Lotho Pimple

“The Gate was Shut. Sam Hurled Himself Against the Bolted Brazen Plates and Fell Senseless to the Ground. He Was Out in the Darkness. Frodo Was Alive but Taken By The Enemy.” Where Can We Find Wisdom in the Ending of The Two Towers?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 964-971

The Lord of the Rings is a book filled with wisdom. Often this is explicit, for example, the moment when Gandalf says to Frodo in the study in Bag End, in speaking of his decision to show mercy to Gollum, that “even the wise cannot see all ends”; and often it is expressed through the actions of wise figures in the story. But in the final pages of The Two Towers we see Sam’s desperate but ultimately futile efforts to catch up with the orcs who have taken Frodo’s body, and we overhear a conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag, the two commanders of the orc companies of Cirith Ungola and Minas Morgul. We learn much from what they say, especially the fact that Frodo is still alive, but we do not learn much wisdom. That is unless you count it as a kind of wisdom to learn from Shagrat and Gorbag how to survive in a world in which the only thing that matters is power.

Let us determine right here that we do not wish to learn the wisdom of the orcs. That even if the time might come in which they and their masters rule the world we will continue to refuse to live by their example and to continue to choose to speak truth, seek for beauty wherever we can find it, and to do whatever good we can, even if we have to pay for this choice with our lives.

We have made our choice. It is the choice that Sam makes in the Nameless Land, and continues to make, even when Frodo becomes incapable of making any choice beyond taking one step of excruciating pain after another. But what of the choices that Sam makes in the last pages of The Two Towers? Can we find any wisdom here?

I said in my last post on this blog that Sam is probably not capable of constructing an argument from first principles. I think that I may have been unfair to him. Listen to these words that he says to himself he learns that Frodo is still alive.

“I got it all wrong!” he cried. “I knew I would. Now they’ve got him, the devils! the filth! Never leave your master, never, never: that was my right rule. And I knew it in my heart. May I be forgiven! Now I’ve got to get back to him. Somehow, somehow!”

These are brave words, even heroic, but are they wise? What would have happened if brave Sam had been found beside Frodo’s body, or in making a futile effort to carry it to a place of safety? I think that we know the answer. Either the orcs would have carried two prisoners off to Barad-dûr or they would have taken Frodo alive while leaving his faithful servant dead upon the path. Sam would have died bravely, maybe even leaving some orcs dead around his body, but Frodo would still be a prisoner and the Ring would have been found. All would have been for nothing.

As it is, Frodo may have been taken but Sam is still free and the Ring has not been found. And as we will see when we next return to their story in The Return of the King, not only will the orcs have carried Frodo into Mordor but on finding his priceless mithril coat a fight for its possession will break out between the orcs of Cirith Ungol and of Minas Morgul and Sam will be able to rescue Frodo without having to strike a single blow.

So what wisdom can we learn? Do we learn that all thought, all planning, is useless? That everything that happens in the world is merely one random event after another? Of course not. Sam is only there to take advantage of his luck because he is deeply principled. If he was guided merely by self interest he would be back in the Shire offering his support to Lotho Sackville-Baggins as he seizes control through a coup d’etat. He would simply swap one master for another. No, it is essential that Sam is a hobbit who loves Frodo, and who seeks truth, beauty and goodness, even and, perhaps most especially, in the darkest places. Sam maybe unaware of the Power that is at work in the world, the Power that meant Bilbo to find the Ring and Frodo to receive it from Bilbo. His only prayer is that the Lady, that is Galadriel, will look after his master. We might think that this prayer is less than adequate but it is honoured nonetheless. Perhaps at the end what we do learn is that the deepest wisdom is not cleverness but goodness. It is Sam’s goodness that is honoured, so that when the gate of Cirith Ungol is opened to him he can enter and set Frodo free.

“These Are Not Holes. This is The Great Realm and City of The Dwarrowdelf.” Gimli Speaks of The Glory of Moria Of Old.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 306-310

After a night spent in silent thought at the door to the guardroom Gandalf announces to a rested company the way that he will lead them. “It is time we began to climb up again.”

He leads them along what was once an important road and they make good progress. Eventually they pass through an arched doorway “into a black and empty space.”

Gandalf raises his staff and light blazes forth from it for a brief moment illuminating “a vast roof far above their heads upheld by many mighty pillars hewn of stone”. They are in one of the great halls of Moria, the dwarf city of old. Sam Gamgee, who as a hobbit knows a thing or two about holes and living in them, is overwhelmed both by the hall’s sheer size and darkness.

“There must have been a mighty crowd of dwarves here once upon a time… and everyone of them busier than badgers for five hundred years to make all this, and most in hard rock too! What did they do it all for? They didn’t live in these darksome holes surely?” Sam is comparing the work of the dwarves of Moria to the creation of a hobbit hole in The Shire and he is overwhelmed by awe and by horror. Then Gimli replies.

“These are not holes… This is the great realm and city of the Dwarrowdelf. And of old it was not darksome, but full of light and splendour, as is still remembered in our songs.”

In Peter Jackson’s film version of this scene the light that blazes forth from Gandalf’s staff is allowed to shine a little longer than in the book but this allows us to gaze longer at the ancient glory of the city. The style of architecture chosen there is medieval gothic and we do not know, of course, if that is what the dwarves would actually have chosen or if that is what was in Tolkien’s imagination as he wrote this beautiful passage. But I did not mind this when I first saw this scene in the film, indeed I found myself deeply moved by the dignified grandeur of a beauty that is passing away. Like the architects of the Gothic revival of the nineteenth century, men like Pugin who created the British Houses of Parliament, I think that medieval gothic was one of the great human achievements, seeking as it did to express divine beauty, essential beauty, for the sake of the glory of God alone. A few years ago a game of Monopoly was created which was located in the city of Worcester here in England that lies just a few miles from my home. I remember being much amused by the fact that the city’s cathedral was the most valuable property on the board. Of course it is easily the most beautiful building in the city but as to its monetary value how does one calculate this? If it were not a cathedral whose purpose is the worship of God what would it be used for? Any other use would diminish its beauty in order to make it more use-ful in the utilitarian sense that dominates modern thought. It might become a museum but then would be merely a memory of that which we once had and knew but which we would have lost.

What is the real estate value of Worcester Cathedral or might we understand its true value in other terms?

My experience of being moved by Peter Jackson’s powerful evocation of this scene was tinged with sadness. Like Gimli I felt that I was looking on a glory that was passing away and could never return. Tolkien’s world is one in which the future is one in which two possibilities seem to lie ahead. One is Sauron’s future which is a descent into darkness. It is one in which Sam’s “darksome holes” becomes the only reality there is. The other is more ambiguous in its nature. One is expressed in the hope of Aragorn and the Return of the King. The other is expressed in the world that Lotho Pimple and Ted Sandyman briefly tried to create in The Shire, a world of business opportunities. And although this world is thwarted at The Battle of Bywater and by the death of Saruman and the other principal actors one cannot help but feel that it lurks in the shadows waiting its moment. And it is this world, the world of greed for gain, that brought about the fall of Moria, through lust for mithril. Frodo wears a mithril shirt that is worth more money than the entire value of The Shire.

The Rise and Fall of Lotho Pimple

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I suspect that Lotho Sackville-Baggins was well aware of the name by which he was known in the Shire although doubtless few, if any, would dare use it to his face. I rather think that he came to hold his resentment about the name close to himself as a kind of possession, one that he would nourish and that he would use in order to find energy to fuel his main project, “to own everything himself” as Farmer Cotton puts it. It takes a lot of energy to suppress the true self. To gain the whole world, as the gospels put it,  it is necessary to lose one’s own soul first.

Resentment was a part of the spiritual atmosphere in which Lotho grew up. His parents devoted over seventy-five years of their lives resenting the way that Bilbo Baggins had returned unexpectedly to Bag End from his travels and claimed possession of it once more. Lotho inherited the resentment and the belief that self-worth is intimately associated with possession. His father, Otho, was already a successful businessman growing and selling pipeweed in the South Farthing of the Shire, a business that Lotho inherited, but Lotho had a stroke of luck that transformed his fortunes.

When Saruman first became aware of Gandalf’s liking for smoking pipeweed he sneered at it. But as with every aspect of his relationship with Gandalf his attempt to show himself the superior was merely an affectation.  Saruman knew that Cirdan of the Grey Havens had chosen Gandalf above himself to receive the Elven Ring of Fire and that Galadriel had wanted Gandalf to be the head of the White Council over Saruman and he resented this.

Readers will have noted already the central role that the word, resentment, plays in this sad story, but, as René Girard shows in his mimetic theory, resentment is closely related to envy and to imitation. Saruman desired not only to possess what he perceived Gandalf to possess but he desired to be like Gandalf. He wanted to be admired as he believed Gandalf to be admired and so he began to smoke pipeweed. Of course pipeweed was never the reason that Gandalf was admired but mimetic desire has a way of playing tricks on us. We attach ourselves to certain behaviours as part of the bigger project of becoming the person we admire. In this case it was the smoking of pipeweed.

Saruman became Lotho’s biggest customer and the source of his growing wealth. In an economy based primarily on barter, like the Shire’s, in which money had not played a significant contribution up till then the sudden arrival of money changed things rapidly. Lotho began to buy up more and more property, “mills and malt-houses and inns, and farms, and leaf-plantations.” In other words he became a monopolistic capitalist.

It is necessary here to recognise that in every purchase that Lotho made in this stage of his career two parties were required. Someone had to be a willing seller as well as a willing buyer. There were plenty of hobbits for whom money appeared as a better option that the hard work required to make a decent living out of a farm or a mill or an inn or malt-house.

Eventually Lotho’s desire to grow his business empire inevitably led to resentment and he brought in Saruman’s men as enforcers. Now purchase between willing parties was no longer necessary and Lotho could simply seize what he desired but the forces that he had unleashed in the Shire were to prove too great for him to be able to control.é When Saruman was driven out of Isengard he turned his attention and his anger to the Shire. The Shire and its inhabitants had been the cause, as Saruman perceived it, of his downfall, and once he had arrived in the Shire himself he had no more need of a middle-man. Lotho who had played that role and believed it to be essential was now to discover that he was simply a tool to be disposed of when of no further use. Frodo was aware quite early in his arrival in the Shire of Lotho’s fate and that he would need to be rescued from the very forces that he had unleashed.