Moral Behavior Under Ontological Entropy in Tolkien's Cosmology

Introduction

With this work, I will be taking up the task of clarifying the moral structures that Tolkien has woven into the fabric of Eä. We will investigate my assertion that the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ of Tolkien’s world are not dependent on any particular character’s normative ethics, nor are they rooted in aesthetics or religious servitude. Rather, they are innate qualities of creation which manifest as real properties of the world, its inhabitants and the motifs of its history. We will uncover the unique channels of power and moral activity that an actor can work through in such a world. Once a lantern is held to the moral scaffolding, we will be able to look at various events that transpire within Tolkien’s work and understand them in a new light. I will also take time at the end to briefly comment on how Peter Jackson ultimately left behind Tolkien’s moral ontology in his film adaptations.

In the Beginning

In the Silmarillion, Tolkien recounts to us the story of all creation. Ilúvatar is the primary mover and first being in Tolkien’s creation myth. His first act is to create beings called ‘Ainur’. “…the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.” - Silmarillion, The Music of the Ainur

We are told that Ilúvatar offers them themes to turn into music, and each of the Ainur are bade to sing. Mostly, at first, they each alone took their turn singing, and each Ainur only understood the part of Ilúvatar’s mind that they came from. As the Ainur listened to the songs of the others, the breadth of their understanding multiplied. When the time was right, Ilúvatar called them all forth and gave to them a grander theme. He commanded them to sing the theme in unison, with each individual bringing to it their particular thoughts and devices. As the music spread out into the void, a desire arose in the Ainur called Melkor for the want of his own theme to be woven into this great song. But what was in his mind was not in accord with Ilúvatar’s theme. Instead, it was in service to the magnification of his own power and greatness. Its expression was discordant with all of the other singing. The song stops and then Ilúvatar grants them a new theme and bids them to start again. The singing begins, and again, Melkor imbues his discord. The song stops, and a third theme is given. Again the same events transpire. Silence. Ilúvatar, now speaking to the Ainur says: “…those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite.”
Ilúvatar then grants the Ainur vision, and turns what they sang into a new world for all of the music to play out and unfold as a great history.

The First Moral Law: Creation and Corruption

In this manifestation of song into world and history is where Tolkien’s most beloved stories take place. And in this creation story is where we can find our first moral law of Eä: Evil is the discord of harmony.

Evil does not have the power to create, only the power to corrupt what has already been created. We see this in the orcs, who are corruptions of men. (Tolkien grappled with this idea, at first proposing that they are corruptions of elves, and later changing them to have an origin traceable to men.) The Ring Wraiths are corrupted kings of men.
This law shows itself in the way that evil stylistically exists in the world, in its modes of interaction with nature and with other beings. For instance, Mordor is barren and lifeless. The Dead Marshes are scarred by war and strife. Mirkwood is a forest poisoned by the presence of Sauron. When Saruman reorients away from the good it is marked by an abandonment of nature. He begins seeing the forests not as monuments of divine creation that should be preserved, but as fuel for the forging of iron and steel. He puts creation to the purpose of making his own inventions.

In contrast to this, the architecture of the elves blends seamlessly into the ecosystems that they are situated in. Of Hobbits, Tolkien says:
“…they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth… They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom… - Prologue, The Fellowship of the Ring

Tolkien, throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy, labors over descriptions of the natural world. The splendor and glory of forests and flowers and little rivers permeates the atmosphere of Middle-earth. The reader apprehends this at all times, whether it’s at the forefront of the events being described, or running in the background of the setting that our characters are in. We know when our characters are situated within the beauty of creation, or when they are surrounded by its corruption. Thus, the style of evil and its way of being in the world are not merely aesthetic, but bound tightly together with the governing laws of the world that moral actors inhabit. Discord is easily seen amongst harmony.

Tolkien’s Entropy

“I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat" - J. R. R. Tolkien

Let us take a break from parsing out the moral fibers woven into Tolkien’s tapestry of creation and turn our attention instead to the passage of time.
For the casual reader, the presence of Tolkien’s attitudes about the passage of time is likely perceived peripherally. If you’ve spent any time with the themes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, you’ve likely been able to detect its presence. It is easy to miss as an explicit feature, but quite present in the atmosphere. Not infrequently, Tolkien’s immortal characters will remember aloud or indirectly point to the bygone splendor and more potent magic of an earlier age. The most beautiful places and objects that we encounter are typically thousands of years old. For a time, I made the mistake of thinking that this was a minor characteristic of Eä, simply a real life position that Tolkien took vaguely seeping into his storytelling. I wrote the Elves and Tolkien off as reactionaries, and went on marveling at the events of the third age. In retrospect, I see that I was wrong about one of these ideas.
When Elrond says: “Such is the way of it: the power of the Dark Lord is again stretching out over Middle-earth. But we must not be deceived: many things that were strong in the Elder Days have grown weak.” - Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

He isn’t just saying this to comfort his allies, he is calling to our attention a feature in the universe that permeates everything, one that as an immortal being, he has undeniably witnessed. Time is entropic, greatness is diminishing. This entropy is quite particular, and dissimilar from the kind of entropy that exists in our own world. You see, it isn’t a matter of thermodynamics, it isn’t that there is going to be a heat death in Tolkien’s universe: it is that time is a one way erosive force that moves creation further and further away from its origin. Tolkien’s cosmology renders time as a distancing from origin, a degradation of the innate goodness within creation that corresponds to its distance from creator. If all of Eä is the unfolding of a song, then passing ages are its dissipation into the void, or its warped echoing in a cavern.
This realization is not one to be taken lightly. If entropy isn’t simply present as an attitude carried by those cursed to witness all of history’s unfolding, but actually built into the physics of Tolkien’s universe, what kind of implications does this have for its moral actors? What kind of victory can there be in such a world? How does this reshape our understanding of consequences and of character motivations? What sort of power does a moral actor have in a world where all of history is a long defeat?

Preservation as Power

“‘Your ring is shown to be that One Ring by the fire-writing alone, apart from any other evidence.’

‘And when did you discover that?’ asked Frodo, interrupting.

‘Just now in this room, of course,’ answered the wizard sharply.”

-Frodo and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

At this moment, I think we are not unlike Gandalf. We can now return to places we’ve already visited and look upon familiar objects in the firelight of deeper knowledge. Let us journey to Lothlórien and see what one can do in the face of history’s inherent degradation.

Lothlórien was settled by Celeborn and Galadriel in the second age. It is remarked, by Frodo, as feeling timeless: “I see no sign of decay here. Is there no change in the aging in this land?” - Frodo, The Fellowship of the Ring

The feeling of timelessness that Frodo experiences is present due to the power of Galadriel’s preservation of Lothlórien, which she wields through the ring of power called ‘Nenya’. Lothlórien’s grandeur has been kept frozen in time since it was settled by Galadriel. When we revisit this location and its history with the knowledge that time is entropic, it’s hard to not see it as a monument dedicated to the very thing that it resists.

Let us consider that an ancient and powerful ring was designed and forged with the ability to give some power over the forces working to undo the world’s splendor and beauty and that Galadriel consciously uses the ring to this purpose. It is safe to say that not only are some beings of Middle-earth aware of entropy, but that it is more than a suspicion, and some actors are motivated to resist it. In a universe where time’s passage takes you further and further away from the origin of goodness itself, the reason for preservation takes on new life beyond simply being archival or aesthetic and becomes a moral question: do moral actors have an obligation to preserve what is good from the claim of entropy? It forces us to ask other questions as well, such as: how does a moral actor know what is good and worthy of preservation? If it isn’t obvious by now, we can look to our first moral law to find this answer.

Euthyphro would have loved it here, because the world and its objects are, by default, good because Ilúvatar made them. Evil forces cannot create, they can only corrupt what has already been created. So what do good moral actors orient themselves toward? They orient themselves toward the uncorrupted, toward unblemished nature, toward systems of harmony, and toward ways of being that further the ability to preserve.
People and places that are uncorrupted or unblemished ought to be preserved. We see this in Frodo and Samwise, who set out to save the Shire. We see this in Treebeard, who retaliates against Saruman for destroying the forests. Once more, the elves harmonize with their environments and bend its unblemished flora into their architecture. Galadriel uses her ring of power to preserve Lothlórien.

Now, through our exploration we have found that time is an irreversible entropic force which works not thermodynamically, but on the goodness that exists within creation itself. We have discovered creation to be a power only available to forces of good, we have therefore also discovered the innate goodness of creation itself. We have found that evil instantiates its will by corrupting what is already created, and cannot itself create. We have seen how beings are able to veridically perceive what is good. We therefore understand that the ability to preserve good things is a type of power. So, we must ask ourselves: how do these new insights impact the way that we understand moral situations? What sort of limitations does this leave our moral actors with? What will this mean for how we interpret character motives?

Timing as Power

“Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away.” - Galadriel to Frodo, The Fellowship of the Ring

There is more to consider before those questions can be properly answered. Let us spend a bit more time with entropy. I must be very clear here about how potent and prevailing this constant erosion is, for it doesn’t only reveal itself within deep time or to ageless beings. It is a force that is present from second to second, it is permeating each sequence of a lived moment for every individual. The world cannot become innately better than it was yesterday. Time does not move backwards. Once a land is scourged by time or evil, it might in the proper hands have what good is still in it restored. But it can never be what it was again and certainly never better than what it was. Our moral actors do not escape from this conundrum either, people do not go through transformative processes and end up as something more than what was already innately within them. Tolkien, instead of transforming his characters has them undergo processes of clarification. Aragorn does not slowly increase his innate kingliness and gentle touch, these qualities are revealed to him over time. He wills himself toward the embodiment of kingliness. Aragorn comes to us from the beginning this way, we meet him as an already clarified being. Samwise does not acquire qualities of bravery that he at first did not contain within him, the bravery is revealed to him in some way, and through an act of will it is chosen and sustained. This process is Tolkien’s clarification, and it is mechanistically distinct from character transformation. It is a reconfiguration of innateness, a dormant quality brought to the foreground of being and made vivid. However, clarification is double-edged, because moral actors have a finite amount of virtue due to entropy. Even though Frodo largely succeeds in clarifying his virtuous qualities, it is not to his persistent, overall betterment. Instead, it is to the expenditure of these very virtues. Toward the end of The Return of the King Frodo says: “‘I am wounded… it will never really heal.’”
You can see how Frodo is like Lothlórien in this way. The journey toward his ultimate act of heroism does not bring him nearer to an immutable state of virtuousness, he will not be better than he was or even restored to how he was formerly. He is still diminished by time, his innate virtues are wielded and then sacrificed on the altar of entropy. In other words: because virtue is a finite resource, our moral actors must use precision when preserving and when halting the act of internal and external preservation.

I find it necessary at this moment to discuss a particular instance when it appears that entropy is violated and character transformation occurs: the matter of Gandalf the Gray into Gandalf the White.
Firstly, what kind of being is a wizard? They are not simply men who learned magic, they are Maiar, which are lesser Ainur. The same beings who sang in the creation story. The Maiar are pre-temporal beings who were sent into time—into physicality, for the purpose of aiding the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. In the third age, Gandalf encountered a Balrog in the Mines of Moria. Balrogs are also Maiar, corrupted by Morgoth and forced to serve him. After vanquishing this Balrog, Gandalf’s physical body perished and he returned to his original form as spirit, but he was made flesh again and sent back. Please indulge this beautiful passage spoken by Gandalf in The Two Towers:
“I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin. Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. ‘Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done. And naked I lay upon the mountain-top. The tower behind was crumbled into dust, the window gone; the ruined stair was choked with burned and broken stone. I was alone, forgotten, without escape upon the hard horn of the world. There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth. Faint to my ears came the gathered rumor of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of over-burdened stone.”

When Gandalf’s spirit left Eä he was again with Ilúvatar. Ilúvatar, knowing that Gandalf was the only wizard who remained true to his task, sent him once more into time, back to Middle-earth. But now, with more of the innate power of his immortal spirit present within its physical incarnation. He was reordered, given a higher status among wizards by the creator of all things. This appears to us in the story like a character transformation: Gandalf endures a hardship, virtuously conquers it, and is qualitatively improved through the process of hardship. Interestingly, Gandalf does not actually become innately better, he is simply granted more access to the innateness of his spirit. In this way, it’s better described as an atemporal clarification. It does not violate Tolkien’s entropy because the process occurs outside of time, nor does Gandalf transform into a greater being.

Returning now to our original task: all of these aforementioned features blend together and create the unique characteristics of Tolkien’s moral ontology. Moral actors do not endure, grow and transform. They uncover what is innately in them through acts of discovery, willfully take up a selection of these qualities and then preserve or utilize them with intentional timing.

We find themes of preservation and emphasis on acts of correct timing all over the place in Tolkien’s work. Tolkien has Gandalf quite plainly point to it:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - Frodo and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

This interaction contacts the reader’s heart first and foremost. It is quite obvious, no matter how closely you’re reading Tolkien’s work, that there is something true and earnest about this bit of wisdom. You don’t need to understand Tolkien’s moral formula, the goodness of uncorrupted creation, or even entropic forces to apprehend the wisdom of what he’s saying. And maybe that’s how it’s so well hidden, it is like a sweetness to our virtue sensing organs. We bite into it and swallow as naturally as we would an apple in an orchard. But that is also its genius, it conceals itself in plain sight with a veneer of gentle council. And yet, it directly announces an essential component of Tolkien’s unique moral formula.

Let us look to Aragorn as one of our strongest examples of this formula: Aragorn, when we first meet him, is presented to us as a Ranger. What is a Ranger? To briefly summarize, they are a small and secret political order who protect and keep watch over the land and the people that they reside in proximity to. The chief of the Rangers is always the heir of Isildur. This order exists as a reserve for a time when the line of kings is to be restored. The proper heir is raised in secret, in a way that makes him suitable for kinghood should the time arise during his life. This itself is a microcosm of Tolkien’s moral formula. The heir’s innate kingly qualities are aided in clarification through the mentorship of the Rangers. He is kept safe, and he must patiently wait in hiding for a time when the need of the world calls for the restoration of the line of kings.

The shards of Narsil are yet another example. The shards are preserved for thousands of years and then reforged, but only when Elrond senses that the world is ready.
Sauron uses this same process in the forging of the One Ring. He clarified within himself the desire to dominate all life and preserved it within a physical object to be used when the conditions of the world were favorable for it. Let us not forget what the One Ring does to its bearer: It clarifies the innate qualities which best serve its own will and then preserves its keeper by giving “unnatural long life.”

So in short, the presence of entropy creates restraints that must be factored into moral behavior and shows up as an intrinsic characteristic of how moral formulas are structured and instantiated.
Precise timing isn’t only important in music, it’s also essential for preserving what is good.

The Second Moral Law: Will

“They had, as it were, no will of their own anymore.” -Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

In the circuits of Tolkien’s moral ontology lives its lifeblood: Will. Ilúvatar first created themes that were then expressed as song, from these songs Eä was manifested. In this world, mind and meaning precedes material, and physical beings are the instantiation of will. This is what gives each act possibility and power, this is what makes acts moral. First there is discovery, or clarity: the revelation of innate qualities. Then, there is the choice of which qualities to will oneself toward and ultimately embody. This is all part of clarification. Further, one must will internal perseveration. And what is an orientation toward something? In some cases, it’s the internal process of choosing to embody a quality. In other cases, it’s what the moral actor is in service of, and how he uses his qualities to preserve it. (i.e. Samwise discovers his bravery; he chooses to embrace it. He sees that the Shire and Frodo are good, he uses his bravery as a means to help preserve what he sees to be good.)

The existence of will is what makes actors moral and corruptible. Corruption can happen without the work of outside forces. In Saruman’s case, corruption is the result of a willful reorientation of his innate characteristics. Or rather, he willfully re-clarified. The One Ring works differently from this, it does not work by persuading or tempting people into willful reconfigurations and reorientations. Instead, it is parasitic on the will of those around it. Those under its power slowly lose influence over their own will. The One Ring gropes around in the darkness of its bearer’s heart and causes re-clarification in a way that is suitable for what it is oriented toward.
The domination of another’s will is a central theme of Tolkien’s stories. The Ring Wraiths have entirely lost their will in place of Sauron’s, they are beings who have lost their status as moral actors and have become servants in the most severe sense. When we first meet Théoden his will is under the influence of Saruman and Gríma Wormtongue. While Wormtongue works on Théoden through ordinary channels of psychological and political influence, Saruman uses enchantments to weaken his will.
“Your leechcraft ere long would have had me walking on all fours like a beast.” -Théoden to Wormtongue, The Two Towers
Acts of domination are not limited to instances directed at bending the will of others, we are shown that domination exists within the relationship between actors and nature as well. A desire to master nature is shown throughout these fictions to be its own iniquity, as we have previously covered. It should be explicitly stated that mastery over nature for Tolkien counts as acts of domination. Something that he severely reviled.
It is becoming clearer and clearer what kind of power beings can wield in the universe that Tolkien has meticulously structured. It seems quite apparent that the channels of moral behavior are the same for both good and bad actors, only utilized in service of opposite ethical alignments. So if the domination of will and nature are evil, what does its inversion look like?

Inspiration as Power

“Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!” - Éomer, Return of the King

If one of the primary themes of power resides in dominating the will of others, then the inverse of this must be the liberation and fortification of another’s will. The heroes of Tolkien’s story do much of their work by helping other moral actors to retain and fortify their own will. The moments in which they succeed in gathering power are not through acts of dominating the minds and bodies of others, but in helping others to orient toward the good and to fortify their will so that they may choose it.
Take our dear Sam, for instance. He stands by Frodo as the One Ring slowly burrows deeper and deeper into his heart and reminds him: “There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for.” - Samwise, The Two Towers
Samwise takes on the effort of preservation for Frodo, he reminds Frodo of the good in the world, the good that Frodo has oriented himself toward and of his will to continue doing so. Because of the length of time that Frodo endures the erosion of his own will, and his constant proximity to Sam, the characteristics of this moral activity seem to me unique. We see Sam aiding in the fortification of Frodo’s will, but Sam almost seems to become a surrogate will for Frodo as well. Nevertheless, Sam and Frodo are perhaps the most tender and intimate depiction of this power that we see within Tolkien’s work.
Gandalf, however, is the most potent wielder of this type of power. He is the owner of the ring of power called Narya—a ring which gives its wearer an enhanced ability to inspire others and to ward off tyranny. When we think about Gandalf’s actions throughout Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy through this lens it becomes quite apparent that this is Gandalf’s preferred course against evil, and almost always his activities are tied up in this end.
It is Gandalf who sets Frodo on his task. Gandalf who understands that Samwise needs to accompany him. Gandalf who aids Théoden in returning to kingliness, regain autonomy and help Théoden to be rid of Wormtongue’s influence. Even Wormtongue, after having his intentions exposed, is never robbed of the autonomy to choose.
Though Gandalf ultimately does not succeed, he attempts to help a Denethor plagued by hopelessness and visions of death reorient himself:
”Denethor started as one waking from a trance, and the flame died in his eyes, and he wept; and he said: ‘Do not take my son from me! He calls for me.’

‘He calls,’ said Gandalf, ‘but you cannot come to him yet. For he must seek healing on the threshold of death, and maybe find it not. Whereas your part is to go out to the battle of your City, where maybe death awaits you. This you know in your heart.’

‘He will not wake again,’ said Denethor. ‘Battle is vain. Why should we wish to live longer? Why should we not go to death side by side?’” - The Return of the King

Contrast this with an approach that is purely exercised through political channels, executed with threats of bodily harm, or the erosion of another’s will with magic to replace it with your own. The good moral actors of Middle-earth do not fight domination with domination, they ward off domination by restoring clarity and will.
In Tolkien’s letters, he says this of Denethor: “Denethor was tainted with mere politics: hence his failure… It had become for him a prime motive to preserve the polity of Gondor, as it was, against another potentate, who had made himself stronger and was to be feared and opposed for that reason rather than because he was ruthless and wicked.” - Tolkien, Letter 183

Even what appear as insignificant moments of Gandalf giving wisdom or council, I now revisit and see quiet representations of this power. I see the bolstering of will and clarity in all of his brief and tender exchanges.
Gandalf rides back and forth over Middle-earth throughout his life, orienting people toward higher tasks and helping to strengthen their will. He is a quiet agent of good, ever keeping his mind focused on all of the threads in the tapestry of Middle-earth’s unfolding history.

Aragorn strongly rejects the idea of domination and tyranny, which is shown to us by what he is in service of, by how he approaches moral activity, and by the kinds of moral actors he opposes. His absolute rejection of domination orients him toward a very specific approach to kinghood, one that is extraordinarily cognizant in its operation and intention. It largely informs his sense of timing in the matter of seating himself upon Gondor’s throne. He knows that Middle-earth must be free of Sauron’s threat in order for a proper restoration of the line of kings to occur.
”I am heir of Isildur and the Stone of Elendil, but the hour is not yet come for me to claim my own.” - Aragorn, The Two Towers
The right to rule must be earned through fidelity, servitude and proven guardianship. To rule simply through inheritance and birthright would walk too closely to domination and tyranny.
”He has wandered far and wide, and he has learned much that the people of Gondor have forgotten.” - Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
This is tied to his time as a ranger, which we reviewed earlier. If Aragorn took the throne of Gondor simply because it was his inherited right or because it was a time of emergency, he would, as Tolkien says; be “tainted with mere politics”.

Aragorn’s resistance to the power of the One Ring is partly rooted in these principles. The One Ring looks into the hearts of those in its presence and finds what is most deeply desired. It must be said that what one most deeply desires is not necessarily what one is presently oriented toward. For instance, Galadriel’s deepest desire is to preserve Lothlórien eternally. In The Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo offers her the One Ring, she says:
”I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer. For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp.”
We know she ultimately understands that Lothlórien must either come to corruption and ruin at the hands of Sauron’s powers, or be swallowed by the maw of time when the One Ring ceases to be and her own ring of power can no longer offer preservation. Still, for a moment the One Ring plunders her heart and bends her will toward a way out of this inevitable loss: the taking of the ring for herself, which seems momentarily like a way out. As we know, she refuses this temptation and eventually departs from Middle-earth.

Returning to Aragorn, his clarification and orientation toward the good are what allow him to resist so easily what the One Ring promises. What power does a corrupting force have when it looks into a heart and finds that the deepest desires that dwell within are its own antithesis? Aragorn deeply desires to restore the line of kings through the his own virtue and fidelity. The ring can only offer rulership through domination. Aragorn has the reforged shards of Narsil, he has rigorously clarified and oriented himself and he is the rightful heir of Isildur. The One Ring has but little for him. This is all to say: Aragorn is a particular case of a being who is morally aligned with his own desires. His desires then are not like a culvert in the Deeping Wall, but instead desire itself acts as a ward against corruption.

In the House of Peter Jackson

“I do not want that power. I have never wanted it. - Aragorn, The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson’s Cinematic Adaptations)

Firstly, I will set expectations by saying this: I intend to spend only a brief amount of time on this subject, as it could be an entire essay of its own. Perhaps, one day I’ll write that essay. But my greater hope is that you can simply take what we’ve uncovered here and conclude for yourself everything that I would have otherwise said regarding Jackson’s adaptations during your next rewatch.

The insights that I’ve had about Tolkien’s moral framework largely sprang forth from a sudden comparison I found myself making between Jackson’s depiction of Aragorn and Tolkien’s Aragorn, so I do owe it a bit of attention. That aside, I will now, quite superficially, get into what I believe Jackson’s adaptations left behind.

Keeping in mind all of the ground that we just covered together, let us focus in on how Jackson’s Aragorn is depicted. Though Jackson’s Aragorn remains largely faithful in his actions to the source material, his motivations and the spirit of his character arc are reconfigured in a way that indicates the absence of major moral themes found within the original works (which by now I hope you have an exhaustive understanding of).
I opened this section of the essay with a quote from the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring wherein Aragorn makes a statement regarding power. He speaks this after Elrond suggests that it is time for the shards of Narsil to be reforged.
Already, I’m sure you’re noticing important differences. Firstly, Tolkien’s Aragorn is the one who wants Narsil reforged, and this is important because it shows us how he’s oriented and what his attitudes toward power and inheritance are. Secondly, Tolkien’s Aragorn does not express fear of power. In fact, he knows precisely what his power is and wields it virtuously. It is not something we see him grow into within Tolkien’s work. We know that Aragorn has an impeccable sense of timing, and that the world is not yet ready for Aragorn, not the other way around. This already greatly diminishes a major component of Tolkien’s instantiations of moral activity and power.
What’s worse, is that the contemporary audience finds in Aragorn a transformative character arc. It can be argued that we are simply seeing Jackson’s Aragorn move through a clarification process, but I don’t think we have any strong reasons to believe a contemporary audience will view it this way, or that Jackson did either. Many of our most popular fictions use the Hero’s Journey template, and the audience will likely quite easily and unconsciously map this onto Jackson’s adaptations for many of his characters.
We watch Jackson’s Aragorn deny his power and inheritance repeatedly. We are told that his time as a Ranger was an act of self-exile and is motivated by avoidance. This is an erasure of what the Rangers are in Tolkien’s world. Because Jackson’s version of the Rangers are not expounded upon, we are left to think of them as simple wanderers of the forests with no greater political or moral goals orienting their cause. It is another absence of what I referred to earlier as a microcosm of Tolkien’s moral process.

So, how does Jackson’s Aragorn seem to resist the One Ring so easily? I don’t really know. I suspect that we are just meant to apprehend that Aragorn is good by how he is framed aesthetically and by the style of his interactions with those around him. This is something many modern fictions are guilty of doing. “Good” and “evil” characters often don’t live in a world which ontologically grounds good and evil. Instead, we simply infer goodness and evilness through stylization, motivations are then given to our senses as good or evil depending on who the actor is. Or to put it another way: Good and Evil live and die in the viewer’s impressions.
I suspect, too, that Aragorn’s relationship with power is one that is more suited and more easily accepted by a contemporary audience. His aversion to power and reluctance to pursue his birthright gears nicely into an audience that finds all forms of power (and in many cases are confused about what power is, even when it’s right in front of them) to be abhorrent.

It is not entirely clear in Jackson’s adaptations that there is an all encompassing, irreversible entropy either. It seems that triumph really is a betterment of Middle-earth, rather than progression within a “long defeat” as Tolkien puts it.
In the book at the end of The Return of the King, we find a final act of corruption has been levied and it is against the Shire. Saruman (who does not die in Tolkien’s The Two Towers) invades the Shire and uses Bag End as his headquarters. He then goes on to erect forces of industry and destroy the natural life. He is ultimately thwarted, and though the Shire has irreversibly lost some of its magnificence, it is mended and what innate good remains is clarified and drawn out by its inhabitants.
Jackson’s adaptations are completely absent of this event. Instead, the hobbits return to an unchanged Shire. Perhaps the Shire isn’t better than it was before, but the world as a whole seems to be. The Shire persists against evil and against entropy.

In some strange way, Jackson’s adaptations fulfill the promise of Tolkien’s entropy by leaving it out, thereby, even if perversely, preserving the deeper essences of its source material.

Alas! I have much more to say on this matter, but I will leave it with this and let you be the judge: I don’t believe an audience, having access to only Jackson’s adaptations, could come to understand what we have uncovered in this essay.
I understand the limitations of cinema, I also apprehend the beauty of cinema. I cherish Jackson’s adaptations, they are not faultless, but they utterly succeed in amplifying Tolkien’s reverence for natural beauty and mythic storytelling. I will not exhaust you with my praise of these movies, but trust that it is plentiful.
My only sadness stems from the fact that Tolkien’s meticulous, and extraordinarily cognizant and unique moral devices can be so easily missed if one only indulges Jackson’s adaptations. The subtleties and genius of his ontological system permeates every word of his story and profoundly deepens all of its characters and themes.

A Long-Expected Ending

“The clearing up certainly needed a lot of work, but it took less time than Sam had feared.” - The Return of the King

And here we are, finally at the end of this long journey. It is only right, I think, that we take a moment to concisely lay out the subject matter that we’ve labored over so that we may feel gratified with a clear sense of what we’re taking away from this.

Here is Tolkien’s moral ontology expressed plainly:

The source of all things is a creator whose nature is good;
Therefore, creation has innate good.

Evil cannot create, only corrupt what is already created;
Therefore, evil only exists as distortions of creation.

The passage of time is proportional to creations’ distance from its creator;
Therefore, history’s progress entails separation from the source of goodness.

Distance from the origin of good is proportional to the decrease of creation’s innate goodness;
Therefore, history unfolds as irreversible moral fading.

Moral actors exist temporally and alongside moral entropy;
Therefore, moral actors cannot become greater than what is innately within them.

Moral actors are beings who possess will;
Therefore, moral actors can orient themselves toward particular innate qualities.

Moral actors are clarified by discovering innate qualities and willing embodiment;
Therefore, moral actors have the potential for moral failure and moral fulfillment.

Goodness is real, and it is possible to veridical perceptions of it;
Therefore, it is possible and virtuous to orient yourself toward the good and to preserve it.

The optimal expenditure of your virtues requires precise timing;
Therefore, good moral actors must eventually cease to preserve their own virtues.

Will is the substrate of moral acts;
Therefore it is virtuous to aid in the fortification of another’s will.

Virtuous behavior is achievable with particular configurations of clarity;
Therefore, it is virtuous to aid others in gaining these particular configurations of clarity.

Nature is uncorrupted creation;
Therefore, it is virtuous to preserve and harmonize with the natural world.

Evil exists as a polarity of good;
Therefore, all channels of virtuous behavior can be inversely used for evil.

And now, we come to the end. Go on, wander again into the deep hallways of time which are adorned only by mantles of despair and sorrow, haunted by the spirits of memory. Preserve what you can against the starving god called ‘entropy’ and rejoice, if you will, in the company of friends and in the ancient landscapes of nature.

But before you go down those halls, take with you the words of Tolkien; for who better to say all of what I have said than the man who labored over its creation:


“I think that a comparison with a seed is more illuminating: a seed with its innate vitality and heredity, its capacity to grow and develop. A great part of the ‘changes’ in a man are no doubt unfolding of the pattern hidden in the seed; though these are of course modified by the situation (geographical or climatic) into which it is thrown, and may be damaged by terrestrial accidents. But this comparison leaves out inevitably an important point. A man is not only a seed, developing in a defined pattern, well or ill, according to its situation or its defects as an example of its species; a man is both a seed and in some degree also a gardener, for good or ill. I am impressed by the degree in which the development of ‘character’ can be a product of conscious intention, the will to modify innate tendencies in desired directions; in some cases the change can be great and permanent.” -Tolkien, Letter 183

And now, dear reader, I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of this long essay.

Farewell.