Tolkien & Me, Part 6
Eucatastrophy - Pity & Mercy Are Never Wasted
Heroic courage is one of the virtues that stands out in The Lord of the Rings (TLOR). It's only what one would expect in an epic adventure story. But there are a couple other virtues that are equally important. Although they're not centerstaged like courage, they're absolutely essential, both to the narrative of TLOR and to our own lives.
Gandalf introduces them at the beginning of the Fellowship when he tells Frodo the story of Gollum, the Ring of Power, and the shadow descending upon Middle Earth. A frightened Frodo exclaims, "What a pity Bilbo didn't stab the foul creature" - meaning Gollum - "when he had the chance!" At which Gandalf responds: "Pity? It was pity and mercy that stayed his hand. Pity and Mercy: not to strike without need."
These two virtues, pity and mercy, appear often in the Hobbit and TLOR, usually without being explicitly named. Beorn, Tom Bombadil, Aragon, Elrond, Galadriel, Éowyn, Faramir, Treebeard/Fanghorn, and many others practice pity and mercy in their dealings with the hobbits. Without them, the success of the quest would've been doubtful.
But the most telling instances of pity and mercy are directed not to the hobbits, but astoundingly to Gollum.
When Bilbo is threatened by Gollum in the dark cavern, for example, “A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart" when he realized how miserable the poor creature's existence was. So he stays his hand.
When Gollum agrees to guide Sam and Frodo to Mount Doom but on the way leads them into Shelob's horrifying lair, a furious Sam wants to slay him. But Frodo, out of pity, spares Gollum. And eventually even Sam comes to pity the creature, and to extend mercy instead of violence to him: "[D]eep in [Sam's] heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum’s twisted mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief in life ever again . . .”
Sam's and Frodo's mercy is born from an empathic awareness that Gollum's brokenness, while a genuine threat to the success of the quest, is also pitiable. They know something of his suffering because they too have experienced it. They're able to look beyond their fear as well as the repulsiveness of Gollum's appearance and demeanor to recognize him as a fellow victim of Sauron.
In the end, the virtues of pity and mercy are just as essential as courage in overthrowing the Dark Lord. If not for them, there would've been no eucatastrophic moment at the Crack of Doom.
"Eucatastrophy": Tolkien coined the term in his remarkable 1939 essay "On Fairy-Stories." I think it's one of his richest categories.
When you and I think of catastrophy, what comes to mind is something uniformly bad or disastrous, doesn't it? But this is a relatively late 18th century connotation. The Greek word καταστροφή simply means a "sudden turn." Attach the prefix ευ or "good" to it and you've got a word that denotes a "sudden good turn," an event or action that unexpectedly salvages a bad situation.
Now, back to the Crack of Doom, the only place in Middle Earth where the Ring of Power can be destroyed. When Frodo finally reaches it, the Ring's malevolent influence overpowers him. He finds himself unable to toss it into the fiery depths. Gollum sees his opportunity: springing into action, he bites off Frodo's ring finger and at last recovers his "precious," only to lose his balance and plunge, Ring in hand, over the brink to his doom.
Eucatastrophe. At the last moment, an unexpected event worked for the good. The Ring is destroyed and Sauron's power is broken.
But - and this is the crucial point - the eucatastrophic moment wouldn't have been possible had Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam not shown pity and mercy to Gollum. As Frodo tells Sam, "Do you remember Gandalf's words: 'Even Gollum may have something yet do do?' But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end."
The deep lesson here, I think, is that acts of goodness and decency - Shire values, if you will - effect pattern changes in the warp and woof of existence which may be noticed only much later. Sometimes they reweave the fabric in dramatically eucatastrophic ways. Usually, I suspect, the consequences are more muted but nonetheless welcome. They make the world a better place, even if we never explicitly notice their effects. Pity and mercy are never wasted.
Next: For Love of the Earth