Loading...
Location
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Document Type
Presentation
Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-53.htm
Start Date
3-8-2024 11:00 AM
End Date
3-8-2024 11:50 AM
Description
In one of the more pivotal passages in Lord of the Rings, Sam makes a couple of insightful comments to Frodo in a way that transcends his earlier foolishness. In a kind of moral and philosophical epiphany he says, “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. . . But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” Sam’s comments speak to the central importance of hope for the wayfarers. And this would resonate with Fleiger’s account of the role of light and darkness as it parallels hope and despair. Hope is the virtue of “being on the way,” or as Josef Pieper says, it is the status viatoris. Persons on a journey have yet “to arrive” at their destination but feel the magnetic pull of some good that demands their efforts. Aquinas writes that hope is “the patient expectation of a difficult but possible future good.” I argue that the journey of hope, as Tolkien narrates it, is where we all find ourselves: in the midst of an ongoing story. And the essential elements of the journey include: fellowship, hope, and a good worth striving for.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
In Media Res: Sam & Frodo on the Journey
Minneapolis, Minnesota
In one of the more pivotal passages in Lord of the Rings, Sam makes a couple of insightful comments to Frodo in a way that transcends his earlier foolishness. In a kind of moral and philosophical epiphany he says, “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. . . But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” Sam’s comments speak to the central importance of hope for the wayfarers. And this would resonate with Fleiger’s account of the role of light and darkness as it parallels hope and despair. Hope is the virtue of “being on the way,” or as Josef Pieper says, it is the status viatoris. Persons on a journey have yet “to arrive” at their destination but feel the magnetic pull of some good that demands their efforts. Aquinas writes that hope is “the patient expectation of a difficult but possible future good.” I argue that the journey of hope, as Tolkien narrates it, is where we all find ourselves: in the midst of an ongoing story. And the essential elements of the journey include: fellowship, hope, and a good worth striving for.
https://dc.swosu.edu/mythcon/mc53/schedule/24
