I am particularly impressed with The Phoenix’ first point. The Shire is almost more Chestertonian than Chesterton; a society in which the small is celebrated. Small people in a small place, delighting greatly in their small pleasures; a society in which all are childlike in their innocence. Catholicism, properly understood, focuses on the same thing, and the social encyclicals powerfully support it. Subsidiarity; the devolving of authority and responsibility down to its most fundamental levels, particularly the family. The hobbits’ joys are earthly but innocent. Ale, a good pipe, simple food, simple but lovingly wraught dwellings and furnishings, fireworks, girlfriends, spouses, an old man with good stories, jokes and a ready smile. Yet all indulgence in the good things of the earth is moderate. No evident affairs, drunkenness, gluttony. No extravagance. That is the Catholic view of the world. It is opposed to, on the one hand, the puritanism that condemns drink, sex, dancing and the sweetness of the tobacco pipe, yet exalts the “cold delights” of aggrandizement and power. On the other hand, it is opposed to licentiousness. The hobbits are profoundly good-hearted and generous, even to the point of tremendous self-sacrifice. They remind one of nothing so much as Jesus’ charge “unless you become like little children…” But they also remind one very much of the social encyclicals, which really are unique to Catholicism.
Smeagal was once a hobbit. The ring of power, of aggrandizement, of freedom from restraint, corrupts him and splits his soul. The ring is more than power. It, itself is sin, with its deadly appeal to ambitions that yield no good or victory to its possessor, but can only serve the ultmate evil-Sauron. It is the Ultimate Lie. It is the core of all sin…the human attempt to be “like unto God”. It is sin that makes Smeagal a killer and gives birth to his evil “double”; Gollum. It is the source of the war within him. There’s a bit of Smeagal/Gollum in all of us, as much as our souls cry to be satisfied with our lives and our loves like uncorrupted hobbits.
Ultimately, an innocent takes upon himself the task of removing sin from as much of the world as he can manage and, in the meanwhile, gets wounded in the process, as he must look evil in the face to rid others of it. This is not “just” Christlike. It is the task of everyone who wants to be a true Christian. Mother Teresa, for example, got into the very heart of man’s inhumanity, looked it right in the eye, and was sorely wounded in the process. This is reminiscent of the “wounding” they say attends being an exorcist.
I’m not a literature expert. I’m inclined to agree with those who think the “direct” sort of allegory is not what the work is, or at least not completely so. Some efforts to say that this or that in the work is necessarily a direct parallel to something in Catholicism sometimes seem a bit overdone. But at the same time, the “life lessons”; the consideration of what is “true” and “false” in human nature, and the examination of good and evil do seem specifically Catholic to me. The work does make us think quite a bit about those things.
I am inclined to think the work is more “Catholic” in that sense than in the sense of being a series of symbolic parallels to Jesus, to Mary, etc. In a way, I think it’s a “mind trick” on Tolkien’s part. We really are pulled into thinking that Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf are Jesus figures in some ways. But in other ways, they don’t quite fit, and in any event, there are too many of them, just as there are too many “Marys”, all of which vary a bit from each other. I think Tolkien wants us to see Christlike aspects that can appear in humans of different personalities, functions and characteristics, and thus in any one of us.
