A broken soul, in the moral sense, is just a few strokes of temptation away. Most of the time, this temptation manifests itself in the pursuit of power — a seemingly noble hunt, but all the while a bane of virtue. All are fallible, whether it’s the corrupted SMERSH officers within Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s momentous exposé The Gulag Archipelago, or the multitude of ethics-barren wretches within J.R.R. Tolkien’s pioneering Lord of the Rings trilogy: Saruman “the Wise,” Smeagol, Boromir, etc. Our innate lust for dominance renders our moral compasses malleable, because it allows the sneaky savagery of subjectivity to cloud our judgement. This is independent of any preexisting purity. In falling for the sirens’ call, we are afforded the ability to separate humanity from the human, a recipe for unspeakable malice to come into being.
In Tolkien’s view, it is a far better demonstration of wisdom if one rejects offerings of power tainted by tyranny. Frodo’s telling time in Lothlorien, more specifically his encounter with Galadriel, bolsters this claim. Frightened by the daunting responsibility that awaits him, Frodo offers the Ring of Power to the elven royal. “You are wise and fearless and fair, Lady Galadriel… It is too great a matter for me” (Tolkien 365). The “Lady of the Forest” dismisses Frodo’s idea, but also admits her “great desire” to wield such power. This stark refusal, followed by humble acknowledgement of her own susceptibility, helps define Galadriel as a character possessing sound judgement, capable of both rare foresight and resisting temptation. Unfortunately, elves are fictional beings, and such moral clarity is more scarce among humans.
Leave a Reply