The Structure of The Lord of the Rings

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Only time for a very brief post -- there is one 'truism' about LotR that I have seen batted around here for a while that I'm not sure holds much water. The 'party line' seems to be that in the Scouring of the Shire we see that evil will never suffer a final defeat and that the stain of this incident upon the Shire serves as a reminder of that fact.

Well, the problem I have with this theory is that in the Scouring of the Shire the very last of the (Third Age) evil is done away with in the form of Saruman's death. After this (relatively minor) battle, the story is quite clear that life in the Shire actually improves. The crops are better, thanks to Sam and Galadriel's gift, the borders are secured, thanks to Aragorn, and even the really disturbing memories are expunged, thanks to Frodo's decision to leave. I think that the presence of Saruman in the Shire when the hobbits return is an intrusion into their complaisance about the Shire (it can be touched by evil), but they very handily do away with that evil.

Now, I am not suggesting that there is a final defeat for evil – a personage of no less stature than Gandalf tells us the contrary on more than one occasion. Sauron will never die, just lose strength, people are still flawed, there is greed and weakness and desire, the line of Men is failing…but in the Shire, in the incident of the Scouring and its immediate aftermath, I just don’t see any of that. I find the whole incident an extraordinarily purgative/healing (even cathartic) process of regeneration: of the turn from good to better, through momentary worse.

So this leaves me, I realise, with having to contend what function or place the Scouring does hold in the overall structure. I shall have to turn to that in a later and longer post…