Examining the battle of good vs. Evil in tolkien's middle-earth by Greg Harvey

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/examining-the-battle-of-good-v

(abtract)

Tolkien was clear in the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings that the struggle between good and evil is never-ending. <…>

Not only do the seeds of evil continue to sprout and grow in Middle-earth, but the dark conditions in which they flourish continue to spread. As the sources of light diminish over the different Ages of Middle-earth, it becomes easier to deny the power of light and tout that of darkness. <…>

<…> Evil cannot prevail over goodness because evil is just a denial of the only true and fundamental wisdom: God, in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic vocabulary; Enlightenment in the Buddhist.

In other words, the light may be hidden or blocked, thereby allowing darkness to grow, but it cannot be destroyed. All you have to do to regain the light is remove whatever obscures it, be it Melkor's or Sauron's evil. The great thing is that the moment you remove whatever blocks the light, it immediately flows again, illuminating the world as brightly as before.

Of course, as The Lord of the Rings so aptly points out, removing the obstacles to the light is often very difficult and comes at a very high price. More importantly, even though the light returns as strong as before once the obstacles are removed, the damage caused by their evil lingers, sometimes long after.

Shadows of evil

Tolkien often used the word shadow in relation to evil and evil characters, even going so far as to refer to Sauron as the Shadow. As the darkness created by an object blocking out light, a shadow lacks substance. Shadow can also mean a faint representation, in the sense of "he is only a shadow of his former self." And shadow can refer to darkness and gloom, as when Aragorn tells Celeborn and Galadriel that Gandalf has fallen "into shadow" in Moria.

Tolkien's calling Sauron the Shadow is an effective way of getting across his dark, evil aspect while reinforcing the insubstantiality of his evil. Same goes for Sauron's good buddies, the Ringwraiths, or Nazgûl. The Ringwraiths, too, are just dark shapes that instill great fear, even though they seem to lack any substance.<…>.

The threat of becoming a shadow like one of the Ringwraiths or Sauron himself is one that particularly menaces Frodo as the bearer of the One Ring. After the Lord of the Nazgûl wounds Frodo with the Morgul-knife, Gandalf notices that Frodo is becoming slightly transparent. As the Ring's evil power becomes stronger as Frodo nears Mordor, this process of turning into a wraith becomes more pronounced — Frodo is literally becoming a shadow.

In Frodo's struggle against turning into a wraith, Tolkien illustrates one process of becoming evil (metaphorically descending into shadow). It is not a process that happens all at once — it progresses gradually over time, like Frodo's very gradual fading. Some critics suggest that Frodo's initial disgust toward Gollum — his criticism of Bilbo's pity towards him, and his revulsion at the idea that Gollum is at heart a hobbit — are due to Frodo's fear of what he could become. In this view, the evil that Frodo carries can separate him from his own self and all he holds dear. In the end, the power of Ring, especially given Frodo's continued use of it, corrupts him and convinces him that he can stand against Sauron and be the new Lord of the Ring.

Tolkien's notion of "wraithing," that is, gradually giving yourself over to a controlling power until you're just a shadow of your former self, helpless before the evil influence, is very compelling and particularly applicable to modern life. Note that the power causing the "wraithing" doesn't have to be as symbolic as the Ring: it can be any of the thousand-and-one addicting influences that rob people of their humanity. The key idea here seems to be that this process of becoming evil renders all of its "wraiths" into indistinguishable shadows, robbing them of individuality and personality.

Tolkien and the warfare

Tolkien's attitudes toward warfare in The Lord of the Rings closely resembles the outlook prevailing since World War I: War is hell, the world is a dangerous place, and the forces of evil are everywhere and numerous. Just as fewer of us are certain that good always triumphs over evil, heroes such as Gandalf and Aragorn are far from certain about the success of their desperate venture to prevent Sauron's total domination of Middle-earth.

Tolkien's heroes fight with little assurance of victory in their particular struggle, to say nothing of a final triumph of good over evil in a much later Last Battle. They fight knowing that they must resist evil to preserve the islands of light in Middle-earth and to arrest the spread of darkness, even with no guarantee of success. In them, you can see a blend of Viking courage with a lot of 20th-century ambiguity over the final outcome of the good/evil question.