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Magic, Enchantment, and the True Nature of Power in the Lord of the Rings

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Magic, Enchantment, and the True Nature of Power in the Lord of the Rings THE VICTORY OF HOPE: MAGIC, ENCHANTMENT, AND THE TRUE NATURE OF POWER IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS by ANSELM G. LEFAVE A THESIS Presented to the Departments of English and Religious Studies and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts June 2020 An Abstract of the Thesis of Anselm LeFave for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Departments of English and Religious Studies to be taken June 2020 Title: The Victory of Hope: Magic, Enchantment, and the True Nature of Power in The Lord of the Rings Approved: Professor Elizabeth Wheeler Primary Thesis Advisor This thesis is an extended analysis of power in the fantasy writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, principally The Lord of the Rings. In it, I argue that the supernatural power which would colloquially be identified as “magic” can be distinguished into two fundamentally different kinds of power. The first kind is the power of evil, of Sauron and his servants, and is properly called “magic.” Magic, in this sense, arises from lust for power and dominance, and is used to enslave, conquer, and deceive. Magicians like Sauron use their power for no one but themselves and no purpose but their own. The second kind is the power of good, of the heroes of the story, and following Tolkien I call it “enchantment.” Enchantment arises from a subordination of one’s will to a higher purpose, coming from a person or reality higher than one’s self. Enchantment manifests in the world when a character chooses in accordance with that purpose which they have received from beyond themselves. When that happens, they wield power which overcomes the evil which stands in the way of that quest or mission to which they are choosing to subordinate themselves. These choices are “eucatastrophic,” participating in and instrumentally causing the ultimate and final defeat of evil in the world. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Elizabeth Wheeler for her constant support and advice throughout the process of writing this thesis; it was her fantasy course, taken my Freshman year of college, that renewed my love of Tolkien and set me on the path to the development of this vision, and it was only right that she be the one to oversee its fulfillment. I would also like to thank Professor Rick Colby and Professor Trond Jacobsen for their passionate and vital assistance in the development and fine-tuning of this writing, given on short notice. I also thank my mother, who has been a constant source of inspiration for this project as in all my endeavors; she has always been my primary and most influential teacher. This thesis was a joy to write, and I could not have done it so well without the help and constant support of my teachers, family, and friends, and for that they have my deep gratitude. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Eucatastrophe 2 Enchantment 4 Magic 5 Chapter I: Sauron 7 Sauron’s Fall 8 The Rings of Power 11 One Ring to Rule Them All 13 Chapter II: Gandalf 17 Servant of the Secret Fire 18 The White Wizard 21 The Black Captain 26 Chapter III: Aragorn 28 The Pillars of the Kings 29 The Paths of the Dead 30 The Hands of the King 32 Chapter IV: Frodo 37 The Deadly Name 37 Brightest of Stars 40 The Scouring of the Shire 42 Conclusion 47 Bibliography 49 iv Introduction In the chapter entitled “The Mirror of Galadriel” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterwork The Lord of the Rings, the Elf-lady Galadriel makes an interesting and puzzling statement about magic. She is explaining to the hobbits Frodo and Sam the power of her “Mirror,” a basin of water in which one may see visions of the past, the present, and even the possibilities of the future. Offering the opportunity to look in the mirror to the hobbits, she remarks, “For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel” (The Lord of the Rings 362). Galadriel objects to the same word, “magic,” being applied to both her power and that of the Dark Lord Sauron, and thereby hints at a fundamental and fascinating distinction between kinds of power in Tolkien’s world. But what is the substance of this distinction? What does “magic” mean for Tolkien, and should that word, so common in subsequent fantasy stories, be applied to the power of the Elves and their allies? A close examination of power in Tolkien’s legendarium, aided by a philosophical framework derived from Tolkien’s own theory of the fantasy genre, can give insight into these questions. Careful analysis reveals that the power of the protagonists of The Lord of the Rings is produced by those characters’ obedient choice in the face of opposition to pursue their given quest, thereby subordinating themselves to higher realities. These choices affect the world as “enchantment”, overcoming evil’s “magic,” and they act as glimpses and signs of the great Eucatastrophe to come, the final defeat of Sauron, which is brought about by these sub-creative choices of his enemies. By examining The Lord of the Rings through this lens, the powerful moral vision of the text can become clear, a vision which highlights hopeful obedience to the good as the path to victory over darkness and evil. The first task in understanding the nature and effects of power in The Lord of the Rings is to elucidate the meanings of the terms “eucatastrophe,” “magic,” and “enchantment” as I am using them. Second will be to examine the uses of power by key characters both evil and good so as to see how those ideas apply to the power they wield. Eucatastrophe In his essay “On Fairy-stories,” Tolkien coins the term “eucatastrophe,” and argues that this element is essential to the “fairy-story,” or fantasy, as a form of literature. A eucatastrophe, as Tolkien defines it, is the opposite of tragedy, the “sudden joyous turn,” or the “happy ending” (Flieger and Anderson 75). It is the sudden salvation that appears just as all seems lost. Tolkien thinks all fantasy that is true to the form should have such a turn at the end. He defends this conception of fantasy against the charge that such stories are thereby “escapist,” or that they are excessively idealistic or lack realism by clarifying that the eucatastrophe does not preclude the realities of great suffering, sorrow, and failure, and in fact goes as far as to say that these “dyscatastrophes” are necessary for the joy which comes with the eucatastrophe (Flieger and Anderson 75). However, the eucatastrophe certainly does mean that evil can never ultimately win in a true fantasy or fairy-story; it “denies universal final defeat,” in Tolkien’s words, “and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief” (Flieger and Anderson 75). As his use of the term evangelium indicates, Tolkien applies this idea to the real world in the context of Christianity; he would say that, for instance, the Incarnation of Christ 2 is the eucatastrophe of human history, and that the Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the Incarnation (Flieger and Anderson 78). The Christian story, for Tolkien, is itself a kind of fantasy, except that it surpasses all others by becoming historical – Christianity is the only “true myth,” we might say, in which, as Tolkien says, “Legend and History have met and fused” (Flieger and Anderson 78). In The Lord of the Rings, the final destruction of the Ring and Sauron with it is indeed eucatastrophic; it comes about inadvertently and surprisingly, when Frodo finally gives in to the Ring’s temptations and claims it for himself, but is then attacked by Gollum, who takes the Ring from him and then plummets into the fires of Mount Doom with the Ring in his ecstatic celebration. Despite ultimately failing in one sense, the quest was still fulfilled through Frodo and with his cooperation. The Ring would not have been in Mordor at all had Frodo not brought it there, nor would Gollum have been alive had Frodo not spared him earlier in the story. It is Frodo’s repeated choice to take up his quest and continue it in the face of great opposition that brings about the victory over evil. Frodo thus participates in the Great Eucatastrophe of Sauron’s defeat, each of his good choices over the course of the story being, if you will, “little eucatastrophes” which prefigure the fulfillment of the quest. The theory of the eucatastrophe provides a paradigm through which all power of good in Tolkien’s work can be understood: Good power is that which eucatastrophically arises from choices in accordance with one’s quest. Each such choice is a small glimpse of joy, made with faith in the great and final Joy to come. Evil power, defined in opposition to the good, is thus that which does not participate in any unforeseen or hoped-for future, but which seeks only the increase of 3 power in the present, and which is turned inward in selfishness, rather than directing oneself and others outward through humility and obedience. Enchantment The term “enchantment” appears in “On Fairy-stories” in relation to Tolkien’s concept of “sub-creation,” in which context the term indicates the power of human authors to create, a power derived from and subordinate to the divine power which first created them.
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