Isengard

“You Have Become a Fool, Saruman, and Yet Pitiable.” Gandalf Breaks The Staff of Saruman and Casts Him From The Order of Wizards.

/ stephencwinter / 3 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 751-762

Isengard lies in ruins and Saruman is a prisoner within Orthanc. His armies are defeated and now he is caught between two enemies. One, the mighty power that lies within Barad-dûr, knows now that he is a traitor, working only for his own purposes. The others, the King of Rohan who he sought to destroy, the Ents of Fangorn who he contemptuously ignored, and Gandalf who he had once imprisoned and would have sent to Mordor, stand before his doors.

Gandalf and Théoden ascend the steps that lead to the door of Orthanc while the rest of the company await their return below. The Ents remain hidden because Gandalf hopes to persuade Saruman to leave his prison and to come down and feels that if the Ents were present he would fear to do so.

Saruman comes to a window and engages in debate, first with Théoden and then with Gandalf, seeking always to turn things to his own advantage, but as Éomer says to Théoden, “so would the trapped wolf speak to the hounds, if he could.”

Although Saruman does not dare to leave his doors in the scene we are thinking about today he does try to make the same impression that he sought to make in this excellent imagining by Harold Jig.

Saruman has great power in his voice but by seeking to divide his enemies, speaking singly, first to Théoden and then to Gandalf, he fails in his purpose. First Théoden recalls that Saruman went to war with him unprovoked and murdered children in the Westfold. Then Gandalf recalls his imprisonment within Orthanc. Saruman has done too much wrong to too many to be able to persuade them now that his intentions have been anything but malicious.

But in his speech to Gandalf Saruman reveals what he still believes.

“Much we could still accomplish together, to heal the disorders of the world. Let us understand one another and dismiss from thought these lesser folk! Let them wait upon our decisions.”

Of course, by now, Gandalf knows that when Saruman speaks of we what he really means is I. But even if he didn’t Gandalf has long been a servant and not a master. That is the fundamental difference between the two. Saruman has always regarded others as either more or less powerful than himself. If, like Sauron, they are more powerful, then he will seek to ally himself to them, although he will wait for an opportunity to betray them. It was for this purpose that he sent orcs to capture hobbits and so caught Merry and Pippin. He knew that a hobbit was bearing the Ring, probably taking it to Minas Tirith so that it could be used against the Dark Lord.

This is how Saruman treats the mighty. But for those who he regards as “lesser folk” he has only contempt. The House of Eorl is “a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs” and hobbits are “small rag-tag that dangle” at Gandalf’s tail.

And against Gandalf himself he bears almost uncontrollable fury. He has always regarded Gandalf as a foe. Right from the time when the Valar sent the Istari, the wizards, to Middle-earth to contest with Sauron and to encourage and organise resistance to him, Saruman insisted that he, and not Gandalf, should be the leader of the mission. And Saruman always knew that Cirdan of the Grey Havens had given Narya, one of the three Elven Rings, to Gandalf and not to him. When Gandalf demands Saruman’s staff and the keys of Orthanc Saruman replies in uncontrollable rage.

Saruman at the head of his order.

“When you also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those that you wear now.”

Of course, apart from the rather pathetic reference to boots, we know that what Saruman has revealed here is what he desires. He is the one who has always desired power and domination. Like a seed growing to a mighty tree this desire has long lodged in his heart but its full extent, his desire to be Lord of Middle-earth, has only become something fully formed quite recently. Before that it may only have been revealed in jealousy of Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond, and contempt for Rohan or Ents, his near neighbours.

And, at the end, not knowing the consequence, not just of betraying those who had been friends but of the Valar who gave him his mission, he is summoned by Gandalf to stand and hear his judgement and he has no choice but to obey. His staff is broken and he is cast from the Order. Gandalf has the authority to do this and Saruman’s power is broken. God cannot be mocked forever.

Saruman’s staff is broken by Gandalf. Christopher Lee played this part so well in Peter Jackson’s films.

“Many Ents Were Hurling Themselves Against the Orthanc Rock; But That Defeated Them.” Why Couldn’t The Ents Destroy Orthanc?

/ stephencwinter / 14 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

Last week we thought about how when the Ents destroyed the fortress of Isengard it was if the action of tree roots over a hundred years were “all packed into a few moments.”

But the Tower of Orthanc was different. After Saruman was able to make a hasty retreat into it, only just managing to escape the pursuit of Quickbeam, he got his machinery of war into action and Beechbone was killed by a kind of flamethrower. This threw the Ents into a terrible fury and they launched themselves into an attack upon Orthanc.

“Round and round the rock of Orthanc the Ents were striding and storming like a howling gale, breaking pillars, hurling avalanches of boulders down the shafts, tossing up huge slabs of stone into the air like leaves. The tower was in the middle of a spinning whirlwind. I saw Iron posts and blocks of masonry go rocketing up hundreds of feet, and smash against the windows of Orthanc. But Treebeard kept his head. He had not had any burns, luckily. He did not want his folk to hurt themselves in their fury, and he did not want Saruman to escape out of some hole in the confusion. Many of the Ents were hurling themselves against the Orthanc-rock: but that defeated them. It is very smooth and hard. Some wizardry is in it, perhaps, older and stronger than Saruman”s.”

Ted Nasmith imagines the Ents trying to destroy Orthanc.

But Orthanc was not built by wizards but by the Dunedain at the end of the Second Age when Elendil and his people escaped the destruction of Númenor and established the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth. As the power of these kingdoms began to wane it fell into the hands of the Dunlendings who were later allies of Saruman at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Eventually Saruman offered to take possession of the fortress and his offer was gratefully received both by the King of Rohan and the Steward of Gondor and for years after he was a valuable ally to them both and Isengard was an important part of the defences of the West against the growing power that first began to arise in Dol Goldur.

Saruman inherited Orthanc but he built the fortress of Isengard; and it was this fortress that the Ents were able to destroy in a single night. But why did Orthanc remain impregnable? It was from a thought in the comments section following last week’s post that this question began to grow in my mind and I want to try to tackle it this week.

I think that there are two main themes in Tolkien’s thought at work here. One is that as a character begins to invest more and more of themselves, of their essence, into the things that they make, so that essence begins to waste away. A kind of entropy is at work. The greatest example of this is, of course, of Sauron and the Ring. Sauron puts so much of himself into the making of the Ring that when it is finally destroyed he falls with it. But the same principle is at work with Saruman and Isengard. When Merry and Pippin speak dismissively of the one who had them captured and who would have tortured them until he found out all they knew, Aragorn replies that “once he was as great as his fame made him. His knowledge was deep, his thought was subtle, and his hands marvellously skilled.”

Andrea Pipano imagines Saruman in his greatness.

The other principle is Tolkien’s sense that when we work in harmony with creation and not seeking mastery over it we are able to make something of real significance and of staying power. So we see the way in which Galadriel makes Lothlórien, a place that Sam Gamgee describes as like being inside a song. And we also listened to Gimli speak of the work that he would do in the glittering caves of Aglarond. Great sculptors speak of finding something within the material that they are working with; something that is essentially present. And in the city of Worcester in England near which I live we could contrast the difference between the gothic beauty of that city’s medieval cathedral and the modernist monstrosity that is the technical college next door to it. The conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton, was once asked to reflect on the unpopularity of new housing developments. His brilliant answer was that if a development were to have the quality of a city like Bath and its beautiful architecture then there would never be an objection to it.

The Royal Crescent in Bath. A beautiful example of Georgian architecture from the 18th century. And the interiors are just as beautiful as the facades.

Scruton, like Tolkien, makes beauty the centre of his thought on the things, and not functionality. When function is subordinate to beauty, in which something is made that is in harmony with the materials that are used and which has a transcendent purpose greater than the agrandisement of the maker then it will last. So Isengard is destroyed in a night and Orthanc is impregnable.

“My Business is With Isengard Tonight, With Rock and Stone.” How The Ents Destroyed Saruman”s Fortress

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

The smoking of pipes at the ruined gates of Isengard had created a quiet mood in which nothing is said but Legolas is anxious to know more about the story of the hobbits after their capture by orcs nine days before. Merry and Pippin spoke of their experience with the Uruk-hai and how they were able to escape amidst the confusion of battle when Éomer’s company attacked. As Gimli said about how Pippin was able to cut his bonds with an orc knife at an earlier point in the story the hobbits were lucky but they were able to seize their luck “with both hands”.

Inger Idelfelt imagines Merry and Pippin as prisoners of the orcs.

Merry and Pippin went on to speak of their meeting with Treebeard and of Entmoot when the Ents discussed what action they should take against Saruman. Then they spoke of how, at the end of their debate, the Ents “suddenly blew up”, of how they marched upon Isengard, and of how they were followed by huorns who came out of the forest behind them.

The Ents avenge destruction of the natural world such as this.

They spoke of how, as they reached Nan Curunir, the vale of the wizard, they were met by a tremendous sound of trumpets blaring and thought that they had been discovered by their enemies. But then they had realised that the noise was of the emptying of Isengard as Saruman sent his army to war against Rohan and how for an hour they watched them marching southward towards Helm’s Deep.

Treebeard watched them go and then said to Merry and Pippin, “My business is with Isengard tonight, with rock and stone”.

Tolkien describes how the Ents launched their assault upon the fortress, wonderfully showing how the slow, deliberate action of tree roots over a hundred years, an action about which all householders must be aware, was concentrated into a single night’s furious work.

“They pushed, pulled, tore, shook and hammered; and clang-bang, crash-crack, in five minutes they had these huge gates just lying in ruin; and some were already beginning to eat into the walls, like rabbits in a sand-pit.”

Merry and Pippin go on to describe how the destruction continues, how Saruman tried to respond by means of fire from within his impregnable fastness of Orthanc at the heart of Isengard; and how the Ents diverted the waters of the Isen from its natural course and flooded the fortress, turning Orthanc into an island in the centre of a lake, an island in which Saruman was now a prisoner.

I have already spoken of how, in this powerful piece of description, Tolkien shows how the action of a forest upon a house over many years is concentrated within a single night. We know that if any building is neglected for a period of time nature soon reclaims it, drawing it back into itself as what once seemed to be permanent is shown to be merely temporary. Tolkien did not know of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, in which Lovelock suggested that the earth is a complex self-regulating system within which that which is organic and non-organic interacts in order to maintain the system as a whole but I suspect that he may have been inclined to like it if he did. Many scientists have criticised the hypothesis on the basis that it is teleological, in other words that it is descriptive of a set of conditions that will lead to a particular end, in this case about the survival of planet earth as a place for organic life, but Tolkien was a Christian, and Christians believe that everything is moving towards a conclusion, of a new heaven and a new earth.

In his Music of the Ainur Tolkien places the whole history of the earth within the framework of a single piece of music in which all creatures, both earthly and heavenly are active participants. Only Eru Ilúvatar, only God, knows how the music will end but it will be a beautiful resolution of all that has preceded that end. As the 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich put it, “All shall be well”. There may be a time in which figures like Saruman may triumph but as the Ents show, through their business with the rock and stone of Isengard, they cannot triumph forever.

Ted Nasmith depicts the destruction of Isengard by the Ents.

“These Hobbits Will Sit on the Edge of Ruin and Discuss the Pleasures of the Table.” Merry and Pippin Amidst the Wreck of Isengard.

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 726-729

This week we return from Théoden’s wonder at his first sight of Ents at Helm’s Deep to Merry and Pippin amidst the wreck of Isengard. Not that I think that they mind our neglect, as they are resting after their first good meal since they were captured by orcs over a week before. Treebeard had given them drafts of a drink that not only sustained them but even made them grow, but there is nothing like proper food and drink to achieve contentment and nothing like a hobbit to enjoy it properly.

Merry and Pippin sit on the edge of the ruin of Isengard and enjoy good food and their pipes.

“These hobbits will sit on the edge of ruin and discuss the pleasures of the table, or the small doings of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and remoter cousins to the ninth degree, if you encourage them with undue patience.” So says Gandalf to Théoden after Merry has begun to discourse on the history of pipe-smoking in the Shire, and we know this to be true, not just because Gandalf says it but because we remember how Merry and Pippin sat down on the edge of Fangorn to eat a piece of lembas as Éomer’s company did battle with the orcs just a few yards away and how, when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli found signs of this meal they commented that this was proof that hobbits had been there. Who else would choose such a spot for a meal?

Gandalf does not say it here but this is why he loves the Shire and his visited it so often over many years. There is a sense in which the whole Shire has been sitting on the edge of the ruin of Eriador as it has been since the fall of the Kingdom of Arnor and its successor, Arthedain, at the hands of the Witch-king of Angmar for many years and has quite simply ignored the fact, being entirely absorbed with its own affairs, the pleasures of the table and the small doings of its families. How different this has been from Gondor, for example, with its endless anxiety about the world beyond its borders, although perhaps in Lossarnach and in their lord, Forlong the Fat, there is something of a hobbit spirit.

Gandalf has needed the Shire for many reasons. In part he has needed it as a place of rest amidst his long and weary travels. But he has also needed it as a place of play, a place where he has learned to play. Sam Gamgee wanted Frodo to include a verse about Gandalf’s fireworks in the lament that he had composed about Gandalf in Lothlórien and that is what Gandalf had meant to him and to most of the people of the Shire. There is a sense that as Gandalf incarnated his Olorin spirit in Middle-earth as one of the Istari sent by the Valar to contend with Sauron, it was the Shire, and its “small doings” that shaped that incarnation in a very particular way. Saruman never understood this, laughed at it, and suspected it too. His own incarnation lay within the walls of what he thought was an impregnable fortress, a place where he could plot the conquest of Rohan and even dream of becoming the Lord of the Rings and master of Middle-earth.

Dimitry Burmak shows how Gandalf delights in his own fireworks at Bilbo’s farewell party.

That it was Gandalf who triumphed in the War of the Ring that ended the Third Age of Arda, and not Saruman, was in no small measure because of his love of the Shire. This was not just because, by a set of strange circumstances, the Ring came to the Shire, and then from the Shire to Mount Doom, but also because Merry and Pippin came to Fangorn Forest. It was Gandalf himself who told Frodo how he had chosen Bilbo for the Quest of the Lonely Mountain, a story recounted in Lost Tales, telling Thorin Oakenshield that “a foresight is on me.” This foresight, this world changing intuition, was formed within Gandalf’s soul by hours at hobbit tables on the edge of ruin while he smoked his pipe and listened to tales of the small doings of his hosts. It was from these doings that Sauron and Saruman fell.

The fall of Saruman in the Shire by Inger Edelfelt.

“Welcome, My Lords, to Isengard!” The Doorwardens of Isengard Greet Théoden as He Comes to The Fortress of Saruman.

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 716-729

The pages that follow Gimli’s beautiful description of the Caves of Aglarond comprise a long slow journey into the unknown. One might think that Théoden and his company might ride with a light heart after their great victory over the hosts of Isengard but we have already seen the much vaunted plainness of manner of the men of Rohan when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli first met them upon the grassy plains while hunting Merry and Pippin as the Uruk-hai were taking them to Isengard. An occasion when Éomer’s men simply dismissed the strangeness of the three companions as an expression of their wildness. And now, as they encounter the strangeness of the forest that has moved from Fangorn to Helm’s Deep the company who accompany their king descend into an unhappy and, occasionally, frightened, silence.

The uncanny world through which the Riders pass.

At one point Théoden and Gandalf speak together about the nature of stories that are told only to children and we will return to this in more detail next week reflecting in particular on Tolkien’s famous lecture on Fairy Tales but now I will only note that, while Théoden’s sense of wonder is gradually awakened during the ride to Isengard, he does not share this experience with his men. At last as they approach the outer fortifications of Isengard the growing sense of grim bleakness accompanied by menace seems complete.

This mood begins to shift subtly and gradually as they perceive that “the power of Saruman was overthrown”. The doors of Isengard “lay hurled and twisted on the ground. And all about, stone, cracked and splintered into countless jagged shards, was scattered far and wide, or piled into ruinous heaps.”

The riders gaze upon the ruin of Isengard in uncomprehending silence but then become aware that within its midst there are two small grey-clad figures lying upon the rubble at their ease and that beside them there are “bottles, bowls and platters… as if they had just eaten well, and now rested from their labour.” One of the figures seems to be asleep while the other “leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke.”

“Welcome, my Lords, to Isengard!”

Of course we have just met Merry and Pippin once again taking their ease as soldiers will after battle with whatever is available to them. We last saw the young hobbits with Treebeard on the night before the Ents’ assault upon Saruman when he was wondering if they were all going to their doom, whether it might be “the last march of the Ents”. And now the battle is done and victory won and all the tension is released.

And not just for Merry and Pippin. Soon all the company who are with Théoden and Gandalf are laughing too. It is as if the young hobbits have gently escorted the Riders from their shared experience of gathering gloom and mute incomprehension into something quite different and much more pleasant.

I can think of few better examples of bathos, that swift descent, sometimes of the sublime to the ridiculous, sometimes of the uncanny to the familiar, sometimes of the terrifying to the safe, than this. From the ending of the battle at Helm’s Deep to the encounter with the hobbits there are some twenty pages in my edition of The Lord of the Rings and throughout those pages the mood is as I have described it above. At no point does Tolkien relent in his creation of this feeling of anxious, fearful incomprehension. Not until the bubble is burst by two young hobbits. And who better within all Tolkien’s legendarium to take us into a world that is less fearful and gentler than hobbits.

Except for the Riders of Rohan hobbits also belong to the world of folktales and fairy stories. But unlike the dwimmer-craftiness of wizards (Gandalf included) or the terrifying silent presence of the Huorns of Fangorn hobbits are not to be thought a threat. Most of the time, indeed, they are anxious not to appear such. This lack of apparent threat does of course lead to the downfall of the greatest tyrants of this age. Tyrants always seem to fall to those who they have underestimated. But now the young hobbits do as they are most at their ease in doing. They gently help a group of men descend from a state of heightened anxiety and foreboding to a gentler place. While infuriating the friends who lay down all their dreams and ambitions even their lives in pursuing them across Rohan. But that we will return to on another occasion.

“The Land Had Changed.” Fangorn Forest Comes to Helm’s Deep. The Revenge of the Trees.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 705-707

It was Gandalf who understood what was happening first. As the host of Rohan rode from Edoras to Helm’s Deep he saw a “darkness brooding about the feet of the Misty Mountains” and asked Legolas to describe what he could see.

“I can see a darkness. There are shapes moving in it, great shapes far away upon the banks of the river; but what they are I cannot tell. It is not mist or cloud that defeats my eyes: there is a veiling shadow that some power lays upon the land, and it marches slowly down stream. It is as if the twilight under endless trees were flowing downwards from the hills.”

The forest moves down from the mountains before Isengard.

At first Gandalf mistook one form of darkness for another, seeing them all as one kind and that kind the darkness of Mordor but as he pondered more he began to realise what he was seeing and so rode towards Isengard. There he asked Treebeard for the help of his Huorns and with them rode back to Helm’s Deep.

Later on Merry spoke of the Huorns to other members of the Fellowship.

“I think they are Ents that have become almost like trees” he said… “There is great power in them, and they seem to be able to wrap themselves in shadow: it is difficult to see them moving. But they do. They can move very quickly if they are angry. You stand still looking at the weather maybe, or listening to the rustling of the wind, and then suddenly you find that you are in the middle of a wood with great groping trees all around you.”

In Peter Jackson’s film he moved the encounter that Merry and Pippin had with Old Man Willow in the Old Forest to one with a Huorn in Fangorn.

And it is these trees, or perhaps we should call them Ent-trees, that Legolas described to Gandalf and that are now in the Deeping-coomb, the valley below the Hornburg. The hosts of Isengard stand at bay before foes on every side. Théoden and his riders drive them towards the Huorns who block their retreat and Erkenbrand and a thousand men upon foot march towards them, the remnants of a once defeated army that had stood at bay at the Fords of the Isen now victorious once more as they drive their foes before them. And Gandalf rides down upon them revealed for a moment in power and his enemies fall upon their faces in terror. For if there is one thing that orcs understand, perhaps the only thing, it is power. Just an hour before they had been a proud army serving a mighty wizard and about to storm a fortress that had never fallen when defended. Now they are surrounded by power on every side. At last they flee into the mysterious forest and are never seen again.

When Treebeard described Saruman as having a mind of “metal and wheels” who “does not care for living things” he was not merely expressing a difference in taste between himself and the wizard but something much more fundamental. When Saruman emptied Isengard of its defenders in order to conquer Rohan he had no idea of the threat that lay on his doorstep and the reason for this was that he did not care for living things. There are two senses of meaning in the word care that Treebeard used. One is the sense of care as responsibility and it is certainly true that Saruman has no sense of responsibility for living things. But the other sense is that he simply did not think about them very much at all. He assumed that his technology was more potent and effective than any living creature that he had encountered with the exception maybe of Sauron himself and in this he utterly underestimated the forest and its power.

It is one of the greatest feats of Tolkien’s imagination to have thought about how a forest might behave if it were to be able to perform its essential actions not as a plant but as an animal. And what might happen if the growing resentment that a forest might feel about its abuse and mistreatment by others suddenly spilled over. This forest has been abused by a wizard and by orcs for a long time and now, roused by two young hobbits, it takes revenge upon its enemies. Tolkien concentrates the revenge of the living world into a brief period of time. We know that our living planet may move much more slowly than this but if we choose to behave like orcs or fallen wizards in our relationship with life itself our planet will defend itself against us and will eventually win albeit after a conflict with terrible losses. Maybe one day we, like the hosts of Isengard, will be cowering before its latent power.

For a brief moment the forest takes control of the plains of Rohan. All can enter it only by permission and protected by Ents.

“I Am Saruman, One Might Say, Saruman as He Ought to Have Been.” We Meet Gandalf The White.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 644, 645

We can be sure that if the mysterious old man who climbed up the hill upon which Merry and Pippin first met Treebeard was indeed Saruman we would now be subjected to a very long speech. It would be a speech about his greatness, one intended to fill his hearers with awe, but all Gandalf says about himself and his transformation is to say:

“Yes, I am white now,” said Gandalf. “Indeed I am Saruman, one,might almost say, Saruman as he should have been. But come now, tell me of yourselves!”

Gandalf the White.

When Gandalf was imprisoned by Saruman in Isengard he was subjected to such a speech. “We must have power,” Saruman said, “power to order things as we will, for that good that only the Wise can see.” Saruman was anxious, not only to subject Gandalf to his will but to convince him that he had the right to be the Lord of the Rings and thus Lord of Middle-earth.

From the beginning of the mission of the Istari, the wizards, to Middle-earth, Saruman was anxious that he should be its leader. And when with Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond he formed the White Council, a council of the Wise to oppose Sauron, he insisted that he should be its leader even though Galadriel argued that the leader ought to be Gandalf.

Although Gandalf never sought power for himself Saruman was always jealous of him and looked for ways to undermine the one who he believed to be his rival. So he made fun of Gandalf’s affection for hobbits and the Shire while beginning to forge links between the Shire and Isengard; and he mocked Gandalf’s enjoyment of pipe-smoking and of pipeweed, while secretly learning the art himself and purchasing the best of Longbottom leaf from Lotho Sackville-Baggins who became his agent in the Shire.

But most importantly of all Saruman believed that Gandalf was his rival in seeking to find and to take possession of the Ring. Like Sauron he was convinced that if anyone of sufficient strength were to find the Ring they would claim it for themselves and use it to become the ruler of all. And he became convinced that Gandalf was trying to find the Ring just as he was so that he should become lord of all and that when he began to suspect that the Ring was hidden in the Shire that the same hobbits who he had despised were being used for some obscure purpose in Gandalf’s plot.

All Saruman’s suspicions were, in his mind, confirmed when he and Gandalf met once again in Isengard after the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Gandalf demands that Saruman surrender the Key of Orthanc to him and his staff as pledges of Saruman’s good conduct and to be returned later to him if he should once again merit them. Saruman responded to Gandalf’s demand with undisguised rage.

“Later!” he cried, and his voice rose to a scream. “Later! Yes, when you also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards.”

Saruman was utterly convinced that Gandalf desired what he himself did, that Gandalf was his rival and therefore his enemy. And perhaps he feared that he was his enemy’s inferior, that Gandalf possessed a power that he himself lacked, and that he needed to surround himself with a fortress, an army and all the trappings of power in order to be what Gandalf was, in himself, alone, vulnerable and homeless in the world. And so he became unsatisfied with his white robes and made a coat of many colours for himself. There is a sense in which he gave up his white robes quite voluntarily having become unsatisfied with what they represented, that is that he was an emissary of the Valar in Middle-earth. That these robes should be given to Gandalf, the very one that he feared and hated most, only confirmed what he always believed, that Gandalf desired to rule just as he did.

Saruman of many colours by Harold Jig.

What he had forgotten, indeed despised, was that his power and status did not belong to him but had been given to him in order that he might be an emissary of the Valar in Middle-earth. His task was to do the bidding of his masters and so when he proved unfaithful in doing that task his masters stripped him of his robes and gave them to one who would do their bidding. Gandalf is now the White, Saruman as he should have been.

“O Rowan Dead, Upon Your Head Your Hair is Dry and Grey.” Quickbeam the Ent Teaches Us the Power of Lamentation.

/ stephencwinter / 10 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991,2007) pp. 628-631

I have never known any fully mature rowan-trees and so sadly have never encountered in my own experience the description that Bregalad, or Quickbeam as he is called in the Common Tongue, gives of the mighty trees of his youth.

“And these trees grew and grew, till the shadow of each was like a green hall, and their red berries in the autumn were a burden, and a beauty and a wonder.”

A rowan-tree crowned in glory.

I may not have met a fully mature rowan-tree but I do share Bregalad’s love of the rowan and its beauty and I have enjoyed watching birds flock to them later in autumn as other sources of food begin to run scarce. It is a tree that sustains them well into winter and itt is a good tree to plant and grow in a town garden or to see upon a woodland walk in the country.

Merry and Pippin are introduced to Bregalad by Treebeard towards the ending of the first day of Entmoot.

“Are you getting weary, or feeling impatient, hmm, eh?” Treebeard asks. “Well I am afraid that you must not get impatient yet?” This is still only the first day of deliberations that will take three days to conclude. Bregalad has already made up his mind about what to do and needs no more debate and so he is given the task of looking after the young hobbits until all is done.

“I am Bregalad, that is Quickbeam in your language. But it is only a nickname, of course. They have called me that ever since I said yes to an elder Ent before he had finished his question. Also I drink quickly, and go out while some are still wetting their beards.”

I love the way in which Peet on Deviantart has captured Bregalad’s gentleness and delight in this picture.

The quickness that Merry and Pippin experience in Quickbeam, and which they delight in, is a quickness to sing and to laugh. The very last time we see the friends at the end of The Lord of the Rings as they bid farewell to Sam is as they go off together singing. Bregalad is of the same spirit and so he laughs when the sun comes out from behind a cloud and he laughs whenever he meets a spring or a stream but his singing is subtly different whenever he meets a rowan-tree. He halts a while “with his arms stretched out” and he sings and sways as he sings.

Bregalad is a lover in the sense that he delights in life, and he delights in the life of the forest in particular, and especially in rowan-trees amidst the life of the forest. He takes pleasure in the being-ness of rowan-trees, in the simple fact that they are, and he expresses his delight in his singing. He sings his joy in the beauty of these trees. 

O rowan fair, upon your hair how white the blossom lay!
O rowan mine, I saw you shine upon a summer's day,
Your rind so bright, your leaves so light, your voice so cool and soft:
Upon your head how golden-red the crown you bore aloft!

This is a song of praise for the glory of a fellow creature but his song does not end with praise but with lamentation. If, in Derndingle where the Entmoot meets, the mood is of growing anger which will eventually spill forth in songs of war, songs in which Bregalad will join, the mood of the song that he sings to Merry and Pippin is one of the deepest sadness. 

O rowan dead, upon your head your hair is dry and grey;
Your crown is spilled, your voice is stilled for ever and a day.

It is not only anger that rouses the Ents against the wanton destruction of Saruman and of the orcs of Isengard but sadness also. And the sadness goes deeper than the anger. With their anger the Ents will “split Isengard into splinters and crack its walls into rubble” but with the sadness that they sing in songs of lament they will labour to heal the land, to renew Fangorn and also to rebuild Isengard making it a place of beauty once again, a place in which earth, air, fire and water can live together in harmony with one another and in which living things that grow and which sustain life can thrive. Bregalad teaches us that we need more than anger if we are to transform the earth. There are other songs to sing than songs of war.

The rowan-tree both protects and heals.

“It is Likely Enough… That We are Going to Our Doom: The Last March of The Ents.” The Ents Go to War at Isengard.

/ stephencwinter / 3 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.623-635

The night that Merry and Pippin spend in Wellinghall is the first since they escaped from the Orcs and the first that they have had in a home, a place of safety, since leaving Lothlórien, and so they sleep long and refreshingly.

Treebeard takes them to Entmoot, the council in which the Ents will deliberate what course of action they must take.

“Deciding what to do does not take Ents as long as going over all the facts and events that they have to make up their minds about”, Treebeard says to the hobbits, and he estimates that this will take a couple of days or so. He sends Merry and Pippin off with a younger Ent called Bregalad or Quickbeam who has already made up his mind about what should be done and the hobbits spend those days in his company as the Moot continues.

It is on the third day, a bleak and windy day, in the afternoon, that all falls silent and then with a great crash and the quivering and bending of the trees that the Ents march towards them.

“We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!”

The Ents are marching to Isengard and to war.

The Ents march upon Isengard

It is through Merry that we learn something about Isengard. Merry is the organiser of the four hobbits, the original company of the Ring that left the Shire some months before these events. He organised the purchase of Crickhollow in Buckland, and, as the real reason why Frodo is leaving Hobbiton became clear it is Merry who made secret preparation for leaving the Shire. He is rather proud that while Pippin spent his days in Rivendell idling away the time he tried to find out as much as he could about what might lay ahead.

“Isengard is a sort of ring of rocks or hills, I think, with a flat space inside and an island or pillar of rock in the middle, called Orthanc. Saruman has a tower on it. There is a gate, perhaps more than one, in the encircling wall, and I believe there is a stream running through it; it comes out of the mountains, and flows on across the Gap of Rohan.”

Saruman’s creation of Isengard around the Tower of Orthanc

Orthanc is not Saruman’s work but much older having been built by the Númenorians in the days of Elendil. It was a sign of their decline that during the first part of the Third Age it became a lawless place far from the authority of Minas Tirith and a thorn in the side of the new kingdom of the Rohirrim who had settled in the plains of Calenardhon that lay between the southern end of the Misty Mountains to the north and the mountains of Gondor to the south. So it was that when Saruman took possession of Isengard in 2759 of the Third Age both the Steward of Gondor and the King of Rohan welcomed him gladly seeing him as a valuable ally who would watch over the strategically vital Gap of Rohan.

It would seem that Saruman was able to keep his true intentions secret right until the moment he took Gandalf prisoner during the time in which Frodo was making preparations to leave first Hobbiton and then the Shire, although Treebeard seems to have been aware of these intentions for some time and the presence of orcs in Isengard. Even after going to war with Rohan Saruman was able to keep Théoden from making a strong response through the efforts of Grima Wormtongue his chief counsellor who was able to convince Théoden that Saruman’s true wish was for peace.

It is with the arrival of Merry and Pippin in their pure, gentle and artless simplicity that the dam finally bursts and the slowly simmering anger of the Ents finally comes pouring out of Fangorn and down to Isengard. It is as if Nature herself finally rises up against the powers that would destroy her. But even as the Ents march upon Isengard and upon Saruman Treebeard is aware that Nature may fail, that it is “likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents”. But, he adds, “if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later”. The possibility that disenchanted Nature could yet reawaken and rise against a world of “metal and wheels” was something that the Inklings pondered both through the character of Merlin in C.S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and through Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien allows such a revolt to take place but recognises the heartbreaking fragility of Nature that may yet fall before the walls of Isengard and before technology.

Alan Lee imagines Treebeard…
…and he imagines Merlin.

“He Has a Mind of Metal and Wheels; and He Does Not Care For Growing Things”. Treebeard Speaks of The Treason of Saruman.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991,2007) pp.611-617

The home that Treebeard has shown to Merry and Pippin is the fruit of exquisite patience. We might almost say the patience of Nature herself except, as we saw Treebeard speak of the hill upon which he first met the young hobbits, it had only stood there since that part of the world was shaped. There was a history before that moment too.

So, as I wrote last week, the Wellinghall that Treebeard shows to the young hobbits has been a careful crafting of earth, water, growing things and light over many years. It has as much in common with an art installation as it does a dwelling place and, although it has been ages in its making, if Treebeard had brought Merry and Pippin to it just a few days later it would be different. The spring that wells up from beneath the earth would have shaped it in a new way and as the year moved onwards into springtime so the rising of the sap within the trees that are the walls of Wellinghall would subtly transform them and would fill the air with a delicious aroma.

But Saruman is a different matter altogether.

“I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for living things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”

Middle-earth Enterprises imagine the fruits of Saruman’s “mind of metal and wheels in their depiction of Isengard.

One could hardly find a greater contrast between any two beings than between the minds of these two neighbours. If Treebeard has lovingly worked with Nature for long ages of time both in the making of his home and in his work as a shepherd of the trees Saruman is impatient both with Nature herself and with all living things. As Treebeard puts it, in the mind of Saruman the one needful thing is that it must “serve him for the moment”; and it is worth noting that phrase, for the moment, for as W.H Auden spoke of factory workers, all are “put to temporary use”. Robots are taking the place of those who work in factories and doubtless if Saruman had lived long enough he would have replaced his specially bred orcs, the Uruk-hai, with robots. It might be that his orcs can withstand the sun in a way that other orcs cannot, but eventually it will be possible to create a robot that will be able far to outlast even the strongest orc. And whereas Saruman could not be completely confident about the obedience of his Uruk-hai he need never have any anxiety about robots. The temporary usefulness of any creature that serves him for the moment would have come to an end. And we might even add that the quality of malice which he required in his servants, which was so useful to him, but which required constant attention as with Uglúk’s need to keep reminding his troops that the prisoners were not to be harmed, could be programmed into a robot in a completely reliable manner.

Saruman’s Uruk-hai are “put to temporary use”.

Saruman’s impatient “mind of metal and wheels” is about to be put to the test by the shepherds of trees and by their Huorns, trees that are growing in awareness and becoming more like their shepherds as Treebeard put it. And when it is tested in this manner it will be his impatience that will be his undoing. His anxiety to defeat Rohan quickly will lead him to empty his fortress of Isengard not fearing any enemy nearer by; his weaponry will not be sufficient to drive away either Ents or Huorns; and whereas the Tower of Orthanc, rising out of the very bones of the earth itself and built by Númenorians at the very height of their powers, cannot be assailed by Ents, the walls of Isengard are a fragile thing and easily overthrown.

Perhaps all lovers of “living things” should be grateful for Saruman’s impatience. If he or any like him were able to wait long enough then life itself might be abolished. The Ring of Power is, of course, the ultimate expression of a mind of metal and wheels, a mind that is a machine, at least for that age of Arda. In our own age the principle that made the Rings of Power is at work in new ways and perhaps with even greater effectiveness.