Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

One Ring to Rule them All
the way we are and do something in our lives that maybe nobody will ever
know about. And who knows that Frodo has accomplished something so
amazing and saved Middle-earth except Gandalf and the fellowship?”
The epic irony is that, in the end, Frodo ultimately falls prey to the
enervating power of the ring, and he fails. He doesn’t throw the ring into
the fire but decides to retain possession of it—or let it possess him. And his
final struggle with Gollum on the brink of the pit is as much to keep the
ring from Gollum as it is to prevent it from falling into the Dark Lord’s
hands. But in that struggle, Frodo has donned the ring, and only Gollum—a
degenerated hobbit—is visible. “The part students most love to talk about is
that ending,” Chance says. “The doubles there are multiple and therefore
rather exciting in an analogical way.”
Tolkien even turns the traditional happy ending on its head. “I’m not so
sure it is a happy ending,” Chance says. “The destruction of the ring and the
fall of the Dark Lord crystallize things, but it’s interesting that Tolkien
didn’t stop there. Things have changed in the Shire towards
industrialization, and they’ll never return to the idyllic days that existed
before. Frodo and the elves go away to the Grey Havens, leaving a world
without wisdom and magic, as history moves into the age of Man, which is
a lesser age.”
The epic does not end on a note of doom, though, for Sam rebuilds the
Shire. He plants the seeds that Galadriel gave him, and there is a great crop.
Many children are born, and there is fertility and happiness for a period of
time. “What he has to help him is his memory of the visit to Galadriel in
Lothlórien,” Chance says. “Remember, Sam has had that glimpse of
paradise—he knows there is a paradise, and that’s so reassuring. Tolkien
talks in some of his fairy stories about why fantasy is so reassuring, and he
says that the ultimate fantasy—in a literary sense—is the resurrection of
Christ because it means there’s going to be a happy ending for us all
somewhere and there is some plan and order to the world.
“I think that’s the reason many modern readers are drawn to The Lord of
the Rings. So I no longer think of it as escapist literature. I think you can
see it as escape and read it as fantasy, but what it provides is reassurance
and consolation that the world is not a bad place but ultimately a place of
good.”
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