The role of Fate in Middle Earth

[Mister Underhill]

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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/wight.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: The Hand of Fate

I get the sense that we're dealing with a Chicken or the Egg sort of question. You could say that Frodo is caught up in a stream of Fate because the Ring came to him – or you could say that the Ring came to Frodo because it was fated to do so.

If we conceive of Ilúvatar as an omniscient Creator who exists outside the bounds of time, then the apparent paradox of foreordination vs. free will may not be a paradox at all. While the mortals (used in the broadest sense to include elves, who are technically only very long lived and not truly immortal) of ME may have free will, Ilúvatar is able to understand every possible permutation of their choices and order the world according to his will as its author. I can see a playful metaphor in Tolkien’s construction – Tolkien as the all-knowing, all powerful “author” of the tale of Arda; his characters, bound within the circles of the world, sometimes given guidance by their creator, but also with a “mind of their own”, but with Tolkien in turn able to account for any “decision” they might make and alter his world where necessary (without regard to the flow of time within the created world) to make it all consonant with his will. If we say that the destinies of Elves, Maiar, Valar, et al are governed by fate, how far do we take this notion? Is all that they do foreordained, even down to what they say? If Gandalf chose Bilbo as his burglar, then, wasn’t Bilbo, by extension, chosen by Fate? Tricky, tricky.

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