The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2 - Christina Scull

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the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved …’ (bk. VI, ch. 3).

      After the publication of The Lord of the Rings some readers wrote to Tolkien commenting on the honour given to Frodo despite his ‘failure’. In a letter to Michael Straight, written probably at the end of 1955, Tolkien said that

      the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. He did rob him and injure him in the end – but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing any one c[oul]d have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his ‘forgiveness’, he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden. [Letters, p. 234]

      On 27 July 1956 he wrote to Amy Ronald:

      It is possible for the good, even the saintly, to be subjected to a power of evil which is too great for them to overcome – in themselves. In this case the cause (not the ‘hero’) was triumphant because by the exercise of pity, mercy, and forgiveness of injury, a situation was produced in which all was redressed and disaster averted. Gandalf certainly foresaw this [in Book I, Chapter 2]. Of course, he did not mean to say that one must be merciful, for it may prove useful later – it would not then be mercy or pity, which are only truly present when contrary to prudence. Not ours to plan! But we are assured that we must be ourselves extravagantly generous, if we are to hope for the extravagant generosity which the slightest easing of, or escape from, the consequences of our own follies and errors represents. And that mercy does sometimes occur in this life. [Letters, pp. 252–3]

      In a draft letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar in September 1963, Tolkien explained his thoughts on

      that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God. For finite judges of imperfect knowledge it must lead us to the use of two different scales of ‘morality’. To ourselves we must present the absolute ideal without compromise, for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+ grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. To others, in any case of which we know enough to make a judgement, we must apply a scale tempered by ‘mercy’: that is, since we can with good will without the bias inevitable in judgements of ourselves, we must estimate the limits of another’s strength and weigh this against the force of particular circumstances. [Letters, p. 326]

      There are other examples of mercy and pity in The Lord of the Rings; indeed, the opponents of Sauron generally seem eager to offer mercy to all except Orcs. Wormtongue, who has betrayed his king, is allowed to depart unhindered by both Théoden and Gandalf. After the Battle of Helm’s Deep, the hillmen beg for mercy; the Rohirrim disarm them, set them to bury the dead, and then set them free to return to their own land, asking only that they swear an oath not to pass the Fords of Isen in arms again or aid the enemies of Rohan. As the host of the West nears the desolation before the Morannon, the horror of the place unmans some of the men. Aragorn looks at them, and with ‘pity in his eyes rather than wrath’ he suggests another task that they might attempt ‘and so be not wholly shamed’ (bk. V, ch. 10). After his coronation Aragorn pardons and frees the Easterlings who have surrendered, and makes peace with Harad, and pronounces a judgement on Beregond which combines ‘mercy and justice’ (bk. VI, ch. 5). Gandalf offers to let Saruman go free on certain conditions, Treebeard releases him, hating to keep any live thing caged, and Frodo spares him despite all the harm he has done to the Shire and Saruman’s attempt to kill him. Other examples of pity are concerned with compassion rather than mercy: when, for instance, Faramir first sees Éowyn, ‘being a man whom pity deeply stirred, it seemed to him that her loveliness amid her grief would pierce his heart’; but later she tells him ‘I desire no man’s pity’, and he replies: ‘Do not scorn the pity that is the gift of a gentle heart …. But I do not offer you my pity …. I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you’ (bk. VI, ch. 5).

      Katharyn W. Crabbe in J.R.R. Tolkien (rev. and expanded edn. 1988) comments that in The Lord of the Rings ‘to be able to pity others who suffer distinguishes the heroic from the villainous. In fact, Tolkien was no doubt making use of the philological fact that pity, in the general sense of “a feeling of compassion”’ did not exist as separate from its specific religious sense of piety until well after 1600: until then the ability to feel pity was a mark of piety’ (p. 81). In the ‘instances of heroic mercy’ shown by Gandalf, Treebeard, and Frodo to Saruman, by Frodo to Gollum, and by Aragorn to the faint-hearted,

      there is an existential side … for in The Lord of the Rings mercy seems to mean the refusal to accept any being’s less than perfect state as his essential nature. Justice would pay each according to what he has done; mercy pays him according to what he might do – according to the ideal …. In a sense, the act of mercy works to preserve the free will of the receiver, giving him the chance to become the better being that is within his capability. Thus mercy is an essentially creative act – it leaves the possibilities for a recreation of the self open as does any healing process. As the hero shares with a divine being the quality of mercy, he shares with him his creative power. [p. 82]

      Instances of pity and mercy are less frequent and less prominent in *The Silmarillion. There the Vala Nienna, who ‘is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered … does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope’ (p. 28). When Mandos, the Doomsman of the Valar, hears the song of Lúthien, he is ‘moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since’ (p. 187). Eärendil, as representative of Elves and Men, stands before the Valar and asks pardon ‘for the Noldor and pity for their great sorrows, and mercy upon Men and Elves and succour in their need. And his prayer was granted’ (p. 249).

      Brian Rosebury, in ‘Revenge and Moral Judgement in Tolkien’, Tolkien Studies 5 (2008), looks at pity and mercy from a different angle, considering actions by Tolkien’s characters when revenge or necessity may seem to override mercy.

      Paul H. Kocher in Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien (1972) comments on the more overtly religious concept of mercy in *Leaf by Niggle, specifically in the dialogue between two voices discussing what is to be done with Niggle,

      one voice insisting on justice, the other pleading for mercy. Here the resemblance is to the debate between the four daughters of God – Righteousness and Truth against Mercy and Peace – at the judging of souls, a favorite theme in medieval drama and poetry …. That Tolkien should employ techniques and ideas drawn from the literature of a period he knew so well is not surprising. But his success in acclimatizing them to our times is remarkable. Again we are justified in stressing that they were, and still are, Catholic. [p. 164–5]

      The manuscript was included in a letter sent by Tolkien to an American correspondent, Richard Plotz, between late 1966 and early 1967. The declension chart proper, on one page, is accompanied by explanatory notes by Tolkien on a second page. The chart, but not Tolkien’s notes, was published earlier in Tolkien Language Notes 2 (1974), p. 4, with a commentary by Jim Allan, and in Beyond Bree for March 1989, p. 7 (‘The Dick Plotz Letter: Declension of the Quenya Noun’), with a commentary by Nancy Martsch.

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