Tolkien’s hymn to humility and mercy

By Andrea Monda

Seventy years ago, in January or February 1956, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a letter to Michael Straight, editor of New Republic, in which he mentioned a “ferocious” letter he had received some time before. His correspondent had argued that Frodo, the protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, should have been executed as a traitor, not praised.  “The ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’,” Tolkien replied, “is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury.”

Now, seventy years later, as copyrights expire and the fear of spoilers fades, we can speak freely about the novel’s most famous twist: it is not the noble Frodo who casts the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, but Gollum—the “villain”, the most horrifying and wretched character of the story. This is part of what makes Tolkien’s work a masterpiece, not just a fantasy tale: the hero fails. Frodo, a humble hobbit, small and fragile, is not a hero in the traditional sense. He is a “traitor,” a man, or halfling, who is fragile, who stumbles and falls.

It is right to speak of this today, March 25, which is the day on which, in the novel, the Ring is cast into the fire by Gollum. With the destruction of the Ring, the reign of Sauron, the powerful and dark Lord of Middle-earth, comes to an end. This is a significant date: on March 25, the Catholic Church celebrates the Annunciation, that “yes” from Mary, the humble girl from Nazareth, which allowed the overturning of history and the victory of Christ, her son, over evil and the Evil One.

It is precisely Mary, a small “hobbit” of Galilee, who sings the hymn Magnificat, which contains in one verse the moral of Tolkien’s novel: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). The entire novel, dominated by the figure of the hobbits, the halflings, is imbued with this bittersweet flavour of Gospel paradox: the great powers reveal themselves to be powerless, and the weak reveal themselves as the true victors, precisely in their inadequacy, in their defeat. The Ring of Power, a “jealous treasure” that arouses everyone’s desires, is “deactivated”; what resolves the story positively is not power but “deponence” in the literal sense. The protagonists, united in the Fellowship (which is the opposite of an elite), lay down their arms, destroy the most powerful device, and break the chain of endless wars, the spell of power, the lust for domination.

The strongest or the most arrogant do not win, but the humble—one might say the humorists, the ones capable of laughing at themselves and serving not their own ego and desires, but a greater design, a mission which they do not even fully understand. This is a mission that succeeds because it is carried out not by great heroes, but by a ragtag company, a caravan of pilgrims rather than a selection of ruthless and efficient soldiers, an open, inclusive company, as one might say today, where people who differ in every respect (ethnicity, talent, lineage, origin, and above all desire) find themselves walking together, collaborating, discovering that the other is much more similar and, in general, much “more” than they appeared at the outset. Difference is richness, contamination is wisdom, mixing is the path that leads to victory. The other, therefore, is precious, decisive. Not only the other, but also the enemy, as in the case of Gollum, or even the Balrog. The most powerful line in the novel in this sense is the one spoken by the wizard Gandalf when he recalls his battle with the monstrous creature: “In that despair, my enemy was my only hope”.

The entire novel develops along the thread of the paradox dear to the author, a Catholic, who in his 1956 letter to the reader emphasizes that “the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury.” This is the heart of the novel, which from this point of view constitutes a hymn to mercy. Pity and forgiveness are the true “weapons” that allow the victory of Good; Tolkien and the character of Gandalf will repeat this several times, the former in his letters, the latter in the novel.

Much more than a fantasy novel, Tolkien’s masterpiece has for over seventy years helped shape the imagination of entire generations, touching all fields of human activity. And it would truly be desirable for politics to be healthily influenced by the power of Tolkien’s narrative. It would be beautiful if politics could learn the wisdom of the hobbits, capable of “deflating” the muscular vision of the struggle for power so in vogue today. Equally, we should learn the wisdom of Gandalf in bringing together those who are different and convincing them to “lay down” their arms, taking the path of humility rather than arrogance.

In today’s world, polarized and torn by conflicts between opposing extremisms, how much we need to rediscover the beauty of mediation, to inhabit “Middle-earth,” reconciling conflicting parties and making the value of the “halfling” prevail over the rhetoric of the superman. It would be beautiful if we could draw inspiration from Tolkien’s imagination, and adopt its language too: for example, one could speak of “Middle-earth,” to emphasize the importance of mediation and avoid the terrible spell of purity, or recover the symbol of athelas, the “king’s leaf” with therapeutic power. The king as healer, a man of healing: this is a beautiful image of a power that tends the wounds and pains of the people, accompanying them in the trials of life. ‘To accompany’ is the right verb, and it already emerges from the title of the first book of Tolkien’s trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, and it is the right verb for a politics that is able to revisit the very concept of leadership: not to lead, control, and “impose” its power from above, but precisely to be “in the midst” of the people, becoming a traveling companion of the common man, with a gaze of mercy, because, in the end, we are all halflings who need the other to reach fulfillment. Politics today, more than ever, has need of this: passionate readers of Tolkien and his grand, paradoxical works.

You can read the original Italian-language version of this article in L’Osservatore Romano.