Could Orcs in Tolkien's subcreation be redeemed? And other obscure questions about Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

[The Marquis de Leech]

OK, Tolkien's politics:

Tolkien doesn't fit within the modern political spectrum, because he is neither a liberal-conservative in the Burkean tradition, a classical liberal, or any flavour of social democrat or socialist. Tolkien's political views are staunchly pre-Enlightenment conservative, which is to say, that there is a proper ordering of society that should be maintained, but also should not be abused by those in power. He once wrote that his ideal system was a sort of unconstitutional monarchy meets anarchy - the King can sack his Prime Minister/Grand Vizier for wearing the wrong coloured trousers, but the King doesn't use this power, and prefers to spend his day with his stamp collection. Petty bureaucracy, obsession with machinery and modernisation, and destruction of nature - those were the things that made Tolkien see red.

So Tolkien was a bit of a Greenie (pre-WWII this was the domain of the Right). What else? Well, he was fervently anti-imperialist, explicitly bashing Britain and America. He even had a distaste for the UK/British state as a concept. He was very anti-apartheid (remarking in his valedictory address at Oxford that he had a hatred of apartheid in his bones), and wrote a famously vicious letter to German publishers during the Nazi era. His intense dislike of both Hitler ("that ruddy little ignoramus") and Stalin ("that blood-thirsty old murderer") is well documented, though he regarded any sort of post-war vendetta against the wider German population as evil, and regarded Hiroshima as the horrific work of lunatic physicists. Essentially, Tolkien regarded any sort of organised secular experiment as deeply flawed: muddling through in an old-fashioned inefficient way was much more preferable.

Most people know Tolkien was a devout Catholic. Most people don't know that despite his dislike of Hitler, the conservative nature of 1930s Catholicism meant that Tolkien was pro-General Franco. He wrote the following in a letter:

C.S.L.'s reactions were odd. Nothing is a greater tribute to Red propaganda than the fact that he (who knows they are in all other subjects liars and traducers) believes all that is said against Franco, and nothing that is said for him. Even Churchill's open speech in Parliament left him unshaken.

Which is, of course, painful reading for a Tolkien fan. I suppose we can simply put it down to Tolkien being a creature of his time and his religion.

[The Marquis de Leech]

You are obviously not a historian :P Mythological narratives are one of the primary sources for daily life (limited though they are)

Academics mining Beowulf for historical and linguistic information drove Tolkien nuts. His great academic achievement was to seize Beowulf back from the historians and reclaim it as an artistic endeavour.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Anyway, based on the available information, and the way Orcs are portrayed in the text, they are only killed when the Orcs the ones are doing the attacking. There is literally one attempt in the entirety of Tolkien's mythos to genocide the Orcs, and that isn't exactly portrayed as anything more than a bloody horrific mess (it's the War of the Dwarves and Orcs after Thror is killed - Thrain sacks every Orkish stronghold in the Misty Mountains over seven years. No-one wins). So chances are, the leaderless Orcs go off to scavenge somewhere, and are left alone so long as they leave Gondor alone.

Which is basically what GRRM's comment is about. He's decrying the simplicity of the framing choices Tolkien made.

You can say "Well, Tolkien didn't want to make it more complex then that" but that doesn't remove the questions that said simplicity leaves open.

Tolkien's framing choices aren't simple. The moral, theological, and linguistic side of Tolkien's work runs very deep (not to mention the obsession with landscapes). Tolkien just wasn't interested in economics or day-to-day administration, so didn't write about it. It's the same reason Martin doesn't write about the ablative case or past tense of Old Valyrian - languages don't interest him. Nor does Martin write about the theological implications of his work - we barely know what Westerosi think about the afterlife, let alone how the Others and the Children of the Forest fit into the framework.

Just because authors have different interests doesn't make them inherently deeper or shallower than others.

[Shryke]

And while he's open to his opinion about decrying the framing choices, he's coming from 60 + years down the road. Fantasy now is filled with minutia, and people glom onto shit that doesn't really matter. In Cormac McCarthy's the Road, its as simplistic as hell. He doesn't even tell us what the extinction level event was that drove the father and his son out into the wilds. He's hinted at it, and mentioned it in interviews I believe, but he really didn't give a shit about the why of it. His story led to some place else. I simply trust that he as an author is taking us to the place where he wants to lead us. It doesn't mean that we can't look critically at the corners of the page, to the outskirts of the world that he has presented to us, but I find little merit in the endless conjecture about what isn't put into a work of fiction. Every work has something that it is missing, for whatever reason the author chose. I'm just more interested in what was included and the implications within the framework.

Martin also makes mention of good kings and good lands, an idealism that never existed in real history. He's very correct in that. But he's also again missing the point of what Tolkien was trying to do. All Martin has done is take a historical event and fantasy-it. I admire the work, but he's coming in with a different objective. I find authors criticizing other authors for having different styles and purposes to be generally a bad idea. I guess I don't give a flying fuck about Aragorn's tax policy, because Tolkien didn't, he wasn't trying to go there. If Martin wants to deal with that, by all means. It's not particularly interesting, to be honest, no more than Martin's endless descriptions of meals. Or Jordan's endless descriptions of clothing. A book does not need to be a catalogue of all that is going on to have a point, or to have a reason.

But meh. I'm done with this discussion, honestly. I'll return to muse about the idea of orcs being genetically evil or forced into evil. I think within Tolkien's work there is a chance for redemption of the orcs, the only problem being some of those that I have listed previously. Namely that they are not human, so the definition of evil, and the people of Middle Earth's reaction to the situation, would make such reconciliation difficult.

You can't talk about what's in without acknowledging what's out.

And The Road as an example doesn't work here. Not knowing the cause of the disaster is an irrelevant detail. The framing of the story is the tight focus on the father and son and there relationship. It's that focus that makes the details of the disaster irrelevant. They don't matter to the story being told because they don't effect that relationship and the lack of those details is itself a sign of what the focus of the story is and what McCarthy think is important.

The framing of Tolkien's work make the details in question rather important. If Aragorn is to be a great king, then how he does that is kind of important. Or, perhaps more accurately, the lack of those details is a sign of the framing Tolkien is trying to use and that framing says something about the views of the series on these things. (and you can see RBPL's stuff above about Tolkien's politics leads into this as well) The focus of the story, as with The Road, helps inform you as to what the story is about.

And it's those views, that focus, that GRRM is criticizing. Which I don't think you really get, given your comments about Martin mentioned "good kings" or implying the comments are about endless catalogues of details.

Tolkien's work reflects a viewpoint that considers the details of leadership irrelevant. Good leaders do good things and good things come of that. And he's decrying this, rightly, for being overly simplistic. GRRM's not missing the point of LOTR, he's seeing one of the points the work is making and saying it's wrong.

Frankly, the idea that this is not worth discussing but orcish redemption is is utterly silly considering that conversation is no different then this one in that it's a reflection on the scope and framing of LOTR. The idea of orcish redemption becomes so problamatic exactly because the way LOTR is told and framed and styled makes the orcs incompatible with Tolkien's larger ideas about God and such.

[Shryke]

Anyway, based on the available information, and the way Orcs are portrayed in the text, they are only killed when the Orcs the ones are doing the attacking. There is literally one attempt in the entirety of Tolkien's mythos to genocide the Orcs, and that isn't exactly portrayed as anything more than a bloody horrific mess (it's the War of the Dwarves and Orcs after Thror is killed - Thrain sacks every Orkish stronghold in the Misty Mountains over seven years. No-one wins). So chances are, the leaderless Orcs go off to scavenge somewhere, and are left alone so long as they leave Gondor alone.

Firstly, the War of the Dwarves and Orcs may have been bloody and horrible, but there's no indication this has anything to do with it being an attempt at genocide nor does it seem a comment against that idea.

And secondly, Orcs left to scavenge on the edges of society would either die out or grow large, as they have before, and need to be killed again at a latter date. This becomes even more troubling when we consider that, from an in universe perspective, the orcs die out. So either Aragorn or his descendants eventually find them too troubling to deal with and wipe them out or they opt instead to push their enemies into inhospitable zones to slowly die attempting to eke out an existence on insufficient resources for survival.

Rather horrifying all things considered. It's basically a question of which tribe of Native Americans we are considering the orcs akin to, eh?

Tolkien's framing choices aren't simple. The moral, theological, and linguistic side of Tolkien's work runs very deep (not to mention the obsession with landscapes). Tolkien just wasn't interested in economics or day-to-day administration, so didn't write about it. It's the same reason Martin doesn't write about the ablative case or past tense of Old Valyrian - languages don't interest him. Nor does Martin write about the theological implications of his work - we barely know what Westerosi think about the afterlife, let alone how the Others and the Children of the Forest fit into the framework.

Just because authors have different interests doesn't make them inherently deeper or shallower than others.

And no one said anything of the sort, so I've no idea why you brought it up.

What is true, however, is that Tolkien's take on these matters is rather simplistic. Just as one could say Martin's take on religion is similarly simplistic.

The details of actual ruling or dealing with hostile populations who's capacity for any sort of growth or peace is muddled even to the author himself, is something Tolkien simply doesn't want to have to deal with. And this is a point one can criticize the work on.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Ar-Pharazon was a great leader. He was charismatic, inspirational, and he humbled Sauron at the peak of his power. He was also a horrible human being, because in Tolkien, being a good person is more important than being a good politician.

[Shryke]

Ar-Pharazon was a great leader. He was charismatic, inspirational, and he humbled Sauron at the peak of his power. He was also a horrible human being, because in Tolkien, being a good person is more important than being a good politician.

But this is the same simplistic framing. He's a bad man, so bad things happen. His humbling of Sauron is itself an overreach based in hubris that leads to nothing but destruction. There's good decisions and he makes the opposite of them.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Firstly, the War of the Dwarves and Orcs may have been bloody and horrible, but there's no indication this has anything to do with it being an attempt at genocide nor does it seem a comment against that idea.

Well, it was Thrain's attempt to get revenge for his Dad by killing every Orc he could get his hands on. Whether it counts as genocide is a moot point (I think it does - there's clearly an attempt at group extermination going on), but it is certainly the only example in Tolkien of another group actively going out and hunting the Orcs on their own turf. Note also that only the Dwarves could pull this sort of thing off - humans and Elves wouldn't have much luck chasing Orcs through dark tunnels under the mountains.

And secondly, Orcs left to scavenge on the edges of society would either die out or grow large, as they have before, and need to be killed again at a latter date. This becomes even more troubling when we consider that, from an in universe perspective, the orcs die out. So either Aragorn or his descendants eventually find them too troubling to deal with and wipe them out or they opt instead to push their enemies into inhospitable zones to slowly die attempting to eke out an existence on insufficient resources for survival.

Orcs are underground cannibals, and never seem to die out on their own accord. If Gondor was ever going to engage in Orc genocide, it'd have done it two thousand years earlier, during the peak of its power, or a millennium earlier under the Numenorean supremacy. Even if Aragorn's Gondor had the will to do such a thing (and the evidence suggests the negative, given the old rules about allowing captured Orcs mercy), it would lack the ability.

Rather horrifying all things considered. It's basically a question of which tribe of Native Americans we are considering the orcs akin to, eh?

Seeing as no Native American tribe that I am aware of consists of beastial individuals subjected to thousands of years of spiritual and genetic corruption at the hands of malevolent supernatural forces, your analogy is a poor one. Orcs ain't human.

And no one said anything of the sort, so I've no idea why you brought it up.

What is true, however, is that Tolkien's take on these matters is rather simplistic. Just as one could say Martin's take on religion is similarly simplistic.

The details of actual ruling or dealing with hostile populations who's capacity for any sort of growth or peace is muddled even to the author himself, is something Tolkien simply doesn't want to have to deal with. And this is a point one can criticize the work on.

I brought it up because it is little more than cheap shots masquerading as criticism. So we don't know Aragorn's tax policy. Oh no, clearly Tolkien's story is weak. We don't know anything about the economics of Gondolin or Nargothrond. A literary disaster! We don't know if Ents have sex. Probably for the best...

Such things are mere cheap shots because they simply aren't relevant. Martin brings up day-to-day administration because exploring the distinction between morality and political success interests him. Good on him. If Tolkien had read ASOIAF, he'd probably be complaining about the unrealistic treatment of language.

Aragorn isn't ruling hostile populations. He's defeated Rhun and Harad, and made peace with them. He goes back to rebuilding Gondor and the recreated Arnor.

[The Marquis de Leech]

But this is the same simplistic framing. He's a bad man, so bad things happen. His humbling of Sauron is itself an overreach based in hubris that leads to nothing but destruction. There's good decisions and he makes the opposite of them.

He was a bad man who was the most successful ruler Numenor ever knew. He was the second most powerful ruler in the history of Arda, behind Morgoth himself. Politically, and militarily, up until he started listening to Sauron, he did everything right by the Tywin Lannister Guide to Success. But he was an awful person throughout. Tolkien knew that success in politics doesn't equally moral goodness; he just preferred the latter.

Denethor is another example: highly competent ruler and administrator. Obsessed with preserving Gondor. But his political strength was his moral weakness.

[Shryke]

Well, it was Thrain's attempt to get revenge for his Dad by killing every Orc he could get his hands on. Whether it counts as genocide is a moot point (I think it does - there's clearly an attempt at group extermination going on), but it is certainly the only example in Tolkien of another group actively going out and hunting the Orcs on their own turf. Note also that only the Dwarves could pull this sort of thing off - humans and Elves wouldn't have much luck chasing Orcs through dark tunnels under the mountains.

Rather missing the point that there's no indication the outcome of this war is supposed to mean anything as you intimated.

Orcs are underground cannibals, and never seem to die out on their own accord. If Gondor was ever going to engage in Orc genocide, it'd have done it two thousand years earlier, during the peak of its power, or a millennium earlier under the Numenorean supremacy. Even if Aragorn's Gondor had the will to do such a thing (and the evidence suggests the negative, given the old rules about allowing captured Orcs mercy), it would lack the ability.

So door number 2 then? Nice. Genocide via a systematic policy of forced migration.

Seeing as no Native American tribe that I am aware of consists of beastial individuals subjected to thousands of years of spiritual and genetic corruption at the hands of malevolent supernatural forces, your analogy is a poor one. Orcs ain't human.

Ah, so orcs are a beastial, mongoloid race, so it was ok? And here I thought Tolkien was conflicted over the issue.

We know how this kind of thing actually goes down. The Native Americans, as I said, provide a bevy of examples of how you push another group of sentient beings off your territory and the consequences of the various ways you do that.

I brought it up because it is little more than cheap shots masquerading as criticism. So we don't know Aragorn's tax policy. Oh no, clearly Tolkien's story is weak. We don't know anything about the economics of Gondolin or Nargothrond. A literary disaster! We don't know if Ents have sex. Probably for the best...

Such things are mere cheap shots because they simply aren't relevant. Martin brings up day-to-day administration because exploring the distinction between morality and political success interests him. Good on him. If Tolkien had read ASOIAF, he'd probably be complaining about the unrealistic treatment of language.

No, you seem to think it's a cheap shot because it's a criticism of an author you really like. Especially since you are bringing up points no one else ever brought up. And most especially because you can't seem to accept any sort of criticism of the work at all and must resort to attacks back on the author making the criticism and engaging in the construction of silly strawmen.

No one, especially not GRRM at the start of the thread, is talking about tax policy or economics or the sexual proclivities of sentient flora. He's talking about the way Tolkien glosses over the very basically difficulties of leadership and the consequences of the events he depicts. He's asking "Where did the orcs go?" after Tolkien says they are scattered and leaderless.

And that's perfectly valid. One can make criticisms on that point. It's ok.

[Shryke]

He was a bad man who was the most successful ruler Numenor ever knew. He was the second most powerful ruler in the history of Arda, behind Morgoth himself. Politically, and militarily, up until he started listening to Sauron, he did everything right by the Tywin Lannister Guide to Success. But he was an awful person throughout. Tolkien knew that success in politics doesn't equally moral goodness; he just preferred the latter.

Denethor is another example: highly competent ruler and administrator. Obsessed with preserving Gondor. But his political strength was his moral weakness.

In what way was he successful? Tolkien obviously views all his acts as ominous and wrong. He's depicted as a popular tyrant doing bad things out of pride. His political success is short-lived. It's a temporary illusory gain before the inevitable fall that accompanies his evil.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Rather missing the point that there's no indication the outcome of this war is supposed to mean anything as you intimated.

How is it missing the point? The thread is about the prospective post-war genocide of the Orkish population. I mentioned the one and only precedent in Tolkien's work for this sort of endeavour, and how it was considered horrific ("the Orcs still shudder and Dwarves weep", I think is the summation). Not only was it an intensely nasty and vicious war, it explicitly resolved nothing - the Dwarves still don't get Moria back - and any good feelings about revenge are cancelled out by the massive death toll. The Dwarves don't gain anything from it at all, and go back to shovelling coal.

So door number 2 then? Nice. Genocide via a systematic policy of forced migration.

Nice straw man. Did you bother reading what I wrote, or were you too keen on a pre-planned gotcha?

No Gondorian leader is ever going to say to the Orcs "we'll draw a line on the map - you get this bit, we get this bit, so start moving now!" (they did actually do that to the Dunlendings with the Rohirrim, but then the Dunlendings are human, and are recognised as being crapped on). Nor are humans ever going to say to Orcs, "move along now, please; we're going to build our own settlements there" - because Orcs don't live in places where humans live. Humans and Orcs never occupy the same space, so there's no scope for forced migration.

Ah, so orcs are a beastial, mongoloid race, so it was ok? And here I thought Tolkien was conflicted over the issue.

We know how this kind of thing actually goes down. The Native Americans, as I said, provide a bevy of examples of how you push another group of sentient beings off your territory and the consequences of the various ways you do that.

As above: Orcs and humans don't live in the same places, nor can they ever live in the same places. Nor are we necessarily sure that the Orcs are sentient as such (hence Tolkien's suggestion they might be beasts with trained speech). Nor, as I have said several times, is there any precedent for humans attacking Orcs unprovoked. Orcs do the attacking - human do the defending is the consistent situation.

Fact is, once you start dealing with supernatural fantasy stuff, and Orcs are supernatural fantasy stuff, cute little straw man analogies with Native Americans simply don't work. It's like complaining about the poor old Others being stuck behind a Wall and subjected to monstrous acts of unprovoked Global Warming.

No, you seem to think it's a cheap shot because it's a criticism of an author you really like. Especially since you are bringing up points no one else ever brought up. And most especially because you can't seem to accept any sort of criticism of the work at all and must resort to attacks back on the author making the criticism and engaging in the construction of silly strawmen.

How am I bringing up points no-one else brought up? I have tried to address the issue of Orkish genocide in Tolkien as best I can given the evidence available - a subject addressed in the opening post. A supplementary point has been raised that Tolkien ignores the question of "what does it mean to say that Aragorn ruled wisely" (Martin himself first brought up the tax policy point - not me). I accordingly responded that the mechanics of day-to-day administration was not something that interested Tolkien, so he didn't write about it. In other words, it wasn't relevant to what he was trying to achieve. You have, however, treated it as a valid criticism - seemingly Tolkien not sharing Martin's thematic and worldbuilding interests is an inherent flaw in the former. Which is daft, and as I pointed out before, is a criticism that can just as easily be reversed (where's my Old Valyrian grammar, damn it!).

As for Aragorn and leadership qualities, well, he spends six or seven decades out in the wilds, looking after ungrateful hobbits and publicans. He fights in disguise in both Gondor and Rohan. He rejects the Ring. He saves Minas Tirith in battle, and takes power in what is actually a coup d'etat with Faramir out of action. He's a popular war hero whose rule then receives supernatural endorsement via being crowned by Gandalf and the flowering of the White Tree.

Once in power, we know he makes peace with Rhun and Harad - comparatively easy peace, since Denethor's potential policies were regarded as unwholesomely vengeful. The guy whose rule he has replaced (Faramir) gets given Ithilien to look after. He bans humans from entering the Shire (including himself - he isn't above the law), gives Isengard to the Ents, and hires Dwarves to repair the city gates. In other words, he seems a reconciliatory sort of chap. This is probably what Tolkien was meaning by ruling wisely.

[The Marquis de Leech]

In what way was he successful? Tolkien obviously views all his acts as ominous and wrong. He's depicted as a popular tyrant doing bad things out of pride. His political success is short-lived. It's a temporary illusory gain before the inevitable fall that accompanies his evil.

Tolkien regarded imperialism as morally bad, so naturally regarded the Numenorean Empire as morally bad. If you prefer to see Empire building and conquest as a sign of political and military success, your views would differ (we don't even have to go that far - Denethor was all about using his extensive abilities to preserve Gondor as he'd always known it. He did this successfully for three and a half decades. But his flaw was that he didn't believe there was any cause greater than Gondor or that political prudence must give way to moral concerns, something that Tolkien treats as a fatal weakness). My point, again, is that Tolkien doesn't ignore politics and morality. He's fully aware that leading political figures can be successful arseholes. He even has Aragorn and Gandalf display a bit of realpolitik with their coup against Faramir. But morality comes first.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

RBPL,

You're correct about Tolkien's focus on morality over Realpolitik. Look at the Silmarillion the Noldor attempt to fight Morgoth power against power for centuries and lose huge. It takes the morally correct Earendil to bring help and even there with the final War of Wrath the confligration is so great it destroys most of what they sought to liberate in the first place.

Tolkien was really down on the overt consequences of Clauzwitizian "continuation of politics by 'other means'".

[Sparrowyn]

But they aren't interesting questions, because that's not the book that Tolkien was writing. They are general, esoteric questions, but in terms of what LOTR was trying to accomplish even asking the questions really misses the mark. The books were an attempt at a mythological British pre-history that was lost to repeated invasions. When I read Beowulf, I care nothing for the economics of the day, or some of the minutia. There are other points to consider, themes, which is what Tolkien dealt with. All mythological tales have some sort of theme, and to treat a 60 years + book as if it is going to carry the same points as a modern work misses the point.

I mean, in all honesty, what are GRRMs themes? That war sucks, power corrupts, people are shitty, and midgets are witty? They are trying for two entirely different ideas. I grow weary of comparisons like this because books need to be considered in the context of what the author was trying to achieve at the time that he was trying to achieve it.

It's not only within the context of what each writer was attempting, and in this case both achieving brilliantly, but when they wrote it.

I don't think GRRM (or any of us) should impose modern literary standards on Tolkien. Times are different, narrative structures and themes have matured over the past decades... GRRM is hands down the better writer, yet Lord of the Rings is the better story. Just my opinion.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Change up the question a bit. Would Tolkien have viewed Tywin's ignoble end as an illustration of the fruits of realpolitik over a moral focus?

[Night's_King]

It's not only within the context of what each writer was attempting, and in this case both achieving brilliantly, but when they wrote it.

I don't think GRRM (or any of us) should impose modern literary standards on Tolkien. Times are different, narrative structures and themes have matured over the past decades... GRRM is hands down the better writer, yet Lord of the Rings is the better story. Just my opinion.

No. Just no. Martin isn't even a very good writer, while Tolkien is one of the best.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

GRRM's prose is very workmanlike. I enjoy GRRM make no mistake but I enjoy the epic feel of LoTR that is quite different from ASOIAF. They're telling different kinds of stories. As such they're difficult to compair directly.

LoTR was a story about decent people standing up to an evil they had little hope of defeating by main strength. It's about maintaining hope when there is no cause for hope.

ASOIAF, so far, is about how people are about power relationships. That everyone thinks themselves justified in their actions and about how the guys who play nice most of the time don't receive their just rewards, most of the time they are rewarded with the downstroke of a very sharp blade.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Change up the question a bit. Would Tolkien have viewed Tywin's ignoble end as an illustration of the fruits of realpolitik over a moral focus?

Good question. I think Tolkien might have preferred to have Tywin killed off in a different way (perhaps his refusal to believe in Others, or dragons comes back to bite him), but apart from that, yes, Tyrion killing Tywin works: all the schemes in the world don't mean anything when the guy you've maltreated all his life decides to snap. It's actually quite Saruman/Grima.

[The Marquis de Leech]

LoTR was a story about decent people standing up to an evil they had little hope of defeating by main strength. It's about maintaining hope when there is no cause for hope.

That's where things get interesting. In Norse myth, hope is the saliva that drips from the mouth of Fenrir the wolf (the one that will kill Odin at Ragnarok). In what Tolkien termed the Northern Theory of Courage, he characterised the "potent and terrible solution" as the idea that winning and losing doesn't determine if you're right or wrong - true courage is fighting on when there is no hope (from a Norse viewpoint, the world is going to end along with the gods, but the gods and heroes fight on anyway because defeat is no refutation). Tolkien's issue was how to balance such an intensely pessimistic concept with Christian faith. His solution was the eucatastrophe: the idea that some sliver of divine providence will slip into the story, utterly beyond hope.

The destruction of the Ring is an illustration of this: Frodo and Sam by the end are simply beyond hope and beyond endurance. Nor can they destroy the Ring by themselves. It takes the eucatastrophe of Gollum's fall to save the world.