Every direction we look, people are hungry for hope.
I know numerous friends and family—as do you—whose lives have been turned upside down by the Covid-19 crisis. Our planet’s pandemic has triggered an avalanche of further dreadful outcomes. Collapsing economies. Loneliness. Relapse into destructive addictions. Spikes in depression and suicide. Increase in child abuse. Perhaps it seems less severe, but very serious issues are emerging in families and neighborhoods. Relational schisms occur between spouses , parents and children, and neighbors, too-long-together under one roof or huddled in a housing unit.
Fortunately, we find solid examples and heart nudges toward real hope throughout Tolkien’s tales in The Lord of the Rings. In fact, Tolkien’s take on hope delivers something deeper, more provocative and far-reaching than our everyday, run-of-the-mill view of “hopes and dreams.” Middle-earth hope is different than our typical hope. It’s more than just crossing your fingers, thinking happy thoughts, and wishing for better days. So, buckle up. As we visit Tolkien’s tales of hope, we might discover some personal applicability: fresh doses of hope for our own hearts during this very-dark season in Present-earth.
Hope is a recurring, resplendent thread woven throughout the Legendarium. The Professor’s nudges come via both people and places, colorful characters and carefully crafted situations. There really are so many. We’ll revisit just a handful and see what we might discover.
Beyond all hope
At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf perished in Khazad-dûm. Or so it seemed. When The Two Towers opens, we are still wondering if our wise guide is gone for good. In Chapter 5, a mysterious old man appeared to Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn. They grew fearful that Saruman was stalking them. When they discovered his true identity, we read:
They all gazed at him. His hair was white as snow in the sunshine; and gleaming white was his robe . . . Between wonder, joy, and fear they stood and found no words to say. At last Aragorn stirred. ‘Gandalf!’ he said. ‘Beyond all hope you return to us in our need. What veil was over my sight? Gandalf![1]
It’s a stunning revelation, indeed. Such profound surprise at a treacherous point on their journey. With Tolkien’s masterful word-crafting, we feel like we are there. Notice the blend of wonder, joy, fear, and speechlessness. And when Aragorn finally speaks, he expresses how Gandalf’s surprise unfolded. “Beyond all hope . . .”
Plenty of our crisis moments right now feel just like that. During our own “beyond all hope” days, what if we start watching for good surprises? A line from one of my favorite songs right now says, “Get your hopes up; lift your head up; let your faith arise!” Perhaps, we can start by choosing a posture of anticipation and better openness to good news. Things have seemed so gloomy for too many weeks. So much bad news. Are you even open to surprising discoveries anymore? Would you know good news if it jumped out at you? What if we more intentionally watch for and actually anticipate moments of surprise? Might people and circumstances sometimes turn out to be different than our initial shadow-casting fears?
Beyond good fortune
As our characters shared together what they each knew about the quest, especially of the hobbits’ condition, their conversation turned to the Enemy. What did he really know? Gandalf affirmed that he knew of the Ring and that it was carried by a hobbit. He also knew the number of the Company that left Rivendell. But the Enemy did not fully grasp their purpose. He had not fathomed that the Fellowship would aim to bring about his demise by destroying the Ring. Gandalf reflected: “In which no doubt you will see our good fortune and our hope . . .”
Pay special attention to Tolkien’s deliberate word-coupling. For Gandalf’s lingo, our Professor pairs “good fortune” with “hope.” Life is not simply made up of lucky situations, at least in Tolkien’s view. Oh yes, it seems there might be good fortune as the tide turns, but there is always the vital role of the characters and their choices. In this case, the choice to hope. And hope is not some fixed condition or predetermined outcome; hope is operative.
Tolkien lover John Eldredge delivers a unique perspective on hope. Eldredge says:
Hope is the sunlight of the soul; without it, our inner world walks about in shadows. But like a sunrise in the heart, hope sheds light over our view of everything else, casting all things in a new light . . . hope looks forward, anticipating the good that is coming. Hope reaches into the future to take hold of something we do not yet have, may not yet even see. Strong hope seizes the future that is not yet; it is the confident expectation of goodness coming to us.[2]
With such thoughtful definition, Eldredge delivers understanding about hope that is quite Tolkienesque. (We have the joy of chatting with John in this month’s video interview. Watch for it—coming soon!)
Notice such hope is not merely wishful thinking. It’s not wispy, ethereal, or passive. Hope is active and substantive. Eldredge adds this very probing, personal, and timely application to the tail end of his definition: “It might be helpful to pause and ask yourself, How is my hope these days? Where is my hope these days?”
A few pages later in The Two Towers, Gandalf discussed Treebeard. As they talked, the Wizard was shimmering in sunlight. ‘Do we go to find our friends and to see Treebeard?’ asked Aragorn. ‘No,’ said Gandalf. ‘That is not the road that you must take. I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory.’ Gandalf related the reality and gravitas of the impending war. Legolas asked, ‘Then are we not to see the merry young hobbits again?’ ‘I did not say so,’ said Gandalf. ‘Who knows? Have patience. Go where you must go, and hope! To Edoras! I go thither also.’
In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, hope is indeed attitudinal but with an action-orientation. Hope has limitations based on situations like ugly war, hungry stomachs, and evil enemies. And yet, hope is manifest as a highly operative choice in the face of such difficult days. As you go through it all, you can choose to operate out of hope.
The day hope died
With The Return of the King, the language of hope explodes all over the story plot. In “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields,” we read:
It was even as the day thus began to turn against Gondor and their hope wavered that a new cry went up in the City, it being then mid-morning, and a great wind blowing, and the rain flying north, and the sun shining. In that clear air watchmen on the walls saw afar a new sight of fear, and their last hope left them . . . And looking thither they cried in dismay; for black against the glittering stream they beheld a fleet borne up on the wind: dromunds, and ships of great draught with many oars, and with black sails bellying in the breeze. ‘The Corairs of Umbar!’ men shouted.[3]
Éomer and the troops would be imminently overwhelmed. We might readily conclude, it’s over. All is lost. However, did you notice what Tolkien planted in the description? Four feisty little words: “and the sun shining.” That’s deliberate. Remember, with Tolkien, almost nothing is ever wasted. But just a few strokes later we read:
“Now he looked to the River, and hope died in his heart . . .”
Ensuing lines relate Éomer’s plans to form a wall and mount one final, valiant stand. “So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the White Horse ran rippling in the wind.” And then we read:
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
Such lines of ominous resolve, including hope’s end. Tolkien’s immediate narrative descriptor tells us that Éomer “laughed as he said them . . . he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people.” We get swept up in the scene. In our mind’s eye, we join the troops to behold: “And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them. And then wonder took him, and a great joy; and he cast his sword up in the sunlight and sang as he caught it.”
What’s so wonderful? The foremost ship’s standard bore the image of the White Tree of Gondor and the Seven Stars as well as the high crown, the signs of Elendil. The dark ships’ inhabitants were not who they originally appeared to be. What a wondrous surprise! Tolkien tells us how “the mirth of the Rohirrim was a torrent of laughter and a flashing of swords, and the joy and wonder of the City was a music of trumpets and a ringing of bells. But the hosts of Mordor were seized with bewilderment . . .” The tides had turned as Aragorn and his army arrived. Victory unfurled across the fields.
Discovering hope in uncertain times
If we look closely across these scenes, we can perceive more precisely how hope is operative. Lisa Coutras supplies evaluative commentary:
For Tolkien, ‘wonder’ is a response to the light within creation. Although Men have fallen from their right nature and reside in disharmony of body and soul, they nevertheless recognize the new creation within the old . . . this ‘cognitive perceptual bias’ is the quality of Estel, an inborn intuition of the truth which manifests as hope.
Coutras highlights the Elves’ stunningly skillful perception in creation: “Even amid the uncertainty of their fate, Elves possess an innate quality of Estel, a hope that manifests as trust. This is trust in the intrinsic goodness and sovereignty of Ilúvatar and his purposes.”[4]
Her synthesis of Tolkien’s two contrasting responses as manifest in Men and Elves is intriguing: “hope defined by trust or else meaninglessness defined by despair.” What a contrast of operative choices. Ponder them again. Coutras proceeds to posit that Tolkien “is making a statement about the nature of human beings . . . Estel is the proper response to wonder: it stirs the heart with an intuition of truth. Elvish wonder is an inborn knowledge of the world as it was meant to be . . .” In this estimation, Tolkien inextricably links wonder and hope as operative attitudes in the face of a world that is not yet as it fully should be and shall be.
Uncertain times in Middle-earth for Elves and Men. Uncertain times in Present-earth for us, indeed. We sense things are not as they fully should be. We know it down deep. And something tells us they are not yet as they shall ultimately be someday. Perhaps, it’s a good time to pause and employ Eldredge’s questions again: How is my hope these days? Where is my hope these days?
Beyond the Shadow’s reach
Let’s quickly visit one additional person and place of hope in The Lord of the Rings. We’d be remiss to skip over Sam on that dark night in “The Land of Shadow.” Remember it? Frodo had gone to sleep. Sam was struggling, but there in the pitch-black sky
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.[5]
Simply seeing that solo star—a vision with such deliberate Silmarillion echo—stirred fresh wonder in Sam’s heart. Hope returned.
But Sam’s star and his heart’s nudges of personal eucatastrophe deliver an even longer-reaching view. Notice the expansive nature of his perspective. Don’t forget. Those of us familiar with the tale, we know the ending. But in this moment in Tolkien’s epic, Sam did not have the luxury of knowing the outcome. He was looking for hope in the here and now but also weighted down with the prospect of what was to come. Notice Tolkien’s language: in the end the Shadow . . . forever beyond its reach. We dare not forget that this was a quest with life-and-death repercussions for the two humble hobbits. They were feeling the heaviness of their own unprecedented times.
Sam chose active wonder that transported his perspective. Such shift brought not only temporary, in-the-moment relief, but fresh grasp of ultimate hope. In contrast to the brilliant star and splendid sunlight, Tolkien set his Middle-earth stage with dismal bouts of darkness and consuming shadow. Should that surprise us? Not really. Tolkien knew firsthand the reality of life’s dark shadows. Again and again across his tales, such foreboding darkness represents the Enemy and evil. Colin Duriez notes: “Set against evil in Tolkien’s world are many elements . . . Underlying them all is faith in providence, hope in the ultimate happy ending even if a person does not live to see it.”[6]
“Even if a person does not live to see it.” Sit with that a minute. Let it settle in.
What about your ultimate hope? Under our own current Covid-shadow, Tolkien’s hope invites us to see with eternal perspective. Honestly, many of our dark places are severe and grim right now. Despair over finances, grieving precious loved ones, suffering through illness, escalating addictions, and even our own potential of death. Tolkien’s take on hope calls us to look upward, to truly get our hopes up. After all, death is really not the end.
Consider the splendor of the sun pushing back the Shadow, the wonder of the star twinkling over Sam, and a wonderfully deeper trust. Recall how Coutras paints it. Estel is that old word that relates a tightly woven, three-strand cord of hope, wonder, and trust.
Trust in whom? Ilúvatar. Providence. God, his sovereignty, and ultimately his goodness. Hope dares to trust that even when all looks dark, frighteningly dreadful and full of despair, God our Father is truly good. He is worthy of our deepest faith. We can have confident expectation of his goodness coming to us. Don’t forget, there will be light and high beauty for ever beyond the Shadow’s reach.
Will you lift your head to see the star?
Where’s your trust right now?
I’m asking myself again:
How is my hope these days? Where is my hope these days?
Every direction we look, people are hungry for hope.
I know numerous friends and family—as do you—whose lives have been turned upside down by the Covid-19 crisis. Our planet’s pandemic has triggered an avalanche of further dreadful outcomes. Collapsing economies. Loneliness. Relapse into destructive addictions. Spikes in depression and suicide. Increase in child abuse. Perhaps it seems less severe, but very serious issues are emerging in families and neighborhoods. Relational schisms occur between spouses , parents and children, and neighbors, too-long-together under one roof or huddled in a housing unit.
Fortunately, we find solid examples and heart nudges toward real hope throughout Tolkien’s tales in The Lord of the Rings. In fact, Tolkien’s take on hope delivers something deeper, more provocative and far-reaching than our everyday, run-of-the-mill view of “hopes and dreams.” Middle-earth hope is different than our typical hope. It’s more than just crossing your fingers, thinking happy thoughts, and wishing for better days. So, buckle up. As we visit Tolkien’s tales of hope, we might discover some personal applicability: fresh doses of hope for our own hearts during this very-dark season in Present-earth.
Hope is a recurring, resplendent thread woven throughout the Legendarium. The Professor’s nudges come via both people and places, colorful characters and carefully crafted situations. There really are so many. We’ll revisit just a handful and see what we might discover.
Beyond all hope
At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf perished in Khazad-dûm. Or so it seemed.
- The Two Towers, 116.
- All Things New, 9-10.
- The Return of the King, 133-35.
- Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty, 80-84.
- The Return of the King, 220.
- Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings: A Guide to Middle-earth, 172-173.
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