The Lord of Karma
Something fascinating happened in The Lord of the Rings. Something that took me a long time to understand.
(To keep things simple, I’m going to use the context of the movies, not the books.)
If you haven’t seen these movies or read these books, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life. Stop everything else and read or watch them. They are essential.
The problem is this: Frodo failed to destroy the ring. He failed. And yet the movies had a happy ending seven layers deep.
Why? How does the storytelling make that possible? And why do we accept that outcome without questioning it?
There are many complex and subtle themes in The Lord of the Rings. And one of them is almost diametrically opposed to what we think of as “superhero” movies. Because these are not superhero movies. Superhero movies are generally focused on the triumph of action over evil. The one big battle, the one redeeming fight, the direct and predictable moment where the hero wins through action. One specific moment of triumph.
Which is why I find superhero movies so dull — because there’s nothing about that which reflects real human experience. Our lives are not made up of moments of victory — they are made up of choices. Choices which never seem to get any easier.
In The Lord of the Rings, there isn’t one specific moment where Frodo conquers Sauron. That moment doesn’t exist.
Frodo, after trekking all the way across the world and into Mount Doom, turns and tries to leave with the ring. He has one very specific action to fulfill, and he fails. The only reason the ring is destroyed is because Gollum bites his finger off and falls into the volcano with it. That’s hardly a triumph of action. And it certainly didn’t look “heroic,” by our standard definition.
Frodo’s triumph is much different from that. It’s a triumph of character. Of time spent making decisions. Of “karma.”
For months and months, Gollum is Frodo’s guide. They are bound together by necessity, at least at the beginning. And for all those months, Gollum makes Frodo’s journey immeasurably harder. He plots and schemes and murmurs about his desire to kill Frodo and finally be reunited with the Ring. Gollum’s lust for the Ring is directly at odds with Frodo’s safety and the interests of the world he’s fighting for. And yet, for all the times he could just cut Gollum’s throat and proceeded alone, he doesn’t. All the times he could choose justice over grace, he doesn’t.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is confused about Gollum. Confused, and harsh. He says it’s a pity that Bilbo never killed him, to rid both Gollum himself and the world of his miserable treachery. “Pity?” Gandalf responds, looking at Frodo with dark concern. “It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand.”
Frodo thinks about Gandalf’s words. And over time he comes to pity the creature too.
And so he leaves Gollum unharmed, no matter how many times the antagonist shows his intent to betray him and Sam. In fact it is Samwise Gamgee who becomes the story’s unexpected hard-ass, always wanting to be rid of Gollum’s deceit once and for all. But Frodo thinks better of it and leaves Gollum alive, time after time. He cannot bring himself to deliver justice or retribution. Not only because Gollum is their guide into Mordor, but because he genuinely believes that the justice is not his to deliver. It could be… but it mustn’t be. He forgives and carries on.
So now here’s where the theme of karma comes in.
What Frodo is doing is arranging the world around him through compassion and restraint rather than the indulgence of self-righteous emotion. Frodo’s choice to spare the creature has rippling effects that will touch many other things. Everything, in fact.
The twist at the end is that Frodo fails. He tries to leave with the Ring. And he is only saved from his own weakness because of the mercy he has shown Gollum for all those months. He has arranged the world around him such that the world itself is able to redeem him. He has acted in the world in a way that provides the necessary counterbalance for his own failure. Gollum is that counterbalance.
You also see this in the way the other main characters handle their affairs in the world. Some of the time they triumph directly through action, but other times they triumph through their service to the virtues in their lives. Through constructing the world around them in a way that would ultimately deliver to them what is right or what is needed. They were not architects of fate, but rather architects of the values that would produce fate.
For instance, it is not Aragorn nor Gandalf who disposes of the corrupt wizard Saruman. It’s Grima Wormtongue. And the only reason Grima is still alive is because Aragorn prevented King Theoden from executing him. Aragorn’s idea seemed like a bad one at the time, to just about everyone. But he did it, because he cares more for mercy than justice. He didn’t want the king to have to live with murder, no matter how justified it was at the time.
It was not the swordsmanship of men nor the arrows of elves that wins any particular battle. Alone, any of their armies would be massacred. It’s their continual willingness to trust each other, despite their misgivings and broken relationships. It’s their continual willingness to put dignity and integrity above grudges that saves them all.
When Frodo is inside the mountain, his character has reached its limit. He can go no further. He can’t finish the story.
His character, his strength, has gotten him precisely as far as he needed to go, and no further. From there it’s up to the world to decide whether he’s done his job or not. And he has. Because the Ring ends up in the fire. The world decides that his character has triumphed even though his actions have not.
It makes me think of the word karma. Karma, in a sense, is what redeems him. And all of them. Not karma as it is commonly used, as in “what goes around comes around,” but the idea that you can be redeemed by the indirect results of your own choices.
People often talk about karma as if it is a market where you buy and sell things. You make trades with the universe and you earn things you want.
You leave good tips, the world will eventually “pay you back for your generosity.”
You’re nice to people for a while, you earn the right to be an asshole guilt-free.
You go out of your way to help one person, you’ve “built up your karma” for the day.
No.
Karma is not making transactions with the universe. That’s not what Frodo was doing. And it's not giving this so that you can morally justify expecting that.
Karma, in Frodo’s sense, in the Buddhist cause-and-effect sense, which I suspect J.R.R. Tolkien was familiar with, is an ongoing character arc that does not occur in one moment. It’s always. It’s about delivering the best of yourself even when it's most painful to do so. It's about offering something good in hopes that it does more good — not that it returns good directly to you. That's not karma, that's bargaining. And whatever god you pray to, he sees right through that.
Life is not about isolated moments where you slay the dragon. It’s about building up your world and its people such that, when you are faced with that dragon, you have the help you need. Because chances are, you will falter in some way. And you’ll need the help. Dragons are not slain by one man, but by a man and the company he keeps.
Drink water and don’t get betrayed,
JDR
“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.” - J.R.R. Tolkien