The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 908-909

In my last post we thought about the chain of events that lead to the strange fact that the road from Ithilien into Mordor is empty at just the very moment in which Frodo and Sam need to walk down it. Instead of companies of orcs and other allies of Mordor constantly travelling up and down it, the road in the Morgul Vale is left free for two hobbits and their guide to walk along it unhindered.

The quotation that I have chosen for this piece does not come from the passage that I am thinking about here but from the chapter entitled Flotsam and Jetsam when Merry and Pippin tell the story of their adventures to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli amidst the wreck of Isengard after it has been destroyed by the Ents. Pippin tells his companions how, by ,means of a fallen orc blade, he was able to cut the rope that his wrists had been bound by . Gimli responds to this approvingly.

“The cutting of the bands on your wrists, that was smart work!” said Gimli. “Luck served you there; but you seized your luck with both hands, one might say.”

In his study on the thought of J.R.R Tolkien, Tom Shippey considers the role of luck within The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R Tolkien, Author of The Century, Harper Collins 2001, pp. 143-147). Shippey tackles the assertion of some of Tolkien’s critics that his story is full of “biased fortune” and so cannot be taken seriously. In speaking of Gollum’s fall into the fires of Mount Doom that destroys the Ring, Shippey argues that “it is clearly not just an accident” but the direct, if unintended consequence, of many conscious choices. The word that Shippey chooses for this is the Old English word, wyrd, a word that both Shippey and Tolkien knew because both of them held the same chair at Oxford University in Philology, the study of language. Modern readers of English will, of course, immediately recognise the similarity between this Old English word and the modern word, weird. They might also note, with some sadness, the way in which a language that once had the capacity to express human experience with great subtlety has turned the words that were able to do this into banalities.

The Old English word that Gimli might have used when he spoke of Pippin’s luck might well have been wyrd. It would have meant something that had happened, something over which Pippin had no control, such as the sudden and unexpected availability of a sharp blade that Pippin was able to use and to change his fortunes. The same thing might be said about Bilbo’s finding of the Ring. The same thing could be certainly be said of the sudden emptying of the roads into Mordor. In every one of these cases luck, or wyrd, serves those who are able to take advantage of these happenings. But Pippin, Bilbo and then Frodo and Sam, each have to take seize their luck, to take advantage of it.

Frodo had to leave the relative security of the refuge of Henneth Annûn and put his trust in a treacherous guide who would eventually betray him. In walking down the Morgul Vale and then climbing the stair to Cirith Ungol he made his way directly into Shelob’s Lair and was poisoned by her. He only entered Mordor on the backs of orcs and his journey thereafter to Orodruin was one of unrelenting agony as the Ring that he bore slowly but inevitably wore down his resistance to its malignant power. By the time he reached the Cracks of Doom he had no strength left to resist it. At the end he needed an enemy to enable him to fulfil his mission and this enemy did so by biting off his finger. If after all this Gimli were to say to him that he seized his luck with both hands then Frodo might well reply that Gimli had a poor idea of luck. Frodo would be right but then so too would be Gimli. This luck truly opened the way to the mountain and it took the Ring into the Fire. But in seizing it Frodo had to pay a terrible price. He could never find peace again in Middle-earth.