Today is Tolkien Day – the day the Ring of Power was destroyed in the Crack of Doom, according to The Return of the King. It became New Year’s Day for the people of Middle Earth, and it’s no coincidence that it’s the Festival of the Annunciation in the western Christian calendar.
Tolkien was recorded reading excerpts from his work by friend George Sayer in 1952. Somebody has mixed his voice with music and images from the Peter Jackson movie to create this video. Works pretty well, I think. I still get the old thrill when I listen.
This is why I decided I wanted to write epic fantasy nearly 60 years ago, my friends.
Tolkien is reported to have had a speech impediment – he bit through his tongue in his youth and is said to have slurred his speech, and his tendency to talk fast did nothing to help it. But when he was lecturing he sounded like this. Clear-voiced like Theoden.
And he sang to them, now in the elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.
I’ve gotten through the hardest part. The ring is destroyed, Sauron is fallen; his followers are scattered and defeated. The great evil has passed, and the world begins to heal under the wise power of the King and the White Wizard.
Tolkien’s essay on Fairy Stories emphasizes the importance of the Eucatastrophe – the surprising happy ending. The eucatastrophe doesn’t work unless the dramatic tension is intense. All must seem lost. Any hope that remains must be no hope at all. “We must do without hope,” as one of the characters says. Only after the good side has lost hope and continues fighting merely out of a stubborn determination to die on the right side, if the right must fall – only then can you have a real eucatastrophe.
It seems to me that most writers – and I am certainly one of them – are a little shy about happy endings. We know how to pile up the obstacles; we know how to frustrate our heroes and test them past the point of despair. But when – beyond all expectation – they triumph in the end, we’re not sure what to do with the victory. Mustn’t do an end zone dance, after all.
Tolkien does an end zone dance. He knows that the drama doesn’t exist for its own sake. It exists for the sake of the happy ending, just as the saga of humanity itself exists only for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom. The Return of the King should be read side by side with the Book of Revelation.
He describes in loving detail how friends are reunited, the wounded are healed, the land is cleansed, the pollution is washed away, and justice is restored. He understands that after the sufferings his characters (and the reader, vicariously) have endured, they well deserve a reward.
I need to bear this in mind as I work on my latest Erling book. My current story actually involves a happy ending with historical warrant. I need to be less shy about rejoicing and vindication.
Like most modern people, I know more about depression than rejoicing. More about ambivalence than victory. I need to look to the Word of God to guide me in subcreation.
It’s a moving scene in the book, and moving in the movie too – the scene with the “healing hands of the king.”
“For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.’
Then Aragorn exercises his healing arts on Eowyn and Merry and Faramir. It’s beautiful in itself, and an evocative image of Christ as King and Healer. Lovely.
I don’t know where Tolkien first came across the idea of the king having healing hands, but I’m pretty sure I know one place where he read about it – Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla. But in Snorri it’s a far darker story. Snorri generally shows conventional reverence for Olaf Haraldsson as the patron saint of Norway. But his treatment can be ambivalent, and it’s at this point in Olaf’s saga, not long before his exile to Russia, that Olaf loses the sympathy of a lot of readers. Historically, it certain lost him some allies.
The situation is this: Thorir Olvesson, a young man with important family connections, is getting married, and King Olaf and his entourage are invited. The hospitality is splendid. Food and drink are plentiful, and everyone is having a good time. But one of Olaf’s men whispers to him that Thorir, the bridegroom, has been bribed by King Canute of England/Denmark to murder the king.
From Lee Hollander’s translation:
When the king sat at table and the men had drunk for a while and were very merry, while Thorir went about, serving the people, the king had Thorir called before him. He came up to the king’s table and rested his elbows on it.
“How old a man are you, Thorir?” asked the king.
“I am eighteen years old,” he replied.
The king said, “A big man you are for your age, Thorir, and a fine fellow.” Then the king put his hand around Thorir’s right arm and stroked it above the elbow.
Thorir, said, “Gently, sire! I have a boil on my arm.” The king held on to his arm and felt something hard underneath.
The king said, “Haven’t you heard that I am a healer? Let me see that boil.” Then Thorir saw that it would not do to conceal it any longer and took off the ring and showed it to the king. The king asked whether it was a gift from King Knut. Thorir said he would not deny it.
The king had Thorir seized and put in chains. Then Kalf [Arnesson] came forward and asked for mercy, offering money for him. Many supported him and offered compensation. The king was so furious that no one dared to address him. He declared that Thorir was to have the same sentence [of death] which Thorir had intended for him, and had him killed afterwards. But that deed created the greatest ill-will….
Reading impressions: I was struck, as most readers will forever be now, I suppose, by the differences between the movies and the books. I know this, and yet it always sort of surprises me. The impression I always get from the movies (and of course it’s much easier to watch the movies than read the trilogy) is that the movies are pretty faithful, except for a few obvious changes. The role of Arwen is the most famous. The omission of Tom Bombadil is another. And we could go on and on, in orders of relative importance.
But in fact, the movies are very different from the books. The general plot lines are largely the same, though the order of presentation has often been shuffled. But there are actually few scenes in the films that are presented substantially as Tolkien described them. Compression and economy have had their effects everywhere. Most of the dialogue is new, too. We notice the direct quotations when they come, and quote them in Facebook memes. But they’re actually relatively rare. Most of the dialogue is new – streamlined paraphrases of Tolkien’s general sense.
Every fan of the movies should read the books at least once.
Of course, they won’t.
Looking at the story through the eyes of a Viking buff, one thing struck me in my recent reading. When Denethor commands that Faramir be carried into the kings’ tombs, the entrance is described like this:
Turning westward they came at length to a door in the rearward wall of the sixth circle. Fen Hollen it was called, for it was kept ever shut save at times of funeral, and only the Lord of the City might use that way, or those who bore the token of the tombs and tended the houses of the dead.
In other words, bodies were not carried in through the main entrance, but through a separate, smaller, door. I’m probably reaching, but this reminded me of a Norse custom known from the sagas. We’re told that when someone died in a house, the corpse was not carried out through the main door. Instead a hole was broken into a side wall, and the corpse carried out that way. Then the hole would be repaired. The idea was that if the dead person were to “walk again,” they would try to get back in the way they left, and be unable to find that door. This would protect the residents.
The two things are different, in that one involves carrying corpses in, and the other involved carrying them out. Still, I thought it might have been in the back of the Professor’s mind.
I’ve finished the narrative of The Return of the King (I’m going on to the appendices now, because, hey, they’re there). Here are a few things that struck me.
‘There is no real going back,’ [said Frodo]. ‘Though I may come to the Shire it will not seem the same, for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’
There’s one of the clearest examples of the effect of the “Great War” on Tolkien’s narrative. Surely something like that was the experience of every combat soldier going home – the strangeness of returning to a familiar place, but finding you somehow don’t fit anymore. The average veteran accustoms himself to it after a while, but (as I am told) the wounds never entirely heal. One always feels something of an outsider, the carrier of a dark secret. Continue reading Blogging through LOTR: The Return of the King→
