Note: If any part of this spoils The Lord of the Rings for you, it’s your own fault.
As I recently finished listening to Rob Inglis’s excellent narration of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, I was struck, once again, by the profound beauty of the ending. I must admit, however, that the first time I reached the part of the story where the ring was destroyed, I stopped and quickly counted the pages that were left. How could Tolkien need this many more pages to wrap up the story? As I read on, I was gratified to read about events that struck the right chord of blessed finality–friends reunited, a coronation, a wedding, and a wedding announcement. Sam Gamgee asked of Gandalf, whom he had previously thought dead, “Is everything sad going to become untrue?” I expected the answer to be a simple “yes,” but I was mistaken.
Here we get to the part of the story that Peter Jackson either did not understand, did not have time for, or did not want to test his audience’s patience with when he adapted The Return of the King for the film (I suspect a mixture of all three). I’m speaking of the scouring of the Shire. For those of you who are unfamiliar (probably those of you who, sadly, only watched the movie), the hobbits returned to the Shire to find it languishing under tyranny and befouled by the works of Mordor. “Sharkie,” who was actually a greatly-weakened Saruman, had set up shop in Bag End and brought in “ruffians” to tyrannize the hobbits and tear up the countryside. Saruman was a disgraced and de-staffed wizard, a serpent who, as Gandalf said, had one fang left, which was his voice. He used his voice to influence others to destroy the peace of the Shire. Under his corrupting influence, the ruffians, and even a few bad hobbits had torn down the party tree and replaced many of the hobbit holes with squalid brick huts. They had taken over the “Shiriffs” and were imprisoning any hobbits who dared to resist their regime. Tolkien described seeing the desolation of Bag End as the saddest part of all of Sam’s journeys, worse than Mordor. But the four returning hobbits, fresh from their victories, had reached the necessary level of maturity that enabled them to fight the evil in their land. They lead a revolt in which they deposed Saruman and threw out the ruffians. They then spent years repairing the damage and building up the Shire to its former glory.
Now, I want to be cautious here. Tolkien was clear that he was not intending anything he wrote to be a spiritual allegory. Frodo was not the messiah. The ring did not represent “sin” or “evil” or “death.” Saruman did not directly represent a weakened Satan who still had power in his voice. That was not Tolkien’s point. And yet, to the extent that Tolkien wrote something true (which I believe he did), the parallels are inescapable. The moment the ring fell into Orodruin, Sauron’s kingdom was finished. Just so, the moment Christ rose from the dead, Satan’s kingdom was no more. After such a triumph, it is rather anti-climactic that the world continues to bring forth famine, disease, and death in abundance. We are now, eschatologically, at the part of the redemptive story where the hobbits had to reckon with what’s happened to their beloved Shire. The hobbits seemed to be far away from the King, but they had to announce his kingdom, proclaim his triumph, and deal with those who did not recognize his kingship. Perhaps, if we were writing the redemption story, we would end it with the empty tomb, or the day of Pentecost. That might seem like a better story to the Peter Jacksons among us, but it is not God’s story. That story would leave out the Church. While the bride is still beset, the story is not over. We are the hobbits, seemingly the weakest of all peoples, whose blessed job it is to announce the return of the King.
Rob Noland grew up attending Providence Church in Pensacola, Florida. He received his bachelor’s from New Saint Andrews College and his J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law. He and his wife, Amber, attend a PCA church in Atlanta, GA where he works as a lawyer.
