The Final Victory

Anthony here. I recently saw the movie The Hunger Games. I thought it was well done. Well acted. Very intense in parts. And quite true to the book.

I read the Hunger Games trilogy a few years ago, and thought the books were interesting. A lot of the themes, especially in the first book, made savvy points about our own culture’s love of spectacle, especially as exemplified by “reality” TV. We tend to filter out morality, to suspend our judgment of right and wrong in the service of a show. This has led people like Miley Cyrus to decide (not incorrectly) that what people want is spectacle, and remake themselves in that image.

Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games, also links her imaginary world to ancient Rome. The name of her country, Panem, is the Latin word for bread, a reference to the phrase “panem et circenses,” or “bread and circuses” — give the people food and entertainment, and you can effectively control them. As Bill Watterson observed when he turned Karl Marx’s famous phrase on its head: television is the opiate of the masses. In many way we have already descended to the level of ancient Rome.

Are you not entertained?

So I think that Suzanne Collins creates a very compelling dystopian future in which disturbing trends in our society are carried forward to a logical, and chilling, conclusion. Unfortunately, what Collins can’t give is any solution. At the end of the trilogy (SPOILER ALERT) no true victory is won. Katniss, the heroine, is a shell of her former self, slowly recovering after having gone almost insane. But there is no true recovery. The best she can do is fall back on her survival instinct. She will go on living because, hey, it’s what she’s good at. But she is thoroughly disillusioned. The new society is not any better than the old. She might have set them back a bit, but they have the same urges as the overthrown Capitol, the same darkness inside, and she knows that sooner or later it will come out again.

It is very bleak.

And I can’t help but contrast it to my favorite writer, J.R.R. Tolkien. A lot of what is presented in The Hunger Games Tolkien would have agreed with. He sensed that evil seems to constantly overpower what is good. He wrote in a letter, “I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat.’” In another letter, he expounded on the theme: “If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapor, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil . . . [E]vil labours with vast powers and perpetual success . . .”

Not exactly an optimist.

Vast powers and perpetual success. Observation would appear to bear this out. Evil seems more powerful than good. Good seems to be involved in a constant defensive struggle. A long defeat.

But I haven’t given you everything. In both those passages, Tolkien wrote more:

“Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ – though it contains (and in legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples of the final victory” (Letter 195).

“If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapor, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil - historically considered. But the historic version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects.’ No man can estimate what is really happening sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast powers and perpetual success—in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in” (Letter 64).

It is this glimpse of the final victory that Tolkien has, and Suzanne Collins seems to lack. There is a moment in The Lord of the Rings in which we find Frodo and Sam struggling through the benighted, dying lands of Mordor, trying to accomplish a task so utterly beyond them that they have no room for hope. They keep going because to oppose evil is the right thing to do, even when victory seems impossible. They hide under some brambles against a rock face, and Frodo, weary from his burden, goes to sleep while Sam keeps watch. Struggling to stay awake, Sam looks out from the hiding place and glimpses, just for a moment, hope:

Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

That moment hits me hard every time I read it. I’m not sure there’s a more beautiful passage in all of fiction.

Ironically, what makes that passage possible is also what Tolkien’s critics have in mind when they speak of his story as being “simplistic” and “black and white.” They say that the characters are either all good or all evil, but this is manifestly untrue (Boromir, Denethor, Gollum . . .). So where does the accusation come from? From the fact that while the characters in Tolkien are not either all good or all evil, good and evil do exist (well, technically good exists – evil exists in the same manner that a hole does, as a lack or privation of some existing good. But that’s a topic for another post). Tolkien treats good and evil not as ideas that we create, but as objective, independent realities that we conform to. The characters in Tolkien’s story align themselves to these definite realities. So while a character might not be wholly good, he may still serve Good. And while a character might not be truly evil, he may still serve Evil. But this philosophy is alien to our modern world. The materialist worldview which characterizes modernity reduces everything to physical cause and effect, and thereby reduces good and evil to human ideas that do not correspond to any greater reality. In this worldview, to think too deeply about the human capacity for evil leads ultimately to nihilism. There is no solution, because there is no meaning at all.

Oh, the emptiness!

I don’t know Suzanne Collins’ background, but I suspect that she subscribes to this worldview. Most people do, to one extent or another, even if they don’t think about it directly, simply because it’s the dominant worldview of our time. Her story, especially in the final book, Mockingjay, conforms much more closely to the expectations of the critics of Tolkien: moral dilemmas without apparent answers, good characters doing evil things, et cetera. There doesn't seem to be a true, transcendent good that can be grasped and held onto, even in the midst of evil. Good is overpowered by darkness. That is why there is no transcendence or hope in the story. Ultimately, the best that the main character can do is simply survive. And even that’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Tolkien, on the other hand, believed in a final victory. While good appears to be fighting a defensive battle, it continually subverts evil, turning it to good in surprising moments. Tolkien coined a word: eucatastrophe, which he defined as a sudden happy turn from darkness to light, from defeat to victory, from sorrow to joy. The happy ending. In a letter to his son, Tolkien wrote:

“I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary 'truth' on the second plane . . . -- that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story – and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love" (Letter 89).

Eucatastrophe

Make no mistake: Tolkien understood evil. In The Lord of the Rings, even the victory over Sauron is just a respite. Sauron is defeated, but much good that existed before has been lost forever. Evil endures, and will rise in other places and other ways. But here’s the kicker: it will be defeated again. And again. And though it may seem that evil is constantly winning, still it will turn to good, again and again, until the final victory.

“Evil labours with vast powers and perpetual success—in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.” Even if we suffer defeat now, even if we suffer it repeatedly, still we know that good will ultimately prevail. That may strike Tolkien’s nihilist critics as simplistic, but I, for one, am willing to live with it.

{teatime} What Are You Reading?

Via

Wow! Two posts in a day! Being sick makes one quite productive! :)

Here's a video response to Clare's teatime video posting at Come Further Up on the topic of "What are you reading?"

Until the next teatime!

Most Sincerely,

             Andrea Rose

Two Months of Marriage!

Anthony here. Andrea and I have been married for two months today! 

And what a busy two months they have been. :) We moved into a new apartment in a new town, we both started new jobs, and, best of all, we found out that we are expecting!

Our baby is almost an inch big!

What's amazing is how natural marriage feels. It's the biggest change of my life, but it feels very normal, very cozy, very right. I feel like I've been married for a lot longer than two months. This is life, and everything before it was in some way unreal. Before, I was missing something. Now, I am complete. 

It makes me wonder at all those poor guys these days who live with their girlfriends before getting married. Marriage should be a watershed moment. People nowadays kind of shuffle into marriage, with one eye always on the rearview mirror. They've been living together and sharing finances, and they've found that they can tolerate each other on the whole; might as well make it official. But the marriage marks no great change in their lives. Maybe the wife has more security now, because it'll be harder for the guy to extricate himself. Maybe the husband stops wondering about other girls, or going out as much with the guys. But nothing fundamental changes. They wake up the next morning to the same life, essentially, that they had before.

How humdrum.

Whereas in the old way of doing things, marriage is a crescendo. It is the grand finale of a symphony, the great crest of a breaking wave, the apogee of a thundering rocket. It is the climax of one story . . . and the beginning of another. The old way of viewing marriage sees it as the making of a new, greater reality, two becoming one. It's the start of a brand new life, a new kind of being for both spouses, with a new mission — a vocation, a great calling! As Chesterton wrote to his wife, "Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it led me to you.”

But I think that part of the reason for such a dull experience of marriage in our mundane modern age is that the vocational aspect has been lost. There's a perception these days that marriage is for yourself. It should serve you. So you test-drive your wife before you commit to her, and even your commitment comes with provisos. Find yourself regretting your choice? You can return your wife and look for a newer model. Kids, too, exist for your benefit. You have them on your timetable. If one comes when you do not want one, a few hundred bucks and an afternoon at Planned Parenthood (and maybe a little time spent pressuring your wife) is all that's needed to push the reset button. And why shouldn't we say that two people of the same sex can enter into the same self-centered relationship agreement? There's no good reason why not. 

I greatly prefer the Catholic position that marriage is not for you, but for the family, which means you are living for your spouse (and, later, kids as well) more than for yourself. You are no longer an individual, pursuing individual wants and whims. You are a part of a greater whole: a new family. You are a servant with a specific role, bound to that role by love — real love! Not self-serving emotion! Too many marriages end as soon as love ceases to act upon a heart that passively receives it, as a man passively receives entertainment in a movie theater. As soon as love demands that the man become the agent, active, willful in his love — a far more adventurous role! — too many men turn away, looking for another non-interactive love that will sate them without thought or effort. 

Granted, my idealism about love and marriage has not exactly been tested. I am, after all, married to the most beautiful woman in the world. Every day I am reminded by the mere sight of her just how lucky I am. But what a wonderful way to start a marriage! How much nicer this is than if we had spent two years living together and got married because it was convenient! I look at my wife, and I am filled with wonder. Her beauty leaves me astonished, babbling incomprehensible fragments of stillborn poetry in a fruitless attempt to capture in words something that exceeds words: the beauty of a human soul, the perfect design of a child a God, the wonder of eyes that contain a whole world, the marvelous otherness of her female nature, and the lovely herness of herself — and the startling, astonishing, impossible knowledge that all this has been given to me, to have and to hold, to guard and protect, to serve . . . and to love. 

This is marriage. 

All this, and yet this new beginning feels so natural and so right and so comfortable that I could have been married all my life. The newness of it helps me to see and to be astonished; the rightness of it makes me feel as though it is not new, but simply the way the universe is and has been since first the stars spun into being from the mind of God. Comfortable as an old sock; breathtaking as the first sunrise. It's a paradox that Chesterton would have delighted in — and probably did, since no man took up the adventure of marriage with more enthusiasm.

Think I'm over-idealistic? I've certainly been accused of that! Ask me in ten years, and I'm sure that my views on marriage will have developed. Developed, but not changed, not in their fundamentals. I will be wiser, the first rush of youthful enthusiasm will have been replaced by the steady appreciation of experience. But I will still believe the same. You see, the the nice thing about ideals is that even if you try and fail to meet them, you're still better off than if you have no ideals at all. And the nice thing about Catholicism is that it tells me that those ideals have a reality that does not depend upon me. Marriage is what it is. If I fail, it will be my own failure, not a failure of the reality of marriage itself. It will be because I fail to see and respond to the true nature and wonder of marriage, not because marriage lacks that reality. Because the ideal is the reality, and it is only we poor humans who fall short, whose blindness loses sight so quickly of the remarkable nature of marriage, the incredible gift of the other, the sheer awesomeness of God's plan. And that gives me the courage — not to mention to the access to grace! — not to fail. I have only to conform myself to reality rather than setting myself against it, to open my eyes repeatedly to the wonder of our marriage, and above all to place myself trustingly in the hands of the Love from whom that reality pours, and my poor, earthly, reflective love will be lifted up and brought into Love Himself, and fulfill its purpose.

Meantime, I get to be married to the most beautiful girl in the world. 

No exaggeration.

Am I lucky, or what?

Planting!

I had intended to create a terranium with a lid, but I couldn't find any pretty glass containers with lids! So I settled on these neat cylinder jars from Walmart. I placed some colorful rocks on the bottom, followed by potting soil and then put in the plant! It was super easy and I love the look! 

Geranium

I believe the back plant is a species of Dracena...

I think I may make a few more to place around the apartment.

Memories

This walk was one of the strongest memories I have of the wedding. My emotions were surging, my eyes tearing, and my smile shaking. As I walked down that aisle, I walked up with my past and present and had the amazing experience of connecting them to my future at the end. As I walked, I saw the individual faces of those family and friends whom I have loved deeply and who have helped me grow in amazing ways. My father's arm reminded me of all our precious times together and the times when our family was growing up and all at home. Memories flooding in of my father practicing his karate downstairs or dancing to "Sixteen Tons" with us, my mother talking with us about the Faith or all the times I lied my head in her lap to vent or obtain advice, and of all the various adventures I had with my sisters.

And that amazing moment when I looked up and saw the man who had loved me so well and so completely throughout our courtship and engagement. I felt the sureness and trust of his continued and undying love. It is a love that we have deemed has "eternal immensitude". Anthony's kind eyes and beaming smile melted my heart at the end of that aisle and mine was melded with his in the Sacrament of Matrimony. God is so very good and I am so excited Anthony is now a part of my past, present and eternal future.

Nuptial Mass Consecration

"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste -or foretaste- of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires."

~ The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to his son.

It is so beautiful to have someone with whom I can share a complete love of the one true Faith. 

Love

"Loves requests always to be amazed at the other one and at what he or she is.

You cannot love if you consider the one you love as a machine about which you know everything.

Love is still greater when you know that you do not deserve to be loved by the other one.  Then it becomes awesome! Then, you can both say. 'thank you'."

~ From our Wedding Sermon written by Canon Jayr of St. Stanislaus