Thoughts On The Hobbit, Good, And Evil

I really liked this thought-provoking article at The American Thinker regarding The Hobbit, orcs, and the human condition:

It was with a burdened and weary heart that I made my way to the IMAX theater to catch the premiere of Peter Jackson's rendition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." The stormy night had blackened my already dour mood, having arisen that morning to another of man's inconceivably brutal horrors that had taken place at an elementary school thousands of miles away.

But upon seeing the face of my lovely daughter, the "almost pharmacist" and her devoted fiancée, both of whom had invited me to this 3-D showing of a classic book that has a special place in my life, I put aside that volume of human tragedy in anticipation of a literary master's fantasy world. One of the most precious things in my life has been the ability to share this love of Tolkien with Melinda -- to hear her rhapsodize of Middle Earth's richness as we shared the grand cosmology where hobbits, elves, dwarves, men, and necromancers dwell in the tenuous balance of Good and Evil. Indeed, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, in their imaginary worlds that have captured the imaginations of child and adult alike, sound a chord that serves to awaken souls to the never ending tension that constrains the human spirit into opposing directions. Later, while driving back home on rain slicked streets accompanied by the chatter of news concerning mass murder and inconsolable parents, I reflected on the Tolkien universe.

Of all the characters of these books, Hobbits are the most joyous and grounded of creatures. Perhaps because they are the smallest and least robust of beings or because they dwell idyllically in the insular Shire, their hearts are attuned to the creature comforts of hearth and home. With their lives bound up in family, food, and drink, they have been seemingly afforded by nature a calm moderation and a predisposition against novelty and adventure. The world around them, however, is anything but a paradise of rolling green hills and warm fires.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien tells us that the Creator Illuvatar begat the Ainur, a host of powerful creatures who in obedience to his purpose sang the world into existence. But the greatest of the Ainur, Melkor, slowly began deviating from the harmonies of creation and through his dissonance clouded Illuvatar's intent. Illuvatar, nevertheless, incorporated his dissonance into even more profound harmonies. Drawing an analogy from the Judeo-Christian God and Lucifer, we find in both stories that what began as loving creation ex nihilo soon became a warring battleground. In the moral sphere of Good and Evil, a contest for the hearts and minds of Middle Earth spanned three ages of Middle Earth. In the Tolkien mythos, it is revealed that the world of this Third Age is but a paltry shadow of the First and that a great schism had divided an increasingly disenchanted world.

Evil, whether appearing in the disembodied spirits of Melkor, Morgoth, Sauron or in the spirits of those it tempts or leads away from the light, cannot of itself create. Being contingent, Evil can only propagate and seed itself through deception, corruption, vanity, or fear. While the First Born Elves have a certain moral excellence and distance in respect to their characters, it is in Men and Dwarves that evil finds a firm foothold. Being heir to dispositions of honor, power, and greed, Evil throughout the ages of Middle Earth often projects itself through strife and vanity. Moreover, the races of Orcs and the terrible creatures in Middle Earth were fashioned by Melkor through cruel and persistent tortures in the pit of Utumno. Thus, elves and beings of the first age were corrupted and bred for their dullness and black cruelties.

The universes of Tolkien and Lewis touch a spot in our hearts, not because of a one-dimensional black and white depiction of Good and Evil, but because they ring true in excavating the subtlety of what drives evil. Evil is not deemed co-equal with Good, as in a Manichean worldview, but as a corrupted end which once sought the Good. Such is vice and evil in our lives: love is denatured into lust, acquisition and thrift becomes greed and covetousness, and the desire to rule becomes the thirst for power and tyranny.

No man seeks evil for its own sake and even Lucifer aspired to rule in autonomous freedom because he judged that he would rule better. Having become unhinged from the Light and lost in the labyrinth of unanchored self, once man proceeds out into a vector of independence from the Archimedean Star of the Moral Law, he can no longer discern how far afield he has gone. Without milestones or ethical guideposts, our liberty becomes its own justification and soon we become the sole arbiter of truth and the moral "ought." Ungrounded from the light, Good inexorably morphs into a dark caricature of itself that eventually inflicts or condones actions that fall along the continuum where pain and suffering reside.

Clearly, the Bible and these lovely books, yea all of the classic fairy tales, are rooted in the knowledge that evil is a persistent companion in our amphibious souls. Having a nature that is both carnal and spirit, we are contestants in a subtle warfare for our minds and imaginations. Christians are, however, assured that though evil ebbs and flows in the hearts of men, Goodness and justice will win out in the fullness of days. Despite the manifold vices and wickedness that entertain the human imagination, a joyous optimism is evident in the words of the Gospels, Tolkien, and Lewis. Therein we can take comfort in virtue, faith, and courage that the Dark Lord shall not stand.

It is in our finite reckoning of time that patience exhausts itself and oftentimes our endurance is drawn down as we despair of evil's resolute gravity. Faced with suffering and evil occurring at an ever-accelerating cadence, it may be easier to believe that we are alone in our sorrows instead of exerting faith that a Deft Hand holds the reins. Sometimes it seems as if the free will of a broken humanity is insufficient when weighed in the balance against our cruelties. But without free will there is no love; and without love there is no impetus for a God of Love to create.

But free will or a future redemption is thin gruel to a town with classrooms full of murdered children. Is it enough to say that God did not will this thing and that despite the glib horror of the words, ripples of good are projecting out in time so that as a consequence at least some of this evil might one day be redeemed? Unlike our stories of Middle Earth, there was no convocation of Eagles to spirit those innocents away from a cruel and insane hand. Nevertheless, we are hearing now of unlikely heroes and sacrifices in the face of certain death by some who did not come home.

It is too early to tell, perhaps even in this lifetime, how these events will have weighted the waves of contingency and their significance for those perhaps not yet born. It is not a cliché to hold that courage and faith are needed now more than ever. They were indispensable in an age of Hobbits, elves and dwarves; how much more so in a tangible world of fragile men.

I think this also gets to the heart of why the Lord of the Rings is so vastly more powerful and epic than the contemporary Harry Potter series.  In HP, there is good and evil, but it's mostly evil for its own sake and good simply to avoid being overtaken by the evil.  I found little moral substance, and even less standing on principle in the series.  After all, does not even one steeped in evil fight for his own survival?  For fiction, that sort of banality may still work, but the deeper introspections that Tolkien performed manifested on paper/screen as reflections of the nature of good and evil in the real world, and thus captured the power of the world we see around us.  Yes, it's still fiction, but I am convinced that the best fiction is that which could be real, or at least seems to mirror the real world effectively.  Tolkien got it, and harnessed those timeless truths in his fiction; Rowling did not.

As indicated at the close of the article, those same truths not only make for impactful fiction, but they are indispensable for the real world.  Sadly, there are woefully too many who ignore the real world, where timeless truths matter most.