The Origin of Evil

 This week in class one of the things we discussed was evil, and how it came to be in the Tolkien Universe, and what was its purpose. This question is interesting when looking at both how it came to be in the Tolkien Universe, and how Tolkien speaks about it and the other creations in the universe. The idea of evil seems to be closely related to that of free will. More specifically the origin of evil seems to be tightly intertwined with the idea of both subcreation and the free will of the creations. One thing that we have talked about alot is the idea of being a subcreator, and how they go about their creations. In Letters, no. 153, Tolkien is responding to a letter from Peter Hastings and is talking about this idea, and one of the things he talks about is evil and where it comes from in his creation. 

In this letter Tolkien talks about Sauron and says “Sauron was of course not ‘evil’ in origin. He was a ‘spirit’ corrupted by the Prime Dark Lord (the Prime sub-creative Rebel) Morgoth (190).” The first thing that stands out is the way in which he states that Sauron was obviously not evil from the beginning, but instead he was corrupted. Throughout the series we see Sauron as a source of evil, and the place where many evil actions come from. But here Tolkien is essentially saying that Sauron had no predisposition for being evil. Instead he was corrupted by something else that was already evil. It is clear that Tolkien is saying that Sauron had free will and decided to be evil, as opposed to his creator making him in a way in which he would become evil. The choice is important because it ties it closer to the real world and religion, more specifically Christianity. Without the choice of good or evil, it may give undue sympathy to the one who is evil, because it is not their fault, instead they were created that way. The fact that Sauron had a choice, is a huge part to what actually makes him evil.

If we take this a step further and look at how Morgoth became evil, we arrive at an interesting question. When reading The Silmarillion  and looking at the creation of Morgoth, then known as Melkor we see he also was not created with any predisposition to evil either. In the beginning we see that his desire was not to be evil, but instead “to bring into Being things of his own (4)”. This eventually led him down a path that was what we call evil, but his original desires were not that. The question that brings us to is what made him evil? In class when attempting to answer the question I attempted to say that the reason for evil was to show that free will exists. I said that without evil how could people have real options if everything they do is good, is that really free will. But this does not fully encapsulate what was happening. When reexamining The Silmarillion, I realized there was something missing. The thing that led Melkor down the wrong path was envy, and the desire to create in the same way that Eru did. It seems like Tolkien is showing us that the root of evil in his universe comes not through trying to create, but instead trying to create in a way that rivals Eru.

This still does not give us the answer to why Melkor is evil. It is interesting comparing what Tolkien said in Letters to what Augusitne said in City of God. When talking about the good and bad Angels Augustine says “the contrasted aims of the good and evil angels did not arise from any difference in nature or origin(471)”. This is interesting because it is practically the same thing that Tolkien says about his creations. Here Augustine is saying that good and evil have no difference in terms of where they were created and instead it has to come from somewhere else. Later he says that “we must believe that the difference had its origin in their wills and desires” (471). It seems like here Augustine is not only explaining their differences, but he is also saying that evil comes from the desires of those that are evil. So it is not something that comes from their person, but instead from their free will, which even though it was given to them by God, is not a reflection of him. This is a very interesting way to look at the creation of evil, because Augustine also tells us that God saw it coming, but allowed it anyway. It can be somewhat difficult to align the fact that God created the thing that would create evil while knowing that evil would be created, but He was not responsible for the creation. The answer to why belongs in free will. 

Free will is clearly important to Tolkien because he draws on it in a similar vein to Augustine. Free will is the reason a creator is not responsible for the creations of its creations. If a creator gives a subcreator the freedom to create, and do as they please, then they have the ability to make choices. These choices can either be things that are good, or they can be things that are evil and destructive. Either way both Tolkien and Augustine are telling us that the creator is not the source, as long as they do not directly imbue the evil into their creations. 

-RL