Absolute Good in Lord of the Rings

[Boromir88]

What we have here is a very different thing, not a question about some lore thing, but rather directly questioning Tolkien's own belief.~TM

But the conflictions occur when Tolkien repeatedly denies allegory in his story, and he cut out religion from his story. Rather, religion is in symbols and you can say Gandalf is Christ-like, Eru is like the Christian God. But the depth of the characters makes it impossible to say Gandalf is Christ and Eru is the Christian God.

Tolkien wasn't writing to teach, nor was he to preach, he was writing a story for people to enjoy, and not just Christians. In Letter 142 Tolkien believed that critics will find it hard to "pigeon-hole" his story. You can't take one label and slap it on to one of Tolkien's characters. Is there a christian influence? Without a doubt, I say yes. But there's also norse, greek, modern, linguistic influences, and the list can go on from there.

And besides, personal beliefs change overtime. Maybe after writing the story, setting it down, thinking about it, reworking it...etc - through that process his ideas changed. Who knows? But, you don't have to be Christian to believe someone has to die to save something he/she loves. What I mean with that is, there are certain themes, ideals, morals, whatever you want to call them, that are global. Sacrifice, mercy, The Fall, death, Stewardship, these are everywhere, and these ideas are what Tolkien decided to work with, and write into his story.

but I always took the meaning of all-good to be only that a person's will and intentions are absolutely good (setting aside whether this is equal to absence of evil here).~Mac

I personally agree with you there , but I would caution that we don't attach our own external beliefs to the characters in the story, or the internal text. Now, to completely detach our beliefs from the text I think would be absolutely () impossible, but we must do so as much as possible.

I will say it's clear that someone intentions do matter, and that is set up right in the story where Saruman justifies his "end" by going through admittingly horrible "means." So, what we have is in Saruman's own delusional mind, his intentions are good, but are they really? And on top of that, he doesn't care what it takes to reach those ends, he doesn't care who he kills, maims, destroys to get there, but he will reach his "good end."

Then we have several letters where Tolkien states, the Ring's destruction (definitely a good thing) is no benefit to Gollum. Gollum's intentions were completely and totally evil. He had planned for a long time to lead the hobbits into a deadly trap, and his actions in the Sammath Naur are anything but good. Eventhough the Ring is destroyed, because Gollum slips in, that does no good for Gollum, his motives were entirely evil.

And on top of that we have Sam, who has good intentions when he mistakes Gollum's "pawing" at Frodo; Sam is only looking after his master. However, his snap and failure to pity Gollum quite possibly leads to Gollum's failure at redemption. Even someone with entirely good motives (not like Saruman who is delusional ) causes evil to happen. It's unintentional, but Sam could not find Pity for Gollum up until the very end, in the Sammath Naur. This doesn't make Sam evil, but does it make him absolutely good?

Here is another thought, there's been talk about absolute evil, Morgoth, Sauron..etc and Tolkien does say that he doesn't believe in Absolute Evil, but he goes on to talk about the two big villains in his myth (Morgoth and Sauron) - what about objects? What about the Ring? Maybe since Sauron is not absolute evil, it is impossible for him to create something that is. However, the Ring just has this knack to turn every possible light, into dark. It has the ability to twist, and corrupt even the most noble actions. And as Frodo is full of pity, strength, courage, to get the Ring to the place where it was made, Frodo's chance to overcome an object of absolute evil; an object that can do no good and turn the best intentions upside down, fails. Frodo succumbs to the Ring - does it then take an absolute good character to destroy an absolutely evil object?