“A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
In the opening chapter of his 1986 book Beyond Identity—one of those titles I consider a “must read” for any Christian who wants to deepen their insights into what it means to be human—Dick Keyes writes, “How rare are writers like C.S. Lewis whose genius as a writer of fiction lay in his ability to make moral goodness attractive and heroic.” Keyes’s point is important in multiple ways. Narrative art—including film and fiction—will inevitably supply characters we are drawn to in one way or another, and thus (consciously or not) ones whom we seek to imitate. And one definition of a “hero” is somebody we seek to imitate. It might be a superpowered comic-book character like Spiderman, a professional athlete like your favorite NBA superstar, or a quiet and unassuming high school teacher who taught in a patient, caring way and made time for you when you needed it. How many of us walked around as kids pretending to shoot webs out our wrists? (And maybe a few of us still do in our middle age, though I’m certainly not confessing to it if I do.) Or we practice our slam-dunk moves on driveway hoops (that have been lowered a foot or two) or imagine being up to bat in the World Series in the bottom of the 9th with the game on the line (while we play wiffleball in the backyard).
More movingly, the day before I started writing this article, I was listening to a student speaker at the graduation ceremony at Middlebury College where I teach. This student, who after graduation will be going to Washington D.C. with the “Teach for America” program to teach underserved and less-privileged youth, gave a fitting tribute to somebody who had invested in his life five years earlier and whose example had inspired him to do what he is doing.
Heroes are important. For most of us, our actions are shaped more by our heroes and our imaginations than by abstract principles. Biblically speaking, we ought to strive for moral goodness. And we are far more motivated to do so when the heroes we imitate display that moral goodness. Yet we live in world that idolizes meanness and greed rather than virtues such as compassion—especially when meanness seems to lead to power. Thus, not surprisingly, forty years after Keyes published his book, films and works of fiction that portray moral virtue as heroic have become even more rare. As Keyes noted, however, C.S. Lewis did this well, particularly in the form of his enduring works of mythopoeic fiction. He did it so well, in fact, that one of his famous atheistically-minded contemporaries, the 20th century psychologist B.F. Skinner, in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity made a point of criticizing C.S. Lewis for his portrayals of heroism and moral virtue in what Skinner referred to as Lewis’s “literatures of freedom and dignity.”
I think one of the authors Lewis learned this from was his friend J.R.R. Tolkien whose book The Hobbit predated both the Ransom Trilogy and the Chronicles of Narnia. Last week I was writing a pair of daily devotions for Life for Leaders, a ministry of Fuller Theological Seminary’s Max De Pree Center for Leadership. The specific topic of my devotions was compassion, part of a longer theme of devotions I’ve written this year inspired in part by the Beatitudes (found in Matthew 5:1–12) and by 2 Timothy 2:3–4 in which Paul penned the following warning to his friend Timothy: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” The connection between those passages is this: I have heard in recent times many national figures—including, sadly, folks who are perceived as leaders of the Christian church as well as political leaders—speaking dismissively of Christian virtues such as sympathy and compassion, and claiming that teachings such as the Beatitudes which call Christians to live in meekness and humility no longer apply to us because our times are too desperate. Even my own recent book Aslan’s Breath: Seeing the Holy Spirit in Narnia was critiqued by one reviewer for promoting the virtue of gentleness. In Aslan’s Breath, I referred explicitly to several scriptural passages which call Christians to gentleness, or which portray gentleness as a trait of Jesus to be imitated. Ironically, the reviewer referred to this as a secular model of gentleness.
So, there I was writing about compassion, and shortly after finishing my devotion and sending it in, what popped to my mind was how well J.R.R. Tolkien also managed to portray compassion as a moral virtue—not only in his longer and seemingly richer works like The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but even in The Hobbit. I should begin by explaining three important terms. All of them are Christian moral virtues, and all have the same Greek root word pati, meaning “to suffer”, which come to us through Latin and from which the word passion is also derived. All of them have also been under attack in our culture. Summarizing what I noted in my devotion: sympathy is an effort at understanding the struggles or sufferings that another person is experiencing; empathy is when we not only try to understand (intellectually) another’s experiences (especially of suffering), but we actually feel what they are feeling; and compassion is when empathy moves us to action. Sympathy and empathy don’t necessarily cost us anything except, perhaps, some emotional discomfort. Compassion might cost something.
There may be no example of this in literature that is simultaneously more succinct and beautiful than that of Bilbo Baggins at the end of his famous riddle game with Gollum in The Hobbit. It is clear to the hobbit Bilbo—and also to readers of the book—that Gollum intends to kill him if he catches him. Gollum had already been pondering how to eat Bilbo and now his hunger is intensified by his rage over his lost ring, which he correctly suspects Bilbo now has. But Bilbo possesses both the magic ring that makes him invisible as well as his sword Sting. Knowing Gollum’s intent, and also the many advantages Gollum has because of his knowledge of the passageways and his keen senses in the dark, Bilbo decides he needs to kill Gollum in order to escape. “He must fight,” the narrator tells us, as he explains Bilbo’s thinking in the moment. “He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him.”
But then something happens to Bilbo. Or, we might say, something happens in Bilbo. First it is sympathy as Bilbo tries to consider the broader situation from Gollum’s point of view. Bilbo himself had been feeling miserable, alone, and lost. But then, putting himself in Gollum’s shoes—or, we might say, in Gollum’s wide webbed feet—he realizes that Gollum, too, probably feels “miserable, alone and lost.” What begins as an intellectual consideration of another’s suffering quickly moves from mere sympathy to a deeper empathy, and then from empathy to compassion. That is, Bilbo moves from a thought to a deep feeling, and then to an action. “A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering.” Instead of using his sword and invisibility to kill Gollum, he chooses instead to try to leap over him.
Considering one of the New Testament words often translated to “compassion”—the Greek word splanchnizomai, which has as its root a word that refers to our internal organs—compassion is something deep down inside us. As I noted earlier, however, it is more than just a feeling; it is empathy that moves us to action. Empathy only becomes compassion when it is reflected in what we do. Bilbo’s action—his choice to try to leap over Gollum and leave him unharmed rather than the seemingly safer choice of killing him—involved great personal risk. The narrator describes the decision to do so as one of “strength and resolve”, and one that nearly results in Bilbo’s own death.
Now careful readers may notice that Tolkien doesn’t actually use the word “compassion” in this scene—though the description of Bilbo’s thoughts and actions certainly provide a clear model of compassion. Rather, Tolkien uses the word “pity”. It is an important word. Readers of The Lord of the Rings may remember at least one significant conversation between Gandalf and Frodo (found in “The Shadow of the Past”, Chapter 2 of The Fellowship of the Ring) that repeatedly uses the word “pity” to describe Bilbo’s action toward Gollum. For many in the world today, the word “pity” has a negative connotation of condescension or even disdain. We associate pitying somebody with thinking the person is pitiable, which is more an act of judgement than one of compassion. That, however, is a relatively new connotation. Pity has the same etymological roots as the word piety which refers to religious virtue. If you want to understand how Tolkien was using the word, keep in mind that after completing his education at Oxford, Tolkien worked for a time for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which was—and for many still is—the source of definitive definitions (to use, quite intentionally, a redundant phrase). The OED uses the word “compassion” in various definitions of “pity”. Thus, pity like its etymological twin piety is indeed a religious virtue.
Or consider Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words which was first published in 1940 at the end of the same decade that The Hobbit was published and while Tolkien’s work on The Lord of the Rings was still in its early stages. In defining various Greek New Testament words, Vine’s also uses “pity” as a synonym for “compassion”, and “compassion” as a synonym for “pity”. There should be no doubt from Tolkien’s usage that he associates the pity of Bilbo with the biblical concept of compassion. (For more on the biblical call to compassion, see the appendix at the end of this essay.)
Bilbo, of course, becomes the hero of the story. This is not because of any particular strength or skill in battle. He does prove remarkably resilient and tough in some ways, but he would not have stood out as a typical hero of Middle-earth—as, for example, would Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas, Glorfindel, or Beren. To make this clear to readers, Gandalf even points this out explicitly (and in a rather humorous way) in the opening chapter of The Hobbit; when Thorin mentions that none of his company liked the idea of approaching the front gate of the Mountain where Smaug the dragon lived, Gandalf affirms that choice, noting, “That would be not good, not without a might Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighborhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found.” Nonetheless, Bilbo proves to be Tolkien’s hero. (For a fuller treatment of how Tolkien drew on the poem Beowulf in an innovative way in his portrayal of heroism in The Hobbit, see my book A Hobbit Journey: Discovering the Enchantment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.) One of the things Tolkien portrays to readers about Bilbo as the hero is the heroism of his compassion demonstrated in his brave leap over Gollum.
But what of Thorin, the leader of the companion whose moniker Oakenshield comes from his prowess and bravery in a famous battle against goblins in older days? It turns out that Thorin is not so heroic or compassionate. After the dragon Smaug has been killed (no thanks to Thorin and his company) and Thorin has reclaimed his kingdom, he hears that refugees from the destruction of Laketown are coming to his door. They are hungry and homeless, in sore danger of starving or freezing in the coming winter. It’s worth noting that these refugees are the same who earlier had helped Thorin and company when they were in dire straits after their escape from Thranduil and the elves of Mirkwood. It is the second time in the story when Thorin and his company are offered food, lodging, and refuge in a difficult time. Earlier in the story, after the loss of much of their gear and their unfortunate encounter with trolls, they are taken in by Elrond and given food and aid on their journey. This is despite the fact that dwarves and elves were ancient enemies—especially elves like Elrond who were descended from the Elven kingdom of Lorien which was destroyed by dwarves in the First Age of Middle-earth, and some of Elrond’s ancestors were killed by dwarves in that battle—and also the fact that Elrond had a very different set of values from the dwarves and “did not altogether approve of . . . their love of gold.”
Add to this history that the suffering of the folk of Laketown is largely a result of Thorin’s own actions of waking the dragon Smaug to a rage. We might, therefore, expect Thorin to be compassionate. Instead, Thorin orders his people to build a wall to keep the refuges out so that he doesn’t have to share any of his treasure to help them out. In case any readers miss just how unheroic Thorin is, the wise and trustworthy figure of Gandalf makes it clear when he points out to him, “You are not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain.” Which is to say, even as The Hobbit portrays compassion as heroic, Tolkien’s story also makes it clear just how unheroic and unvirtuous a lack of compassion is. May those who see the heroism of a hobbit named Bilbo also be drawn to a life of compassion.
Appendix on Biblical Models and Mandates for Compassion
Those who claim to be disciples of Jesus are called to imitate the character and mindset of Jesus. We see this command in the writings of Paul, John, and Peter, for example in: Phil. 2:5; 1 Cor 11:1; Eph. 5:1-2; 1John 2:6; 1 Peter 2:21) And the Bible repeatedly describes the character of God the Father and Jesus Christ the son as compassionate. See, for example: 2 Corinthians 1:3; James 5:11; Psalm 145:9, Matthew 9:36, 14:14 and 15:32; Mark 6:34 and 8:2; Luke 10:33 and 15:11-32.
The apostles also explicitly command Christ’s disciples to be compassion, as in Ephesians 4:32, Colossians 3:12, and 1 Peter 3:8.