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enanito
Rohan
Aug 12 2016, 9:56pm
Post #1 of 6
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Evil, temptation, and redemption in M.E. -- or, "The Devil Made Me Do It!"
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Recent postings have gotten me thinking again about the nature of evil in Tolkien's world. We seem to have come to a truce regarding the souls of orcs being "irredeemable", and in that sense orcs being locked into their evil natures, no temptation required. But there's a whole lot of other beings that have free will, and make all kinds of choices that create some great stories :)
What do we understand about the role of evil, temptation, and redemption in Middle Earth? And how culpable are we to hold evildoers for their works, in the sense that there might be powerful outside influences acting on them?
We have instances where beings come up directly against Evil (aka Melkor or Sauron), and to varying degrees end up submitting or overcoming that evil will. Apart from those direct confrontations, do the beings in Tolkien's world basically decide for themselves how to act?
In a christian sense (like J.R.R.'s friend C.S. might think), there's an omnipresent devil that tempts us, and if we're not careful we can fall under his sway. But in M.E., is there any latent evil will causing beings to do bad things? Or are the bad men, elves, dwarves, etc., simply choosing their destiny for themselves? And when Eru stands in judgement, can anyone wiggle out by claiming that "the devil made me do it"?
Someone like Feanor, whose pride obviously causes his downfall, but can he state that without Melkor around, he would have still been proud/arrogant/foolhardy/impulsive/etc, but never gone to the extremes he did?
As this is the R.R., if there's "canon" text that points to any conclusion you might suggest, that'd be great!
And outside the "canon", do we know if Tolkien's personal views on evil are reflected in how he constructed M.E., or is this world a bit distinct from how he viewed evil, temptation, redemption and all that jazz?
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Aug 12 2016, 11:26pm
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What a great and thoughtful question, enanito
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Not that I would expect any less from you. 
Since this isn't Twitter and we can post things longer than 140 characters, here's a portion of Tolkien's Letter 64 to Christopher (April 1944), a father worried about his son at war. I bolded some parts that I think address your question.
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 in 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. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their 'causes' and 'effects'. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitaris. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives... But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn't it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do. And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this. Probable under God that we shall meet again, 'in hale and in unity', before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life – subject of course always to the mystery of free will, by which either of us could throw away 'salvation'. In which case God would arrange matters differently!....
[To forestall any nitpickers, yes, it is a single paragraph in the original.]
My own conclusions from this very personal letter (which I doubt he thought would ever be public) are that there are 2 points: 1) that no matter how awful the Power of Evil is, and no matter how triumphant it may seem, it is ultimately constrained by Fate to lead to something Good. And 2) he allows that even he and Chris, devout though they were, could throw away salvation because they possessed free will, hence people are responsible for their actions and do basically decide how they act.
In Letter 264, he addresses Frodo's failure to destroy the Ring:
I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum – impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed. And in the paragraph preceding this one, he talks about the moral complexity of the world, and the need for mercy. So while people are responsible for their actions, they can still deserve mercy and forgiveness. And though there is free will in the world, it's not always in the 100% "on" position. Frodo was at the end of his rope and under reduced free will, and the outside force of evil from the Ring was overwhelming him with temptation, but he still chose to give in to evil at the end. But is he guilty? No, we're supposed to forgive him.
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a.s.
Valinor
Aug 13 2016, 12:23am
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evil succumbs to the will of The Creator, but only in the end
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...only in the final end, at the end of the world.
no matter how awful the Power of Evil is, and no matter how triumphant it may seem, it is ultimately constrained by Fate to lead to something Good.
Evil may triumph over good for long periods, maybe it could for the entire time humans and other assorted creatures exist on Arda. Evil beings have the potential to drive or tempt or coerce ordinary creatures to make evil choices, to destroy good things, to corrupt all that is holy and decent about the physical world we inhabit together.
It's only in the final accounting that all things will be revealed to have worked for the purpose of Eru, who is only good and whose creations can only ulitmately serve his holy purpose. Meantime, to those bound to the physical plane, evil has terrible power to harm us.
It wasn't intended to be this way, and the whole of Tolkien's re-imagining of our world through his myths, is in essence a story of loss of our intended earthly Paradise, our Garden of Eden lost through sin.
The Long Defeat he refers to.
So for your quote cited above, if you substitute the word "Providence" for Fate, I would agree but only as a final outcome. Meantime, we suffer.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds." JRR Tolkien, Letters.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Aug 13 2016, 9:40am
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Here's how I currently think it works:
Some things in Middle-earth are meant to happen - 'the elves would say' that this was to do with Eru's grand plan. A virtuous person tries to sense what is meant to happen and to act accordingly, even if they can't personally figure out why that should be meant to happen.
So for example, Bilbo is meant to find the Ring and pass it on to Frodo, who is meant to take it to Mordor, unlikely though that might seem as an effective plan for combating Sauron. And yet Frodo is apparently free to turn down this duty if he wishes, suggesting that people in middle-earth are not mere puppets.
People are therefore under the Doom of Choice (as Aragorn puts it to Eomer) - they have to choose as best as they can, and choosing not to make a choice is only another form of choice.
Working out what is meant to happen is difficult, even given wisdom and introspection - Gildor does not help Frodo more because he is not sure what he is meant to do. Maybe escorting Frodo straight to Rivendell would mess things up (arguably it would - no barrow blades nor Frodo's experience in the barrow , no meeting with Aragorn etc.) Or maybe Gildor did make a mistake, despite his best efforts.
Misinterpretation is one problem - another is preferring one's own plans to what is meant to happen. I suppose that is 'temptaton' in the normal sense. That can be tempting because what is meant to happen isn't always pleasant. For example Halbarad correctly predicts his death is he goes with Aragorn through the Paths of the Dead. But he goes anyway. Perhaps he realises this is all meant to happen - in any case his duty to his Lord is to go. Saruman provides, I think, an example of how one can convince oneself - intellectually at least - of the rightness of one's own plans.
Then there is 'binding' : the magical or other effect of another's will on one's own. Binding was, I understand, one major branch of Norse or Germanic magic, and I believe Tolkien incorporated similar ideas int his works. Binding works as a sort of persuasion - there must be something in the 'bindee' that is in sympathy with, or is tempted by co-operating. So a determined or alert person might resist (as Theoden and others do in the Voice of Saruman, and the hobbits don't when being bound by Old Man Willow, or the Barrow Wight). Sometimes, however, there may be no material for the binder to work with - Faramir or Sam just don't seem to be interested in taking the Ring. In Sam's case, the Ring fails to offer him the only bait that I think might have worked - Frodo's safety. We are told explicitly that Bilbo and Frodo are good keepers of the Ring in part because of how their association with it begins - Smeagol, who immediately murders to get the Ring, fares less well. He becomes almost completely bound by the Ring. The Nazgul have gone yet further down that path.
A further thing is that what is 'meant' to happen is either quite flexible, or can be complicated by layers of incorporating apparent disaster. 'Oft evil will shall evil mar' in Middle earth, with the bad guys inadvertently proving to be agents of their own ruin. And the odd sudden reversal or eucatastrophe can and does happen.
I think it works pretty well given that LOTR is a story that has fate, death and heroism as themes, without attempting to turn into a sermon or lecture about them.
That's how I currently see it, anyway, with every chance that I'm about to learn more in this discussion!
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming read-thorough of Book VI ROTK (and the appendices if there are sufficient volunteers) http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=909709#909709
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A set of links to the Book IV discussions are here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=899201#899201
A wonderful list of links to Boook II, Book I and previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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Morthoron
Gondor
Aug 13 2016, 8:11pm
Post #5 of 6
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A further thing is that what is 'meant' to happen is either quite flexible, or can be complicated by layers of incorporating apparent disaster. 'Oft evil will shall evil mar' in Middle earth, with the bad guys inadvertently proving to be agents of their own ruin. And the odd sudden reversal or eucatastrophe can and does happen. I think it works pretty well given that LOTR is a story that has fate, death and heroism as themes, without attempting to turn into a sermon or lecture about them. "If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred..." Thus Tolkien ends the Quenta Slimarillion. We see fate, or the Pagan "Wyrd" or the Christian "Providence" throughout the history of Tolkien's Middle-earth, more so in the telling of Turin's tale, and also very pronounced during LotR, as when Gandalf says to Frodo, “Behind that, there was something else at work, beyond any design of the ring maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it." There is no randomness involved, no existential blind luck without an external influence, although the Christian concept of "Free Will" throws an added layer into the mix. And speaking of influence, the Anglo-Saxon concept of Wyrd, the inexorable (and in Anglo-Saxon literature, often grinding and fatalistically relentless) force which a warrior bears along with his sword and shield, is an idea Tolkien knew intimately and evidently used (with the veneer of his Catholic ideology) throughout his corpus, borrowing it from Beowulf and the translation he conducted with E.V. Gordon of the A-S poem The Wanderer: "Wyrd bið ful aræd" ("Fate remains wholly inexorable") The link between Middle-earth and The Wanderer is never so clear as in Tolkien's rephrasing of the poem's famous lines: 'Where is the horse now, where the hero gone? Where is the bounteous lord, and where the benches For feasting? Where are all the joys of hall? Alas for the bright cup, the armored warrior, The glory of the prince. That time is over, Passed into night as it had never been." We see Wyrd in an oath unfulfilled (as with the Dead Men of Dunharrow) and an oath maintained in all of its horrible ramifications, as when the messenger of Manwë proclaims, "But thou Fëanor Finwë's son, by thine oath art exiled." Words carry weight in Middle-earth, whether it is uttered by Malbeth the Seer or Glorfindel in relation to the WiKi's fate, whether by Luthien and Finrod's songs of power, or Frodo's prayer to Elbereth, but the interesting thing Tolkien added was compassion as the counterbalance to the ruthless nature of Wyrd, and thus by Mercy mingled with Fate do we arrive at a eucatastrophe. But you cannot run from Wyrd in Middle-earth, it caught up to Turin even though he attempted to hide from it (whereas his direct counterpart, Tuor, accepted without question the Fate laid upon him by Ulmo, and was thus rewarded in the end). Gollum hid for centuries only to have the Ring betray him (as it betrayed Isildur), but Frodo, having accepted freely his fate and completed the Wyrd (from the Old German root "wirþ" which meant "to come to pass, to become, to be due") with immense suffering, he was relieved of his inner wounds by passing over the sea, a metaphor used in another Anglo-Saxon poem Tolkien translated The Seafarer in which the ocean is the great divide between heaven and earth, two different planes of being, a recurrent theme in both The Silmarillion and LotR, where again Tolkien borrows from an A-S poem The Seafarer and gives to Legolas his lament upon hearing the cry of the gulls.
Please visit my blog... The Dark Elf File...a slighty skewed journal of music and literary comment, fan-fiction and interminable essays.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Aug 14 2016, 10:19am
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Wyrd is a concept that I have struggled to understand, without success as yet. I do agree that must have been one with which Tolkien was familiar from his readings, and is a concept that could be used in readings of Tolkien's work.
As I understand it, it is (in part at least) a concept of fate - an unavoidable way that things will go, and which a person ought to face bravely. But I don't think that is to say that everything is fated to the last detail (perhaps that is not what you meant?) - the Beowulf poet has Beowulf say:
Wyrd oft nereð/unfaegne eorl, þonne his ellen deah. (""Often, for undaunted courage,
fate spares the man it has not already marked." -Seamus Heaney)
So I interpret there as being some 'wiggle room' for characters to influence what happens to them. Some things are fixed (or at least a person has no way of affecting them): but other things are within a person's control, with their choices possibly making an important difference.
But as I say, I'm not at all confident that I understand.
I'm also aware that people differ in their own conclusions about fate and free will in real life, and presumably we each bring our own views to Middle-earth, in the absence of any authorial steer. So for me, with my tendency to think that what I do in real life can have important consequences, I like to think that Tolkien's LOTR characters make real, though often painful, decisions. If the characters had no agency and everything was bound to work out well (or badly) regardless of what they did, that would rather spoil the story for me. Someone else, might prefer their own world-view of things being fated to a much larger degree.
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming read-thorough of Book VI ROTK (and the appendices if there are sufficient volunteers) http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=909709#909709
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A set of links to the Book IV discussions are here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=899201#899201
A wonderful list of links to Boook II, Book I and previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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