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 ii © 2010 Mark A. Keuthan All rights reserved iii 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 iv 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. v 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 vi 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 vii 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. Keuthan 2 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