Eucatastrophe
We are two
weeks from Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day. Jesus’ story is the great story, the back
story to all our stories, and resurrection is its essential core.
In “On
Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien invented the term eucatastrophe for the happy ending that he thought was almost
necessary for complete fairy tales.
Tragedy, he thought, is the true form, the highest function, of drama;
but a happy ending is the true form of fairy stories, and in the best stories
it is an almost-beyond-hope happy ending.
Readers of The Lord of the Rings (and in recent
decades, viewers of Peter Jackson’s films) are familiar with Tolkien’s eucatastrophe: the armies of Mordor have
surrounded the army of Gondor; Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas and their
friends face defeat and death; but at the last possible moment certain defeat
turns into victory, because the enemy’s ring of power is destroyed. In a sense, of course, Frodo failed. His long quest brought him, with Sam’s help,
to Mount Doom, but at the last Frodo fell prey to the spiritual corruption of
the ring. He took the ring for himself, and
the quest would have failed—except that Gollum, consumed by lust for the ring,
bit off Frodo’s finger and fell into the fire with it. The quest succeeded not by Frodo’s strength
but by unexpected “grace.”
It would be
interesting to compare Tolkien’s eucatastrophe scene with the happy endings of
contemporary fantasy stories. Stan Lee’s
Marvel comic books have blossomed into movie franchises, and it seems the
public has an insatiable appetite for Spiderman, Captain America, the Green
Lantern, and all the rest. We notice a
contrast immediately. Frodo and Sam are hobbits, little folk, a humble and
unspectacular race. In the Marvel
universe, the heroes are superheroes. Their literary forbears are Odysseus and
Beowulf, not Everyman. The superhero suffers
temporary defeats which leads her (some are female) to crisis, but in the end
she triumphs by her power (or the help of her friends).
It’s no surprise
that Tolkien was a Christian. The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory
(Tolkien said he hated allegory), but it is full of Christian themes, including
discipleship and grace. Discipleship to Christ takes different forms in
different lives, but in the end discipleship always demands our whole
being. (Remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
Cost of Discipleship. Christ always calls us to “come and die.”). And
even then, especially then—when we have given our all—success comes by God’s
grace, not by our power.
It’s fun to
imagine having a super power. People
love role playing games, super hero movies, and Harry Potter. I’ve had fun imagining characters like Debbie
Apple (in Buying the Bangkok Girl) blessed
with a “little” magic. Because it’s fun,
I predict a long successful market for superhero movies and fairy stories. They won’t all succeed; even fairy stories
can be badly written or badly screened.
An
effective eucatastrophe pulls a fairy story into parallel with the great
story. For creative purposes, we avoid
direct copying (not too many resurrections in our stories, unless we are
writing allegories, like The Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobe). Our happy endings
are only symbolic of resurrection. When
it comes to the real thing, there’s only one.
