Explanation for Quotation 2

Frodo shares this calm reflection with Sam at the end of Book VI, Chapter 3, as Mount Doom explodes and crumbles around them. Their somewhat leisurely conversation belies the fact that they have suffered from exhaustion and physical danger for so long, as well as the fact that Mordor is rupturing into a virtual apocalypse around them. The moment highlights one of Tolkien’s strongest narrative devices—the juxtaposition of intimate personal moments against the backdrop of cosmic or earthly crises. This tension between the great and the small drives the entire plot of The Lord of the Rings—which revolves around the idea of two lowly hobbits not simply embarking on a quest but, as the critic Roger Sale puts it, descending into hell. Tolkien uses the device to emphasize the deep friendship between Frodo and Sam. Not only does the physical destruction of Mount Doom signal the climax of Tolkien’s tale, but it also suggests that the moment represents the pinnacle of the two hobbits’ friendship.

Frodo himself points out another irony: it is not he who finishes the quest they have traveled so far to achieve, but Gollum, the Ring’s greatest hoarder, who has completed the task. Frodo cites Gandalf’s prediction from the early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring—that Gollum would invariably play a part in the fate of the Ring. Frodo has shown great patience and mercy toward Gollum throughout the second half of the quest. It remains unclear to what degree Gandalf’s foreshadowing has remained in the back of Frodo’s mind, inspiring his clemency for the miserable Gollum. Either way, a sense of divine providence and fate looms over the events that transpire at the Cracks of Doom, evoking a perfect blend of chance and retribution in Gollum’s fall. In this regard, Frodo and Sam’s calm discussion of Gollum’s actions in light of the destruction around them hints that a greater, unknown power of good is protecting them.

Faith and fantasy: tolkien the catholic, the lord of the rings, and peter jackson’s film trilogy Steven d. Greydanus

http://www.decentfilms.com/articles/faithandfantasy.html

(abstract)

Note: This article refers to important, even climactic plot points in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings necessary to this overview of the spiritual significance of Tolkien’s work. If you haven’t read the books and wish to be able to do so (or to watch the films) without knowing in advance what will happen, please do so before reading this article.

J. R. R. Tolkien once described his epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." Yet nowhere in its pages is there any mention of religion, let alone of the Catholic Church, Christ, or even God. Tolkien’s hobbits have no religious practices or cult; of prayer, sacrifice, or corporate worship there is no sign. <…> How then can The Lord of the Rings be in any sense described as a fundamentally Catholic work, or even a religious one?

Creation and corruption in Middle-earth

Part of the answer is found in Tolkien’s other great chronicle of Middle-earth, The Silmarillion, which recounts the larger mythic context of Middle-earth, beginning (notwithstanding his antipathy for allegory) with a magnificent allegorical retelling of the Creation and the Fall according to Genesis 1-3.

Here Tolkien does name the creator-God of Middle-earth, Eru ("the One," also called Ilúvatar, "All-Father"), as well as the mighty spirit Melkor, who rebelled against Eru and went into darkness. We also learn that Sauron, maker of the One Ring, is himself an agent of this Melkor. Tolkien thus establishes a direct relationship between the theistic, even Judeo-Christian cosmology of The Silmarillion and the war for the One Ring recounted in The Lord of the Rings.

In the latter work itself there is no mention of Eru, nor is there any explicitly religious component to the characters’ behavior. Even so, Tolkien’s Catholic Christian worldview not only stands behind the saga of the Ring in its prehistory, but surrounds and suffuses it in its overarching themes and imaginative structures.

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But it was Tolkien’s deeply held Catholic faith that most profoundly shaped his work. Though he rightly insisted The Lord of the Rings is not an allegorical work, the fact is that Tolkien thought, imagined, and wrote as a Catholic, and his work bears the clear signs of his faith, as he fully intended it should.