[davem]

However, I don't think that Tolkien would have seen Middle-earth as fundamentally different from the 'primary' world in this regard. It is an over-simplification to say that in Middle-earth 'evil choices lead to self-defeat, whereas self-sacrificing choices lead to victory'. Yes, this is true to an extent - but it does not mitigate the Long Defeat. Self-sacrifice does not always lead to victory, and indeed it seems that the forces of good are doomed to lose in the end - at least within the world.

Yet this is a central theme in LotR - it is Frodo's act of mercy to Gollum (as Tolkien himself stated) which ultimately leads to the destruction of the Ring. Yet is this actually logical, or is it Tolkien's fantasy of how acts of mercy ought to work out in real life. Of course, within the story it 'makes sense', & seems a 'logical' conclusion, but is that merely because we have been 'taken in' by the story? If we were told by someone that a similar series of events had happened in real life would we be inclined to believe them? In other words, based on our real life experiences, would we believe such a thing could happen, or would we instead think 'Er, I'd like to believe that, but life isn't like that.'

I suppose what I'm asking is, while we can accept Eucatastrophes in stories, do they actually happen in real life - or do we merely wish that they would happen? Perhaps we even convince ourselves sometimes that they do happen. But what's interesting is our desire for them - where does that come from is what I'm asking. Do stories shape our desire, make us want things that aren't true, or do they awaken a sense of something else, a sense that the stories are telling us the way things really were meant to be? Are they attempts to awaken 'memories' of 'Arda Unmarred', do they in effect 'alienate' us from our fallen state so that we will seek our unfallen state?

And, yes, I know this takes the thread way off-topic.....

EDIT. My thinking here is inspired by an essay I read recently 'the LotR as Literature' by Burton Raffel in the collection Tolkien & the Critics. Raffel mentions a story by Nathaniel West 'A Cooll Million'. In one episode

'the naive hero defends a young lady from a bully, beats the bully fair & square, holds out his hand to the bully afterwards, & is promply hauled into oblivion (the young lady, who faints at this sight, is promptly raped by the bully)'

Now what's interesting is that in reading this precis I felt the 'wrongness' of this incident far more than if I'd read of that in a newspaper as an actual event in the real world. In the latter case I'd probably have thought 'Horrible, but typical - that's the kind of society we live in!' but in a 'secondary world' its almost as if I expect 'better' from the subcreator - I want to be told how things ought to be, not how they are. Its as if West (& maybe I'm being unfair on him, as I haven't read the actual story) has 'let me down' by simply telling me how things are in the world I live in.

Yet Tolkien's Legendarium is full of such horrors as well as moral victories - The Sil in particular - but in a sense they don't move us as much, feel as 'True' as the Eucatastrophes'. They merely show us the world as we know it, as opposed to the way we feel it should be...