Under-dogs of Middle-earth


To counter this rather bleak vision of life, a second message accompanies all the heroic tales of Northern Europe. Though not a hopeful one, the message dispels hopelessness by heralding the notion that death in battle (and by extension the daily struggle of human existence) must be faced with a fierce joy. To enter another corpus of modern legend, the Klingon oath of 'It is a good day to die!' cannot be far removed from the oaths of the Norsemen or the Rohirrim. The glimmer of hope for the tribe and its members shines from the obverse of that grim assertion, 'Today is a good day to live!'. As Dorothy L. Sayers wrote, "One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again." The heroic individual was meant to exult in the essential effort of existence, join the feast of life with gusto, disregard the inevitability of famine, and perpetuate the spirit of hearty camaraderie which would sustain the clan and its members. This ethos permeates the works which Tolkien studied as a scholar of Old and Middle English, Anglo-Saxon, Finnish, Icelandic and Gothic texts. He understood as a devout Catholic and Christian that in pre-Christian times, this code of conduct (what Tom Shippey has called 'martial heroism') was what held the society together, at least in part.

Tolkien called upon this martial heroism time and again to substantiate and motivate his characters. During 'The Last Debate' (Book Five, chapter IX of The Lord of the Rings), Gandalf states "Victory cannot be achieved by arms, whether you sit here to endure siege after siege, or march out to be overwhelmed beyond the River." Later, he counsels the captains, "We must walk open-eyed into that trap, with courage, but with small hope for ourselves. ... For this, I deem, is our duty. And better so than to perish nonetheless - as we surely shall..." Here, the immediate situation is the proposed attack by the free peoples of Middle-earth on the Black gates of Mordor. The assault is without hope of victory by force of arms but meant only to serve as a diversion so that the Ring-bearers might cross the plains of Gorgoroth, reach the Cracks of Doom and destroy the Ring of Power. Lifting Gandalf's pronouncement from the story's setting, it could be taken as a credo of the warriors of pre-Christian Europe to the duty owed society

The copyright of the article Under-dogs of Middle-earth in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Douglas Charles Rapier. Permission to republish Under-dogs of Middle-earth in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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