When Evil Loses by Winning

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is most often described with a single word: epic.  And it truly is a sweeping story, full of magnificent world-building, great characters, and an overall story arch of good triumphing over the vast strength of evil.

At least, that’s how most of us think of it.  But take a moment and consider how the main conflict of the story ends at the Cracks of Doom.  Frodo has carried the ring across Middle Earth, through the heart of Mordor itself.  Sam has been his constant companion, sacrificing his strength to carry Frodo when Frodo could no longer make it on his own power.  And our heroes have finally made it to the final ledge.  Good has triumphed.  All Frodo has to do is toss the ring into the lava.

The exact same scenario had happened previously in the lore.  Isildur had cut the ring from Sauron’s finger and had taken it to the very spot Frodo now stood.  All Isildur needed to do was toss the ring into the lava, and he failed to do so.  The ring was too powerful.  It corrupted Isildur.

Tolkien drew the obvious parallel here by having Frodo stand in the same location thousands of years later.  And while most tales of heroes would indeed have the hero conquer the temptation and toss the ring into the lava…

Frodo fails.

Frodo succumbs to the same fate that fell upon Isildur.  Hobbits fail the same way men do.  It should not be overly surprising.  We already saw that with Gollum, who had been known as Sméagol before his corruption.  And we even saw it happen to Bilbo, who for one moment tried to take the ring back from Frodo.  So it really should be no surprise that Frodo could no longer endure the siren song of the ring.

But the story does not end with Frodo’s failure.  Instead, at the very moment he gives in to evil, Gollum pounces.  And here, Frodo fails a second time.  He cannot fend off Gollum and is incapable of maintaining control of the ring.  In a callback to how Isildur severed the ring from Sauron’s finger, Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger and takes the ring himself.  But in the process, as the two combatants struggle for control of the ring they both desire, Gollum falls into the lava and the ring is destroyed.

And thus evil is conquered, not because good prevailed but because evil destroyed itself.

This is what makes The Lord of the Rings unique, or at least very rare, in terms of story structure.  Nearly every heroic tale has good conquering evil.  Sometimes, a main character may have to sacrifice a lot to achieve this aim.  For example, in the movie Saving Private Ryan Tom Hank’s character, Captain Miller, ends up dying to achieve the stated goal of saving Private Ryan.  We see similar structure in other stories, such as Neo’s sacrifice at the end of The Matrix trilogy.  Or how Dan Evans dies at the end of 3:10 to Yuma but manages to get Ben Wade on the train and becomes a hero to his son.  Sure, the secondary aspect of surviving the exchange failed, but audiences appreciate the fact that the greater goal succeeded.  Good prevailed over evil.

In other stories, we have the bad guy win.  This has become very frequent in stories involving the antihero.  Take movies like The Godfather where Michael Corleone ends up becoming the ruthless mob boss at the end of the film, having hits carried out on all his enemies during the very baptism of his son.  Or take the example of Primal Fear where Aaron Stampler successfully convinces the court to render a verdict of innocent by reason of insanity, only to reveal he was faking his mental illness all along.

But The Lord of the Rings takes neither of these paths.  The good guy fails in all his tasks so good does not triumph over evil.  He does not destroy the ring.  He cannot even fight off Gollum.  And yet evil does not win either, for the ring is still destroyed and Sauron defeated.  In fact, it is through the very failure of good that evil loses.  There are very few stories that take this trajectory.

For Tolkien, however, this story arc is the only one that could make sense.  He was, after all, a devout Catholic with a view of evil that was shaped by Christian theology.  Evil is a corrosive force, even while it is so tempting.  Therefore, by its very nature, evil is unstable.  The more successful evil is, the more it is doomed to fail. Even though Roman Catholicism does not have as strong a view of depravity as one would find in the Reformed doctrine I subscribe to, Catholicism does strongly hold to the doctrine of Original Sin.  Everyone is born corrupted and bent toward evil, and you do not need to learn how to do evil.  You will be evil, even without a teacher.  No matter how good of a person you are, you cannot be perfect.  You will fail in the end.

 

Tolkien intended the ring to be an impossible burden, because evil is an impossible burden to bear.  And yet rather than rendering everything hopeless, Tolkien demonstrated that evil will never win in the end.  It is tempting to correlate this to the very heart of the Gospel itself.  After all, the greatest evil ever committed was the murder of an innocent man, and it was that murder that killed death itself.  There is a sort of poetic justice in knowing that death was destroyed by its own actions.

Yet Christ's death is not an instance of good failing and it would be an error to think Tolkien had that in mind here.  Instead, Tolkien examines good and evil from the perspective of imperfect men.  As he writes in Letter 246:

Frodo indeed ‘failed’ as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say ‘simple minds’ with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal in enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine Nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God.

The story therefore most reflects the path of sanctification.  We live our lives in an evil world and fail to attain the heights we know we should be at, and it is easy to lose heart.  Yet all is not lost even in such a scenario because of the role of mercy.

Though much more could be said on this, and indeed entire books could be written over it, one simple truth remains.  As powerful as evil seems, evil cannot triumph over good for evil must, of necessity, consume itself.  Evil is the harbinger of its own demise.  Even if it destroys all around it, it simultaneously must destroy itself. And this, itself, is due to the mercy of God in ensuring that evil will be self-destructive rather than permanent.