And they all lived happily ever after...” It is a ubiquitous phrase that over time has come to reflect the quintessential ending of fantasy stories and fairy tales. To imagine a story without this concluding phrase is nearly as difficult as imagining a narrative unfold without the opening words “A long, long time ago”. Yet, as a reader, the joy of the happy ending is often sweeter than the excitement of the tale’s beginning. Why does the happy ending, the victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, resonate so deeply? One of the greatest authors of the modern age, J. R. R. Tolkien, offers an answer to this question in the conclusion of his masterful work of fantasy, The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is a story of epic scale. It has a most unlikely hero, not a man of great deed and renown, but a simple hobbit of small stature named Frodo who hails from the quaintly insular and idyllic Shire. The unwitting recipient of a ring of great evil, Frodo learns that he holds the One Ring of Power forged long ago by the Dark Lord Sauron. Possession of the One Ring is all that stands between Sauron and the strength and power to destroy Middle-Earth. Rather than give into the temptation to use the power of the Ring for himself, Frodo and a small band of companions undertake a perilous quest to destroy the Ring in the one place it can be unmade, the fires of the volcanic Mount Doom where it was forged in the very heart of Sauron’s dark domain. The fate of all free peoples of Middle-Earth depends on the success of this quest. Eucatastrophe in The Lord of the Rings Kirsten Setzkorn
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