What is Mordor: Part I

There is Darkness in the world

I keep saying I am going to write a funny installment but it hasn’t happened yet; perhaps I am not funny. Onward.- KHS

ETA: One of my readers has made an important correction. You can find it in the coments. Thanks, Ken!

“The rumours you have heard are true: he has indeed risen again and left his hold in Mirkwood and returned to his ancient fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor. That name you hobbits have heard of, like a shadow on the borders of old stories. Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.” (50)

I have a five-year old- the youngest of our three children- and you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you he is adorable. He collects ladybugs and dances in the kitchen and has never met a stranger. As he is our youngest and our last we have treasured every stage with this little boy.

The stage we are in now is the one where he comes into our bed nearly every night. He has certainly had a nightmare, but he does not come in crying or needing to be consoled. He just quietly wakes me up and whispers, “Mom! Are monsters real?” This dear child is asking to be reassured, in the early hours of the night, not that there are no monsters in his bed and not that he is safe. He is asking whether the monsters in his dreams might live also in the world, whether the things he is afraid of are real.

Literature, and especially children’s literature, has often brought the reader close to the monsters that may live in the world. There was a period when my oldest two were young that we made a study of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Our library has a wonderful collection of these tales, fabulously illustrated and sometimes even interpreted in different cultural settings. I read them to my children when they were very young- perhaps three and five- and almost immediately regretted it. These fairy tales are extremely dark. My favorite was Rumplestiltskin.[1] In this story, there is an imp- a creature variously described in the literature as a demon or fairy. We don’t have an origin story for this man, but he is not a human. He comes from some netherworld, some other space. This imp is merely an interloper in a story of human deceit.

On the horizontal plane, which is to say the world of human creatures, a miller has boasted to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. This is the crassest example of the chief of all human duplicity- making something ultimately valuable out of something profane. But the miller has endangered his daughter with this boast, and so the king takes her and locks her in a room, insisting that she spin gold out of straw or he will kill her in the morning.

It’s worth slowing down the story a bit here. The miller has falsely boasted that his daughter can do something she cannot do. The king has kidnapped her and enslaved her, threatening her with death if she does not make gold out of straw. There are no good men in this story.

The only way the princess is rescued from these terrible outcomes is by the appearance of an interloper- the imp- who enters the horizontal plane of human affairs from outside of it. How does he hear about the trouble the princess is in? We are not told. But he brings his supernatural powers to turn the straw into gold himself because the arrangement may profit him. The imp is also not a good man. He aids the princess only in exchange for the girl’s necklace, for her ring, and then for her firstborn child. Once the gold is delivered to the king, everyone ups their demands- the king wants a bigger room filled with gold, the imp wants the girls’ necklace and then her firstborn daughter. There is no virtue anywhere here to be found.

[At this point in my writing my little boys stumbled downstairs and so I told them again the story of Rumplestiltskin. The nine year old remembered, but the five year old had not heard it before. “What will he do with a baby?” he asks me. Good question.]

 There is no virtue to be found in this story- but there is vice. There is boasting, on the behalf of the miller, who sacrifices his daughter’s well-being over a falsehood. There is greed, on the behalf of the king, who enslaves an innocent girl for money. And there is the utterly self-serving imp, who appears and uses his power only to gain riches for himself. If there is a moral here I cannot find it. Indeed the rich prosper and so do the deceitful and the best the princess can get is a life with a king who does not love her. Alas. What there are, in this story, are real people who intend to do bad things to each other. There is real agency, as individuals make good and bad choices, but there are also terrible results that occur when bad choices are made. Each individuals choices affect the others in the story as well, and the agency of the princess, perhaps the one true innocent, is limited.

 I thought about the Brothers Grimm as I reread volume 1 of LOTR. I was puzzling over the story as a whole and I wanted to plumb the depths of Mordor a bit. I couldn’t quite get clear on what Mordor is and how it functions. The Hobbits only knew Mordor “as a shadow in the background of their memories” (42). They are told that the Dark Tower, the home of Sauron the Great, had been rebuilt; “from there the power was spreading far and wide, and away far east and south there were wars and growing fear”. (43). The Dark Power of Mordor has a quick-spreading quality. It cannot be contained. It is like liquid that must move to fill the space that it is dropped into. Without boundaries or walls to hem it in, the dark force of Mordor will overtake all of the world- even the Shire.

This concerns the Hobbits only because of the Ring. The prehistory here is given to us in small pieces throughout the first volume. This ring is one of the Elven Rings, and it possesses great power. If the Dark Power possesses the ring, his power will be complete. Darkness will spread over the earth. The only way to prevent the wanton destruction of the earth is to destroy this ring.

But whoever gets the Ring is not immune from its powers. They get with it also a strained immortality. They cannot die as long as they have the Ring, but their life does not grow or increase; it “he merely continues… until at last every minute is a weariness” (46). The Ring’s power is not neutral. It must be guarded against until it can be ultimately destroyed. No one can be close to it and remain unaffected.[2] Bilbo remains ageless as long as he has the ring, but he slowly fades, his cognition even tottering a bit toward the end before he leaves the Shire and the ring for good.

Once Frodo inherits the Ring and its task, he must come to terms with this responsibility. Not for a minute does Frodo feel righteous about this task. Indeed when he uses its force hastily, he is swiftly punished. Gandalf is indeed concerned about Frodo and how he will manage such a responsibility. But he is more concerned about the “charming, absurd, helpless hobbits”; for “It would be a grievous blow to the world, if the Dark Power overcame the Shire; if all your kind, jolly, stupid Bolgers, Hornblowers, Boffins, Bracegirdles, and the rest, not to mention the ridiculous Baggineses, became enslaved”.

For the Dark Power wants nothing more than to enslave the hobbits. This truth accosts Frodo: why should the Dark Power want the Hobbits, this silly slow useless bunch?” The Dark Power, it seems, wants them as slaves because he delights in slavery. “The Hobbits as miserable slaves would please him more than hobbits happy and free. There is such a thing as malice and revenge” (48).

            There is such a thing as malice and revenge, indeed.

Today’s children’s literature is often not up to the task of speaking about malice and revenge. Rather, many children’s books are more interested in speaking about the opaque, pristine goodness of children and their efforts to “change the world”. I keep a collection on my phone of examples of this optimistic literature. There is A is for Activist and No! My first Book of Protest. There is also Only You Can Save the Planet (which, really? Are we sure about that?). There is We Rise, We Resist, We Raise our Voices and I Affirm Me (which, what kind of children do these authors have? My children needed no training in resistance- it was their natural tendency). There is also the extremely improbable Notorious RGB for Young Readers.

Listen, you likely know less about my politics than you think you might from this list. My concern is not that children are sheltered from conflict or political causes. My concern is what we are doing to our children’s moral imaginations. The thing about Mordor is that its infectious. No one is immune from its power.

But the thing about Activists is that they have a privileged positionality in relation to evil (which itself has a shifting definition). Activists set themselves up to decry evil and injustice, but by taking this position they necessarily position themselves in opposition to it. This view necessarily presupposes that the activist herself is not evil, that she has the ability to exempt herself from evil and that she can speak truthfully about it. Considering that much activism suggests that it is social forces that create evil, one wonders where said activists were able to muster such ideological purity.

I am forever trying to persuade people that a Christian doctrine of sin is the best way to effect social change (I am great at parties). The thing about a Christian understanding of sin (which note: most Christians do not possess) is that it does not allow you to exempt yourself, not even for a moment, from sin’s reality. It requires that we acknowledge ourselves as both deeply sinful and always in need of grace. Sinful does not mean “disgusting” or “gross”- don’t make that foolish mistake. It simply means in need of repair.

The Christian doctrine of sin recognizes that sin, like Mordor, always seeks to take dominion. It overtakes its boundaries, it contaminates, it fills whatever container it is given. If it is not actively resisted, the dark will prevail. But those who resist cannot take the moral high ground of activists. Those who resist must recognize that they too, like Bilbo and Frodo, are susceptible to evil’s forces.

Mordor constantly threatens to outstrip its bounds. It creates chaos and war everywhere. It threatens the Shire’s peaceful tranquility. If it can, it will make slaves of the Hobbits. But Frodo can destroy the Ring and prevent the world from being entirely dark.

When I choose books to read to my children, I think about what I want them to know about the world, what I want them to believe about it. I want my children to know that their actions matter, of course. But I want them also to know that darkness does indeed exist, and that it may exist even in their hearts. I want them to not exempt themselves from its effects. I want them to know, also, that the world’s darkness cannot be changed- not totally. The world is sometimes a scary place because people can do dreadful things. Indeed like Little Red Riding Hood, you may get lost and lose your way, and the people you initially think are good may be horrid. But you can be brave, and I have told you the stories that will teach you to be brave and faithful. I have told you stories that cause you to see both the best and worst in everyone. Indeed you may be afraid. You may stumble and fall. But you will remember the stories I have told you, and you can hold them in your heart as you await the one whose sandals we are not fit to untie. You will not exempt yourself from darkness and its effects. The world indeed is dark--  “the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.” Monsters are real indeed. But as for now there is yet another day.

---

[1] If you can, get a copy illustrated by Paul Zelinsky.

[2] The exception is Tom Bombadil, which is why I think he is God.