Henneth Annûn

“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.

“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!”

Time to Start Writing Again.

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It is early morning here in the English county of Worcestershire just a few miles down the road from the farm that once belonged to the Suffield family and was the childhood home of Mabel Tolkien, the mother of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and creator of a legendarium that has caught the imagination of the world ever since the publication of that book in 1954 and 1955. The locals who were the neighbours of the Suffields named their farm house, Bag End, and this and the surrounding countryside and small towns and villages was to form, through the medium of Tolkien’s rich imagination, his Shire, the home of the hobbits.

A photo taken of me a couple of years ago at Magdalen College, Oxford, by my daughter, Dr Bethan Winter, who has been teaching there.

Tolkien’s hobbits were very much a reimagining of the Worcestershire country folk among whom Tolkien grew up in the early years of the 20th century both when he visited his Suffield relatives and in the village of Hall Green just a few miles north of Bag End. You can still recognise the slow speech and the rich accent of Worcestershire folk but Hall Green is now a suburb of the English city of Birmingham and many of the farm houses of north Worcestershire are now inhabited by wealthy incomers who have made their money elsewhere and now enjoy the fruits of their labour in this beautiful countryside. At least I hope that they do.

I guess that you could include me among the incomers, perhaps not so wealthy but comfortably off, who have moved into this area. My father was London born but he took the opportunity offered to his generation who had served in the armed forces in the Second World War of a college education to go to agricultural college and spend his working life on farms in the English countryside. We never had much money. My father left enough money to pay for his funeral and nothing more but thanks to the generosity of the English state back in the 1960s and 70s I was educated at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe among boys from the families of senior military officers and leading political families. My school also educated luminaries such as Roger Scruton and Paul Kingsnorth but Scruton came before me and Kingsnorth after.

Following a brief career as a school teacher I was ordained a minister in the Church of England in 1988 and came to serve in the city of Birmingham where I met my wife, Laura, who was a young hospital doctor there, and so we have spent the rest of our lives together since then in the English Midlands where Tolkien grew up.

In these last years I have served seven country parishes here in Worcestershire as their Rector but I will be 70 years old this month and feel that the time has come to pass that responsibility to someone else. It is time to move on to other things.

I first read The Lord of the Rings back in the late 1960s thanks to the encouragement of my school friend, John Flint, whose father was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force. There were copies of the three volumes in our school library and I took them out and read them voraciously. Eventually I bought John’s paperback copy of the entire book in a single volume from him. It cost me six weeks work at weekends on the farm to do this but I never resented a single minute. I still don’t. I have read and re-read this and other works by Tolkien ever since and enjoyed both a BBC radio dramatisation of the work and Peter Jackson’s films.

Back in 2013 I began to write a blog here on WordPress on the wisdom that I have learned from the The Lord of the Rings. I figured that after reading Tolkien for so many years I might have something to say about him. I think that I have written over 300,000 words since then and had over half a million readers. Thank you to each and every one of you.

Last year I somehow lost access to the blog site and as I was winding up my work in the parishes and then taking a complete break after taking my final service at the end of August I haven’t got round to sorting this out until now. Laura and I walked 150 miles of the Camino del Norte, the pilgrim route to Santiago da Composite in northern Spain during the autumn and we will return to walk the last 250 miles later this year. We have been catching up with friends and family and working on our cottage together. And it’s been a lot of fun just catching up with each other after years of busy work as a priest and as a doctor.

Now the energy is coming back and it is time to write again. I both want to return to the blog and I am beginning a book. I will tell you more of that another time. My daughters are teaching me how to use new technologies to publicise my work. There’s a lot going on. To my delight I found that I had a record number of readers last September, three months after my last post and while Laura and I were in Spain. It seems that people are finding their way to my work. I am so grateful.

Thank you to all who have taken the time to send messages of good will while I have been away from the blog. I will write in response to all of you.

I left Frodo and Sam with Faramir in Henneth Annûn last June. They are in safe hands there but they don’t really know that yet. When you next rejoin me I will take up that part of the story again. It has so much to teach us.

Anke Eissman ‘s wonderful depiction of the scene in which Frodo and Sam talk with Faramir in Henneth Annûn. I really love her work!

I hope you will join me.

“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.

“We Look towards Númenor That Was, and Beyond to Elvenhome That Is, and To That Which is Beyond Elvenhome and Will Ever Be”. Faramir Prepares to Eat in The Divine Presence.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 882-884

While on the journey to Henneth Annûn, Faramir had spoken to Frodo and Sam about his love for the memory, the ancientry, the beauty and the present wisdom of the city of the Men of Númenor, Minas Tirith, and his desire, therefore, to defend that city against Sauron, the Lord of Darkness. Faramir lives in a big world and before he sits to eat with his guests and his men he leads them all in a simple ceremony in which all stand and face west “in a moment of silence”.

This is the only ceremony that takes place throughout the entirety of The Lord of the Rings until the crowning of the High King of Gondor and of Arnor. There might be an argument to be made that the peoples of Middle-earth are ritually malnourished, an argument that could be made about the West in our own time, but Tolkien had good reason not to give his secondary creation a ritual structure. His creation was a mythical history of our own world but in a world before the incarnation of Christ, the True Myth as he famously explained to C.S Lewis, the moment in which myth and history became one in first century Palestine.

Faramir remembers “Elvenhome that is” as depicted by Alan Lee.

His anxiety was that any attempt to create a ritual life for his sub-creation would at best be inadequate and at worst idolatrous. There is only one place of worship built in the whole of Tolkien’s legendarium and that was built by Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor, for the worship of Morgoth because Ar-Pharazôn had been seduced by Sauron who had convinced him that Morgoth was the ultimate power of the universe. So the only place of worship was idolatrous and rejected by Elendil, the Elf-friend, and his followers, of whom Faramir was a descendant.

So when Faramir leads his men in a moment of ritual before they sit to eat it is done in silence so that there can be no danger of idolatry, the worship of that which is false. But this does not mean that there is no content to the ceremony and when Faramir explains it to Frodo he shows him the world in which he lives.

“We look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.”

Númenor is the memory and the ancientry of which Faramir spoke upon the way. While the Númenor of Ar-Pharazôn was destroyed by a great wave by Eru Ilúvatar at the end of the Second Age Elendil escaped with his followers to Middle-earth and created there the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. Elendil honoured the ancient friendship that the Númenorians had enjoyed with the Elves, a friendship that meant that he fought alongside Gil-galad in the last great alliance between Elves and Men that overthrew Sauron taking the Ring from his hand. Faramir recognises this as he speaks of Elvenhome that is, Valinor that lies beyond the wreck of Númenor.

And he also recognises “that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be”. He recognises God, Eru Ilúvatar, the source of all being and life. Later when he takes Éowyn into his arms for the very first time he tells her of the wave that destroyed Númenor. In doing this he shows that he understands that Eru had intervened once directly in the affairs of Arda and also feels that something similar has just happened at the moment in which the Ring has gone to the Fire.

Frodo feels “strangely rustic and untutored” when Faramir explains all this to him. He recognises that Faramir lives in a bigger world than he does. Faramir probably lives in a bigger world than any of his men but because they honour him as their leader so too they honour his inner life and that which he believes. He is the greatest holder of the memory, the ancientry, the beauty and the present wisdom of his people. One man holds all of this, a fragile link with it all, but the world in which Faramir lives is not held by him. He is held by it as are his men and his people whether they do so consciously or not. Soon Faramir’s world will be assaulted by the darkness and tested to its very limits. It will stand, not because of its own might, but because of that which stands beneath, around and within it, and will hold it even and especially in its darkest moments.

“At Least by Good Chance We Come at The Right Hour to Reward You For Your Patience.” Frodo and Sam Come to Henneth Annûn, the Window of the Sunset.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 878-881

The journey to the place of refuge in which Frodo and Sam will stay that night is not an easy one, especially for Frodo and Sam for they will have to make the journey blindfold. But even Gollum, who we glimpsed briefly through Sam’s eyes at the beginning of this passage seems to be thrown off the trail.

But at the last, after a journey that Tolkien describes by means of the language of sound, the hobbits arrive at their place of rest and find it to be a place of beauty. For Frodo and Sam this will be their last place of refuge upon their long journey before they enter Mordor and there will be no refuge there. The first was at Woody End when they were guests of Gildor Inglorien and his company and there have been many along the way. The house of Tom Bombadil, the Prancing Pony at Bree, the Last Homely House at Rivendell, the secret land of Lothlórien, and now this. Of all the places in which they have rested this provides the least comfort but it is a safe place and it has its reward for those who rest there.

See Alan Lee’s beautiful depiction of the Elves refuge in Woody End.

“They stood on a wet floor of polished stone, the doorstep, as it were, of a rough hewn gate of rock opening dark behind them. But in front a thin veil of water was hung, so near that Frodo could have put an outstretched arm into it. It faced westward. The level shafts of the setting sun behind beat upon it, and the red light was broken into many flickering beams of ever changing colour. It was as if they stood at the window of some elven-tower, curtained with threaded jewels of silver and gold, and ruby, sapphire and amethyst, all kindled with an unconsuming fire.”

If elves had come to this place they would have fashioned a place of wonder just as they did at Woody End in the Shire. They would have learned what the place had to teach them through patient attention and then worked with it to reveal that wonder. As Gimli showed us at the glittering caves of Aglarond that dwarves would pay attention to the gifts of the earth in order to reveal them. And hobbits would discover that which would make it homely just as they had done in the Shire.

But these gifts are gifts of peace and now there is no time to practice them. The men of Gondor have made it a place of temporary shelter just as soldiers did in the trenches of the Western Front in the 1914-18 war in which Tolkien played his part. Whether Faramir returned to Henneth Annûn after the war we are not told but I like to imagine that he did and that some of Legolas’s promised elves from the woodland realm offered their services to create a kingly hall here.

But Frodo and Sam are able to find beauty wherever they go. Perhaps, as Frodo suggests when his eyes are blindfolded, it is a gift that he shares with all hobbits. He spoke at that moment of how, when the Fellowship had entered Lothlórien Gimli had sought to resist the Elves insistence that their eyes should have been blindfolded but that “the hobbits endured it”.

The willingness of hobbits to endure is one of the great gifts that they bring to the story. Of course they are capable of heroic deeds when called upon to undertake them but they do not look for such things. Merry and Pippin are carried across Rohan bound by orcs and Sam follows where Frodo goes without seeking any comfort for himself. And Frodo endures the Ring that he never sought, never desired,but which simply came to him. Later Frodo will be carried into Mordor by orcs and at the end he will be carried up Mount Doom by Sam.

“And do you seek great things for yourself, seek them not,” was a favourite text from the bible of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great theologian and resister of the Nazi tyranny, and one that he pondered often while in prison. And the text continues, “but I will give your life as a prize of war” (Jeremiah 45.5). Bonhoeffer learnt that life was to lived as something given, not shaped by ourselves, just as prisoners of war are allowed to live. Frodo understands life in this way and one of the rewards of his patience is an ability to find beauty at many unexpected times and places.

Frodo and Sam Rest For a While in The Woods of Ithilien

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Frodo and Sam have been here before because the Field of Cormallen lies close to the refuge of Henneth Annûn. These are the woods that they came to on their journey, guided by Gollum, from the desolation that lay before the Black Gate of Mordor to the Crossroads, the Morgul Vale and then the great climb up to the Pass of Cirith Ungol. These are the woods in Ithilien, the desolate garden of Gondor that “kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness” even as they were ravaged by orcs and other foes of Gondor.

It is only a few short weeks since Frodo and Sam were last in these woods in the first days of March. Even then Spring was beginning and the life of the Earth was already breaking through the destructive grip of Mordor after the cold of Winter. “Fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing.” Now the Spring is advanced and in its full riotous glory of smells, sights and sounds. Even amidst the fearfulness of their last visit to Ithilien Frodo and Sam were refreshed by the gentle beauty of this place, now they linger there without fear “visiting again the places that they had passed before.” This time they know that there are no dangers hiding in a shadow or behind a rock or tree. The song of a bird can be heard clearly without the possibility of an iron clad footfall of an orc being listened for amidst its beauty. The “groves and thickets… of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay” can be gazed upon and their aromas drank in without fear that they may conceal an enemy who might do them hurt.

The last time that they were here Frodo and Sam were pressing forward, always aware that every moment’s delay in their journey to the mountain might lead to disaster for their friends and all that they loved. The curtain of water cascading down the rocks that concealed the refuge of Faramir and his Rangers might be gazed upon for a moment as the setting sun lit it with light and colour but always there was the sense as they paused in their journey that there was another step to be taken, another danger to be faced.

Tolkien’s story is filled with pauses in which the characters encounter beauty in a manner that takes hold of them, making them stop to take it in. The hidden valley of Rivendell, the woods of Lothlórien, the glittering caves of Aglarond and the refuge of Henneth Annûn in the woods of Ithilien are all such places. Each one calls them to turn aside for a moment from their task but they are not thereby distractions. A distraction is a pulling or dragging away of the mind from the needful thing. In The Lord of the Rings the encounter with beauty is not a distraction but a recollection. The essential is that which is good, true and beautiful and it is the essential that is threatened by the Dark Lord and yet so woven into the very fabric of reality that the Dark Lord cannot touch and destroy it. We recall Frodo’s cry of “They cannot conquer for ever!” at the flower-crowned head of the statue of the King of Gondor cast down by orcs and Sam’s vision of the star beyond the mirks of Mordor that is inaccessible to the reach of Sauron.

Already Frodo and Sam have known that there is “the dearest freshness deep down things” and so they can wander through Ithilien without fear and contemplate it in a way far beyond that which those who have not known the dark as they have done can do. This is the dawn that awaits those who watch through the dark of the night, the Springtime prepared for those who have endured through Winter.