The Interplay Between Free Will and the Nature of Evil

 In front of you are two souls, both black and twisted. One was predestined to turn to evil, the other chose it willingly. Which do you deem worse? In Tolkien’s two main works not concerning burglars, the villain is an elemental representation of pure evil. Both Ainur, both immortal spirits, both were formerly, in a sense, “good”. The first, Melkor, later Morgoth, is Tolkien’s vehicle of original sin. Once the greatest of the Vala, he sought to contend with his creator, Eru Ilúvater, in the Music of the Ainur, the fabric of the world, introducing discord that begat all the world’s ills. But it is unclear whether he had any choice in the matter. Each Valar “comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came.” (Ainulindalë.) Melkor was only a vehicle for an aspect of Ilúvater’s thought, and was nothing that did not ultimately flow from the allfather. Additionally, the seeds of his treachery and covetousness were sown from the beginning. Before the singing, “he had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own.” (Ainulindalë.) If he was from the outset created to be uniquely prideful as to think himself capable of wielding the sacred flame, and pride is the sin that causes his contention and ultimately his destruction, then was his fall not inevitable by the will of Ilúvater? Was he not a tragic figure, ineluctably saddled by his creator with the unenviable task of introducing shadows to accentuate the light? Without struggles, and those who rise above them, Ilúvater’s world would be but a sandbox, (a video game sandbox more than a playground one,) beautifully adorned, but with no depth. And so Morgoth rose, and so he fell, and so he was cast out into the void until the world’s end.

Each Valar is almost a personification of his or her element. (It’s never stated which Melkor’s is, but when the Vala descend to Arda, he’s shown to have a particular affinity for fire and a particular role in its conception, just as Ulmo did for water.) The Maia are more ambiguous, and more nuanced. They are not aspects of their masters like the Vala are, and don’t even necessarily serve just one Valar, as seen in the case of Melian. This nuance manifests itself in an important way—unlike the Vala, who are Eru’s unquestioning instruments save Morgoth, who is just as inextricably locked into his own ruinous spiral, the Maia have free will to a meaningful degree. (The qualifier is important here—it matters not if the Vala have free will if they’re fated by their given natures to always follow a particular path, as do Melkor and Mandos.) And so there is Sauron. A Maia servant of Aulë, he is seduced by Melkor’s power, choosing of his own volition to follow him. “It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.” (Morgoth’s Ring.) First Morgoth’s lieutenant, he becomes in time an evil to rival Morgoth’s: “In all the deeds of Melkor the Morgoth upon Arda, in his vast works and in the deceits of his cunning, Sauron had a part, and was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself.” (Valaquenta.) (The quote raises some really interesting questions about whether, to Tolkien, the capacity for worship, as Sauron did Melkor, at least in Númenor, was itself a virtue.)

Sauron’s descent is marked by choices, whereas Morgoth incarnate is an elemental, unthinking avatar of destruction. After the War of Wrath and Morgoth’s sundering, Sauron came in contrition before Eönwë, chief of the Maiar. Tolkien leaves open the possibility that this desire for penitence was genuine, if motivated by fear. However, referred up to Manwë, (the structure of Tolkien’s Heaven not unreminiscent of a bureaucracy,) Sauron chooses to flee rather than face the consequences of his actions. “Then Sauron was ashamed, and he was unwilling to return in humiliation and to receive from the Valar a sentence.” (Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.) To be unwilling of course implies a will to be directed. With this action more than any other, (though the Luciferian War on Heaven [Aman] is a strong contender,) in choosing not to repent and accept the god’s salvation, Sauron chooses his destiny as absolute evil, and the rise and fall that accompanied it.

But was his fall inevitable? Sauron, Tolkien writes, believed that the sundering of the Undying Lands represented the gods’ (the Vala and Eru’s) abnegation of Middle Earth, blessing and cursing its populace with freedom. He could thereby exercise and grow his power without drawing himself into a conflict with the almighty. Morgoth never stood a chance, and neither did the fleet of Númenor, but, had things gone a little differently, Sauron could easily have razed both Gondor and the Shire, and everything in between. Tolkien, however, suggests that Eru intervened in hidden ways, just as the Christian God is said to do. Eru, he writes, saw to it that Bilbo found the Ring, and that Frodo’s failure at Mount Doom was for naught. (It is humorous that, from the available evidence, the post-sundering acts of Eru Ilúvatar, omnipotent father of all and font of gods, seem entirely consigned to manipulating Gollum.) If the God of Gods was indeed intervening, was Sauron’s destruction predestined? If Frodo had faltered, would the deus ex machina have found another way? And why did he take so long, and let the War of the Ring, and all the misery it caused occur? The same reason he let Morgoth’s Fall and the War of Wrath occur. The master craftsman, he knows that his creation needed discord, and needed depth. It needed to be interesting. Why? To add to his ultimate creation, the end to which everything he made hurtled inextricably towards: the Red Book of Westmarch. For the one allfather had his own creator, and he knew how stories work, and he wanted people to buy his book.

As for which soul is weightier? It doesn’t particularly matter, any more than something that came up when I Googled Eru Ilúvater—“Eru Ilúvater power level?” Is he stronger than the Christian God? What about Allah? It’s of course a ridiculous question unanswerable by all but children and perhaps the most scholastic theologists. Each is all. Each is different. Sauron and Morgoth are both as close to absolute evil as evil can get, but they have different domains. One is the elemental evil that shaped the universe, one a scourge in the minds of men. Tolkien even makes an attempt at comparing their powers, but he never sought to seriously answer that. Because after a certain point it’s infinitesimals. Sauron served another, sure, but he was also more conscious of what he was doing, not acting out of pure elemental rage. Is one 0.000001 on the goodness scale, and another 0.00000000001? (Tolkien did not believe in absolute evil.) Who cares? -LAL