WARNING: This article will contain spoilers for Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Whatever we may think about the universe, it is clear that John Reginald Reuel Tolkien firmly believed in an objective good and evil. A Roman Catholic who took his faith seriously, he shaped his fictional world of Middle-Earth to broadly fit a Christian worldview. A good and all-powerful God created the world from nothing. The angelic powers, some of whom fall into evil, exist as part of the created order. The world’s future hangs on the moral choices of common people. Evil is characterized as a turning away from the objective good, not merely an action that is deemed destructive by the social norms of the dominating culture. In fact, evil must be identified and confronted even though the dominating culture approves it.
Tolkien’s understanding of objective moral good and evil is demonstrated in his meditations on temptation in The Lord of the Rings. Boromir, a valiant but weak man, contemplates the use of the One Ring against Sauron. Faramir and Tom Bombadil, bastions of moral goodness, are unaffected by its draw. The power of the One Ring to dominate and to change free beings into thralls is disdained by those who recognize its means as objectively evil.
However, in Monolith’s recent hit, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the player finds himself or herself doing battle with Sauron, not by taking the moral high-road and trusting good to overcome evil, but by wielding powers similar to Sauron himself. By dominating orcs and turning them against each other and their masters, players wield creatures with will and self-knowledge as pawns in a larger game. More than once, the high elf Celebrimbor states that the only way to overcome Sauron is to match him in determination, and to use his own powers against him. When the ranger Talion asks the Elven Lord how he can control the orcs, Celebrimbor states that when Morgoth (Sauron’s predecessor) created the orcs as a mockery of the elves, he made them to be dominated. Celebrimbor is merely walking the same path that his enemy forged.
The French Scholar Rene Girard identified one of the central motivations for violence in human history as the “Mimetic Desire,” a drive not only to want what another has, but to desire what another desires. Mimetic Desire is a longing for something mediated by another, shaped by the one who mediates the desire to us. If we exist in the same order of reality as the mediator, he or she can become a competitor for the desired thing. As in many cases, both real and fictional, Celebrimbor desires power, mastery, and revenge.
The model is obviously a destructive one. It is why Tolkien attributes it to his tragic figures and has his heroes reject it. Melcor, Sauron, Saruman, and Fëanor all succumb to jealousy, desire, and the will to dominate. The One Ring itself is a physical embodiment of both the desire and the power to achieve the desires of the libido dominandi (“lust of rule”). Gandalf rejects the ring, as does Galadriel, though both are tempted. They recognize their own desire and push the One Ring aside as objectively wrong, and ultimately destructive to their own identities. Tolkien understood that our actions shape our identities.
In a situation of conflict, the formation of identity hinges on how we address our desire in relationship to our enemies. Conflict of any kind brings with it the temptation to mimic our enemies, to mock when we are mocked, to strike when we are struck, and to dismiss and discount when we are dismissed and discounted. When momentous accusations are made against us, we mirror with momentous accusations of our own. This is the way of Saruman the Many Colored, who saw his enemy Sauron and formed himself according to his desire to dominate his enemy. One sees in our own modern age the formation of mutually conditioning social forces: Soviet Communism and American Capitalism, Christian Fundamentalism and Modern Skepticism, and Political Conservativism and Liberalism. It can be observed in each of these dialectical relationships that the formation of identity is not controlled essentially by a set of a ideas, but instead by the ideal of competition, domination, and rejection. Though each side may begin by looking to an ideal good, they find themselves led on, step by step, to succumb to the destructive power of pure opposition. No longer shaped by their inherent telos, they take on the characteristic earmarks of pure competition and the desire to have mastery.
History is rife with other examples. It is the declaration “Carthago delenda est!” (“Carthage must be destroyed!”) that sets Rome down an imperial path unlike any seen before in western history. A republic dedicated to the ideals of its citizenry undergoes a radical transformation into opposition with the world. Its transformation empowers it, but also sows the seeds of its own eventual destruction.
Tolkien would rather hold up Gandalf for our imitation. Standing alone in darkness, with all reasonable hope gone, but trusting that despair is always a sin and doing what he knows to be right, the old wizard shaped himself in accordance with what he understood to be objectively good. He does not let his enemy’s evil shape his own self-direction. He refuses evil at every turn, even when it would have perhaps made his path easier. He holds to his identity as one who will not succumb to mere opposition. His measure is not his enemy, but something far greater that raises him up when he is cast down.
It appears that the developers of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor know this, and have laid a subtle trap, or perhaps woven a parable, for the player.
A shadow fell across the Elf Lord long ago that set him a dark path. Celebrimbor does not seek justice; he seeks vengeance and mastery. By the end of the game, the noble Talion has also fallen under the shadow. He has the opportunity to leave off his mission of revenge and turn back to what is good, but the work of the Mimetic Desire is revealed. Talion wishes to forge a new ring of power, one that can contend with the One Ring itself. We find that we have not been playing a hero, but a tragic figure who has succumbed in the land of Mordor where the shadows lie. In the end, Talion is more like Boromir than Aragorn, more like Saruman than Gandalf.
The message to the gamer is as clear as if it had been inscribed on the Black Gate itself: “Beware lest you become the evil you confront.”
