[The Saucepan Man]

As probably one of the least religious members here, I sometimes wonder why I always seem to get involved in debates (no, Knight, certainly not arguments ) on the religious themes in Tolkien's works.

But I do feel it necessary to address a few of the points that you have made, Knight, and perhaps seek to clarify some of the issues that I and others have raised.

I'd certainly think the mass populace has the right to know how our favorite actors respond to questions regarding such issues

Why? Why should their religious views (or any other personally held ideas and opinions) have any bearing on their work? Of course, Ms Basham is free to raise such questions. But those questioned are equally free to refrain from answering them, if they wish, or to express their own thoughts and opinions, and they should not be castigated for doing so. My gripe with Ms Basham is that she pours scorn on their views simply because they do not accord with her own.

I will merely quote Ms. Basham, who merely quoted Tolkien. Some time, perhaps you can take the discussion up with him. "Tolkien himself stated, The Lord of the Rings is 'a thoroughly Christian work.' "

The precise quote, from a Letter from Tolkien to Robert Murray, SJ (Letter 142) is:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut, out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel. For, as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should be chiefly grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and I owe that to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships and poverty resulting from it.

By this, I take Tolkien to be acknowledging that LotR is (inevitably) coloured by his own religious beliefs and values. But he is also at pains to make clear that it is not intended as a religious allegory. In a Letter to his American publishers, the Houghton Mifflin Co, containing some biographical and explanatory material (Letter 165), he stated:

It [LotR] is not 'about' anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political.

In many of his Letters, Tolkien explains the difference between allegory and applicability. LotR is not an allegory of Christianity, so the reader (or interpreter) is not obliged to recognise it as such, or indeed any of the themes presented as implicitly Christian. But it does have applicability. So, a Christian may (and no doubt will, given the faith of the author) find the themes expressed within the book applicable to his or her own beliefs. Just as readers of other denominations, or those of a non-religious persuasion, may find themes within it (often, in all likelihood, the very same themes) which are applicable to their own values, be they moral, political, socialogical, envoronmental etc. As I said earlier, there is no "set way" of reading this book. Readers are free to take from it whatever values seem most important to them.

Besides an immoral, omniscient Creator creating the world, sending his angels to sustain it, having one powerful angel fall away and despoil creation, and the hearts of his creations. And undeveloped legends tell of a time when Illúvatar would one day enter Arda in mortal form. Besides that...

Nevertheless, Eru is not God (Christian or other). He is a character in a series of stories (and, indeed, his existence is only implicit in LotR). As Tolkien said, again in Letter 165:

I am in any case myself a Christian; but the 'Third Age' was not a Christian world.

Precisely why it is a bit of a letdown to hear the staff deny any existence of good or evil

I don't see anything in the quotes given that has the cast and crew denying the existence of good and evil, in the sense of abstract concepts. Indeed, one of the quotes talks of the "enduring goodness of men". What I do see is some of those questioned (understandably, in my view) shying away from the suggestion that the films should be taken as representing good and evil as found within any particular belief system. Ms Basham interprets what they say as representing a complete rejection of the concepts of good and evil, but that is a mischaracterisation of what they actually say.

I think that those questioned were also recognising that the issue of good versus evil is not as clear cut in real life as it is portrayed in the books and the films. If anything, good and evil is more starkly delineated in the films because characters such as Denethor (and even Saruman) are more one-dimensional than they are in the books. However, the film does retain the concept of good vying with temptation/evil within a single character (Boromir and Gollum/Smeagol, for example). At the same time, characters such as Aragorn and Theoden are less obviously "pure" in the film, because doubt (Aragorn) and bitterness (Theoden) are introduced into their characters (something which I think probably makes them more believable to a modern film-going audience).

So you acknowledge that those values and themes exist. This is more than Ms. Basham could persuade the cast and crew to admit

I don't get the sense that those questioned were denying that themes such as the struggle between good and evil are to be found within the books and the films. How could Jackson, Boyens and Walsh deny the existence of these themes when they managed to transpose them successfully from the book to the screen? I don't believe that to be mere coincidence. What they were doing was expressing those themes which resonate particularly with them (applicability again).

It would seem what you say should apply to Ms. Basham as well. She is an individual, entitled to her own beliefs, opinions and views, and can express them as she sees fit.

Of course she can. But she shouldn’t presume to insist that others should accept those views.

So there we have it. I believe that the concept of the struggle of good versus evil and other themes found within (although not exclusive to) Christianity were successfully transposed from the books to the films (although good and evil were perhaps downplayed in some characters and overplayed in others). And I believe that this was conscious on the part of the film-makers, meaning that they clearly must have recognised the existence of these themes. That is not to say, however, that they should accept that the concept of good and evil as portrayed in the books and the films accurately reflects real life. And nor is it to say that they are not entitled to express those themes and values which they see in the books and the films which resonate most with them. Ms Basham should not criticise them for expressing their own views, and she should not castigate them for not sharing hers.