J.R.R. Tolkien hated Frank Herbert's Dune — but why?

In an unsent letter, he said he disliked Dune "with some intensity", but didn't explain his reasoning. However, it’s clear that The Lord of the Rings is a profoundly different take on good and evil, and how to live a moral life…

Dune's protagonists are directly opposed to the heroes of Middle-earth. Dune, GoT, and other modern fantasies adhere to the idea that good and bad actions are defined by their consequences — their characters are pragmatists, choosing the lesser of evils to forge a path they deem is good.

So, moral decisions shift with context. Paul Atreides' choices assume the ends justify the means, unleashing jihad (albeit reluctantly) that will later kill billions in order to secure humanity’s future. These protagonists are Nietzschean in the sense that they forge their own moral framework, embracing will to power without divine authority — they thrive entirely by their own strength.

Tolkien, however, was a deontologist: actions are right or wrong based on their inherent nature, not their outcomes. Frodo's quest is inherently right because it resists evil, not because it's guaranteed to succeed:

"I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way."

Tolkien's protagonists act not through will to power, but through duty, in submission to a higher plan. And this moral vision runs deep throughout Middle-earth, because it's a deeply religious story.

Tolkien's universe is first sung into existence via the music of creation. Arda begins as a perfect, symmetrical world, absent darkness, until Melkor (a Lucifer figure) brings evil into it. Over time, the world is remade after numerous "falls" echoing the Biblical Fall of Man, and each time, the perfect beauty of the old world declines.

By the Third Age (the events of LOTR), the world is a shadow of what it used to be, and Middle-earth is littered with the ruins of past, superior civilizations. Minas Tirith still stands, but its inhabitants could likely never build it, and struggle only to maintain it.

This is how Tolkien perceived all of history: a steady fading of the beauty and magic of creation. He wrote:

"I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat'..."

This long defeat, according to Tolkien, mirrors our own reality. Middle-earth is supposed to be on our Earth, when the continents were shaped differently, and inhabited by magic and beauty now lost to the ages. Arda is our world, only in a different stage of the imagination.

But if history is a long march to inevitable defeat, isn't that cause for despair?

No — Tolkien's universe has another power at work. A guiding force or divine providence watches over it, providing "samples or glimpses of final victory..."

The destruction of the Ring is a glimpse of that victory. Note that it does not happen solely because of our heroic protagonists, as Frodo cannot himself destroy it. It happens in an instant of good fortune, by the guiding hand of something higher. Likewise, Aragorn cannot defeat Sauron in battle. He can only stage a last-ditch diversion at Mordor's gates, and he does so facing near-certain defeat, but with trust in the divine plan.

Tolkien's long defeat, therefore, is not a march toward final destruction, but to a final, great rescue. A rescue outside our control, when all seems lost, claiming victory over all evil — just as in Tolkien's Catholic theology.

So, if you're living through a great decline, what do you do? Do you live pragmatically, choosing one evil over another for an outcome you decide is good? Or do you walk like Tolkien's heroes, doing what is right regardless of context?

Tolkien's characters feel profoundly good because they choose the latter, bound by moral laws beyond themselves. Even when it seems foolish to do so, Bilbo spares Gollum in an act of mercy, and that simple act is what led to the destruction of the Ring in a joyous turn of fortune. In the end, Gandalf's words are vindicated:

“Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.”