In addition to the crosses that we each carry in our daily lives, the news reports an endless avalanche of negativity: talk of nuclear war, diseases, accidents, failing economies, and so on. It’s easy to be swept by this barrage toward the precipice of discouragement.
A Story of Hope
J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Return of the King,” the final story of the epic fantasy trilogy “The Lord of the Rings,” tackles the darkness head-on, but it doesn’t come to a dark conclusion. It’s a story of hope—hope against all the evidence to the contrary, hope against all odds. At moments when all seems lost, this is a tale to turn to.
Here, Tolkien takes his characters into the heart of darkness. The two hobbits, Frodo and Sam, who have been chosen to destroy the essence of evil, the One Ring, which carries within it the power to enslave all the world to the Dark Lord Sauron, must travel into Sauron’s own kingdom of night, Mordor. There, they must climb the volcanic Mount Doom and cast the ring into its flame—the one place it can be destroyed. Meanwhile, their friends, such as the rightful Gondor king, Aragorn, must fight a losing battle to stave off the dark lord’s hordes of goblin-like orcs from overrunning the free lands.
In “The Return of the King,” Frodo and Sam enter the barren, hellish, ash-enshrouded landscape of Mordor. Days grow shorter under the dark shadow of that evil place. The strength of Frodo, the ringbearer, wanes. And he and Sam must try to cross a valley filled with orcs and worse creatures in order to reach the mountain. At one point during the grueling, hopeless journey through the shadowlands, Sam looks up at the sky and sees something.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.”
Part of the paradox of this beautiful passage—and maybe of hope itself—is that it involves a kind of self-forgetfulness. When Sam realizes that there are larger forces at work, that there is an untouchable beauty, he is at peace, even knowing he may never see it again. He forgets himself. Knowing that the star continues to burn somewhere overhead is enough.
Outside Mordor, the forces of good are terribly outnumbered by the forces of evil. With time running out, Aragorn and his companions decide to attempt one last-ditch effort to give Frodo the chance he needs to destroy the ring. Aragorn and his men march on to the Black Gate of Mordor itself. They are only a small, battered army, facing the full might of Sauron’s troops and the unleashing of his wrath. For most of the book—for most of the trilogy—the situation seems quite hopeless. Doom hangs heavy in the sky, overshadowing everything. But this is not the end.
An Immutable Law
“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive.’ In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and insofar is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. ... In such stories when the sudden ‘turn’ comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.”
The understanding and experience of the eucatastrophe is not just useful to us. I propose that it is essential. Life teaches us enough about catastrophe on its own, but we need literature to teach us about eucatastrophe, for such moments of the unexpected happy turn are usually reserved for those who persevere, who hope in the triumph of goodness—evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Without a vision of a victory against all odds—such as literature can provide—we are all too likely to lay down, admit defeat, and let the shadow envelop us. And for those who do so, there is no “sudden joyous turn.” The eucatastrophe of Tolkien is generally possible only through dauntless perseverance, grounded in a kind of certainty in the possibility of miracles.
I am more often moved to tears by tales like this, tales of unexpected hope, of unaccountable victory, than I am of tales of defeat and sorrow. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle—and not lose it.” Literature offers us a glimpse of victory in defeat, of hope and courage overcoming the darkest hour, and that can touch us more deeply than any suffering.
I am convinced that the unexpected happy ending is no mere comforting illusion, but that literature such as “The Return of the King” expresses some immutable law of the universe, some fundamental, mysterious decree of existence, that evil is not, in the final analysis, victorious. And that is why stories like Tolkien’s resonate so deeply with us.
Somewhere, well beyond your sight and mine, the stars still shine. And they will go on shining whether or not you and I ever see them again and no matter how much evil tries to blot them out. We grope about in the darkness, but every night gives way to morning. “In the end, the Shadow [is a] ... passing thing.”
