Tolkien's Philosophy: Why couldn't Frodo destroy the One Ring?

almost nothing gets to me more than the end of The Return of the King come on mr. Frodo I don't carry it for you but I can carry you and what distinguishes talking's writing from other fantasy stories here is that when it comes to the moment of truth the hero fails for all the way he has come from the Shire Frodo can't cast the ring into the fires in fact he takes it for himself but it got me thinking why did Tolkien write it this way and today's video was brought to you by me and my book on writing and world building which compiles all of my writing and world building videos into one single easy to reference easy to read book actually has quite a lot a lot of the wrong stuff in here the e-book is already out for you to preorder down at the link below and the actual paperback release is not till May 30th so if you're keen and a'dreea really appreciate you going to get it and thank you to the hundreds of you who already have now when I say Frodo failed I mean this in a very specific narrative scenes photos failure is unique but to explain why we need to discuss primary and secondary conflicts in a narrative climax which I discussed in my video on final battles the secondary conflict is the visual or physical confrontation between characters this might be an argument the hero fending off an army like in Logan or in the case of The Return of the King Frodo and Gollum grappling on the precipice of a volcano the primary conflict on the other hand is the internal conflict that a character has to overcome in Logan this was with a Wolverine could take responsibilities to stop himself being isolated and allow himself to be a part of another family in The Return of the King this is where the Frodo can resist the temptation of the One Ring in the heart of Saran's power usually these two layers of conflict are woven together they work in tandem and a lot of the time the hero actually succeeds in both like Aang in Avatar The Last Airbender who retains his morality the primary conflict and defeats the Fire Lord the secondary conflict and in some more solemn stories like Logan the hero loses the secondary conflict but they succeed in their primary conflict which is the one that we typically see as more important or more meaning for Logan chooses to care as part of a new family again even if he dies in doing so in contrast Frodo succeeds in neither his primary nor his secondary conflict golem successfully wrestles the one ring from him and Frodo doesn't manage to resist the lure of the one ring this isn't a narrative model that we usually see the defeat is neither willing nor is his capitulation to the one ring a noble sacrifice at least not directly no he succumbs to the one ring to the will of Sauron to his most deepest and darkest desires in totality so the question becomes why did Tolkien write it this way talking's dichotomous narrative where there is a definitively good side and a definitively evil side to the point that he describes ser on one-time as as close to a wholly evil mind as is possible it stands out because it isn't providing a commentary on subjective human morality in the way that say george RR martin is in his a Song of Ice and Fire series no tokens stories are instead written to comment on the nature of good and evil themselves and how they relate to one another and Frodo's failure and Mount Doom is perhaps the most important scene in discussing this the first thing that tokine explores in this scene is the nature of evil how is evil overcome is it something we defeat with good and moral acts or resisting the draw to do evil things the scene at the crack of doom suggests no the irony of sarang's defeat is that the very evil force that kept him alive the desire that all feel for the one ring is what eventually causes his total defeat at Mount Doom after sarang's destruction Isildur could not destroy the One Ring or resist taking it for himself yet in the climax of The Lord of the Rings what causes the one rings destruction is that because Frodo and Smeagol are both utterly consumed by that evil in their hearts fostered by the One Ring they fight to the bitter end till Smeagol falls into the depths with it but Gollum held aloft the ring finger still thrust within its circle if Shawn now is that verily was wrought with a living fire and with that even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat upon his prize he stepped too far toppled wavered for a moment on the brink and then with a shriek he fell out of the depths came as last whale precious precious precious precious I'm sorry I tried saying like that in a way that makes Gollum well but I can't I just I can't and then he was gone James chance explains the nature of evil the scene really well in her book the scene of the crack of doom is one of a Mint's moral ambiguity good does not triumph over evil but depends on evil to deliver it tokens moral philosophy becomes clear here that good cannot always destroy evil but evil will always destroy itself in the end in particular token use is my absolute favorite literary technique to explore this idea of evil being self defeating literary symmetry I have a weakness for it in all of its forms there is a symmetry between the battle of Degel ed and three for for one of the second age and the crack of doom there the ring survived because man could not resist its evil here the ring was destroyed because man could not resist its evil and just as Sauron loses a finger in the moment of his defeat he is defeated immediately after Frodo loses his finger there's a cyclical Ness here cyclic honest that's not a word the point being that the forces that make it go around the world that cause up to transfer hands from sera onto a SIL dirt to Gollum to Bilbo to Frodo bring it all the way back to Mount Doom that it is self-defeating but this point of tension further complicates tokens ideas when we account for the power of one particular thing mercy which holds a precarious place in the story of The Lord of the Rings and the wider Tolkien legendarium particular in two moments in the story firstly when Bilbo spears the life of Gollum in The Hobbit and secondly when Frodo Spears Gollum in the two towers at the forbidden pool and numerous times after that halation in the Fellowship of the Ring talking explicitly highlights the role of mercy in the overall narrative you see it was pity that state losses it was pity that stayed his hand pity and mercy not to strike without need and he is bound up with the fate of the Ring the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many yours not least this line it seems is almost prophetic and mercy is shown to be an incredibly important force than the story if Frodo and Bilbo each hadn't shown compassion and mercy to Gollum he couldn't have been there in Mount Doom and the ring would have never been destroyed it seems that showing mercy matters even if we fall to the temptation of evil to talking the most important moral acts that we can take are not necessarily actively opposing evil people and forces like orcs but doing moral things when nobody is watching amid a--the people won't remember that Frodo took mercy on Gollum that won't go down and the tale of the ages even though it's one of the most important moral acts that Frodo ever took to destroy the One Ring they certainly won't remember that Bilbo took mercy on colum fundamentally tokine is using this interplay of good and evil and mercy and temptation to say that even though evil will destroy itself that doesn't mean we don't need to do good moral things in the Lord of the Rings mercy is an important virtue even if it never punishes evil or converts it like we see and many other fantasy stories in this case the cause nah Frodo was triumphant because by the exercise of pity mercy and forgiveness of injury all was redressed and disaster averted and the second thing that talking does in the sea as he rejects the notion of the paragon the idea that any person can be morally perfect hobbits have a remarkable ability to resist the One Ring far more than men or elves or Maya this is poly because of their humility but even here the hobbit who selflessly took it upon himself to destroy the ring and resisted its power influence and manipulation for so long hey to succumbs to its evil as well to tokine evil is all corrupting in that it is an inherent part of the nature of man and as a loss i know'd hobbits are actually distantly related to the race of men though we don't know any more than that and it's interesting because talking's theology bleeds into his work here in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as Tolkien was a devout Catholic it has written that original sin is a deprivation of original holiness and justice but a human nature has not been totally corrupted it has wounded and the natural powers proper to it subject to ignorance suffering and the Dominion of death and inclined to sin to talking it's not that human nature is evil as we see the characters of Aragorn Sam Frodo and many others do morally good things but that human nature is wounded it's a struggle inside all of us and this natural inclination of men and hobbits towards evil underpins how tension is built throughout the story with the culmination of that tension in the scene at the crack of doom Frodo isn't just resisting the one ring tokine sees him as resisting a part of his very nature and on this he said one must face the fact the power of evil in the world is not final irresistible by incarnate creatures however good it is possible for the good even the saintly to be subjected to a power of evil which is too great for them to overcome in themselves but even he cannot overcome the evil deeply rooted in his heart but Tolkien's rejection of the Paragon goes even deeper than this he goes on to say that I do not think that Frodo's failure was moral failure morals failure can only be asserted I think when a man's effort or endurance falls short of his limits and the blame decreases as debt limit is closer approached it is no more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been say Frodo was crushed by a falling rock we repeatedly see throughout the story characters interacting with the One Ring some falling to it some resisting it this tension because there is an ambiguity as to whether Frodo will be able to resist the One Ring in the end after all he's headed for a lot longer than most of these characters who have only interact with it pretty briefly overall and the one character who has interacted with it for an extended period of time or the two if we include Bilbo there well the tension in the narrative feels like it's leading to a moment where someone is going to have to resist the evil of the One Ring once and for all to destroy it and it does but instead of talking telling the reader that we should always be like Frodo and resisted the temptation of evil as he casts the ring into the fires token instead chooses to acknowledge our inherent flaws as humans this is because token believes that there are some situations in which it is impossible for us to be truly moral some moments that have just beyond us interestingly this seems to be a subjective standard that we all have different moral limits and if we read this as kind of influenced or inspired by his experiences in war it's understandable to see where this idea comes from the idea that you can always and truly act morally when you're put in a stressful situation like a battlefield in world war 1 it's understandable that in real life there may be situations where acting morally is just beyond us what Madison token is that we strive to reach that moral limit and that struggle itself is moral this is why Aragorn and legalists don't blame Frodo for giving in when they learn about it afterwards they understand the reality of this but this is only half the story understanding the idea of moral limits is important but the text also reflects another part of tokens Catholicism that moral limits are met with an even more powerful redemptive force in the grace of God the Catechism of the Catholic Church says as much the victory the Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us with sin increased grace abounded all the more frodo sees himself as a failure in the text because he gave in at the moment of truth but you the creator god and tokens mythos still welcomes him when he sails to the Grey Havens once again the importance of Mercy comes through that it is stronger than any wrong now there are other meanings behind Frodo's leaving for the Grey Havens especially in the law but this is one reading of the text they think we should consider fundamentally toking rejects the idea of the Paragon and Frodo not merely to say that man is naturally inclined towards evil but to say that forgiveness cannot be earned through good works that forgiveness is freely given and should be freely given a very Christian idea and the third thing that talking does with the scene is that he scales down the scope of this epic story to the heart of the conflict and I used the word epic in the traditional literary sense of being a grand world-spanning tale tokine's works aren't about the clashes of mighty armies or heroes on the battlefield he subverts this fantasy trope and that the Battle of Marana NAT the Black Gate is literally intended as a distraction from the real battle which is not only taking place in Mount Doom but taking place in Frodo's heart too talking the battle of good and evil in our world isn't one between holy good and holy evil people like the men of the West and orcs it takes place in the hearts and minds of all men and the most important moments in our struggle against evil are not public grand of heroism and courage in battle but subtle decisions to show mercy and resist evil that few see the secret caves for Bilbo the hidden pool for Frodo and finally the crack of doom ends in a more grounded sense because I think this is important to discuss tokine also wanted to touch on how the traumas of war stay with us that when the war is over and we come home the war doesn't vanish or the effects of the war the pains of the war don't just leave talking had to rate experience of this as a soldier in the First World War particularly in the Battle of the Somme one of the bloodiest battles in the war where he saw friends of his died and this kind of idea is most clearly demonstrated in Frodo there is no real going back though I may come to the Shire it will not seem the same for I shall not be the same I am wounded with knife sting and tooth and a long burden where shall I find rest this idea of being permanently changed by war and trauma is physically manifested in how Frodo loses a finger a physical manifestation of the deeper and greatest psychological wounds that he will never recover from necessarily I also have to address the Tolkien hated allegory comment which I'm sure someone didn't even finish the video is going to comment down below in new ways now it is true talking did say I cordially dislike allegory in all of its manifestations but this line is often misinterpreted he disliked overt and childish allegory this is one of the reasons he wasn't a huge fan of CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia [Music] where it sort of imposes on the reader how they should be interpreting this this isn't to say that you can't have inspirations or draw on philosophical ideas or parallels between other things and your own work he even state at one point that the Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work unconsciously at first and then consciously in the revision in other words he made his work purposefully very Catholic and for the reasons we've discussed today that should be pretty obvious why and there's a lot more in it than obviously I discussed so yes we can definitively read philosophical and religious understandings from the text don't make that mistake but another question is what can we as writers learn from this well this is an example of the Dark Lord trope being used to actually enrich the text and the doclet rope we often advise to stay far far away from and this is because token was not so much concerned with what is right and what is wrong but how good and evil as concepts relate to one another a really interesting question to ask and the reason that I think that many of the stories that came afterwards failed to capture the magic of the Lord of the Rings is because even though they copied the tropes of the story they didn't understand the philosophy and ideas and how these tropes work together to give the text a deeper meaning oftentimes the Dark Lord will just be a manifestation of evil and that's it nothing more and the Lord of the Rings and tokine's legendary and more broadly is less about individual characters and their stories and more about one grand tale and mythology which has ideas and philosophies artistically woven into it and I think this has be summed up in some of the closing lines of the Lord of the Rings he has dwelt in the West since the days of the dawn and I have dwelt with him years uncounted and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat the long defeat I really like that phrase it's a phrase that means fighting a noble impossible battle noble because it is impossible doing good even if all will come to dust in the end because ultimately all will come to dust this is the struggle of middle-earth but it is also the struggle of mankind toking calls us the true theory of nobility and heroism to do good even if we fall eventually like Frodo and that ladies and gentlemen is today's video remember go get on writing in the real building if you would like it lots of other Lord of the Rings and fantasy nuggets like that because I love doing this sort of analysis it is a writing book does compile all of the videos and scripts and everything plus a whole bunch of new stuff that you've never seen before just really cool it would mean the world if you went to 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Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 533,068

Rating: 4.9358411 out of 5

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, tolkien, the one ring, the ring, fellowship of the ring, gollum, frodo, sam, mordor, gondor, rohan, music, scene, two towers, return of the king, bilbo, arag

Id: 2Ftxu6P_HOQ

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2019