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Originally Posted by Raynor
I disagree; this joy "produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love" (letter #89). Quite not all the same  . |
Well we'll have to agree to disagree here. I can honestly say that Christian joy does not have the monopoly on this kind of emotion, and many non-Christians will agree.
To take another literary example, in His Dark Materials, the scene where Lyra and Pantalaimon are almost parted in Bolvangar but are saved from the blade evokes exactly the same kind of feeling as the scene at Mount Doom. We are at once terrified, upset to the core, but at the same time elated and joyful that they have been saved. This is because we have been at a point where a perfect Love has almost been permanently severed and at the very last moment has been saved. Reading this you find yourself in tears, of both joy and sorrow.
lmp - this is a reading of the text from a particular perspective, in a way, trying to get to a point by breaking it down into statements. What I want to see is something which is unequivocally Christian symbolism which this is not. This passage can be read in any number of ways. A simple exercise in describing a face-off. As an example of supernatural horror. Even as an instance of sanwe. But all of them would be speculation and personal interpretations because all that this is about is trying to show how Bilbo has been 'captured' by the Ring and underlining its status as a dangerous magical object when previously Tolkien had written the object as a handy trinket useful for hiding from the neighbours (the contrast between The Hobbit and the more serious LotR which he had to bridge). The points made are all fair enough (give or take one or two that I'd read differently), but to then build any more onto that we enter the realms of speculation, and possibly into
reading too much into the text.