Notes and Documents Stolen Pears, Unripe Apples: The Misuse of Fruits as a Symbol of Original Sin in Tolkien's "The New Shadow" and Augustine of Hippo's Confessions

"The New Shadow," a brief text by J.R.R. Tolkien (Peoples 409–21), was meant as the beginning of a sequel to his masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. Even though it is only a fragment of the story he had in mind, just a few pages long, it surprisingly received more than one revision before being finally abandoned. About the text, Tolkien said:

I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men, it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless—while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors—like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a "thriller" about the plot and its discovery and overthrow—but it would have been just that. Not worth doing.

(Letters 344)

The fact that the text was revised, notwithstanding its shortness and such considerations as those just cited above, suggests that it was important to Tolkien, especially theoretically, as it was clearly provided with an intrinsic symbolic value.

In the story, a young man, Saelon, discusses an episode of his childhood with an older man, Borlas, who rebukes him for having stolen unripe apples from his orchard. The discussion leads to some consideration of the nature of Orcs and Men and then rumors about a mysterious Dark Tree and the call of an equally mysterious character named Herumor. Saelon invites Borlas to a meeting in the night and then leaves him. Borlas enters his house and feels the presence of Evil, the cause of which we are left wondering about, since the tale breaks off here.

A key to the episode is the consideration of the theft of the unripe apples, which the two characters look upon from divergent angles, never to be reconciled. According to Borlas, the theft of the unripe apples is a crime far worse than it seems, for a number of reasons. First, it is wrong to steal. Secondly, and worse, the theft was not committed out of hunger and need for those fruits to any purpose, but just to play with them. The triviality of this act must not shadow its gravity; on the contrary, it reveals to us a carelessness and a corruption which are better clarified by the third, and even heavier, reason. That is the unripeness of the apples itself, which should require even a thief to wait for their right time to be taken from the tree. Seizing an unripe apple means depriving the world of the ripe fruit; it is a perverted act, since it prevents the realization and fulfilling of the true aim of a being, which would be to manifest itself in the fullness of its potentialities. That was the way of the Orcs.

The third reason is the most important, since it concerns the very nature of Evil. In Saint Augustine's thought, Evil consists in the deprivation of Good, and, as Tom Shippey points out (128), Tolkien agreed, although sometimes he also seemed to consider Evil as an independent substance. In "The New Shadow," I think it is quite clear that Tolkien echoes Augustine of Hippo's ideas, and also one of his themes, the theft of fruits.¹ In fact, in the Confessions, Saint Augustine reports his theft of a few pears when he was sixteen, and he also points out that, despite the apparent triviality of the act, it was a very vile deed. He acknowledges that the theft was not committed out of need, hunger, desire to taste the fruits, appreciation of their beauty, revenge...