The End of the Third Age

J.R.R. Tolkien was less of a seer of the future and more of a chronicler of human nature.

I gave up on pro football years ago and my wife was down in Mississippi with her sisters finalizing some stuff with their dad's estate, so on this past Sunday, it was just me and my dogs - and while they are staunch and loyal companions, they aren't much on the conversation side.

While I was working on other things around the house, I nerded out with all three of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies and as I am won't to do, sort of set my mind on cruise control while allowing the dialog to be passively absorbed by my brain.

A couple of phrases caused me to look up.

The first was Samwise Gamgee saying:

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

The other was, of course, Aragorn's passionate speech at the Black Gates:

"A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship; but it is not this day! An hour of woe, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down; but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”

I can't count the number of times I have seen these movies, but I always stop what I'm doing when that part is on.

In 1964, Tolkien sat for an interview with the BBC. In it he was asked if he saw the the world declining as the Third Age declined in his books, he replied:

"At my age, I’m exactly the kind of person who has lived through one of the most quickly changing periods known to history. Surely there could never be in seventy years so much change."

It is inarguable that Tolkien saw remarkable highs and lows before his passing in 1973, but one would wonder how he would compare our current state to his imaginary conflicts between men and Orcs and demons.

There is a dimming, dwindling, autumnal quality throughout the whole of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, not at all unlike what we are experiencing today. In "Rings", from the world of the Hobbits in the Shire to the Forest of Fangorn where Ents dwell, everything is declining and fading as time ticks toward the end of the Third Age and existential conflict draws nearer.

Every choice tends to the upsetting of some social more or tradition, signaling permanent change and the erasure of any path back to the familiar of where the world once was.

Methinks Tolkien was less of a seer of the future and more of a chronicler of human nature.

The world of men seems insistent on a march to Mordor. The eye of Sauron is always upon us and the journey may be random and difficult but it is always in the direction of the coming conflict between good and evil, between East and West.

This conflict is always inevitable. Western civilization has always been destined to journey to the Black Gate of Mordor.

As the old bromide goes, the only constancy is change.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote: “the old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways”.

Let's hope Tennyson was right and we are at the dawning of Tolkien's Fourth Age - but we should be aware the Third Age won't go without a fight.