People's questions about Tolkien on Qora made me realize something that might end up being typologically relevant.
The thing is, lots of people just don't get the ending of the Lord of the Ring.
Especially the destruction of the ring at Mount Doom.
Lots of people seem to think that Gollum falls into the lava with the Ring by accident, and as some kind of Deus Ex Machina.
Even saw people justifying this by saying it was because of Tolkien's christian belief in God's Providence.
Except... it's not at all what happens.
Gollum falls into the lava because Frodo made him swear an oath on the Ring that he would never betray him.
And later on, Frodo warns/curses Gollum by telling him that if he was ever to break that Oath, he would use the ring and command him to die.
In this exact way.
"If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command."
This is exactly what happens, and it's doomed to happen.
Gollum's fall is as much Fate than Icarus' (or Numenor's) one.
What Frodo didn't see is that, to do that, he would have to expose the Ring and then Gollum would be able to get it back from him.
But there is nothing accidental or providential in the destruction of the Ring.
There is just the inevitable collision of two increasingly treacherous machinations.
By the time it happens, Frodo isn't the "good" one anymore, and Gollum has already lost all hopes of redemption.
Two evils defeating each other.
If anything, it's a "diabolus in machina", so to speak, not a deus ex machina.
And the thing is, it's the only possible sequence of actions where the ring gets destroyed.
If Frodo hadn't commanded Gollum to die, they would have fought to death and the last standing one, consumed by the Ring, would have been unable to destroy it. In any case, Sauron wins.
This ending, i think, is another argument for Te aux / against Te polr.
Btw when i first read the book, as a Te polr kid, i didn't understand all of this.
But i didn't see it as a deus ex machina either. It was the resolution of a sequence. It had to be.
So i knew that i missed something along the way, in the long chain of causes, and that i had to read it back to get it.