Today we think of duty as dull, so it may surprise us that duty plays such an important role in the high adventure of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is, in fact, the hobbits’ commitment to duty that eventually overthrows the powers of evil in Middle-earth. Tolkien, who had experienced the trench warfare of WWI, knew one’s duty was often miserable. After escaping from the goblins and Gollum in dark caves of the misty mountains, Bilbo thinks of his companions:
“But all the while a very uncomfortable thought was growing inside him. He wondered whether he ought not, now he had the magic ring, to go back into the horrible, horrible, tunnels and look for his friends. He had just made up his mind that it was his duty that he must turn back—and very miserable he felt about it—when he heard voices.”
It is this grudging and trudging doing of one’s duty even when miserable that Tolkien finds most heroic—and that he places center stage in his stories.
In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam slog through the land of Mordor day after dark day without much hope and with no expectation that anyone will every record their deeds. Duty alone keeps them going: Sam’s duty to Frodo and Frodo’s duty to all of Middle-earth. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli pursue the orcs who have taken Merry and Pippin captive, not because of their strategic importance but because of duty and friendship.
Duty is perhaps a combination of two virtues. The first is a clear sense of what is right and noble that comes from having a moral compass. The second is the perseverance that overcomes all discomfort and obstacles to do what is right. Duty, as understood by Tolkien, is not a slavish devotion to the expectations of others. Often his heroes are alone when they decide to do what duty requires. Duty is obedience to one’s conscience and a transcendent standard of right and wrong.
Some education researchers have asserted that those who succeed academically are not always the smartest or most gifted, they are the “grittiest”. They go on to define grit as the willingness to do boring stuff, to work at developing skills, and the courage to overcome failure. The problem educators have run into is that they don’t know how to teach “grittiness”. I don’t know either. I suspect teaching virtues instead of just information might be a beginning. Certainly reading Tolkien could awaken students to the beauty of duty.
