Aragorn

“Well, Master, We’re in a Fix and No Mistake.” Some Thoughts on Hobbits and Heroes.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) p. 787

I spent a pleasant evening with a friend in a pub recently (Thanks, Ben!) talking about The Lord of the Rings and we got to thinking about heroes and, more specifically, the kind of heroes that Tolkien’s hobbits are. We compared them to superheroes in, say, a Marvel comic or film. Now I was an avid reader of those comics as a boy and I am happy to say this with pride now with C.S Lewis’s thought in mind that he would rather see a boy reading a comic with pleasure than a classic novel because he thought he had to. I also fell in love with Narnia so I hope that would have pleased him too. I was fascinated by the characters of the heroes and their inner struggles just as much as their triumphs over evil. I was just starting to become aware of my own struggles and they gave me some comfort and the thought that I might be a hero too.

Heroes from Marvel Comics and Films

But we agreed that Tolkien created a different kind of hero in Frodo and Sam. In fact, as Tom Shippey has shown, he created the kind of hero that could only have been created in a 20th century story, the kind that would have experienced industrial warfare, as Tolkien and Lewis did on the Western Front of the First World War of 1914-18. And while in a Marvel story the hero comes to save the day while the rest of us run for cover or stand helplessly with our hands raised over our heads as the forces of evil destroy our city around us, Tolkien’s hobbits are more like us.

Yesterday I listened, deeply moved, to a news report that the French military attaché to the United Kingdom unexpectedly arrived at the hundredth birthday celebration of a veteran of the Normandy landings of June 1944 and presented him with France’s highest honour, the Legion d’honneur. I was moved by this because my father took part in those landings and, had he lived, would recently have celebrated his own hundredth birthday. I felt that my Dad was being honoured too. The old gentleman was interviewed on the radio and, speaking with admirable clarity, said that he did not feel that he deserved the award because, as he put it, “I was just there”. I think my father would have said the same thing. In fact the only story that he ever told us of the experience was that as he was going ashore on the Normandy beaches in his American built landing craft he noted that it had an ice-cream maker fitted and wondered what it was doing there. If any of my American readers know the answer please let me know in the comments below.

British soldiers coming ashore on the Normandy beaches in June 1944.

But that “I was just there” remark typifies Tom Shippey’s argument about the “heroes” of 20th century warfare. Whereas Lancelot, riding to rescue Guinevere from her captors, is a hero of romance, the veterans of the Normandy landings of 1944 were “just there”, doing their duty and trying to stay alive.

Tolkien gives us both kind of heroes in his story though he hardly ever used the word. In Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, following the orcs of Isengard across the plains of Rohan in the hope of freeing Merry and Pippin from their captivity we have the kind of hero that Sir Thomas Malory would have recognised in his Morte D’Arthur. In Frodo and Sam trying to find a way down from the Emyn Muil to the livid marshes below we have something quite different. They are more like the men going ashore on the Normandy beaches in 1944. They just keep going. Or, at least, they try to.

But Frodo and Sam give a dignity to every person who has ever just kept on going, trying their best to do whatever good they can in their lives. I have had conversations with my daughters about this recently as they have looked in horror at evils in the world and have wondered what can be done. I have thought about it in reference to my own life as I have asked myself the question, “What use have I been?” And like Frodo and Sam, I won’t pretend that my story has been like Aragorn’s or Lancelot’s although there was a time when I wanted to be like that, but, whether I ever write it down or not, I will try to create my own Red Book in my head of what I have tried to do, of how I have tried to answer Gandalf’s principle that all any of us can do is “to decide what to do with the time that is given us”.

And not to give up.

Frodo and Sam just keeping going.

Ten Years of Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings on WordPress.

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It was on October 30th 2013 that I first posted on WordPress seeking Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings. On those first two days I was so excited that nine people around the world had read the introduction to my work. By the end of that year those nine had been added to by a further 390 and so my project had begun.

My daughter, Bethan took this photo of me outside the rooms where she taught Modern European History at Magdalen College, Oxford last year. Fans of the Inklings will know that it was on Addison’s Walk in the gardens of the College that Tolkien and Lewis went for the famous walk that ended with Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.

My first encounter with The Lord of the Rings came in the autumn of 1968. I was 13 years old and a pupil at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, one of those schools originally founded in the middle of the 16th century in England. And while Tolkien attended a school originally founded in Birmingham by Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, mine was founded a few years later by his half-sister, Elizabeth I.

It is worth noting that in 1968 comparatively little of Tolkien’s work had been published and The Silmarillion was yet to come. So apart from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit little was known of the history of Middle-earth except what could be found in the appendices to The Return of the King. But I was a lover and not a scholar and so, in the years to come I returned to what I knew again and again, always with a sense of melancholy as Frodo’s ship went into the West but with the knowledge that I could return to the beginning on another occasion.

It was in the first decade of this century that I began to wonder if I might write about the book that I loved and as I read it once again I began to fill notebooks with my thoughts on the text and to find references to the ideas that I was gleaning from it. I thought that forty years of reading Tolkien might give me some kind of authority to write about his work. But nothing seemed to flow until one evening at home I watched a movie on TV with my wife and younger daughter, Rebecca, and a new idea came to mind.

The movie was called Julie and Julia and in it I was introduced to a thing called a blog. The movie told the story of a young New Yorker, Julie Powell, who decided to cook all 520 recipes in the book written by the legendary cook, Julia Childs in a single year and to tell the story in a blog. As well as enjoying the story itself I began to realise that while I could not construct whole chapters on my favourite book I could construct a short piece of 700 to 800 words. My mind seemed to think in arguments of that kind of length quite naturally. After all I was a church minister, a priest of the Church of England, and I constructed sermons that felt like that.

The first year was a bit of a struggle and in 2014 I published irregularly and my work was read by just a handful of people each day. In 2015 I began to write more regularly and my readership grew to a dozen a day. I would publish a piece once a week and that felt all right within my other commitments. In November 2016 my readership grew to over a thousand in that month for the first time and thereafter kept on steadily growing and by the time I was was appointed to my current post in December 2018 I was being read by about 2000 people each month.

At that point I felt that I could not write regularly and minister to seven busy parishes in rural Worcestershire close to where Tolkien grew up and where his mother’s family used to farm on a farm known locally as Bag End. There was a gap in my publishing of over a year but to my surprise my readership held up pretty well. People were still finding and reading my work.

Then came Covid in March 2020 and we were all locked away inside our homes. Suddenly I had time to write and people had time to read. During that spring and summer I got two mentions in Google News and suddenly my readership grew from a little over 2,000 a month to around 5,000. Even after I was able to return to more normal working practices I kept on writing, getting up at around 5 a.m on a Saturday morning and writing my 700 to 800 words. A further leap in my readership came in the autumn of 2022 with Amazon’s Rings of Power and in September and October of that year I got over 11,000 readers. The number fell back a little bit after the series ended but during this year I have had regularly had between 8,000 and 9,000 readers a month and by the end of 2023 I will have had over 100,000 readers during the year for the very first time. It is a long way from the handful that I was getting each day ten years ago. Over 50 pieces that I have written have been read over 1,000 times and my two most popular posts have been read over 20,000 times.

It has been a rich experience and I would like to say a special thank you to the people who have accompanied me along the way. Brenton Dickieson who writes the blog, A Pilgrim in Narnia, has been an important regular encourager and I will always remember the weekend that he stayed with us as he made his way from Prince Edward Island in Canada to Oxford to give a lecture to the C.S Lewis Society there. We went walking in the Malvern Hills above the town where Lewis went to school and found places to which Lewis made reference in his imaginative works. And I am still incredibly excited every time I see a comment and know that a new conversation might be about to begin with someone new. Just leave a comment and we can start to talk.

So thank you everyone for travelling with me along the way. And thank you to WordPress for being such enabling hosts. I wonder where the blog is going to take me next.

“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.”

Peter Jackson’s imagining of Meduseld.

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.

“I Have Spoken Words of Hope. But Only of Hope. Hope is Not Victory.” Gandalf Looks to The Future.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 652,653

The moment is about to come when Gandalf will lead Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to Edoras and to Meduseld, Théoden’s golden hall in the realm of Rohan. At that moment the story will leap forward once again even as Gandalf and the three companions leap forward borne by Shadowfax and the horses that ran from the camp on the night before Aragorn and his friends entered Fangorn. But just before this great leap there has been a pause, a drawing of breath, as Gandalf speaks of how things stand at this point in the story. And there is also the conclusion of a theme that has run through the story ever since he fell in Moria in the battle at the bridge of Khazad-dûm.

Aragorn speaks to his grief-stricken companions.

It was Aragorn who spoke then to his grief-stricken companions.

“Farewell, Gandalf!” he cried. “Did I not say to you: if you pass the doors of Moria, beware? Alas that I spoke true! What hope have we without you?”

And then he added words that would both drive him on yet hang around his neck like the mariner’s albatross in Coleridge’s great poem:

“We must do without hope,” he said. “At least we may be avenged. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.”

To do without hope. To carry on without any sense that at the end of the long road there will be a completion of the taskdone. To carry on because that is what must be done and for no other reason.

And step by step, from the emergence of the Fellowship from the dark of Moria “beyond hope under the sky” until the reunion “beyond all hope” in the forest of Fangorn Aragorn has journeyed hopelessly.

Now hope is restored. Surely with Gandalf beside them once more there is hope they will triumph. But Gandalf speaks once again of their hope of victory.

“I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory. War is upon us and all our friends, a war in which only the use of the Ring could give us surety of victory. It fills me with great sorrow and great fear: for much shall be destroyed and all may be lost. I am Gandalf, Gandalf the White, but Black is mightier still.”

I am Gandalf the White but Black is Mightier Yet.

To follow a road hopelessly is a courageous act for it is to do what must be done simply because the deed is right and not for any sense that a reward of some kind might lie at the road’s ending. We might compare the way in which Aragorn and his companions journey onward from Moria to the journey that Thorin Oakenshield and his company make to the Lonely Mountain in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. There, we might say, a part of what sustains hope upon the journey is simply not to think too much about its end, upon the dragon that must be faced and overcome. The dwarves and their hobbit companion go from obstacle to obstacle thinking of nothing more than how to deal with each one as it comes until at the secret door into the mountain Thorin informs Bilbo that the time has come for him to do his job without any sense of how this is to be accomplished. Hope of treasure certainly drives them forward but in another sense they also travel without hope because hope of success lies too close to fear of failure and death in the flames of Smaug. It is best not to think either of success or failure.

Aragorn has also put aside all thoughts of triumph or disaster, only focusing on whether the deed is just or not. But now Gandalf is returned and his hope rekindled. Gandalf does not counsel that they should do without hope. Indeed he tells Legolas that he should go “where he must go and hope”. But he warns them that hope is not victory.

I am reminded of the grim and rather frightening deputy head at my school who, when he would lead prayers at the start of the day, would do so with these words of St Ignatius Loyola. They seem to have been written in very much the same spirit that Gandalf displays here.

“Lord Jesus, teach us to serve you as you deserve. To give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to labour and not to seek for rest, to give and not to seek for any reward save that of knowing that we do your will.”

To labour and not to seek for rest. Yonatan Ayala depicts the labour of the three hunters in their journey across the plains of Rohan.

“That at Least is Enough to Show That He Was a Hobbit.” Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli Search for News of Their Friends.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 636-639

When Gimli awakes under the eaves of Fangorn, with his “very bones” chilled, after the night in which the strange visitor came to the camp and the horses loaned to the three hunters ran away, Merry and Pippin are spending the day together with Bregalad as Entmoot continues. The young hobbits are safe in the care of the Ents although Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli could not possibly know this. Indeed Gimli, at least, still regards Fangorn Forest as a place of threat and menace and not, as we have learned, as a place of refuge and kindly welcome to those who are fleeing from danger.

Aragorn and Legolas search for clues concerning Merry and Pippin

We know that there is little possibility that the hunters will find Merry and Pippin, at least at this point in the story, but they are resolved to continue the search until either they find them or fail, even perish, in the attempt.

The search for clues begins close to the site of the battle in which Éomer’s company first surrounded, and then wiped out, the orcs who were taking Merry and Pippin to Isengard, and it is Aragorn, the greatest tracker of the age, who makes the first find.

“‘Here at last we find news!’ said Aragorn. He lifted up a broken lead for them to see, a large pale leaf of golden hue, now fading and turning brown.”

It is one of the mallorn-leaves of Lórien in which the elves had carefully wrapped the gift of lembas, the waybread that proves so important in sustaining the travellers, especially Frodo and Sam, upon their journey. And there are other signs nearby. One is the presence of lembas crumbs, another the cut cords of the bonds that had held Merry and Pippin, and the other the orc blade that Pippin had used to cut Merry’s bonds.

Legolas is perplexed by the strange tale that these signs seem to tell but Aragorn is able to interpret their meaning. As we know Pippin had been able to free his hands earlier in the forced march across the plains of Rohan. We know too that Grishnákh had tried to escape the battle carrying Merry and Pippin one under each arm in the hope that he could take them to Mordor and claim a reward for bringing a prize to the Dark Lord that Saruman had clearly coveted so much. And we know that Grishnákh was discovered and then killed by the Rohirrim who were not able to discover the hobbits because they were wearing their elven cloaks.

And there is a further detail about which all the companions are able to agree. It is clear that before they continued their journey, one, or as Aragorn guesses and hopes, both of the hobbits sat down to eat a meal of lembas.

The first main scene of The Lord of the Rings is located in The Ivy Bush, a small inn on the Bywater Road that the Gaffer Gamgee, Sam’s father, likes to frequent. This is no random detail. Hobbit life is built around the enjoyment of food, drink and good company. Tolkien described himself as “a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe and like good plain food.” He might have added his liking for beer, ale and the company of friends. It is no mere accident that some of the finest literary work of the 20th century, work that was wonderfully imaginative, brilliantly critical and profoundly philosophical, arose from The Inklings who used to gather in The Eagle and Child on St Giles’ in Oxford.

Sadly we have no photographs of a gathering of The Inklings in The Eagle and Child in Oxford; but which of them could one imagine with a smart phone at the ready to record the occasion? I will leave it to my readers to put names to the faces.
The Eagle and Child on St Giles’s in Oxford. It is temporarily closed for a major refurbishment. We are assured that it will be sympathetic. When it reopens I look forward to enjoying its pleasures. Would anyone care to join me there? Perhaps as we enter we could call out, as C.S Lewis used to do, “Any pies today?”

It is no mistake that one of the main things that makes the four hobbits , and especially Merry and Pippin, who set out upon the impossible journey first to Rivendell and then southwards towards Mordor so likeable, is their simple pleasure in food and drink. As Gandalf said of Bilbo and of hobbits in general in The Hobbit, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” It is the possibility of a merrier world that touches so many of the hearts of those who meet Merry and Pippin in their journey, even the glacial hearted Denethor of Gondor. And at this moment of the story as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli search amidst the debris of battle for signs of their friends it transforms the mere doing of a duty into a passionate and loving self-sacrifice.

Hobbits enjoying the conviviality of The Prancing Pony in Bree, although on this occasion it rather got them into trouble!

“This Old Man Had a Hat Not a Hood.” Who Did The Three Hunters See Under The Eaves of Fangorn?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.573-577

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have found the site of the battle between the Riders of Rohan and the Orc band who had taken Merry and Pippin but they have found no sign of the hobbits themselves. Now before they continue their search they decide to make camp for the night right under the eaves of an ancient chestnut tree. They build a fire taking care not to cut wood from any living tree but only that which they can gather from the ground about them.

As they rest by their fire they ponder the journey that lies before them, a journey that is likely to take them into the forest itself.

“Celeborn warned us not to go far into Fangorn,” Legolas says. “Do you know why, Aragorn?”

But Aragorn knows little of the forest save that it is old, “as old as the forest by the Barrow-downs, and it is far greater. Elrond says that the two are akin, the last strongholds of the mighty woods of the Elder Days, in which the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept. Yet Fangorn holds some secret of its own. What it is I do not know.”

Alan Lee evokes the wonderful mystery of forests.

The journeys of The Lord of the Rings sometimes lead under the ground, such as the journey through Moria, the Paths of the Dead under the White Mountains between Rohan and Gondor and the path through Shelob’s Lair that passes under the mountains that surround Mordor. Each of these paths hide a deadly peril. The Balrog lurks in the depths of Moria; the Dead haunt the paths under the White Mountains; and Shelob lies in wait for any that might pass through her lair under the mountains of Mordor. All who pass through these dark ways will come to an end of themselves in some way and emerge the other side as different from the self that first entered in.

But the journeys through forests are different in nature. In these journeys a secret is encountered. The hobbits encounter Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, a strange and delightful wonder. In Lothlórien, the Golden Wood, the Fellowship meet the Lady of the Wood, Galadriel. And in Fangorn Forest Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard, the oldest of the Ents, the Onodrim of which Legolas speaks by the campfire. Each forest is alive, not just as the aggregation of many things, many separate trees and other plants, but as an intelligence that holds all the separate parts together and which is expressed in the secret life hidden therein.

The night passes and Gimli is on watch by the fire when something happens that awakens all three. Or perhaps I should say that two things happen. An old man “wrapped in a great cloak” is seen standing in the firelight but who disappears when challenged by Aragorn. And the other thing is that the horses run off at the same moment.

Shadowfax, Chief of the Mearas.

Gimli is convinced that the old man is Saruman and that he has driven their horses away. He is partly correct in this. The following day the companions will meet Gandalf in the forest. It is one of the great moments of the story. Gimli will ask Gandalf if it was him or Saruman who he had seen by the fire and Gandalf will reassure him that he was not there so it was likely to have been Saruman; that Saruman had not been able to wait for his orcs to bring him the hobbits and with the hobbits the greatest prize of all, the One Ring. But it was not Saruman who drove away the horses. The following morning Aragorn will remark to the others that the horses did not sound as if they were fleeing in terror and Legolas will reply that “they spoke as horses will when they meet a friend that they have long missed.” The friend, as we will learn later, is Shadowfax, the greatest of horses who has drawn near to Fangorn in order to await Gandalf. If the companions knew this they would not have to worry about their horses. As Galadriel told them their paths are laid out before their feet and all they need do is to walk the paths in trust.

Gandalf and Saruman together.

“How Shall a Man Judge What to Do in Such Times?” Eomer Ponders The Making of Choices. To Aid or To Thwart Aragorn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 565-571

Eomer dismisses his company in order to speak to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in private, and in order to give himself time to make his choice. Whether to aid or to thwart the hunters in their effort to find Merry and Pippin. He has already taken a risk in leading his men against the orc band that had slain Boromir and taken the hobbits prisoner. Theoden, the king, did not give him permission to go. Now what will he do about these three strangers who walk across the fields of Rohan?

Eomer needs space in order to make his decision. Anke Eissmann depicts the meeting between him and Aragorn.

Eomer needs space to think. He also needs space to reorient himself after all the things that he has just been told.

“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. Elf and Dearf in company walk in our daily fields; and folk speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the Sword comes back to war that was broken in the long ages ere the fathers of our fathers rode into the Mark! How shall a man judge what to do in such times?”

In my last piece on this blog I wrote about a world “grown strange”. I wrote about how hobbits were dismissed as mere “children’s tales out of the North” while Galadriel is feared as one who belongs to “net-weavers and sorcerers”. Tolkien once wrote that if someone comes bearing tales of dragons either he will not be believed and so will be dismissed as a mad man or he will be believed and so will be regarded as dangerous and uncanny. Aragorn and his companions seem to be regarded as both at one and the same time and so Eothain, who speaks for the ordinary person dismisses them as “wild folk” who should be left to their fancies.

Bilbo tells tales of dragons and so is dismissed as mad, even though he gives very good parties.

It was not just because the world would be a more delightful place if it were to be more magical, to be re-enchanted, that Tolkien and the other Inklings wrote their stories. It was because the world would be more true. So the good, the beautiful and the true are really one and in order for something to be true it is not necessary to separate it out from the beautiful.

Nor is it necessary to separate the true from the good. “How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” Aragorn’s answer is both clear and simple.

“As he has ever judged… Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”

Boromir began to make his choice to take the Ring while in the Golden Wood.

So Eomer is left with a choice to make. Aragorn has made it clear to him that he will not abandon Merry and Pippin. He determined to find them when at Tol Brandir even at the cost of his own life. If the wise choice were simply about finding out what was in his own interest and then pursuing it he would certainly not have followed the orc band. The wise choice would probably have been to go on to Minas Tirith. He could have spoken of his promise made to Boromir and expressed genuine regret about the unhappy fate of Merry and Pippin but the principle of self interest would have left him little choice in the matter. Of course by going to Minas Tirith he would have brought himself into conflict with Denethor who would have contested any claim that he might have made, but then politics and the achievement of power is always a matter of navigation through one set of circumstances after another in seeking to achieve the goal. That Aragorn would not have met with Gandalf once again in the Forest of Fangorn nor played his part in the defeat of Saruman and through that to win the loyalty of Rohan not just in the battles that immediately lay ahead but in the future too would simply be unfortunate. After all, it is not possible to achieve everything at any one moment. But Aragorn does not make this choice. He chooses the good in his loyalty to the young hobbits and so wins the respect and the aid of Eomer who chooses to try to do the good also. He gives horses to the three companions to aid them in their task and this choice will cost him his freedom, for some time at least.

“They Will Look for Him From The White Tower… But He Will Not Return.” Boromir is Laid to Rest in an Elven Boat.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991,2007) pp. 538-544

Legolas and Gimli find Aragorn kneeling beside the body of Boromir and, at first, they fear that he is mortally wounded too. But soon they are reassured and learn of all that has taken place, of the slaying of Boromir by many orcs as he sought to defend the hobbits.

Now there are questions to answer. Are the hobbits still alive or have they been taken by the orcs? And if they have been taken which way have they gone? They know that Boromir had gone to defend Merry and Pippin but were Frodo and Sam among them? What should they do now? Should they follow the orcs to aid Merry and Pippin or should they find Frodo’s tracks and follow him for the sake of the quest? It is an evil choice that lies before them.

“First we must tend the fallen,” Legolas says. “We cannot leave him lying like carrion among these foul orcs.”

Aragorn stands over the body of Boromir in this poignant depiction by Anke Eissmann.

They do not have time to bury Boromir or raise a cairn of stones above him and so they determine to lay him to rest in one of the elven boats. We are reminded here of the ship burials of the Norse or Germanic peoples of Europe. The most famous of these burials here in England is the Sutton Hoo burial from the early 7th century of an Anglo-Saxon king laid to rest in a a ship that was nearly 90 feet long and when discovered in a famous excavation in 1939 was found to contain the most spectacular treasures from as far afield as Byzantium and Sri Lanka.

The Sutton Hoo ship burial and the famous warrior’s mask now kept in the British Museum.

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli lay what treasures they can around the fallen hero, son of Denethor, Lord of Gondor. “The grey hood and elven-cloak they folded and placed beneath his head. They combed his long dark hair and arrayed it about his shoulders. The golden belt of Lórien gleamed about his waist. His helm they set beside him, and across his lap they laid the cloven horn and the hilt and shards of his sword; beneath his feet they put the swords of his enemies.”

And so the Anduin, the mighty river of Gondor, takes Boromir over the Rauros falls and down through Osgiliath “out into the Great Sea at night under the stars”.

It is a deeply poignant moment within the story. A brief pause amidst all the frantic action that has taken place that day and all that lies ahead of the three companions. As Tolkien was writing this scene he must have thought of the many fallen soldiers at the Battle of the Somme in which he fought and, most of all, of Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Bache Smith of the Tea Club, Barrovian Society, the T.C.B.S of King Edward’s School in Birmingham, both of whom fell in 1916.

For so many of the dead in that war there could be no pause amidst the fighting and the carnage amidst the trenches of the western front. Many bodies could not even be identified and it was not until after the war ended that the people of Great Britain began the long and patient task of creating memorials to their war dead. From the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, over which Queen Elizabeth’s coffin was carried at her funeral, to the memorial at the Menin Gate in Ypres in Belgium where those whose bodies were never identified are remembered, to the war cemeteries in Belgium and in France where thousands upon thousands lie, among whom are two of my mother’s uncles, and then the memorials raised in communities up and down the land for those who they had lost, the people of Britain did all that they could to honour their fallen. And we still do on each Sunday nearest to the 11th of November every year at those same memorials in all but a small number of villages across the land where everyone came home from the war. No such villages exist in my county of Worcestershire.

There is much debate among Tolkien scholars about the extent to which The Lord of the Rings is as much a memorial to the fallen of the Great War as it is the creation of a myth that reaches back into a distant past. The recent biopic about Tolkien’s early life certainly suggests this and I, for one, am persuaded. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli do all that they can to give meaning to the fall of Boromir and Tolkien makes heroes of the thousands who fell on the western front by creating a myth big enough to contain their stories.

One of the many war cemeteries in Belgium and Northern France from the Great War of 1914-18.

“It is I That Have Failed. Vain Was Gandalf’s Trust in Me.” Aragorn’s Despair at The Breaking of the Fellowship.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 537-540

“Alas!” said Aragorn. “Thus passes the heir of Denethor, Lord of the Tower of the Guard! This is a bitter end. Now the Company is all in ruin. It is I that have failed. Vain was Gandalf’s trust in me. What shall I do now? Boromir has laid it on me to go to Minas Tirith, and my heart desires it; but where are the Ring and the Bearer? How shall I find them and save the Quest from disaster?”

The Death of Boromir by Anke Eissmann

Boromir is dead, having fallen in the attempt to protect Merry and Pippin from the Uruk-hai of Isengard, and Aragorn kneels in despair beside his body. At the moment when he makes this speech he knows nothing of the whereabouts of any other member of the Fellowship. Boromir died before he could tell Aragorn whether Frodo and Sam were captured along with the young hobbits and he does not even know where Legolas and Gimli are. For all intents and purposes it seems that the Quest has failed and that all hope has died.

Aragorn does not know it yet, but this, for him, is the lowest and the darkest point of the story. From the moment when the Company was defeated in its attempt to cross the Misty Mountains beneath Caradhras and the decision was taken to attempt the journey through Moria Aragorn has been an inner pathway downwards to this place. It seems clear that he had some kind of foresight of Gandalf’s fall in Moria even before the battle at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Apart from the speech that he makes to the Fellowship in the dark of the Mines in order to raise their faltering morale he remains silent and a little distant. The next speech that he makes is to a grief stricken Company who have come through Moria but are themselves in despair at the loss of their guide. “We must do without hope, ” he says to them, and there is little doubt then that he has lost his own.

When, at last, the Fellowship reach the refuge of Lothlórien, Frodo descends from the hill of Cerin Amroth to find Aragorn “standing still and silent as a tree”, and hears him say, “Arwen vanimelda, namarië!” These are words of longing and of farewell as Aragorn bids his own farewell to any hope that he might achieve happiness in this life.

At the last parting from Lothlórien Galadriel reminds Aragorn of his mighty lineage and gives to him “the Elessar”, the green stone that Idril, the daughter of Turgon of Gondolin gave to Eärendil, her son, with the words, “there are grievous hurts to Middle-earth which maybe thou shalt heal”. Galadriel reminds Aragorn that he holds this story of healing as heir of Gondolin and of Eärendil, as rightful King of Gondor and of Arnor, and sends him upon his journey down the Anduin with this declaration ringing in his ears. When the boats of the Fellowship pass through the Argonath Aragorn greets his mighty ancestors as one who has come to claim the inheritance that is his but soon after comes the sundering and now he is alone amidst the wreckage of all his hope, both for personal happiness and for the world.

The Hildebrandt brothers depict the moment when Galadriel gives the Elessar to Aragorn.

Boromir dies with the horn of Gondor and his sword in his hand. Despite his own sense of failure Boromir dies a hero’s death in a way that both he and his warrior people understand. Such a death for them is a good death, offered in despite of despair. But at the very moment in which Boromir was fighting his last battle Aragorn was running first up, and then, down Amon Hen first in vain search for Frodo and then in vain attempt to come to Boromir’s aid. All is vain and Aragorn carries this sense in his unhappy heart even as he kneels beside Boromir. As those who know the ending of the story we know that this is Aragorn’s lowest point but he does not know this. For him it seems that a door is opening that bears the words that Dante reads above the gate of Hell. “Abandon all hope you that enter here.” There is no comfort that can be offered to Aragorn. Not yet. We must simply wait with him in silence.

Abandon all hope. Inger Edelfelt depicts Aragorn’s despair.

“You Have Conquered. Few Have Gained Such a Victory. Be at Peace!” Is Aragorn Just Being Kind to Boromir as He Dies?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.537-540

In Tolkien’s telling of the tale the whole of Boromir’s last fight takes place off stage and we are taken with Aragorn upon his pointless climb after Frodo up Amon Hen and then his equally pointless descent of the hill when he hears the horn of Boromir and realises that both Boromir and, probably, the hobbits are in need. At last he draws his bright sword, and crying out, Elendil! Elendil! he crashes through the trees.

But it is all too late. Aragorn finds Boromir “sitting with his back to a great tree” as if he was resting. His body is pierced by many orc arrows, his sword is broken near the hilt and his horn is cloven in two by his side.

Inger Edelfelt’s poignant depiction of the death of Boromir.

Boromir’s final words are both a report on how the hobbits have been taken by orcs and an admission of guilt.

“I tried to take the Ring from Frodo,” he said. “I am sorry. I have paid.”

Anke Eissmann depicts the terrible moment in which Boromir comes to try to take the Ring.

Aragorn’s response is one of great, and gentle, kindness.

“No!” said Aragorn, taking his hand and kissing his brow. “You have conquered. Few have gained such a victory. Be at peace! Minas Tirith shall not fall!”

And Boromir smiles; and then he dies.

Is Aragorn simply being kind to a dying man? One might begin to try to answer this question by saying that such kindness is never a simple matter. When we are with someone as they reach the moment in which they will cross the river, never to return, it is a deeply solemn affair. We are aware that a fellow human being is entering into a mystery about which we know almost nothing. If we are people of faith then we will have received from our traditions some sense of what awaits them and rightly we will seek to comfort the one who is dying with the confidence of that tradition but we all know that faith does not mean seeing. We may even receive some comfort from the dying. A good friend of my wife told me that when her mother was dying she began to speak with joy to the people who were waiting to greet her and our friend was, indeed, greatly comforted by this. But for all the comforts death remains a mystery.

“Alas!” said Aragorn. “Thus passes the heir of Denethor, Lord of the Tower of Guard! This is a bitter end.”

But Aragorn’s words to Boromir are more than a matter of comfort, important though that is. They are a matter of truth. Boromir did conquer. Although he did try to take the Ring from Frodo, almost immediately after Frodo’s escape he became aware of what he had done and returned with bitter regret to the place where the rest of the Company were. He met Aragorn’s distress and anger without any attempt at self justification and upon Aragorn’s command to go after Merry and Pippin and to watch over them he did so without question and then gave his life in their defence when they were attacked and taken by the Uruk Hai of Isengard. One might think that for the heir of the Steward of Gondor, one of the mightiest lords of Middle-earth, to give his life for hobbits, perhaps the least significant of its peoples, was a wasted gift, but doubtless Boromir remembered his words to Frodo, of his curse upon all halflings, and wished with all his heart to undo them, to pay a price for what he had sought to do.

Boromir’s deed in laying down his life for the hobbits was a victory over his desire, at all costs, to achieve greatness, to be the hero of Middle-earth and the Third Age. In itself this was a conquest. But it also achieved much in the task of the Fellowship. In taking Merry and Pippin the orcs believed that they had accomplished their mission to seize the halflings and so Frodo and Sam were able to make good their escape and to continue their journey to Mordor. Surely the fact that a great warrior was defending the hobbits convinced Uglûk and the Isengarders that they had done what they had been ordered to do. There was no need to hunt and kill anyone else. They could return to base. The lives of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were probably saved by this mistake. And surely there is something in Aragorn’s declaration that Minas Tirith would not fall that is linked to Boromir’s conquest. Just as the pity of Bilbo, when he did not begin his keeping of the Ring with the murder of Gollum, was to rule the fate of Middle-earth, might we not say that Boromir’s conquest over the corrupting power of the Ring in his own heart, expressed in his sacrifice for the hobbits and his truth telling to Aragorn, also rules the fate of his people?

I love this depiction of Boromir’s last moments. The picture is entitled ‘The Horn of Boromir’ by Matthew Stewart. Note the contrast between the fear on the faces of Merry and Pippin, the violence of the orcs, and the achievement of an inner peace shown upon the face of Boromir. He has conquered indeed.

Many thanks to Overly Devoted Archivist for letting me know about the source of the artwork. To find Matthew Stewart’s work please go to the comment below and click on the link there.