In Chapter 5 of The Road to Middle-Earth, Shippey analyzes Tolkien’s portrayal of good and evil throughout LOTR through two different schools of thought. The Boethian view posits evil as something internal, the absence of good in a person, calling evil beings (such as Trolls or Orcs) a “perversion rather than a creation”, a “counterfeit” version of the real, good thing (respectively: Ents and Elves). The Manichaean view posits evil as an external force, equal and opposite to good, that everyone must fight back against—Sauron, for example, whose will all the protagonists of LOTR must in their own way resist. Ultimately, Shippey shows that Tolkien allows space for both schools of thought, leaving many aspects of the story open to interpretation. Either view of evil is plausible in his world, and this mirrors our modern reality, wherein evil does seem to take both forms, arising from within every one of us as well as from external forces.
The question of free will is always relevant in the discourse between good and evil, but it is specifically even more relevant when looking at Tolkien’s work, which focuses so heavily on the strength of one’s will. While there are many literal fight scenes, a lot of the conflict between good and evil actually takes place through spiritual battles, of two characters’ wills. For example, the Palatiri provide a direct connection between two users; when used to communicate with Sauron, the strength of the user’s will directly impacts their response to the magic. Saruman succumbs entirely, becoming Sauron’s servant; Denethor retains his mind but his perspective is warped subtly over time until he sees evil’s victory as an inevitable future; and Aragorn, true King of Gondor, has such a strong will that he can look into the Palantir, into Sauron’s soul, and not only retain his mind but even bait Sauron into thinking a new Ring Lord is rising up against him.
A similar battle of wills, between evil (Sauron) and good, takes place within the One Ring. The Ring is the ultimate source of power in Arda; whoever puts it on can use it as a weapon and will inevitably win the war, thus gaining the dangerous and tantalizing power to shape the resulting world according to their vision. The specific power of the Ring does not seem to fall neatly within the realms of creation or sub-creation but rather emphasizes control over another: as stated in lecture, the power lies in the ability to dominate another’s will. Despite being the manifestation of evil, Sauron’s will is one of the strongest of any character in the LOTR, which suggests that strength of will and morality do not always necessarily align. When Frodo’s will finally fails at the brink of Mount Doom, succumbing to the evil persuasion of the Ring (and Sauron), Tolkien does not characterize this as a “moral failure” (Letter 246). Frodo has a lot of virtue, but something about Sauron’s will is strong enough to overwhelm even the most “good” and virtuous of wills. Perhaps it is the simple allure of power, a desire within all of us that doubles as a seed of evil—this is in line with the Boethian view of good and evil, and following this line of thought further implies an internal battle of two halves of the Ring bearer’s wills, the good versus the evil. Sauron’s will factors a little less into this resulting fight—even so, it is undeniable that Sauron’s will is extremely powerful, persuasive, and dangerous.
The strength of Sauron’s dark will, to me, is really made manifest in Tolkien’s references to “enslavement.” Enslavement is the most extreme form of domination of one will over another, subjugating the slave until they are no more than mindless puppets. When Gandalf first introduces the Ring’s power to Frodo in Book 1, he says that if “the Dark Power [Sauron] overcame the Shire,” then all of the hobbits would become “enslaved.” When the Ring is at last destroyed, cast into the flames of Mordor, Tolkien writes of Sauron’s army:
“The creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves into pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope. But when Men of Rhun and of Harad, Easterling and Southron, saw the ruin of their war and the great majesty and glory of the Captains of the West. And those that were deepest and longest in evil servitude, hating the West, and yet were men proud and bold, in their turn now gathered themselves for a last stand of desperate battle. But the most part fled eastward as they could; and some cast their weapons down and sued for mercy.” (928)
“Spell-enslaved” implies a magic derived from language; in Tolkien’s world, magic and language and power are all inextricably linked. The keyword here, though, “enslaved,” implies that Tolkien’s army was unable to give consent to his domination of their wills. This seems like a contradiction: one must give consent, in some form, to be persuaded by an external voice, no matter how magical. However, once that consent has been given, can it be freely revoked, especially under a fear-based system of domination such as the one Sauron implements in Mordor? The reactions of most of Sauron’s army after Sauron’s defeat imply that it was Sauron’s will alone that animated them, and once it is gone, their own wills have dwindled so much over the years of subjugation that they are now incapable of thinking on their own. Thus they are deemed “mindless.”
There are, however, some exceptions: Tolkien describes the corrupted Men in Sauron’s army who do break free from Sauron’s will and decide to continue to fight anyway as “proud” and “bold”. These are adjectives one might commonly associate with noble, good characters—“bold” in particular is similar to brave, or courageous, in meaning, and we have already established that, in Shippey’s words, “courage is perhaps the strongest element in the Tolkienian synthesis of virtue.” Bold, however, is not the exact same as courageous, despite being related; in the same vein, the men of Sauron’s army are not the same as the men in the West, despite both fighting on the ground in this war. The “proud and bold” men continue to obey Sauron’s orders even after Sauron has died; in this way Sauron’s power, the ability to persuade others into siding with him, lives on (briefly) beyond Sauron in his not-creations, but perversions.
—AY
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