Tolkien Reading Day 2021: “On Courage without Hope”

March 24, 2021 Kaitlyn Facista

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On Courage without Hope (Tolkien Reading Day 2021) Tea with Tolkien

Our Tolkien Reading Day Giveaway

In honor of Tolkien Reading Day, I’m giving away one copy of my Lord of the Rings devotional “To Middle-Earth and Back Again”, one undated Tea with Tolkien Planner, and one illustrated edition of the Silmarillion! Enter using the Gleam widget below! And don’t forget to visit our shop for the Tolkien Reading day sale, through the end of the month.

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The Importance of March 25th

We could easily refer to March 25th as the most important date of all history, both in our own world and in the history of Middle-Earth. And that, if you might've guessed, is no coincidence.

Tolkien created Middle-Earth with painstaking detail and wove importance and symbolic meaning into nearly every page of The Lord of the Rings - and the dates of important events are no exception.

March 25th marks the date when the One Ring was destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom - so what is the significance? Why did he choose this date?

It turns out this date is incredibly important in Christian history, and Tolkien would've known this.

In The Spirit of Liturgy, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote, “Jewish tradition gave the date of March 25 to Abraham’s sacrifice... This day was also regarded as the day of creation, the day when God’s word decreed: ‘Let there be light.’ It was also considered, very early on, as the day of Christ’s death and eventually as the day of his conception.."

This date is the officially celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of the Incarnation, Mary's fiat: when Mary assented to God’s will and became the Mother of God Incarnate.

Considering its importance in Jewish and Christian tradition, it feels natural that Tolkien chose for March 25th to bear such significance to the history of Middle-Earth as well.

Two major events took place on March 25th within The Lord of the Rings: first and foremost, it is the date on which the One Ring is inadvertently destroyed by Gollum; and later, it is also the date that Elanor the Fair is born.

And so it is on this date that we encounter, in so many beautiful ways, Tolkien’s devotion to Christ's humbled and sacrificial love. Mirroring Christian history, Tolkien presents to his readers an incredible juxtaposition of life and death. Mary's acceptance of Christ's Incarnation - her fiat - was a death to her own plans or desires for her life; Christ's humiliation, torture, and crucifixion was the ultimate act of love brought about through death.

Through Frodo's ultimate death to himself, he conquers the evil of Sauron and brings about an age of peace for Middle-Earth.

Of course there is no perfect parallel but it’s absolutely worth noting and discussing when it comes to Tolkien Reading Day and the question of why Tolkien chose this date.

The Tolkien Road Podcast discussed this on Episode 57, and their stuff is always much more in-depth than mine so definitely check it out if you’d like to hear a longer discussion of the significance of March 25th.

Hope and Courage

Now this year’s theme is “Hope and Courage”, two virtues which are dependent on one another, and two things we dearly need in these days.

It takes Courage to hold on to Hope in the face of darkness or apparent ruin, but it is also Hope that can push us towards the most Courageous deeds.

But in many cases, the characters of Tolkien’s stories have been so burdened, crushed for long months and years by such a suffocating force of evil that they feel as if they are completely without hope. Weighed down by grief and yet not fully succumbed to despair, they trudged towards the light with their last ounce of strength and will. It is in these circumstances that Tolkien’s heroes are made.

This is encouraging to me because I have very little strength of will.

And we see it over and over in Tolkien’s works.

To have Courage even when it would seem that all hope is gone for ever -- this is how Sam Gamgee is able to put one foot in front of another as he carried Frodo up the slopes of Doom, this is how Aragorn, how Faramir, were able to fight against the seemingly endless armies of Sauron, this is how Gandalf was able to guide all of these moving pieces of Men towards the final destruction of Sauron’s realm.

Even As Hope Died

If I were to choose one character who most exemplified this idea, I think it would be Sam. One of the greatest heroes of The Lord of the Rings.

Sam was given the task of staying with Frodo and helping him along his journey, though he didn’t know exactly what it would cost him in the end. As the seemingly endless miles of their journey wore on, Sam grew weary -- as anyone would -- but his ability to hold onto courage despite having no hope of a return journey home is incredibly inspiring.

In the Return of the King, Tolkien writes:

“But the bitter truth came home to him at last: at best their provision would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.

'So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started,' thought Sam: 'to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job then I must do it. But I would dearly like to see Bywater again, and Rosie Cotton and her brothers, and the Gaffer and Marigold and all. I can't think somehow that Gandalf would have sent Mr. Frodo on this errand if there hadn't a' been any hope of his ever coming back at all. Things all went wrong when he went down in Moria. I wish he hadn't. He would have done something.'

But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.”

We see this sort of courage in so many of Tolkien’s characters as well -- in every member of the Fellowship, even Boromir -- but someone who stood out to me outside of the Fellowship was Faramir.

Faramir, Captain of Gondor, brother to Boromir and son of Denethor, has been worn down by years of battle against the forces of Mordor. From his perspective, there is little to no chance of victory.

In the Two Towers, Faramir says to Frodo:

“'What hope have we?... It is long since we had any hope. The sword of Elendil, if it returns indeed, may rekindle it, but I do not think that it will do more than put off the evil day, unless other help unlooked-for also comes, from Elves or Men. For the Enemy increases and we decrease. We are a failing people, a springless autumn.”

And yet Faramir continued to fight. Bound by a sense of duty and the firm desire to do what was right, his heart instilled with the goodness that came from Gandalf’s mentorship, he carried on.

Without Hope or Courage

Look at him in contrast with his own father, Denethor.

When we meet Denethor in The Return of the King, he is a man who has long ago lost any hope. Gondor, his realm, has endured the brunt of Sauron’s forces for so long and he has become obsessed with the Palantir.

The Palantiri were ancient seeing stones created by the Noldor used to communicate between realms. They were not evil at their beginning, but they have since fallen under the control of Sauron. In Denethor’s case, Sauron had been using the Palantir to manipulate Denethor, showing him glimpses of his power and basically holding his hand and walking him down into the pits of despair.

By the time Gandalf arrives at Minas Tirith with Pippin, he has essentially accepted that there would be no way to defeat Sauron without wielding the Ring against him -- something that we know would be impossible to do, but nevertheless Denethor is convinced. He has lost all hope entirely and renounced courage as vanity.

And Denethor holds so tightly onto this despair even through the last moments of his life.

Tolkien writes:

“‘Pride and despair!’ he cried. ‘Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind? Nay, I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. For thy hope is but ignorance. Go then and labour in healing! Go forth and fight! Vanity. For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory.’...

Then Denethor leaped upon the table, and standing there wreathed in fire and smoke he took up the staff of his steward-ship that lay at his feet and broke it on his knee. Casting the pieces into the blaze he bowed and laid himself on the table, clasping the palantír with both hands upon his breast. And it was said that ever after, if any man looked in that Stone, unless he had a great strength of will to turn it to other purpose, he saw only two aged hands withering in flame.”

So how can we avoid becoming like Denethor despite all of the evil that surrounds us? How can we cling to courage despite a loss of hope?

Everytime I look at the news of the world around me I see: a worldwide pandemic, wars, genocide, racism, injustice, death, the dehumanization of the most vulnerable, and more and more and more until it reaches this point where it feels like the entire world is evil and that all is lost.

But then this quote comes into my mind: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

I think this is one of the great lessons we can take away from Tolkien’s works. That despite all the evils in this world, there is still goodness -- we need only to look for it. And if we can manage to hold onto Courage, even when it would seem that all Hope has left us, we may yet come through whatever shadow has fallen upon us.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo asks Gildor: ‘But where shall I find courage? … That is what I chiefly need.’

In typical elvish fashion, Gildor replies: ‘Courage is found in unlikely places.”

But there are so many moments throughout The Lord of the Rings in which characters are strengthened by small, unlooked for moments which bring hope and courage.

So many of my favorite Tolkien quotes echo this idea, but none more than the moment in the Return of the King when Sam looks up to the sky from the desolation of Mordor:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” - The Return of the King

So I hope, on this Tolkien Reading Day, that you will be strengthened by these characters, and that you’ll be able to hold onto whatever courage you can, and that you’ll continue putting one foot in front of the other even if everything around you feels dark. To paraphrase Gandalf: alll we can do is decide what to do with our small measure of time and then to trust in Providence that this will be enough.

Evil Labours in Vain

I wanted to end with a passage from Letter 64 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien,

“All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives. . . . . But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God.

And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do.”

If this was your first time listening to our podcast, I invite you to visit our website www.teawithtolkien.com to learn more about everything we’re doing at Tea with Tolkien: from our blog, to our book club, our discord, and our shop -- there’s quite a lot up on there, and plenty of ways to get involved with our Tea with Tolkien community. And we’d love to have you!

I hope you’ll have a beautiful rest of the day, and I will see you next week for week twelve of our Silmarillion book club!