[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by alatar

Never saw Minas Morgul as Hell - surely a dreadful place, but if there were a Hell in the story, then I think that it would be located somewhat closer to Barad Dur.

Well, heck, alatar, hell is an expansive place. Dante's has several levels and Milton's has a capital city (Pandemonium).

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Are you certain that it's Tolkien allegorizing and not you? Is there somewhere in Tolkien's Letters that he refers to Minas Morgul or Mordor as his depiction of hell? The only adjective Tolkien uses for the vale of Minas Morgul in the Letters, that I could find, was "dreadful". I'll give you that MM is hellish, but that's as far as I can go.

I admit that I cannot come at this from the same space as some of you (I almost said "objectivity" instead of "space", but who are we kidding? None of us are really objective about this topic), because I was born in, raised in, and still practice, the same faith as Tolkien; so some things are apparently "home" to me that are alien to other readers.

That said, I find it interesting that you admitted that Tolkien's vision of Minas Morgul seemed to have come from his experience in WW1; in my recent reading of the chapter, I had the same thought. So did you cognate Minas Morgul as hell in your very first reading, Bêthberry? Did others of you? If you did, then this section did function for you as a disenchanting emblem of religion. I suspect that Tolkien had no such intention, but wrote this out of who he was just as much as every other part of LotR.

Well, I can certainly see why you did not participate in Fordim's Canonicity thread, lmp. My point here was to consider Tolkien's comment and relate it to his work rather than to Lewis's as is often done. For much of LotR, I think Tolkien handles his allusions to his faith very much in keeping with his avowed intention. For me, he creates a secondary world of great awe and splendor, with the delight being that his allusions ask for readers such as yourself and myself to intuit that fuller meaning. I think this is a crucial aspect of Tolkien's art, that he choose deliberately to veil some things. In doing so, he places certain demands on his readers. He expects them to become very active readers, seeking out patterns, consistencies, putting things together. To my mind, he is an author who holds out greater rewards for readers who are creative rather than passive.

To that end, this chapter of the Cross Roads disappointed me because it destroyed that secondary world. The imagery, symbols, descriptions, became too obvious. Do I discount Tolkien as a superb writer for that? Hardly. I cannot think of one writer who does not at times fall from the hight of his or her talent. Authors are, after all, human, and humans are on this long defeat.

Like you, I have recently been reading about Tolkien's World War I experiences and that likely helped me on this reading place some of the characteristics of the felt experience here. Yet I don't think they are intended to suggest that experience, to lead readers to say, yes, this was what it was like in the trenches. The experience supplied "information" which, together with Tolkien's literary and religious experience, went into the cauldron here to describe this long march.

Why did I refer these descriptions to Hell? Because--and this was even as a child--I understand the evil in LotR as an absence of goodness, a complete and utter separation from those things which Galadriel, Aragorn, Elrond, Frodo, Sam stand for. Anyone who grew up reading Victorian literature as I did knows Tophet and Moloch's Valley of Hinnon, and Milton and Dante too. The cultural milieu is inescapable--even if one wanted to. While the Catholic Encyclopedia discusses hell as a place of punishment for those who have chosen to reject God, Pope John Paul II discussed hell more in terms of estrangement from God. It is this concept which informs my reading. That it differs from yours should not be the grounds for innuendo about the lack of integrity in other readings.

Originally Posted by davem

Isn't this simply the nature of Faerie - both good & evil are incarnate in that world rather than simply moral concepts. LotR isn't a 'realistic' novel, but a fairy story - which is why its so relevant (& why so many 'realistic' novels are not).

I clearly was not clear in my explanation! My point here was not to deny the role of good and evil in Faerie but to suggest that, for me, because of the way this chapter is written (and came to be written) this particular part of LotR destroyed the secondary world for me by bringing the references from the primary world too directly to mind. I don't have this response to other chapters we have already discussed; I don't object to good and evil in Lothlorien or Moria. My point is I guess an aesthetic one rather than a narrative one. This is why I found Son of Númenor's distinction between evangelical and eucatastrophic so interesting. SoNo generated an explanation from Tolkien's own ideas. And it was that creativity which prompted my reply here.

EDIT: cross posted with SpM and Lal!