Month: September 2026

“Nay, Nay, Whatever May Now Betide in War, My Line Too is Ending, Even The House of The Stewards Has Failed.” Some Thoughts on Hope and Expectation in The Lord of the Rings.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 799-806

I am grateful to one of my regular correspondents, Kate Splieth, for thoughts that have led to this reflection as we continue to think about the siege of Minas Tirith before the arrival of the Riders of Rohan, one of the darkest moments in The Lord of the Rings. In a comment on my last reflection upon eucatastrophe, she writes this,
“Is there a difference between hope and expectation?”

It is in the tragic character of Denethor that we see that difference most clearly expressed. From the moment that Denethor first receives the sign that his son, Boromir, has been killed, he begins his fall into despair. When Gandalf and Pippin first meet him, seated upon the Steward’s chair in the throne room of Gondor, they see this sign in his hand. He holds aloft the horn of Boromir that was cloven in two as he made the brave defence of Merry and Pippin at Parth Galen that led to his death.

From that time onwards Denethor’s spirit is broken even though he continues to direct the defence of the city against the Morgul host. But at the last the Prince of Dol Amroth carries the body of Faramir from the failed defence of the fords of Osgiliath to his father, and whatever strength Denethor had to continue resistance is lost.

“I sent my son forth, unthanked, unblessed, out into needless peril, and here he lies with poison in his veins. Nay, nay, whatever may now betide in war, my line is ending, even the House of Stewards has failed. Mean folk shall rule the last remnant of the Kings of Men, lurking in the hills until all are hounded out.”

We may note here that Denethor has reduced the story of his people to the story of his family, of his line. He is convinced, wrongly as we shall see, that Faramir is dying, and unlike Sam Gamgee, kneeling beside what he believed to be the corpse of Frodo in Shelob’s Lair, Denethor sees no reason to carry on, “whatever now may betide in war.” To him there is no future, even if victory should ultimately be achieved over the forces of Mordor. His line is ending, just as the line of the Kings of Gondor failed.

Here we see the difference between hope and expectation, or at least expectation as it has become. In the Latin text of the Nicene Creed we read et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, and I await the resurrection of the dead. The word, exspecto, that has become expect in modern English is associated with specto, to look out for, to wait for, to hope for. This kind of expectation is to Denethor, a fool’s hope, and when men call for guidance from their lord, Denethor answers, “Follow whom you will, even the Grey Fool, though his hope has failed.”

Denethor has given in to despair which is the ultimate consequence of his expectation. All his gathering of intelligence has convinced him of the overwhelming power of his enemy and the utter inadequacy of his own resources. His one hope, if we can call it that, was to gain control of the Ring of Power and so have a weapon that he could use of sufficient power to stand against that enemy. In this manner he resembles Saruman who also hoped to gain control of the Ring, although unlike Saruman, Denethor never considered the possibility of becoming an ally of Sauron. Saruman’s intention was to ally himself to Sauron while seeking either to gain control of the Ring or to create his own ring of power. Denethor was never a traitor unlike Saruman.

But neither Denethor, nor Saruman, had hope. Both gave way to despair. Saruman did so cynically, choosing to ally himself with darkness believing that darkness would have the last word in everything. Denethor also came to believe in the final victory of darkness but refused to ally himself with that darkness. In that sense there is still a heroism in Denethor, a heroism that he shows in the breastplate that he wears under his robes.

And what of hope? Gandalf chooses hope, the decision to believe that at the end the good, the true and the beautiful will prevail even though all that can be seen is darkness and the power of evil. In the Council of Elrond the choice was made to send the Ring to the Fire, not because it was felt to be a good idea but because it was the right thing to do, the only thing that could be done without giving way to the ultimate power of all the Ring represented which is the power of power itself.

“Though the Darkness Had Reached Its Full and Grew No Deeper, It Weighed Heavier on Men’s Hearts, And a Great Dread Was On Them.” Tolkien Describes The Darkest Moments of The Siege of Minas Tirith.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 799-803

There are many dark moments in The Lord of the Rings, and I do not wish to take part in one of those polls that seem to be popular in social media. You know the kind that I mean; what are the ten darkest moments in this story? Is it Sam Gamgee kneeling beside the body of Frodo after his friend has received what seems to be a deadly sting from Shelob, or is it this moment when it seems that Minas Tirith will fall to the assault of the Morgul Host under their deadly captain, the Witch-King of Angmar? I do not wish to compare them. At the very least it would be a terrible slight upon the anguish that Sam feels as he looks upon Frodo and feels that the whole world has come to an end. But although Gandalf has been right to call Denethor to think of more than Gondor, Denethor has also been right to say that if Gondor falls the fall of the rest of Middle-earth will inevitably follow.

There is a word that serious readers of Tolkien’s work eventually come to know and that is the word, eucatastrophe. In his famous essay On Fairy Stories, Tolkien defined this word as “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argue is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce)”. And so he thinks of the moment when the prince awakens the Sleeping Beauty from her hundred years sleep, or, in the Christian story, the moment of the incarnation, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, the moment that is heralded in Isaiah 9.2 by the words, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” The essential contrast here is between darkness, the shadow of death and the great light that suddenly and entirely unexpectedly breaks in upon them in their utter hopelessness.

We will, of course, come back to the eucatastrophic moments in the telling of the story of the breaking of the siege of Minas Tirith later in this series of reflections, and we will see that not one of these moments is able to lift Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, from his deep despair. But what I wish to reflect upon here is that the essential feature of a true eucatastrophe is that it is entirely unlooked for. If we were to expect the “sudden happy turn” in our stories, then what such an expectation would create in us would be complacency. Unlike Pippin, who stands “alone and sleepless” on the walls of Minas Tirith looking eastward through the night we would sleep comfortably in our beds even through the greatest disaster. Don’t worry, we would say to one another, something will turn up, it always does.

And not all the sudden happy turns that have happened either in our own experience or in the telling of stories that we love the most are able to assure us that this time, in this present darkness, there will be an inbreaking of light. Like Pippin we wait, robbed of sleep, and asking, as we thought of a few weeks ago, “Is there any hope?”

And therein we see the action that we can take. There is the anxious waiting that Pippin shows us. There is the courageous if hopeless action of Faramir going out to the fords of Osgiliath even though he knows that he will not be able to hold them. Or there is the steady and indomitable spirit of Gandalf who remains in the darkest places so that those who are lost in them will not be utterly abandoned.

None of these actions can bring about the eucatastrophic events that will deliver Minas Tirith from the siege of the Morgul host, but without them, without the faithful perseverance that each of these actions represents, there can be no “joy that brings tears”, the tears that will later fall at the Field of Cormallen when Sam will cry out, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?”