Tolkien and too good or too evil characters

One criticism of Tolkien was that his good characters were unrealistically good and his evil characters too purely evil.

Tolkien did write a fantasy story with sentient monsters, so in keeping with that setting there are irredeemably evil “persons” (Sauron, Orcs, etc). And many of these same critics don’t like fantasy stories at all. So I can see why this springs to mind as a valid criticism.

It is also true that Tolkien had options. Stephen Donaldson’s anti-hero Thomas Covenant is a great example of another way one can write fantasy. But not everyone likes Donaldson’s story and it doesn’t make sense to say that Tolkien had to do things in that way. (By the way, I had forgotten all about all the Thomas Covenant reading I did in college. I have to thank Tom Shippey for reminding me about him in his excellent J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century.)

But while it is true that there are portrayals of mixtures of good and evil missing from Tolkien’s story, and there are heroes like Aragorn who don’t have much of an apparent “dark side,” the criticism is simply wrong.

Is Gollum/Smeagol pure evil?

What about Boromir?

What about Theoden who allowed himself to be lulled and then only awoke to act almost too late?

What about Saruman who was evil in most of the story but only because he was corrupted?

Why can no one safely handle the ring? Why do Gandalf and Galadrial refuse it? Because there is darkness in their hearts that can be seduced by the ring.

And the Hobbits are portrayed both a noble and as ridiculous.

Notice how easily the idyllic Shire goes bad and has to be rescued at the end.

I don’t see the issue.

7 thoughts on “Tolkien and too good or too evil characters”

Scott Moonen March 24, 2010 at 5:29 pm

Mark, do you have a copy of Tolkien’s letters? I read letter #154 just the other night and it addressed just this point. If not, let me know and I can copy down the relevant paragraph.

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Matt Colvin March 24, 2010 at 8:09 pm

Scott, post it as a comment!

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mark Post authorMarch 24, 2010 at 9:21 pm

I had forgotten about that. Thank you. I am thinking about using it. Actually, I didn’t plan on any of this going into the book. It was just some “overflow” when I posted it. But now I may put it in.

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Scott Moonen March 25, 2010 at 6:01 am

Matt, sure thing. So this is a paragraph from letter #154, written to Naomi Mitchison on September 25, 1954. She had reviewed the first book, FotR:

Some reviewers have called the whole thing simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad. Pardonable, perhaps (though at least Boromir has been overlooked) in people in a hurry, and with only a fragment to read, and, of course, without the earlier written but unpublished Elvish histories. But the Elves are not wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were ’embalmers’. They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert, where they could be ‘artists’–and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret. In their way the Men of Gondor were similar: a withering people whose only ‘hallows’ were their tombs. But in any case this is a tale about a war, and if war is allowed (at least as a topic and a setting) it is not much good complaining that all the people on one side are against those on the other. Not that I have made even this issue quite so simple: there are Saruman, and Denethor, and Boromir; and there are treacheries and strife even among the Orcs.

He goes on to talk about the downfall of Númenor.

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Rick Davis March 26, 2010 at 10:11 am

I think the movies did a lot toward destroying those rounded characters that Tolkien wrote. In the movie Theoden hasn’t fallen into despair and abdication, he’s simply possessed by Saruman. No repentance needed, just an exorcism.

Also, in the movie, the Ring itself corrupts people. Much like Lord Acton’s famous quote: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In the books, however, the Ring only actualizes the evil that already exists in characters hearts. There is an Anglo-Saxon saying, “A man does as he is, when he can do as he pleases.” I think this is much more how the Ring works in Tolkien’s books vs. the more Actonian(?) portrayal in the movies. Which is why in the books there can be characters like Faramir who are not only not tempted by the Ring, but say they wouldn’t even pick it up if they found it by the roadside.

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