Providence

“I Can’t Be Their Ring-bearer. Not Without Mr. Frodo.” The Orcs of Cirith Ungol and Minas Morgul Take Frodo’s Body and Sam Decides to Follow Them.

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 960-963

No sooner does Sam take the Ring from Frodo and take his first few faltering steps towards Mount Doom weighed down by the terrible burden that he now bears than everything suddenly changes.

“”And then suddenly he heard cries and voices. He stood still as stone Orc voices. They were behind him and before him. A noise of tramping feet and harsh shouts.”

Sam’s first instinct is to protect himself. There is no place for him to hide and so he decides to put on the Ring. That was Sam’s first instinct. His second is awakened a few seconds later when the orcs discover Frodo’s body.

“With a dreadful stroke Sam was wakened from his cowering mood. They had seen his master. What would they do? He had heard tales of the orcs to make the blood run cold. It could not be borne. He sprung up. He flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them. He knew now where his place was and had been: at his master’s side, though what he could do their was not clear.”

I used the word, instinct, a moment ago, deliberately, because Sam is not a creature of profound thought. This is not to say that he is shallow. Not by any means. As we have seen throughout the story he is capable of deep insight. When he was in Lothlórien he described his experience there as being “inside a song.” In a few beautifully poetic words he was able to capture the essence of that wonderful place in a way that no philosophical discourse ever could. Indeed a philosopher might be so anxious to find appropriate language for the experience that its sheer immediacy would be lost. And Tolkien played a beautiful language game with his readers with those words. Sam speaks to Frodo and to us in the Old English of simple country folk when he speaks of being inside a song. If he had used the language of his French speaking betters he would have spoken of being enchanted, for that is exactly what his words meant. I am not convinced that if he had used that word he would have conveyed to us his experience nearly so well.

But we should not ask Sam to reach a conclusion by means of starting with first principles because Sam has never learned to think that way. A few minutes later, as Shagrat and Gorbag and their orc companies carry Frodo towards Cirith Ungol Sam will learn that Frodo is not dead, that Shelob has a poison that renders her prey immobile so that she can eat it live later on at her leisure. Sam reels with horror when he realises that he had abandoned Frodo alive and then he says to himself:

“You fool, he isn’t dead and your heart knew it. Don’t trust your head, Samwise, it’s not the best part of you.”

Sam has only one principle and that is love. Not that this makes life easy for him. Sam loves Frodo but not exclusively. He gave his love to Bill the Pony and so found his heart torn in two when Bill refused to enter Moria. His love is given to the Gaffer, his father, and so when he sees him in Galadriel’s mirror, being driven from his home by Saruman’s thugs, again his heart is torn in two. To live for the sake of love as Sam does so completely means that he will always have to live with the danger that his heart will be broken. But now amidst the chaos as Frodo is borne into Mordor by his orc captors Sam’s heart grants him complete simplicity. He will follow Frodo and lay down his life for him. Providence will have to do the rest.

And Providence, or Luck, or Wyrd, as Sam understands it, will do exactly that. What Frodo’s captors find on his body, especially his priceless mithril coat, will lead to the annihilation of the orc company so that Sam will be able to rescue him without having to strike a single blow. The orcs only work will be to carry Frodo into Mordor itself and Sam’s work will be to follow where his heart leads him. What began in Shelob’s Lair when the light that was first captured by Feänor when he crafted the Silmarils shattered the monster’s eternal darkness, is a chain of events that will take the hobbits into Mordor and then on to Mount Doom itself.

“Maybe It Was the Ring That Called to The Wraith-lord, and For a Moment He Was Troubled.” A Contest of Powers Within the Morgul Vale.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 730-734.

Travelling through Scotland and having forgotten my usual edition of The Two Towers I am grateful to my sister in law, Elinor Farquharson and her husband, Geoffrey, of Edinburgh, for the loan of their single volume edition of The Lord of the Rings.

The short time that the companions spend at the Cross-roads is one of poignant tension between hope and despair, between light and darkness, and Tolkien immediately draws our attention to this at the beginning of the chapter entitled, The Stairs of Cirith Ungol, as Frodo turns his back reluctantly on the West and his face towards the East and to darkness. Gollum leads Frodo and Sam towards the tower of Minas Morgul and up the first steps of a path that crawls upwards “into the blackness above”.

Frodo is exhausted, feeling the great burden of the Ring for the first time since he entered Ithilien, but perhaps there is another power at work. “Weariness and more than weariness oppressed him; it seemed as if a heavy spell was laid on his mind and body.”

All the way through this passage we are aware of many powers at work, sometimes it would seem in contest with one another. The Lord of Minas Morgul, the Witch King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl, is a master of dark magic and he has wreathed the very air about his fastness with spells that rob any who might dare to venture towards it of the will and strength to continue their journey. Tolkien is not explicit about this but when he says that “it seemed as if a heavy spell was laid on his mind and body” there are dark powers at work here.

Perhaps if this were an ordinary day in the foul history of Minas Morgul it would not have been long before Frodo and Sam were discovered. But this is no ordinary day. It is the day upon which Sauron, filled with fear that one of his foes has taken possession of the Ring, sends forth an army to take possession of Minas Tirith, the greatest fortress of his enemies.

“So great an army had never issued from that vale since the days of Isildur’s might.”

And this great army and all the carefully choreographed terror that goes before it and which surrounds it achieves precisely an end for which it was never intended. So great is the energy of the powers both of Minas Morgul and of Barad-dûr that is poured into the departure of the army, an energy whose intention is to terrify the army of Gondor and to rob it of what courage remains to it, that for a brief moment the powers of the Morgul fortress are unaware of what is taking place beneath their very noses. The Ring of Power is passing the armies of Mordor borne by one whose intention it is to destroy it if he can.

And the Ring-bearer is almost caught. The Nazgûl Lord, the king who almost stabbed Frodo to the heart in the dell below Weathertop, pauses for a moment. “He was troubled, sensing some other power within his valley.”

He begins to reach out towards that power just as he did below Weathertop but unlike on that occasion when Frodo felt compelled to put on the Ring this time he is able to resist. He has a strength now that he did not possess before. Eventually this strength will tempt him to take possession of the Ring but now he knows that he does not yet have the power “to face the Morgul-king- not yet”.

That “not-yet” tells us that one day soon he will try to use the Ring, to become its lord, but now it works in Frodo’s favour.

And there is one more power at work. Frodo becomes aware that his hand is moving, unbidden, at least by him, towards the Ring, but as it does so it finds the star-glass of Galadriel, in which the light of the Silmaril, borne by Eärendil into the undying lands and set as a star in the heavens by Elbereth herself. His hand folds about it and the Witch King ceases from his search and moves on.

At this moment the power of the star glass is enough but what if the Witch King had given his entire attention to his search for the power that briefly he is aware is present in his valley? Would Frodo, even aided by the glass, even aided by the Ring, have had the strength to resist? But this test never takes place. It is an exquisite irony that so much has been put into the choreography of the departure of the army of Minas Morgul that the Witch King is distracted, just enough, from finding the very thing that has the power to destroy his lord.

“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.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

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?

“Better Fear Undeserved Than Rash Words”. Can Frodo Trust Faramir?

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 874-878

The question of trust is one of life’s greatest challenges. When we are able to trust someone it creates a liberty that enlivens and energises like nothing else. When trust is betrayed the very foundations of the soul are undermined. In Dante’s Inferno it is traitors who are placed in the deepest circle of hell. Faramir himself has had to struggle with the question, “Can he trust Frodo?”. When he was interrogating Frodo after the battle against the Haradrim it was the one thing that he was striving to establish. Boromir was dead and here was someone who clearly had known him. Had Frodo played some part in his brother’s death?

“Treachery not the least.” Can Faramir trust Frodo? Anke Eissman depicts Faramir’s interrogation of Frodo.

One of the central themes of The Lord of the Rings is the creation of the bonds of fellowship. Fellowship is in the very title of the first volume of Tolkien’s great work, the one title in which he had full confidence, having wished himself that the book should have been published in a single volume and not three as his publisher decided to do. When Elrond formed the Fellowship following the Council in Rivendell and Frodo’s courageous offer to carry the Ring to the Fire of Orodruin in Mordor he had two purposes. One was the decision to choose nine walkers to stand in opposition to the Nazgûl, Sauron’s nine riders. This was a symbolic choice and not a practical one. Perhaps only Gandalf of the nine could match any of the Nazgûl in combat. That one of the hobbits should play a part in the death of their chief was due, not to his prowess in battle, but to the part played by deeper and providential forces at work, another of the central themes of Tolkien’s great work.

The other purpose in Elrond’s choice, and the purpose that we are considering in this reflection, was to create a fellowship of the free peoples of Middle-earth; elves, men, dwarves and hobbits. That these had been sundered from one another over long years had been one of the greatest sorrows of its long history. There had been no alliance of men and elves since the end of the Second Age and the war against Sauron in which Elendil the only High King of both Gondor and Arnor, and Gil-galad, the last High King of the Elves in Middle-earth, were able, just, to stand against Sauron in battle and to overthrow him. Indeed it had been one of Sauron’s main purposes throughout the Third Age once he began to take shape again following his defeat and the loss of the Ring, was to weaken those essential bonds of fellowship among his enemies. Elves and Dwarves had long mistrust in one another as we learned when Gimli came to Lothlorian. Indeed it was one of the greatest fruits of the stay of the Fellowship in that land that Gimli gave his heart to Galadriel and formed a deep friendship with Legolas, the son of an elven king who had once held Gimli’s own father prisoner. Elves and Men had become sundered as the elves had slowly withdrawn into secret lands and a secret way of living, the outcome of which was that elves had become a thing of legend in the minds of men, even an uncanny thing, a thing to be feared little less than Mordor itself. And hobbits, if they were known at all, were largely disregarded as a people of small consequence.

Throughout the Third Age it was examples of friendship between its free peoples that was always remarkable. Elrond’s own “Last Homely House” in Rivendell was a place of hospitality to all free peoples, and its way, The Prancing Pony in Bree played a similar role but on a lesser scale. That Elves never made use of its welcome played its part in the growing belief amongst other peoples that they were fey and to be feared. The west door of Moria through which the Fellowship entered with such difficulty had a password of beguiling simplicity. All a traveller needed to do in order to gain access to the greatest kingdom of the Dwarves was to say the word, friend, and the door would open. And the friendship between Dale and the kingdom under the mountain, near neighbours in the north of Middle-earth, was a rare example of friendship between Dwarves and Men.

Indeed each of these examples brought prosperity and strength and it was to deepen, even create, friendship to which Gandalf devoted his long sojourn in Middle-earth, using Narya, the even ring of fire to “rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill. In our own human history it was the creation of Christian monasteries, first formed in the deserts of Egypt and Syria in the 4th century, and then in the West of Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire, places of hospitality, learning and healing, that played a central role in the renewing of Europe, giving a part to friendship in the history of that continent that stood in sharp distinction to the role of power in the Roman Empire and in the many attempts to recreate empire in the centuries since that time.

So can Frodo trust Faramir? Or is fear, even if undeserved, a wiser cause of action? Perhaps the whole future of Middle-earth rests upon the choice that Frodo will make. Fortunately for all it is Sam’s simplicity that will make the choice for all and that is wonderfully providential.

“All You Wish is to See It and Touch It, If You Can, Though You Know It Would Drive You Mad.” Gollum Swears To Serve The Master of The Ring.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 803-809

What are Frodo and Sam to do with Gollum? They know that he will not stop following them and that he means to do them harm. Frodo, in particular, knows that it is the Ring that draws him, knows it in a way that Sam cannot possibly know, because he knows that the Ring has the same power over him and that this power grows each and every day.

“One Ring to rule them all and in the Darkness bind them.”

Sam suspects that Gollum is in league with the Enemy in some way, that he has been given a job to do, to find the Ring and to bring it to Barad-dûr. Sam believes that at some point he will betray them so should they kill him? Frodo knows that they might kill Gollum in self-defence, if Gollum attacked them, but not in cold blood, in an execution, and reluctantly Sam agrees.

Eventually, after Gollum attempts to escape, they tie the elven rope around his ankle, but this causes Gollum to scream in pain. It is the connection with Elves that Gollum cannot bear, the connection with light. At last Frodo says that he will not take the rope from Gollum’s ankle unless Gollum makes a promise that can be trusted.

It is the word, on, that Frodo immediately understands.

“No! not on it,”said Frodo, looking down on him with stern pity. “All you wish is to see if and touch it, if you can, though you know it would drive you mad. Not om it. Swear by it, if you will. For you know where it is. Yes, you know, Sméagol. It is before you.”

At this moment Sam begins to see something in Frodo that he has not seen before. Until this time Sam has served Frodo because he loves him. He loves Frodo’s gentleness but he does not think that Frodo is especially strong or tough. Now, to his surprise, he sees Frodo speak with an authority that he did not know that Frodo possesses, the kind of authority that requires obedience. And he sees Frodo almost grow in stature before him while Gollum shrinks. Gollum senses this too.

“We promises, yes I promise!” said Gollum. “I will serve the master of the Precious.”

This is a critical moment in the story. Until now Gollum has been the hunter and Frodo and Sam have been fugitives in the wild always trying to throw their pursuer off their scent, always trying to evade his grasp, but now Frodo, in particular, has become the master. Gollum is the prisoner and even, it would appear, a willing one. Frodo even tells him that they are going to Mordor and although Gollum is horrified he still promises to help them get there.

And it is a critical moment in another way. Until now Frodo and Sam have been lost. They know where they are trying to get to but they have had no idea how to get there. Now they have a guide. This alone is providential; an unexpected, even unwelcome, but a very necessary gift. Gollum will guide them across the Dead Marshes, a way that orcs fear to tread, a way that will bring them close to the borders of Mordor.

And the thing that binds them all together, at least for a brief time, is the very worst object in the world, the Ring of Power. The Ring gives Frodo an authority that he would not otherwise possess, an authority that he is beginning to understand and to use, and the Ring has a power over Gollum that he cannot ignore. For a time, at least, until he works out a way to break his promise, Gollum will obey that power and he will serve Frodo. And both Frodo and Gollum will resist Sauron with all the strength that they possess.

“We won’t!” Gollum cries into the darkness at one point. “Not for you.” Not for Sauron. Through all the years of torture and intimidation Sauron was never able to break Gollum’s will. It is the Ring, and not Sauron, that has power over Gollum and it is this tiny space of freedom that will make all the difference. Gollum will be a faithful guide and a capable one and Frodo knows this. Of course, all the time, Gollum will be thinking of ways in which he will be able to break Frodo’s trust but there is one way that Gollum will never think of, and that is to betray Frodo, and the Ring, to Sauron. In this way Gollum and Frodo have forged the strongest alliance possible. And so the words that Gandalf spoke to Frodo in Bag End are already beginning to prove true.

“My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that time comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many- yours not least.”

“It is My Doom, I Think, To Go To That Shadow Yonder, So That a Way Will Be Found.” Frodo Thinks About Providence and His Journey.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 787-789

It has been three days since the Fellowship was broken at Parth Galen and Frodo and Sam have been wandering in the Emyn Muil, always looking for a way to bring them down to the marshes below but always finding that the eastern slopes are too steep to do this with any kind of safety. Westwards on this same day Merry and Pippin have just met with Treebeard in Fangorn, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli follow them and in two days will meet with Gandalf who has made his way directly from Lothlórien to Fangorn.

Sam fears that they are lost, that they have come the wrong way. Should they make their way back and try another? Frodo does not think it possible to retrace their steps. They have hardly taken a straightforward path through the hills that would make this an easy choice and there are orcs patrolling the eastern banks of the Anduin. No, somehow there needs to be a way forward.

Frodo thinks about his doom. We have come to think of this word in dark terms. I remember a much loved sitcom from my youth set in the days of the Second World War in England when a German invasion was expected at any moment. There was a Scottish character who would respond to any difficulty with the words, “We’re all doomed,” in other words, we’re all finished. But this is not what Frodo means. He uses the word in an older sense in which doom meant judgement. People would speak of doomsday as meaning the day of judgement, the day on which their eternal destiny would be decided.

Private Fraser expresses his personal philosophy of life, shaped by Scottish Calvinism.

But there was another meaning that takes us back in the story to Lothlórien and the words that Galadriel spoke to the company as they prepared to continue their journey onward and wondered which way they should take.

“Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that each of you shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them.”

And none of the Fellowship could see, at that moment, the paths that they were to follow in the days that followed their departure from Lothlórien. Only Boromir among them was absolutely certain which way he should go. He would go to Minas Tirith and he thought that the Fellowship should go with him. But Boromir’s journey ends when the Fellowship is broken. Aragorn is torn between his desire to go with Boromir to Minas Tirith, to the land over which he will become king, but feels that he cannot abandon Frodo. On the day of the breaking of the Fellowship he will make another choice completely and one that he never anticipated; he will follow Merry and Pippin across the plains of Rohan with Legolas and Gimli and while failing to find them will find Gandalf once more.

And Frodo and Sam are stuck in the barren Emyn Muil with seemingly no way forward.

It is a feature of our lives that we are aware for the most part only of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Frodo and Sam have no awareness of the great events that are unfolding westwards that will lead to the fall of Isengard. They only know that at this moment they cannot find a path. But Frodo has a sense that he is a part of a bigger story, one that is carrying him along, even against his own will. This sense is called a belief in Providence. Gandalf told him that he was meant to have the Ring. Galadriel told him that his path was already laid before his feet. And even though at this point he has no idea how he will find that path he believes that it will be found. And in that faith he will keep on going. He will find a way to Mordor and his doom.

“From the First my Heart Misgave Me”. Gandalf, and Tolkien too, only gradually begin to understand the meaning of the the Ring.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) p.245

When I thought to spend a few weeks reflecting upon themes from The Fellowship of the Ring over the summer before continuing with The Two Towers in September I did not expect to spend much of the time writing about Gandalf; but so it has proved. Maybe I should not have been surprised. When Elrond asks Gandalf to speak at the Council in Rivendell he introduces him by saying, “in all this matter he has been the chief”.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Gandalf loved to play in order to find some rest from his labours and how the Shire became especially important to him to allow him to do this. We saw how this desire for play proves to be utterly crucial in the history of Middle-earth. We recall that when Tolkien’s publishers first asked him for “more about hobbits” after the success of The Hobbit that he first regarded the request as an annoying interruption to what he regarded as his life’s work, the history that his son Christopher would eventually edit and publish as The Silmarillion. It was only with time that it began to dawn upon him that the ring that Bilbo found in the depths of the Misty Mountains and put to such good and, might one say, playful use, might be prove critical to the resolution of the history of the Third Age.

As Gandalf puts it to the Council what began as a little more than a misgiving began to turn to dread. The thing that Bilbo had in his possession, that he regarded as little more than something useful in case awkward relatives like the Sackville Baggins came to call, was indeed the Ring of Power that Sauron had lost in the great battle at the end of the Second Age and for which he was now seeking in order to complete his conquest of Middle-earth.

Gandalf’s misgiving that turned to dread moved hobbits from a pleasant distraction on the fringes of his life onto the centre stage. When he reflects upon what he can discern of the big story, of the purposes of the divine, of Illuvatar in Arda, he tells Frodo that first Bilbo and then himself were meant to have the Ring. This is a statement of incredible importance. I use the word, incredible, in its essential meaning, as speaking of something that is hard, almost impossible, to believe. If the divine mind were to entrust the Ring to anyone for safekeeping surely a hobbit would be the last person chosen. Even hobbits are not, in themselves, a completely reliable choice. After all, Gollum was himself a hobbit and he began his possession of the Ring with murder.

But what began in Tolkien’s telling of a children’s story in The Hobbit as the happy and fortuitous entrance of magic into that tale was to turn into something that would be critical to the whole history of Middle-earth and it became clear that neither elf, nor dwarf or man could be entrusted with the Ring. It had to be a hobbit and it had to be a particular hobbit with the history and character that Bilbo had. And then because the Ring was beginning to have a destructive influence even on this good hobbit it had to pass to another, to Frodo. It has to pass to someone who does not want it, or the burden that it represents. Frodo tries to give it to Gandalf in Bag End, to Aragorn in Rivendell and to Galadriel in Lothlórien. He is the perfect person to have the Ring in his possession and even he will be overcome by it in the end.

Gandalf might have said that in his reluctance to take on the burden of the Ring Frodo reminded him of himself. When the Valar first thought to send the Istari to Middle-earth Gandalf was reluctant to go because he feared Sauron. Perhaps it is this reluctance, this desire for peace, even obscurity, that makes Gandalf, and Frodo too, the ones who can be chosen for the really great tasks. Help will be given to them when they most need it. Frodo will eventually achieve his task through the aid of Gollum. But it is not the ones who seek greatness who can be entrusted with the great things. It is those who wish to be little but are willing to say yes to the call that they receive.

“My Time is Over.” What Was Gandalf Doing in His Time in Middle-earth?

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 973-974

During this summer month, having completed my thoughts on The Fellowship of the Ring, I am writing a few reflections on some of the bigger themes of The Fellowship before I return to The Two Towers in September, and this week I want to think about Gandalf.

As my readers can see my title does not come from The Fellowship but from The Return of the King and from the moment when Gandalf takes his leave of Frodo and his companions in order to have a really long talk with Tom Bombadil, “such a talk as I have not had in all my time,” The hobbits are anxious about hints that they have heard in Bree that things are amiss in the Shire and want Gandalf to come with them in case of trouble but Gandalf replies:

“I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves, that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so.”

Gandalf first came to Middle-earth around the year 1000 in the Third Age of Arda as one of the Istari, emissaries of the Valar, to aid the free peoples of Middle-earth in their struggle against Sauron. He was one of the Maiar, of the same order of angelic being to which Sauron was also a member and in Valinor he had been known as Olorin and had been a pupil of the Lady Nienna, one of the queens of the Valar, a lady of pity and of mourning.

In Unfinished Tales we read that Gandalf was at first unwilling to go to Middle-earth because he felt that he was “too weak for such a task, and that he feared Sauron”, but that Manwë had declared that these were reasons why he should go. We also read that when he arrived at the Grey Havens Cirdan greeted him and gave him Narya, one of the three elven rings, the Ring of Fire.

“Take this ring, Master,” he said, “for your labours will be heavy; but it will support you in the weariness that you have taken upon yourself. For this is the Ring of Fire, and with it you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill.”

And so Gandalf begins 2000 years of wandering through Middle-earth, never settling for long in any one place doing the work that Cirdan described, rekindling hearts in a world grown chill. Among the Elves and the people of Gondor this leads to him being given the name, Mithrandir, or Grey Pilgrim. And although in the year 2063 he goes alone to Dol Guldur, Sauron’s fastness in the south of Mirkwood, and forces him retreat eastwards from there for a time, it is rare that he enters into open conflict with the Dark Lord.

And there is one place that he goes to from time to time simply to enjoy a holiday and that is the Shire. It is there that he discovers the pleasures of pipeweed, simple and substantial food, and good beer. It is in the Shire that he learns to play. There he is known and welcomed for the wonderful firework displays that he puts on. These have an almost legendary status among the hobbits and mean that they regard him as something of a travelling showman although they are a little wary of him as he can sometimes take a young hobbit off with him for “an adventure”. And it is in taking Bilbo Baggins away for a very big adventure that the Ring is found and his task is completed.

We might say that Gandalf never has a plan, a great master strategy that he implements little by little until it is finally put into place in the War of the Ring. He did not plan the finding of the Ring and when it is found at last he knows that he can never use it to defeat Sauron and that it cannot be destroyed by force of arms opening a way to Mount Doom. At the end all his long labours come down to an act of utter foolishness. Denethor is right to call the journey of Frodo and Sam a “fool’s hope”. But Gandalf, and Elrond and Galadriel too, ultimately place their hope in a power that is greater either than themselves or their enemy. A power that normally chooses to work in ways that are hidden except through subtle hints that can only be seen by those who have given their lives to wisdom, to faithful service and, in Gandalf’s case, to the enjoyment of simple pleasures.

“You Are Come and Are Met, In This Very Nick of Time, By Chance As It May Seem.” Wisdom From ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) p.236

As readers of this blog will know I have come to the end of a long and careful reading of The Fellowship of the Ring and before I continue with The Two Towers I would like to do what the title of my blog speaks of. I would like to spend a few weeks thinking about the wisdom that we can find in Tolkien’s great tale. Perhaps it might help us as we ponder our own journeys.

I am not sure why I ended the quotation that is the title for this week’s reflection where I did. I am sure that my readers will recognise that the words quoted thre are those that are spoken by Elrond at the Council in Rivendell. They speak of how Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits, Men and a wizard have all arrived in the Halls of Elrond at this moment, one described as but a ‘nick’ in the long tally of time, but it is the right moment, even the last possible moment.

Elrond ponders the meaning of this council. He did not summon these people. Had he done so it would surely have been a meeting of the White Council, a meeting of the Wise. Galadriel would have been there, as would Círdan of the Grey Havens. And Saruman would have been its leader. The descendants of Númenor would not have been summoned, nor Durin’s folk, nor the people of the realm of Thranduil in the northern marches of Mirkwood. And hobbits would most certainly not have been invited.

So is it merely a matter of chance that has brought Glóin from the Lonely Mountain of Erebor to Rivendell with Gimli his son? Or Legolas, the son of Thranduil from his land? Or Boromir from Minas Tirith; or a small group of hobbits from the Shire with their guide, Aragorn, the heir of Isildur?

Elrond chooses his words with care. “By chance as it might seem.” By using this word, seem, Elrond deliberately draws a distinction between those things that merely appear to us, like traffic passing by on a busy highway, and something of a deliberate purpose. Actually, if we were to ponder the deliberate purpose behind every one of the journeys being taken by those travelling down a particular highway on any given day, we might be able to discern and then tell a story in which each of those participants would have a part to play. The song, “Another Hundred People”, from Stephen Sondheim’s show, “Company”, comes to mind here and that tale is rather beautiful.

So Elrond chooses not to end with chance. “Yet it is not so,” he continues. “Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.” Elrond chooses to speak of belief. By this he does not mean an assent to certain doctrines. He encourages his guests to accept that their presence in his halls, at this precise moment, this “nick of time”, is a part of a big story in which each one of them has a part to play.

We might want to say at this moment that it is the unseen presence of The Ring that gives significance to the whole proceeding. Certainly, if it were not for The Ring there would be no hobbits present. I wonder if Boromir had this thought in mind when he cried out to Frodo, “It is not yours save by unhappy chance. It might have been mine. It should be mine.” Frodo made a similar statement when he bemoaned the seemingly cruel fate by which he has come to be in possession of The Ring. Gandalf’s response was that “Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”

Neither Gandalf, nor Elrond, choose to give themselves to lengthy metaphysical speculation about such matters. They receive encouragement from the thought that there seems to be a power for good at work in the world, one that put the Ring of Power into the hands of first Bilbo and then Frodo, neither of whom had any interest in power for its own sake; and one that has gathered this particular company of people together in Rivendell at this moment. Frodo is not encouraged by either of these things. As we saw last week, he simply accepts that he has been given a job to do and that is enough.

The Shire is Stranger than Frodo Thinks. The Hobbits Encounter with the Nazgûl and with Elves.

/ stephencwinter / 3 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp 73-80

There is a phrase that shows just how disorientating it is when something happens in your backyard that is entirely unexpected. Frodo has just encountered one of the Nazgûl for the very first time. He has no idea that what he can see, just a few yards away, is one of the most terrifying things that he could ever meet unless he stood before the Dark Lord himself. He begins to have an overwhelming desire to put on the Ring, convinced that he would be safe if he did so. “And I am still in the Shire,” he thinks.

Still in the Shire. Still in a place in which every blade of grass, every tree and rise and fall of the road speaks of familiarity and of predictability. The unexpected has no place in the Shire. Of all places in Middle-earth this is the one where the outlandish is where it should be; in the lands outside and beyond the borders. You would have thought that Frodo Baggins, of all hobbits, would have known that this was not true. The stories and actions of Bilbo, his friendship with Gandalf, and his own dealings with the world outside should have taught him that the world is not safe and predictable. As the poet, Louis Macneice put it (in a poem entitled, Snow, written in my parents in law’s house in Birmingham, England), “world is suddener than we fancy it”.

But that, of course, is the problem, even for Frodo. We fancy the world to be in a sense, on time. Not too late or we will make a complaint to the management. Nor too soon neither. Every event that departs from this ‘law’ we regard as abnormal. Except the abnormal keeps on happening. But this event is so abnormal that perhaps we could forgive Frodo. I think that the Powers do forgive him. He is not yet ready for this encounter and so Something prevents him from putting on the Ring, his life is saved, the Ring is not returned to its Maker and the world is not yet subjected to darkness.

And Something brings him into contact with another power at work in the world, a power that even the Nazgûl are not quite ready to match themselves against. Not just yet, anyway. When the hobbits encounter the Nazgûl for the second time Frodo wants to put on the Ring once more but “this time it was stronger than before. So strong that before he realised what he was doing, his hand was groping in his pocket”. The Ring has only one desire and that is to return to its Master and Frodo is no match for it.

But “world is suddener… world is crazier and more of it than we think, incorrigibly plural” and in its glorious plurality a large company of High Elves just happens to be on the same stretch of road in the Shire as the hobbits, the Nazgûl and the Ring, at precisely that moment and, once more, Frodo and the world is saved.

Is this a writer’s tendency to allow a coincidence to occur in order to solve a problem with the plot? Or is it how this writer understands the world? I think that the latter is the case. Tolkien’s enchanted world, suddener, crazier, more of than we think, incorrigibly plural, is one in which powers are at work of which we are not usually aware. We might use the word, Providence, to describe these powers. You will remember how when Gandalf said that Bilbo was meant to have the Ring he spoke of “something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker”. Tolkien was always reticent when it came to his Christian faith and his imaginative work, especially in The Lord of the Rings. He chose to know no more than the main characters in his story, who were the hobbits, except by implication. They must learn about the powers at work in the world just as we do. But the world is suddener, and in it there are High Elves, the eldest of the children of Ilúvatar, who see its suddenness, its craziness and plurality with perfect clarity. And they take the hobbits under their protection.