Why is the Hated Loved?

[Encaitare]

Yes. Melkor and Ungoliant did not want to simply bask in the light and be near its beauty; they wanted to be the ones to own and control it. Out of greed and the lust for power, they were compelled to seek out the Silmarils. The simple action of sending light to "stay Melkor's hand" would perhaps frighten him, but not stop him -- I assume you are talking about the creation of the Sun and the Moon here? In this case, Melkor was definitely shocked by their creation, but it also served to infuriate him. He hated the fact that the Valar could control the light and he could not.

[Evisse the Blue]

So maybe Morgoth lusted for the silmarils exactly because they encompassed the pure and good ("light") that he was so afraid of. He wanted to corrupt that which was most precious to the good ones and most dangerous to him, therefore scoring a 'double victory': deprive the Valar and Elves of the light and confront his own fear in the process. Corrupting and ruling over the thing he feared and hated the most gave him a 'satisfaction' as similar to 'love' as he could get. Because he was technically 'unable' to feel 'love' - in the true sense of that word, so when we speak of love in relation to Morgoth and Ungoliant we mean lust, or a base satisfaction.

As for poor Gollum, (and Frodo. to some extent), it was a different story. Mark12_30's addiction idea comes close to explaining it, but it's so weird, because even when the Ring was in their possession, they felt no happier...Gollum was certainly miserable, hungry and grumpy even when he had the Ring, while poor Frodo had awful visions and felt helpless and terrified.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Good topic!

I think that perhaps the thread title is, however, the wrong way round. . .as it seems to me that these characters hate what they love, not the other way round.

Since nothing is evil in the beginning, then all beings must, by nature and definition, love the good. Some, unfortunately, get all messed up and confused in that love and begin to equate their desire to be near or with the good with the desire to possess the good. They don't want to share the good with others, but to own the good.

This makes them really mad, and they begin to hate -- not the good -- but the fact that they can't have the good as their own. They hate the way that the good is making them feel about themselves, and they externalise this hatred of themselves onto the good. So Melkor hates not the light, he loves the light, but the fact that he can't have the light for himself and the subsequent sense of loss, isolation and emptiness that he has imposed upon himself.

Er. . .right. . .?

[Evisse the Blue]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

So Melkor hates not the light, he loves the light, but the fact that he can't have the light for himself and the subsequent sense of loss, isolation and emptiness that he has imposed upon himself.

I was going to argue that Melkor can never own the light, even though he badly wants to, whatever the reason. The thing which proves this is the fact that as soon as he tries to touch the silmarils, his hand is burned and he suffers an agonizing pain. So even by his 'owning' the Silmarils (because technically he did own them), he did not fully make them his own: his evil deed only apparently succeded. This probably (surely!) left him even more bitter than before. Just as Gollum and Frodo can never truly get the Ring to obey them - they are merely the Ringbearers (they bear the Ring from place to place, mostly acting according to the Ring's own devices), they are not the Ringmasters.

[davem]

I'm not sure the 'hated' is 'loved' - I think its desired - which is pretty much the case for all of us - we dwell on what we hate, we feed our desire for it by dwelling on it. We find it as impossible to let go of our desire for what we hate as we do for what we love. As Buddha said, life is suffering - we suffer because we desire, & the way to be free of suffering is to be free of desire.

The suffering we find in Tolkien's world is instigated & prolonged because of desire - someone's desire for something, & the stronger the desire the worse the suffering.

'Love not too well the works of thy hands' as someone says to Feanor(?). Its this 'love' (strictly desire, that leads to all the falls we see throughout the Legendarium. Morgoth desires the Silmarils - but what else is he capable of? If it wasn't the Silmarils that obsessed him it would be something else. Ungoliant & Shelob desire light, to consume, transform & vomit out as 'darkness' - its opposite, its negation.

This is why, for me, we are not dealing with 'love' in these cases, because there is no wish for the things desired to survive, to be loved by others, to even continue to exist - Morgoth 'loves' nothing - his desire is to destroy all things, to reduce them to primal chaos. Why? because he didn't make them - they don't owe their existence to him. He is not God, & so he hates the things he is not God of.

Of course, he begins with the belief that to be 'God' is simply to have absolute control, but in the end he realises that rule is not the be all & end all of divinity. He has not made the things that he desires, so they can never truly be 'his', because they sprang from another mind & will. Eru will always be present in their essential nature. So it seems he decides that the only way he can be 'God' is to destroy all things which originated outside himself - yet, he himself was made by Eru, & in the end he must destroy himself also.

But he cannot destroy Eru, so he is doomed to failure in his only desire. He turns on himself as much as he turns on other thngs. He ends up hating himself & desiring himself at once - as does Ungoliant & Shelob - who ends by consuming herself, because thats the nature of desire: it consumes itself, & ends up with nothing.

(Here endeth the lesson!)

[Lhunardawen]

I agree with Evisse that the proper term for this is lust. Love, desire, and lust may be quite similar terms, but lust alone has a negative connotation. Negative, because they resorted to evil in order to gain what they wanted.

However, I believe that Morgoth and Gollum are in two different cases altogether. Morgoth was so desperate for revenge (and rebellion) when he took the Silmarils that he endured the pain they caused him. He knew that as he suffered, the Valar and the Elves - those whom he hated - suffered with him because of, ironically, the Silmarils' absence and corruption in their Enemy's hands. On the other hand, I think mark12_30's suggestion of addiction is Gollum's situation. He knows he has no power over the Ring and he can do nothing with it, as opposed to the damage indirectly caused by Morgoth's possession of the Silmarils (and Morgoth is powerful!), but he has this running in his mind the whole time: "The Ring is ssso beautiful, m'Preciousss." He is probably unaware of the "political (and whatever else) implications" of the Ring's being on his finger, but hey, "the Ring is so perfect to my sight, I don't care! I want it and I should have it...at all costs!"

[Neferchoirwen]

If you love someone and then hate them the next minute, then that means that you are in love!

At least, that's what I learned (and confirmed) from a tv show recently, and it goes to show how dependent a person can be over something or someone.

As for Gollum, he was dependent on the Ring, and it was the very thing that made him into what he was, and he didn't even fight it for his life (and sanity).

Morgoth, as I see it, loved the silmarils the way he seemed addicted to it, was because it was such a power trip for him to own something in spite of his own evil self. It was his own way of showing Middle Earth that he is the boss of everything, including good and evil.

Desire is the driving force behind the evils that plague the doomed characters in ME.