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The Mount Doom scene exemplified lines from the Lord's Prayer.

#113: Nov. - Jan. 2013 (Fiction)
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The Mount Doom scene exemplified lines from the Lord's Prayer.

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Tolkien wrote that the Mount Doom scene exemplified lines from the Lord's Prayer.[/size]

Tolkien admitted that Christianity was very much a part of his writings. In fact the climax to The Lord of the Rings in Mount Doom can be related to the Lord's Prayer. He also wrote that "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Please see Letters, #'s 142, 181, and 191.)

Beginning of letter 191
191 From a letter to Miss J. Bum (draft) 26 July 1956

If you re-read all the passages dealing with Frodo and the Ring, I think you will see that not
only was it quite impossible for him to surrender the Ring, in act or will, especially at its point of maximum power, but that this failure was adumbrated from far back. He was honoured because he had accepted the burden voluntarily, and had then done all that was within his utmost physical and mental strength to do. He (and the Cause) were saved – by Mercy : by the supreme value and efficacy of Pity and forgiveness of injury.

Corinthians I x. 12-131 may not at first sight seem to fit – unless 'bearing temptation' is taken to mean resisting it while still a free agent in normal command of the will. I think rather of the
mysterious last petitions of the Lord's Prayer: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

A petition against something that cannot happen is unmeaning. There exists the possibility of being placed in positions beyond one's power. In which case (as I believe) salvation from ruin will depend on something apparently unconnected: the general sanctity (and humility and mercy) of the sacrificial person. I did not 'arrange' the deliverance in this case: it again follows the logic of the story. (Gollum had had his chance of repentance, and of returning generosity with love; and had fallen off the knife-edge.) In the case of those who now issue from prison 'brainwashed', broken, or insane, praising their torturers, no such immediate deliverance is as a rule to be seen. But we can at least judge them by the will and intentions with which they entered the Sammath Naur; and not demand impossible feats of will, which could only happen in stories unconcerned with real moral and mental probability.

No, Frodo 'failed'. It is possible that once the ring was destroyed he had little recollection of the last scene. But one must face the fact: the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures, however 'good'; and the Writer of the Story is not one of us.

I am afraid I have the same feeling – I have been forced to publish up-side-down or backwards; and after the grand crash (and the end of visibly incarnate Evil) before the Dominion of Men (or simple History) to which it all led up the mythological and elvish legends of the Elder Days will not be quite the same. But perhaps read, eventually, from beginning to end in the right order, both parts may gain. I am not writing the Silmarillion, which was long ago written; but trying to find a way and order in which to make the legends and annals publishable. And I have a dreadful lot of other work to do as well.

end of letter

Tolkien's Letters
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
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