He is burdened with guilt and sadness, and feels separated from the pure, good people. He goes home to the Shire, but he cannot enjoy his retirement there. After his altercation at Mount Doom with Gollum, he is still somehow tainted by his association with the evil One Ring, and no absolution or purification is offered him. There is no redemption for evil characters-a central theme of Christianity.Īnother interesting point is the fate of Frodo. Second, good characters remain good, and bad characters remain bad. There is some mention of godlike entities to which the characters pray-Elbereth and Gilthoniel are two such entities-but these are along the lines of departed ancestors rather than divine beings. First, none of the characters provides salvation to the others-they are all in the fight together.
#What does it say on the lord of the rings ring plus#
The absence of the Christ figure, plus a few other aspects of The Lord of the Rings world, make it clear that the series is not proclaiming or mimicking Christian thought. In fact, there is no Christ-like figure in The Lord of the Rings. He tells the other characters that he "strayed out of thought and time" but, despite this resurrection-like occurrence, Gandalf is not a Christ figure. At one point, he apparently dies, but then returns to Middle-Earth in a kind of glorified form. Gandalf, the wizard, also protects and guides Frodo and Sam, but interestingly, Gandalf is almost more like a guru, or a spirit-guide, or a figure out of eastern mysticism. He is especially enamored of the Elves, who are other-worldly, ethereal creatures that offer protection and wisdom to the hero and his companions, rather like angels or saints. The character of Samwise Gamgee is a beautiful example of Christian morality he is the hero's best friend and companion on his long journey to Mordor, and consistently displays self-sacrificial love and stalwart faith that all will be well in the end.
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That said, Tolkien was raised a Catholic, and his worldview and spiritual understanding is apparent in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was attempting to create a world and a mythology completely separate from Earth. Tolkien criticized Lewis' Narnia series for being allegorical. Tolkien, the book's author, was not trying to write a Christian allegory. The existence of Christian themes in the story is both obvious, and mysterious. And you don’t want them to.Does The Lord of the Rings series have Christian themes? The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy masterpiece of fiction, which has delighted readers for decades. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. “I wonder,” said Frodo, “But I don’t know. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?” You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same like old Mr Bilbo. 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. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and Frodo, adventures, as I used to call them. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. “Yes, that’s so,” said Sam, “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. “I don’t like anything here at all.” said Frodo, “step or stone, breath or bone.
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And trees and hills they long have known.