Last month Amazon debuted its mega-super-massive television series “The Rings of Power,” a “Lord of the Rings” prequel (in the identical way that ancient Egypt is a prequel to today—the events happen 5,000 years before The Hobbit). And 6 episodes in, the large query is, which character is definitely the evil wizard Sauron? Is it the dark elf who the orcs called Father? The mysterious man with tremendous magical ability who crashed to earth seemingly from the celebs? The tormented ironsmith who doesn’t need to return to his kingdom and has unexpected dexterity as a fighter? The lovely Harfoot who’s just attempting to help everyone?
O.K., nobody is asking whether it’s the lovely Harfoot. She is clearly good. But otherwise it truly is an open field. Even the lead character Galadriel seems as likely as to not be an unwitting agent of evil.
In our own modern-day world of would-be trolls and heroes, Tolkien’s work offers vital lessons on the ways we treat others and ourselves.
Obviously, that is Storytelling 101: You desire to keep people guessing. But it surely’s also emblematic of J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of human existence, during which the difference between villains and champions is much lower than we would expect. In our own modern-day world of would-be trolls and heroes, Tolkien’s work offers vital lessons on the ways we treat others and ourselves.
Nothing Is Born Evil
In The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s ancient history of Middle-earth from which “The Rings of Power” draws, Tolkien explains that only Ilúvatar (Tolkien’s version of God) can create life. And this has a serious implication for his universe: No race of creature is inherently evil. Evil is a corruption of something that was once good. So orcs were created from elves who had been kidnapped and tortured by the Lucifer-like Melkor. Trolls are believed to be a similarly warped version of Ents, the trees that walk and speak. And Balrogs just like the one which attacked Gandalf the Grey in The Two Towers are the Middle-earth equivalent of Lucifer’s fallen angels.
For Tolkien, every creature exists on the identical continuum between good and evil, and has the capability to travel either way along it.
Of all of the races in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy the orcs are the one group who seem utterly evil. Never in any of Tolkien’s books will we meet a single orc that is nice, or who resists the commands of Sauron. Yet in The Silmarillion, Tolkien reveals that orcs are amongst Middle-earth’s best victims, because their corruption is a result not of their selection, but of Melkor’s torment and abuse. Long after they’ve turn out to be a species of their very own, they continue to be trapped and in pain: “Deep of their dark hearts,” Tolkien writes, “the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery.” In a way, perhaps they’re probably the most universally evil of all of the types of life in Middle-earth because they’re probably the most universally abused and imprisoned.
Good People and Bad Are Not Fundamentally Different
Grounding the concept of evil in corruption has major consequences for Tolkien’s way of thought. Most significantly, it undermines any try and separate life on Middle-Earth into heroes and monsters. Every creature exists on the identical continuum between good and evil, and has the capability to travel either way along it. Good people can go bad: Tolkien repeatedly shows even the noblest of creatures, like Gandalf or Frodo, falling prey to the identical temptations to greed and power that drives monsters like Smaug or Melkor. The Nazgul who fight at Sauron’s side, though they’re a number of the most frightening creatures in Middle-earth, were likewise originally nine human kings, no less than a few of whom were almost actually good before they donned the rings that corrupted them.
For Tolkien even the very worst of monsters have inside them the potential to show back toward the nice. The central a part of The Silmarillion concerns three jewels generally known as the Silmarils, which shine with probably the most beautiful light within the universe and are widely coveted, including by Melkor (who the elves know as Morgoth). But as mentioned in Episode 2 of “The Rings of Power,” when Morgoth actually gazed upon the Silmarils, he was so overwhelmed by their beauty that he needed to turn away from them, lest his heart be modified permanently toward the nice. For Tolkien, even Devil himself is able to conversion.
For Tolkien even the very worst of monsters have inside them the potential to show back toward the nice.
Perhaps no character embodies these ideas more fully than Gollum, the violent, lizard-like creature Bilbo Baggins encounters living within the caves of the Misty Mountains and obsessing over his precious ring. In The Hobbit he looks like a vile and treacherous monster, his external filthiness indicative of the state of his character. But over the course of “The Lord of the Rings” we discover that before he found the ring Gollum was a hobbit himself named Smeagol. It was the ring’s power and his obsession with it that slowly transformed him into the monster we meet. And over the course of the “Lord of the Rings,” Gollum fights his own compulsions to attempt to be more good.
We Have a Role within the Goodness or Evil of Others
What made Gollum want to alter? The kindness of others. In The Hobbit, despite Gollum’s villainy, Bilbo refuses to kill him. And in “The Lord of the Rings,” Frodo’s persistent charity toward Gollum does much to undo the corrupting process he had undergone. Indeed,Tolkien wrote in a letter to a reader that “things might need turned out in a different way” for Gollum if not for Frodo’s companion Samwise Gamgee. While most (including myself) are inclined to see Sam as considered one of the noblest characters in “The Lord of the Rings,” faithful above all, Tolkien insists that he, too, is tempted by a pride and possessiveness—in his case, of Frodo. And that has devastating consequences.
“It prevented him [Sam] from fully understanding the master that he loved,” Tolkien writes, and from seeing as Frodo did the “…damaged good within the corrupt.”
When Sam dismisses the change in Gollum’s behavior at the top of The Two Towers, Tolkien writes, Gollum’s “repentance is blighted and all Frodo’s pity is (in a way) wasted. Shelob’s lair [into which Gollum leads them to try and kill them] became inevitable.” Once more, for Tolkien the nice are able to great evil—notably, even through seemingly very small deeds—while the “monsters” aren’t inherently evil but “damaged good.”
The more you read Tolkien, the harder it gets to completely write anyone off. Without calling attention to it, Tolkien’s stories keep pushing readers to see those around them through the eyes of God. Our heroes are also sinners and our monsters are “damaged goods,” similar to us. Some might say nobody escapes God’s justice. But in Tolkien’s books nobody escapes God’s mercy, either. In the long run that is perhaps probably the most revolutionary and in some ways disconcerting aspect of Tolkien’s body of labor.
