Faramir

“Frodo, I Think You Do Very Unwisely in This… I Do Not Think You Should Go With This Creature. It is Wicked.” Frodo and the Wisdom of Unwisdom.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 902-907

When I first sought for a title for this blog and all that I am trying to achieve in reading and rereading The Lord of the Rings at this point in my life I decided to call it Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings because that is what I was looking for. And when I first began to write it twelve years ago I never thought that one day I would be writing about unwisdom and that I would be doing so approvingly. You, my dear readers, must judge if I am right to do so and whether you think that Frodo is right to do as he chooses to do here or whether, with Sam, you will sigh audibly when Frodo declares to Faramir that he will take Sméagol under his protection and that he will go with him to Mordor.

“Frodo, I think that you do very unwisely in this,” said Faramir. “I do not think you should go with this creature. It is wicked.”

“No, not altogether wicked,” said Frodo.

“Not wholly, perhaps,” said Faramir, “but malice eats it like a canker, and the evil is growing. He will lead you to no good.”

And Faramir is right. Gollum has told him that he intends to lead Frodo and Sam into Mordor by way of the pass of Cirith Ungol, or cleft of the spider, and that there is “no other way”. And we know that in that place Gollum will betray Frodo and hand him over to Shelob, deadliest of the children of Ungoliant, a malicious and monstrous spirit in spider form who, long ago, had aided Morgoth in the destruction of the trees of light and in the theft of the silmarils of Fëanor.

Gollum will lead Frodo to no good because he intends to regain the Ring from him and he will not rest until he has done so. We know that and Frodo knows it too. He does not know exactly how Gollum will seek to do him harm but he knows that he intends to do so.

So Denethor is right to call this a fool’s hope when he learns of what his son has done in setting Frodo free and not bringing the Ring to Minas Tirith. Faramir’s action is an act of foolishness and so is Frodo’s. It is utter foolishness to go to Mordor carrying the Ring of Power into the very heart of the Enemy’s power. It is foolishness to entrust the task to a “witless halfling”. And before we leap to Frodo’s defence here and speak of his wisdom we might recall that when Frodo asked Gandalf why he had been chosen for this task and not another, Gandalf replied to him:

“You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.”

Faramir tells Frodo that he does not think that Gandalf, the wise one, would have made the choice that Frodo makes. But even Gandalf has never entered Mordor but only Sauron’s lesser fortress of Dol Guldur. There is no guide that Frodo could possibly choose to take him into Mordor than Gollum and Gollum will only take him there because of his desire for the Ring and it is almost certain that Gollum will betray him.

If wisdom means making the best choice among all available options then surely we must say here that no such choice exists. Faramir cannot think of one and neither could the Council in Rivendell. Frodo must give himself up to a wisdom that is so unwise that maybe the Wise would be incapable of doing it. Maybe this is why all the other members of the Fellowship are given other work to do, absolutely necessary work without which Frodo could never accomplish his mission.

Gandalf did come closest to the unwisdom that Frodo now chooses back in the study at Bag End when he spoke about Gollum.

“My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end…”

Gandalf, more than anyone else in the whole story, knows that there is a Power at work in the story that does not work primarily through the wisdom of making the right choice among available options but a wisdom of such things as Pity. Frodo will make his choice through this wisdom. It will almost cost him his life. It will certainly cost him the possibility of a happy retirement in the Shire among those who love him. But it is through this unwise choice that Middle-earth will be saved.

“I Declare You Free in The Realm of Gondor to The Furthest of its Ancient Bounds.” Why Does Faramir Set Frodo Free?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 902-904

Why does Faramir set Frodo free? Why does he allow him to leave, carrying the Ring with him, to go into Mordor? It is almost certain that he is sending Frodo to his death and it is just as certain that the Ring will be taken from him and that the Dark Lord will regain it.

Later in the story Denethor, Faramir’s father and Steward of Gondor, will ask the same question. Why did his son allow this witless halfling to go free? For Denethor, this angry question is bound up with his grief over the loss of Boromir. Why did Boromir go to Rivendell and not Faramir? Why was it that Boromir fell and not Faramir? If Boromir had been in command at Henneth Annûn Frodo would not have gone free. Boromir would have brought his father “a mighty gift”.

Denethor has his own understanding of why Faramir acted as he did. Faramir is living in some private fantasy. He imagines himself reenacting the life of one of the ancient kings of Gondor, lordly in his condescension, being able to act in this manner because he has the power to do so. He suspects that Gandalf has something to do with this and accuses Faramir of being a wizard’s pupil. Boromir had not fallen under Gandalf’s spell.

Is Denethor’s accusation true? Is Faramir acting out some private fantasy in which he is the hero? Is he merely a Don Quixote who has spent too long immersed in chivalric tales to the point that he has come to imagine himself still living within them.

Actually, Faramir has immersed himself in the stories of the past. I do not know if he knows the tale of Beren and Lúthien and how they went together into the very heart of darkness in order to take a silmaril from the iron crown of Morgoth. Aragorn knows this story and told a part of it to Frodo and his companions just before they were attacked by Nazgûl below Weathertop. Indeed the story of Beren and Lúthien matters deeply to Aragorn because it is the story of the love of an elf-maiden and a man and he is living within the same story in his love for Arwen.

We do not know precisely what stories Faramir lives in but they are stories that have led him to regard Gondor as “full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves”.

And Denethor lives inside stories too. But his stories are of a kingdom in decline from its former glory, a kingdom that stands alone in the world against overwhelming and malignant power. It is this story that he has passed onto Boromir but not Faramir. At the Council of Elrond Boromir told this story to those gathered there with great pride. He identified himself completely with it. He was the hero in that story and this was the story that he told to Frodo just before he tried to take the Ring from him, imagining himself as the captain of mighty armies driving all his foes before him, wielding the Ring of Power.

Denethor’s stories lead him to despair. Boromir’s stories lead him to try and take the Ring by force from Frodo. And Faramir’s stories lead him to set Frodo free to go into Mordor on a hopeless mission.

We all live within stories and we all have to choose which ones we will live in. If we believe we live in a world of objective facts that we are able to stand apart from as a clear eyed observer then this is our story. In this regard we are closest in spirit to Denethor. He tried to gather facts, using the palantir, the seeing stone of Orthanc, in order to do so, not knowing that Sauron controlled what “facts” he was able to see. We might liken this to our own belief that our chosen media platform is able to give us the facts that we need in order to make our own clear eyed decisions. Faramir’s stories lead him to hope against hope, to do the impossible thing, to let Frodo go free to complete his mission and to free the world from a very great evil.

“There are Locked Doors and Closed Windows in Your Mind, and Dark Rooms Behind Them… But in This I Judge That You Speak The Truth.” Faramir and Gollum in Henneth Annûn.

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

When Sauron interrogated Gollum in Barad-dûr he found to his surprise that there was an inner strength within this pathetic creature that he was unable to break. By means of his tortures he was able, at last, to learn of Baggins and the Shire but he was never able to open the “locked doors and closed windows” in Gollum’s mind or to enter “the dark rooms behind them”.

In the end Sauron deemed that he had learned all that he needed to know and that there was not enough of significance that might dwell within those dark rooms for him to continue his interrogation and so he released him. He even thought that Gollum’s malice might even be of some small use to him in the future. Little did he know that Gollum would eventually bring about his downfall.

Sauron would never acknowledge or accept that Faramir had an advantage that he, in his wisdom, had abandoned long ago. When Faramir, with Frodo’s unhappy assistance, was able to capture Gollum alive in the forbidden pool beneath Henneth Annûn he needed to find out what Gollum knew.

“Do you know the name of this place? Have you been here before?”

If Gollum was unable or unwilling to answer these questions in a satisfactory fashion Faramir would have either to kill him or to bring him captive back to Minas Tirith. No one unless they were judged to be trustworthy could know of the existence of this refuge within Ithilien. The very survival of Faramir and his men depended upon its location remaining a complete secret.

“Slowly Gollum raised his eyes and looked unwillingly into Faramir’s. All light went out of them, and they stared bleak and pale for a moment into the clear unwavering eyes of the man of Gondor. There was a still silence. Then Gollum dropped his head and shrank down, until he was squatting on the floor shivering. ‘We doesn’t know and we doesn’t want to know,’ he whimpered. ‘Never came here; never come again,'”

It is enough. Faramir has learned all that he needs to know. And he has learned this because,wholly unlike Sauron, he is a man of truth.

“I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood,” Faramir had declared to Frodo the previous day when he questioned the hobbit before his men. Faramir speaks the truth and he has an unwavering commitment to the truth and so he recognises truth and he recognises falsehood when he hears them.

We might think that Sauron was seeking for truth when he questioned Gollum in Barad-dûr. He wanted to know what the connection was between Gollum and the Ring and he wanted to know where the Ring might be found. Surely these are both expressions of truth? But Sauron has come to believe that no-one can be trusted unless they fear him and unless they fear the consequences of betrayal more than the consequences of loyalty. The servants of Sauron may have little love, if any, for their master, but they believe that his triumph is inevitable and they want to be on the winning side.

Faramir’s servants also fear his power but they love him too, knowing that he would lay down his life for them. They know that he has not separated truth from goodness and beauty. When he says that he would not even snare an orc with a falsehood they know that he speaks the truth and that he would never be false to them either. And he will not be false to Gollum. Does Gollum recognise this? Does he see anything different in Faramir that he did not see in Sauron? Probably not. For Gollum, his heart twisted by five hundred years possession of the Ring, there is only power, but at this moment the power that Faramir possesses is tempered by a love of truth, beauty and goodness and that makes all the difference.

“He Came to Me Because He Trusted Me at First, I’m Afraid.” Frodo and the Capture of Gollum in the Pool Beneath Henneth Annûn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 893-902

There are passages in The Lord of the Rings that I do not enjoy reflecting upon and this is most certainly one of those passages. The chapter entitled The Window on the West with its revelation of the wisdom of Faramir is one of the most moving in the entire story, and its climactic ending as the exhausted Frodo finally reveals his mission to his astonished host is quite wonderful.

And then it is followed by this description of the capture of Gollum when one noble figure (that is Faramir) discusses the execution of Gollum in a quite manner of fact way, and another (that is Frodo) participates in Gollum’s capture by means of deception. When Frodo went to down to Gollum as the wretched creature hunted for fish in the pool beneath Henneth Annûn he knows that the only way in which he can save Gollum’s life is by lying to him. That is certainly how Gollum sees it.

“Wicked! Tricksy! False!”

Frodo may have saved Gollum’s life but he does so at the price of destroying what trust had been built up between them along the road from the Emyn Muil. After Gollum’s capture Frodo cries out to him: “I’ll go with you, and you shall come to no harm. Not unless they kill me too. Trust Master!”

Gollum’s response to these words is to turn and spit at him.

There have been critics over the years who have dismissed The Lord of the Rings as being morally simplistic, a story in which all the characters on one side are unambiguously good while those on the other are evil. One can only assume that these critics have never actually read the book and certainly not this chapter. There is nothing unambiguous about this incident and most certainly not in the relationship between Frodo and Gollum.

When Frodo first learnt from Gandalf that Gollum is searching for him and searching for the Ring his response was quite simple. It was a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum in the first place in the dark tunnels of the Misty Mountains when they first encountered one another. Gandalf responded that it was Pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand and when Frodo met Gollum himself for the first time he recalled these words when he said that now that he saw Gollum for himself he did pity him.

But Frodo’s pity never deflects him from his mission. The Ring must be destroyed and Gollum will guide Frodo and Sam to Mordor because he has been there before. Frodo always knows that he can never reveal his true purpose to Gollum because Gollum would not countenance it. When on the slopes of Mount Doom Gollum finally realises Frodo’s true purpose his response is to try to kill him. So at every step of the way Frodo is deceiving Gollum.

For Sam it is all much simpler. From the very first he wants to be rid of Gollum finding him utterly disgusting. When Faramir asks Frodo if he should shoot Gollum we read: “If Sam had dared, he would have said ‘Yes!’ quicker and louder.” Sam hates Gollum although when he finally has him at his mercy beneath the Cracks of Doom he finds that he cannot actually kill him in cold blood. He lets Gollum go and so allows the great moment to take place on the edge of abyss within the mountain when Gollum takes the Ring at last and falls with it into the fire.

The Lord of the Rings is shot through with moral ambiguity from beginning to end but that never means that it loses its profoundly moral centre. It does not give way to an amorality in which the only thing that matters is the goal and any means by which the goal can be achieved is justified. Nor does it descend into cynicism and a sense that there is no good nor any point in looking for it or trying to do it. We read that as Faramir’s men carry Gollum wrapped in a blanket up to their refuge behind the waterfall Frodo follows them “feeling very wretched”.

This wretchedness is not merely the unease that someone of liberal sentiments might feel in watching suffering from a safe distance. Frodo is as close to Gollum’s misery as he can possibly get without actually being Gollum. He will pay for the closeness of his relationship to Gollum many times; when Shelob stings him in his lair, in his misery as he lies naked and alone in the tower of Cirith Ungol and when Gollum bites off the finger on which he has placed the Ring in the Cracks of Doom. He will never be free in Middle-earth from the price of his closeness to this creature. We have to imagine in what way he is able to be healed in the Undying Lands. It gives us all hope that this is possible.

” Good Night, Captain, my Lord,” Sam Said to Faramir. “You Took the Chance, Sir.” Praise From the Praiseworthy in Henneth Annûn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 891-892

The effort that Frodo used to speak of his mission openly at last to Faramir was the last that he was able to give that night. As he tried to stand he fell into a swoon, was caught by Faramir and laid upon a bed. Sam was about to lie in another bed beside his master’s but then he paused, bowed low before Faramir and spoke.

“Good night, Captain, my lord,” he said. “You took the chance, sir.”

“Did I so?” said Faramir.

“Yes sir, and showed your quality: the very highest.”

You can feel Faramir wince slightly as he hears these words. He comes from a strictly hierarchical society in which only those of equal or higher rank are permitted to speak so freely to one another. In Gondor only the Prince of Dol Amroth and, of course, Boromir and Denethor, would be permitted to speak to Faramir in this way. Faramir describes Sam as a “pert servant” as he responds to his words, as one who is speaking more freely than he has a right to do, but then he continues:

“But nay the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”

Faramir recognises that in Sam’s courageous service to Frodo, a service that will almost certainly cost him his life, that Sam has won the right to speak freely. The early Greek fathers of the Christian Church had a word for this freedom of speech that is close to the way Sam speaks here. They called it parrhesia, likening it to the way in which Adam was able to speak freely, openly, confidently, face to face with God in the garden, a freedom that had been restored through the obedience of Christ. In recent years some philosophers, such as Michel Foucault, have argued that this freedom of speech is a quality that belongs inherently to all humans although it always comes with a risk. If I speak frankly I may put myself in danger. But Sam is able to make himself equal to Faramir at this moment, not because of some innate quality that he possesses but because he, as Faramir recognises, is himself “praiseworthy”.

And as Faramir speaks here, perhaps he carries within himself his deep sadness that the one person whose praise he desires above all others is the one who will never give that praise to him. Faramir will never hear that praise from his father, Denethor. Eventually Denethor will learn that for a brief moment his son had the Ring of Power, the One Ring, within his grasp, but that he let it go. He will declare bitterly that Boromir would have brought him “a mighty gift” because Boromir would have done his father’s bidding. And in his anger towards Faramir Denethor will go further in his bitter criticism. He will take the love that his son’s men so clearly have for him and he will say that this is only given because his son likes to appear lordly. Faramir has nothing praiseworthy within himself. He is merely an actor; one who is playing a part.

The part that Denethor accuses his son of playing is that of a lord of Númenor. It is merely a game that Faramir indulges himself in while Gondor is in imminent danger of destruction. Faramir, the “wizard’s pupil”, as Denethor bitterly names him, has chosen to play his lordly games, to imagine himself as one of the heroes of an age long ago, to let Frodo and Sam go free, carrying the Ring with them, when what was needed was a weapon, a weapon so great that even Sauron would quail in fear before it.

Sam sees Faramir quite differently from Denethor. Faramir had the opportunity to take the Ring for himself just as Boromir had tried to do so, but he had chosen not to do so. This is a deed, as Sam sees it, worthy of the highest praise. But in one sense Sam sees things just as Denethor does. For Denethor Faramir is who who is an adopter of a pose in order to win popularity. Sam sees something else.

“You have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, of – well, Gandalf, of wizards.”

“Maybe,” said Faramir. “Maybe you discern from far away the air of Númenor. Good night!”

“I Must Find The Mountain of Fire and Cast The Thing Into The Gulf of Doom. Gandalf Said So. I Do Not Think I Shall Ever Get There.” Frodo Speaks of His Task to Faramir and of Its Impossibility.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) p.891

The shock and fear that followed the revelation of the true identity of Frodo’s burden is at an end but what follows is sheer exhaustion. With the last of his strength Frodo tells Faramir of his mission.

“I was going to find a way into Mordor… I was going to Gorgoroth. I must find the Mountain of Fire and cast the thing into the gulf of Doom. Gandalf said so. I do not think I shall ever get there.”

Faramir stares at Frodo with “grave astonishment”, and rightly so. Alongside Frodo’s declaration at the Council of Elrond that he would take the Ring though he did not know the way this is the only time that Frodo actually speaks of his task in plain speech. There is no attempt at heroic language. No boasting. Merely a quiet statement of what has to be done.

“Gandalf said so.”

Frodo claims nothing for himself. He has been given his orders and now he must carry them out. There is nothing more to be said and Frodo says nothing more. Except, as Faramir knows, that Frodo is attempting something that no-one has ever before tried to do. Later in the story Ioreth of the Houses of Healing will tell her friend that Frodo “went with only his esquire into the Black Country and fought with the Dark Lord all by himself, and set fire to his Tower, if you can believe it.” Of course we know that this is not quite what happened but what Frodo achieved is almost as impossible and Faramir recognises this. His grave astonishment is entirely justified. He knows that he stands in the presence of greatness even as Elrond recognised at Frodo’s first quiet declaration, comparing him to Beren and the great heroes of the First Age.

Only Frodo, as we have seen, does not recognise this, nor ever does. He only thinks in terms of what must be done and of its impossibility.

Hope and hopelessness are themes that Tolkien returns to again and again throughout The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is given the name, Estel, secretly by his mother as she gives herself up to her own death and he spends his life struggling with this destiny, hoping against hope, not with Sam’s cheerful optimism, but a grim determination just to carry on. Frodo is of a similar spirit. There is a job to be done and that is all needs to be said.

What Frodo, and Aragorn, both do, is to give themselves up to something that is greater than themselves. Although Tolkien was himself man of deep Christian faith he never allows the characters in his story the comfort or strength that such faith would bring. Julian of Norwich’s famous declaration that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well” is something about which they know nothing. They must simply do their jobs because they are both necessary and right. Whether they will be rewarded with success is not something that they can know. So Elrond told Gimli’s father, Glòin, on learning of Sauron’s threats against the dwarves of Erebor that there is naught that the dwarves can do “other than to resist, with hope or without it”.

The heroic figures of The Lord of the Rings are denied faith in God in an explicit sense but the goodness, truth and beauty that they both love and fight for sustain them throughout their struggles. Galadriel may speak of “the long defeat” but this does not weaken her resolve. Tolkien did not believe in an arc of history that tends towards justice but in his belief in the resurrection of Christ, “the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest fairy story”, as he put it in a letter, he placed his hope in a final victory that would be one achieved by God alone.

In this sense Tolkien felt closer to the spiritual world of his heroes who had to resist “with hope or without it” than to some general kind of Christian optimism. And so he gives us Frodo, walking step by step towards Mordor even though he does not think that he will ever get there, as a model for our own lives and even as we stare with Faramir’s grave astonishment at him so too do we do the good that we have been called to do both this and every day.

“Your Land Must Be a Realm of Peace and Content, and There Must Gardeners Be in High Honour.”

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 891,892

Faramir knows that Frodo’s secret is the very Ring of Power. He does not yet know Frodo’s mission, that he has been given the task of casting the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, but he wonders at this little folk who now keep it.

“If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at other’s asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it. You are a new people and a new world to me. Are all your kind of like sort? Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardeners be in high honour.”

“Are all your kind of like sort?” Faramir asks. The true answer is that just as Faramir is exceptional within Gondor so too are Frodo and Sam within the Shire. Neither are typical of their kinds although there are many good men in Gondor and good hobbits in the Shire. What is providential is that these great ones have found one another in a hostile land and at this critical moment in the story. Within this providential context even Sam’s mistakes, from his negligent care of a smoking fire to his revealing of the true nature of the burden that Frodo bears, only lead to good. Faramir puts this in a different way. Sam was “fated” to stumble, to make such good mistakes and so to aid his master’s mission the better. Later his interventions will be of the most heroic kind.

For a long time when I have read this passage I assumed that the reference that Faramir makes to the high honour in which gardeners must be held in the Shire must have been a gentle joke on Tolkien’s part. When we remember that the very first scene in The Lord of the Rings is set in the Ivy Bush on the Bywater Road near Hobbiton in which Gaffer Gamgee expresses his hope that “no harm” will come of Bilbo teaching Sam to read and write, to “learn him his letters”, it is hard to believe that greatness can come of this family of gardeners at least.

But woven into the rest of the story are very different references to gardens and to gardeners. Galadriel’s gift to Sam, so carefully put together, comes with her recognition that it is Sam, the gardener, who will have to heal his land after the ravages of Saruman there. “Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there.” Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin of the Entwives who were tenders of gardens and how they would love the Shire if they were to find it. And perhaps most telling of all, Faramir himself was given the task, by Aragorn, of healing the land of Ithilien after the ending of the war of the Ring and so himself became a prince of gardeners.

There is a gardener within the soul of this Captain of Gondor that recognises a kindred spirit in the soul of Sam Gamgee even as he recognises greatness within Frodo’s soul. Faramir, like Sam, will become a healer of the hurts of Middle-earth after warfare is ended and, like Sam, he will tend a garden. Galadriel’s gift to Sam will keep the memory of Lothlórien alive within Middle-earth and Ithilien too will be a blending of wild woodland and cultivated lands, a marriage of Ents and Entwives just as the land that Galadriel made was such a marriage.

Tolkien was drawing upon the memory of Eden in his following of this theme in The Lord of the Rings. Eden is the garden in which everything is in perfect harmony and humankind is connected with itself, with the land and with the divine presence. There is no abuse or exploitation here. There is much more than mere cultivation here and so the Gaffer cannot be a perfect example of a gardener. It is Sam with his internalisation of all that he has seen upon his journeys, especially in Lothlórien, who will subcreate Eden in Middle-earth, or at the very least, a glimpse of it, and so draw his fellows into a delight in what is good, beautiful and true.

Ted Naismith gives us a land at peace with itself in his beautiful depiction of the young mallorn tree in the Shire

“Your Heart is Shrewd As Well As Faithful, and Saw Clearer Than Your Eyes.” Sam Gamgee Shows Us How To Make a Mess of Things and Yet To Get The Biggest Things Right.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.888-890

It is a catastrophic moment. Frodo has taken such care to keep the conversation with Faramir away from the matter of the Ring. Faramir is aware that there is something that Frodo does not wish to speak about but once he has made his mind up that Frodo is a man of honour he chooses not to press him on this. But Frodo is tired and lapses into silence and Sam takes over the conversation.

Anke Eissman depicts the moment when Frodo begins to drift into sleep and Sam takes up the conversation with Faramir. Note the intensity of the gaze between Sam and Faramir. Great things are about to be revealed.

Sam begins to speak about Galadriel and he falls into a reverie as he does so and within that dreamlike mood suddenly says of Boromir:

“It’s my opinion that in Lórien he first saw clearly what I guessed sooner: what he wanted. From the moment he first saw it he wanted the Enemy’s Ring.”

Suddenly everything changes. The Ring takes centre stage after it has lain hidden and defended and the brother of the man who tried to take it by force from Frodo stands before it surrounded by a troup of warriors. Faramir knows what it is and he knows that his brother tried to take it. It is as he puts it himself “a chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality”.

And he does show his quality. At this critical moment he chooses not to try to take the Ring. And as when Gandalf and then Galadriel both chose not to take it when Frodo offered it to them and as Bilbo freely let it go when Gandalf told him to do so it is upon these moments of free renunciation that the whole story turns. A number of readers of The Lord of the Rings have noted that Tolkien does something quite unique in his story. That whereas every story of quest is about the finding and getting of something Tolkien tells us a story of letting something go, of casting it away, a story of renunciation. The Ring is a thing that can give great power to the one who possesses it and each one of the characters that we have mentioned chose to renounce the possibility of this power.

Bilbo chooses freely to renounce the Ring after a little persuasion from a good friend.

And what of Sam’s terrible mistake? At this moment Frodo simply sees it as a disaster. What had lain hidden now lies bare before all. The brother of the man who tried to take it knows what it is and where it is. But Faramir sees it very differently.

“Be comforted, Samwise. If you seem to have stumbled, think that it was fated to be so, Your heart is shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than your eyes.”

Clearly Sam was not meant to reveal that Frodo had the Ring of Power in his possession. We thought a few weeks ago about Frodo’s decision not to let Faramir know about the true purpose of his mission. But Sam has come to trust the man who has offered them shelter and has chosen, albeit without reflection, to entrust him with the secret of Frodo’s mission. Frodo himself longs to do the same. It is only the memory of Boromir that prevents him from doing so.

And so it is Sam’s heart, and not his head, that has lead both him and Frodo to this moment. It is Sam’s heart that breaks through all the mistrust that has divided the foes of Sauron from one another for so very long. Gondor’s long separation from peoples who once stood with them as allies is set aside in a moment of heartfelt indiscretion. Not that the heart of Minas Tirith is changed in this moment. Denethor, when he learns of the trusting action of his son, will bitterly declare that if Boromir, and not his brother, had lived he would have brought to his father “a mighty gift”. But all through The Lord of the Rings it is these moments of trust that prove essential to the successful outcome of the great quest and this is one of the most important of all of them. If Faramir had chosen at this moment to take the Ring then all would have ended in darkness and the triumph of Sauron. That he does not do this, but chooses to trust in the mission that Frodo has been given, is crucial to the whole story.

And all becomes possible because of Sam’s heart and not his head.

“It Strikes Me That Folks Takes Their Peril into Lórien, and Finds It There Because They Brought It.” Sam Gamgee Thinks About The Fall of Boromir.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.888-890

Faramir’s reflections upon the decline of the West bring him to a melancholy mood. Frodo has fallen silent and so Sam enters the conversation asking Faramir why he has not spoken more about Sam’s great love, Elves.

Anke Eissmann depicts the quiet conversation between Faramir and the hobbits.

“No, indeed, Master Samwise,” said Faramir, “for I am not learned in Elven-lore. But there you touch upon another point in which we have changed, declining from Númenor to Middle-earth.”

And so Faramir speaks of the ancient alliance between Elves and Men, the Edain of Beleriand, of whom Beren was one of the great heroes and about whom Tolkien’s early readers were largely ignorant before the publication of The Silmarillion that took place after Tolkien’s death. And he speaks of the gradual sundering of Elves and Men in Middle-earth during the Third Age.

“In Middle-earth Men and Elves became estranged in the days of darkness, by the arts of the Enemy, and by the slow changes of time in which each kind walked down their sundered roads.”

And so through the mouth of Faramir Tolkien draws out his belief that a key feature in the decline of which he speaks is melancholy, not as an occasional mood such as the one into which Faramir has fallen in the quiet of the cave behind Henneth Annûn as night falls about him, but as a settled state of mind. He speaks of a growing fascination with death among the great of his land so that tombs become more splendid than palaces. Later Legolas and Gimli will note the silence of the streets of Minas Tirith and an absence of children as further signs of this state of mind,

Faramir speaks of this and adds that his people have drawn into themselves, into a self-obsessed introspection and have forgotten their roots as the descendants of Elendil, the Elf-friend, whose very resistance to Ar-Pharazôn the last king of Númenor was centred upon the very friendship that gave him his name.

“Men now fear and misdoubt the Elves, and yet know little of them.”

Even Faramir fears to go to Lothlórien, deeming such a journey perilous.

Then Sam makes one of those speeches that those who love him know and delight in and yet Sam himself does not think that he is capable of giving. He speaks of Galadriel both accurately and with words of heartbreaking beauty.

“Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, small and slender like. Hard as diamonds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime.”

And Anke Eissmann shows Galadriel as she gives the starglass to Frodo in Lothlórien.

Tolkien skillfully and frequently gives some of his most beautiful writing to his simpler characters and in so doing shows his readers that they too have the capacity to encounter and enjoy the sublime. All Sam’s images in his speech are drawn from his experience as a gardener and from some of the new things that he has seen upon his journey. He is one who has practiced William Blake’s counsel to find “heaven in a wildflower” and who, as a consequence, knows heaven when he sees it, as he does in Galadriel.

But because of his encounter with Galadriel he knows that heaven is not like a holiday resort and when Faramir describes Galadriel as perilous Sam shows himself to be one of profound spiritual insight.

“It strikes me that folks takes their peril with them into Lórien, and finds it there because they’ve brought it”

Sean Bean portrayed the way in which Boromir “brought his peril with him ” into Lothlórien quite wonderfully in Peter Jackson’s film.

This is the way in which heaven is not like a holiday resort, a place in which everything should be as the customer wishes because they have paid for it to be so, and if it is not as the customer wishes, angry complaints are made. What complaints would be made about Lothlórien and what difference would it make if you did complain? Readers will remember that Boromir did complain, warning his companions against their hosts. Sam remembers this and it is Boromir that he has in mind when he speaks of bringing peril with them into Lothlórien.

Sam has the capacity to find heaven in a wildflower and in Galadriel too because he has practiced the discipline of finding over a number of years. Sam’s discipline of delight means that he finds beauty wherever he goes and not peril. He is not perfect. His unwillingness to extend mercy to Gollum is a great shortcoming in his moral character but his willingness, even desire, to find, and not merely to remain within existing prejudices, desires and fears, as Boromir did, makes him one of the great characters of The Lord of the Rings.

“We Are a Failing People, a Springless Autumn.” Faramir Tells Frodo and Sam of The History of Gondor and of His Loss of Hope.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 884-887

One of the main themes of The Lord of the Rings is the decline of the West. Later on in the story Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, will declare to Gandalf that the West has failed and that there is no hope against the dark and Sauron its lord.

Faramir seems to have as little hope as does his father and says as much to Frodo as they converse together after dinner.

“What hope have we?” said Faramir. “It is long since we had any hope. The sword of Elendil, if it returns indeed, may rekindle it, but I do not think that it will do more than put off the evil day, unless other help unlooked-for also comes, from Elves or Men. For the Enemy increases and we decrease. We are a failing people, a springless autumn.”

If one of the main themes of Tolkien’s great work is the decline of the West so too is the matter of Hope. Faramir speaks of help from Elves or Men but describes it as “unlooked-for”. He cannot imagine from where such hope might come even though he speaks warmly of the ancient alliance with the people of Rohan, their distant kin from of old. It is, of course, a delicious irony that the hope of the West is even now sitting before him in the form of a hobbit and his faithful servant. Elrond both recognised and welcomed this irony and Denethor will later dismiss it as a fool’s hope and Denethor will be right. It is my conviction that it was one of the greatest moments of the twentieth century and a moment whose influence is, if anything, greater in our own century, when Tolkien found himself writing words on a blank piece of paper while doing the tedious task of marking examinations, “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”.

An evocative illustration by Daniel Reeve. (With thanks to Marcel Bülles for alerting me to my original incorrect attribution.)

Hobbits arrived both unlooked-for in Tolkien’s mind and even unwelcome. They interrupted his life’s work, the creation of a legendarium to which he had devoted himself for many years. They made him some money, a very useful and necessary thing for a man with a large family, but he always felt that they kept him from The Silmarillion, the great work whose existence we owe to his son, Christopher.

But, as he was to say in his foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, “the tale grew in the telling”, so that the figure who sat before Faramir in Henneth Annûn was very different and much greater than anything that Tolkien had initially conceived. In many ways Bilbo was a figure akin to the tricksters much beloved of old English folktales like Jack the Giant Killer a figure who won the prize by quick wits and good luck. Such figures would appear in the great mythologies of Europe such as the Grail Legend merely to offer some comic relief. This is how Denethor sees Pippin later on. Faramir recognises something different in Frodo but even he does not recognise just how different Frodo is.

If there is hope to be found in Faramir’s world then perhaps it might be found in “the sword of Elendil” that Aragorn wields, but Faramir is right in saying that the best that Aragorn can do is to put off the evil day. The victory won at the Pelennor Fields is just such a thing. The army that Aragorn leads that follows this victory is “scarce as many as the vanguard of [Gondor’s] army in the days of its power”, such as the army that overthrew the Witch-king of Angmar in Eriador. Aragorn knows that his assault upon Mordor is utterly impossible. There is only one hope, the fool’s hope that Frodo can take the Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it there.

It is here that I would argue that only an imagination formed by long practice of Christian faith is capable of creating the figures of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. I am prepared to be persuaded that other religious traditions are capable of this but even then would argue that if they are then they will be very closely akin to Christianity at this point. Even many who call themselves Christian do not look for hope in the unlooked-for places. Like Faramir we cannot imagine what they might be so we do not look beyond the tried and tested or beyond a slightly better version of what we already know.

But I think that I might be judging Faramir too harshly. When he finally discovers Frodo’s mission through Sam’s unintentional assistance he recognises it for what it is. He knows that all the truth that he has ever learned, in Númenor that was, Elvenhome that is and above and beyond all “that which is beyond Elvenhome, and will ever be” has led him to the moment when he can see that Frodo’s mission is the hope of the West and that, at the same time, it is a fool’s hope as well.