tragedies throughout his life, speaks to his sword, which has spilled the blood of many innocent and guilty alike, asking the enchanted blade if it is willing to take his life, too; the cursed sword answers in the affirmative (“Túrin” 680). In the tradition of great tragic literature like the Book of Job or Hamlet, The Children of Húrin is not just a litany of tragic events, but also a story that tangibly communicates the complex psychology of loss and desperation, and the courage of those who resist the malicious forces that have conspired against them (Birns 190).

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Once the framing story is in place and the reader is aware that everything that happens to Túrin, his mother and his sisters is unbearably being watched by Húrin by means of an enchantment, the reader also watches the effects of the curse unfold. The effects of Morgoth’s malice has its full force on Túrin, so the tragic events of the story revolve around him. Túrin is thus the quintessential mythic hero, and, like the Greek tragic heroes, represents both the potential and the fallibility of humanity. But Túrin is also remarkably unlike other Tolkien heroes particularly in terms of the corruption aspect

(Birns 194). Unlike Job, who maintains his righteous piety no matter what tragedies accost him, Túrin, after many years of cruel hardships turns mean and cold – at least until he is cruelly tricked into falling in love with his sister. As is said of Túrin during the outlaw period, he “became hardened to a mean and often cruel life, and yet at times pity and disgust would wake in him, and then he was perilous in his anger” (Tolkien, Children

102). But Túrin’s most consistent hero trait throughout is his tenacious defiance of

Morgoth. He suffers endlessly, but he never succumbs (Birns 195).

In an effort to see what Tolkien is attempting to communicate to the reader about the nature of evil in this story and for the purposes of parabolic consideration, consider the details of The Children of Húrin that may lead to theological conclusions.

First, all evil and tragic things in this story happen to and/or are a result of the actions of the character Túrin Turambar. The importance of the loss of Túrin's father during the formative years of his character cannot be overstated. Any parent of a boy with tendencies towards rage will readily understand that the strong-handed influence of the mighty father can train the destructive tendencies so that they become strengths.

Túrin did have the guidance and training of a father surrogate in Thingol; however, the

Keuthan 177 chain of circumstances which bring about a life of woe for Túrin, and everyone he comes in contact with, begins with the loss of his father.

Túrin’s second familial loss scarred his early childhood. When he was five years old, Túrin’s beloved younger sister, Lalaith, full of life and laughter, died. “For the Evil

Breath came to Dor-Lómin.” Túrin took sick as well, and when he recovered, she was dead. He wept, but his mother told him never to mention the name Lalaith, for “Laughter is stilled in this house” (Tolkien, Children 40). The inability to grieve the loss of his sister instilled in the boy at a young age the coping mechanism of repressed emotion, which usually breeds rage.

Túrin's third familial loss came as a result of his being hidden in the far Elvish country of Doriath. Túrin's father had ridden off to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears and been captured by Morgoth. Morgoth sent Easterlings to take over the captured lands, thus necessitating Túrin’s removal to Doriath. Not long after Túrin's departure, his mother, Morwen, gave birth to a daughter, Niënor. How Túrin loses this sister shall be discussed shortly as it happens much later in his life.

Túrin’s exceptional capability with weaponry and great skill as a fighter becomes a liability to a young man who is under a curse. Combine Túrin's fighting skills with his tendency towards dark moods, a heightened sense of pride, and a quick temper, and the evil in Túrin's life translates to a number of unintended deaths. As a result of his temper and injured pride, Túrin accidentally kills Saeros, which commits Túrin to a life of wandering. But the most tragic of Túrin's accidental killings is his best friend Beleg. As he was cutting Túrin's bonds, the black sword Anglachel slipped, and pricked Túrin’s

Keuthan 178 foot. In a rage he broke free, wrested the sword from Beleg, and slew him, mistaking him as a foe:

But as he stood, finding himself free, and ready to sell his life dearly

against imagined foes, there came a great flash of lightning above them;

and in its light he looked down on Beleg’s face. Then Túrin stood stone

still and silent, staring on that dreadful death, knowing what he had done;

and so terrible was his face, lit by the lightning that flickered all about

them, that Gwindor cowered down upon the ground and dared not raise his

eyes. … Thus ended Beleg Strongbow, truest of friends, greatest in skill of

all that harboured in the woods of Beleriand in the Elder Days, at the hand

of him whom he most loved; and that grief was graven on the face of

Túrin and never faded. (Tolkien, Children 154, 55)

The fratricidal blood on Túrin's hands could never wash away. Killing Beleg was an evil that physically marked and changed Túrin; he was forever afterwards dark of countenance and convinced that his life could not be without evil.

Tolkien's lifelong interest in the lore of dragons comes to compelling fruition in the story of Túrin with the introduction of the Dragon Glaurung. Many evil events and tragic missteps have marked Túrin's life, but from the moment Glaurung enters, the messaging of the evil in this story darkens considerably. Tolkien took his dragon lore largely from the Völsungasaga, the Nibelungenlied, and Beowulf in order to produce the

Dragon Glaurung. This cunning beast became one of the chief instruments of the curse on Túrin’s family (West 680). From a biblical and parabolic standpoint, as well as from ancient literature, a dragon always represents evil. Satan is often referred to, especially in

Keuthan 179 the Book of the Revelation, as The Dragon. But Tolkien's use of dragons is a compilation of qualities as evil manifest in a terrifying beast. In the case of Glaurung, the dragon allows the reader to see Túrin and his sister's life as cursed and terrorized in ways that portray evil as complex, psychological, and frustratingly undefeatable.

Glaurung was known as the Deceiver and the Worm of Greed — a very powerful dragon, if not the most magical (Tolkien, Children 180). Glaurung was wingless and fire breathing. So the first attribute of the evil assigned to Glaurung is still borrowed from

Tolkien's experience in the war, which is to say that the dragon was capable of earth- rending destruction. He could destroy whole forests with his fire breathing and could wipe out whole armies with brute animal force. Additionally, as a mature dragon, he was almost indestructible as his scales made him impervious to arrows, swords, and any other of the normal weaponry of the day. This is normal, physical evil — bloody, terrifying, mutilating, and charred.

But it is Glaurung's more calculating, Satan-like qualities that reflect Tolkien's maturing, thought-provoking, theological depiction of evil in the dragon. Shrewd and full of guile, at times Glaurung used psychological manipulation to achieve his desired ends without resorting to direct physical violence. Like Satan, it is in his nature to trick and deceive, and to spread lies and deceptions so cleverly that they cannot be discovered until it is too late. In this manner, he accomplished damage to the spirit and soul that he could not have duplicated with brute force.

Morgoth sent Glaurung to attack the elf-kingdom Nargothrond with a great force, and they sacked the fortress easily. Glaurung used the bridge to the fortress of

Nargothrond that Túrin had built but in his pride refused to cast down. The Orcs were

Keuthan 180 herding the captive women away. Túrin charged to the rescue, and he hacked his way across the bridge but found himself facing Glaurung, who managed to catch Túrin’s eye.

Túrin was entranced and frozen by the dragon’s spell, and Glaurung spoke to him, saying:

“Evil have been all thy ways, son of Húrin. Thankless fosterling, outlaw,

slayer of thy friend, thief of love, usurper of Nargothrond, captain

foolhardy, and deserter of thy kin. As thralls thy mother and thy sister live

in Dor-Lómin, in misery and want. Thou art arrayed as a prince, but they

go in rags; and for thee they yearn, but thou carest not for that. Glad may

thy father be to learn that he hath such a son; as learn he shall.” (179)

As he was held fast by the eyes of the dragon, the Orcs made off with all their slaves, including Finduilas, the elf-maid who was his betrothed, and when they were gone,

Glaurung withdrew his glance. When Túrin came to himself, Glaurung gave Túrin two options: save Finduilas, or save his mother and sister in the North Country. Túrin tragically chose the latter, and in this way he was deceived by the dragon, for his mother and sister were living well in Doriath. The next sequence of events plays out Túrin as a victim of the dragon's deception.

Túrin rode hard to Doriath, but when he arrived at his elf home, he found his mother and his sister gone to look for him. So Túrin’s eyes were open to Glaurung’s lies.

Túrin then rode south in a rage, trying to save Finduilas. On the way, he saved a raiding party of the Men of Brethil, who were surrounded by Orcs. They broke the tragic news that Finduilas was dead; they had attacked the Orcs trying to save the captives, but the

Orcs killed everyone of them. Finduilas was skewered to a tree with a spear. The Men of

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Brethil had laid her in a mound and named it Haudh-en-Elleth, the Mound of the Elf- maid. The reader begins to see the complex, cunning evil of the dragon. Killing Túrin outright would have been too quick and too painless, but dragging him through the agony, the torture of being too late to find his mother and sister, or too late, only by moments, to save his elf-maid is a much more insidious kind of evil.

The next of Glaurung's deceptions causes Túrin's sister Niënor to lose all of her memory when she is captured in his spellbinding gaze. Túrin finds her wandering naked and senseless in the woods, falls in love with her, marries her, and impregnates her, all without knowing that she is actually his sister. Finally, the terrible parable must come to its inevitable, tragic end. Even the evil of the dragon must meet its match. In fact, one of the reasons I believe that Tolkien had Túrin endure such a difficult life is that it hardened him, sharpened his mind, and emboldened his purpose, so that he was the only man in

Middle-earth qualified and prepared to kill the dragon. One of the theological reflections on the story of Túrin is that he never quit fighting evil, and it made him uniquely qualified to confront and defeat the most powerful evil in Middle-earth, apart from

Morgoth. One of the theological concepts pervading the Bible is the idea that a sovereign and loving God prepares us to confront and even defeat the evil, which is ever present in this world. The stories of Moses, King David, Daniel, the Apostles, and Jesus Christ are all illustrative examples of God preparing a man, usually through extensive trials, to face a kind of evil prescriptive to his training, so that he can effectively confront it and defeat it. The parable of Túrin is a masterly illustration of this same theological concept.

Túrin has had enough of his cursed existence and resolves to kill the Dragon

Glaurung by any means necessary. Túrin knew that the Dragon was lying at Cabed-en-

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Aras, a gorge narrow enough for a deer to jump across. Túrin's plan was to hide himself in the gorge so that when the Dragon crossed it, his belly would be exposed, and Túrin could use the Black Sword Gurthang to stab him in the belly. When Glaurung began to move, Túrin was anxiously clinging to the side of the ravine, barely daring to breathe. As the great beast crossed the chasm, Túrin saw his most vulnerable spot and drove his blade into Glaurung’s belly with all his might. The Dragon writhed all about, spewing forth flame and crashing into trees. Finally, Glaurung appeared to have died. Túrin moved toward the still beast to retrieve his sword and to look upon his foe. He stood over

Glaurung, saying:

“Hail, Worm of Morgoth! Well met again!

Die now and the darkness have thee!

Thus is Túrin son of Húrin avenged.” (Tolkien Children 239)

But when Túrin pulled out his sword, black blood spewed over his hand and arm, scalding him like acid. Suddenly, Glaurung opened his eyes, and the evil look and the poisoned blood knocked him into a swoon, and he fell with his sword beneath him.

Glaurung screamed until his strength was gone. Niënor came running and found

Glaurung with Túrin apparently dead beside him. With his last breath, Glaurung poured out his last evil and gave Niënor her memory back, then died. The stricken and horrified girl looked down at Túrin and cried:

“Farewell, O twice beloved! A Túrin Turambar turun ambartanen: master

of doom by doom mastered! O happy to be dead!” (243, 44)

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Then she cast herself off the cliff of Cabed-en-Aras into the foaming water below and was lost forever. Ever the plan of the Enemy is to torment us our entire life until it ends in horror, despair, and destruction.

One of the shocking moments of revelation in this story is Niënor’s reaction to the revelation of her marriage to her brother. Glaurung prophesies and accuses Niënor that the “the worst of all his deeds shall you feel in yourself” (243). Poor Niënor suffers the worst of deceptions — an agonizing consciousness of sin, of violation, and deception, as marriage is traditionally the most important relationship in a woman’s life. The way these events are described brings out the forlorn regret and biting despair that the reader sees the characters feel at the moment of their ruin (Birns 196).

Túrin awoke from his faint and learned all the truth. Grief beyond all that he had ever known overwhelmed him. He looked into the dark foam of the gorge Cabed-en-

Aras and drew his black sword:

”Hail Gurthang! No lord or loyalty dost thou know, save the hand that

wieldeth thee. From no blood wilt thou shrink. Wilt thou therefore take

Túrin Turambar, wilt thou slay me swiftly?”

And the sword replied:

“Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of Beleg

my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay thee

swiftly.” (256)

Whereupon Túrin Turambar, the mightiest warrior in all of Middle-earth, plagued by unending evil all of his life, gladly fell on his sword and ended his miserable existence.

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Tolkien seemed to find Túrin Turambar a fascinating yet perplexing figure whose story he was drawn to write and re-write, eventually claiming it as “the dominant story of the end of the Elder Days” (Lost Road 281). Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle-earth, states that the story of Túrin and his family centers round Tolkien's favorite question of how corruption worked, and how much evil gained power over time, over heroic moral resistance. Shippey believes that the most important scene in this story is the one in which Morgoth debates with his captive Húrin on top of the "Hill of Tears," looking out over the kingdoms of Middle-earth, like Christ and Satan in Milton's Paradise Regained.

Like Satan in the story of Job, Morgoth promises to ruin Húrin's family and break them on his will (262).

The parable of Húrin is an unrelenting story of evil heaped upon his children until their deaths are a relief from the darkness and despair. Tolkien extracts elements from ancient stories such as the Kalevala, Beowulf, and the Book of Job, which resonate with unsettling certainty the universal encounter of evil with all human beings: undeserved suffering, loss of family members, death and sickness, and fatefully bad decisions. But

Tolkien’s story also reflects McFague’s and Kirkwood’s sense of the parable by interjecting the great extremes of evil: a divinely instigated family curse, and a marauding, conniving dragon. The radicalness of these extremes lower the reader’s wall of rationalization and draw the reader into this parable so that s/he cannot look away, even though s/he may desperately want to. Thus, the depictions of evil weave themselves into the subconscious and result in an exercise of personal, extended theological reflection. It is unavoidable if you read this story. This is the brilliance of Tolkien as a storyteller. Nowhere is God mentioned, and yet unequivocally, a consideration of how he

Keuthan 185 has indirectly communicated to the reader a new understanding of the evils we encounter in our lives and the example by which we must take up arms against a sea of troubles, and if we have "northern courage," spend our lives standing against it. This is for

Tolkien Christianity at its deepest level.

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CHAPTER 4: TOLKIEN AS MASTER STORYTELLER

THE AGED BARD AT LAST

In the eighteen years since he had written The Hobbit and delivered the Beowulf lecture, Tolkien had become a master storyteller. He had labored for fourteen years to hammer out what would become the most widely read piece of fiction in the twentieth century. Fame and fortune came to him in his Elder Days. Tolkien had risen to the very top of his profession, enjoying world-renowned as a philologist and somewhat of a cult status in the newly popular fantasy fiction genre. But he was in his sixties when The

Lord of the Rings was published, and he and Edith did not always enjoy good health.

Tolkien gave up his position at Oxford and his social habits with his buddies to move to a seaside resort so that Edith might be happy in the social strata she had missed for fifty years. C. S. Lewis died in 1963 and then his wife in 1971. Tolkien had led a romantic life of literary adventure and scholastic camaraderie, but the end of his days read like

Frodo going off to the Grey Havens, or Arwen living her last years alone after Aragorn’s death, or perhaps like the end of his most romantic and autobiographical story: “The Tale of Beren and Lúthien.”

The golden morning sun spilled through the window; splashing white warmth across the bowls and cups used to break the great man’s fast. A wrinkled, trembling hand carefully guided the china cup so that he might drain the last of his sweet morning brew. The cup was replaced with a rattle. His fast was broken, now he must return to work. The aged warrior-poet rose from his chair with a groan and cast about the room

Keuthan 187 for the gnarled shillelagh necessary for steadying himself as he walked. Since the time of his fall, churlish pains in his side plagued him.

To work. He must return to the work of the great tales, the mythology upon which he had laboured since the Great War. The world-renowned myth warrior had long since won his mightiest battle — the greatest labor a bard can perform — the bestowing upon a troubled and despairing world an earth-rending story. Tolkien had brought forth from the mind of the Creator the great tale of The War of the Ring. Long had been the struggle to wrest forth from his soul the story of the evil ring. Deep had been the anguish of his mind and body in the penning of the tale. Bloody had been the battle to bring the tale to the blessed page. For a score of years, save three, Tolkien had taken up the keen- edged pen and done private battle with the soul beast until the spirit tale lay bested on the fair page. Buckler and shield did he swing and crack in the misty morn of eager singing. With firebrand and spear did he labour in the deep dark night of the soul.

Sometimes, too, he had slaved in the grey work of forging, heating the tale to molten white-hot, sending sharp sparks flying into tunic and bare hammer arm, then sharpening on the Wheel of Perfection, finally burnishing the glittering tale until it shon like the first morn of the world. This was the work of the Master Bard, and he knew the blinding joy of the singing fire of the Swift Sure Hand in the halls of his breast.

But Tolkien had not been alone in the Word Work. Several of his sword-brothers had resided in the holy city of Oxford, fellow Bards in the faith-calling. To these he brought the great tale as it was being forged. The mighty legend was mere thought and mist on paper, but told forth with clarion voice, it transformed into bone and sinew, deed and thought, ring and evil. To these keepers of the Ancient Song, Tolkien’s grand myth

Keuthan 188 had entranced, challenged, and moved them to loud “Huzah!” But they had also joined him in the forging, too, by giving him song-counsel. The most stalwart sword-thain of them all had been the mighty Lewis – knit together in mind and heart with Tolkien. Lewis had always whetted the word-wrack in both praise and in sooth. Then flagons of ale would be poured all round and another bard would step to the hall fire and tell forth another tale in the making. Season upon season, year upon year, Tolkien’s sword- brothers had tested the tale for its soundness and found it true. They had stoked his mind-forge with the Secret Fire, enflaming him to fight on. “The mighty tale must be told,” quoth they. “The mighty tale must be told!”

Tolkien, having retrieved his walking stick, crept down the carpeted hall to his study. The work must continue apace. The great mythology is not finished. The hoar poet shuffled to his desk and carefully lowered his creaking frame into the chair padded with fealty pillows. He pulled the sartorial robes about him as the late fall morn still baited his bones with a chill bite. The servant must come tend the hearth fire anon.

More than one publisher would feign have forsworn to herald the Great Tale forth, but Tolkien had fought through the treachery o’re land and o’re sea to see the Tale of the Ring brought to the masses. And what a hale acclamation rose up from the starving masses! They clamoured! They wept! They swore fealty! And the rich rewards began to come. Anon the silver and gold swelled his coffers, but the humble scholar- knight did not change his abode to stones and towers more noble. Nor did he or his Lady

Fair adorn themselves with rich raiment. When the Ring Tale came forth, Tolkien and his Lúthien were already advanced in years – three score odd years. Such peacockery was forsworn as foolishness.

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But his warrior days were now past him. He need fight no longer. The Task had been done. He had answered the Call – the Majestic Tale was told into the world. And he was now alone. He had lost his sword-brother Lewis many years hence – he grieved still, as a tree with an axe laid to its very roots. The other Word Bards had now gone Home as well; he had outlived them all.

And Lúthien, his elf-princess, his wife, had been laid low less than a year agone.

When she went Home, the fight went out of him. The pen sword felt too heavy to wield any longer. Stiff and aching in body and heart, the once mighty Word-Master, unrivaled by any, had only the company of the Master SongPoet, and in Him Tolkien resided.

Pulling himself out of his reverie, Tolkien addressed the pile of papers that comprised the Great Myth yet unfinished. Gondolin, Túrin, Beren, and Lúthien. They all still needed the forging hand. The Three Tales and the Legendarium would be his last charge. While there was still strength, he would be true to the Maker’s Calling. Drawing a deep breath, Tolkien picked up the pen and began to scratch corrections on the Tale of

Beren and Lúthien.

Then he heard the quiet moving of the Great Creator in his heart. “I can ask no more of you my good and faithful servant. You are done. You have answered My Call and fought the good fight. Rest now. Be still and know that I am God.”

His heart was now serenely quiet. The fine old warrior closed the folder with the

Tale of Beren and Lúthien yet unfinished, laid the pen on the top of all and let out a bone- deep sigh. Hoisting himself out of the desk chair, he tucked a pillow under his arm and crossed to the stuffed chair near the fire. He sank into the tapestried cushions, clutched the pillow to his chest and closed his eyes. A misty smile began to play on his face as he

Keuthan 190 remembered a beautiful, raven-haired elf-maiden who danced and sang in a hemlock grove long, long ago.

The above fictionalization of a day in Tolkien's old age continues to illustrate the terms in which he viewed his own life: as a kind of myth narrative, thus further confirming the applicability of Walter Fisher's Narrative Paradigm. Tolkien made sense out of his own life by forming it into a narrative, in this case a narrative imagined in

Middle-earth. Further, the fictionalized day in the life above is written in a particular style, a style most nearly emulating the style and voice in which he wrote The Lord of the

Rings. The introductory narratives which start Chapters Two, Three, and Four are all written in a style which illustrates the way I believe Tolkien may have been imagining his life narrative, as inferred from examples of the fiction he was writing at that time. Right after World War I, he wrote in homage to the high legends of Northern Europe: lofty, grandiose. His writing while he was immersed in Beowulf has a slightly different style: an emulation of Anglo-Saxon poetry, much less elevated than before, more earthy. And finally, the introductory narrative to Chapter Four reflects the style of a fully matured master story teller: polished, refined, nostalgic, wielding more than one dialect and voice to better spin the story out. Each of these short pieces is intended to be an illustrative rhetorical exercise, to persuade the reader by example that Tolkien grew as a writer as a result of his deepening understanding of how better to tell a tale that might entertain, lower the rational wall, and present as a feast the delectable food of his faith. Once his magnum opus was published, Tolkien felt that he had accomplished his life work.

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Tolkien as Published Author

According to biographer Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien briefly attempted to have

The Silmarillion considered by his publishers as the next thing that should be published after the tremendous success of The Hobbit. However, the jumbled mass of stories and poems that was his legendarium in 1937 was admittedly unfinished and unpublishable

(209). Therefore, some time in 1937, Tolkien began to write The Lord of the Rings. But the process was slow and laborious. On top of his extensive duties as a professor at

Oxford, Tolkien told friends that writing the “new Hobbit" drained him considerably

(White 188). He would make rapid progress on the new story for as much as a year, and then not touch it at all for maybe another year. He would get to certain points in the story and then get stuck, not at all sure how the story should proceed. But for the purposes of this project, the real struggle to write The Lord of the Rings centered round the question of how to represent evil. He knew that his mature ideas about evil had to reside in the

One Ring; however, how to effectively weave his complex theological understanding of evil into the new story posed a conundrum which he could only seem to work out by returning to work on the stories in the legendarium. I would assert that both the symbolic objects representing evil and the thematic timbre of The Lord of the Rings parallel some of the same elements in "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien." Tolkien returned to work on the Beren and Lúthien story as a method he had used successfully in the past to work out his own understanding of some theological idea. As he was writing it, the tone of The

Lord of the Rings progressed evermore towards darkness as an indication of Tolkien's concentration on a mature representation of evil. When he was writing The Hobbit,

Tolkien's audience was his young children, thus their input consistently steered the tone

Keuthan 192 of that story towards light whimsy (with the notable exception, of course, of the end of the story with the attack and killing of the Dragon Smaug). By the time Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings, his children had become teenagers, and his audience was his own heart and the Oxford Christians (Grotta-Kurska 102–110).

Finally, by 1949, Tolkien had a completed draft of The Lord of the Rings ready for someone to read. He gave it to C. S. Lewis. Lewis, even though he and the other

Inklings had heard major portions of the story read out loud to them, was astounded at the final story. In a letter to Tolkien he enthused:

I have drained the rich cup and satisfied a long thirst. Once it really gets

underway the steady upward slope of grandeur and terror (not been

relieved by green dells, without which it would indeed be intolerable) is

almost unequalled in the whole range of narrative art known to me. (qtd.

in Carpenter 204)

The fight in which Tolkien was next engaged concerned his adamant desire to have The Silmarillion (even though it was still in a shambles) published in the same volume with The Lord of the Rings. Obviously, his normal publisher, Allen and Unwin, desperately wished to publish The Lord of the Rings; however, times were tough for the publishing business in 1949: paper was scarce and expensive after the war, and the reading public didn't have a lot of money to buy a huge volume of fiction. Additionally,

Tolkien's publishers were fully aware that The Silmarillion was far from being in any condition to be published, not to mention that a single book with both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings would be well over a million words. No one would buy it; no one would read it; and Allen and Unwin would go broke. Consequently, when Allen and

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Unwin told Tolkien that they would not publish The Silmarillion, he was deflated and furious (Carpenter 207–10).

Tolkien got his first taste of the evils of modern business when he attempted to change publishers. Collins, a much larger publisher, wanted the rights to publish both

The Hobbit, which was still doing brisk sales, and the forthcoming The Lord of the

Rings. They feigned a significant interest in publishing The Silmarillion and seemed to indicate that they might be willing to publish the two together. Tolkien was elated and severed his relationship with Allen and Unwin. However, as Tolkien got closer to being finished with The Lord of the Rings, things did not go well with Collins. When Tolkien told Collins that the actual length of the finished The Silmarillion would be at least as long as The Lord of the Rings, the publisher understandably balked. But the real blow to

Tolkien came when Collins told the author that The Lord of the Rings itself "urgently wanted cutting" (Carpenter 211, Grotta-Kurska 115). Tentative agreements between

Tolkien and Collins fell apart quickly, and the Oxford don was left with a magnificent story and no publisher.

Tolkien petitioned Allen and Unwin to reconsider publishing The Lord of the

Rings; he was willing to do so on their terms. The rest, as they say, is history. The Lord of the Rings was published as three separate books: Fellowship of the Ring and The Two

Towers in 1954 and Return of the King in 1955. As a result of the unusual financial arrangement he had with Allen and Unwin, Tolkien earned half of the profits from the sale of his books after the printing costs had been recovered. Within the first five years of publication, Tolkien's royalty checks were enormous (White 227, Carpenter 224, 244).

Of course he was thrilled and excited to see such a huge endeavor in his life reap

Keuthan 194 unexpectedly large dividends, both financially and in popular opinion; however, the

Tolkiens did not radically change their lives. They didn't move into a huge house or buy expensive clothes, but they did take some trips, eat out frequently, and Tolkien retired from teaching in 1959, leaving him with the enjoyable ability to spend lots of time simply sitting and talking with Edith (Carpenter 222, 248).

Once The Lord of the Rings started selling well and Tolkien's fame actually became worldwide, he and his wife lost one of their most treasured possessions: peace and quiet. All three of Tolkien's major biographers relate stories of intrusive visitors, phone calls in the middle of the night, bags and bags of fan mail, and numerous requests for speaking engagements (White 230–34). Tolkien saw the loss of his peace and quiet as an evil unto itself; he longed to return to the sort of life Bilbo led in his advanced years: quietly writing, elegantly dining, with the extended leisure to sit and talk with friends. Tolkien was sixty-three years old when The Lord of the Rings was published; he was already an elderly man, set in his ways, and valued his privacy above gold. Finally, he and Edith could endure it no longer. In 1968, when the Tolkiens were in their late seventies, they moved to the seaside resort town of Bournemouth, England. Carpenter describes living in this town to be torturous for Tolkien. He was without any of his friends, none of the residents were his intellectual equal, and on the whole he felt imprisoned and out of place. Over the years the Tolkiens had taken some of their vacations here, and Edith had made a number of friends in the mostly affluent community. Tolkien realized that Edith was remarkably happy in Bournemouth, happier than she had been in Oxford. It constituted a return to her upper-middle-class society life before they were married. So Tolkien endured the years they lived in the seaside

Keuthan 195 bungalow as a personal penance for all the years he had forced Edith to live unhappily as a professor's wife in Oxford (246–51).

Tolkien in Retirement: Accolades and Loss

The worldwide acclaim afforded to Tolkien as a result of The Lord of the Rings being translated into many languages and distributed to millions of readers also allowed his scholarly work to be examined by a wider audience, the result being that numerous accolades were extended to him in his later years. He received the Commander of the

Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II, a station in the peerage just below a knighthood. He was also awarded a number of honorary doctorates; however, the one he valued the most, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford was finally conferred upon him in 1972 (White 241, 42 Carpenter 254). Recognition for his scholarly work also motivated him to continue his own research and writing. He collaborated with some of his colleagues to publish several new translations of Anglo-Saxon literature in the years following his retirement. Carpenter relates, however, that these obligations kept him from what he called his "real work" — the work on the stories in the legendarium (239).

The evil that Tolkien experienced in his own life after his retirement could probably best be summed up by the word ‘loss.’ Sadly, the blight of old age is enduring what has been lost. First, for a number of reasons, Tolkien lost his friends. The countless hours of supreme joy shared in the company of his circle of male friends slowly ebbed away as Tolkien grew older. Unfortunately, for example, the deep and abiding friendship that he shared with C. S. Lewis started to cool in the late 1940s. By the time The Lord of the Rings was published, the two saw each other only rarely. The reasons for the friendship falling away are several and need not be recounted here, as they are effectively

Keuthan 196 discussed by Tolkien’s biographers (White 137, 149 Carpenter 236), but the reader can conclude that Tolkien deeply missed his friend and considered the loss of time spent with him to be tragic indeed. When Lewis died in 1963, Tolkien's grief was so profound that he could not bring himself to attend the funeral or write an obituary or an essay in memoriam. Carpenter famously quotes Tolkien in a letter written to his daughter

Priscilla a few days after Lewis' death: "So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age — like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an ax- blow near the roots" (241). As a result of Lewis's death and many other factors, the circle of friends that met around Lewis, Tolkien, and the other Inklings, ceased to meet. That great male camaraderie in which Tolkien had reveled for more than twenty years was now lost, too. The foundational relationships of Tolkien's life, which facilitated the enrichment of his spirit and his mind and sharpened his writing through exposure to the encouraging, critical minds of the Oxford Christians — the men — were shorn from him.

Carpenter reports that Tolkien suffered the ache of their loss for the rest of his life (245).

Next to the loss of his friends, Tolkien was also saddened by the loss of contact with his family. Biographers Carpenter and White write that Tolkien was a remarkably devoted father, so his children’s growing up and leaving was a significant loss for him.

Since Christopher grew up to be a professor at Oxford in philology like his father, he and his children visited his parents frequently. However, when John Ronald and Edith moved to Bournemouth, visits became less frequent (238).

Tolkien and his wife also suffered the deterioration of their health, as they grew older. Edith became more and more crippled by arthritis and troubled with infections, so much so that in 1966, she was barely able to attend the golden wedding celebration put

Keuthan 197 on by their friends. When she died in 1971, Tolkien suffered from intense loneliness and an extended depression (Grotta-Kurska 149, White 240, Carpenter 251, 52). They had been married for fifty-five years. Now he would have to learn how to live alone.

Tolkien's own health also deteriorated in the years after his retirement. He suffered a fall down the stairs and injured his leg badly, so that he had to spend many weeks in the hospital in a plaster cast from his hip to his ankle. He never walked well again after that, using a cane to steady himself. He, like his wife, also suffered from arthritis and various infections, which often left him tired and ill for long periods of time

(Carpenter 251). The accident and his ill health often left him too worn out to do much work on his writings. He used what little energy he had to fulfill his commitments for publishers demanding his scholarly work. This frustrated his efforts to return to the work on the legendarium (White 236, Carpenter 236, 239). Tolkien was, therefore, unable for many years to work on the stories that became The Silmarillion. Carpenter concludes that given his ill health and the mounting losses in his life, the task of finishing his great myth seemed ever a larger and larger task and far too complicated (240, 251).

I must assume that Tolkien felt that his greatest loss in the last years of his life was the diminished capacity of his mind to produce great things. His brilliance had been brought to bear for so many years on his work as a teacher, published scholar, and inventor of whole worlds. He must have been aware of the gift of his own genius; great writers often reread their own works and, if they are truly great writers, they see that their masterpieces are beyond their human abilities. As a godly man, Tolkien would have been aware that his genius, his imagination, and his skill with a pen were a rare gift from God.

To come to the end of his life and see that God's gift has spent itself must have brought to

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Tolkien the deepest sadness of his last years. Yes, the loss of his friends, Lewis, and his wife left Tolkien lonely, but the inability to finish the Great Mythology, by a man so driven to the perfection of completion, must have been the greatest misfortune of all.

After Edith died, Tolkien moved back to Oxford into rooms given to him by the university. Apparently, he could not bring himself to return to any substantial work on the legendarium stories. The Oxford to which he returned was even more mechanized, industrialized, and modernized (255–61), so that the only joy Tolkien may have experienced in his last years was to retreat into his sub-created world, away from the cars, and the televisions, and the telephones, to the pleasant place in his mind where Rosie

Cotton can bring him a tankard of ale, and he can smoke with his fellow hobbits, reveling in pleasant conversation as the sun goes down.

OF ELVEN JEWELS, EVIL RINGS AND DARKER THINGS

Before attempting an analysis of this story, the version of "The Tale of Beren and

Lúthien” which is most useful for the purposes of this project should be identified.

Specifically, I want to examine the version of the story that reflects Tolkien's mature ideas about evil as they would have been built into a later version. "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien” had been written and rewritten many times. Tom Shippey counts the number of rewrites at more than a dozen versions, indicating that Tolkien clearly valued this particular story in some ways more than anything else he wrote in his Elder Days mythology. Perhaps this is true because, by Tolkien's own admission, the story was based on a vision of his wife and himself. The first version of the story, written in 1917 as a part of what Tolkien called The Book of Lost Tales, was called “The Tale of

Tinúviel,” and it is one of the Three Great Tales Tolkien wrote in its first form while he

Keuthan 199 was convalescing from trench fever. During the early 1920s, Tolkien started to recast the story into an epic poem called The Lay of Leithian. After composing some rather impressive poetry mimicking the style of Anglo-Saxon poets, he abandoned the work, leaving three of seventeen planned cantos unwritten. After his death, The Lay of

Leithian was published in The Lays of Beleriand by his son Christopher, together with The Lay of the Children of Húrin and several other unfinished poems. The most complete prose narrative version of the tale exists as a story of The Silmarillion and is sung by Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring. Additionally, it was the model for “The

Tale of Aragorn and Arwen,” which is told in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings

(Road 257–60).

In Volumes Ten and Eleven of The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien constructs from the original texts the evolution of his father's work on The Silmarillion, specifically the legendary history of the Elder Days or First Age. With the publication of all of Tolkien's later writings concerned with the last centuries of the First Age in Volume

Eleven, The War of the Jewels, the long history of The Silmarillion, from its beginnings in The Book of Lost Tales, is completed, and the enigmatic state of the legendarium at his death can be understood. After The Lord of the Rings was published, his work on "The

Tale of Beren and Lúthien” was intermittent and, in fact, what he did with the story was to weave it into The Gray Annals (Tolkien, Rings forward). So, although the version published in The Silmarillion represents Tolkien's last effort on the story of Beren and

Lúthien, it is by no means his best or most complete representation of the story. The version in The Gray Annals is more like a summary than a narrative; it has none of the fluid, imagistic beauty of earlier versions, particularly his poetic versions. Why is this?

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Tom Shippey answers the question by quoting from Carpenter's biography: Tolkien's later life was "a perpetual discontinuity, a breaking of threads which delay achievement and frustrated him more and more" (Road, 227). Shippey confirms my earlier analysis that the cause of Tolkien’s writing deficiencies can be traced to external factors: loss of friends, a perpetual stream of visitors, and the lack of self-discipline (227). Tolkien had spent the bulk of his extraordinary storytelling skill writing The Lord of the Rings and seems to have had little strength left to apply to the finishing rework required for the stories of The Silmarillion. For the purposes of discovering what Tolkien intended to communicate about the nature of evil in the story "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien,” I will utilize the version published as a chapter in the 1977 Silmarillion.

"The Tale of Beren and Lúthien”: A Synopsis

Beren was the last survivor of a group of warriors led by his father Barahir who still resisted Morgoth after the Battle of Sudden Flame, in which Morgoth with his

Dragons and hordes of Orcs conquered much of northern Middle-earth. After the defeat and/or death of most of his companions, Beren fled from capture into the Elvish realm of Doriath. Wandering through the forest, he happened upon Lúthien, the only daughter of the Elf-king Thingol and his Maia (think angel) wife Melian.

… Beren came upon Lúthien… at a time of evening under moonrise, as

she danced upon the unfading grass in the glades beside Esgalduin. Then

all memory of his pain departed from him, and he fell into an

enchantment; for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the children of

Ilúvatar. (Tolkien, Silmarillion 165)

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Lúthien later fell in love with Beren as well, when she heard him calling for her in a longing voice. As King Thingol disliked Beren because he was a mere man and regarded him as being unworthy of his daughter, he set a seemingly impossible task for

Beren to complete before he could marry Lúthien. Thingol asked Beren to bring him one of the silmarils, the three hallowed jewels made by Fëanor, which Morgoth had stolen from the elves:

“I too desire a treasure that is withheld. For rock and steel and the fires of

Morgoth keep the jewel that I would possess against all the powers of the

Elf-kingdoms. Yet I hear you say that bonds such as these do not daunt

you. Go your way therefore! Bring to me in your hand a Silmaril from

Morgoth's crown; and then, if she will, Lúthien may set her hand in

yours.” (166)

Beren set out on his quest to Angband, the enemy’s fortress. Although Thingol tried to prevent it by locking her in a house up in a tree, Lúthien escaped and later followed Beren. Beren first reached the elvish stronghold of Nargothrond and was joined by ten warriors under the lead of Finrod Felagund, who had sworn an oath of friendship to Beren's father. Although Fëanor’s sons, Celegorm and Curufin, warned Beren not to take the silmaril, which they considered their own by right, inheritance, and oath, the company was determined to accompany Beren on his quest. On their way to Angband,

Beren and the elves were captured by the servants of Sauron, despite the best efforts of

Finrod to disguise themselves as Orcs, and imprisoned in a dark pit. One by one, werewolves killed the elves until only Beren and Finrod remained (169–72).

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Sauron kept Finrod to the last because he believed that Finrod knew the purpose of their quest. But when the wolf came for Beren, Felagund put forth all his power and burst his bonds. He did battle with the werewolf and slew it with his hands and teeth; yet he himself was fatally wounded (174).

Following Beren’s trail, Lúthien was caught by Fëanor’s jealous sons, Celegorm and Curufin, and brought to the elf stronghold of Nargothrond. Aided by Huan,

Celegorm’s great hound, Lúthien was able to escape from Nargothrond. On the bridge to

Sauron’s fortress, Huan destroyed the werewolves of the enemy, the Great Wolf

Draugluin, and did battle with Sauron in wolf-form:

But no wizardry nor spell, neither fangs nor venom, nor devil's art nor

beast-strength, could overthrow Huan of Valinor; and he took his foe by

the throat and pinned him down. Then Sauron shifted shape, from wolf to

serpent, and from monster to his accustomed form; but he could not elude

the grip of Huan without forsaking his body utterly. Ere his foul spirit left

its dark house, Lúthien came to him, and said that he should be stripped of

his raiment of flesh…Then Sauron yielded himself, and Lúthien took the

mastery of the isle and all that was there....Then Lúthien stood upon the

bridge, and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone

to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the

pits laid bare.... (175)

As a brief byword, notice that Lúthien condemns Sauron to forsake bodily form forever in Middle-earth. Sauron, in The Lord of the Rings is only a disembodied spirit manifest as a flaming eye. All things are connected in Tolkien’s mythology.

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Lúthien and Huan freed Beren, and he wanted to proceed on the quest alone, but

Lúthien insisted on coming with him. Through her magic, they assumed the shapes of a bat and the great wolf Draugluin that Huan had killed. Disguised thus, they were able to enter the Morgoth’s land and at last come to Angband and before Morgoth’s throne.

Still disguised as a wolf, Beren slunk beneath Morgoth’s throne; but Lúthien was stripped of her disguise by the will of Morgoth, and he gazed upon her. She steadfastly returned his gaze and stated forth her own name, for there is some power in the name of a high elf-princess. Lúthien offered to sing for Morgoth, in the manner of a minstrel:

“... then Lúthien catching up her winged robe sprang into the air, and her voice came dropping down like rain into pools, profound and dark. She cast her cloak before his eyes, and set upon him a dream, dark as the Outer Void where once he walked alone”

(180 –181). Morgoth, spellbound and dreaming, fell out of his throne and lay sprawled upon the floors of hell.

Changing quickly to the shape of a man, Beren cut a silmaril from Morgoth’s crown. As he tried to cut out another one, his knife broke and a shard scratched

Morgoth's face, awakening him. Beren and Lúthien fled the hell hall, but they found the gate barred by Carcharoth, a giant werewolf, who was bred to be the equal of Huan.

Beren, believing that the radiance of the silmaril would ward off the beast, held it aloft in

Carcharoth’s face, but he bit off and swallowed the hand in which Beren was holding the silmaril. However, Carcharoth was burned by the pure light of the silmaril in his belly and ran off on a wild, howling rampage.

Beren and Lúthien escaped Morgoth’s lands to Doriath, where they told of their deeds before the throne of King Thingol. He looked upon Beren in wonder, but not love,

Keuthan 204 because of the troubles that he would bring to Doriath. Thingol asked, “What of your quest and of your vow?” And Beren answered, “It is fulfilled. Even now a Silmaril is in my hand.” Thingol, shocked, surprised, and disbelieving said: “Show it to me!” (184)

Beren held up his right arm and explained that the silmaril, still in his clutched hand, lay burning in the belly of the wolf-beast Carcharoth.

Beren’s great courage changed Thingol’s mind, and he accepted the marriage of his daughter and the mortal man. Beren and Huan joined in the hunt for Carcharoth, who in his madness had come into Doriath and caused much destruction. In a great battle, the wolf killed the Great Hound Huan, but Carcharoth was also slain. Beren was also mortally wounded in the fight:

Then Mablung took a knife and ripped up the belly of the Wolf; and

within he was wellnigh consumed as with a fire, but the hand of Beren that

held the jewel was yet incorrupt. But when Mablung reached forth to

touch it, the hand was no more, and the Silmaril lay there unveiled, and

the light of it filled the shadows of the forest all about them. Then quickly

and in fear Mablung took it and set it in Beren's living hand; and Beren

was aroused by the touch of the Silmaril, and held it aloft, and bade

Thingol receive it. 'Now is the Quest achieved,' he said, 'and my doom

full-wrought'; and he spoke no more. (186)

Grieving for Beren’s death, Lúthien died too and came to the halls of Mandos (think something like purgatory or limbo). There she sang of her heart-wrenching sadness, that she would never again see Beren, who as a mortal man had passed out of the world. Her song moved Mandos to pity, and he restored Beren and Lúthien to life, granting mortality

Keuthan 205 to the elf. Lúthien left her home and her parents and went to Ossiriand with Beren.

There they dwelt for the rest of their lives, and both eventually died the death of mortal men.

A Parable for Comparison: Novels As Parables

Thinking of Tolkien's masterpiece in terms of being a parable may seem a little strange, but Sallie McFague uses it as an example of the novel as a parable in her book

Speaking in Parables. First, she builds her case that many western novels are, in fact, parables:

When the Christian in any time or place confesses his faith, his confession

turns into a narrative.… It is through the Christian story that God speaks,

and all heaven and earth come into it. God is an active and purposeful

God and his action with and for men has a beginning, a middle, and an end

like any good story. The life of a Christian is not a dream shot through

with visions and illuminations, but a pilgrimage, a race, in short, a history.

(Crites “Myth” 67, 64–65)

McFague, referring to the ideas of Amos Wilder, agrees that because a reader of a well- crafted novel finds himself immersed in the story, he also finds himself also in the "realm of indirection." Then, she says, the intrinsic indirection communicated by said novel follows a similar paradigm as indirection communicated by a parable, as an extended metaphor (Speaking 120). Or as Stephen Crites proposes in his essay, "Myth, Story,

History," concerning indirection when writing of the depths of human truth, "Honest men try to tell the truth, but in order to do so they are obliged, like liars, to tell stories....

Stories have been told, and told with imagination, in the serious attempt to speak the truth

Keuthan 206 that concerns human life most deeply" (70). From Crites, then, a novel like Tolkien's could be considered a story that is a parable – narrative indirect communication.

McFague also proposes that one of the reasons that novels can draw the reader into parabolic/metaphorical thinking is that these stories always project a "world" (122).

T. A. Shippey, as well, asserts that one of the most significant attractions to Tolkien's novel is that he creates a believable, intricately crafted world, making a willing suspension of disbelief easier and even desirable (Road 135–176). Recall that William

Kirkwood has also proposed that a parable and/or well-told story first draws the reader in by means of its believability, and as the reader is being drawn into the created “world,” the “wall of rationalization” is lowered, making the presentation and acceptance of theological ideas all the more persuasive. The believable world in a story invites the reader to participation, empathy, and identification, thus making the communication of theological ideas entirely probable.

Amos Wilder counters Joseph Campbell's Monomyth Theory by stating that the average reader may be tempted to assume that there is only one story in the world that falls into the formula of “lost and found” and that all the stories in the Bible are variations on this theme (67). Tolkien would part company with the western novel at this point because the now cliché "lost-found struggle," the plot line of the individual in search of his or her real identity is the pattern of choice in many novels written after World War I, by the so-called “disillusionment” authors. Tolkien famously eschewed modernism and chose to write his stories, not only in archaic verbiage, but also adhering to the mythic plot structure of ancient legends. Thus, Tolkien's work can much more easily be identified as parable than a majority of modern novels. In Speaking in Parables,

Keuthan 207

McFague uses as examples novelists like Tolkien who emphasize "individual, dramatic, historical destiny," which, she states, is informed by the parabolic or metaphorical tradition. Such stories must interweave together and be "radically relevant" to the unfamiliar and "religious" (abstract concepts) with the course of ordinary life (concrete ideas), that characters in fiction become, like Jesus, the believable human metaphors

(124).

William Lynch proposes the “analogical imagination,” which finds in the mental images of the narrative “the path to whatever the self is seeking: to insight, or beauty, or, for that matter, to God," which is related to what he calls metaphor as method. “There are no shortcuts to beauty or truth. We must go through the finite, the limited, the definite, omitting none of it lest we omit some of the potencies of being-in-the-flesh”

(23). In other words, Lynch is saying that the literal process of mentally walking through the author’s created world puts the reader on a path to discover, through an imagined sensory experience (thus the requirement of effective details), some new insight or truth.

Lynch’s analogical imagination delves into the commonplace, for it is precisely in and through the complexities of personal narrative (read or lived) that insight comes. This is, of course, to take the mundane aspects of the story of Jesus with radical seriousness as the metaphor of human experience (McFague, Speaking 125). McFague makes the above argument in an attempt to illustrate the possibility of the parabolic nature of a novel. She asserts that the western novel is “haunted” by the story of Jesus, in the sense that, like the idea of God hidden in human life, the construction of human life in the characters in the western novel is one in which "human beings grapple with the transcendent through the inexorable limitations of historical existence"(125).

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The “elusive unity of the literal, mundane and sensory with the transcendent”

(126) is remarkably difficult for a novelist to accomplish. Many of the successful metaphorical novels have gravitated to the dark side; which is to say, evil looks easier to manifest metaphorically than good. Novels with parabolic qualities which attempt to facilitate insight into evil through metaphoric transformation include: Conrad’s Heart of

Darkness, Melville’s Moby Dick, Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The other end of the continuum, writing of transcendent good by the portrayal of grace, beauty, and God, through the sensory experiences of difficult realities of individuals living their lives is much harder to accomplish (126). But C. S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings does accomplish this.

McFague further proposes that novels like Lewis’ and Tolkien's are more accurately understood by examining them in the same terms and framework she uses to discuss parables:

They evoke the graciousness of the transcendent by means of a distortion

of the familiar, for the purpose of providing a new and extraordinary

context for ordinary experience. Their method is by metaphor, moving

from the mundane — but never leaving it behind — to the transcendent by

"figuring" it in terms of the human metaphor. (126, 27)

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A Parable for Comparison: The Lord of the Rings

McFague has stated that Tolkien's fiction poses a challenge because a first reading of The Lord of the Rings may well result in exactly the opposite of appreciating the metaphorical potential of his works. Tolkien’s fantasy, she assesses, of "little people and strange creatures, of evil powers and gracious rescues seems anything but parabolic….

But I think it is strangely and marvelously parabolic" (132).

In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien creates what he calls a "Secondary World" as complete and well-described an imaginary place as possible, but which is related to the

"Primary World" as fantasy is related to imagination, that is, "secondarily." Unlike

Lewis, Tolkien does not construct the “dichotomous oppositions of supernature against nature, and/or superior over inferior” (133); Middle-earth is a world created by fantasy, imagination and copious details as a world unto itself. Tolkien creates secondary relations with the primary world that, however, are nowhere spelled out – the reader’s imagination fills them in. When Lewis, by contrast, has the Pevensie children enter

Narnia only through portals, the separation between the real world and his invented world are too obvious to be believed, making it very difficult for disbelief to be suspended.

What Tolkien created is a world believable on its own terms, so that the reader does not need to work very hard to suspend disbelief or struggle with questions of science, as the reader must, for example, in Lewis' space trilogy. With a reader in Middle-earth, the location does not necessitate working to discover what characters and events "mean" because the hobbits, mortal men, and elves trying to destroy the One Ring do not “mean” anything other than who they are and what happens, which defines qualities which

McFague believes should be in a parable. The occasionally surrealistic nature of The

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Lord of the Rings does at times create cracks in the realistic surface of the story, which are deeper and more pronounced than the cracks in the realism of parables in the

"Primary World," but the story is still parabolic, for the "transcendent unfamiliar, both good and evil, operative in this tale works within the givens of this world" (133).

The parabolic nature of The Lord of the Rings is, however, much more mythic than merely human, which is to be expected since Tolkien drew so much of his influence from ancient Northern European myths. McFague compares the “subjective, dramatic human growth, such as Flannery O’Connor depicts in Francis Tarwater, in The Violent

Bear It Away,” with the quest-structured movement of the narrative in Tolkien’s novel, which is "more external, more the grace of power than of persuasion" (133). Event- driven narrative, not character-driven narrative, is expected and apropos in a fantasy world; the emphasis of Tolkien's writing is not human transformation per se — that would be too modern for him — but on the epic and ancient struggle of good and evil forces in the world, a struggle of mythic proportions, which should be resolved in grand, mythical style, like the epics of old.

McFague agrees with Tolkien that his novels are not allegories: the imagery, symbols, and characters cannot be simplified into a one-to-one assignment of meaning;

Tolkien notoriously disliked allegory and would have considered The Lord of the Rings a failure of intentions if it could be classified as an allegory. Nor is this story a supernatural struggle like some of his stories in The Silmarillion. The Lord of the Rings is a historically-based struggle in the mundane world of the hobbits, dwarves, Ents, Orcs,

Sauron, and the Wizards; in the context of believing that Middle-earth is an ordinary world unto itself, the mythic struggle of good and evil (readily relatable to our own

Keuthan 211 world) makes the most effective use of the qualities of a parable to portray that universal struggle (133, 34).

For the reader to be able to see this tale as parabolic, s/he must allow Tolkien’s world to be "the world," in the same way that a listener to Jesus would have assumed that the world in his parable is also "the world." Millions of readers have been readily convinced that Middle-earth could have been our world thousands of years ago. One reason for its believability may be the extraordinarily temporal character of Middle-earth.

It is not, like C. S. Lewis’ and Charles Williams’ worlds, merely spatial (Tolkien's meticulous attention to maps of Middle-earth notwithstanding), a world which the reader sees with his/her mind but which could in an instant of disbelief vanish. Rather Middle- earth is mind bogglingly, densely historical, stretching back for eons (Tolkien adds appendices with hundreds of pages of genealogies and fragments of more history), and covering within the story so many incidents, so much detail, that the reader cannot possibly "see" it or hold it in his/her mind in just one reading. The enormity and depth of

Middle-earth can only be grasped as an exercise in the breadth of your imagination.

Once the reader has become immersed in and accepted this world, the machinations of good and evil are entirely appropriate. It is the way of this world (134).

McFague proposes, because of its uniquely mythic quality, that Tolkien's novel is parabolic/metaphorical in at least one more way. Myth is especially appropriate as a narrative construct to portray the struggle, universal for all mankind, between good and evil, establishing the essential element of what Tolkien has called (in his lecture "On

Fairy Stories") "recovery:" seeing things as we were meant to see them (135). Writing of

Tolkien’s notion of "recovery," R. J. Reilly explains:

Keuthan 212

Recovery is recovery of perspective.…We re-discover the meaning of

heroism and friendship as we see the two Hobbits clawing their way up

Mount Doom; we see again the endless evil of greed and egotism in

Gollum, stunted and ingrown out of moral shape by years of lust for the

ring; we recognize again the essential anguish of seeing beautiful and frail

things — innocence, early love, children — passing away as we read of

the Lady Galadriel and the elves making the inevitable journey to the

West. (his emphasis 205, 206)

Tolkien achieves his recovery of perception by making the familiar more alive, more potent, more splendid, more nostalgically fantastic than it is in the "Primary World." The unfamiliar, like the introduction, for example, of a creature like Gollum, is accomplished by establishing the believability of the familiar so that the unique or singular appear larger than life; this is the method by which myth stretches reality, to open the cracks into it and let the reader in (135).

A Parable for Comparison: The One Ring

For the purposes of this investigation, the one element of The Lord of the Rings that most compellingly classifies it as a parable is the One Ring — the One Ring of the old rhyme:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. (Tolkien, Rings I:53)

Keuthan 213

All of the evil presented in Tolkien's novel is centered round this ring, so an examination of the Ring within the parameters of the parable will reveal Tolkien's mature, highly sophisticated understanding of the nature of evil.

Most of the Catholic scholars, such as Joseph Pearce, who have studied Tolkien's works, agree that Tolkien's theological basis for his representation of evil in his writings emanates from the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo. What Augustine proposes is that

“the loss of good has been given the name ‘evil’” (City of God, XI:9, 440). For

Augustine, there is no moral evil that is inherent to a being’s essence, but it is a defect in the creation: “Evil has no existence except as a privation of good, down to that level which is altogether without being” (Confessions 43). This is repeatedly evident in The

Lord of the Rings; the end result of continued corruption is nothingness – evil devours itself. Augustine further states, “If we are evil, to that extent we exist less” (Christian

Teaching 24). Which is to say that, as a being ceases to choose to reside in the created goodness in which God has placed him or her, he or she ceases to exist in a full realization of their intended place in the world and start to fade from complete existence.

The best example of this is perhaps the Ringwraiths. Every step this being takes away from being in his or her ordained place, results in steps taken toward evil. The more they remove themselves from their original goodness, the less they exist in the world. Again, the choice by the Kings of Men to take the Rings of Power from Sauron sets them on a path to destruction unto nothingness.

Sauron’s One Ring embodies this nature of evil. When the reader is first told the history of the Ring, Gandalf explains its power:

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[Gollum] could not get rid of [the Ring]. He had no will left in the matter.

The Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously,

but its keeper never abandons it…It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the ring

itself that decided things. The Ring left him. (Tolkien, Rings 1:64–5)

The One Ring is different from any other inanimate object within Middle-earth in that it has a will, which means that the Ring is sentient. In addition, according to Augustine, having a will means that it should have a place in the created order. The reader can now begin to see the development of Tolkien’s understanding of evil: the Ring has a will. It exerts its power of addictive corruption on the possessor. In his earlier work, the silmarils are merely desirable objects. Because the Ring has a will, we must consider it not merely as an object (evil as it is) but also a character. And the Ring is not merely a tool of evil, it is a self-perpetrator of evil; although it cannot act on its own, it has discernment and will to exert its influence in its own right. The advancement of

Tolkien's understanding and representation of evil becomes evident here. In The

Silmarillion, the jewels created by Fëanor are merely magically beautiful and highly desirable, enough to instigate wars between Morgoth and the elves for centuries. The silmarils represent a rather obvious aspect of evil ‘They're pretty. I want them. I'm willing to kill to get them.’ However, by comparison, Sauron forged the Great Ring himself, pouring all of his malice and power into it, specifically to pour himself into the

Ring. When that hate and malice comes into contact with a bearer, it begins immediately to attempt to tempt the bearer to corruption and to eventual destruction, as per the unquenchable desire of its maker. As we can already see, Tolkien's Ring represents a significantly more theologically advanced depiction of evil.

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The Ring is sentient; it also is created. In Frodo’s conversation with Gandalf, the reader learns that: “[Sauron] made the Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others” (I:61). Note two key ideas in this text: what composes the substance of the Ring, and for what purpose this substance was formed into a ring. First, consider what makes up the substance of the

Ring. Beyond the metal, the Ring has poured into it “a great part of [Sauron’s] former power.” Literally, a part of Sauron left his own being and joined with a gold ring to form a separate identity. This is what gives the Ring its sentience. It was not created by

Ilúvatar (God), and it was created specifically to hold the evil power of a corrupted being.

Augustine proposes that all things are created good. Even in Sauron's case, this is true.

In The Silmarillion, Sauron starts as a being full of goodness, but is later corrupted through choosing his own desires over that of Ilúvatar and the Valar. Then, Sauron forms the Ring to be co-equal with him; and in Augustinian terms, the loss of good causes

Sauron to be perpetually more and more evil, unto nothingness.

Next, consider the nature which Sauron passed on to the Ring. From the quote above, Sauron let “a great part of his own former power pass into” the Ring. The reader will wonder about the nature of that power. Gandalf says, “The enemy still lacks the one thing (the Ring) to give him strength and knowledge to beat down all resistance” (I:60).

The power, then, within the Ring itself is Sauron’s strength and knowledge. When

Sauron lost the Ring, this strength and knowledge of the Dark Lord took on a life of its own in the Ring apart from Sauron. When it passed into the Ring, it became self- animated, whereas before it was a part of Sauron’s volition. The reason, then, that the

Ring is evil, is because, much like Sin birthed from the head of Lucifer in Paradise Lost,

Keuthan 216 it was true to its nature, which was evil in Sauron. The Dark Lord had chosen evil and corrupted his being long ago (as told in The Silmarillion), so for the Ring to be “all together evil” as Elrond describes it, is a function of its creator. The will that is in the

Ring is a part of that same will with which Sauron originally chose evil and thus corrupted himself. The Ring cannot choose to do anything but evil because it corrupted its will long ago when it was in Sauron.

So then how does the nature of the Ring correspond to Augustine’s doctrine of evil? Consider Augustine's doctrine that “the loss of good has been given the name

‘evil’” (City of God, XI:9, 440). Sauron's nature passed to the Ring, who is “all together evil.” The Ring consists entirely of evil, then, because the nature that exists in it chose evil long ago when it was a part of Sauron. So this Ring is being entirely true to its nature to continually choose evil.

One more striking example of how Augustine informs Tolkien is seen in the effect the Ring and evil have upon Middle-earth. Every person who puts on the Ring disappears (except for Tom Bombadil). Consider that Augustine says: “If we are evil, to that extent we exist less;” the Ring causes its bearer to slip into a land of Shadow, moving the bearer to a land of lesser existence. Notice, it is not that evil does not exist; it exists in a lesser sense than reality, in the same way that the shadow of a person exists in a lesser reality than the person. The Ringwraiths, who, even though they have never possessed the Ring, are under its power and only have shadowy bodies. When Sauron comes to destruction, a great shadow rises above Mordor, reaching out towards Gandalf and Aragorn, but “ a great wind [takes] it, and it [is] all blown away” and passes into the west (VI:227). These evil beings exist less because they have moved too far away from

Keuthan 217 the intended good order for which they were created. They are thus to that extent evil, and to that extent exist less just as Augustine teaches.

What kind of evil the Ring portrays has long been a topic of discussion among

Tolkien scholars. The most widely revered Tolkien scholar today, T. A. Shippey, is both wrong and astutely correct about what kind of evil the Ring represents. First, both Ralph

Wood and I believe that Shippey is wrong specifically in his assessment that the Ring represents a Manichaean type of evil. As discussed just above, Tolkien adhered consistently with an Augustinian theological understanding of the nature of evil. St.

Augustine, once a Manichaean himself, became a Christian and devoted the bulk of his adult life to writings that stand in direct opposition to Manichaean philosophy, especially concerning evil. Briefly, a Manichaean idea of evil is based on an ontological dualism:

The central and sine qua non aspect to the Manichean outlook on evil is

ontological dualism. In the Epistula Fundamenti Mani clearly lays out

this doctrine: “For there were in the beginning these two substances

divided from one another,” and Augustine, who is understood by most

scholars to have an accurate grasp on Manichean doctrine, notes that Mani

“put together two principles, different from an opposing each other, as

well as eternal and coeternal (that is, having always been), and also two

natures or substances, namely, of good and bad.” Evil, then, is ultimately

not an object of the will or of the mind, but a separately active pre-cosmic

substance. (Jones par. 6)

I see little to no evidence of the Manichean concept of evil in Tolkien’s corpus. It would be highly unlikely that Tolkien would depart from such a strong stand in agreement with

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Augustinian doctrine to portray evil in any regard unto Manichaean thinking. For further clarification of Shippey's position on Manichaean evil in The Lord of the Rings, refer to

Chapter Three in J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century.

In the same book, however, Shippey is most astute in realizing that the One Ring plies its evil by tempting the possessor to become addicted to something (119). Shippey questions why the Ring affects different people differently. Even though Bilbo possessed the Ring for more than sixty years, it corrupted him very little. Aragorn, Galadriel, and

Gandalf are all freely offered the Ring and yet refuse to even touch it, while Boromir and

Gollum hungrily seek to get their hands on it — in Gollum's case, he’s willing to kill for it. Shippey asks, why the difference in the way the Ring affects different people? Many scholars have missed the answer to this question. Some have assumed that the Ring represents acquisition of power, but not everyone who wants the Ring wants power, such as Gollum. To come to the conclusion that the Ring is addictive, Shippey explains that we must examine what Gandalf explains about the Ring in Book One, Chapter Two.

Gandalf says that the Ring has three characteristics. First, the Ring is immensely powerful, more powerful than any mortal. Second, the Ring is extremely dangerous to anyone who carries it. Gandalf uses words like "devour" and "possess," stating that the process may be long or short, depending on how "strong or well-meaning" the possessor may be, but "neither strength nor good purpose will last — sooner or later the dark power will devour him" (Tolkien, Rings 1:49). The Ring is too dangerous for anyone to handle

— no one can resist its power to turn them toward evil. It will corrupt anyone who possesses it. And finally, Gandalf says the Ring cannot be put aside, thrown away, or simply ignored; it must be destroyed, and of course, it can only be destroyed where it was

Keuthan 219 made: the fires of the Cracks of Doom (Shippey, Author 113, 114). But these qualities of the Ring do not apply uniformly the same to everyone who comes in contact with it.

Another key to understanding that the Ring is addictive comes to light when

Gandalf explains to Frodo that he could not make him relinquish the Ring "except by force, and that would break your mind" (Tolkien, Rings 1:63). Colin Manlove has argued, however, that Tolkien's entire presentation of the origins of evil is flawed: the

Ring has bad effects on some people, but no effect at all on others. He charges that the plot is being manipulated and not developed logically. In response, Shippey offers that

Tolkien has created the One Ring to be subversively addictive: the wearer is not usually aware that he is being tempted to corruption (Shippey, Author 119). Sam can use the

One Ring once and the result is not disastrous, but even Sam, after only one use, wants to use it again. Once the addiction has taken hold of a possessor, it cannot be broken by will-power alone. However, some people are simply not prone to addiction, which means the One Ring has no real attraction for them. Faramir, Merry, and Pippin are examples of characters who, since they never even touch the One Ring, never begin to develop any addiction to and/or desire for it. What Gandalf meant by stating that he could not "make"

Frodo hand over the One Ring "except by force and that would break your mind" was that he could not make him want to hand over the One Ring. Shippey's compelling and insightful conclusion is that the very urge to use the One Ring is what is destructive.

Even if powerful characters like Gandalf or Galadriel bore the One Ring, they would begin to use it with the best intentions, but would eventually come to crave having their intentions achieved. The very use of power itself would turn their virtues into power-

Keuthan 220 mad dictators, enslaving themselves, unable to give up the One Ring or go back to their former selves (119).

Tolkien's One Ring is the reverse of the parable of the Pearl of Great Price, where a man, when he found the most perfect pearl in the world, went and sold all he had and then bought the Pearl. Both stories have eternal significance. The Pearl of Great Price is the one eternal thing (salvation, relationship to God, truth), which is worth sacrificing all you own to gain it. The One Ring, on the other hand, subtly, consistently tempts the owner to become addicted to whatever it is inside you that can be corrupted. Like the

Pearl of Great Price, the One Ring will require you to give up everything to gain whatever you need to feed your addiction. And the more you yield to the addiction, the more that thing to which you are addicted devours you. In the same way that a parable causes the reader to reflect on what it may mean, sometimes for many years afterward,

Tolkien's One Ring causes the reader to reflect on what it may mean to them, until that moment of epiphany, that shock of revelation brings to your understanding the universal truth about the One Ring: as human beings the one thing that we know can bring evil into our lives on a consistent basis is an addiction. This makes The Lord of the Rings a great parable, the One Ring a brilliant representation of evil, and Tolkien's ability to communicate evil in a universal, theological revelation disturbingly compelling.

Evil in the Parable of "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien"

Tolkien did not arrive at his ability to construct evil in the representation of the

One Ring without having the chance to work his ideas into stories in the legendarium first. I propose that in the particular case of the One Ring communicating evil, Tolkien first thought through the concept of a desirable object like jewelry representing evil in the

Keuthan 221 story of Beren and Lúthien. In this case the desirable jewels are the silmarils, and all of the conflicts, sins, wars, and evil in The Silmarillion are gathered around these three jewels crafted by the Elf Fëanor. Again, though, Tolkien shows his adept ability to communicate evil by creating in the Elves a sin that is more than just mere pride.

According to an analysis by T. A. Shippey in his book The Road to Middle-earth: How

J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology, Tolkien builds several different kinds of evil into the story of the silmarils: the sins of possessiveness, materialism, pride in creation, and unwise oaths. But rather than placing these kinds of evil in a war story like "The Fall of Gondolin" or in a tragedy like The Children of Húrin, Tolkien writes the most important of the Three Great Tales in the legendarium as a romance, but a romance marked by extremes in character, motivation, and actions, and radical depictions of evil villains, demanding fathers and sacrificial love (240–43). Seeing this story in these terms will make metaphorical thinking in "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien" readily identifiable as a parable.

Tolkien expands and complicates the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall by more narrowly defining the specific type of pride by which the elves in the First Age of

Middle-earth become entrapped. Several scholars, including Shippey, have stated that

The Silmarillion is based on the Christian story of the Fall and Redemption. However, in a brilliant stroke of reversal, Tolkien has the Elves not punished by death, like Adam and

Eve, but rather by a weariness of life (Letters 236). Tolkien's elves can be killed, as in battle, but are trapped in Middle-earth with eternal life, thus punishing them with millennia — of living in a fallen world, full of wars, death, destruction, and the evil oppression of Morgoth and Sauron — a punishment far worse than death. So what is this

Keuthan 222 terrible sin that the elves have committed to warrant such severe punishment? Tolkien constructs his elves to be susceptible to a different kind of pride, not quite mere possessiveness, although the sin of over-possessiveness will certainly come into play after the silmarils have been created and stolen. No, the elves of Middle-earth are stricken with an unquenchable desire to make things that will forever reflect and/or retain a piece of themselves in what they make. This sin begins with Melkor, who, when the world was being created, harbored a burning desire "to bring into Being things of his own" (Tolkien, Silmarillion 3). Thwarted in all of his attempts to create anything ex nihilo, Melkor is only ever able to put together beings and things that are a corruption or mutilation of what already exists. So, for example, Orcs are a corruption and mutilation of elves.

Fëanor forges the silmarils. Fëanor’s skill is so extraordinary that these gems capture the very light of the two holy trees that produce the gold and silver light in

Middle-earth. Shippey asserts that the Fall happened for the creatures of Middle-earth when they became "more interested in their own creations than in God' s" (Road 241).

This great pride in what he had created brought about in Fëanor and, in fact, all of his descendents, a radical manifestation of the twin sins of pride in what he had created and an extreme possessiveness. When the silmarils are stolen by Morgoth, the twin sins set in motion the manifestation and propagation of an evil which plagues Middle-earth for centuries and will radically affect Beren and Lúthien and their descendents.

The second temptation attached to the silmarils is based in a love of artificial things. In the case of the elves (and Morgoth and Sauron), this overweening sin is not quite Avarice and not quite Pride, but somehow a combination of the two (242). Tolkien

Keuthan 223 believed that modern sins had ancient origins, so the modern sin of materialism had roots in the ancient civilizations. He drew from his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon poets who looked back to Cain and Abel to find the origin of evil, rather than Adam and Eve.

Specifically, the ancient poets could more effectively see evil residing in the pursuit of bright, shiny things (242). The corruption of materialism lies in the brightness and beauty of precious metals and gems. Fëanor, and then Morgoth, do not merely want to possess the silmarils simply to be able to say they have them, like a collector; the addiction is more passionate, more dangerous, more deadly. Anyone who actually gets between Fëanor and his silmarils is subject to his wrath.

The creation of the silmarils was at first a good, noble, and artistic accomplishment: the light of the trees that were now dead (poisoned and destroyed by

Morgoth and the giant spider spirit Ungoliant) had been preserved magically and beautifully in the silmarils. The gems were admired by all universally; they brought joy and artistic enrichment to anyone who looked upon them. But slowly, over many, many years, Fëanor became addicted to them. He took to wearing them around his neck on a necklace and never letting them out of his sight. He grew angry when anyone wanted to touch or even look at them. Then Morgoth stole the silmarils and mounted the gems in an iron crown, burning his own hands irrevocably black in the process because he coveted Fëanor’s great treasure and wanted any light of the Valar removed from the peoples of Middle-earth. Fëanor was so enraged that he vowed a terrible oath: he and all his descendents would spend all of their lives and resources in an attempt to regain the stolen silmarils. Additionally, anyone who ever obtained a silmaril and did not return it to its rightful owners would face death. The radical and extreme change of what the

Keuthan 224 silmarils represented came to mean, instead, objects that instigated death, destruction, unhappiness, and evil throughout Middle-earth and across all races. Now the reader can see the evil that surrounds the silmarils when discussing the love story parable of Beren and Lúthien.

One of the really strong parabolic elements of "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien" is its tendency to duplicate events, which Tom Shippey sees as a fault. Once the quest is set

— that Beren knows he must extract a silmaril from Morgoth's Iron Crown to be able to win the hand of his beloved Lúthien — the story pattern is set in motion. Two wolf/hound fights, three scenes of the power of songs, two recovery scenes in the woods, two pursuits and rescues by Lúthien, three times Beren is wounded (twice by Carcharoth and once by Fëanor’s son Celegorm), twice Beren places himself between Lúthien and an arrow and a wolf's bite, three times Huan speaks, and twice the evil sons of Fëanor,

Celegorm and Curufin, cross paths with Beren and Lúthien. Shippey objects to the narrative structure by stating that there is too much plot (Road 257, 258).

But notice in the Gospels how often Jesus used duplication when he told parables.

"The kingdom of God is like..." starts more than a dozen different parables in the New

Testament. A skilled teacher knows that the average student has to hear something three times before it is remembered. Certainly Jesus, arguably a good teacher in His own right, would have known that repetition is a way to reinforce ideas, as well as to be able to turn the story slightly so that the same idea being communicated can be examined from a somewhat different angle. No one looks at a beautiful gem from just one side; it is turned from side to side so that the light will reveal new facets and give the bearer a chance to

Keuthan 225 understand the value of the entire gem. I propose that this is exactly the value of duplication in this story of Beren and Lúthien; it is one way to identify it as a parable.

Another parabolic element of the story centers round Thingol's unwise oath:

"Bring to me in your hand a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown; and then, if she will, Lúthien may set her hand in yours" (Tolkien, Silmarillion 81). Unwise oaths are common in many places in The Silmarillion (remember Fëanor’s terrible oath which bound him and his family to a descendency of destruction) and only result in evil being perpetrated.

Several of these oaths cross bloodlines, descendents, and centuries. Finrod swears an oath "of abiding friendship and aid in every need to Barahir (Beren's father) and all his kin" (added information mine 73); however, he is sad to see it redeemed by Beren, as he knows Beren' s quest can only end badly, probably in his death and the deaths of many more elves. Interestingly, Finrod seemed to know that he should not make unwise oaths because he states to Galadriel many years earlier "An oath I too shall swear, and must be free to fulfill it, and go into darkness. Nor shall anything of my realm endure that a son should inherit" (62). In fact, his words turn out to be a prophecy of his own demise. He does not survive the quest.

Unwise oaths complicate themselves upon one another when Thingol promises

Lúthien’s hand to Beren if he will retrieve a silmaril. Plainly, this is an attempt to commit murder in circumvention of another regretted oath not to kill Beren himself. But,

Shippey indicates that Thingol is motivated by the sinister, age old, elven desire to possess a silmaril (Road 259–261). The evil of those gems and the temptation they represent to commit the sins of possessiveness, materialism, and pride in creation surfaces yet again in Thingol. Tolkien, however, sets in dynamic tension the mighty love

Keuthan 226 between a man and an elf-maid and the evil with the ancient attraction of the bewitching gems, the silmarils. I assert that his intention is to communicate that love is stronger than evil. The intention is made clear by the repetition of that message. In the end, every character suffers as a result of the corruption perpetrated by the silmarils; however, nothing is able to quench or conquer the love between Beren and Lúthien. Their love is eternal, while the evil their love attempts to overcome devours itself unto nothingness.

Many centuries hence, Aragorn will sit in the wilds and sing a song, which Frodo will ask about, and Aragorn will tell him. And the parable of Beren and Lúthien will teach yet one more time that love can conquer evil.

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CHAPTER 5: EVALUATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

EVALUATIONS

Tolkien as the Parabolic Model

The objectives of this chapter are four: First, revisit the questions posed in

Chapter One and determine whether they have been answered satisfactorily. Second, evaluate the results of the investigation and determine if what was discovered was what expected to be discovered. And third, draw some conclusions from the arguments presented concerning what Tolkien may be communicating about the nature of evil. And last, propose some ideas for further investigation as a result of new questions raised from the answers to the original research questions for this project.

The first question to ask is whether Tolkien's stories are comparable to parables.

To phrase the question more specifically, ‘Do the three stories examined from The

Silmarillion have qualities and characteristics of parables?’ Sally McFague’s book

Speaking in Parables was instrumental in proposing ideas that helped to make the connections between parables and Tolkien's fiction. Jesus Christ, in his earthly ministry as recorded in the Gospels, and then Christian literary tradition has taken advantage of the idea that human beings are attracted to a story (35, 138). McFague advocates a story- based theology founded on the metaphoric thinking as illustrated by the exemplary parables of the New Testament. McFague states that the motivating factor to developing these ideas is that it is the primary purpose of theology to make the Gospel heard in our time (1). However, theology cannot fulfill its divine purpose if it only abstracts theological concepts from the New Testament. For theology to effectively communicate the Gospel, McFague advocates that we utilize the Bible story form:

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The discrete metaphors of the New Testament — the parables, the passion

story, the images and anecdotes — were and are for us today good

metaphors for helping us to hear the good news. They are inseparable

from their content — there is no way of getting at the 'essence' of

Christianity apart from them. (33)

The heart of the parable or story is metaphor, according to McFague, and, thus,

‘story’ is defined as an extended metaphor (35). Metaphors have two interrelated characteristics pertinent to story-theology. First, metaphors mean more than they seem to say at a first hearing; thus, their strongest feature is that parables communicate in an indirect mode (16, 36, 41, 78). Second, it follows that metaphors are irreducible; that is, they are tied fundamentally to the way we know something. Parable and metaphor, then, are inextricably intertwined. In a parable there is no way around the metaphor; it is not expendable and it is unavoidable (4, 45, 51, 66, 87, 97). McFague further extends her thesis by eloquently demonstrating that metaphor is the basis for human language understanding and thought because it is historically grounded in the fabric of human experience (50, 56). So, it follows then that, if Jesus' parables are intrinsically, organically metaphoric, then the communication paradigm of ‘parable’ and ‘metaphor’ cannot be removed from one another. Hence, systematic theological exegesis applied to the Jesus’ parabolic stories may be counterproductive and counterintuitive; in fact,

McFague states that it takes away their original richness and potential communicative effect. In light of this, McFague advocates that theologians simply go on telling the stories, instead of the dissecting them (139). The true obstacles to effective propagation of theology, according to McFague, are not ignorance, selfishness, or even the devil;

Keuthan 229 rather, they are abstraction, conceptualization, and systematization (1, 24, 63, 82). She says that, in order for theology to fulfill its purpose — to make the gospel heard and understood — theology must first be parabolic. Ordinary systematic theology drives a wedge between "thought and life" (1).

McFague's proposed metaphoric story-theology seeks to avoid abstract conceptualization, and thereby it keeps " 'in solution' the language, belief, and life" to which we are called (1, 3, 8, Peters 404, 405). Metaphor is a concrete, not conceptual, associative, ontological way of knowing, not just a way of communicating (4).

Existential, sensuous, religious reflection that tells stories about human life and only by implication speaks of God is an ancient and vibrant tradition in Western Christendom,

(11) a fact of which Tolkien must have been acutely aware from his study of ancient literature and the Bible. Tolkien's work further illustrates what Amos Wilder succinctly insists, that “When the Christian in any time or place confesses his faith, his confession turns into a narrative” (qtd. in McFague 119). McFague advocates that the theologian search through literature to find examples of stories that fit the parabolic model.

Specifically, she says that the Western novel is especially adept at providing the reader with insight into evil through metaphoric communication (126). McFague believes that

Tolkien's work is a prime example of a novel adhering to the Parabolic Model; thus, The

Lord of the Rings is best illuminated by analyzing it in the same terms in which parables are examined:

They evoke the graciousness of the transcendent by means of a distortion

of the familiar, for the purpose of providing a new and extraordinary

context for ordinary experience…. their method is by metaphor, moving

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from the mundane — but never leaving it behind — to the transcendent by

"figuring" it in terms of the human metaphor. (126, 127)

William Kirkwood has also provided this investigation with ideas and criteria for answering the question: Can Tolkien’s work be profitably compared to the metaphorical qualities of parables? Kirkwood explains the purpose of parables: “Parables are told to arouse both sympathetic and hostile listeners to recognize and overcome those thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions which impede their spiritual growth” (“Storytelling” 58).

To reiterate the main points Kirkwood makes will help to answer the question above.

Kirkwood proposes, first, that parables have a subtle way of challenging established beliefs in a way that is non-confrontational and even enjoyable. Second, parables evoke a state of awareness specific to religious ontology. Kirkwood believes that some kinds of theological knowledge can only be gained from parables. Third, Kirkwood cites Fisher’s ideas on the “dialectical” form of literary presentation: “A dialectical presentation … is disturbing, for it requires of its readers a searching and a rigorous scrutiny of everything they believe in and live by. It is didactic in a special sense: it does not preach the truth, asks that its readers discover the truth for themselves” (63). Parables establish in the listener a personal, prescriptive inner dialectical which intrinsically searches for the truth in the substance of the story. Fourth, Kirkwood proposes that “intellectuality:” a

“habitual mental process – i.e. an internal, verbal dialogue and…rational activity —

…must be suspended temporarily” (65) if an ability to accept a new idea is made available. Kirkwood states that in two instances “intellectualizing” can be suspended:

When a reader/listener has been exposed to an engrossing, highly believable story for a long period of time. Certainly Tolkien’s 1,200 page novel might be sufficiently long

Keuthan 231 enough. And the second instance is when a story has a “shocking climax” and “may thus be sufficient to arrest for a few moments the listener’s otherwise incessant intellectualizing” (65). McFague’s ideas neatly coincide here when she proposes that a parable has the “shock of revelation” as one of its primary effects, as, for example, when

Frodo does not throw the One Ring into the Cracks of Doom. The end result of stacking up together the main points of Kirkwood’s elements of a parable is the conclusion that parabolic storytelling has the unique ability to override the reader/listener’s rational defenses and thereby, through that opening, introduce views of life which would have otherwise been rejected out of hand, before they might have the opportunity to prompt a critical, epiphanal self-examination in an audience (68).

Assessing McFague’s and Kirkwood’s elements of parabolic stories leads to the question: Is The Lord of the Rings a parable, and further, can we infer that Tolkien excels at utilizing Parabolic Model when telling other stories, such as those in The Silmarillion?

Further evidence that Tolkien's work adheres to McFague's Parabolic/ Metaphorical

Thinking Model and Kirkwood’s Narrative Rational Suppression Hypothesis comes in the form of a sermon given by Father Robert Murray. Tolkien was a close, personal friend of Father Murray starting in 1944, when Tolkien handed him drafts of The Lord of the Rings for his opinion. At a Thanksgiving service at the 1992 Tolkien Centenary

Conference in Oxford, England, Father Murray spoke on "J.R.R. Tolkien and the Art of the Parable" wherein I believe we can see that Tolkien's work is unequivocally parabolic.

Murray first qualifies parables for their ability to communicate in a particularly effective fashion. Jesus, he says, evaluated the capacity of his audiences, realized the wide range of their education and openness to him and, therefore, often chose not to communicate

Keuthan 232 with them in a confrontational manner with a challenge, for which many of them might not be ready. Instead, Jesus chose to use a medium which could, first, attract and then fascinate and tease the mind, perhaps for a long time, until, second, the hearers might arrive at their own response. Jesus realized that parables were the definitive tool for appealing to a broad audience, first as entertainment, and later catching the listener with that shock of revelation. A parable, well-told and well-constructed, draws the hearer in because everyone loves a good story, then afterward it speaks to the audience at a subconscious, spirit level. Murray states that a parable "is a skillful use of the arts of speech so as not to impose or compel, but to invite a response in which the hearer is personally active" (42).

Murray next indicates in his sermon that parables can “release” a metaphor to an audience. Remember that most of the time Jesus ended the telling of His parables with

"For him who has ears to hear, let him hear." This is a metaphor also because the physical hearing of the story is over; now "hearing" means inward perception and response. Whatever the parable may mean to a hearer constitutes their release of personally prescriptive metaphors perceived from the story. This would illustrate

McFague's "metaphorical thinking" and Kirkwood’s suppression of “intellectualization.”

Murray is indicating that the power of parables lies in their open-endedness; Jesus rarely interpreted his stories. But when the disciples asked him to interpret a parable, Jesus was always exasperated because he realized that His interpretation would be the only one they would get, leaving all other possible interpretations unseen (44, 45). Murray indicates that because humans naturally think metaphorically, the ordinary things in human life in the actual world possess the possibility of "natural symbolic potency" (47). If the story

Keuthan 233 can engage the imagination so that the hearer has flashes of insight, resulting in new meaning in another context, then meta-phora occurs: "the transference of symbols power so as to illuminate something else" (47). Murray concludes forthrightly that Jesus’ greatest parables operate in this manner, as do Tolkien's stories.

Finally, Murray proposes that one other feature of Jesus' parables is illuminated by Tolkien's literary insight. Many Biblical parables tell the story of a person coming to an important moment of decision, the outcome of which may have far reaching consequences. By telling these kinds of stories, Jesus intended to confront people with a challenge to re-evaluate their ideas about God in a new way and thereby change their values and their way of life, but everything would depend on how they received the turning point, the decision made by the central character. A parallel can be seen in

Tolkien's focus on the climax and outcome to which a fairy story leads: in his terms, a eucatastrophe (48). This is the critical point at which Tolkien's stories and Biblical parables meet. The eucatastrophe of the Gospel is that, although Jesus was crucified, He rose from the dead, thereby able to offer to all eternal salvation. Many of Tolkien stories have the same turn of disaster to salvation. Certainly the climax of The Lord of the Rings is example enough. Can we conclude from Father Murray’s evaluation of Tolkien’s mythic fiction that the Three Great Stories from The Silmarillion examined in this project have qualities and characteristics of parables?’ The evidence leads to an answer in the affirmative.

Tolkien’s Life as a Mythic Narrative

If Tolkien's stories have parabolic qualities, then the next logical question is whether these stories are a manifestation of him seeing his own life as a mythic narrative,

Keuthan 234 as a result of backing away from modern life. The evidence from friends, and his own letters, would seem to indicate that this is the case. Recall a quote of Roger Sales from

Chapter Three: “He withdrew more completely from the modern world than any other maker of the Myth of Lost Unity…” (qtd. in Grotta-Kurska 74). To Tolkien, the modern need for fantasy stories (with parabolic qualities) is directly related to the increasingly oppressive and intolerable conditions in the modern world. In his lecture "On Fairy

Stories," Tolkien explained that one of the important elements of fantasy story is that it takes the reader out of the modern world to escape to a world "far away and a long time ago" (qtd. in Grotta-Kurska 95). Tolkien had a knack for mentally moving into his imagination in his invented, ancient past but remaining alive and relevant in the present.

Humphrey Carpenter's biography relates the story of how Tolkien's third son

Christopher, on many evenings in the early 1930s, huddled for warmth by the study stove and "would listen motionless while his father told him (in impromptu fashion, rather than reading aloud) about the Elvish wars fighting against the black power, and of how Beren and Lúthien made their perilous journey to the very heart of Morgoth's iron stronghold.

These were not mere stories: they were legends that came alive as his father spoke"

(169). Examples of how stories of Middle-earth could come out of Tolkien's head are myriad and testify to his immersion in that world which he created for himself. But in fact Tolkien's own words are the strongest indication that he saw his life in the mythic narrative he was creating for Middle-earth. In a letter written to Milton Waldman, he complains: “This charming house has become uninhabitable – unsleepable-in, unworkable-in, rocked, racked with noise, and drenched with fumes. Such is modern life.

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Mordor in our midst” (Letters 135). And to his friend and former student W. H. Auden, he wrote:

I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world…. the

theater of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical

period is imaginary…. so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by

the enchantment of distance in time. (Letters 183)

Clearly Tolkien's mind was frequently in Middle-earth, where we assume he wished he would rather be than in the modern world.

A Growing Understanding of Evil

So, if Tolkien's stories have parabolic qualities, promoting metaphorical thinking, and if those stories are a manifestation of him seeing his own life as a mythic narrative, motivated by a desire to eschew modernity; then, the next question should be: Do the three stories examined in this project indicate a growing understanding, developed over many years and living through some specific experiences, of the nature of the evil in human existence? This question can be answered by mapping the correlation between his significant life experiences and his stories, then arriving syllogistically at the answer. A causal relationship could be mapped between Chapters Two and Three, and by a series of

‘if/then’ statements. Starting with Chapter Two, if Lieutenant Tolkien lived through brutal, bloody, gross, animalistic, sensually abusive experiences during the Battle of the

Somme, then it makes sense that he might write stories immediately after these experiences, to excise the demons, so to speak. And if he wrote these three early stories, one of which, "The Fall of Gondolin," is a brutal, bloody, gross, animalistic, sensually

Keuthan 236 abusive battle story, while recovering from his war experiences, then perhaps he was attempting to communicate both to himself and to his reader a particular kind of evil.

Chapter Two illustrated effectively that Tolkien's experience during World War I was horrendous, leaving the sensitive man with a mind full of ideas, newly generated, about the evil things that men do to other men in war. In an attempt to make some sense out of his own mental, spiritual chaos, Tolkien did what he was educated to do: he composed legend-like stories. Chapter Two makes some inferences, some connections between Tolkien's experiences in World War I and the story he wrote immediately afterwards, namely "The Fall of Gondolin." This story indicates the provenance of

Tolkien's understanding of the nature of evil; it is a conceptual understanding of evil in its infancy, which shall be discussed more fully below.

Chapter Three attempted to map the causal relationship between Tolkien's life experiences in the late 1930s, his work on this story of Túrin, and the next step in his development of understanding the nature of evil. So, if we remember that Tolkien did some intensive work on analyzing and then forming a lecture about the Beowulf poem, then we concluded that he was immersed in the northern European literary ideas of fate, personal bravado in the face of overwhelming odds, and the particular evil represented by monsters, especially a dragon. Next, if Tolkien had some new ideas about evil from his study of the Beowulf poem, then they should naturally appear also in his own fiction.

This transference was made apparent by an examination of Tolkien's story The Children of Húrin. Chapter Three further solidified the connection and transference of ideas from

Beowulf to the tragic story of Túrin and his sister by posing in parallel a comparison to the story of Job, which exhibits remarkably similar thematic ideas concerning the nature

Keuthan 237 of evil as it exists outside of the control of man. Finally, if Tolkien's Hamlet-like story of the tragic life and death of Húrin's family portrays the type of evil exhibited in both the

Beowulf poem and the story of Job, then the reader should be able to infer Tolkien's next step in the development of his understanding of the nature of evil. Below, it shall indeed be explored how Tolkien is communicating a more complex kind of evil in The Children of Húrin than he did in "The Fall of Gondolin."

By the time The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954 and 1955, Tolkien's conceptual and theological understanding of the nature and evil had grown complex and deeply insightful. The syllogism of Chapter Four is not entirely linear, compared to the way the logic flows in Chapters Two and Three. Because the evil represented by the One

Ring in The Lord of the Rings is more complex and sophisticated than is the evil represented by the silmarils, this investigation had to examine the story of Beren and

Lúthien first, and then compare it to The Lord of the Rings. Consider that the lifelong work Tolkien poured into the romance of Beren and Lúthien, where the driving force in that story is embedded in three jewels, which represent evil that is addictive, corruptive, and devouring. Then the reader can recognize the backwash of the evil represented by the silmarils in the Beren and Lúthien story into the evil represented by the One Ring. If, on the other hand, the Tolkien historian examines the period in his life during the writing process for The Lord of the Rings, as well as the years after its publication, which are marked by a significant loss of his friends, his health, his wife's health and her death, not to mention Lewis' death, then the reader can infer the effect of those elements both on the development of evil in The Lord of the Rings and the representation of evil in the re-work of "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien.” By comparing these two stories in Chapter Four, we

Keuthan 238 come to understand that in his later works, Tolkien communicates his most theologically advanced, indirectly communicated kind of evil, discussed more fully below.

Assuming that there was a causal relationship and identifying such would yield significant observations, this project has attempted to identify said causal relationships between three specific periods in Tolkien's life to three of his stories from the legendarium upon which he worked in each of those three periods in his life, thereby arriving at plausible inferences about what he may have understood and therefore communicated about the nature of evil. First, an exploration of the early adult period in

Tolkien's life in which he experienced war and then wrote his war story "The Fall of

Gondolin" did, in fact, yield the inference that human conflict in battle has certain evil aspects to it common to all mankind. Second, an exploration of the professional, scholarly adult period in Tolkien's life in which he devoted himself to the study of ancient northern European literature, such as Beowulf, did, in fact, yield the inference that sometimes evil in human life should be considered in terms larger than one small life on

Earth. And third, an exploration of the later, aged years in Tolkien's life in which he struggled to see his masterwork published, then struggled through old age, poor health, and the death of his wife and friends, did, in fact, yield the inference that evil is a much more subtle, corruptive, and slow moving invader of souls. So, do the three stories examined in this project indicate a growing understanding, developed over many years, and living through some specific life experiences, of the nature of the evil in human existence? The logical conclusion yields an answer in the affirmative.

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CONCLUSIONS

Tolkien's Communication of Evil

From the three different slices of his life and the three different stories from his mythology, Tolkien is communicating at least three different aspects of the nature of evil.

What is Tolkien saying about evil?

From his first story, "The Fall of Gondolin," which grew out of his experiences at the Battle of the Somme, Tolkien's ideas about the nature of evil seem rather obvious. In the early stages of his development of the idea of evil, Tolkien's fiction draws heavily from the visual, in fact from all of the senses. "The Fall of Gondolin" is a battle story, so, fresh with the sensory experiences of battle itself, evil in this first story is depicted as brutal, bloody, gross, animalistic, and sensually abusive. The connections are obvious: terrible images remembered from the Battle of the Somme translate almost verbatim to terrible images in "The Fall of Gondolin." Because Tolkien had been reading battle stories in legendary literature for many years, he may have been overwhelmed by the actual first-hand experience of battle. Add to this equation that Tolkien was a naturally gifted writer, a creator of mythic stories, able to paint for the reader vivid, almost real pictures of fiery battles, Beowulf-like heroes, and heart-rending beauty. This gift made it possible to take images and feelings of battle and write a story where the reader experiences it as vividly as Tolkien did. So, evil in this first story is not hard to identify; it is brutal, bloody, gross, animalistic, and sensually abusive. This early in his life, evil for Tolkien is plainly in front of him, uncomplicated, and not yet remarkably theological.

The second story in this project, published as The Children of Húrin in 2007, indicates how much further Tolkien's conceptual ideas of evil had progressed since he

Keuthan 240 first penned this story in 1917–18. Reading of the trials and tribulations that Túrin and his sister endured through their lives, ending in their tragic deaths caused me to wonder how and why Tolkien wrote a story of such unrelenting evil. Like the story of Job, the story of Túrin depicts evil as sometimes capricious, unexplained, undeserved, unavoidable, and overwhelming. But it was profitable to compare the two stories, because by doing so, the reader can see that Tolkien was attempting to depict evil as often beyond just human existence. The evil brought against Job was a result of a conversation between God and Satan. The evil brought against Túrin was a result of a conversation between Morgoth and Túrin's father. Neither Job nor Túrin did anything wrong to deserve all the evil that came against their lives. Job never has all the evil heaped against him explained to him. Túrin never knows about the conversation between

Morgoth and his father; he dies in this ignorance, and the reader is overwhelmingly struck by the tragic unfairness of his life and death. This is gut-wrenching evil. The comparison to the story of Job becomes profitable at this point because of the manner in which God answers Job when the suffering man questions Him. Job realizes that he is one infinitesimal part of the universe sovereignly governed by a benevolent God — the evil levied against his life serves purposes beyond mortal comprehension. The hope the reader extracts from reading of the evil in Job's life comes from believing that human suffering has a purpose not yet understandable in this life. Job came to accept God's sovereignty, and he could endure any suffering as long as he believed in a sovereign God.

In Túrin's case, the reader sees almost the same conclusion brought to the end of that story when Túrin's parents meet for the last time at their children's grave and understand that everything that has happened to them was beyond anything they could have done to

Keuthan 241 stop it. Someone else is in charge. It seems unlikely that, given the remarkable similarities between the story of Job and the story of Túrin, Tolkien did not intend to use the depiction of evil in Job to inform his depiction of evil in The Children of Húrin.

One more aspect of evil appears to be useful to discuss and provides one more reason that Tolkien had Túrin suffer so much in his life. The key was in the inclusion of the dragon. The correlation of dragons at this time in Tolkien's life (the mid to late

1930s) was just too convenient to be ignored. Tolkien made much in his lecture of the dragon that Beowulf fought at the end of his life, then he included a dragon, thus darkening the story considerably, to the end of The Hobbit, published the year after

Tolkien delivered the Beowulf lecture. So the dragon that Túrin fought at the end of the story had to be a representation of evil in some correlation with the other two dragons.

All three of these dragons are powerful, full of fiery destruction, and cunning so that some of their destructive power lies in their ability to deceive. The last characteristic is less pronounced in Beowulf and The Hobbit than in the Túrin story. The dragon in

Tolkien's legendarium story, Glaurung, is much more destructive in his cunning speech and in his spellbinding gaze than he is with his fire blasts. All of the deceptions, battles, prideful mistakes, and lost love in Túrin's life make him a character especially equipped to take on a dragon. One of the reasons I believe Tolkien had Túrin live through so much evil was so that he would be especially prepared to confront and defeat the most powerful representation in evil in legendary literature — a dragon. If this is true, then Tolkien is an astute and cunning storyteller for his ability to weave into the story the sense that humans go through the evil in their lives for a higher purpose, thus subtly alluding to the same sovereign God in the Job story.

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In The Children of Húrin Tolkien is communicating the next step in his understanding of the nature of evil, that it is sometimes capricious, unexplained, undeserved, unavoidable, overwhelming, and always serving a purpose beyond mere human existence.

Tolkien's mature representation of evil, written in the later years of his life, is literarily complex, mythically beautiful, and theologically rich. Although he wrote the romance story of Beren and Lúthien in its original form soon after World War I, he continued to return to it, rewriting it, reforming it into poetry at one point, always refining it because the story was so near to his heart. What scholars such as T. A. Shippey have determined is that Tolkien continued to return to this story so that he could best work out the relationship between the jewels he called the silmarils and how they generated evil in his entire mythic structure. The story of Beren and Lúthien is just one episode involving the silmarils, but it was important from the perspective that what the silmarils came to represent for Tolkien as a way to communicate evil translated to what the One Ring could potentially communicate about evil. The silmarils also reflect Tolkien's Augustinian position on the nature of evil in that the jewels start off as good and beautiful emblems of the uncorrupted world. The elf craftsman Fëanor was able to capture the light of the magical Two Trees in these beautiful gems, and Fëanor took great joy in simply admiring these most enchanting of all the creations of the elves. But there was something so enchanting, so mesmerizing about the beauty of the silmarils that they began to engender an evil response: over-possessiveness by Fëanor, envy and greed from Morgoth, and deadly selfishness by Fëanor and his sons when they are stolen. The silmarils have a way of corrupting those who look at them; their beauty is addictive. Thingol’s envy, greed,

Keuthan 243 and unquenchable desire for one of these gems is the evil motivation of the Elf-king which brings about the doom and/or death of all the characters in the “Tale of Beren and

Lúthien.” The moment Thingol says to Beren, "Put a silmaril in my hand, and I'll put my daughter's hand in yours," the evil that the silmarils engender is set in motion in the story, and there can be no outcome other than death and destruction. The kind of evil represented by the silmarils sweeps across the entire breadth of Tolkien's Elder Days mythology. Using jewels to embody the evils of possessiveness, addictive desire, and corruptive passion for their beauty would have established Tolkien as a brilliant creator of thematic representation of evil in literature; however, what he did with a single ring is even more amazing.

All who have read The Lord of the Rings in the last seventy years have tried their hand at answering the question: ‘What does the Ring mean?’ It is a tribute to Tolkien's inspired conceptual and theological understanding of evil that so many scholars and lay readers have not only felt compelled to attempt to answer the question, but that so many prescriptively different answers have been put forth. The consensus of these ideas is perhaps best represented by Ralph Wood and, as discussed in Chapter Four, top reigning

Tolkien scholar T. A. Shippey. Wood’s book, The Gospel According to J. R. R. Tolkien, proposes at least three compelling ways that the One Ring can be interpreted as a representation of evil. First, Wood says that the One Ring, since it corrupts whatever the bearer’s individual vice may be, is prescriptively evil to the individual possessor. So,

Gollum MUST possess the One Ring to feed his insatiable appetite – he used it to catch fish (56). Boromir must possess the One Ring to feed his need for power — he wanted to save his people from the oppression of Mordor. Even characters of good intention, like

Keuthan 244

Gandalf and Galadriel, realize that the One Ring would corrupt their individual intentions. In fact, the Ring is better at appealing to virtue than to vice (62). Notice how

Gandalf handles the temptation when Frodo freely offers the Ring to him:

You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?'

“No!” cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. “With that power I should have

power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power

still greater and more deadly.” His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by

a fire within. “Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the

Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity

for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I

dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it

would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great

perils lie before me.” (Tolkien, Rings 1:62)

Even Gandalf is aware that his great virtue of pity would eventually be overtaken and corrupted by the One Ring because as Wood suggests “The essence of the Ring’s evil is coercion as well as seduction: it enslaves the will” (69). This, in fact, is the stated objective of the Enemy of our world: to enslave the will of all humankind by any means possible. Tolkien grew in his understanding of the nature of evil to realize that this could best be accomplished through the temptation of addiction.

Here is where Shippey's conclusions make the most sense: to realize that every human being can be tempted to be attracted to something to which he or she can become enslaved. The One Ring acts like The Tempter of the ancient literature of the Primary

World. The inspiration of Tolkien in creating the One Ring as sentient (and here lies the

Keuthan 245 crux of his radical improvement over the silmarils) lies in the fact that the One Ring, once it is possessed, and especially if it is ever slipped on, immediately begins its evil work; first, to determine what may be the weaknesses of the wearer; second, to determine the virtues of the wearer; and third, to begin to exploit that information by wheedling into the subconscious, slowly, quietly, and unceasingly, a desire to either use or acquire more and more and more and more...until the possessor is possessed by an unconquerable addiction. Brilliant. Tolkien's inspired creation of the One Ring brings to every reader a universally understood concept of evil. It is impossible to read The Lord of the Rings (as well as many stories in the legendarium) and not see that there is evil in this world that is unavoidable, that there are evil forces at work intent on seeing mankind destroyed.

The third story examined in this project, "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien," as well as a parallel examination of The Lord of the Rings has produced the revelation of

Tolkien's most mature understanding of the nature of evil: that it is sometimes subtle, seeping slowly into the soul without the bearer realizing it — addictive, corruptive, and devouring unto nothingness.

Evil in Broader Strokes

Answering the “So what?” question involves stepping back from an examination of individual stories and attempting to determine what Tolkien is saying more broadly about evil. I believe Tolkien is making at least three statements about evil: first, that this world will never be without evil; second, that it is the calling on all human lives to stand against it; and third, that mankind is never alone in the fight against evil.

At the end of almost every story in The Silmarillion and at the end of The Lord of the Rings, some character indicates that, although the momentary battle against evil has

Keuthan 246 been won, evil in some other form will return. After centuries of war against

Melko/Melkor/Morgoth, involving generations of elves and mortal men, the Prince of

Evil, the Dark Lord is finally defeated, with the help of the god-like Valar — only to be replaced immediately by Sauron. Over the next several hundred years, Sauron would exert his shadow over Middle-earth and eventually the elves and mortal men would rise up and defeat him. After each of these defeats, Sauron would have to assume a lesser version of himself; first, he lost his tangible body; then, he lost his spirit body, until finally, by the time he rises to power in Mordor prior to the opening of the story of Frodo, he is reduced to a single fiery eye. At the end of The Lord of the Rings, the characters are flushed with the excitement that Sauron has been defeated; he has been blown away into nothingness by the West wind. But even then his influence is not gone:

For though Sauron had passed, the hatreds and evils that he bred had not died,

and the King of the West had many enemies to subdue before the White Tree

could grow in peace. (Tolkien, Rings VI:1059)

One of the main tenants that I believe Tolkien is trying to communicate about evil through his literature is that it will never go away. In this world, mankind will always have evil, no matter how many times it is defeated. Like any good Catholic, Tolkien would understand from the Book of the Revelation in the Bible that evil and the dragon will have dominion until the world ends:

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the

bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the

dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a

thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and

Keuthan 247

set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more.... (KJV,

Revelation 20:1–3)

The second main tenant that I believe Tolkien is trying to communicate about evil through his literature is that the calling on mankind’s existence is to always stand against evil. Standing against evil defines human existence. Certainly the prospect of defeating the mighty Sauron looks ridiculously remote for a little hobbit like Frodo. When he realizes that he has the responsibility of being the Ringbearer, he laments his lot in life:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But

that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the

time that is given us. (Tolkien, Rings 1:52, 53)

However, Tolkien voices his conviction of what we must all do when Frodo, at the

Council of Elrond, stands forth timidly and says, "I will take it... though I do not know the way" (1:269). Frodo will carry this evil thing, and against all odds, choose to attempt to destroy it. It makes no logical sense for him to attempt this quest; it is just the right thing to do to stand against an evil attempt to overcome the world.

The third main tenant that I believe Tolkien is trying to communicate about evil through his literature is that mankind is not alone in the fight against the Enemy – within or without. In the battle of "The Fall of Gondolin," Tuor is not without his sword brothers. In the story of Túrin, he is not without his elf-friend Beleg. Beren is not without his Lúthien; in fact, they are partners in victory and are awarded eternity with one another in evidence of their undying love. Frodo does not have to face the evil of Mordor without the support of the rest of the Fellowship. And in Tolkien's most touching

Keuthan 248 illustration of this tenant, beautifully illustrating the Scripture that affirms “there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother" (KJV, Proverbs 18:24), Frodo is never without

Sam, even unto the Cracks of Doom. Humans who have bonded together in the common purpose of standing against evil share the strength of will unique to this particular purpose. The reader of Tolkien's fiction becomes repeatedly aware that taking up arms against the evil that comes against us in this life need not be a lonely endeavor, that we will not be left, nor forsaken — "and maybe that's an encouraging thought" (Tolkien,

Rings 1:56).

For the Fourth Age

To conclude this investigation, the question must be asked, “Why was this important?” In other words, what can I take away from this project? The answers are several. First, understanding how such a great author created his stories would help other writers to tell better stories. A quick perusal of the literature analyzing the stories of The

Silmarillion indicates that this is a mine largely still untouched. And now that nearly all of Tolkien's writings, manuscripts, notes, and revisions have been published, scholarly scrutiny of the stories is more possible than it has ever been. Additionally, as evidenced by Michael Drout's recent discovery of two previously unknown manuscripts of early versions of the Beowulf lecture, scholars might assume there are still some important

Tolkien writings yet unexplored. How did this man construct some of the most powerful fiction of the twentieth century? Certainly, I would say that further research is needed to solve that puzzle. I see an applicability specifically to storytellers of the Christian faith.

Because Tolkien was a devout Christian and crafted beautiful stories with his Christian belief system woven into them, and because he was the most successful fiction writer of

Keuthan 249 the Christian faith in the twentieth century, storytellers of the same faith could profit much by understanding how he told his stories. Further, media scholars would say that, whereas print novels were the dominant media art form from the seventeenth through most of the twentieth century, film and television have replaced print novels as the dominant media art form in the twenty-first century; as a world culture, humans now tell stories visually. It would profit visual storytellers of the Christian faith enormously to understand how Tolkien told stories in print because their translation into film has already proved remarkably successful at communicating the original intent of the author.

Adaptation from literature to film is a whole Pandora's box unto itself and merits further consideration.

Second, the reader may better understand two concepts from having read this project. The first concept is that understanding what Tolkien was trying to communicate through his fiction about the nature of evil is the keystone to understanding all of

Tolkien's fiction. Everything else there is to understand from reading Tolkien’s fiction must be built on an understanding of what he is saying about evil. It was that important to him. In fact, if the reader truly wants to understand what Tolkien is trying to communicate through his fiction, he or she must start with reading the legendarium – The

Silmarillion (as laborious as that may be), then read his two lectures on Beowulf and fairy stories (as scholarly as that may be), then read his two autobiographical short stories,

"Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wooten Major" (as revealing as that may be), and then read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This process will bring about a slow- moving epiphany: the reader will have new insight about the nature of evil.

Keuthan 250

The second concept is that evil in Tolkien's fiction is the key that opens the door to so much more that needs to be understood and explored in Tolkien’s work. Again, so much could be mined from just the stories of the legendarium. To name a few, a researcher might explore symbolism, the role of love, the different kinds of love demonstrated, the workings of poetry and song, and, of course, the other side of the coin from evil: the representation of good in Tolkien's works. Truthfully, this last topic has been discussed and rehashed ad nauseum; however, long overdue research into the background mythology might yield some fresh ideas. I would also advocate that further research and thought should be devoted to Tolkien's minor works of fiction. The literature is woefully scant on these artifacts. And, I believe that "Leaf by Niggle" and

"Smith of Wooten Major" might be adapted very nicely to film. In the same way that

Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Lord of the Rings to film have brought a whole new generation of readers and filmgoers to a deep appreciation of Tolkien's work, visual storytellers need to continue that trend and bring all of Tolkien's cinema-worthy stories to the screen.

In one other way I would like to continue the work that this project has begun.

Sally McFague’s early work on making connections between literature and theological interpretation deserves further consideration. Her largely undeveloped methodology could be the basis of forming a method, a procedure, and perhaps even a new theory of communication. Further work in this area needs to include defining, solidifying, and testing Parabolic/Metaphorical examination analysis as a method. The idea that human beings naturally, without any training or education or even direction, think metaphorically makes sense. A communication model which maps the procedure by

Keuthan 251 which human beings looking at literature (either in print or visually in film and television) prescriptively receive complex batches of messages which they then interpret through their personal artistic filters to be effected emotionally, physically, and spiritually needs to be formulated. Parabolic/Metaphorical Thinking Model could be utilized as a procedure to both understand and construct stories of the same effectiveness as Biblical parables and/or The Lord of the Rings.

Having formed such a method and/or model, a profitable way to begin to work out its parameters would be to apply its tenets to other writers of similar type fiction in the same fashion as has been done in this project. Writers that may benefit from such an analysis would include Flannery O'Connor, Madeleine L'Engle, C. S. Lewis, Charles

Williams, Walker Percy, George McDonald, and G. K. Chesterton to name a few.

This project could be best concluded in Tolkien's own words. Few indications exist in the corpus of Tolkien's writings which would clearly explain what he felt was the explanation as to why God had given him such an extraordinary storytelling gift. Tolkien was a humble man who shied away from public attention and did not handle worldwide fame well. He felt that he was simply being God's servant, fulfilling his high calling by crafting to the best of his ability the finest stories God put into his head and heart. He may not have realized that he was in the same league as Shakespearean plays or Mozart’s music, but he did realize that God was involved in the creation of his stories. A letter he wrote to Father Robert Murray may provide the best clue:

... indeed the Holy Spirit seems sometimes to speak through a human

mouth providing art, virtue and insight he does not himself possess: but

the occasions are rare. (Letters 75)

Keuthan 252

Consider the weight of what he has said for just a moment. I believe he is saying that the

Holy Spirit can work through art to communicate God to humans. Does this explain what happened to Tolkien? More significantly, can we say that the Holy Spirit intervenes in the communication process between inspired literature and reception and interpretation by the human heart and mind? Well, that's a whole other Pandora's box – worthy of further research.

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