If I were Thórr, I'd be pretty ticked. Someone has stolen my thunder! To be precise, two different guys have made off with my big rumble this month.

Way, way back last December, I started assembling the editorial plan for the year's Lord of the Rings features on Hollywood Jesus: twelve monthly guest features, twelve featured interviews, the make-it-up-as-we-go email-of-the-month, and twelve hard-hitting, incisive (and somewhat insightful) features in the vein of the pieces I'd done for the previous two years. Now, this was no great hardship, and I didn't have too hard a time coming up with an agenda that has, for the most part, kept a step or two ahead of HJ's very knowledgeable and loyal Tolkien fans.

Yet now, within the last two weeks, my pet topic for July—the propensity of evil to defeat itself in Tolkien's (and Jackson's) Middle-earth fantasy—has twice been soundly co-opted by readers over on HJ's Rings forum! These dudes are either stealing from my playbook, anticipating my next move like film-critique Robert E. Lees, or simply homing in on the same Tolkien wavelength as my own over-active brain.

This is no great tragedy, of course. But rather than go to the trouble of developing the whole thesis myself, I'll reprint the relevant sections of their posts, and then move on to examine some implications of their observations.

First, David Marley, in a running conversation regarding the nature of evil in Middle-earth, makes the following observations:

For the victory of good to have "moral significance," evil must be self-defeating. This cannot be the case if it has the power to overwhelm the weak and innocent, and force them to do its will. Evil corrupts through temptation, by offering individuals the power to do as they will—it exploits desire, convincing them that what they want is right. But the individual must have the choice to go along with that, or reject it.

A moral victory requires that "good" wins because it is good, and "evil" loses because it is evil. If good wins because it happens to be stronger than evil, then the victory is of the strong over the weak, and it will be able to claim the title of "good" for itself merely because history is written by the winners.

Hope, in the sense of "estel" (faith) as opposed to amdir (or simple optimism), requires that evil cannot ultimately win—that by its very nature it will bring about its own defeat. So the Manichaean view must ultimately be false, because otherwise there will always remain the possibility that evil could in some way become powerful enough to overcome in the end, or at the very least, as I said, that it will only lose because it's not strong enough.

Evil cannot "win" in the sense of having an overall victory, because it has no objective or "real" existence (according to Ainulindalë). It is an option—one can choose to behave in a particular way, which could be classed "evil"—but it has no existence in the sense that Illúvatar has, or even that the things created by Illúvatar have: evil does not possess the Secret Fire which alone guarantees true "existence." This is confirmed by its inability to create, and instead only mar what has been created.

So, even if the forces which fight for good were defeated, evil's victory would not last, because (being unable to create, only mar) it would turn on itself and so bring about its own destruction.

Brian Overland, in an associated thread, then contributes:

If you read the first part of The Silmarillion, I think you'll find the doctrine that evil is a kind of disharmony. It is clearly laid out there. To use other (but related) metaphors, you could characterize evil as a kind of spiritual sickness.

In characterizing evil as disharmony of the soul (the sufferer is out of harmony both with Eru and his own best nature), Tolkien is not so different from Plato. Evil does not need to be punished so much as corrected and checked in this view, because the internal disharmony robs the sufferer from any real enjoyment of life regardless of evil's external victories. Certainly Sauron, simmering in his hatred and malice, was not relaxing and having a grand old party at the top of Barad-dûr.

As I've remarked to Greg several times, Sauron literally builds his own Hell, as does Morgoth before him. This, despite the fact that each originally lusted for something of beauty (the Silmarilli in the case of Morgoth, the power of the Elves in the case of Sauron).

The arguments that these two students of Tolkien make are easily supported from the text of The Lord of the Rings, which is rife with instances of evil being defeated by its own devices: Saruman's mechanized despotism un-wittingly bringing down the fury of the Ents; the treachery of Sauron's past rebounding on him through the Army of the Dead; Gollum's oath on the Ring bringing about not only his own demise but the destruction of the oath-binding Ring itself; and my own favorite example, the Orc-strife in the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

I'm hopeful, of course, that the Very Very Ultra Extra Special Extended Edition of The Return of the King demonstrates to Jackson's cinematic audience exactly what happens in that tower. In the theatrical release, we see just the beginning of the spat between Shagrat and his comrades—and when Sam later comes to Frodo's rescue, it's entirely unclear why it's so easy for Sam to succeed in that insane task, and why there's only a handful of Orcs remaining.

In the book, of course, there are even fewer Orcs left, and Snaga tumbles to his death (minus a hand, of course) rather than ending up skewered by a sneering (if passionately protective) Sam. Tolkien's narrative also provides a great deal more detail about the reasons for the slaughter in the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

In the first place, the tower is occupied by a mixed contingent of Orcs with divided loyalties; and while they are all dominated by Sauron's will, they've still got differing agendas and—more importantly—are very focused on their own rights to life, obscene liberties and the pursuit of greediness. Into this very unsettled and unwholesome mix comes Frodo's mithril shirt, which Gandalf noted was greater than the worth of the entire Shire. The Orcs, of course, well know its value, and idle hands wreak great evil. The factions divide and conquer the garrison themselves, with Snaga left in the tower and the lone weasel Shagrat running off into the Morgai to report the carnage. Nothing is left for Sam to do but break the will of the Watchers at the gate. Then, finding the Orcs slain and clutching at the Ring around his neck, Sam ascends the tower amid the Ring-inspired gloom which hangs about him, "a great silent shape, cloaked in a grey shadow"—a presence not unlike the Elf Warrior about which Shagrat's Orcs have speculated. In the penultimate room of the tower, Sam finds Snaga lashing Frodo with a whip and springs to his master's defense. Sting severs one of Snaga's arms, and the Orc then tumbles through an open hatch to his death.

It's very easy to cite this scene as an example of how Jackson has managed to twist Tolkien's intent, somehow making it a justification of pre-emptive "not if I stick you first" international policies. It's also very easy to serve up a lesson on Tolkien's very Christian belief that evil is without a doubt its own worst enemy: "oft evil will shall evil mar," to quote Théoden's aphorism. And originally, those two points were all I intended to make.

David's and Brian's comments, though, have inspired me to take the discussion one step further. After all, if we're convinced that evil is its own undoing, can't we then argue (for example) that the United States really didn't need to go to war in Europe against Hitler? Germany wasn't attacking us, and the evil Nazi regime would have collapsed under its own weight at some point anyway, just like Reagan's lumbering Soviet bear. Right?

Yes, without a doubt. But there's a price to pay for waiting for that to happen on its own. It's one thing to wait for a tower full of evil thugs to beat each other up—and I seriously doubt that there were any "innocent" victims at Cirith Ungol. When there are innocent bystanders to consider, however, the equation gets a little messier. How long do we pursue peaceful and diplomatic solutions to an international crisis, all the while knowing that thousands and thousands more innocent victims are dying while the talking and praying goes on? Sudan is a case in point, and I don't have an easy, canned, scriptural answer for that one, I'm afraid. But I am very sympathetic to the most-repeated refrain of Peter Jackson's films: What ultimately matters is what we do with the time that is given us.

I, for one, vow to forego further second-guessing of those who have to make such difficult decisions for our country. Instead, I intend to: first, pray for all those who have to make such decisions (God knows they can use it!); second, use the time that is given me to halt injustice and suffering where I see it, without inducing further injustice and suffering in the process; and third, do everything in my power to prevent divisiveness from bringing down the good that there is in this world. From what I've seen on C-SPAN lately, our own Congress is taking on a lot of the characteristics of the Tower of Cirith Ungol—much to our national shame and discredit. As human beings, we're better than that, and should demand better of ourselves and our leaders.

Have our politics turned us all into Orcs?

LOTR Coverage Index here

E-mail Greg Wright here