11/05/2018

Heroism

This literary critic offers an insight into Tolkien's work that reveals the true nature of sanctity: 
In Tolkien’s tales, evil’s greatest successes require not just monsters and machinations, but the weakness and wickedness of free men, elves, and others.
Tolkien’s work illuminates how moral weakness is the real problem of the human condition, not moral dilemmas and uncertainty. The latter are rare, the former is ubiquitous. I rarely do wrong because I do not know what is right; I often do wrong because it is fun, easy, or otherwise attractive.
Tolkien was not a moral simpleton but a moral realist. He could write of tragedy and moral ambiguity (see The Children of Húrin, for instance), but he knew that we mostly lack the will to do right, rather than the knowledge of what is right, and so his tales bring the moral imagination to the aid of the will. By identifying with his heroes, we want to choose to do right, but are constantly reminded of our capacity to give in to temptation and do wrong. His works do not fill readers with assured self-righteousness. His heroes are heroic not because they are morally incorruptible, but because they could be corrupted (if not to active evil, then certainly to despair), but resist the temptation. 
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/11/42732/

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