‘The Workhouse’ – Tolkien’s Purgatory

[Child of the 7th Age]

Esty -

Here I am plop in the middle of a theological discussion, but I'd like to consider this topic from a slightly different angle and examine one point you raised in your first post:

Quote from Esty.....2. Unpleasant treatment – The environment is very unfriendly and devoid of human warmth and fellowship; here’s how it’s described:

Quote from book:
The medicine they gave him was bitter. The officials and attendants were unfriendly, silent, and strict; and he never saw anyone else, except a very severe doctor, who visited him occasionally. It was more like being in a prison than in a hospital. He had to work hard, at stated hours: at digging, carpentry, and painting bare boards all one plain colour. He was never allowed outside, and the windows all looked inwards. They kept him in the dark for hours at a stretch, ‘to do some thinking,’ they said.

This confinement does not sound pleasant, yet in its humble way Leaf by Niggle almost seems like a tiny reflection of grander themes that are splashed in much larger type through the Legendarium as a whole. Specifically, this includes such concepts as how difficult it is bring about change in human history and to eradicate evil from the world, and how such things can only be done (if at all) through great pain and sacrifice. This tiny little prison cell in Leaf by Niggle with all its forced limitations and hardships was a tiny piece of the bigger picture. Its purpose was not to mold history, but, a task just as difficult, to effect change in a single human soul. And Tolkien never saw that as easy.

Tolkien consistently shows us characters who must go through extremely painful experiences in order to grow and change. The one person most changed by the Ring quest is Frodo Baggins, and his path was the most unpleasant of all. Yet, all the other characters, especially the light-hearted hobbits, had to go through a certain amount of hardship in order to mature.

Perhaps, one reason for this is that Tolkien felt Man, even those who are labeled as “good”, stubbornly resisted change (perhaps something he saw in himself?) The best known example is the Elves who were, on some level, intended to exemplify certain aspects of our own race. But equally striking were the Men of Gondor who, in a manner similar to the Elves, simply wanted to restore the glories of the past. For them it was the glories of Numenor, and they are described as “a withering people whose only ‘hallows’ were their tombs" (letter 154).

It took a cataclysm – that of the Ring War— to finally prod the Elves into giving up their failed dreams and to push the Men of Gondor towards the Fourth Age instead of always dwelling on the past. So too, in Tolkien’s eyes, it takes a set of painful circumstances to get the individual to change. And I think that is one of the reasons he describes the confinement in such harsh terms (in addition to the theological questions that have already been discussed.)

In other words, those who have authority are not remiss if they are stern and strict and set up unpleasant rules and limitations to prod us into reflection and change for our own benefit. This is actually the feeling I got when Sam disciplined his children for complaining that they had to go to bed:

“But that won’t be fair,” said both Merry and Pippin, who were not in their teens. “We shall have to go directly to bed.”

“Don’t talk like that to me,” said Sam sternly. “If it ain’t fair for Ellie and Fro to sit up after supper it ain’t fair for them to be born sooner, and it ain’t fair that I am your dad and you’re not mine. So no more of that, take your turn and what’s due in your time, or I’ll tell the King.”

In other words, rules are rules – whether in Middle-earth or in purgatory—even if unpleasant, and those above have the right to enforce them. This is not a particularly popular stance in much of modern culture.

And since Tolkien was a humble man, and was probably envisioning his own possible experience in describing Niggle, he assumed the worst: that he would need the very strictest of discipline. And that the First and Second Voice were simply setting up this confinement for his own benefit.