The Truth Beyond Memory - J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"

National Review, Dec 31, 2001 by John J. Miller

Take the word "orc," the name given to a nasty race of goblin-like monsters. It appears in Beowulf as "orc-neas." Rendered into modern English from Beowulf's Old English (a language almost as foreign to our ears as German), it means something like "demon-corpse," or perhaps "zombie." But the truth is that even scholars of Tolkien's caliber aren't sure of its precise definition or etymology-leaving open the delightful idea that there's far more to its meaning and background than what is dreamt of in our philosophy.

One of the most famous questions scholars have asked about Beowulf is whether it's a Christian poem; it seems to have been written by a Christian, but it deals with a pagan society. Likewise, there is no mention of God or even religion in Middle Earth. Yet Tolkien considered the book a reflection of his own faith. "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision," wrote Tolkien in 1953. "The religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." There are many examples of this, though readers frequently overlook them. A close examination of the appendices (there are six, plus indexes and maps) reveals a detail that goes unmentioned in the main narrative: The nine companions who comprise "the fellowship of the ring" begin their fateful mission on December 25 (Christmas), and their story climaxes exactly three months later, on March 25 (in the traditional English calendar, the date of the Fall of Man, the Annunciation, and the Crucifixion). Too much can be read into all this-Tolkien insisted that his book was not an allegory-but it does carry at least a limited meaning. Tom Shippey, Tolkien's finest interpreter, calls it "a kind of signature, a personal mark of piety."

The Lord of the Rings, then, is not an explicitly Christian work, but it is entirely consistent with Christianity. This is an essential element for Tolkien. As Joseph Pearce points out in his literary biography of Tolkien, "[his] Catholicism was not an opinion to which one subscribed but a reality to which one submitted." There is nothing in what he wrote that contradicts Christian belief. Middle Earth is un- Christian only in the sense that everything coming before Christ is un- Christian.

Tolkien does more than strive to avoid contradiction, however; he filled The Lord of the Rings with patchy foreshadowings of a Christian truth that had not yet revealed itself in fullness. Early on, when Frodo says he wishes someone would kill Gollum, a pitiful beast who haunts Tolkien's heroes, Gandalf objects. "Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it," he says. "My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end." Indeed Gollum does, and he contributes to a medley of themes about knowledge, salvation, and eternity.