Tolkien and Man's Most Regrettable Feature
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- A 'Liberal' Education
- Evil, Punishment, Forgiveness
- Recall Jesuit Tragedy, Affirm Life of the Mind
- Learning to Drop Our Feathers
- Thoughts on Reading for Five Hours a Day
- Take It Easy and See the Difference
- Stumbling Toward Learning
On May 13, 1964, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a letter to Colin Bailey about his unfinished story “The New Shadow.” The story began about 100 years after the fall of Mordor (the dominion of the villain Sauron in “The Lord of the Rings”), thus in presumably happy times. Tolkien told Bailey, however, that he did not finish the story because it was too “sinister and depressing.” One would think that, after the fall of Mordor, things would be looking up. Tolkien’s reason for not continuing such a story was that things might be even worse than they were before.
What was behind Tolkien’s hesitation to finish his story? The title of the story, “The New Shadow,” may have come from Plato — the shadows in the cave — or from the shadow cast upon the earth by Satan’s part in the fall of man. Tolkien gives this reason: “Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good.” It’s like saying that the good is not “good enough” for us. We might wonder why.
So the people of Gondor (Tolkien’s land of men), in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become “discontented and restless.” Notice that Tolkien does not place the fault in Gondor as a place. Evidently, it would not matter where it happened — regardless, the best condition turns out to be the most dangerous condition. G. K. Chesterton had earlier said that we are more likely to lose our souls if we are rich than if we are poor, even though the poor can also lose theirs for the same reason — that is, by what they choose to do.
The words of Tolkien are striking: “We are dealing with Men.” We are not dealing with hobbits, who, I believe, could live in reasonable prosperity. Here, precisely the condition that we seek for ourselves — peace and prosperity — is pictured as the most morally dangerous atmosphere for our human condition. Some Romans worried that if the Empire destroyed Carthage, they would be in moral danger without an enemy to keep them disciplined. We are perplexed by this type of situation. We think that our problems will be over when we have a sufficiency of things. We look outside, not inside, of ourselves for what can go wrong and why.
I mentioned Plato: He was convinced that our desires are unlimited. They drive us on to more and more unless we hold them in place. It was Augustine who poignantly discovered in his very living that the “good things” he chose could be turned away from their natural purpose by how he used them.
In considering this “regrettable feature of [our] nature,” Tolkien thought that the story of “The New Shadow” would have to go this way: “I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage.” This passage is almost directly out of Aristotle, who said the same thing less graphically. The “revolutionary plots” were directed at the goodness of being. The “Satanistic religion” made man God.
“I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow,” Tolkien adds, “but it would be just that. Not worth doing.” What might Tolkien have meant here? He could have written a thriller in which the plots of these young men are discovered and overthrown. Still, it was “not worth doing.” Why was this story not worth finishing, while writing “The Lord of the Rings” was worth finishing? What was the difference?
“Their quick satiety with the good” is given as the reason for the “most regrettable” thing about the nature of men. One must look long and hard at such an affirmation. The question is: Is this “quick satiety” with the “good” such a bad thing? Augustine, of course, is witness to its factuality. All finite things are good. We are given minds to see that goodness in them.
Our nature is such that we never find complete satiety in anything less than that for which we were put into existence in the first place. And this end is not just one more finite good, no matter how good it is. The “Satanistic” part constitutes a turning away from the good that is there, even if not complete, to a “good” that we make ourselves. This story has been repeated so often in our kind that we should by now have learned the lesson. The reason Tolkien did not finish the story is that we should already know these things from our own experience.
Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., is a professor of government. He can be reached at schallj@georgetown.edu. As This Jesuit Sees It … appears every other Friday, with Fr. Maher, Fr. O’Brien and Fr. Schall alternating as writers.
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Mar 27 2009 at 1:44 p.m.
Thank you for the interesting piece. You say near the end of it that “[t]he reason Tolkien did not finish the story is that we should already know these things from our own experience,” but I think the *real* reason is that Tolkien knew it would have been boring and too repetitive. “Is this ‘quick satiety’ with the ‘good’ such a bad thing?” you ask. For real people in the real world, no, of course not; but for fictive people in a fictive world, yes, it is “bad” — in the sense that stories about perfectly happy people living perfectly happy lives in a perfectly evolved world usually fail to grab readers. Tolkien elsewhere wrote that “all stories are ultimately about the fall.” A good story is one about man as a sinful creature struggling to drag himself up out of a fallen state — and about the tense probabilities of failure. This is why dystopian stories outnumber the utopian by dozens, maybe hundreds, to one.
Apr 01 2009 at 4:28 a.m.
Thank you Fr. Schall for writing this very enlightening piece. I would like to first address the first response before I comment on your piece. I find the view that the intentions of writers and artists in general as limited to “grabbing readers” or viewers quite belittling, even demeaning. For such infers an artist simply panders to the fad of today and avoids repeating the one of yesterday. Yet, such opinions not only demean the artist, but the viewer and reader as well. For if one assumes the artist is truly doing his or her job correctly, the assumed comprehension of the viewer is no more than that of a baby amazed by his parents playing hide and seek with him, only hiding in a new place every time. It is not where you hide that makes art, but how and why you got there that does.
As you note, Fr. Schall, due to our satiety with the good, “we think that our problems will be over when we have a sufficiency of things. We look outside, not inside, of ourselves for what can go wrong and why.” I agree it is this urge for satisfaction, for achievement, or a “sufficiency of things” is our demise. This leads to what I would refer to as an escapist mentality, a mentality simply corroborating a pre-conceived mentality, avoiding questioning, and any potential growth.
I am an aspiring filmmaker and Film has given me the opportunity to discover many if not the majority of my life lessons. Yet, I cannot say that films explicitly taught or showed me such lessons. Film and Art in general is the opportunity for collaboration between artist and viewer, for any message to be taken from Art lies on the responsibility of both. A responsible artist should seek the guidance of reasonable philosophy where-ever that is assumed to come from when creating art. A responsible artist warps reality via reasonable philosophy into a different environment for a viewer to wander through. Yet, the responsible viewer must mutually discover that philosophic yellow brick road to arrive at and experience the world of OZ in every piece of art. More importantly a responsible viewer is also a responsible critic, who once again through reason decides whether or not such a path taken has been the right one.
Yet, I do not agree with Tolkien’s final decision to not finish, “The New Shadow.” For if “the reason Tolkien did not finish the story is that we should already know these things (the immorality of man and the good it attempts to or believes it creates, and etc) from our own experience,” he assumes one of two things. First, that such “things” if uttered again are simply uttering the already uttered and not worth uttering again. I do not believe this is the reason Tolkien chose, for such a message can never be said enough, as our satiety with the good demands us to remember.
Perhaps it is this second of reasons, that experience with or in the environments that Art presents is less credible or truthful than that in the supposed “real life.” I can not completely say this is the actual reasoning behind Tolkien’s decision; however, if it is I must bring up a metaphor presented by Robert Nozick, former philosophy professor at Harvard University. Prof. Nozick once wrote about what he called an “experience machine,” something very similar to that in the movie THE MATRIX. He describes a machine which people are placed into and remain immobile almost indefinitely, stringed up to wires and placed into a virtual world as though it was the real world. Yet in a minute period of time outside the machine people choose off an infinite menu experiences they wish to have in the machine, in order to do or be any person they wish. In the machine there is no recollection of this moment outside the machine, in order to create this facade of reality. Nozick says people would not enter this experience machine because first, “people want to DO certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.” Second, that people “want to BE a certain way, to be a certain sort of person. Someone floating in a tank is [only] an indeterminate blob.” Thirdly, that “plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct. There is no ACTUAL contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be simulated.”
Yet I must note people in movie theaters are not actually physically doing anything, but are simply basking in the experience of the film. Also I have seen many “inanimate blobs” sitting in movie theaters along with their popcorn and hotdogs. Finally films are man made mediums just as story books or paintings. Can one not call movie theaters experience machines? It would seem through this counter example Prof. Nozick may be mistaken in his view of humanity, for the film business is one of the biggest industries in the world.
Some may claim submission to this machine is evidence of the demise of humanity. I believe it to be evidence of humanity’s respect for a reality or truth that transcends our physical environments, one which respects philosophy and a relationship with Truth over that with material objects. The only limitations on that relationship though is our own humility and pride as artists and viewers. Such characteristics determine how much we question not only other artists, authors, or filmmakers, but also ourselves.
Tolkien is correct that people should understand such “things” from their own experience, but who is to divide experience between that in and outside of art? Experience in a movie theatre, reading a book, watching a play, or looking at a painting is just as much the artist’s as it is the viewer or reader. To disagree would deny the viewer’s natural responsibility not simply as a viewer, but as a reasonable human being.