Triumph of Evil

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke.

That is what my father wrote in black sharpie on the inside cover of The Lord of the Rings. It was all three books in one massive, hardcover tome. I don’t remember how old I was, but I know it was between the Two Towers coming out on VHS (gee, am I old?) and the theatrical release of Return of the King. I read that tome cover to cover…and I do mean that. I even read the appendices. It led me to reading The Hobbit and taking a crack at The Silmarillion. That one was over my head; I came back and finished it a few years later.

Along the way, I picked up The Children of Hurin, and was exposed to Tolkien’s work in a plethora of other ways. I distinctly remember playing LOTR Risk games on Warcraft 3’s custom games function in 2008. Six years later, I jumped at the opportunity to knock out an elective English credit by taking a class on Tolkien’s work. I guess of all my college classes, that was the only one I’d been preparing for since elementary school. Just recently, I received a beautiful book for Father’s Day that traces the inspiration for the LOTR throughout the literature and poems that preceded it. Perhaps in the future we will see if the LOTR shows in production measure up to Tolkien’s imagination.

At the time, I focused entirely upon the book and the worlds it opened to me—I barely paid mind to the quote. But it made an impression that continued to grow. “Triumph of evil,” are strong words, and growing up, it seemed like there was plenty of evil going around. The evil has always been there—in many ways, our world has less evil in it than ever before—BUT now we can be aware of it every moment even if it is thousands of miles away. As I matured, that quote started to mean something. The middle school I attended had a lot of curriculum focused around the Holocaust. I can’t think of a more perfect example of a great many “good” men doing nothing and letting evil triumph. To this day, I find myself thinking about that quote a lot, and it cuts both ways. I look with contempt at those who will tell you all about the evil but don’t lift a finger to do anything about it.

Did my father have any idea how impactful just a few sentences would be for me? I doubt it. His decision to give me that book and write those words continue to have ripple effects throughout my life. It is now standard practice in my family that if you are giving somebody a book you write a note inside the cover. Some are deep and others are just like what you would write in a birthday card. I love it, because it removes any expectation to keep a card. Also, reading LOTR was foundational in creating my love for fiction and my desire to write. The short stories I have written and the unfinished novels I’m working on are direct outgrowths of that gift. I have a young daughter who already loves bedtime stories and will be ready for the Lord of the Rings before too long. I know it will inspire her imagination like it did mine and millions more. I’ll have to be careful about when I introduce her to the novels I’ll have finished by then. I’m not sure I want to hear my own works compared to Tolkien’s masterpieces.

“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love." ~ Gandalf (J. R. R. Tolkein ~ The Hobbit)”