Henneth Annûn

“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.