The Happy Ending: Finding Hope in the Darkness

Josh Stephens: Listen, when it comes to the riding carnival,
it's either go big or go home, and my hair is amazing.
I do agree with you on that.
So to prepare our minds for Dr. Hawley guiding us on this journey,
I just grabbed a few quotes from the Fellowship of the Ring.
Sam says this,
I made a promise, Mr. Frodo, a promise.
Don't you leave him, Samwise Gamgee.
And I don't mean to.
I don't mean to.
Frodo tells Gandalf, you're late.
And Gandalf said,
a wizard is never late,
Frodo Baggins.
Nor is he early.
He arrives precisely when he's meant to.
Aragorn says,
if by my life or death I can protect you, saying this to Frodo,
I will.
You have my sword.
Legolas says, you have my bow.
Gimli says,
and my axe.
And Broromir says,
you carry the fate of us all, little one.
If this is indeed the will of the council,
then Gondor will see it done.
And finally, Gandalf says this to Frodo.
My dear Frodo, hobbits really are amazing creatures.
You can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month.
And yet after a hundred years,
they still surprise you.
I hope you're ready for this journey.
Let's give it up for Dr. Kenneth Hawley.
Dr. Kenneth Hawley: Good morning.
Welcome to the 17th Annual Writing Carnival.
We've been doing this for a few years in a row,
and we're glad to do it again this year.
The theme is The Lord of the Rings.
You'll find that after chapel today,
we will be dismissed,
and you will find the reading marathon already beginning.
It will.
And when it begins with the reading from Dr. Long,
it'll be a 24-hour reading marathon where there'll be shifts of people taking 30 minutes apiece.
And here we go.
30 minutes apiece as they make their way through the novel.
We're going to begin with, and you might notice that we begin with, The Return of the King.
We've been doing this a few different times,
and we never get through the end of the story.
So we decided to start with The Return of the King so we can get to the end of the story.
Here we go.
J.R.R. Tolkien considered fairy tales a means by which a man has expressed his deepest desires,
especially the innate human need for a good ending to his story.
As he concludes his essay on fairy stories,
Tolkien defines the type of story that ends happily,
calling it a good catastrophe,
a eucatastrophe that brings sudden joyous turn, that offers sudden miraculous grace.
This is the kind of ending where it seems like it's not going to end well,
and yet somehow it does,
even at great cost to those involved.
Now he assures his readers that such a story does not deny the existence of discatastrophe,
of sorrow,
and of failure.
The possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance.
It does deny,
though, in the face of much evidence,
if you will, universal final defeat.
And insofar is Evangelium, the good news,
giving a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world,
poignant as grief.
The good news,
the happy message,
is that just when all seemed lost,
at the very moment when everything might have been destroyed
and no one left to tell the story,
a glorious and joyous turn brought metamorphic grace,
transforming and redeeming the world of men.
Tolkien explains that these stories often end in ways
that hold meaning in that story world,
for those characters in that land,
but that the eucatastrophic tale speaks beyond its own pages
and into our world.
It is not, he says,
a consolation for the sorrow of this world.
Not only that, it's a satisfaction,
an answer to the question, is it true?
But in the eucatastrophe,
we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater.
It may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium, good news in the real world.
Stories such as these Tolkien has in mind, those fairy tales that end happily with the prince transformed,
the princess alive and well,
the kingdom saved and the people free.
These stories reflect a truth at once higher and deeper than the voices that speak them.
They tell of good news that shines in stars and rumbles in the earth,
pointing the way and giving a sign,
proclaiming that a child is born and the dead are raised.
We can see Tolkien's idea of the good catastrophe reflected in his Lord of the Rings trilogy,
particularly in the two towers,
as Theoden and Aragorn muster the Aerilingas and ride against the forces of Saruman at Helm's Deep.
Refusing to despair and die, the warriors advance against the hordes of Oryk and Uruk-hai,
and as they cleave the darkness with sword and spear,
shafts of sunlight pierce from the sky from the east.
It is Gandalf the White bringing with him the faithful Aemir and the fearsome riders of the mark.
the hosts of the Saruman are doomed.
Light sprang in the sky.
Night departed.
They cried and wailed
for fear and great wonder had come upon them with the rising of the day. There suddenly upon the
ridge appeared a rider clad in white shining in the rising sun.
The hosts of Isengard roared
swaying this way and that turning from fear to fear.
The white rider was upon them and the terror
of his coming filled the enemy with madness.
The wild men fell on their faces before him.
The orcs reeled and screamed and cast aside both sword and spear.
Like a black smoke driven
by a mounting wind,
they fled.
Wailing,
they passed under the waiting shadow of the trees.
And from that shadow, none ever came again.
Like the bright dawn on which he arrives,
the white rider brings light and life to the darkness and despair that had ruled the night.
Now Tolkien's understanding of life as a story is reflected also in the journey of Sam and Frodo
as they make their way toward Mount Doom.
Sam speaks of stories and how the characters make sense of their situations
and choose to live within them.
The tales that matter are those that almost went untold,
that would have been lost if their heroes had not overcome all odds
to survive certain doom and live long enough to make them remembered.
but that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered he says the ones that stay in the
mind folks seem to have just landed in them usually their paths were laid that way as you put it
but i expect they had lots of chances like us of turning back only they didn't and if they had we
shouldn't know because they'd have been forgotten we hear about those as just went on and not all to
a good end mind you at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end
You know,
coming home, finding things all right, though not quite the same, like old Mr. Bilbo.
We know the stories of those who persevered to the end.
Whatever the end might be, whatever the cost and the consequences,
those are the ones that are remembered.
Now, as he considers their seemingly impossible situation,
Sam remembers a story that he was raised on.
It's the tale of Baron.
He realizes that that ancient journey continues with each step that he and Frodo take.
One more step.
You may not know,
you may guess what kind of tale it is, happy ending or sad ending,
but the people in it don't know, and you wouldn't want them to.
Beren now,
he never thought he was going to get the simile from the Iron Crown in Thangoradrim.
and yet he did and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours but that's a long tale
of course and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it and the similar went on and it
came to erindil and why sir i've never thought of it before but we've got you've got some of the
light of it in that star glass that the lady gave you why to think of it we're in the same tale still
it's going on and don't the great tales never end sam draws courage from this story seeing for
himself then a path that's less dark a danger a danger that's less threatening that sacred light
of the simile that baron had somehow managed to wield had made its way into the very star glass
that galadriel had given them that episode occurs in the fellowship of the ring as the band of
travelers leave Rivendell.
She held up a small crystal file.
It glittered as she moved it. The
rays of white light sprang from her hand. In this file, she said, is caught the light of Arendelle's
star set amid the waters of my fountain, and it will shine still brighter when the night is about
you.
May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out.
Now when Frodo and Sam
are later threatened by the hideous Shelob,
that light overwhelms the creature and drives it away.
Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced,
Frodo,
hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.
They wavered.
Doubt came into them as the light approached,
and one by one they dimmed, and slowly they drew back.
No brightness so deadly had ever afflicted them before.
From sun and moon and star they had been safe,
underground,
but now a star had descended into the very earth.
One by one, they all went dark.
They turned away.
They were gone.
Now later, Sam must rescue his master from that same Shelob's
grasp.
As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly like
a white torch in his hand. It flamed like a star that leaping from the firmament sears the dark
air with intolerable light.
No such terror out of heaven had ever burned in Shelob's face before.
The beams of it entered into her wounded head and scored it with unbearable pain,
and the dreadful
infection of light spread from eye to eye. She fell back,
beating the air with her forelegs,
her sight blasted by inner lightnings, her mind in agony.
Then, turning her maimed head away,
she rolled aside and began to crawl,
claw by claw,
towards the opening in the dark cliff behind.
And so, that same light that Baron had once bore now saves them.
The story that Sam grew up on continues,
and he doesn't just know it or share it, he shares in it.
He plays a role. He determines,
in part,
how it will go.
Now as Sam and Frodo win their way through the dark and forbidding realm of Mordor,
Sam finds once more the inspiration he needs in a light in the heavens.
Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.
The beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land and hope returned to him.
For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end,
the shadow was only a small and passing thing.
there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
Even darkness must pass.
The shadows of this life, even the most terrible ones,
that seem to have power, that seem to have volition to spread and to consume,
they are small and passing compared to the eternal light represented in that evening star,
far above the stench and the sorrow of Mordor.
The reign of Sauron stops far short of that high beauty.
After Frodo and Sam tanked the ring to the fires of Mount Doom,
and with the intervention of Gollum,
the one ring that would rule them all is finally destroyed,
and the effect is immediate and devastating upon the dominion of Sauron.
But the Nazgul turned and fled and vanished into Mordor's shadows,
hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower,
And even at that moment, all the hosts of Mordor trembled.
Doubt clutched their hearts.
Their laughter failed.
Their hands shook and their limbs were loosed.
The power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering.
Its will was removed from them.
And now looking in the eyes of their enemies,
they saw a deadly light and were afraid.
Then all the captains of the west cried aloud,
for their hearts were filled with a new hope in the midst of darkness.
Tolkien's Eucatastrophe offers a sudden joyous turn,
a sudden miraculous grace,
and the happy ending consoles because it tells the truth about darkness by telling the truth about the light.
The power of the enemy had almost seemed too great,
its reach too far,
its insidiousness too deep.
But this evil that had loomed large over the earth and would have rolled over it with an awful and merciless tyranny,
Its reign has ended.
As the captains gazed south to the land of Mordor,
it seemed to them that black against the pall of cloud,
there rose a huge shape of shadow,
impenetrable, lightning-crowned,
filling all the sky.
Enormous, it reared above the world and stretched out towards them
a vast,
threatening hand,
terrible but impotent.
For even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it,
and it was all blown away and passed.
and then a hush fell.
The defeat of Sauron does not deny the existence of discatastrophe,
of sorrow and failure,
for the possibility of those was necessary to this joy of deliverance.
In fact, as Frodo stumbles away,
wounded from his long journey,
as well as from back at Weathertop,
and from the Shelob,
as well as from Gollum at Mount Doom,
and with Schmeagol dead,
along with Boromir
and King Theoden
Tolkien shows us
the awful price of victory
what it costs
to crown the true king
his eucatastrophe
comes at great sacrifice
but it denies
universal final defeat
and in so far is
evangelium, good news
a far off gleam
or echo of gospel
truth
That trilogy takes us from Bag End all the way to Mordor and back again.
It's a complete journey that transforms its travelers and redeems the world of men.
However,
as it comes to a triumphant close,
Tolkien's narrative reminds us that even so, the Shire must be cleansed.
Justice must be done, and yes,
much life remains yet to be lived.
But Frodo's pain lingers on with wounds unhealed.
and he leaves everything behind,
joining Gandalf and Aeron as they journey west to a final adventure.
That gray rain curtain,
turned all to silver glass,
was rolled back,
and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
So Frodo sails on, but Sam goes home.
The happy ending consoles.
Sam lives within a redeemed world where a hearth fire glows,
where a feast awaits,
and where his beloved and his baby embody the joy and the hope of a life
dearly bought.
As it says,
and he went on, and there was yellow light and fire within,
and the evening meal was ready,
and he was expected.
And Rose drew him in and set him in
his chair and put little Eleanor upon his lap.
He drew a deep breath.
Well,
I'm back.
You might wonder, why end with Sam?
Why,
after all the many adventures,
the battles, the heroic
sacrifices,
why end with fire,
food,
and family?
Well, he's a hobbit after all.
Good tilled earth,
second breakfast,
little leaf from the south farthing.
But it's more than just domestic tranquility or simple pleasure for simple folk.
This home and its redeemed future is the last of the happy endings,
or perhaps next to last.
For it is at once a fulfillment and a promise of rest,
of love,
of comfort,
and reunion.
And he was expected.
That's good news in his story, and it's a glimmer or an echo of good news in our world.
As we journey homeward, where all things are ready, and the one who loves us completely draws us in,
gives us a place at his table, and welcomes us to the fulfillment of his reconciling work of redemption.
Tolkien's happy ending is a consolation for all of us who want to know something of such beauty,
for all of us who've always wanted to know everything about such love.
We hope that you enjoy the riding carnival.
We hope that you see soon our own Dr. Jesse Long and Josh Stevens.
We'll conclude it 24 hours from now.
You are dismissed.
Thanks.