Besides recovering Beowulf, compiling a composite pan-European epic with English characteristics, and being an all-around good chap, J.R.R. Tolkien also concocted the neologism “eucatastrophe” for his theory of storytelling in general and fairy stories in particular.1 While one could argue that this term is a trope derivative of the Greek Deus ex Machina artifice, he would be wrong. A Deus ex Machina (DEM) is a plot device whereby a problem resolves in a sudden, neat and improbable way thanks to some entity’s entrance into the story. Tolkien’s eucatastrophe is simply
[T]he joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.”2
So a DEM resolves narratival tension by entering into a story, whereas a eucatastrophe is the plot solving itself with extant ingredients in a satisfying way that “denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”3 Use of a DEM may prompt a yawn or roll of the eyes, whilst a eucatastrophe evokes a sigh of relief, fist-pump, or even tears.
To offer a non-LOTR example: the aftermath of Seven Samurai or the Magnificent Seven are eucatastrophic in that the villagers are outnumbered, outgunned and intimidated, but still succeed and save the village that faced certain bondage or even death without their defenders’ sacrificial help. A DEM in a Westerns setting could be Cowboys & Aliens, where an alien sneaks into an invader’s ship, sabotages it, and ends the carnage.
Eucatastrophe has two tiers: the more accessible rung is the satisfaction intrinsic to a believable, happy ending; the esoteric version, on the other hand, is “a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium [the Gospel] in the real world.”4 Tolkien makes clear that while the former elicits an emotional response, the latter is something more, something like harnessing metaphysical themes that stir one’s spirit.
Conspiracy, like catastrophe, has negative connotation. Following Tolkien’s innovation, the concept of ‘breathing together,’ plotting, however, can also have positive moral valence. Consider the American Revolution which was sparked by Yankees fed up with the exorbitant prices and taxes levied on them by an unresponsive and faraway capital. The Planters’ branch of the War for Independence also involved much plotting, often in churches when proper meeting places were locked or surveilled. Of course, the Continental congresses were illicit, treasonous meetings where the overthrow and replacement of government (by violence if necessary) were envisioned.
The state of the American experiment—parameters ignored, ingredients altered, controls abandoned, yet expected to perform—is dire. You know things are dire when commonsense like “when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle” sounds profound.5 Simplicity has a profundity of its own, that which is profound is simple, while truth is both simple and profound. Burke’s adage shares Tolkien’s vision that fighting against evil and fighting for good is a contemptible struggle. It seems hopeless. This theme underlies the Lord of the Rings. And that’s where eucatastrophe enters the equation. Tolkien’s tales are strewn with it! The eucatastrophic crescendo of Gollum falling into Mt. Doom, and the redemption that follows, would not have been possible without the “euconspiracy” planned and pushed by the Fellowship.6
We need many such fellowships today. And to think that those behind the modern American civil religion, who revised it from opportunity to equality, pace Hofstadter, mocked the “conspiratorial mindset” and relegated it to those dumb Birchers; when really, as is obvious today, distinct from speculative online culture, those who conspire, win.
Eucatastrophes require euconspiracies. Euconspiracy: Conspiring eucatastrophe.
The paucity of eucatastrophe rests on the eventuality of euconspiracy. Men huddled over drinks, moms worried when their husbands will return home, repressed tears, hearty laughs, long hours. One is tempted to call this a Sisyphean work. But even Sisyphus was happy and he was alone, trapped in terminal decline after short uphill progress. We, however, are not alone and are engaged in meaningful work. As the work of Augustus and Belisarius proved: Through euconspiracy, rot can be excised, regress reversed, and civilization progressed. Fortuna has been a bad girl and needs to be taught a lesson.
The necessity of euconspiracy depends on availability and capability of good men. Whilst Sparta never recovered from Leuktra, and was later crushed for good, Rome recovered from annihilation at Cannae, took the fight to Carthage, and conquered the world. This lack of men, oligoanthropeia, that Sparta experienced is worrisome but it is oligoaristopeia, a lack of good men, that seems fatal to me. After Leuktra, Sparta still had plenty of Perioikoi (monied yet non martial residents) but it was their lack of Spartiates (armed, agoge-trained citizens) that doomed their polity.
Conspiring for a better future shouldn’t be viewed as a last-ditch effort, but rather the norm for what an engaged citizen does to see to it that his side wins. The importance of euconspiracy is apparent when one realizes that it provides for a third method of engagement amongst those outlined by Albert Hirschman’s Exit and Voice, as it is an “exit within” in that a conspiracy creates new space into which one retreat and operate from. Your very own imperium in imperio. Euconspiracy enables someone to reform or functionally exist without the cost of either exit or voice. Time is short and life is fleeting, but what we build can last. It’s up to you to find good men and conspire for a better future.
“On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien, 1939, pub. 1947. Internet Archive. The essay is worth reading!
Id.
Id.
Id. In an epilogue he appended to the lecture upon publication, Tolkien goes on to say: “It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite.
I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. … But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.”
This insight that Christianity is “myth come true,” later picked up by René Girard and applied to anthropology and comparative literature, was first formulated during a late-night, peripatetic conversation between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis during 1930. This insight comforted Lewis, who was still adjusting to his father’s death, convinced him to revert to faith in Christ and sparked the formation of the Inklings.
Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (1770)
This is inspired by the author and top pseud, Conan, Esq, who AFAIK coined the term “euconspiracy.” You can read the evidence and framing for Tolkien’s Fellowship-as-conspiracy in one of his delightful twitter threads.