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Old 01-24-2003, 11:50 PM   #5
doug*platypus
Delver in the Deep
 
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Aotearoa
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Ring

Quote:
Where's Bill Ferny when you need him?
He'll be here soon, I don't doubt that. Whether his twitching ears alert him to a new free will thread, or some unthinking soul puts the Bill Signal into the cloudy skies of Cardolan City, he will arrive.

By redemption, Pan, it appears you mean redemption by a creator figure outside the bounds of Arda, where the fëa of men go after they die. I'm not very authoritative on the theosophical cosmology of Tolkien's world, but I think I can say that this is an assumption rather than a fact. We do not know for sure that Eru judges the souls of men, the way that the Christian god or holy trinity is said to do.

I believe that the characters you mention, Boromir and Gollum received their redemption and acted out their penance within the confines of Arda (though with Gollum it was unwitting). I prefer to think of the ends that Gollum achieves as being noble enough to excuse him for his sins, especially since his soul had been partly cleansed through contact with Frodo.

The Dunlendings, Haradrim etc. are never portrayed as entirely evil - they just happen to be fighting for someone that is. Deluded, perhaps, but no more cruel than, say, the Rohirrim. The real question is whether Orcs are redeemable, but of course there are other threads for that specific debate.

At the other end of the scale you have Sauron and Saruman - utterly irredeemable, and apparently cast (by either the Valar or Ilúvatar) into the Outer Void. Melkor was previously set a term of penance in the Outer Void by the Valar and then released in the hope that he had been reformed. I don't think it likely that similar grace would be granted to Sauron or Saruman, given the nature of the cases and the embitterment of the Valar.

Garen is right that Wormtongue's shows no case of redemption within the confines of Arda. It is hard to say what will happen to him beyond the confines of the world. Although I'm sure that someone who has studied Tolkien's mythology further will have a fairly plain answer.
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