Author: stephencwinter

“The Land Had Changed.” Fangorn Forest Comes to Helm’s Deep. The Revenge of the Trees.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 705-707

It was Gandalf who understood what was happening first. As the host of Rohan rode from Edoras to Helm’s Deep he saw a “darkness brooding about the feet of the Misty Mountains” and asked Legolas to describe what he could see.

“I can see a darkness. There are shapes moving in it, great shapes far away upon the banks of the river; but what they are I cannot tell. It is not mist or cloud that defeats my eyes: there is a veiling shadow that some power lays upon the land, and it marches slowly down stream. It is as if the twilight under endless trees were flowing downwards from the hills.”

At first Gandalf mistook one form of darkness for another, seeing them all as one kind and that kind the darkness of Mordor but as he pondered more he began to realise what he was seeing and so rode towards Isengard. There he asked Treebeard for the help of his Huorns and with them rode back to Helm’s Deep.

Later on Merry spoke of the Huorns to other members of the Fellowship.

“I think they are Ents that have become almost like trees” he said… “There is great power in them, and they seem to be able to wrap themselves in shadow: it is difficult to see them moving. But they do. They can move very quickly if they are angry. You stand still looking at the weather maybe, or listening to the rustling of the wind, and then suddenly you find that you are in the middle of a wood with great groping trees all around you.”

And it is these trees, or perhaps we should call them Ent-trees, that Legolas described to Gandalf and that are now in the Deeping-coomb, the valley below the Hornburg. The hosts of Isengard stand at bay before foes on every side. Théoden and his riders drive them towards the Huorns who block their retreat and Erkenbrand and a thousand men upon foot march towards them, the remnants of a once defeated army that had stood at bay at the Fords of the Isen now victorious once more as they drive their foes before them. And Gandalf rides down upon them revealed for a moment in power and his enemies fall upon their faces in terror. For if there is one thing that orcs understand, perhaps the only thing, it is power. Just an hour before they had been a proud army serving a mighty wizard and about to storm a fortress that had never fallen when defended. Now they are surrounded by power on every side. At last they flee into the mysterious forest and are never seen again.

When Treebeard described Saruman as having a mind of “metal and wheels” who “does not care for living things” he was not merely expressing a difference in taste between himself and the wizard but something much more fundamental. When Saruman emptied Isengard of its defenders in order to conquer Rohan he had no idea of the threat that lay on his doorstep and the reason for this was that he did not care for living things. There are two senses of meaning in the word care that Treebeard used. One is the sense of care as responsibility and it is certainly true that Saruman has no sense of responsibility for living things. But the other sense is that he simply did not think about them very much at all. He assumed that his technology was more potent and effective than any living creature that he had encountered with the exception maybe of Sauron himself and in this he utterly underestimated the forest and its power.

It is one of the greatest feats of Tolkien’s imagination to have thought about how a forest might behave if it were to be able to perform its essential actions not as a plant but as an animal. And what might happen if the growing resentment that a forest might feel about its abuse and mistreatment by others suddenly spilled over. This forest has been abused by a wizard and by orcs for a long time and now, roused by two young hobbits, it takes revenge upon its enemies. Tolkien concentrates the revenge of the living world into a brief period of time. We know that our living planet may move much more slowly than this but if we choose to behave like orcs or fallen wizards in our relationship with life itself our planet will defend itself against us and will eventually win albeit after a conflict with terrible losses. Maybe one day we, like the hosts of Isengard, will be cowering before its latent power.

“His Horse Was White as Snow, Golden Was His Shield, and His Spear Was Long.” Théoden Rides to Victory at The Battle of Helm’s Deep.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 691-707

I remember sitting beside my wife as we watched the scene in Peter Jackson’s film of The Two Towers when Théoden and Aragorn lead the cavalry charge from the fortress of the Hornburg over the causeway and into the armies of Isengard. She had not been with when I saw it first at a morning screening at my local multiplex so we were sitting together watching it on a DVD in our front room. Laura is the most peaceable of people but as I looked across at her I could see tears in her eyes. Peter Jackson had done his work well, I thought. He had succeeded in portraying the beauty of the heroic act.

What conveys the beauty, I believe, is the unbearable moment in which the hero lays down his life for the sake of life. I ended last week’s reflection by quoting Faramir on this. “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” It is that which the hero seeks to defend that gives beauty to the sacrifice and brings tears to the eyes of those who watch. The author of the Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood, tells the story of the death of Christ upon the cross in such heroic language. Christ climbs upon the rood, grasping the wood of the cross as a young warrior in order by his death to defeat death itself. In so doing the poet dignifies the hero’s death, a theme that everyone in the cultures of northern Europe would have understood, in a new way. The hero’s death becomes a sacrifice for life in the face of death, for light in the face of darkness and for love in the face of hatred.

Tolkien never states this explicitly although he knew well all the resonances that I have touched upon but as Théoden leads Aragorn and the knights of his household in the last desperate charge at daybreak as the echoing sound of Helm’s horn resounds about him the beauty of the sacrificial deed shines forth and tears come to my wife’s eyes.

The language of the story needs to express this beauty as does the story’s shape. And so in his telling of the story of The Battle of Helm’s Deep Tolkien gives us a beleaguered force falling back before a host of enemies filled with “reckless hate”. At the last Théoden turns to Aragorn as he frets within the Hornburg questioning the wisdom of Gandalf’s counsel that he should lead his host there and says to him:

“I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song-if any be left to sing of us hereafter.”

And as the dawn breaks and the doors of the Hornburg are shattered by an explosion the horn of Helm sounds and Théoden and his knights ride out sweeping all before them.

It is not death itself that is beautiful. A death can be a lonely, hopeless, even meaningless affair. But the setting of the sun at the end of a good day is beautiful even though it will end in darkness. At the Battle of the Pelennor Fields Éomer stands at bay before the host of his enemies. And as he stands by his banner he laughs at despair and cries out:

Out of doubt, out  of dark to the day's rising 
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

For the Rohirrim there is such a thing as a good death and it is one when you have given your all and there is nothing left to give. This was Théoden’s death in the same battle and so he died at peace. At Helm’s Deep events were about to turn in a strange and entirely unexpected way. This is not the day in which Théoden will die but it is his willingness to die that is beautiful.

“And with that shout the king came. His horse was white as snow, golden was his shield, and his spear was long. At his right hand was Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, behind him rode the lords of the house of Eorl the Young. Light sprang in the sky. Night departed.”

“Forth Eorlingas!” Tolkien and The Restoration of The Heroic in Warfare.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 682-691

It is important at the outset of these thoughts on warfare in The Lord of the Rings to note that from the arraying of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in gear of warfare before the gates of Edoras to the final victory over the hosts of Isengard before Helm’s Deep there are only twenty-seven pages in the Harper Collins edition of The Two Towers. Compare that to the amount of time devoted to the battle in Peter Jackson’s film of the same name and even before we think about the battle at all we see that this Hollywood action movie treats warfare very differently to the way in which Tolkien does.

Tolkien’s personal experience of warfare was very different to that of the armies who fight in his great story. Harold MacMillan, who was the British Prime Minister in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a fellow officer to Tolkien at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 on whose first day the British army lost 60,000 men killed and wounded. MacMillan was himself one of the wounded and spent several hours hiding in a shell hole and reading Aeschylus in Greek to distract himself from the pain before before being found by British soldiers. In a letter of the time he wrote that “perhaps the most extraordinary thing about a modern battlefield is the desolation and emptiness of it all… One can look for miles and see no human being. But in those miles of country lurk (like moles or rats, it seems) thousands, even hundreds of thousands of men, planning against each other perpetually some new device of death. Never showing themselves, they launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo, and shell.

It was a shell that hit and wounded MacMillan as he led an advance of his men towards the German lines. I quote these lines in a reflection upon Tolkien because they describe with dreadful eloquence the experience of warfare shared by soldiers of both sides in that dreadful conflict and contrast so starkly with the language that Tolkien uses to describe the ride of the Rohirrim to Helm’s Deep. Not that Tolkien ignores the horror of war. Théoden describes the hosts of Isengard as they advance “burning as they come, rick, cot and tree”. But he also writes of the beauty of a host of men about to ride out in defence of their homes and families.

“At the gate they found a great host of men, old and young, all ready in the saddle. More than a thousand were there mustered. Their spears were like a springing wood. Loudly and joyously they shouted as Théoden came forth.”

Tolkien profoundly understood the contrast between the desolate horror that MacMillan described and the heroic language that he used in his own descriptions of battle. Indeed he expressed that contrast in his distinction between the orcs of Mordor and Isengard and, for example, the Riders of Rohan. While the armies of Saruman and of Sauron use all the devices available to them of industrial warfare, the Rohirrim ride into battle carrying spear and sword; and Tolkien’s account is full of acts of individual heroism on the part of the defenders of Helm’s Deep while their enemies are faceless.

What Tolkien achieved in The Lord of the Rings was a restoration of humanity in the brutal and faceless experience of warfare that he knew and which MacMillan described. This means that he is a genuinely modern writer whose war literature can be included alongside A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway or Robert Graves Goodbye to All That. But whereas Hemingway and Graves seek, with great success, to express the experience that MacMillan describes, Tolkien does something quite different. He attempts a kind of redemption of the brutal experience of warfare by restoring the heroic to it. While he understood the experience that Wilfred Owen described in speaking of “these who die as cattle” he restores to those who die a human face and personal heroism.

But I must end where I began. Tolkien never sought to glorify war in his writings. This is perhaps best and most explicitly expressed by Faramir who is a warrior by necessity and not by choice and, of all the characters in The Lord of the Rings speaks most in Tolkien’s own voice.

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all, but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

“His Hand Met Hers and He Knew that She Trembled at The Touch”. The Beginning of the Story of Éowyn and Aragorn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 677-683

It was at the doors of Meduseld that Aragorn first declared himself and his high lineage. Háma, the door warden had commanded that no weapon be brought into the hall and Aragorn had questioned whether Théoden had the authority to demand this of him.

“It is not clear to me that the will of Théoden, son of Thengel, even though he be lord of the Mark, should prevail over the will of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elendil’s heir of Gondor.”

Aragorn had already declared his lineage to Éomer when they first met on the plains of Rohan and doubtless when Éomer had made defence of his mission to intercept and destroy the company of orcs that were crossing the plains he had spoken of this but if he had then Wormtongue would have dismissed Éomer’s report as the deranged words of some vagabond wandering across Théoden’s lands. But Éowyn would have heard these words and would have seen the mighty warrior who had stood before her uncle in his hall as Gandalf had performed his act of healing and as she saw with her own eyes the transformation of a broken man into a king ready to lead his men to war.

Éowyn has had to live a secret life. Indeed, so secret has it been that when Théoden’s men ask that one from the House of Eorl should lead the people to the defences of Dunharrow he has no idea who they mean. She has been almost invisible to him simply being there to tend to his needs as he descended into decrepitude.

Later in the story as Éowyn lies in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith Gandalf will speak of that secret life. Éomer will show that he too was unaware of what lay within his sister’s heart, saying that it was because of Aragorn that she had given way to despair even though he knew that Aragorn bore no blame for this. But Gandalf corrected him.

“My friend… you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.”

Tolkien has received considerable criticism over the years about the apparent invisibility of women in his stories. Peter Jackson’s decision to make Arwen an active character in The Fellowship of the Ring giving her the part that is played by Glorfindel in the book is in many ways a response to this criticism. I remember my own surprise when Arwen appeared in the story as a warrior who would resist the Nazgûl but I quickly realised why Jackson would make this choice and accepted it. But the character of Éowyn is no response to criticism. She is Tolkien’s creation and Gandalf’s words show that Tolkien fully understood both the richness of her character and also the injustice of the way in which women had been treated through history in life and in story. In a warrior culture, which Rohan is, it is perhaps inevitable that women would be expected to be servants to men who would be those warriors. But Éowyn has undoubtedly learned skill in arms, perhaps because she was a member of the royal house, perhaps because it amused the teachers of the arts of war to teach this eager young princess. She may have been invisible to Théoden but not to others.

“She is fearless and high-hearted,” Háma says to Théoden when he asks that Éowyn should lead the people to Dunharrow. “All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone.”

Háma may have seen something of what Éowyn truly was but she herself felt the dishonour of her position; to be a mere serving girl in a house of little honour. So it was that when Aragorn appeared in her life he represented something that she longed for. Aragorn put it this way himself in speaking to Éomer.

“In me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.”

Éowyn has been doomed to live a life in shadows until now but like her uncle she too will come to embrace life in all its joy and sorrow. But unlike Théoden, who was restored to himself in a single day, her journey to wholeness will first lead her to false hope in the form of the heir of Isildur and to despair when that hope is taken from her.

” Westu Théoden Hál!” The Healing of the King and the Healing of Rohan.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 671-677

Éomer has been a prisoner since returning from his mission to track down and destroy the orc company that had been travelling across Rohan. Wormtongue has long been in secret service to Saruman and throughout that time his purpose has been to weaken the will of Théoden and his people until they are defeated and crushed. We have seen how he was able to reduce the King to a broken old man incapable of action but Éomer remained a threat with his youthful vigour and capacity to inspire action in others. In disobeying Théoden’s decree that no-one should leave Edoras without permission of the King Éomer had offered Wormtongue an opportunity to remove him from the scene but now with Wormtongue’s defeat Éomer is freed and he comes Théoden in order to lay his sword at his feet.

Théoden receives the sword and just as Gandalf had predicted his fingers remember their old strength again in their grasping of the hilt. He lifts the blade and swings it “shimmering and whistling in the air” and gives a great cry.

Arise now, arise, Riders of Théoden!
Dire deeds awake, dark is it eastward. 
Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded!
Forth Eorlingas!

Théoden's men rush in thinking that they have been called by their lord and seeing him, sword raised in the air, draw their own swords to lay them at his feet, and Éomer cries out in joy, "Westu Théoden hál!"

The literal translation of these words, taken from Old English, the language spoken throughout England by all its people before the Norman conquest of 1066, and by the ordinary people thereafter, is “health to Théoden”, but a better translation that gives the sense of the words is the cry that rang out in Westminster Abbey at the recent coronation of King Charles III of “Long live the King!”. It is a declaration of personal loyalty and devotion.

The relationship between the health of the King and the health of the people was wonderfully portrayed in the medieval Grail legend and within it the story of The Fisher King. This story tells of how the grail is in the keeping of Amfortas who is the Grail King and of how he was wounded by the sacred spear that was thrust into the side of Christ at his crucifixion. Thereafter Amfortas is only able to find relief from his pain when he goes fishing and so he spends all his days by a lake side while his kingdom declines into hopelessness and barrenness. In The Lord of the Rings this relationship between king and people is displayed throughout the story. The final volume of the trilogy is entitled The Return of the King and tells of how Gondor and the West are healed as Aragorn returns in triumph to claim the crown.

The relationship between kings as they manifest themselves in the world and kings as they are in their archetypal reality is always complicated. At the time of the death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession to the throne of her son, Charles, I wrote a piece on words spoken by Merlin in C.S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. I think that they express this tension perfectly. “The Saxon king of yours, who sits at Windsor, now, is there no help in him?” Merlin knows that the true King of Logres, of Britain, is not the one who occupies the throne in Windsor but it is the Pendragon, the archetypal king. Only the true king or queen can heal, something that Tolkien beautifully expresses in the chapter when Aragorn comes to the Houses of Healing after the battle on the Pelennor Fields. It is the hands of a true king that are the hands of a healer and in the Christian story this is displayed in the figure of Christ, the true king, who serves the people, who lays down his life for them, and who heals all creation. The way in which this story has shaped the whole of western history and still does, albeit often in sadly diminished ways, has recently been demonstrated in Tom Holland’s masterful study, Dominion. Théoden is a true king who demonstrates this in laying down his life for his people. They recognise this truth and so they gladly follow him. As Aragorn says as preparation is made for battle, “even the defeat of Rohan will be glorious in song”.

“Now, Lord… Look Out Upon Your Land. Breathe the Free Air Again.” Théoden Begins to Emerge From Dark Thoughts into Free Action.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 671-673

The first thing that Gandalf does after freeing Théoden from the malign influence of Wormtongue is to bring him out from his hall into the chill morning air as winter begins to give way to spring in the world about Edoras, and Théoden gives careful attention to the weather that they encounter.

“From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder, and the lightning far away flickered among the tops of hidden hills. But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding, rolling away southward to the sea. Suddenly through a rent in the clouds behind them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass.”

This is a passage full of symbolic meaning. The storm coming out of the east being blown away by a wind from the north and light breaking through dark clouds turning everything into silver. So it was that Eorl the Young rode out of the North to deliver Gondor long ago and now deliverance is coming out of the North in the form of the entirely unexpected returning King and the entirely unlikely form of a hobbit going step by step toward Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom.

Like all great writers, Tolkien is capable of offering his readers layers of meaning within his use of imagery, just as his characters, and his readers too, have the capacity to read the same layers of meaning both in the text and in daily experience, if we should choose to do so. We might choose to limit our reading of text and experience to the random elements that make them up but we would be impoverished if we were to to do this. Théoden’s comment as he breathes the air outside his hall is to remark, with austere simplicity that it is not so dark there, but we know from what we have learned about Théoden’s recent experience how much is contained within these words. It is clear that he is choosing to read his experience of weather in a meaningful way and this deliberate giving of meaning will both continue his healing and enable him to enter into the realm of free action once again following his imprisonment within the darkness of his hall.

Gandalf deliberately chooses to bring Théoden into an unprotected experience of weather precisely to bring him into freedom once again. While Wormtongue has sought to persuade him that everything outside the protected realm of Meduseld is a threat of danger that is to be feared, Gandalf does nothing to diminish this sense of threat. Indeed he tells Théoden that he is “come into a peril greater than the wit of Wormtongue” could weave into his dreams. But even as he admits the reality of the peril, Gandalf also shows Théoden the joy of simply being alive and fully alive. Théoden is no longer crippled by fear. If he is to die then he will embrace this reality too and will not fear it.

The contrast between the protected space of a dwelling place and the unprotected reality of the world outside is one that Tolkien often returns to in The Lord of the Rings. Later, in The Return of the King we will learn that Sauron constantly weaves “veils of Shadow” about himself in Barad-dûr. In many ways he is the master-hider from reality, both hating and fearing the real. But if he is the biggest example of the way in which a dwelling place is created primarily by fear of what lies outside it, many others copy him. Even Rivendell and Lothlórien are hidden and protected realms, descendents, in their way, of Nargothrond, Gondolin and Doriath. And although we thought about how in Treebeard’s dwelling in Wellinghall there was little distinction between the world outside it and the world inside nevertheless the Ents sought to make the forest a protected space for the thriving of trees. Maybe only Gandalf lives a pilgrim life that is undefended but he too needs homes in which to rest and be restored. Perhaps at best we need a rhythm of free air and weather, but homes to live in too, and Théoden has lived too long at home and needs to breathe again if he is to find wholeness once more.

“Your Fingers Would Remember Their Old Strength Better, if They Grasped a Sword-hilt.” Gandalf and The Healing of Théoden.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 671-677

It is in the record for the 2nd of March in the year 3019 of the Third Age in the Tale of Years that we are told explicitly, “Gandalf comes to Edoras and heals Théoden.” And yet what kind of healing is this when the patient will be dead within two weeks, falling in battle before Minas Tirith, slain by the Lord of the Nazgûl? Surely if Gandalf had left Théoden to the darkness of Meduseld and the care of Wormtongue he would have lived longer. At least until the armies of Saruman overcame the defence of Edoras and he fell in his own hall.

Last week we thought about how Gandalf overthrew Wormtongue, revealing for a brief moment something of his greatness and power, now made all the more potent after he was sent back again by command of Ilúvatar to complete his work in Middle-earth. And as Wormtongue grovels on the floor Gandalf calls Théoden to rise from his chair and leave the darkness of his hall. At first Théoden’s steps are uncertain and he is aided by Éowyn, sister of Éomer and Théoden’s niece. But even as he begins to walk again strength slowly returns to his body and as he steps out of the doors of his hall he takes in deep breaths of fresh cool air and feels the rain upon his face.

“It is not so dark here,” he says to Gandalf. And Gandalf replies, “Nor does age lie so heavily on your shoulders as some would have you think”

At Gandalf’s bidding Théoden casts aside his stick and draws himself up slowly, “as a man that is stiff from long bending over some dull toil”.

Théoden calls for Éomer to be released from his imprisonment, imposed upon him after his disobedience in riding north to deal with the orc company that were going to Isengard bearing Pippin and Merry as prisoners and for threatening death to Wormtongue in Théoden’s presence. As they wait for Éomer to come Gandalf secretly takes Théoden into his confidence about Frodo’s mission to take the Ring to Mordor and as he does so “the light shone brighter in Théoden’s eyes, and at the last he rose from his seat to his full height”.

For a brief moment Théoden is stirred by the tale of Frodo’s bravery and the hope of victory but soon he becomes aware again of the slenderness of that hope and slumps back into a seat. Like Frodo in the study at Bag End a year before he bemoans his fate that such evil things should come to him instead of the peace that old age has earned and he clutches at his knees with his wrinkled hands.

“Your fingers would remember their old strength better, if they grasped a sword hilt,” said Gandalf.

Éomer offers Théoden his own sword and new strength surges through the body of the old man. He swings the sword aloft and cries out a mighty call to arms.

“Forth Eorlingas!”

The King of Rohan will go to war at the head of his men.

Glory lies ahead of him in the last days of his life and he will be remembered as the greatest King of Rohan since Eorl himself rode victoriously to the relief of Gondor many years before. But the question remains to be answered. What kind of healing does Gandalf perform when the patient’s life is almost certainly shortened by it? Was not Théoden right in saying that he had earned the right to peace in his old age?

It was Abraham Lincoln, another man whose life was violently foreshortened, who said that “it’s not the years in your life that count, but the life in your years”. Such a spirit seems to run very much counter to the contemporary desire to extend life for as long as possible, even to achieve some form of immortality. And this is not only a desire of our own time. Tolkien gave us the Kings of Númenor who were seduced by Sauron to resent death as a form of unjust punishment who tried to seize immortality by force. Elendil’s faithfulness in opposing his king and Sauron meant an acceptance of death but also, as Aragorn was one day to say to Arwen that “we are not bound to the circles of the world, and beyond them there is more than memory”. Théoden, in accepting his healing, foreshortens his life but in those last days he lives that life to its fulness.

“I Have Not Passed Through Fire and Death to Bandy Crooked Words With a Serving-Man Till The Lightning Falls. ” Gandalf Overcomes Wormtongue in Meduseld.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 668-671

As Gandalf and his companions enter the hall of Théoden Tolkien gives us many contrasts. The light of the sun falls only upon the image of Eorl the Young while everything else is in cloying darkness. A man sits upon a gilded chair “so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf; but his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow.” This man has a beard that reaches his knees “but his eyes still burned with a bright light”.

In other words we are meant to see that the decline of the House of Eorl is only superficial. There is a potency within Rohan that now lies hidden but could be unveiled in a moment. Gandalf knows this and appeals to Théoden to join the conflict against Sauron.

But there is one other person who is, perhaps, more aware than any of the hidden power of Rohan and that is Grima, Wormtongue, the King’s chief counsellor. He has long been secretly in the service of Saruman ever working to weaken the resistance of the Rohirrim against his true master, ever weakening the resolve of Théoden to resist him. When Saruman was not at open war against Rohan it was easy to convince Théoden that he posed no threat. But when open war began Wormtongue’s task became more difficult. Now what he sought to achieve was to weaken Théoden’s resolve and to convince him that his only hope lay in keeping the larger part of his force within Edoras so that in the battle at the Fords of the Isen where Théodred, Théoden’s son fell in battle, his armies were insufficient in number to mount an effective defence. And, perhaps worst of all, the King of Rohan was sitting upon a chair in his darkened hall while his people were falling in battle vainly seeking to defend their homes.

In his guise as the Grey Pilgrim Gandalf has always sought to achieve his purpose by encouragement and persuasion. He has never used force except by necessity. He has remained true to the charge that the Istari, the wizards, were given by the Valar not “to reveal themselves in forms of majesty, or to seek to rule the wills of Men or Elves by open display of power” (Unfinished Tales p.389). As the secret keeper of Narya the Red, one of the three Elven Rings forged by Celebrimbor he has sought to kindle hearts and not to dominate them. But now the great crisis of the Third Age of Arda has come. There is no longer the time to work in this way. in time past Gandalf had been willing to accept rejection patiently, to withdraw from Edoras as he did upon Shadowfax after his escape from Isengard, but now there is no time to act in this fashion. Saruman is at open war with Rohan and, worst of all, so is the Dark Lord in Mordor.

And so in this moment when a choice must be made Gandalf casts aside his tattered cloak and reveals himself in power.

“The wise speak only of what they know, Grima son of Gálmód. A witless worm you have become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.”

There is a particular kind of wisdom required to know the true moment of crisis when all normal forms of action must be cast aside and replaced by decision. Some are too quick to do this and so act too soon. Gandalf knows that patient diplomacy is now insufficient, that if Rohan remains passive it will fall, so too will Gondor, and ultimately so will all the free peoples of Middle-earth and so night will fall. Gandalf has passed through his own personal crisis in his battle against the Balrog of Moria that ended with his death and so no longer fears anything less than that. He must rouse Théoden from his illusion of decrepitude and with the King restored to who he truly is so too will the Rohirrim rediscover their greatness.

“Upon One Form the Sunlight Fell. A Young Man Upon a White Horse”. Eorl the Young in the Hall of a Broken King.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.660-668

The hall of the King of Rohan is an unhappy place. In Peter Jackson’s film, The Two Towers, this is effectively depicted by giving Edoras the sense that it is a barren place where nothing grows with a harsh wind sweeping through it. As Gandalf and his companions arrive at the doors of Meduseld they are met first with suspicion and are even refused entry. But at last word comes that they are to be permitted to enter and so they approach Théoden in his darkened hall.

Tolkien tells us that “The hall was long and wide and filled with shadows and half lights”. The travellers need a few moments to allow their eyes to adjust to the darkness within but as they do so they begin to see that “the pillars were richly carved, gleaming dully with gold and half-seen colours”.

This is the world within which the King of Rohan lives. A “half-seen” world. He spends his days seated upon a gilded chair, “a man so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf”. Théoden is a broken man, one so given to age that it feels as if there is no life left in him. It is a theme displayed within the Grail legend that when the King is wounded, robbed of life and of fruitfulness, the whole land becomes a desert, incapable of sustaining life.

One thing within the hall seems to break through this barren darkness.

“Many woven cloths were hung upon the walls, and over their wide spaces marched figures of ancient legend, some dim with years, some darkling in the shade. But upon one form the sunlight fell: a young man upon a white horse. He was blowing a great horn, and his yellow hair was flowing in the wind.”

This is Eorl the Young, the first King of Rohan, who rode out of the North at the head of his men to the aid of the armies of Gondor who were hard-pressed in battle upon the Field of Celebrant. After victory in the battle Eorl and Cirion, Steward of Gondor, swore oaths to one another at the tomb of Elendil upon the hallowed Hill of Halifirien. Cirion gave the plains of Calenardhon to Eorl and his descendents to be their land in perpetuity, swearing the same oath of alliance that Elendil had sworn to Gil-galad before they went to war with Sauron together at the end of the Second Age. Eorl promised that if ever Gondor were in great need again Rohan would ride to their aid “and whatsoever evil, or threat, or assault may come upon them we will aid them to the utmost end of our strength,”

It is this image upon which Théoden has to gaze from his chair from day to day. This image of youthful vigour and the story with which Théoden would have been raised from his youth stands in judgement over his aged and decrepit form and over the people who once rode to glory behind their lord and now sink into shame behind this dying king. It is Saruman who will name this shame. “What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?”

Théoden feels this shame deeply every day. At the end of his life when his body lies broken beneath his horse at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields he will name it, ” I go to my fathers. And even in their mighty company I shall not be ashamed. I felled the black serpent. A grim morn, and a glad day, and a golden sunset.”

Théoden lives in shame each day that he looks upon his mighty ancestors but although shame cripples the one who feels it shame is always hated. The one who feels it never comes to accept it. At any moment the one who feels shame can cry out in angry protest against it. No one, least of all the one who feels shame, can predict when this moment will come. Nor in the story that Tolkien tells can Wormtongue, the King’s chief counsellor, who is deliberately dragging Théoden into the misery and degradation that he now feels in order that he will not make effective resistance to Saruman in the war that now rages.

“Where Now The Horse and The Rider?” Aragorn Sings of The Brevity of Human Life.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 660-665

After a hard and weary crossing of the plains of Rohan Gandalf and his three companions arrive at the feet of the White Mountains and to Meduseld, the hall of Théoden amidst the courts of Edoras. Legolas is the first to see them clearly and Gandalf asks him to describe what he can see.

“I see a white stream that comes from the snows,” he said. “Where it issues from the shadow of the vale a great hill rises upon the east. A dike and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it. Within there rise the roofs of houses; and in the midst, set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall of Men. And it seems to my eyes that it is thatched with gold.”

As the road draws near to the gates of Edoras it passes under many grassy mounds covered with white flowers. These are the barrows in which the kings of Rohan lie. There are sixteen of them, “seven mounds upon the left, and nine upon the right”, and the first was raised 500 years before this time. To Legolas it is but a little while but to the Riders of the Mark this seems so long ago “that the raising of this house is but a memory in song, and the years before are lost in the mist of time.”

There are many barrows in England, none of which are made beautiful by Evermind. They are thousands of years old and “lost in the mist of time” and yet to Legolas this would still be but a little while.

This contrast between the immensity of time itself and the brevity of each human life within it is one of the major themes within Tolkien’s works. Elves and Men feel this contrast in different ways but both feel its sadness. Elves are immortal unless they suffer violent death and yet they live amidst change and decay. The three Rings that Celebrimbor forged in the Second Age and hid from Sauron were an effort to mitigate the effects of Time. They have done much good and Gandalf himself bears one of them, using it secretly to warm human hearts wherever he goes, but they are ultimately a futile effort to prevent what is inevitable. And for humankind, while they feel deeply the immensity of time they feel also how short each life within time is doomed to be.

Aragorn has been here before. In the days of his lonely wanderings in Middle-earth after learning from Elrond his true identity as the heir of Isildur and Elendil he served both the Steward of Gondor and the King of Rohan, preparing in hope for the day on which he would claim the throne. Thanks to the way in which he has inherited the longevity of the Númenorians he has already lived a long life by the time he returns to Edoras. He is older than Théoden and none of the people who now live in Rohan have any memory of him from the days of Thengel, Théoden’s father. In his time among the Rohirrim he mastered their language and now he begins to sing from the Lay of Eorl, words “laden with the sadness of Mortal Men”.

Where now the horse and the rider? Where  is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. 
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning, 
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

Tolkien draws here from the poetry of the people who created kingdoms in England after the departure of the Romans in 410 A.D. Like the Rohirrim they felt the brevity of life deeply, the tragedy of what it is to be human, to be aware of the immensity of time and space, of the possibility of the eternal, and to know that life is too short to explore the potential of all this. He knew the story that St Bede recounted in his history of the English people, of Bishop Paulinus standing before the King of Northumbria and telling him of the Christian faith. And of how, after Paulinus had finished speaking that Coifi, the high priest replied and spoke of how to be human is to be like a bird in winter flying from the dark and storm outside the hall of the King and enjoying, for a brief moment, the light and warmth within before returning again to the cold and dark outside. “So man appears on earth for a little while,” Coifi concludes, “but of what went before this life, or what follows, we know nothing.”

And so the scene is set for the encounter between the travellers and Théoden in Meduseld, upon whom, with the malicious aid of Wormtongue, this tragic sense of life lies so heavily.