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Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age
. . . . Middle-earth seems to be profoundly pagan and fatalistic at the core. (There, I've said it!) The overwhelming sense of evil that hangs at the center of the universe goes beyond the depiction of evil in mainline Christian theology. There is simply no escaping it. If evil doesn't get you today, it's going to get you tomorrow! In that sense, Frodo's fate was a given, and the Sea Bell makes a lot of sense.
Yes, I know about original sin and such, but this is a situation where the very fabric of Arda has been contaminated by Morgoth. That didn't happen in the bible. According to Tolkien, we are all living in Morgoth's world, since our world is supposedly a continuation of Middle-earth. Yet I don't think most orthodox Christians would say that Earth belongs to Satan. In Middle-earth, you can literally say that: Eru is barely seen and the Valar only stick their noses in occasionally. Morgoth and Sauron were a much more constant presence.
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Somebody out there help me! I don't care how many allusions, images, and symbols that Tolkien "stole" from the bible. How can Middle-earth and the Legendarium possibly be Christian if so much pessimism and fatalism stand at its very core? Maybe Tolkien felt and sensed this ambivalence and, realizing the truly pagan world he'd created despite all the biblical imports, felt compelled to write the Athrabeth in his relative old age. Unlike Davem and Imp, I love those later writings. I also love the old Northern pessimism that stood at the heart of the original writings. So call me contradictory! But I feel that two-way tug in my own heart as well---and I'm not phrasing that in terms of Christian doctrine but a general way of looking at our existence--the hopeful and the not so hopeful, the anguished response versus the refusal to give in.
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Amazing! Just this morning I was chatting with Estelyn saying I had another contribution to make to this thread and you have hit on it,
Child.
As you say, Norse mythology was exceptionally pessimistic. Chaos wins, in the end, with the defeat of the gods in the final battle. I wonder if it is this which drew Tolkien and the other men in the trenches at the Somme to Fairie. Does horror and death and defeat seem less terrifying if it can be placed within some kind of context, even one which is devoid of hope?
Yet at the same time, I have been thinking not so much of philosophical or theological matters but of literary ones. Tolkien's beloved
Beowulf is also a work which incorporates both pagan and Christian elements, sometimes easily, sometimes not. The tension between the two is one of the powerful attractions of the poem. Perhaps
Squatter can speak to this, as he likely has read the poem more recently than I and can give examples of this tension. It could well exist more in other Anglo Saxon works as well--I don't know the entire corpus. Would this tension be something that Tolkien strove to incorporate in his work at a later date? Or was it something related to his own faith?
I think it can be said that this tension exists in LotR. It is possible to read without 'seeing' or considering this tension, yet the book becomes far more compelling--to me at least--when both these aspects are held in uneasy equipose. The fascination for me in Old English poetry lies in how it incorporates the world under change--the passing of the pagan era and the arrival of Chrisitianity--and yes,
Child you are so right to say that there are many versions of Christianity.
sic transit gloria mundi. Perhaps it is this fascination which also draws me to LotR.
So that what we have is not an either/or situation, but a work in which the very tension between those two poles--hope and hopelessness, pagan and Christian--is part of its attraction? Some of the best stories are those which don't provide pat solutions and presentations, but which always leave something beyond the grasp of readers, so that each new reader must come to terms with this tension on his or her own and then have that grasp shaken as new readers come along with their own grappling. The tension stretches, but never is resolved.