EUCATASTROPHE IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS 101 They are stranded, alone, and awaiting death. Frodo and Sam collapse from exhaustion, believing that their story has ended, not knowing their delivery from danger is close at hand. The wizard Gandalf, with the help of the Great Eagles, rescues Frodo and Sam from the mountainside, and they fly to safety. When Sam awakes, he is met with many happy surprises. He first realizes that he and Frodo have survived. At his bedside, he sees that Gandalf, who he had long thought dead, is actually alive! He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself ! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” Indeed, many sad things do come untrue in the conclusion to The Lord of the Rings. The Ring is destroyed, and the ultimate evil of Sauron is defeated. Frodo and Sam survive the quest to be reunited with their friends and companions. They even witness the return of the king, the coronation of Aragorn as the long-lost heir of the kingdom of Gondor. Eucatastrophe In the climax of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien orchestrates numerous unexpected victories that elicit hope and joy not only in the characters, but vicariously in the reader as well. The destruction of the Ring when all hope seemed lost, and the miraculous rescue of Sam and Frodo as Mount Doom collapsed around them, represent what Tolkien has coined a “eucatastrophe”, or a “good catastrophe”. Just as a catastrophe is an unexpected disaster, a eucatastrophe is a sudden joyful turn of events. It is a miraculous turning of the tides that lifts the readers’ hearts and makes them catch their breath. It is the happy ending. The eucatastrophe is a literary device suited particularly well to fantasy and fairy stories, according to Tolkien, but it also points to a truth far greater than the plot of a story. As he explains in his essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien believes the eucatastrophe in literature can serve as “a faroff gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.” In fantasy, the joy of the happy ending and the characters’ miraculous defeat of evil can reflect the greater joy of the real, true story of the Gospel. While the joy of the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=