Living through two world wars, Tolkien himself had seen his share of despair and ruin. The Lord of the Rings was written during the years 1936–1949, among the darkest years in England’s history. We would do well, though, not to overplay the connections between the War of the Ring and Tolkien’s own experience. Unlike Nietzsche, Jaspers, and Arendt, Tolkien is not writing of Europe’s pain, or of the human condition in the twentieth century. The Lord of the Rings is a work of fiction, and should be read as such. Yes, the Shire has obvious similarities to the English countryside and the tea-drinking, pipe-smoking hobbits bear more than a slight resemblance to older English curmudgeons, but Tolkien spends almost his entire Forward to the series pleading that we not mix history and fiction.11 Though he readily admits, “An author cannot remain wholly unaffected by his experience,” neither is he compelled to make an allegory out of political events. For our purposes, it is enough to observe that Tolkien can be placed in the small group of thinkers who passionately believe in the artist’s role to stand resolutely, and create in darkness.
Tolkien’s elves share this need to affirm life, especially in dark times. As the sorrowful Fellowship enters Lothlórien, Haldir the elf informs them that even the Golden Wood is no longer safe: “The rivers long defended us, but they are a sure guard no more; for the Shadow has crept northward all about us. Some speak of departing, yet for that it already seems too late. The mountains to the west are growing evil; to the east the lands are waste . . .” (FR, pp. 390–91). The elves are not ignorant of the dangers around them. They face the abyss every day and out of this confrontation their joyous music is born. Beauty is not diminished by dark times. As Tolkien elsewhere comments on the elvish quest for joy, “sorrow and wisdom have enriched it” (S, p. 49).
When Nietzsche cautions us to forget, he does not encourage an obsessive, “technological” attitude with the here and now. Understanding our times means knowing what brought us to the place we are in today. Tolkien’s Lady Galadriel remembers who she is and where she came from. As we have seen, the name “Lórien” had been taken from a favored region in her homeland. Her happiness and pride, even her strength, comes from her ability to remember the greatness of her family and people. Sam observes how the elves of Lórien seem more rooted than the singers of Rivendell. “Now these folk aren’t wanderers or homeless . . . Whether they’ve made the land, or the land’s made them, it’s hard to say, if you take my meaning” (FR, pp. 404–05). In Lórien, the greatness of the past lives on, and that is one explanation for the cheerfulness of the elves.
But Galadriel has a darker side to her as well. Her own personal happiness and her lust for life have been dissipating by the time Frodo and company enter her woods. As Tolkien notes in a posthumously published work, Galadriel had tried to make Lórien “a refuge and an island of peace and beauty, a memorial of ancient days,” but she was now “filled with regret and misgiving, knowing that the golden dream was hastening to a grey awakening.”12 What has so filled the strong and seemingly ageless Lady of the Wood so with regret?
Perhaps the cause of Galadriel’s growing unhappiness is that she remembers too much. She never really forgets the curse hanging over her from ages long gone. Though Frodo and Sam see only settled bliss, Galadriel feels the burdens of being a stranger in a strange land. She can never be fully happy in Lórien, because she can never entirely let go of the past. Tolkien judges this clinging to the past to be an “error,” a futile attempt to “embalm time.” Holding on to perfection in an imperfect world is an ultimately tragic attempt by the elves to “have their cake without eating it” (L, p. 151). As long as Galadriel harbors an irrational desire to turn back the clock, her songs are mournful and slow. Bidding farewell to the Fellowship, she sings a poignant, regretful song about the changing of the seasons and the passing of time in Lórien (FR, p. 418).
Because Galadriel cannot forget the past, she is unable to adjust to the changes around her. In Galadriel we see both the blessing and the curse of Tolkien’s elves. They are given unnaturally long lives by the gods, and because they can live for thousands of years, it is exceedingly difficult for them to forget anything. Elves only die if they are slain in battle or otherwise mortally injured, or if they develop unbearable “world-weariness” as Miriel does in The Silmarillion (S, p. 64).
As Nietzsche warns us, world-weariness is bound to set in when one loses the capacity to forget. It is not surprising then, to see Elrond’s daughter Arwen forgo her immortality for a shot at happiness with Aragorn, a mortal man.13 In Tolkien’s fiction, the race of men is blessed with the capacity to forget. Their short lives should make this easy. And yet, throughout The Lord of the Rings, we see men remembering when they should be forgetting. Aragorn feels the weakness of his ancestor Isildur, Denethor refuses to emerge from his past, and King Théoden has to be thoroughly reprimanded by Gandalf before he can begin to live in the present.
Human beings do have this capacity to forget, as both Nietzsche and Tolkien insist. So why is it so hard to let go? The god-like Valar of The Silmarillion are equally puzzled, observing, “Fate may not conquer the Children of Men, but yet are they strangely blind, whereas their joy should be great.”14 If only we could do a better job of remembering some of what we forget, and forgetting some of what we remember, we could share more of the elves’ joy and less of their world-weariness.
Country’s favorite singing philosopher, Kenny Rogers, recognizes “the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” But once again, we return to the question: how do we gamblers know when it’s time to let go? The twentieth-century existentialists tell us to trust in our own light. If life gives you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. But if life gives you rotten lemons, make something else. Use the past when it helps, but trust in yourself when all else fails. Whether it’s a bad relationship or a stale job, it is our own freeing light that reminds us we are not slaves to our pasts. This light that each of us carries within us is what Arendt hoped to reawaken in the years following the Holocaust, and it’s the same light that can help us leave our unhappy security and strike out for uncharted lands.
Through the wise elf Galadriel, Tolkien teaches us to trust that inner light and be strong enough to leave old problems behind. When Frodo freely offers her the One Ring to rule them all, the very Ring that Galadriel has coveted throughout the ages, she refuses, knowing full well that with the refusal comes her own demise. Though the Lady of the Wood has stayed too long, she can still find happiness by remembering who she is, while walking away from the pronouncements of her past. “‘I pass the test,’ she exclaims. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel’” (FR, p. 411).
More than any other character in the tale, with the possible exception of Tom Bombadil, Lady Galadriel is imbued with the existentialist’s affirmation. As Frodo leaves the friendly borders of Lórien, she presents him with the symbolic light, a crystal phial. “It will shine still brighter when night is about you,” she promises. “May it be a light to you in dark places” (FR, p. 423). And perhaps that is all that is meant by Tolkien’s imaginary elves. The elves find happiness when they trust in themselves. This self-confidence helps them sing throughout the darkest night, and leave the shores when the music ends. May their world be a light to us in our own dark places.15
_____________________
1 The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), Preface.
2 Ibid., section 47.
3 Ibid., section 800.
4 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 165. Nietzsche presents us with the image of a light-footed dwarf, who laughs at the bumbling men and women. Nietzsche’s dwarf and Tolkien’s elves appear to have much in common.
5 “History in the Service and Disservice of Life,” in Unmodern Observations, translated by William Arrowsmith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 89.
6 Ibid., p. 99.
/> 7 Man in the Modern Age, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Routledge, 1951), p. 45.
8 The Future of Mankind, translated by E.B. Ashton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 234.
9 Hannah Arendt–Karl Jaspers Correspondence, ed. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, translated by Robert and Rita Kimber (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992), #31.
10 “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” in The Beowulf Poet (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1968), p. 28.
11 Not everyone takes Tolkien at his word. Jane Chance, for example, argues that Tolkien wrongly dismisses the influence of WWII on his work. See Tolkien’s Art (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), pp. 31–37.
12 “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn,” in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), p. 251.
13 In The Two Towers movie, Peter Jackson creates a particularly haunting vision of Arwen (played by Liv Tyler), standing by Aragorn’s tomb, knowing that she is condemned to linger on. For further discussion of mortality in The Lord of the Rings, see Chapter 10 in this volume.
14 Christopher Tolkien, ed., The Book of Lost Tales: Part I (New York: Ballantine, 1983), p. 57.
15 Many thanks to the woodsy elves of Beverly Road, and the mountain elves of Wilkes-Barre for helpful comments on previous drafts.
PART III
Good and Evil in Middle-earth
7
Überhobbits: Tolkien, Nietzsche, and the Will to Power
DOUGLAS K. BLOUNT
What is good?—All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
What is bad?—All that proceeds from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that a resistance is overcome.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE1
The One Ring is, of course, a Ring of Power. Indeed, it is the ruling Ring of Power. For, as elven-lore tells us, the One Ring gives its wearer dominion over other powerful Rings. When Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, forged the One Ring, he infused it with his own malevolent power. There were other, lesser rings, but Sauron saw to it that the Ring “contained the powers of all the others, and controlled them, so that its wearer could see the thoughts of all those that used the lesser rings, could govern all that they did, and in the end could utterly enslave them” (L, p. 152).
By infusing the Ring with much of his own power, however, Sauron was gambling. For if one with sufficient knowledge and power were to gain possession of it, the Dark Lord could be overthrown. But who in Middle-earth would challenge him? Indeed, who could challenge him? Of course, if the Ring were actually destroyed, his power which he had infused in it would be lost. He himself “would be diminished to vanishing point, and . . . reduced to a shadow, a mere memory of malicious will” (L, p. 153). Still, the Ring could be destroyed only in the fires of Mount Doom. More significantly, those who used the Ring came under its sway, eventually becoming dominated by it.2 And those dominated by it could not bring themselves to destroy it. Its destruction thus seemed highly unlikely. So perhaps Sauron’s gamble was not an overly risky one. At any rate, his desire to dominate, enslave, and establish his will over Middle-earth ultimately outweighed the risk.
Ilúvatar, also called Eru, is the one true God, creator of Middle-earth.3 During the long conflict between light and darkness, the Dark Lord Sauron takes for himself the title “King of Kings and Lord of the World,” a title rightfully claimed only by Ilúvatar himself (L, p. 155). Moreover, in seeking to subjugate the whole world, Sauron seeks to supplant Ilúvatar, thus making himself God. Tolkien explains that he sees the fundamental conflict in The Lord of the Rings as not about “freedom,” though that is certainly involved, but about “God and His sole right to divine honour.”
Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. (L, pp. 243–44)
Thus, the conflict in Middle-earth is essentially religious. Sauron seeks to establish his will not only over his fellow creatures in Middle-earth but ultimately over Ilúvatar himself.
Nietzsche: Philosopher of Power
Sauron’s quest to dominate, enslave, and establish his will over all others—even Ilúvatar—makes him the arch-enemy of all that is good in Middle-earth. Still, while it represents a deadly threat to others, the Dark Lord’s power play represents to him the hope not merely of life but of abundant life.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was an outspoken supporter of the quest for power. For life, according to Nietzsche, is all about suppression of the weak by the strong. “‘Exploitation,’” he states, “does not pertain to a corrupt or imperfect or primitive society: it pertains to the essence of the living thing as a fundamental organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will of life.”4 Well, if exploitation is indeed the essence of life, no denizen of Middle-earth is more alive than Sauron!
Undoubtedly, this view of life as essentially exploitive will cause many of us to squirm, being uncomfortable as we are with its moral implications. Here, Nietzsche suggests, we might be wise to consider great birds of prey who exploit (eat) little lambs for their own purposes. That the lambs dislike the birds, even see them as evil, certainly does not surprise us. But does this make the birds somehow morally defective? Does it make them evil? Are not the birds simply acting in accordance with their nature? And is it not the nature of strength to control, to dominate, to exploit? “To require of strength,” Nietzsche writes, “that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to conquer, a desire to subdue, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”5
The lambs interpret their situation in one way; the birds, finding the lambs especially tasty, interpret it in quite another way. So also Bert, Tom, and William—the trolls who almost roast Bilbo and his dwarvish companions (H, pp. 34–41)—interpret their situation in one way; the hobbit and dwarves interpret it altogether differently. In the end, however, the interpretations are merely that—interpretations.6 None has any binding moral significance—though, of course, the birds and (if not for Gandalf) the trolls have the power to force their interpretations on the lambs and Bilbo and his companions. To see things in this way is to move beyond good and evil.
Now Nietzsche also boldly states that God is dead and life is meaningless—though, he assures us, that ain’t all bad. When he announces God’s death, he does not mean to be taken literally. For, of course, God has not actually died. Rather, Nietzsche means that humans can no longer harmonize God’s existence with other things they know about the world, “that belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable.”7 According to Nietzsche, talk about God’s dying does not refer to the deity’s demise in fact; instead, it refers to the human realization that God never existed in the first place.8
Obviously, the view that God does not exist has important implications. Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn from it involves the meaninglessness of life. For if God does not exist, it follows that humans have not been divinely created; and if they have not been divinely created, they have not been designed for any specific purposes. Humans thus exist for no purpose. Their lives have no inherent meaning. “We invented the concept of ‘purpose,’” Nietzsche tells us, “in reality purpose is lacking.”9 Far from being at home in a place where we can pursue our divinely appointed destinies and fulfill divinely intended purposes, we find ourselves in an alien world filled with pointless suffering. This, of course, stands in marked contrast to Middle-earth where each legitimate race (as opposed to orcs, trolls, and other bastardized races) has a place to call home.
Truth, as Nietzsche sees it, is ugly. If we were faced with the world as it actually is and forced to be honest with ourselves, we could n
ot bear it. “Honesty,” we are told, “would bring disgust and suicide in its train.”10 Those who search for a reasonable, good, and beautiful truth by which to live their lives do so in vain. Ultimately, we must deceive ourselves in order to cope with this fact. Otherwise, we would be unable to function.
Fortunately, humans have found in the arts a means of coping. Art keeps our eyes veiled so that we do not despair; art makes our absurd, anguished, meaningless lives bearable by distracting us and obscuring truths which, if faced honestly, would debilitate us. Thus, art serves us as a “kind of cult of the untrue.” Notice here the emphasis on beauty over truth, taste over reason.11 Beauty, not truth, will be our salvation. (Indeed, beauty will save us from truth.) “There is no pre-established harmony,” Nietzsche states, “between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.”12 In such a case, it seems, taste is far more helpful than reason.
To illustrate the meaninglessness of life, Nietzsche puts forward an unusual view of history, a view according to which everything that will ever happen has already happened infinitely many times in the past. Ordinarily, we tend to think of history as progressing forward in a straight line. Such a view fits nicely with the belief that history has some culminating moment toward which it moves. Certainly, the history of Middle-earth—from the earliest events recorded in The Silmarillion to those chronicled in The Return of the King—seems to be progressing toward some grand climax. Of course, the glimpses which Tolkien allows us of what appears to be the hand of Ilúvatar at work behind the scenes orchestrating events only strengthen the sense that things are moving toward such a climax. On the view put forward by Nietzsche, however, history moves not in a straight line, but rather in a circle. History thus repeats itself over and over again. Scholars debate whether Nietzsche actually believed in this eternal recurrence.13 As with his announcement of God’s death, he might not have intended his affirmation of it to be taken literally.
The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy Page 10