“There’s Some Good In This World”: What The Lord of the Rings Teaches Us About Resistance

In 1916, a twenty-four year-old British soldier arrived at the Battle of the Somme, where over a million men were killed or wounded over just five miles of ground. John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R) Tolkien lost two of his closest friends in the battle, an experience of indiscriminate slaughter that stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Echoes of the First World War can be found throughout Tolkien’s later literary work, most famously in The Lord of the Rings - from the corpse-strewn Dead Marshes to Frodo’s lingering trauma. However, the true value of The Lord of the Rings doesn’t lie in whether or not it’s an allegory for the war, but in its deeper truths and lessons that continue to resonate over seventy years after its publication.

In 2026, the currency of the world is fear. This fear, whether it comes straight from the Oval Office or from the very algorithms that facilitate our doomscrolling, is almost always measured in outrage and division. 

The louder the noise that fuels this fear, the more attention it earns, and the sharper the divisions in society are drawn. When President Trump fascistically insinuated that Iran’s ‘entire civilisation will die tonight’, every crevice of the political spectrum erupted with noise. That these comments have become ‘acceptable’ for the Leader of the Free World to use on a whim speaks to the poisonous division and noise within contemporary society. 

In moments like these, when fear and fragmentation define every facet of our waking lives, it is tempting to find peace in ignorance, or worse, in complicity. Nuance is devalued, and empathy becomes the enemy of the state. The regimes that are waging wars, persecuting the innocent, and destroying the planet, rely on this disengagement to foster apathy in society - and as Tolkien himself implies, that is incredibly dangerous. 

In Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Two Towers, Pippin voices this tempting instinct to turn away when he attempts to convince Merry that the War of the Ring is too far to affect them and their peaceful lives in the Shire. Merry answers this starkly and simply, stating:

“The fires of Isengard will spread. [...] And all that was once green and good in this world will be gone. There won’t be a Shire, Pippin.”

Tolkien’s insight here is crucial in times of injustice - we cannot afford the illusion of ‘separation’ from the horrible things that happen around us, just because they are not happening to us. As Pastor Martin Niemöller sombrely writes in his seminal poem about the Holocaust, ‘First They Came’:

‘Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me’

However, Tolkien by no means endorses an ‘eye for an eye’ approach to these injustices, concluding from the wanton destruction of the Somme that you cannot fight fire with fire. This is perhaps the subtler, and more radical thread that runs through Tolkien’s work: the power of mercy. 

Early in the story, Gandalf reflects on Bilbo Baggins’ decision to spare Gollum’s life, when he had every reason not to. It is an act that at first appears small, and even foolish - Bilbo is lost and alone in the tunnels of the Misty Mountains, being pursued by the treacherous and unpredictable Gollum. By any rational calculation, eliminating him would be the safer choice.

In our world, this rationalisation is what disengagement can lead to: designating and acting against a threat, drawing the line, and simplifying the moral landscape. Just take Israel’s passing of a new law that would make the death penalty the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of deadly terror attacks. Capital punishment alone is an example of the moral essentialism that Tolkien is wary of, but targeted capital punishment takes this a step further, reflecting the fatal danger of abandoning nuance in situations where it is badly required. 

Tolkien’s stories resist this instinct. When Frodo hears of Bilbo’s mercy towards Gollum, he exclaims that it is a pity that he did not slay the creature. Gandalf retorts, 

“Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. [...] My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or for evil. [...] The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.”

This quote, of course, ends up being somewhat prophetic, as (spoiler alert) Gollum proves instrumental in the destruction of the One Ring. 

This implication can be difficult to reckon with, yet it forms the foundation of a moral resistance of doing what is right, when right isn’t easy. Tolkien lived through two world wars, and fought in one of them - he saw the darkest sides of humanity, and still refused to yield to the instruments of violence and fear, even in the fantasy world that he created. 

Tolkien does not promise that darkness can be avoided. His stories are full of loss and weariness, and our favourite heroes: Aragorn, Gandalf, and even the hobbits, have to wield their swords against Sauron’s armies when it is necessary. However, he insists that what truly matters in the fight against evil is what we choose to hold onto - restraint over outrage, connection over separation, mercy over cruelty, and hope over despair. 

Throughout Tolkien’s work, evil is loud, dramatic, and overwhelming. Sauron builds towers, commands armies, and decimates the land that he touches to instil fear in the people of Middle-earth. Goodness, by contrast, is often portrayed as quiet, graceful, and resilient. It survives in the relationships built in the Fellowship, the diplomacy of the Elves, the strength of Aragorn, and even in the pipeweed of the hobbits. These forces of trust, compassion, and most importantly, hope, are what truly sustain society. 

As Samwise Gamgee wisely states:

“In the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. [...] There’s some good in this world Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

Sauron fed on the fear of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth to wage his wars, just as the far-right feeds on our fear to amass power and sow division.

In 2026, when fear is the dominant currency, perhaps, as the resilience of Samwise suggests, the most radical thing we can do is to refuse to trade in it.

Image: Flickr/Christopher Chan

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