Latest / Mythmakers / Should Dark Lords be Rationed? Evil in Fantasy - Part 1

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Should Dark Lords be Rationed? Evil in Fantasy - Part 1 · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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an author and I also run the activities of the Centre and today I've been joined by Jacob
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Renica, friend of our Centre, who is an expert on Tolkien but also works for a great game maker,
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so he's got a sort of practical realization of fantasy worlds in board game style as well
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under his belt. But we are taking on a massive theme today and it's one we're both really excited
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about, which is evil. Here we go, wah, wah, wah, you know. Excited about evil, I don't know
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that that doesn't come across, that's maybe fascinated by evil. What we mean though, let's
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is it's absolutely fascinating seeing how writers tackle the nature of evil in their works.
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And we're going to start off by using the great Terry Pratchett phrase, which is he writes that
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Dark Lord should be rationed. So you may have come across more than one book of a Dark Lord
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in it, you know, we allow Tolkien as one of the first, but since then there has been this
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cliche of a Dark Lord of some sort in a tower or some kind of fortress, who's usually at the
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sort of bottom right hand side of the map, that cliche. And we want to sort of explore the idea
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of who are the baddies or the dark forces in fantasy and what are the solutions people have come
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up to rather than just doing yet more Dark Lords. So it's a big subject and we're going to start
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by breaking up the nature of evil into different groups because how you conceptualize evil
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depends a lot on where you are coming from in your world. And we thought we would start with
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those writers who have a clear religious slash moral stance on evil. That's where they're
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setting their boundaries. And rather than rush directly to Tolkien, which is tempting,
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I thought we would start with a different inkling and we'll start with CS Lewis thinking in
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particular of the Narnia stories and his space or heavens, we should say, the ransom trilogy.
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So when I'm looking at CS Lewis and his version of evil, Jacob, I think that he really frames it
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with the idea of the Christian fall. It's very important again and again in his work that the
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characters are in some form of innocence. And then they go bad, but they can be redeemed.
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So you get that in the story of the in the space trilogy because that's the we are the fallen
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planet. And there is a sort of desire to protect other planets from us, in particularly in
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Perilandra, which is the one set on Venus. But of course you get it in the founding of Narnia
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in the Magician's nephew and in the story of Edmund, who in a way is a sort of semi-innocent
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who is tempted and falls and is redeemed. So I see evil as part of a full narrative when it comes
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to Lewis. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, absolutely. And you definitely see him in conversation
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with his academic works at the time, right? So his discarded image, his series of lectures
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that was collected on kind of the medieval worldview, which is suffused with that very narrative
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about God creation, fall, redemption. Really, yeah, the cosmic trilogy, the ransom trilogy,
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set in the heavens, right? Not space because that's cold. And the heavens are warm and suffused with
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life from the medieval and Lewis's point of view. So yeah, that I think you definitely see him
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dealing with evil from that medieval framework. And I think you also see that I think in Narnia
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as well with the white witch and her obsession with cold, right? So Dante is not strictly
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medieval, but Lewis draws on Dante to illustrate medieval frameworks often. And so Satan, the lowest
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circle of Dante's hell is not fire, but it is ice, right? It's frozen, it's cold, it's kind of like
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cessation of action. And that's what the white witch essentially is, right? It's preserving
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it's kind of the stasis, an absence of movement and absence of like both physical movement and
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internal movement, right? So Lewis is seeing the heavens and the cosmos as reflecting what's
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happening internally in humanity themselves, like the movement of the planets. This is why
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discarded images, such a great, it's a great read is that for understanding medieval view as well
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told or Lewis and what he's working with, that the movements of the heavens, like physical
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movement mirrors the kind of like internal movement that we experience in our own ability to
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change, right? To be to be moved and affected by in Lewis's term by God or by other, by other forces
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by other individuals. So it's really this kind of like isolationist, it's it's very internal, right?
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Uh, cold, it's both churn, right? Churn is kind of the air cold, old or all that's that
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Ed because there's no movement, right? Life as the movement has stopped, life has stopped.
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So yeah, so I think yeah, you're absolutely right, that fall and evil as being that that if God
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is the creator of the world and the universe and cosmos and sets it in motion, then the
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opposition to that is a cessation of motion, right? For cutting, putting things to a stop.
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And that seems to be the kind of modus operandi for the point which
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of J-dust right in in Narnia. And I think you see some of that in the cosmic trilogy as well.
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Is the silent planet Earth is the silent planet in that it's been cut off from communication
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from the rest of the the heavens or the heavenly bodies. So isolation, cold, kind of a cessation of
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movement and life. So using this image of not a dark Lord, we're thinking here about people
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who are maybe penning their own fantasy novels. He's used not just a white witch, he's used this ice,
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this bright white red and white, you know, the drop of blood, the pink of the
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turquoise delight, they're sort of snow white and blood red using the fairy tale sort of colors
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to sum that up, getting away from the idea that evil has to be dark or black.
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I sort of, you know, that sort of cliché as well, which I think is a really interesting point,
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is it? I hadn't thought of it quite in that way. I'm sure there are whole university courses on
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the nature of evil and CS Lewis's thoughts. So we can't possibly do enough justice to it,
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but just briefly before we move on, I think the other obvious place where CS Lewis is creatively
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thinking about evil is the screw tape letters. Listeners will out there will be shouting screw
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tape letters if I haven't mentioned it, because that's all about how you tend to human to fall.
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And it's what he's doing is flipping it and telling the story from the point of view of
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the devils who are charged with this task. So he, that's why I think it still fits with this idea
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that for him it's the process of your decisions. And so are you are you moving towards
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the devil or the evil side, or are you moving towards the good? And the worst thing is to get stuck
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on the wrong side of this. I mean, do you think, for example, do you think that the white witch
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could repent, could be saved, could be redeemed?
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I say that is that is the that is the that is the question, because you do have for as much as
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Lewis does track with our human characters, the right, the ability to not just
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steer into evil based on their choices, but to be redeemed, even divine is one of the cosmic
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trilogy. The Weston is Westman divine are these humans, but their choices kind of have led them
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to be co-opted by the rebellious heavenly entity that's kind of isolated or even you have
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within the parallelandra, you know, ransom, who's our protagonist, who's, you know,
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supposed to be trying to prevent this fall from happening, come parallel fall from happening
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on on Venus. He keeps, you know, trying holding out the opportunity for Weston to change,
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but ultimately he doesn't, and he transforms into some ugly creature. And so it becomes irrevocable
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at some point, but in Narnia, you really don't have any sort of multi-dimensionality of the white
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witch about that she's already at the point where we pick up the story. If there was decisions,
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there was, you know, the path of decisions that essentially become walled off to the point
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where she cannot change. And I think that's reinforced by the creatures that she's surrounded with,
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right? So he has these kind of creatures, you know, you have your werewolves, you have
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creatures that seem to be, right? Yeah. Where is he? Where is he? They get a bad press too.
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So they must, yeah, so like, yeah, the way that Lewis is treating those, they almost seem to be
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categorically their species who are evil. So those, there's no sort of nuance to the
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in the animal kingdom. They're divided or the animal if these kind of be mythological creatures
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are considered animals. They're kind of divided into on the side of Aslan and then on the other side.
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And there aren't kind of, there don't seem to be creatures that kind of bridge the two there.
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And Jada seems to be there. I don't know if because Jada is kind of described in language
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evocative of giants, right? Having, having giant blood. And if Lewis is drawing on
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biblical, right? His kind of religious background and religious traditions surrounding the
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Genesis account that these that the, you know, some of the fallen angels are intermingling with
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humanity and it's resulting in a race of giants. Then in that sense, you would see Jada's as like
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you know, it's a different species. Isn't quite human and might from her might be genetic lead
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who disposed to evil, but that's, but he doesn't even touch that there.
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No, it is. And of course, it's fantasy. So you can do what you like. But it does pose
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interesting for theological question as a result, which is, are some creatures condemned to be
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bad. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind.
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vary. We'll return to that theme in a bit. So let's move on to another inkling. I feel there's
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a lot more to be said about CS Lewis, but we've already come up with ice and white and red and
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a white which has an alternative to dark lords. Charles Williams, who's one of the most bizarre and
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challenging and interesting of the inklings, he has a different take on evil. In
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his quite a difficult writer to plumb, partly because his theology is right out there. He's
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yeah, I won't even try and we've done podcasts. Look them up.
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By his little description. Yeah, he's complicated. I'll rest it there. Anyway, if we look
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at what he writes in his novels, I think one of the threads that do go through his many interesting
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novels is the idea that it is our choices that make us take us towards
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heaven or hell. Basically, it's he's very centered on us as having free freedom to make these
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choices. I'm thinking particularly of all Hallows Eve, which is in a kind of non-sacchee
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purgatory, but he posits a sort of liminal space between life and death and two of the characters
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are dead. You don't act first, realise it. They've died in the blitz and they're in touch with the
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world of the blitz. So one character can see her husband, for example, and she's with another
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character who is making sort of selfish choices, bad choices, and you can see them being pulled
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in different directions, almost literally being pulled, like there's a sense of one going well,
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one going the other. That is one very strong message in that way, and there's also, I think it's
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called the marriage of heaven and not marriage of heaven, hell, that's William Blake, the battle
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for heaven or something is called. So he keeps coming back to this idea that
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Warren heaven, there we go, Warren heaven, he keeps coming back to this idea of
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we are choosing, we either give into it, is a sense you succumb to evil or you resist with your
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choices. So that sees evil not as an entity outside us, not as a more of force, I suppose we
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would say a hellish force is not, and it's probably a child's willing book somewhere which does
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bring in the devil and that kind of thing. But as I'm thinking about how I remember his novels,
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I feel that there's very much a human agency reaction to evil. I don't know, have you read
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much child's willingness? Yeah, yeah, I have and there's definitely, yeah, that you're right,
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that it is difficult to describe or pin down, it's not easily, you can't lay it over Lewis
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and Tolkien precisely. And I think, yeah, the sense that I get kind of like broadly speaking
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is exactly what you said that there's so much as depend on human agency and free will to
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choose your trajectory, but there are real forces that are pulling. And so for, for Williams,
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there's definitely the acknowledgement that there are real supernatural evils that exist and
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that like permeate the world in some sense. You don't necessarily have that in, in Tolkien, they're
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kind of depicted as individuals, right, embodied individuals, but for Williams, there's more of
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the allegory saying, like it's kind of like a force that is, wait, that's all. He's based
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Star Wars, actually, now I kind of think, you know, the force is with you in one way or another.
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Yeah. And so going to our favorite, well, maybe our joint favorite, Inkling, Tolkien, I think,
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so we see this has had much scholarly ink spills about it, but obviously he is approaching it from
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a Catholic background, but that's mixed with love for the the Norse sagas. So then you've got a kind
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of pagan, well-few and ragnarok and all those kind of things and you get a very interesting
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mix up of those elements. And you want to sort of say a little bit how you see the nature of
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evil working in Tolkien in the broadest, broadest senses that comes up with Dark Lords, basically.
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Have Dark Lords. What's the origin of our Dark Lords? Right. Dark Lords. Right. Yeah. So
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this is, yeah, so yeah, definitely. So from at least, you know, from talking creation, right,
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the Inalindale in the Somerilian, right, our creation story, the Song of Creation, is really where
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you see kind of the introduction of something that could be considered evil and that's with
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Melkor as one of the Ainur, the heavenly hosts that are created by Aero and charged essentially
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with Creed. And well, actually, given, they're not charged at that point, they're just kind of
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given the ability to sing and you know, to act and they choose to do that in singing and it's
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conducted by Aero. But the Melkor is one who's not playing his, his kind of evil turn is that he
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doesn't want to play with others. He wants to make, he doesn't want to, he doesn't see this as a
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collaboration. This, you know, intermingling of voices and the creation of the world, he doesn't
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see that as collaboration. He definitely wants his to impose his will and he wants to kind of carve
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out his own corner or have an ability to create that is said to exist with within this kind of
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god figure only. So it's definitely like possession and kind of imposition of an individual will
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on other. So at least from middle earth's perspective from the, right, our, you know, Tolkien's
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Legendarium, the initial evil turn is kind of a focus on oneself and bending others to your own
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will and to your own end. So that's, and that's not, and we are told that it's not something that
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is into breaking into completely independent and outside of the system that this Aero
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Eluvatar has created for this, you know, existence itself. But it functions within that. And there's
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this really fascinating phrase that, that comes up that Aero, when he's responding to a meld core,
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morgoth, right, who becomes our first real dark, dark Lord, when after he's, you know,
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has been pushing against his rebelling, he's, he's causing discord in the song and Aero, this
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god figure says, and that meld core shall see that no theme may be played that has not its
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uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite for he that attempted this
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shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself
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have not imagined. So it's all kind of circumscribed by good, right? So this, this, this god
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character is good and evil exists, but it only exists within this larger framework of good that
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ultimately will redirect a weave that evil that's suffering into a greater tapestry that will
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actually in these words will actually create something more wonderful and Tolkien seems, yeah,
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has a few different ways of treating like does is evil ultimately for our good. And you have
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a few different viewpoints within the Silmarillion there, but yeah, I'll pause for for a while.
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I want to hear it. I think it's not on evil, foundational. I think it's okay to be not entirely
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settled about this because we're talking about the problem of pain to go back to Circeus and the
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problem of why bad things happened to good people and the vice versa of that is why bad people
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succeed, you know, it's on the face of it the world isn't fair. So if you have suffered
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awfully in your life in a way that seems entirely nothing you did cause this when that happens
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to so many people, you know, an illness or the death of someone they love or whatever it is,
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then of course it does not seem as though the theme being woven is fair, which is why you can see
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is it the manicure and idea that there's kind of like two forces battling it out as if
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you know God and the devil but more like Job it is happening and they're fighting over us
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and they're almost it's not safely held within one is that am I if I got that right?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, I might sometimes I'm not the theologian. I know you're absolutely right, yeah.
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And that's one way of looking at it, but that's not the Somarillion idea. The Somarillion idea is
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probably more in tune with his own understanding of his Catholic faith, which is
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right. When you put in the perspective of loving father gods and a sense of an eternal life where
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your tears we wiped away and the new Jerusalem, the new creation, you know that that is the sort of
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it will all be all will be well and all manner of things should be well to borrow from Julian
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of knowledge, which is very hard in the lived experience of the bad times, but is is also
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a comfort. So there's yeah, but you don't necessarily have to be completely sorted about it because
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I think the questions are so profound that nobody has come up and if you come up with an answer,
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it comes it feels too simplistic. Yeah, to live. Yeah, yeah, I was reading that Tom Tomshipi
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sort of set up this this sort of many strands of evil sort of argument and he also brings up
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the Boethian one, which is Boethius was a obviously about four centuries, something like that.
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Theologian who talks about evil as an absence, I've certainly heard that in a religious sense
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that hell is where God is not. And you can see elements of that in what the effect of evil on
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characters in Tolkien's world is to suck out all that's all that's loving all that's good. It's
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the worst thing the worst fate is to be left with just yourself, you know, it's it's the three
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strips away on the Ash heaps of Mordor. So you could see that I think in the
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also astrand in his thinking. Yeah, it's yeah, it's fascinating. There seems to be kind of a
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disagreement even within the the iron ore within the kind of you know our our our angel
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had demigods like semi gods there that when a fan or
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is you know challenging challenging the iron ore and they're asking for the light from the
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Silmarils to help restore Valor to bring the light back into the world since it's the only place
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where the light exists and he says no it's mine right I'm not giving it up. And as the gods there
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is as you know the iron ore are kind of processing this and responding to that. Manway says says
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this says even his era spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Arda
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and evil yet be good to have been. So so so manway is saying like yeah so even even if
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terrible things we we all recognize that what is going to happen here with fan are
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is not good that this is going to cause you know peen and suffering but in the end isn't it going to be
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good uh which is that that you know kind of the Augustinian that's this kind of like Christian
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view but then mandos who's our representative of kind of like fate and just kind of like cold
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objective observation in response to manway saying and evil uh and evil yet be good to have been
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mandos says and yet remain evil so he's a so mandos like that lived experience where he's saying
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here is it is an actual experience it still sucks it's still not exactly and then we're talking
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yeah and in Tolkien's own life right so you have these and uh this is something that should be
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kind of points out is this you have the kind of like theological theoretical view that you get
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in the pews at church and then Tolkien the soldier who's in the day-to-day actual lived experience of
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war and how horrific that is and that seems that easier to wrap your head around to opposing forces
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because how could possibly a loving god allow this death destruction carnage uh pain suffering uh
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to happen and so he's kind of torn between those two between good so evil as an absence of good
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and versus evil as like an active force and you see that I think illustrated well in the like ring
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rates themselves right so like you're saying like they're shadow they're like they're the
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their humanity is stripped away so they're the absence of yeah few but at the same time
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they're like an active force that can wield blades and inflict like actual physical damage on
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individual so you kind of have in in the ring rates both just kind of like the absence of evil
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but then how evil or the absence of good complete absence of good but then acting as like an
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active force that's thwarting that's that's you know impending you know imposing uh its own will
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upon the people who are fighting against and and ultimately with all of that evil either absence
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and evil as an active the thread that runs throughout is the good right the elves humans um
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dwarves everyone who is on the side of of light is still even though they're on the side of light
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they're fighting the long defeat right so evil has such a foot hold and right so the the
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worth melcourt by virtue of uh of his you know kind of you know his dissonance and creation that
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there's something within creation itself within art itself that makes it corruptible there's
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something of evil there and then it's left for individuals to then that's what kind of moves
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internally that each individual then chooses right to have your boormear uh is kind of like
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warring over that impulse I think that would be explained by this idea of like Arda Mard and that
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in existence itself the world itself has become more Goths ring to use Tolkien's term right the
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it's so the ring itself it could just sit there unless you use it for uh evil it it contains it
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within it the possibility of corruption but that depends upon an individual and how they choose to act
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yeah so it has no effect on tom bondadil so actually maybe this is going to be radical thought
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here maybe we should stop saying that Tolkien's evil principles are dark lords I know that by the time
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we reach Lord of the Rings we are talking about Sauron as a dark lord it's a kind of how
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he's termed but actually he isn't a lord as he's not like a person that stage of his existence
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finished he is now an eye a sort of principle and evil of evil which is a red like cat like
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eye not a dark lord anymore at all um and evil is actually warming its way through the hearts
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of people so you've got Sauron and the white Sauron and many qualities evil we've got denathorn
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is white tower um and the ring race when you see them in the shadow world are ghosts like
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white and pale right so in fact perhaps we should push back on this idea and say
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and just thought of course in um the the fall of um of Sauron himself he actually starts off as
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a sort of beautiful um yeah yeah anatar or gets who's who's described as being like
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absolutely gorgeous yeah just by the numerians take him in was because he was so fair yeah he's
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all those hair shampoo adverts you know just so beautiful yeah I don't know but so let's let's
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actually rewrite this and say Tolkien isn't about evil being dark lord at all evil is
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something which I'd much prefer your idea of um middle earth being more ghost ring that idea that
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evil is is coming down to choices again isn't it what you give into so there is some agency
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for humans we aren't and off of it's an else and doors and yeah um so we aren't swept away by
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evil and powerless we are actively collaborating with it we're either a collaborator or we're not
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right so this is where we get on the we've touched on this before on another podcast so it gets a
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bit tricky when you've got creatures who appear to be like whole races of evil creatures so orcs
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for example um even though we get to hear them chatting away about their sort of industrial
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relations in those rather wonderful bits in um yeah where salmon uh Frodo walking through
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more door I love all those bits where they're all grumbling about their work conditions um but they're
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you know they do basically get hunted to to extinction that's that's the goal there so what about
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the idea that some creatures and we can move beyond Tolkien here are just born bad
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um one example of this would be the first Terminator film where the Terminator turns up as a kind
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of an assassin and it's kind of we're bad you know this is we are made to be bad and we are bad is
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that actually evil yeah because they have no choice about being bad right yes is it is it about
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yeah is it is it truly evil if you are just acting upon your existing knowledge and that's it's
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like you know philosophically speaking uh that's uh there's one philosopher uh Susan Wolf who
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kind of posits that uh evil is in uh a person's something exists in some ways in in their in their
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personality which is affected by what they know so um uh she has an article it's called sanity
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and the metaphysics of responsibility so she argues that those people who don't have who have
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bad upbringing they can't they're like incapable of making strong moral judgments because they
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don't have the framework they don't have the values with which to say this is evil or this is good
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so it requires a certain amount of accountability and and and so are are people with right so
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again like mental illness uh people who are like have are experiencing forms of psychosis
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are they are they are they truly evil or are they
34:58
impaired or are they morally impaired and I can see that being used as kind of a blueprint like
35:04
a way to reframe evil as being morally impaired but uh and I think that's I think that's a cheap
35:09
I like a cheap way of of poking the hole in uh you know what somebody doing is doing is evil but
35:17
from a real kind of in that lived experience sense what you do is dependent upon what you know
35:23
and what you can see and what you can perceive and so but if somebody can't perceive that good so if
35:28
you're an orc for instance and you're born into a world of darkness you're while you're born
35:35
your hatched or yeah visual if you're pulled out of some gooey something at Peter Jackson uh depicted
35:43
right so however you're critical you um if if if you're brought into that just like complete darkness
35:49
uh what what more do you know um you have that in uh uh uh not an inkling but inkling a
35:58
jace and with George Mcdonald with uh uh day boy and night girl or at this uh right of um
36:07
uh kind of two people uh individuals one who only lives during the day and one who only lives
36:14
during the night and therefore they have this uh you know an impossibility in a sense of conceiving
36:21
what exists outside of their own framework and I think you had that in some ways in uh silver chair
36:29
with Lewis right you have a whole world where people are living dying without seeing the sun
36:36
in any uh right in any sense and so they're acting the the way that you have the dwarves uh
36:43
another character is there it's very different he treats them differently but with Lewis
36:50
he gives even those creatures the ability to turn a bit once they learn or to show that they're
36:57
they're not meant for the world above that their natural state is actually deeper in the earth
37:05
uh and there's like where there's like almost a different framework uh of a way of being of
37:10
thinking and being so it's almost like that there are like different I don't know spheres of
37:19
evil uh and that you can act it's so with what you know within that sphere is dependent on
37:27
you know the will determine whether or not you can say to what this person's act is a truly evil
37:33
or not uh because that sphere of understanding that framework might
37:39
exist outside of a completely different sphere but if we're writing stories within a particular
37:44
framework that's like they have to say this is evil because this is the framework that we're
37:48
working with in and sometimes that will be challenged a little bit but in order to craft this
37:53
narrative with the satisfying you know character arc story arcs uh challenges and resolutions
38:01
it has to exist within a single framework or a single kind of moral sphere and that's where
38:06
evil kind of comes up there but at the practical lived uh day-to-day what is an individual's
38:12
able that's clearly philosophically speaking a lot more complicated.
38:17
I mean that's supposed to thought experiment is and I wonder if anyone asked talking this is
38:22
if if an orc is rescued as a young orc from somewhere bearing in mind in some versions of
38:29
this or orcs or spoiled elves and raised in Rivendell or La Floria would that creature become a
38:42
moral creature or would it revert to being evil you know that's it made we don't actually
38:50
have to expect talking to have solved every every everything about being evil it it may be
38:55
just enough in his world he thought well these these are my enemy soldiers they fulfill this
39:01
function in my book um so I don't want to push it too far here but there is one area which I think
39:08
you're sort of hinting at here about different frames and wait what you understand because
39:15
WHO and the poet who was one of the first very positive reviewers of the Lord the Rings and also
39:21
there's a really interesting letter that Tolkien writes to Orden about how he came it's one of the
39:27
places where we know the story that Tolkien told himself about writing the book um if you see what I
39:34
mean because it may not be true I know that when people ask me how did you write that book
39:37
sometimes you can't remember you know you make it up anyway um Orden who also is a philosopher he
39:45
says good can imagine evil but evil cannot imagine good thank you for listening to part one of our
39:55
investigation of evil in fantasy and we'll be picking up next week moving from Orden to the world
40:03
of Harry Potter and then out boldly going where no one has gone before into the space evil in Star
40:11
Wars and Star Trek and even Doctor Who thank you very much for listening
40:22
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