Luck

“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.

“Around Them Lay Long Launds of Green Grass, Dappled with Celandine and Anemones, White and Blue, Now Folded for Sleep”. The Journey of Frodo and Sam to the Cross-Roads.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 910-915

I am going to make an assumption that Tolkien was not familiar with the work of the great Blues singer, Robert Johnson, and so did not know his classic song, Crossroad, even though the opening lines, “I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees… Asked the Lord above, “Have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please”, seems strangely apposite to Frodo’s situation and state of mind.

As we have been seeing in these last weeks, Tolkien does not allow Frodo and Sam the comfort that they would receive if they could share the same faith that he did, and yet it is clear that they live in a world that is under divine order. For although, as Gollum puts it, they are in “Dangerous places” where “Cruel peoples come this way, down from the Tower”, these same places are, for the time being, absolutely empty, as if they have been prepared for the hobbits to walk along them in complete safety. We have thought about the sequence of events that have led to this being so, but we have also thought about how the best explanation that Frodo and Sam might be able to give to this sequence is luck or wyrd.

Frodo and Sam have to make their journey without comfort or a sense that they are part of a story that is divinely governed. And yet they are not left entirely comfortless. We have seen the comfort that Frodo received through the unexpected friendship of Faramir that “turns evil to great good” and in the next reflection we will think about a particular incident that takes place on this journey at the Cross-roads. And as they make their fearful journey from Ithilien to the Cross-roads Tolkien shows us another form of comfort.

As they make their way Tolkien gives particular attention to the flora of the landscape about them.

“As the third stage of their day’s march drew on and afternoon waned, the forest opened out, and the trees became larger and more scattered. Great ilexes of huge girth stood dark and solemn in wide glades with here and there among them hoary ash-trees, and giant oaks just putting out their brown-green buds. About them lay long launds of green grass dappled with celandine and anemones, white and blue, now folded for sleep; and there were acres populous with the leaves of woodland hyacinths: already the their sleek bell-stems were thrusting through the mould.”

Anemone and celandine …

Tolkien gives us a rich account of what readers from England would recognise as a classical woodland landscape in spring time. He also treats us to the word, laund, that the Oxford English Dictionary tells us is an archaic word which “refers to an open, grassy area, especially in a woodland, like a glade or a lawn.” It also tells us that the word is now rarely used. I have made a decision, based upon reading this passage, to use the word whenever I come across such a place. I would never have known about it if Tolkien had not used it here and I feel that my imagination has just been enriched by it.

I recently went on a long country walk through that went, in part, through the kind of woodland scene that Tolkien describes here. The walk took me down to the banks of the River Severn at this point and I saw a profusion of celandine and wood anemone in the launds about me. I took the walk in the last days of March, near the Feast of the Annunciation on the 25th March, the date upon which the Ring goes into the Fire and Sauron falls into nothingness. Spring has come a little earlier here upon the marches of Gondor, but we know that this land lies more under the influence of a Mediterranean type of climate than does England itself and so the flowers that I saw would come a little earlier there. We know too, that these woods lie higher in the mountains than my woodland walk down by the river. And for me there was the added pleasure of having known the farmer, of old Worcestershire stock, who had chosen to set aside this area on his land for wildlife. As he had proudly shown me round his farm just as he was about to hand it over to his son, he spoke of his decision to set a part of it aside as a wildlife reserve. I knew that he was too shrewd a businessman not to receive financial reward for his actions but on the day I walked through these woods I just remembered him with thanksgiving and affection.

My walk through these spring time woods was rich with a feast of sight, sound and smell. The trees had not yet turned green (is this why Tolkien refers to them as “dark and solemn”?) but this allowed the ground underneath them access to sunlight and the spring flowers to proliferate. I felt as if I had stepped into heaven. Did Tolkien feel the same way on spring time walks? Did Frodo feel the same way on his walk to the Cross-roads?

“Luck Served You There; but You Seized Your Chance With Both Hands One Might Say.” Some more thoughts on the empty Morgul Vale that Frodo and Sam will walk through.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 908-909

In my last post we thought about the chain of events that lead to the strange fact that the road from Ithilien into Mordor is empty at just the very moment in which Frodo and Sam need to walk down it. Instead of companies of orcs and other allies of Mordor constantly travelling up and down it, the road in the Morgul Vale is left free for two hobbits and their guide to walk along it unhindered.

The quotation that I have chosen for this piece does not come from the passage that I am thinking about here but from the chapter entitled Flotsam and Jetsam when Merry and Pippin tell the story of their adventures to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli amidst the wreck of Isengard after it has been destroyed by the Ents. Pippin tells his companions how, by ,means of a fallen orc blade, he was able to cut the rope that his wrists had been bound by . Gimli responds to this approvingly.

“The cutting of the bands on your wrists, that was smart work!” said Gimli. “Luck served you there; but you seized your luck with both hands, one might say.”

In his study on the thought of J.R.R Tolkien, Tom Shippey considers the role of luck within The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R Tolkien, Author of The Century, Harper Collins 2001, pp. 143-147). Shippey tackles the assertion of some of Tolkien’s critics that his story is full of “biased fortune” and so cannot be taken seriously. In speaking of Gollum’s fall into the fires of Mount Doom that destroys the Ring, Shippey argues that “it is clearly not just an accident” but the direct, if unintended consequence, of many conscious choices. The word that Shippey chooses for this is the Old English word, wyrd, a word that both Shippey and Tolkien knew because both of them held the same chair at Oxford University in Philology, the study of language. Modern readers of English will, of course, immediately recognise the similarity between this Old English word and the modern word, weird. They might also note, with some sadness, the way in which a language that once had the capacity to express human experience with great subtlety has turned the words that were able to do this into banalities.

The Old English word that Gimli might have used when he spoke of Pippin’s luck might well have been wyrd. It would have meant something that had happened, something over which Pippin had no control, such as the sudden and unexpected availability of a sharp blade that Pippin was able to use and to change his fortunes. The same thing might be said about Bilbo’s finding of the Ring. The same thing could be certainly be said of the sudden emptying of the roads into Mordor. In every one of these cases luck, or wyrd, serves those who are able to take advantage of these happenings. But Pippin, Bilbo and then Frodo and Sam, each have to take seize their luck, to take advantage of it.

Frodo had to leave the relative security of the refuge of Henneth Annûn and put his trust in a treacherous guide who would eventually betray him. In walking down the Morgul Vale and then climbing the stair to Cirith Ungol he made his way directly into Shelob’s Lair and was poisoned by her. He only entered Mordor on the backs of orcs and his journey thereafter to Orodruin was one of unrelenting agony as the Ring that he bore slowly but inevitably wore down his resistance to its malignant power. By the time he reached the Cracks of Doom he had no strength left to resist it. At the end he needed an enemy to enable him to fulfil his mission and this enemy did so by biting off his finger. If after all this Gimli were to say to him that he seized his luck with both hands then Frodo might well reply that Gimli had a poor idea of luck. Frodo would be right but then so too would be Gimli. This luck truly opened the way to the mountain and it took the Ring into the Fire. But in seizing it Frodo had to pay a terrible price. He could never find peace again in Middle-earth.

Ride to Meet Your Fortune. A Final Thought From the Wisdom of Tom Bombadil

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 143-145

I had intended to be safely within the hospitable walls of The Prancing Pony in Bree by now but I will have to leave that pleasure until next time. You see, one thing kept niggling at me after last week’s post. I was reasonably satisfied with my thoughts on Tom Bombadil’s encouragement to the hobbits to keep up their merry hearts but I had said almost nothing about the last words that he said to them.

“Ride to meet your fortune.”

Back in August 2017 I wrote about Sam Gamgee’s decision to trust to luck on the roads of Mordor, the last place you would think where any luck might be found. If you click on the tag, luck, at the end of this post, you will be taken to that piece. I wrote about Tom Shippey’s musings upon the subject of luck in his magnificent The Road to Middle-Earth (Harper Collins 2005 edition pp.170-74) and I wrote about the way in which Sam understood what it meant to trust his luck.

Tom Shippey

In these pages, Dr. Shippey refers to the translation of The Consolation of Philosophy ascribed to King Alfred the Great and written originally by the 5th century philosopher, Boëthius. My own personal choice for the founding myth of the English nation is the winter that Alfred and his small group of loyal followers spent on the Isle of Athelney in the Somerset marshes hiding from the Danish invaders. Eventually Alfred overcame t invaders and established the kingdom that became England. Alfred (like Faramir in The Lord of the Rings?) was both a warrior and had a deep love for scholarship. As well as making the greatest work of early medieval philosophy available to his people in the English language he also had Pope Gregory the Great’s treatise on pastoral care translated into English for his clergy. Now that is how to found a nation. Would that we had more of his kind among us in our own times.

Boëthius gives much thought to the subject of fortune or wyrd. Tom Shippey quotes this passage from his great work.

“What we call God’s forethought and his Providence is while it is there in his mind, before it gets done; but once it gets done then we call it wyrd.“

Boëthius is thinking about the fall in his personal fortunes. Once he was a senator of Rome but now he is a prisoner of King Odoacer the Goth and he awaits his death. The wheel of fortune is inexorable but philosophy enables him to bear either good or bad. We still speak of someone as being of a philosophical disposition in this sense today. The hobbits too have little control over what lies ahead of them. They cannot prevent the wheel of fortune from turning. They have no choice but to ride to meet it. Actually, they do have a choice. They could follow the advice of Fatty Bolger and hide in Crickhollow but if they had followed that advice they would merely have waited for the Black Riders to arrive and find them. Either you ride to meet your fortune or it comes to meet you. Either you can meet it with a merry heart and while being wary you ride boldly or you try to hide from it.

Even as Tom Bombadil speaks these words the hobbits are afraid. They are on the Road once more and it is on the Road that the Nazgûl seek them. “The shadow of the fear of the Black Riders came suddenly over them again. Ever since they had entered the Forest they had thought chiefly of getting back to the Road; only now when it lay beneath their feet did they remember the danger that pursued them.” Danger lies behind and before them and they have little control over it. All that they can do is to keep on going, to keep up their merry hearts, to be bold but wary and to ride, not away from their fortune, but towards it, to meet it.

Trusting to Luck on the Roads of Mordor

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Life sometimes takes you to places that you would rather not go to. Tolkien found himself in the trenches of the Western Front on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 when nearly 20,000 British soldiers were killed in a single attack on the German lines and a further 40,000 were wounded. He gained a great respect for ordinary British soldiers and largely based the character of Sam Gamgee upon those who he got to know. Sam, like those men, would rather not be in the trenches. He does not pretend to some kind of heroism. As far as he is concerned behaviour like that would be entirely inappropriate, like pretending to be Aragorn, or Faramir, or Boromir, or… Frodo for that matter. Sam just gets on with whatever needs to be done. Things like dealing with “Gollum’s treacherous attack, the horror of Shelob, and his own adventures with the orcs.”

Sam has no sense of entitlement. He does not believe that he has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He hopes and even expects that Frodo will treat him fairly and with due respect but that expectation lies within certain bounds. He does not think of himself as Frodo’s equal.

And Sam believes in luck. Not that he thinks that he has a right to it but that he wants to give it a chance if possible. In his fine study, The Road to Middle-earth, Tom Shippey reflects on the place of luck in Tolkien at some length. Shippey tells us that the poet of Beowulf “often ascribes events to wyrd, and treats it in a way as a supernatural force.” But Shippey notes that luck or wyrd is not the same thing as fate. There is an implacability about fate, there is nothing that you can do about it; but you can change your luck. As Shippey puts it, “while persistence offers no guarantees, it does give ‘luck’ a chance to operate.”

And so Sam decides to go in search for water and, as he does so, he says to the sleeping Frodo, “I’ll have to leave you for a bit and trust to luck.”

Sam does find water but he also nearly runs into Gollum and his response to these events is to say, “Well, luck did not let me down… but that was a near thing.” In other words, it is wise not to push luck too far.

Later, when they are forced to take the road, Frodo and Sam are overtaken by a company of orcs on the way to reinforce the garrison at the Black Gate as the armies of the West approach. They know that they cannot escape and Frodo despairs. “We trusted to luck, and it has failed us. We are trapped.” Sam, however, is not so quick to give up. “Seems so,” he says. “Well, we can but wait and see.” They are not able to escape the orcs’ attention but later, in a moment of confusion, they are able to escape and so continue their journey to the mountain. Their persistence has given luck a chance to operate.

In recent weeks in this blog we have thought about the role of Providence in the hobbits’ journey through Mordor. We have seen the part played by the gifts of the Valar in the light of the Silmarils captured in the star glass of Galadriel and in the retreat of the smokes of Orodruin before the West Wind. Shippey reflects on the relationship between Providence and Luck in King Alfred the Great’s translation into Old English of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a text that was one of the most influential in the shaping of the medieval mind. He comments that “What we call God’s fore-thought and his Providence is while it is there in his mind, before it gets done; but once it gets done, then we call it wyrd. This way anyone can tell that there are two things and two names, forethought and wyrd.” Sam is content to live in the experience of luck or wyrd and leave the discernment of Providence to kings or scholars. The result is that he lives life cheerfully and thankfully and he never gives up.