Fordim wrote:
Quote:
The 'party line' seems to be that in the Scouring of the Shire we see that evil will never suffer a final defeat and that the stain of this incident upon the Shire serves as a reminder of that fact.
Well, the problem I have with this theory is that in the Scouring of the Shire the very last of the (Third Age) evil is done away with in the form of Saruman's death. After this (relatively minor) battle, the story is quite clear that life in the Shire actually improves.
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I don't think that these two propositions contradict each other. Yes, the result of the Scouring of the Shire is good - that is, Saruman is defeated and life in the Shire improves. But the first point is not contingent upon the outcome of the scouring. The discovery of such evil in the Shire makes the point that even such a tremendous event as the final defeat of Sauron is not a
final defeat of evil, and it makes that point regardless of whether Saruman is in the event defeated or not.
It's the same pattern that we see throughout the Legendarium. Morgoth is defeated, but Sauron survives. Sauron is defeated twice, but he returns both times. He is defeated a third time, this time utterly, but Saruman survives. Saruman is defeated - but based on this pattern we would be fools to expect that no evil will ever return. As indeed
The New Shadow shows.
Still, I think you have a good point. Too often is it said that LotR is a tragedy, or that despite the defeat of Sauron it has a sad ending (and the same mistake is made with the Silmarillion). But surely it does have a happy ending, if not a
simple one. The great evil is defeated - as indeed is the lesser evil of Saruman. We are reminded that this does not mean that
all evil has been defeated; but that hardly makes the ending tragic. Or, to say it in allegory, if someone suddenly gave me 999,999 dollars I would not say "What a stroke of bad luck! I didn't get a million."