THOMAS HIBBS
At the very end of the Quest in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam reflect on the completion of their task. The Ring has been destroyed in the Cracks of Doom and Frodo, after his battle with Gollum, is now safe, except for the finger Gollum bit off in his ferocious desire to seize the Ring. A joyful and grateful Sam remains angry with Gollum, until Frodo recalls Gandalf’s premonition that “even Gollum may have something yet to do.” He then explains to Sam, “But for him . . . I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end” (RK, p. 241). Frodo is referring to his own unwillingness at the crucial moment to part with the Ring; only Gollum’s theft of the Ring and his accidental fall into the Cracks of Doom with the Ring accomplished the task with which Frodo, the Ring-bearer, had been entrusted.
It seems then that good triumphs in Tolkien’s fictional world not only over the power and will of the evil characters but even against the momentary wishes of those most trusted to defend the good. In this and other ways, Tolkien manages to suggest the working of a higher, benevolent power, a providential orchestration of events. Unlike Sauron, whose attempt to see and control all is obvious to those involved in the cosmic war between good and evil, the hand of providence is neither clear nor compelling. Indeed, Tolkien repeatedly suggests that the fate, destiny, or providential design of things is not available to human beings in advance of events. How then can we detect its presence?
We must be careful here about what sort of account of providence to expect from The Lord of the Rings. This is a novel or epic, not a philosophical treatise or even a philosophical dialogue. Even in terms of drama, we will find very little direct evidence of the providential power at work in Middle-earth. What we find are suggestions, clues, and hints that enliven and deepen our appreciation of the mysterious way in which all things seem to work together for the good.
From the vantage point of the characters in The Lord of the Rings and the readers of the books, providence first appears under the guise of chance, of seemingly fortuitous events that turn the tide for good and against evil. These events, which often bring good out of intended evil, occur contrary to the will or at least outside of the intention of those who cause them. But providence is more than simply one or more fortuitous events; it involves the orchestration of an entire sequence of events; whatever glimmer we have of the workings of providence can generally be seen only in hindsight, the discernment of an order or intelligibility in what initially appeared to be merely a sequence of chance events.
Since Gollum’s role in the drama of the Ring illustrates all of these, we shall begin with a brief summary of Tolkien’s depiction of him as an instrument of providence. Then we will turn to two difficulties or problems traditionally associated with providence: (a) the role of freedom and finite agency, and (b) the existence of evil. In each case, we will attend not so much to abstract philosophical arguments as to the way Tolkien offers a dramatic demonstration of the reality of human freedom and action and of the way patience and compassion is used to overcome evil.
Gollum As an Instrument of Providence
Early in the story, when Gandalf is explaining the history of the Ring to Frodo, he mentions that Gollum both hated and loved the Ring as he hated and loved himself. Frodo wonders why, if he hated the Ring, he did not simply get rid of it. Gandalf responds that Gollum “could not get rid of it. He had no will left in the matter. A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. . . . It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him” (FR, pp. 60–61). “What, just in time to meet Bilbo?” said Frodo. Gandalf comments that Bilbo’s appearance at that precise moment, inadvertently putting his hand on the Ring in the dark “was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far.”
“There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. . . . [I]t abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire! . . . 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. And that may be an encouraging thought.”
“It is not,” said Frodo, “Though I am not sure that I understand you” (FR, p. 61).
In this early exchange, we find the elements of Tolkien’s dramatic depiction of providence. First, the role of chance; Bilbo did not enter the cave looking for the Ring, yet he ends up leaving with it. Second, at least according to Gandalf, the Ring itself left Gollum in an attempt to return to its master, but its will was thwarted by the chance arrival of Bilbo. This implies for Gandalf the workings of some other, perhaps higher, power, “beyond any design of the Ring-maker” (FR, p. 61). Third, what appears to be chance allows for the possibility that good may now be brought out of evil. Gandalf predicts that the malicious and deceptive Gollum may yet have an important role to play in the events unfolding. He observes that not even the wise know all ends. Thus, fourth, whether and precisely how things will turn out remains unclear until the end of the entire drama.
Later, in a chapter entitled, “The Taming of Sméagol,” Gollum engages in a bloody battle with Sam, who is saved only by the timely and forceful intervention of Frodo. When Sam urges slaying Gollum, Frodo hears voices “out of the past.” The voices remind him, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends” (TT, p. 246). At this point, Gollum becomes their guide on an arduous trek that will enable them to fulfill their Quest in ways they could never have imagined.
Finally, in the dramatic ending of the Quest at Mount Doom, Gollum seems to pass beyond the bounds of hope. Yet, even here we should pause. We cannot be certain what Gollum would have done had he lived and remained in control of the Ring, especially once he became aware that Sauron was bearing down upon him with all his concentrated might. At this crucial point in the drama, Sam is separated in the darkness from Frodo and from Gollum. Suddenly he sees Frodo standing at the very Crack of Doom, speaking with a “voice clearer and more powerful” than he had ever heard before: “I have come,” he said, “but I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” (RK, p. 239) As Frodo puts the Ring on and disappears, he becomes visible to the Dark Lord, who realizes how precarious is his power and turns his attention away from his armies to concentrate exclusively on Frodo. Sam is knocked down and briefly loses consciousness; when he awakes, he sees Gollum “fighting like a mad thing with an unseen foe” (RK, p. 240). Gollum eventually locates the Ring on Frodo’s finger and bites it off, chanting wildly, “Precious.” In his exultation, he loses his balance and falls into the Crack of Doom, effectively fulfilling the quest of the Ring-bearer. Gollum is, as Gandalf had predicted, an unwitting instrument of divine providence, but he manages to serve this role only because Frodo had earlier recalled Gandalf’s words and taken to heart his plea for mercy and patience.
Freedom and Duty in a Providential Cosmos
The mysterious, incomprehensible designs of providence underscore the importance of human effort, a sense that, in spite of the apparent odds, one must press on to do one’s duty in the fight against evil. Why? Finite creatures must take their bearings by what they can discern, by fulfilling the limited role assigned to them—a theme that pervades The Lord of the Rings. This requires a virtuous and prudential sense of what is within one’s power, what falls under one’s jurisdiction, and what does not. Concepts like duty and providence are often seen as limits to our freedom to make our own unique ethical choices. In Tolkien’s world, however, doing one’s duty is a free choice made by good beings in the fight against evil. The working of providence may initially be perceived as an external or miraculous intervention, say, for example, in the return of Gandalf. Ultimately, however, providence involves an ordering of
the entire narrative; this is evident in and through the dramatic structure of The Lord of the Rings. Rather than undermining freedom, providence presupposes that finite creatures are real agents, responsible in various measures for their actions. Without this, there could be no drama.
These points are driven home after the death of Boromir and the splitting of the Fellowship. Aragorn tells his few remaining comrades, “my choices have all gone amiss. . . . With [Frodo] lies the True Quest. Ours is but a small matter in the great deeds of this time” (TT, p. 19). This is a remarkable expression of humility on the part of Aragorn, an expression that is rendered all the more striking by its contrast to the hubris of Boromir. Humility here is not a matter of groveling subservience; instead, it has to do with acknowledging one’s part within a larger whole, with discovering and filling one’s role in a cosmic battle between good and evil. Of course, Boromir manages in his repentance to die well, an alteration that underscores the contingency of human choice, the mysterious presence of freedom even in those whose characters seem to have been formed in a certain determinate way.
The notion of submission to one’s proper part within the whole means that one’s ultimate destiny is not in one’s own hands. It means that the assertion of human autonomy or the celebration of raw will is a dangerous illusion. In Gandalf’s confrontation with the despairing Denethor, the latter asserts that against the Power that now rises there can be no victory. Gandalf does not dispute the claim (indeed, he will soon quote Denethor’s claim to others), but he urges Denethor not to imitate the “heathen Kings,” who slew themselves in “pride and despair” (RK, p. 129). Boasting of his own autonomous control over himself, Denethor asserts that his will is to rule his “own end” (RK, p. 131). The use of “end” here by Denethor calls to mind Gandalf’s earlier assertion that not even the wise can see all “ends” (FR, p. 65). After Denethor’s death, the Captains of the West hold a counsel to decide what path to take. Gandalf reiterates Denethor’s claim that the Power they oppose cannot be defeated directly. It is “not our part,” he adds, “to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule” (RK, p. 160).
Gandalf explains that while we can’t always control life’s storms, we can control how we react to the inclement weather. Though we cannot always choose our duties, we can freely decide whether we are willing to accept those duties. Denethor freely chooses not to carry out his duty to Gondor. In the eighteenth century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that freedom and duty are not opposites and that duty must be obeyed even when doing so fails to bring happiness. A rational being freely compels himself to obey universal laws. For Kant, conformity to duty is the very expression of one’s freedom, “and such a power can be found only in rational beings.”1
Tolkien first shows us this interplay between freedom and duty in Frodo’s decision to be the one who takes the Ring to Mordor. At the Council of Elrond, when Bilbo asks who will take the Ring (in the movie version Bilbo is not present and it is Elrond who asks), Frodo feels the weight of his duty. “A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken” (FR, p. 303). Frodo grudgingly accepts his duty to be the Ring-bearer. Although Elrond admits that he believes the task was “appointed” to Frodo, he allows the hobbit the freedom to choose this path for himself.
Still, there are important and instructive differences between Tolkien and Kant. Kant argues that the source of the moral law could not reside in nature or God or anything external to human reason itself. Any external source of the moral law would create heteronomy, the opposite of autonomy. Kant is an advocate of this opposition in part because he believes that the natural world is not a moral world; instead, the natural world is governed by the mechanistic laws of science and hence precludes freedom. Kant thus accepts what has come to be called the disenchantment of the natural world. For Tolkien, by contrast, the entirety of nature is not just enchanted but is permeated with reason and a moral sense. For all his stress on freedom and duty, Tolkien does not operate with a Kantian dichotomy between autonomy and heteronomy; indeed, certain forms of autonomy signal the vice of pride. In place of Kant’s isolated individual will, which in order to be free must turn from God, nature, and society, Tolkien gives us characters who can only understand themselves and their duties by seeing themselves as parts of larger wholes, as members of nations and races, as participants in alliances and friendships for the good, and ultimately as part of a natural cosmos.
When we freely accept our duties, we rarely know how the story will end. Providence may help us see our path, but it can never promise ease or peace. The finite intellect’s limited apprehension of ends should teach us patience and determination in the endurance of suffering and deprivation.
A good example of this occurs in the scene in which Sam finds Frodo apparently killed by Shelob. “‘What shall I do, what shall I do?’” he said. ‘Did I come all this way with him for nothing?’ And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of their journey: I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand” (TT, p. 385).
Still, he is caught in a conflict of duties, to stay with Frodo, or at least to bury him, to take his sword and the Ring and continue the Quest in Frodo’s place, or to resist that out of cowardice or a temptation to supplant the rightful Ring-bearer. Sam comes close to despair, believing that even if he and Frodo accomplish their goal, they will perish near Mount Doom, “alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return” (RK, p. 225). Yet, in the face of despair, resolve grows in Sam.
Sam’s plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue. (RK, p. 225)
A grim determination to press on in the performance of one’s allotted role marks a peak of virtue or heroism, which is motivated no longer by the expectation of reward or even “return.” Kant believed that while doing one’s moral duty did not always bring pleasure, it gave the rational being a certain level of dignity. As Denethor counsels at one point, “after hope” there remains only the “hardihood to die free” (RK, p. 82). Of course, so long as they are able to fulfill their duty and continue the fight, they continue in some sense to hope, to cling to the good that their virtue renders them incapable of denying.
Providence, Patience, and Endurance
The survival of hope in the face of the seemingly imminent victory of the enemy marks the endurance of good in the face of evil. Indeed, the language of a “cosmic battle between good and evil,” which I have been using in this essay, can be terribly misleading. It invites a Manichean vision of two forces, roughly equal to one another, and suggests that one can neatly divide the adherents of darkness from the warriors of virtue.2 The metaphysical underpinnings of such a view render divine providence questionable. As Augustine pointed out long ago, if evil is actually something, some independent power operating in the universe, then divine providence would be in doubt.3 For, if that were the case, then some things would seem to elude providence.
The doctrine of providence seems to entail a classical metaphysics of good and evil, wherein evil is parasitic on the good and, contrary to appearances, has no independent existence. It is a privation, the absence of a good that ought to be present. Of course, writers like Augustine and Tolkien try to reconcile this teaching with the psychological experience of the seeming existence of evil. Augustine shows that in the sinner’s departure from God, the fullness of being, he makes himself “a land of want.”4
For Tolkien, Gollum is once again the central dramatic c
haracter. When Frodo first hears the story of Bilbo’s taking the Ring from Gollum, he states that he wished Bilbo had killed Gollum and never found the cursed Ring. Gandalf replies that “Gollum was not wholly ruined. . . . There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark: light out of the past. . . . Alas! there is little hope . . . for him. Yet not no hope” (FR, p. 60). Still, Gollum’s devotion to the evil Ring divides him against himself. Moreover, the pursuit of the Ring severely diminishes his entire life, even his enjoyment of pleasure. As Gandalf explains, there remains nothing more for him “to find out, nothing worth doing.” He retains “only a nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering” (FR, p. 60).
Tolkien underscores the role of providence in bringing about the fulfillment of the Quest not only through Gollum’s role but also through Frodo’s succumbing to the power of the Ring at the last moment. Concerning Frodo’s “failure” at the Crack of Doom, Tolkien writes,
Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of divine 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. (L, p. 326)
Through patience, tolerance, and compassion, the designs of Providence are brought to fruition.
Even Saruman, who embodies a kind of anti-providence, seeking to bring evil out of good, is treated as not being utterly beyond hope. When Saruman is discovered wreaking havoc in the Shire, Frodo decides to banish him rather than kill him. In his pettiness, Saruman laughs scornfully, “I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.” When the hobbits chant, “Kill him!” Frodo says, “I will not have him slain. It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal nothing” (RK, p. 325). Even after Saruman pulls a knife and attempts to kill him, Frodo still spares his life. Saruman responds bitterly, “You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy. I hate it and you!” (RK, p. 325) But as he is leaving, his lackey Wormtongue, turns on Saruman, pulls a knife and cuts his throat.
The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy Page 19