Doom

“Whatever Betide, You Have Come to the End of The Gondor That You Have Known.” Gandalf Enters the Gates of Minas Tirith and Declares Its Doom.

/ stephencwinter / 8 Comments

The Return of The King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 733-735

There are many who fear the word, doom, believing it to be a word that speaks of destruction. And let us begin by saying that it does speak that way. Indeed it is a word that speaks of judgement and it is words of judgement that Gandalf speaks at the gates of Minas Tirith as he arrives there upon Shadowfax bearing Pippin before him.

The guards at the gate see Gandalf as the herald of war as is their belief about him and in reply to them he has no words of comfort for them.

The storm “is upon you,” he declares to them. “I have ridden upon its wings. Let me pass! I must come to your Lord Denethor, while his stewardship lasts. Whatever betide, you have come to the end of the Gondor you have known.”

This is the end of the Third Age of the world. Its terrible climax as Sauron reaches out his hand seeking to bring all things under his rule and domination, lacking only the ruling Ring to make his victory absolutely complete. If he triumphs, as Galadriel said to Frodo after he had looked into her mirror “then we are laid bare to the Enemy.” But if Frodo succeeds in his mission “then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away”.

I speak here of the ending of the time of the Elves in Middle-earth but what of Gondor? In what way will its end have come? Surely if Frodo succeeds in destroying the Ring then Sauron will fall and Gondor will triumph being free from its greatest foe forever?

The clue to understanding what Gandalf says to the guards lies in his reference to the Lord Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. “I must come to your Lord Denethor, while his stewardship lasts.” Gandalf is not prophesying the particular end to which Denethor will come on the day of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. It is the return of the king to which he alludes here. Aragorn, the Lord Elessar, is making his way to the city even as Gandalf speaks, and either he will fall with Gondor or he will claim its crown as its rightful lord. The Gondor that its people have known for many centuries will come to an end either in defeat or triumph.

The Return of the King, the final volume of The Lord of the Rings, is a story of endings and new beginnings. Of course there is the ending of the great evil, the shadow that has oppressed the peoples of Middle-earth for many long years. As Sam will ask as he wakes at the Field of Cormallen: “Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?” And one sadness has indeed “come untrue”, but not all that is sad. Lothlórien will fade as the power of the Three Elven Rings will fade with the destruction of the One Ring, and their keepers, Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf, will depart from Middle-earth, and with them will depart the enchantment, the song that Sam felt himself to be a part of in Lothlórien, with which they enriched the world. The disenchanted world in which we live, the burden that we must bear, is in part the fruit of Frodo’s triumph. How much would the readers of Tolkien’s great tales wish to be able to walk into the enchanted lands of Lothlórien and Rivendell in the clear light of day even as Frodo and his companions were able to do, but all we can do is to catch glimpses of Faerie and to carry them in our hearts in the diminished world that is the one in which we live, learning perhaps the art of re-enchantment as we bring what we have glimpsed to the task of ordinary life, to find “heaven in ordinary”, as George Herbert puts it in his poem, Prayer.

And so too will the Gondor that its people have known pass away, and we will journey with its steward, in his sad attachment to what has long been passing away under his watch. We will see that not all will welcome the possibility of renewal but will reject it. But renewal will come, even though much will be lost, and some will embrace it, even while they bear the loss of much that was beautiful.

“It is My Doom, I Think, To Go To That Shadow Yonder, So That a Way Will Be Found.” Frodo Thinks About Providence and His Journey.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 787-789

It has been three days since the Fellowship was broken at Parth Galen and Frodo and Sam have been wandering in the Emyn Muil, always looking for a way to bring them down to the marshes below but always finding that the eastern slopes are too steep to do this with any kind of safety. Westwards on this same day Merry and Pippin have just met with Treebeard in Fangorn, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli follow them and in two days will meet with Gandalf who has made his way directly from Lothlórien to Fangorn.

Sam fears that they are lost, that they have come the wrong way. Should they make their way back and try another? Frodo does not think it possible to retrace their steps. They have hardly taken a straightforward path through the hills that would make this an easy choice and there are orcs patrolling the eastern banks of the Anduin. No, somehow there needs to be a way forward.

Frodo thinks about his doom. We have come to think of this word in dark terms. I remember a much loved sitcom from my youth set in the days of the Second World War in England when a German invasion was expected at any moment. There was a Scottish character who would respond to any difficulty with the words, “We’re all doomed,” in other words, we’re all finished. But this is not what Frodo means. He uses the word in an older sense in which doom meant judgement. People would speak of doomsday as meaning the day of judgement, the day on which their eternal destiny would be decided.

Private Fraser expresses his personal philosophy of life, shaped by Scottish Calvinism.

But there was another meaning that takes us back in the story to Lothlórien and the words that Galadriel spoke to the company as they prepared to continue their journey onward and wondered which way they should take.

“Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that each of you shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them.”

And none of the Fellowship could see, at that moment, the paths that they were to follow in the days that followed their departure from Lothlórien. Only Boromir among them was absolutely certain which way he should go. He would go to Minas Tirith and he thought that the Fellowship should go with him. But Boromir’s journey ends when the Fellowship is broken. Aragorn is torn between his desire to go with Boromir to Minas Tirith, to the land over which he will become king, but feels that he cannot abandon Frodo. On the day of the breaking of the Fellowship he will make another choice completely and one that he never anticipated; he will follow Merry and Pippin across the plains of Rohan with Legolas and Gimli and while failing to find them will find Gandalf once more.

And Frodo and Sam are stuck in the barren Emyn Muil with seemingly no way forward.

It is a feature of our lives that we are aware for the most part only of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Frodo and Sam have no awareness of the great events that are unfolding westwards that will lead to the fall of Isengard. They only know that at this moment they cannot find a path. But Frodo has a sense that he is a part of a bigger story, one that is carrying him along, even against his own will. This sense is called a belief in Providence. Gandalf told him that he was meant to have the Ring. Galadriel told him that his path was already laid before his feet. And even though at this point he has no idea how he will find that path he believes that it will be found. And in that faith he will keep on going. He will find a way to Mordor and his doom.