The Ultimate Eucatastrophe: How Fairy Tales Illuminate the Resurrection of Christ
By Melissa Cain Travis
“…and they lived happily ever after. The end.”
At the end of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the reader is treated to a wonderfully satisfying conclusion—one that paints a picture of Bilbo Baggins’ delightful post-adventure life:
He took to writing poetry and visiting the elves; and though many shook their heads and touched their foreheads and said, “Poor old Baggins!” and though few believed any of his tales, he remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.[1]
Tolkien believed that fairy tales are a high genre of literature because they provide powerful imaginative satisfaction of humanity’s “ancient desires,” such as a world in which goodness is fully restored. Think of how deficient a tale would be if the dragon—be it literal or metaphorical—was slain by the hero’s arrow and fell to the ground, the end. We’d judge that to be a poor ending indeed, but why? Because deep down in our souls, we long to have full resolution of the story. How is the damage wrought by the villain undone, and how does our hero fare in life thereafter? Does he climb the tower to retrieve the princess, marry her, and have countless prosperous days as a lord, husband, and father? We want this kind of closure in an imaginative story because we have a built-in yearning for full redemption—a world made right forevermore, not merely one in which one particular force of evil has been destroyed.
In a proper fairy tale, argues Tolkien, there is a central turn of events, an abrupt pivot from seemingly certain doom to a thrilling escape that occurs prior to all the happy aftermath. This climactic plot point is what Tolkien regarded as the most important element of the story. He called it the eucatastrophe—a “good catastrophe”—and described it this way:
In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.[2]
The Tolkienian eucatastrophe is the supreme literary vehicle for triggering a peculiar kind of joy, “a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.”[3] In other words, a sudden and powerful intimation of the Gospel, which is the eucatastrophe at the very foundation of the world. The paradigmatic example from Tolkien’s own work is the scene in the fiery crack of Mount Doom, when Frodo succumbs to the power of the One Ring, and then a sudden, merciful grace occurs that not only saves Frodo from himself, but also saves all of Middle-earth from being swallowed up by the seething, ravenous evil of Sauron. It seemed that all was hopelessly lost, but in a dramatic, unexpected intervention, the tide completely turned.
In my home hangs a large framed print of Eugene Burnand’s masterpiece, The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre. Even after twelve years of walking past it numerous times a day, I cannot consciously contemplate the image for very long without a tightening of the chest and tearing of the eyes. The expressions on the faces of Peter and John are a heart-wrenching mixture of agony and desperate hope-against-hope. I try to imagine the torturous anguish they endured in the hours between their beloved and divine Rabbi’s crucifixion and Sunday morning. What would it have been like to be in the deepest pit of despair and then abruptly shocked out of it by a pile of empty grave clothes? Did they know that Christ’s ascent from the grave was also the cosmic-scale defeat of the Enemy and of the spiritual—and eventually physical—death of God’s image-bearers? Did they know that now, a glorious day will come when everything sad will become untrue?
When we read great fantasy stories, many of their qualities point us to higher truth. I think of literary art as a conduit through which our Creator pours natural revelation. When we are absorbed in a beautifully written, exciting tale that takes the protagonist to a perilous brink, and our hearts pound and our palms sweat in expectation of his or her certain demise, there is a piercing kind of joy, a brief moment of transcendence when the eucatastrophe occurs. He is risen! He is risen indeed!
—Melissa Cain Travis holds a PhD in Humanities (Philosophy) from Faulkner University's Great Books program and an MA in Science and Religion from Biola University. She is a Fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, where she teaches adult education courses related to the intersection of science, faith, and philosophy. To learn more about her publications and academic interests, visit melissacaintravis.com.
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 254.
[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, “Tree and Leaf,” in A Tolkien Miscellany (New Yort: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 135-136.
[3] Ibid., 137.