A Joy That Brings Tears: The Boons and Blessings of Eucatastrophe

A eucatastrophe involves a difficult set of circumstances and an unexpected joyful resolution. Myriammunoz/Shutterstock

Eucatastrophe.

After I recently stumbled onto that five-syllable mouthful, I used the word in conversation with six friends and family members, all of whom are readers and well-educated and none of whom had ever heard of a eucatastrophe (pronounced you-catastrophe). All of them were well aware of the definition of catastrophe, some personal or public event causing great damage or a sudden disaster, which can range in scope from a Category 5 hurricane to 4-year-old Johnny playing Giotto and making the living room wall a magic marker fresco.

But eucatastrophe? Like me, no one had the faintest idea.

Origin and Definition

J.R.R. Tolkien coined this word in the mid-1940s before writing his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, adding “eu”—Greek for good—to catastrophe. This neologism appears in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” and in a letter to his son Christopher. In the essay, Tolkien defines eucatastrophe as “the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn.’”

To Christopher, he wrote, “I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears. ... And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story.”

In short, a eucatastrophe is a calamity that unexpectedly ends in joy.

Two Famous Eucatastrophes

On Dec. 22, 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky faced death by firing squad, sentenced to die for antigovernment activities. At the last minute, a messenger arrived bearing a reprieve for the prisoners, and the writer of such later novels as “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Crime and Punishment” was instead sent to a Siberian work camp for four years. Although the reprieve was arranged in advance, with the firing squad scenario meant only to terrify the prisoners, Dostoevsky didn’t know of that plan.

On returning to his cell, he wrote to his brother about his brush with death and his radical new embrace of life: “When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul—then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness!”

In 1935, after a crucial business venture in Akron, Ohio, fell apart, recovering alcoholic Bill Wilson was tempted to begin drinking again. Desperate to talk to a fellow alcoholic, he was eventually put in touch with Dr. Robert Smith. The two men spent five hours together, formed a friendship, and “Dr. Bob” soon gave up drinking himself. For both men, their long calamitous affair with the bottle came to an end, and they became the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, a group that has since given millions of people a chance at sobriety.

Both these stories are modern-day fairy tales, examples of crises with happy endings.

Eucatastrophe for the Rest of Us

Many of us, I suspect, have met with a eucatastrophe, often without even knowing it. Some horrible personal disaster slams into us, and we suffer the consequences, but then suddenly fate or providence takes a hand, and we are rescued. Only much later do we look back at the wreckage we’ve escaped and think with gratitude about the turn of events that delivered us from our misery.

One man I know, for instance, married while in college, was deserted two years later by his wife, and felt himself unutterably crushed. Without two more years, however, he met the true love of his life, a woman who adored him and would be the mother of his children. Only much later did he realize that the demolition of his first marriage had cleared the way for true happiness.

At another time in my life, a man sentenced to prison for burglary and drug possession joined my adult basic education classes, telling me that prison was his wake-up call. Mike earned his GED, was eventually released, rejoined his wife and children, and became a welder. When I last saw him, he was wearing a smile as big as the moon. That stint behind bars had given him a whole new outlook on his life and his priorities.

So if you’ve ever come to the end of your rope and suddenly some mysterious act of grace pulls you from the abyss, that’s eucatastrophe. It’s the nightmare with the happy ending, the horrible tragedy in which some twist of providence transforms pain and suffering into joy.

Keeping Watch

By its very definition, eucatastrophe can’t be predicted or foreseen. Nor by that same definition can we work to make it happen. But we can prepare for it in two ways: hope and possibility.

Let’s say that your spouse dies unexpectedly, leaving you with two children. Suddenly, you’re facing a future you’ve never considered. If you’re fortunate, you get some help from family and friends: money, offers to watch the children, and some meals delivered to your home. But when the kids are asleep for the night and you’re lying alone in your bed in the darkness, the future can seem awfully lonely and bleak, and in some ways, truly and terribly unimaginable. The children force you to keep up a brave front and to keep moving forward—or staggering forward—but this catastrophe seems an unmitigated disaster.

This is precisely when we have to keep hope alive and breathing. Despair is a killer. Hidden inside of us, often unremarked, that deadly disease eats away at our dreams and our longings. Engraved above the portals of Hell in Dante’s “Inferno” is “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Give way to despair, and you are in hell. Cling to hope above all else.

Second, we must be open to the possibility of Tolkien’s “sudden happy turn,” prepared to recognize and welcome eucatastrophe should it appear. When a door opens, we must be ready to walk through it. Call it mindfulness, alertness, concentration: call it what you will, but to recognize eucatastrophe should it come our way requires keeping our eyes wide open and our minds sharp.

The Way Things Work

From Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” come these lines:

From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.”

Whether by our own valiant efforts or by the sudden appearance of eucatastrophe, or by a combination of both, we must believe that from the ashes of calamity, a fire can be woken, for it is belief that will breathe life onto the embers and feed those flames. This hope and possibility of renewal is good and natural, for, as Tolkien remarked, “This is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.”