One of the (many) things I love about The Lord of the Rings is how remarkably anti-war it is. It feels like a counterintuitive concept; the book stands triumphant in the canon of the fantasy genre, a genre known for its swords and war-making. Even The Lord of the Rings is built around the precipice of war and Tolkien wanted to call the final part The War of the Ring instead of The Return of the King. And, there are great battles in the books, but they’re hardly the point.
Vitally, wars are never the solution chosen by the heroes to accomplish their goals. The Battle of The Hornburg is Théoden mounting a desperate defense at Helm’s Deep against Saruman’s army. When Aragorn arrives at The Battle of the Pelennor Fields it’s not to conquer Sauron but to aid in saving Minas Tirith from the Dark Lord’s grasp. Even the great Battle of the Morannon is not one fought in the hope of conquering Mordor or even victory at all — it’s a desperate gambit to draw Sauron’s attention away from the two small Hobbits on a quest to destroy the weapon of the Enemy.
The quest to destroy the Ring itself is a repudiation of war. Sauron has created the ultimate weapon, one by which someone like Galadriel or Gandalf or, indeed, Aragorn, could bring all of Middle-earth to heel. But conquering the world is anathema, the temptation to use the Ring for good is what leads to the fall of Boromir. Destroying the Ring is a refusal of fighting on the Enemy’s terms, a refusal to vie for the ultimate weapon. Warring begets more warring, and the heroes don’t want to perpetuate war, they only fight to bring peace.
Éowyn wants to join Aragorn’s company on their journey through the Paths of The Dead and to war against Mordor. Aragorn rebuffs her, telling her that she has “no errand to the South”, but Éowyn argues that neither do the others who go with him, “They go only because they would not be parted from thee – because they love thee” (Return of The King, 794). As Éowyn sees it, there is a cause to believe in, a reason to fight and she cannot stand by. When Éowyn’s mirror, Merry the Hobbit, is similarly told to stay behind, he is heartbroken, saying “And as all my friends have gone to the battle, I should be ashamed to stay behind” (811). They both want to take up arms and join the cause, to find glory and renown in battle. But Éowyn does not go to war to kill Orcs and conquer or out of aggression. She “can ride and wield blade, and [does] not fear either pain or death,” preferring to put her abilities to use rather than “stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them…” (794) She’s able and willing, she sees it as her duty to join the fight to defend the world of Men against the forces of Evil. There is no delight in warfighting, but if evil would have it, she will join the cause against it.
Glory in war is, ultimately, not the true marker of character. When Aragorn is first recognized by the people of Minas Tirith as the returning King it is not for his victory on the battlefield. After the battle of the Pelennor Fields, he sets up camp outside the city, not wanting to claim his Kingship until the war’s end. But Éowyn, Merry, and Faramir are dying from Nazgûl wounds and the Healers of the city are powerless against it. Ioreth, one of the healers, laments that there is no king in Gondor, “for it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known” (871). This prompts Gandalf to fetch Aragorn who, cloaked and hidden, comes to the Houses of Healing. Procuring some Athelas, he gets to work, his royal lineage giving the plant healing properties in his hand. Before long, he’s able to bring the wounded back from the brink and the Healers are relieved, not the least because Faramir, the new Steward of the City, will live. Ioreth, naturally, cannot keep this to herself and the book continues:
…Pippin heard Ioreth exclaim:
‘King! Did you hear that? What did I say? The hands of a healer, I said.’ And soon the word had gone out from the House that the king was indeed come among them, and after war he brought healing; and the news ran through the City. (877)
It’s this act, curing the sick, that announced the King’s return. He may have helped win the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, but healing, not fighting, is his herald.
It is better to heal than to kill in The Lord of the Rings, and part of this is because the horrors of war are never far from the narrative. There are few battles in The Lord of the Rings that are not fought against Orcs. The first of these is shortly after Frodo and Sam meet Faramir in Ithilien. Faramir and his Rangers skirmish against the Haradrim while the Hobbits watch. Tolkien’s description of the fight is brief, and aptly summed up: “It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much” (The Two Towers, 667). Notably, this is Sam, the Hobbit who grew up loving Bilbo’s stories of the Elves’ fight against Morgoth and Bilbo’s own adventures. But war, between Men, up close, is decidedly distasteful. Then a body of a Harad falls before him.
[Sam] was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace – all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind. (667)
It’s a striking passage, where this dead soldier who’s ostensibly a villain is given a brief eulogy by Tolkien’s prose. There’s a deep empathy for the dead man — a man who had very recently been trying to kill Faramir and his men. Thus far in the story, there has been no regret over any villain’s death — they are all Orcs and Uruks, monsters bred by evil for evil deeds. But the first time we see an ‘evil’ man die, the narrative fills with regret. There is grief for a life lost by war and the acknowledgment that the dead man have had a life as much as Sam did. War is revealed for what it is: a tragedy. This young man should not have had to die, no matter how evil his cause.
The attitude of the prose reflects Tolkien’s own thoughts on war. Writing to his son, Christopher Tolkien, who was serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, Tolkien lamented “the utter stupid waste of war” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #64). He goes on to write:
I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. (Letter #64)
As far as Tolkien was concerned, war is nothing but sorrow. He misses his son and hopes to raise his spirits, even as the awfulness of everything bears down on them. Later in the letter, Tolkien updates Christopher on the progress of The Lord of the Rings, wherein he mentions that he’s just written about Faramir’s encounter with the Haradrim. It hardly feels like a stretch to connect that the war weighed heavy on Tolkien’s mind as he wrote about the dead soldier. Indeed, the very real weight of war is felt throughout much of Tolkien’s writings, even by his own admission.
In the foreword to the second edition, Tolkien admits that even though The Lord of the Rings is not meant as an allegory for the Second World War, “An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience” (The Fellowship of the Ring, xix) His attitude towards war was shaped by his experiences even
as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. (xix)
Tolkien knew the cost of war firsthand and it was grievous.
Not long after the fight with the Haradrim, Faramir has a long conversation with Frodo and it doesn’t take him long to deduce that the Hobbit carries a weapon of the Enemy. He assures Frodo, though, that unlike his brother he would not take it, “…Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory” (Towers, 678). A great weapon would only beget more war and there is no goodness in that. Tolkien said that “as far as any character is ‘like me’ it is Faramir” (Letters, #180) and it’s hard not to hear Tolkien’s voice directly when Faramir says that “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all.” Faramir, a military officer — like Tolkien himself — views war as a sad necessity, “but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend…” (Towers, 678) In Tolkien’s view, and indeed in The Lord of the Rings itself, there is no glory in war itself, but rather in what they are fought to protect. Because war is only a passing thing, because there is hope for more after, hope that one woman can stand between defeat and victory, hope that the hands of a returning king will bring healing, the Ring that would wreak havoc across Middle-earth can be destroyed. That hope was ever-present in Tolkien’s mind, like the Phial of Galadriel it was his bulwark against the darkness:
All we do know … is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. …. But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do. (Letters, #64)
The Lord of the Rings is a story about war, yes, but it is one about every effort to stop war before it can become worse. And in Tolkien’s mind, no matter how awful things may be, so long as there are those that hope for more than death and destruction, there can be peace again.
Works Cited:
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of The Rings, Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Selection. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins, 2006.
Note:
Well then! This one got away from me. It’s been a year or seven since I’ve really written a proper essay. Been fun to flex the muscles and dig into Tolkien, even if I it’s a bummer to not have all the time I did as a student to really tease these ideas out. Still! Here it is! An overlong essay where I definitely did not keep getting distracted by reading the books while finding quotes! Also, it’s remarkable how well the film adaptions key into the ethos of Tolkien’s letter and arguably why they work so well.
Essays, Not Rants! 