Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Tolkien Quotes: When the Road Darkens

Update, 2021: This post for some reason shows up in a lot of search engines, so it's one of my most-viewed posts despite being an off-the-top-of-my-head thing I wrote when I had barely turned 21. If you want to view other posts in this series, you can check out this tag: https://thetravelingmandolin.blogspot.com/search/label/tolkien
Just remember that I was in my young twenties when I wrote all of these! I haven't read them in years and can't speak to their quality. I was a kid, and I was still learning. :)

Reposted from 8/28/2010
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,” said Gimli.
“Maybe,” said Elrond, “but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.”
In this passage, Elrond cautions the stouthearted dwarf against judging another person’s weakness. Gimli can’t imagine that anything would cause his courage to fail, but later on in the journey, he faces trials of a kind he could never imagine. He chooses to hold to his vow and push through anyway, but he learns that the Road is full of peril that weakened his resolve in ways he couldn’t begin to imagine. 
A theme that constantly arises in Tolkien’s work is the frailty of the heart, no matter how steadfast. It is easy to make vows; it is nearly impossible to keep all of them. Does he imply that we should never pledge to do anything difficult? At first it may seem so, but in context it becomes clear that Elrond’s words caution against a specific kind of promise. 
From, “I’ll never be as bad as he is” to “I will never hurt you,” vows that depend on our own fortitude and moral fiber are, by their very nature, doomed to fail. We cannot keep our promises unless we rely on Someone greater to strengthen our hearts and keep us true to our word. We cannot vow to tread the hard path if we haven’t seen the nightfall— however, we do not have to walk in darkness. The great Light is always by our sides, able and willing to show us the path. We only need to open our eyes and see.
~Lisa Shafter


2 comments:

  1. Lisa, thanks for sharing these reflections on Tolkien!

    One of my favorite quotes is from his later work, Morgoth's Ring - which was intended as part of the Silmarillion. Note the phrase "not even by ourselves" in this declaration of hope that by God's grace we are his children and thus our outcome is sure:

    “If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not [allow] Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel [hope], which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs, the issue must be for His Children’s joy.”

    This and a few other quotes are woven together into a prayer, a Tolkien liturgy, which I've posted as a pdf here:
    http://kerrysloft.com/2011/08/22/feast-of-middle-earth/

    PEACE
    Kerry

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  2. Lisa, I read your post and lay in bed thinking, and what got me up determined to comment was not the quote above, but this one, which it took me some time to find, even though I knew I had read it recently from Tolkien's letters. It reminds me how much Tolkien's sufferings and experiences in World War 1 underlie his understanding of hope as something that is a future reality, not a present emotion. Like your post, he does not overestimate the ability of our will to survive intact the depredations of this world (whether WW1, WW2, or our present materialist culture). Here's the quote - I hope you see a connection with some of what you've written:

    "The Quest therefore was bound to fail.... and also was bound to end in disaster as the story of humble Frodo's development to the 'noble,' his sanctification. Fail it would and did as far as Frodo considered alone was concerned. He 'apostatized' .... I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors. But at this point the 'salvation' of the world and Frodo's own 'salvation' is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury...." [the pity of Bilbo will rule the fate of many]

    Letters, p. 234; Letter #181

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