People often say LOTR is a story about hope. (I’m reminded of it because someone said it in the notes of my Faramir post.) And that’s true, but it’s not the whole picture: LOTR is in large part a story about having to go on in the absence of hope.
Frodo has lost hope, as well as the ability to access any positive emotion, by Return. He is already losing it in Towers: he keeps going through duty and determination and of course Sam’s constant help.
For most of the story, Sam is fueled by hope, which is why it’s such a huge moment when he finally lets go of the hope of surviving and returning home, and focuses on making it to the Mountain. To speed their way and lighten the load, he throws his beloved pots and pans into a pit, accepting that he will never cook, or eat, again.
When Eowyn kills the Witch King, she’s beyond hope and seeking for a glorious death in battle. It’s possible that in addition to her love and loyalty for Théoden, she’s strengthened by her hopelessness, the fear of the Nazgúl cannot touch someone who’s already past despair.
Faramir is his father’s son, he doesn’t have any more hope of Gondor’s victory or survival than Denethor does, he says as much to Frodo. What hope have we? It is long since we had any hope. … We are a failing people, a springless autumn. He knows he’s fighting a losing war and it’s killing him. When he rejects the ring, he doesn’t do it in the hope that his people can survive without it, he has good reason to believe they cannot. He acts correctly in the absence of hope.
Of course LOTR has a (mostly) happy ending, all the unlikely hopes come true, the characters who have lost hope gain what they didn’t even hope for, and everyone is rewarded for their bravery and goodness, so on some level the message is that hope was justified. But the book never chastises characters who lost hope, it was completely reasonable of them to do so. Despair pushed Théoden and Denethor into inaction, pushed Saruman into collaboration, but the characters who despaired and held up under the weight of despair are Tolkien’s real heroes.
(In an early draft of Return, Frodo and Sam receive honorary titles in Noldorin: Endurance beyond Hope and Hope Unquenchable, respectively. Then he cut it, probably because it was stating the themes of the entire book way too obviously, because this is what Tolkien cared about, really: enduring beyond hope. Without hope.)
Also, people who know more than me about the concept of estel, feel free to @ me.
I agree with everything in the above post, and think that the knife’s edge balance between despair and hope in LOTR is a really important theme when you see the characters that fall into despair and the ones that don’t, and the ones that despair but don’t fall.
But the thing about estel is that it’s not the only elvish word for hope. There’s amdir, which is hope with a foundation, it’s based on something. Estel is hope without that foundation, based on nothing at all–a fool’s hope, if you will. It’s what drives the entire Quest, because sending the Ring to Mt Doom is objectively insane and there is no reason to believe that it’ll work beyond like, Elrond saying so (and if anyone is familiar with estel, it’s Elrond). But it does work, because everyone in the Fellowship comes together to make sure that it will, because they’re clinging to that estel with their last fingernails and they aren’t letting go. Even if they give up hope for themselves or for their homes for for their loved ones.
Anyway all that to say I just wanted to highlight this passage from ROTK:
Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.
That’s the hope that people are talking about when they say LOTR is about hope, I think. It’s a hope that’s bigger than any single character, and it’s so hard and at times impossible to keep holding on to, but in the end it wins out, in spite of everything.
My posts are always about pain, bombings, hunger, and destruction. What else can I do? This is the life we have been forced into by an endless war. We used to be one of the happiest and most loving families.
I support my family through your donations—I buy medicine for my father and mother, who suffer from chronic illnesses, and I provide for my siblings, my wife, and my children.
Please help us. This is the short version of my plea: donate and share—it makes a huge difference
Don’t leave us alone. Every donation and every act of kindness is an investment in humanity. Right now, our living conditions are beyond desperate.
A donation = saving a family from being wiped out.
Gaza without bread .. The sector’s bakeries were closed all of the day .. The remaining flour is not enough for more than a week, and the sack of flour if its price is exceeded 60 dollars ..
I swear to you that Gaza is hungry, and the remaining food stocks are not enough for the maximum of more than ten days and will completely end .. What do you expect after that from a people who kill around the clock and now hunger?! God does not forgive those who brought us here, God does not forgive those who have the ability to stop this genocide and did not.
Every day that passes our life gets worse in Gaza there are more than 2 million people we need large quantities of food but with the crossings closed it is impossible every day food is getting scarcer and its price is increasing dramatically there is no water or even electricity to operate the water wells our life is tragic in addition to all of this the sounds of explosions and cannons and planes that never stop they never stop when we ask you to donate you are our only hope with this money we can eat some of the available food or even some clean water to drink there is no sanitation or health services diseases are everywhere insects too everything is difficult so difficult that you cannot imagine what we are going through without experiencing it it is more difficult than what you see on TV our life is tragic so I ask you to donate to us any amount you can afford my family and I need something to help
“covid is a seasonal illness” ok sure. what season though? because, for multiple years, people have gotten covid every single season. we’re very much out of winter in my area (and even longer out of what would be considered winter weather), but my coworker tested positive a few days ago. i would put money on there being people getting it in the depths of summer. a disease isn’t seasonal if it’s year round
“There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they’ll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they’d tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.
"No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.”
please think about male pregnancy outside of a meme context at least sometimes. idc if you say “I’m gonna get him pregnant” or things like that but male pregnancy is going to become an increasingly serious issue for us trans men/mascs
just. acknowledge that there are men irl who can get pregnant, not always by choice, and how that effects us. because we’re going to need it. we already need it
My roommate thought she hated cooking and then she moved in with me and started using knives that were actually sharp and realized cooking is fun. Sometimes I wonder how many other situations are like this. It’s not you, or your skills. It’s just the lack of correct tools. Everyone knows you need a knife in the kitchen but no one mentions a sharpening stone.
Also you should probably sharpen your knife.
Speaking less metaphorically I literally do wonder how many people would realize Cooking Doesn’t Suck if only they had sharper knives. Cutting vegetables is not supposed to be a workout. You’re not supposed to apply force when you press down. If you have to force the knife down then the knife is dull! This is a fixable problem!
you can get a sharpening stone for under ten dollars and soak it in water in like a leftover Chinese food container (the plastic ones like from the sesame chicken combo) and pass your shitty dull walmart knife* over it for like 4 total minutes of sharpening time (please do try to keep both sides even to avoid curling the edge over) and that’ll be already SO much better than what you’ve been putting up with, I promise.
*no judgement, I too own shitty dull walmart knives that I don’t sharpen often enough, that go too long sitting in the sink after using, but Occasionally Sharpening Your Knives is better than Never Sharpening Your Knives. I WILL be honest and say the noise can be pretty grating though, so if you’re the kind of person for whom that would a capital B.S.E. (Bad Sensory Experience) I’d suggest putting in your earplugs or headphones and blasting some music, possibly putting on some disposable gloves too cuz of The Texture.
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