Did Tolkien find the idea of war honourable?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Sad and even incomprehensible though it may seem to some, there are people who really do enjoy fighting, and the joy of battle is a recurrent theme in the literature that was Tolkien's professional area of interest. None of us can know what it was to be involved in a cavalry charge like that of the Rohirrim: careering wildly into battle amid a host of one's comrades, driving the enemy and scattering them and, yes, killing them. I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that the sheer rush of adrenaline must have been tremendous, imparting a feeling of invincibility as one charged down and defeated a hated enemy.

Odin's role as a war god is well established in the popular imagination, but he was also a god of poetry and wisdom; and in the Germanic mind there is nothing unusual about composing poems on one's sword or axe. The problem here is that this does not agree with Tolkien's portrayal of war elsewhere: as something regrettable and sad. However, he was not the only person to describe this feeling, and we must therefore presume that this is an aspect of war, particularly a medieval war, that really did exist, and which is portrayed here much as it could have been. I am reasonably sure that he had never felt it himself, in fact I am fairly certain that he was working from ideas that he had read in early-medieval poetry; but Tolkien is, perhaps, showing us why people will perpetuate a warrior mentality. Faramir and Aragorn are unusually noble men, and it seems natural that they should regard war as a regrettable thing. Clearly they are the standard, and represent the stronger element in Tolkien's mind; but there is another element at work that understands how someone might love battle in itself, and this shows itself elsewhere in his writing. There is something dark and terrible about people singing as they go to kill and die. It has a poetic power that is echoed in a passage from Smith of Wootton Major in which the hero encounters Elven warriors:

He stood beside the Sea of Windless Storm where the blue waves like snow-clad hills roll silently out of Unlight to the long strand, bearing the white ships that return from battles on the Dark Marches of which men know nothing. He saw a great ship cast high upon the land, and the waters fell back in foam without a sound. The elven mariners were tall and terrible; their swords shone and their spears glinted and a piercing light was in their eyes. Suddenly they lifted up their voices in a song of triumph, and his heart was shaken with fear, and he fell upon his face, and they passed over him and went away into the echoing hills.

Clearly Tolkien himself found this awesome and terrifying yet fascinating, but there is also a narrative purpose at work. I doubt that he could have made the host of Rohan seem more intimidating, or better explain why their enemies crumble before them than to show them not just eager for the fray, but actively enjoying it. What this reveals of the contradictory nature of many of his ideas is probably a matter for another post.

Bethberry has raised a very interesting point, and one on which Tolkien is regularly pulled up: that of his portrayal of evil. Obviously the presence in his text of a physical personification of wickedness gives particularly The Lord of the Rings a definite feeling of simplicity, in which it is much easier to choose sides than in the world we inhabit. However, the idea that evil is imposed from outside is balanced by a feeling that there is something within us that resonates with and reacts to that influence. Tom Shippey devotes an entire chapter to the discussion of this point in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and I have neither the space nor the skill to rehash his entire argument here; but a good example of this dual portrayal lies in the action of the Ring. Although it is made clear to us that anyone would eventually be overcome by the One, he does more than suggest that certain people will be more quickly and completely corrupted than others. When Frodo regrets Bilbo's not having killed Gollum, Gandalf replies:

Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.

Like the Christian world view, Tolkien's writing suggests that there is an embodiment of evil, which we have the power and right either to accept or deny; but also in making Melkor (to Ilúvatar as Lucifer is to God) dissipate so much of his power in the world, he makes evil a part of everything that exists in 'Arda marred'.

This is too simplistic a view of Tolkien's portrayal, though. Charles Moseley in his book on Tolkien in the Writers and their Works series, quite rightly places a lot of weight behind Christian elements in Tolkien's view of evil, and makes the connection between Morgoth and Lucifer better than I. However, Shippey has another strand of philosophy to draw in: that of the Boethian view that evil does not exist, and that what we consider evil is in fact simply an absence of good. Shippey cites C.S. Lewis' essay Mere Christianity, in which he points out that many people who commit evil acts justify them in terms of good: 'circumstances have changed' says the oathbreaker; 'I was provoked' says the murderer. There is a suggestion that people do not simply love evil for its own sake. To me this sounds like taking self-justification as an indication of motive, but there is certainly more to the theory than that. When Gandalf says that 'the treacherous are ever distrustful' he is making a point about the inherent weakness and misery of evil. He says in no uncertain terms that there is something missing from the evil characters that is present in the good, whilst still showing that in the good there are elements of evil.

Another important Christian theme is the offer of repentance. Saruman, Gollum, Gríma and even Sauron are all given at some point the opportunity to repent and to return to what they were. For various reasons, each turns this down, but the point is that the offer is extended, which implies that there is a chance of it being accepted. As Gandalf says, even Sauron himself was not evil from the beginning, but from his portrayal in the Silmarillion, neither was Melkor. In all of these cases, something is thrown away to make the character into something evil, but there is never a point after which they cannot go back. It just becomes harder to do so as time passes.

I have only really scratched the surface of all there is to say on this subject, but hopefully that leaves a lot for others to point out. As it is, my hands are threatening to drop off, so I shall leave off here.