Lent: Day 21
Mar. 11th, 2015 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamflowerSome more excerpts from Tolkien's Ordinary Virtues : Exploring the Spiritual Themes of the Lord of the Rings, this time on the subject of friendship:
There is not greater treasure in Middle-earth (or anywhere else for that matter) than friends. For all the benefits of being unencumbered, Frodo is fortunate to find he has several such treasures and that three of them refuse to be left behind.
Merry, Pippin and Sam are not perfect friends. They poke their noses into Frodo's personal affairs, they spy on him, scheme behind his back and entirely fail to abide to his wishes. "My dear old hobbit, you don't allow for the inquisitiveness of friends," says Merry (I:137) when their conspiracy is unmasked. To Frodo's amazement, they know all about his decision to leave the Shire and even about the Ring. They are, however, resolved to guard his secrets more closely than he has himself. They are better than perfect: they are true...
...The Ring Frodo has carried for seventeen years has surely had its effects, taking his sense of loss and amplifying it, whispering to him that there is no end to losing. Finally, and in a certain sense rightly, he does not consider himself worthy of such friends as would die for him.
But in spite of this, and maybe even because of it, when Frodo's own loyalty is tested he chooses not to abandon his friends. When he and his companions are captured and buried in the Barrow Downs, and the wight is chanting a spell to hold them forever underground, Frodo has a sudden vision: he could slip on the Ring and escape alone, to run free upon the grass. He would grieve his friends yet comfort himself there was nothing else he could have done: No one would blame him for leaving them behind in that impossible situation. But then he would be as faithless as he fears his friends could be. The seed of courage buried deep in hobbits opens up inside him then, and he calls out to Tom Bombadil...
..."Many proclaim themselves loyal,/ but who can find one worthy of trust?" (Proverbs 20:6). Most of us wish to be loyal to our friends but find it a difficult virtue in practice. When friendship gets in the way of our own aspirations, it is easy to find reasons for stopping short of a full commitment. It requires a servant's heart, like Sam's, to lay aside our plans, simple as they may be and follow a friend into danger and exile, but that is precisely what true friends do.
While I don't agree that Frodo ever doubted his friends, I do think this gets the essence of it right: Friendship is a virtue, and that virtue is at the heart of the story.
There is not greater treasure in Middle-earth (or anywhere else for that matter) than friends. For all the benefits of being unencumbered, Frodo is fortunate to find he has several such treasures and that three of them refuse to be left behind.
Merry, Pippin and Sam are not perfect friends. They poke their noses into Frodo's personal affairs, they spy on him, scheme behind his back and entirely fail to abide to his wishes. "My dear old hobbit, you don't allow for the inquisitiveness of friends," says Merry (I:137) when their conspiracy is unmasked. To Frodo's amazement, they know all about his decision to leave the Shire and even about the Ring. They are, however, resolved to guard his secrets more closely than he has himself. They are better than perfect: they are true...
...The Ring Frodo has carried for seventeen years has surely had its effects, taking his sense of loss and amplifying it, whispering to him that there is no end to losing. Finally, and in a certain sense rightly, he does not consider himself worthy of such friends as would die for him.
But in spite of this, and maybe even because of it, when Frodo's own loyalty is tested he chooses not to abandon his friends. When he and his companions are captured and buried in the Barrow Downs, and the wight is chanting a spell to hold them forever underground, Frodo has a sudden vision: he could slip on the Ring and escape alone, to run free upon the grass. He would grieve his friends yet comfort himself there was nothing else he could have done: No one would blame him for leaving them behind in that impossible situation. But then he would be as faithless as he fears his friends could be. The seed of courage buried deep in hobbits opens up inside him then, and he calls out to Tom Bombadil...
..."Many proclaim themselves loyal,/ but who can find one worthy of trust?" (Proverbs 20:6). Most of us wish to be loyal to our friends but find it a difficult virtue in practice. When friendship gets in the way of our own aspirations, it is easy to find reasons for stopping short of a full commitment. It requires a servant's heart, like Sam's, to lay aside our plans, simple as they may be and follow a friend into danger and exile, but that is precisely what true friends do.
While I don't agree that Frodo ever doubted his friends, I do think this gets the essence of it right: Friendship is a virtue, and that virtue is at the heart of the story.
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Date: 2015-03-12 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-13 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-12 11:51 pm (UTC)"A conspiracy unmasked " is one of my favorite chapters and merry had one of my favorite quotes !:)
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Date: 2015-03-13 03:51 am (UTC)