Tolkien and the Monsters

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

As usual, I have done a good search of the forum for similar topics, but not found one. If one exists, my apologies in advance and I await reprimand.

This thread is an ougrowth of a post I just put up in the Chapter by Chapter discussion (please, everyone who might come acros this post/thread, join the CbC discussion ) At any event. . .

There's been a lot of discussion in the forum about the different kinds or types of heroism and heroic virtue that are developed in The Lord of the Rings, but I'm wondering if there isn't a similar conversation possible about the monsters of LotR and the nature of evil. I've seen the threads asking "are orcs evil" or "is Gollum evil" and even "is Sauron evil". The commonality amongst all these threads is the idea of evil -- that is, the only question seems to be, "which characters fall into category E" (E being evil).

But what is evil in LotR? Again, there are a number of threads devoted to discussions like this, but they are all focussed (quite understandably) on the Ring, on Sauron, on Gollum and on Saruman. But what about the monsters that define the structure of the book? The journeys of the heroes are marked by a cyclical movement from danger to safety, so that there are along the course of all their journeys a number of safe havens (Farmer Maggot's, Tom Bombadil, Rivendell, Lorien, Ithilien), but in between these are the other part of the pattern -- the monsters:

The Black Riders
Old Man Willow
The Barrow Wights
The Black Riders (again at Weathertop)
The Watcher in the Water
Moria orcs
The Balrog
Gollum
lots and lots of orcs (and Uruks)
The Fell Beasts
Shelob
The ghosts of the unfaithful
The Mouth of Sauron
Sauron
(others I've missed?)

So I suppose there are a number of questions I want to ask about these monsters:

How are they alike? In what ways are they all similar?

How are they different?

Are they all 'evil' in the same way, or is the book presenting different kinds or forms of 'evil'?

What kind of pattern is being developed here (if there is a pattern)?

Different heroes are used to defeat different monsters: does this mean that there are different kinds or modes of goodness that are appropriate for different kinds or modes of evil? Or is this series of monsters simply a repeated pattern of Good defeating Evil?

For What It's Worth: My instinctive reaction is that there is a pattern here, and one that moves from relatively 'simple' forms of monstrosity (that is, things that are unnatural/perversions of nature: beasts) toward moral corruption (perversions of unnatural will or spirit). The Black Riders are the best demonstration of this -- they begin the book appearing as eerie Men who are frightening, but they end it as terrifying manifestations of the Ring's power and Sauron's domination: they 'grow' and become Nazgul.

The other pattern I see is one charted by the Barrow Wights, the Balrog and the Mouth of Sauron. Each of them is doing Sauron's work, but as we move through the novel each one is successively more and more aware of how he/it is doing Sauron's work. That is, the 'evil' of the Barrow Wights is unconscious and confined (they are just being Wights); the Balrog is working sort of with and for Sauron, although not as part of his conscious plan (its not 'there' to destroy Gandalf or hinder the Fellowship; I'm not even sure that it's a servant of Sauron); the Mouth of Sauron is so aware of his place in Sauron's works that he doesn't even know who he is anymore, beyond the fact that he's a cog in the machine.

What this pattern means about evil I'm not sure yet (hence this new thread), but it does seem to me that there is a pattern, and that it is doing something about the nature of evil as expressed by the monsters. . .