Redemptive Themes: Religious Imagery in Tolkien

Ladymage

Ladymage

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I apologize if there exists a similar thread, but this is a topic that interests me. I wrote a twelve page paper on the redemptive themes of LotR and the Hobbit, specifically focusing on the characters of Frodo and Galadriel.

What is some of the most powerful religious imagery that you have noticed in his work?
 
Welcome!

Have you seen the discussion in pages 196-204 of Tom Shippey's Road to Middle-earth (I'm citing the paperback edition that came out a dozen or so years ago)? Thoughtful and sound material there.
 
Ladymage, Welcome!

Redemptive Themes: Religious Imagery in Tolkien.

Well, that is not a light subject at all.

Galadriel is not a character that I've considered in this light before. If you could share your thoughts I'd appreciate it.

For me, I find three types of Christ in The Lord of the Rings... Prophet, Priest, and King. These are represented by Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo. Gandalf brings hope to the dejected. He brings light to those in the dark. He encourages those who want to quit. For me, Gandalf fulfills the Messianic role of Prophet. He brings the good word. He brings hope. He brings light and encouragement. He reminds the people of what is right and he strengthens their morale to then do what is right.

Frodo represents the second of Jesus' roles, the Priest. A priest serves as an intermediary between man and God. In the Old Testament, the chief function of the priest was to make sure the sacrifices for sins and the offerings to God were done properly. The priest was the one who helped the people be in a correct relationship with God. Frodo accomplished this by volunteering to take the Ring (sin) from the Shire (this saved the Hobbits). Later Frodo volunteered to take the Ring to Mount Doom (and save all of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth). Of course, Frodo did not make it and the analogy breaks down.

But Frodo, by taking the burden of the Ring upon himself and enduring the evil blade of the Nazgul, the venom of Shelob and the teeth of Gollum became what the prophet Isaiah called the "suffering servant." He was a young, an innocent and good hobbit who undertook the quest to destroy the embodiment of evil... and he suffered for it. He saved the world (with help)... be he was not able to enjoy it. The hobbits gave their praise to Merry, Pippin, and Sam. They sort of put up with Frodo.

The most obvious of the three is Aragorn. The title of the third book, The Return of the King, says it all. Society in Middle-earth had broken down by the time of Aragorn. Orcs, Trolls, brigands, and wargs wandered the world. Even in Gondor (bastion of culture and order), they were ruled by a man in the throes of great depression. Gondor was beset by enemies. Aragorn defeated their enemies in battle and gave peace to the kingdom. Aragorn healed the gravely sick. (He called himself the Renewer, Envinyatar.) He dispensed justice to Beregond, Faramir, and many others. He showed mercy to those who sought it. Without a King of Gondor, Middle-earth withered. With a restored King, Gondor drove the orcs and trolls from Ithilien and Mordor. With a restored King of Gondor, the Haradrim and the Easterlings were driven back and then made vassals. With a restored King of Gondor, the Kingdom of Arnor was renewed. In short, justice and peace were established. This is what we are promised with the return of Christ.

Yes, all three analogies break down at some point. Gandalf was an angel, not a man. Frodo was unable to let go of the Ring of his own accord. Aragorn's peace and justice did not encompass all of Middle-earth.

I feel these themes were definitely intended by Tolkien though the imagery is not always overt. Obvious examples include Ioreth's comments in the Houses of Healing, "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer"; Gandalf's return from the dead; Aragorn's journey along the Paths of the Dead (he traveled to the underworld of Ghosts and emerged as their king, i.e. he figuratively died and came back); Boromir's and Denethor's doubt that anyone noble could come from Arnor...
 
Hello Ladymage,

This is a topic that’s very close to my heart as well.
I wonder if you have come across the lectures given by Stephan Hoeller and Lance Owens about Tolkien?
They both have a gnostic take on the subject, but I think they are well worth listening to even if you aren’t particularly interested in gnosticism.

I cannot yet post links because I just registered today, but they shouldn’t be hard to find: go to “gnosis dot org”, the tab labelled “web lectures” and scroll down until you find “Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings” and below that “JRR Tolkien: an imaginative life”.

To answer your question: I think there are many very powerful images in Tolkien’s work. However, one might differ about the meaning of the term “religious imagery”: would that be analogues of themes found in the Christian (or other) canon or a certain transcendental or even salvific quality that the stories might have?

I have never really looked for the first, but I suppose they are in there, possibly plenty even, as Tolkien was a devote Catholic himself.

But I find the other kind infinitely more interesting, and I have found that quality is even more pronounced in some of his lesser known work, especially in “Smith of Wootton-Major” and in “Mythopoeia”, the poem he wrote to CS Lewis.
 
Whilst I accept that Gollum was, if you like, struggling with his sinfulness, I don't accept that he was at last redeemed in the cracks of doom.
His last act was to steal the ring by biting off Frodo's finger and then to fall over.

I suppose he was the agent of Frodo's redemption, and therefore perhaps a servant of Eru's purpose. So if we're going for Christian correspondence that would presumably make him a sort of Judas Iscariot figure.
 
I may be wrong and I am sure some of our more learned Tolkien readers can correct me but I always saw the Orcs as key to Tolkiens redemptive themes. The Orcs being beyond the redemption of Men and Elves and only capable of redemption by Eru, this is taking the corrupted elves interpretation. My understanding was that Tolkien regretted having irredeemable evil in LotR.

Interesting points above so I just waned to add my thoughts into the blender.
 
I'm not so sure.
Tolkien himself believed in an absolute good and an absolute evil. As many have observed, that's not only a pretty old-fashioned view, it's not a realistic one. But I do think he saw some people and characters with "internal struggles", like Gollum. Another fascinating half-and-half character is Denethor - blinded by "love" of his elder son.
 
Surely the idea of redemption implies an absolute good to which to be redeemed, and presumably an absolute evil, which would simply to be defined as a complete rejection of that absolute good.
And therefore everyone in the story is an example of someone struggling with their evil, and so in need of (if not necessarily in search of) that redemption.

If we assume that Eru is the embodiment of the absolute good, then even Morgoth is in the needy group. During the song, Eru predicts that before the end even he will come to understand that every act (or note) that Melkor makes has its ultimate beginning in Eru.
There is, therefore, no actual embodiment of absolute evil (other than perhaps the void itsself, in which case perhaps Ungoliant is more an embodiment of it than Melkor.)

Now I, like many of us here, am talking about the connection between Tolkien imagery and Christianity, largely because its the one I know, but I would think that the same thing could be applied to many religions.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
I'm not so sure.
Tolkien himself believed in an absolute good and an absolute evil. As many have observed, that's not only a pretty old-fashioned view, it's not a realistic one. But I do think he saw some people and characters with "internal struggles", like Gollum. Another fascinating half-and-half character is Denethor - blinded by "love" of his elder son.
Click to expand...

I probably didn't parse myself very well - what I meant to say was that Tolkien regretted having irredeemable agents, essentially type casting the Orc race so that all Orcs are fundamentally evil. My understanding was that Tolkien regretted creating an evil "race" per se, not that he didn't believe in moral certainty but that he regretted ascribing that moral certainty on the basis that you happened to have been born an Orc.

I could be wrong and a lot of this is remembered from essays I read many years ago when on a big Tolkien kick. :) I remember reading a lot about Beowulf at the time :)
 
Stephen Palmer said:
If you invent an absolute good, you have to have an absolute evil too.
Click to expand...

Hmm, not sure about that. If we take ourselves back to 1967 and posit that absolute good = some kind of cosmic love, then you could have various degrees of not-love, but you wouldn't have to have a force of absolute hatred/loathing/etc. Maybe Tolkien came to think the same. He was alive just long enough to stick flowers in his hair.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
I just don't see how religious people could've had one without the other.
Click to expand...

If you count Buddhism as a religion (most would, I think, but some don't), that doesn't IIRC have any concept of absolute evil. I think the same might be true of Hinduism too, though I'm not sure.

I don't want to get OT with this (nor go anywhere near a discussion of the merits of religion of any type, which is a definite non-no here), so I'll just say that Tolkien was unlikely to have been influenced by either of those. :D

I wonder, though, if he thought Melkor was potentially redeemable?
 
HareBrain said:
I wonder, though, if he thought Melkor was potentially redeemable?
Click to expand...

For all his undoubted brilliance, and gifts for imagination, language and story-telling, Tolkien was morally limited to what was around him at the time, which, and I'm being generous, was simplistic. Basically, black and white. So, I don't think Melkor is remotely redeemable, for the same reason Satan is not. Yet Tolkien transcended his moral limitations in one way, you could say, by creating characters like Gollum, Denethor, Boromir and a few others. In fact, given that he is regularly slagged off for not having any real women in his work (a true and relevant comment), he did at least give us a terrific selection of male stereotypes for men to avoid.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
So, I don't think Melkor is remotely redeemable, for the same reason Satan is not.
Click to expand...

From a bit of Googling, the only reason Satan isn't redeemable is basically "because". I guess (and even suspect) that Tolkien would apply the same (lack of) logic to Melkor: he isn't redeemable because it's Iluvatar's will that he isn't. But that's the only reason I can see: arbitrary divine power. After all, if a being isn't evil in the beginning (as Gandalf says of Sauron, and as was also true of Melkor) why couldn't that being change back to how they started?

I wonder if a more modern writer, but who had started with a similar set-up, would write the redemption of a "force of pure evil". Has anyone?
 
Not that I'm aware of although I've toyed with the idea a few times. You can find a few sympathetic treatments of the devil, but relatively few where the MC is on the other side to begin with.

To think of a few more modern authors who've gone for a similar set-up

Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara - Very much like Tolkien went

David Eddings - No. Redeems the humans following the evil god in one series, and occasionally the evil gods are offered a chance to surrender, but its never done all that seriously.

Robert Jordan - No. The Dark One is an integral part of the universe. His creations are never shown as having the potential for redemption. His human followers are, but with a couple of exceptions, most are simply too selfish and power-blind to go there.

Joe Abercrombie - Sets it up but goes off in a very different direction.

I suppose the closest you get is the Invisibles, where Grant Morrison starts with a dualistic war, but ends up admitting a certain amount of similarity between the two sides and ends up advocating conversion of the opposite side rather than 'military' defeat.

Pratchett vaguely wanders near the territory occasionally, mainly in the Witches' books and Small Gods, but only in a fuzzy way and without much redemption. Soupcons, but there we go.

I could easily be missing something of course. But I think the modern caution about the idea of absolute evil lends itself more to stories where everyone is a little bad and a little good, rather than stories where good is good and bad is bad, but redemption and fall are possible, even for abstract deities. Which is something of a shame to me.

edit: Actually, Pratchett might get closest in The Truth.
 
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