Sorry I let so much time go by before getting back to this discussion! I had started composing a post and couldn't finish it ... but I'll try to put up some abbreviated ideas right now.
Prim, you had comments on my observation that the Eagles made this a Christian faery tale ...
Prim wrote:Emphasis mine, and I suspect it's the emphasis you meant. The "pulling of punches," the people who live who should not, is not because this is a Christian tale, but because it's a faery tale.
I think the post-deed appearance of the eagles reflects three identifiable perspectives actually:
1. It is a faery tale
2. It is a faery tale of European origin, and therefore Christian in its doctrinal orientation
3. It is a faery tale written by someone who attained adulthood prior to WWII, even though most of the book was written subsequent to WWII.
Let me start with the last one first, because to my eye there is a very sharp dividing line between the thematic content of books written in the first half of the 20th century and those written in the second half. The idea that good must be rewarded in order for a story to be morally sound is a first-half concept. The idea that providence is obliged to intervene in certain ways is also a first-half concept. The second half of the century is dominated instead by themes of alienation, anomy, and abandonment of providence.
Although Tolkien acknowledges the free will of god to a much greater extent than does ... C.S. Lewis or C.G. Chesterton, say, whose tub-thumping approaches are really 19th century literature, imo, Tolkien does revert ultimately to this idea that god
does come through for those who acknowledge that he/she has no obligation to do so. This is a more purely faith-based approach, in my opinion, quite different from themes based on doctrine. (some day I am going to start a thread about this idea all by itself; i've been threatening to do so for years!)
I once wrote at some length on TORC about the cultural clues in LotR and how different even small events would have worked themselves out if LotR had not been a European story. I sort of don't feel like going into a lot of examples here, but focusing just on the Christian aspect of European culture, there is a doctrinal distinction between Faith and Hope. The eagles appear after all that has been "hoped for" (beyond all hope) has been achieved. So although I believe that hope is a pervasive theme within LotR I do not believe that this is what the eagles represent. I do believe they represent, if anything, the virtue of faith, and a very western approach to faith which views god as linear, historic, and committed in an anthropomorphic way to specific motifs of reward and punishment. I do not believe, for example, that a Hindu would have felt required to bring in eagles at the end - Mahima may wish to correct me on that. If salvation had to be represented it would have been represented a different way. And I am confident that no Jew writing in the 1950s would have found it 'truthful' to include such a rescue in order to represent faith or salvation.
Finally, it is a faery story and must, therefore, according to Tolkien himself, have it eucatrastophe. What sort of ending the reader will accept as eucatastrophic is, I think, defined culturally as well.
(this is much shorter than what I was originally going to say, but it will have to do for now)
