What Tolkien Taught Me about Giving Up Hope

 “I don’t know how long we shall take to— to finish,” said Frodo. “We were miserably delayed in the hills. But Samwise Gamgee, my dear hobbit— indeed, Sam my dearest hobbit, friend of friends— I do not think we need give thought to what comes after that. To do the job as you put it— what hope is there that we ever shall? And if we do, who knows what will come of that?… I am commanded to go to the land of Mordor, and therefore I shall go,” said Frodo. “If there is only one way, then I must take it. What comes after must come.”

Sam said nothing. The look on Frodo’s face was enough for him; he knew that words of his were useless. And after all he never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning; but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.

~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

One of the most interesting things about my all-time favorite book, Lord of the Rings, is the theme of hope. It is often held up, and rightly so, as being one of the key themes of the book. When I was younger, I interpreted the subplots within Lord of the Rings to be straightforward parables about hope: Aragorn and Gandalf, for instance, express hope even in the darkest of situations (“Yet do not cast all hope away," Aragorn remarks at the battle of Helms Deep. "Tomorrow is unknown. Rede oft is found at the rising of the Sun"), and it pays off. King Théoden learns to have hope, which makes him a good king; Denethor gives up hope, which makes him a bad steward; Saruman sees how powerful Sauron is, gives up hope of winning, and joins the wrong side. As far as I was concerned, hope = good; hopelessness = bad.

And yet, the older I get, the more I find myself thinking about the themes in a new way. I feel like, at its core, many of the most important plots of the book center around the idea of giving up hope— and what you do after that. 

To illustrate, let's look at two sets of characters in the story. On one hand: Frodo and Sam. On the other hand: Boromir.

First, Frodo and Sam. They, the heroes of story, are both consistently characterized by a lack of hope. Sure, they act as if they have hope: Frodo volunteers to take the Ring to Mordor, Sam follows along, and they never waver from this goal. But are they traveling out of hope? It certainly doesn't seem so, especially as the story progresses. 

By the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo decides he must leave everyone behind, because he has given up hope of them protecting him, or doing anything but dying or turning against him along the way. He can't bear to see this, so he sets out alone— well, tries to, until Sam dives headlong in the river after him!

It becomes increasingly clear as the story progresses that Frodo doesn't actually believe that he'll make it to Mount Doom. He is flat-out ready to march up to the Black Gates and knock until Gollum convinces him otherwise! He walks forward not out of hope, but because of something else.

In contrast to this, we get Boromir's character arc.

Boromir has been fighting a hopeless battle his entire life. He has been trying to hold back an enemy that he knows at his heart will overwhelm him someday. Then, at the Council of Elrond, he learns about the One Ring, and he has hope again. Here is a weapon that can put an end to the war. Here is a chance for him to save his father, his brother, his army, his people— all of Middle Earth. 

Even though he submits to the Council's decision to destroy the Ring, that spark of hope never leaves him. It grows and grows and possesses him until, finally, it inspires him to try to reason with Frodo, try to get Frodo to see his side. (I feel like in many narratives we gloss over the fact that he didn't come in guns blazing trying to steal the Ring from Frodo— he, like Gandalf with Bilbo in the beginning of the book, was trying to get Frodo to give up the Ring willingly.) When Frodo refused to capitulate to the story Boromir had in his head— the story borne by that spark of hope that he could save his kingdom— Boromir turned violent. It was just for a moment, but that was enough to split the Fellowship and lose him his chance. Hope did not set him on the right path, but the wrong one.

Boromir has hope, and it drives him to violence.

Frodo and Sam have no hope, but they just pick up their backpacks and keep trudging.

The book is so much more complex than "Hope good, hopelessness bad." In the case of Frodo and Sam, it is usually about finding good and rest and resilience beyond hope, even when you are in the pit of despair. Probably my favorite moment in the entire trilogy is inThe Return of the King, when Sam is trying to find Frodo in the tower of Cirith Ungol:

"At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step below of the level of the passage-floor and bowed his head into his hands. It was quiet, horribly quiet. The torch, that was already burning low when he arrived, sputtered and went out; and he felt the darkness cover him like a tide. And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing.

"The voice sounded thin and quavering in the cold dark tower: the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit that no listening orc could possibly mistake for the clear song of an Elven-lord. He murmured old childish tunes out of the Shire, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo’s rhymes that came to his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run,

the merry finches sing.

Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night

and swaying beeches bear

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey’s end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell." 

Sam is not merely cheering himself up; he is telling himself that it isn't over yet. Perhaps that is a kind of hope, one that's not dependent on an outcome. One that can be true regardless of whether or not one's mission is hopeless. One that comes from inner strength rather than outer circumstance. Can we really call it hope at all? Is it grit? Perseverance? Duty? A sense of morality? A larger perspective? Character? Whatever it is, this looks despair in the face and decides to keep going anyway— not because the outcome will change, but because, well, it's just the right thing to do.

All in all, Lord of the Rings is not a tidy fable about how great hope is, but about all the ways that we relate to hope— and what lies underneath when all hope is gone. 

~~~