Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: despair and hope. It is a remarkably stupid and cruel time in the world lately, for reasons we need not spell out. (And indeed in the week since we recorded this episode, it has somehow gotten worse.) So granted our mood hangs heavy, but then again, as Tolkien himself said in one of his letters, he was conditioned by the idea of ‘the long defeat’ in his own Catholic perspective from the start. Despair is certainly something Tolkien had a sense of how to portray, whether via Gandalf’s famed description of it as a tool of the enemy or the utter self-destruction of figures like Denethor and Turin. At the same time, there’s the remarkable aspects of how hope works in his legendarium, whether it can be in the naming of a person as a promise to the future or when Sam looks up on a dark night in Mordor to see a star shine in the heavens, a beacon in the midst of everything awful. What are the ways in which despair functions in the history of Middle-earth, and how is it weaponized by the forces of Morgoth and Sauron in multiple ways? Are there distinctions in terms of how despair plays out between Men and Elves, and how does the latter’s lack of knowledge of their own ultimate fate potentially factor into their own experiences? Is hope the key counterbalance to despair, or is it more the realm of action, whether Gandalf’s visits to the soldiers of Minas Tirith or the decisions by Merry and Pippin to scour the Shire? And what drives us all these days when it comes to finding hope or the focus to continue even when things aren’t the best?