Renunciation of Despair

“They Cannot Conquer For Ever!” Frodo Finds the Consolation of Nature and The Desolation of Darkness at The Cross-roads.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 915-919

The journey from the fragrant woodlands of Ithilien to the Cross-roads is marked by a growing sense of threat as, although it is only afternoon, a deepening darkness takes hold of the land, as if, as Sam puts it, the worst storm that ever was is about to break over their heads. The very ground beneath their feet begins to quiver as “a rolling and rumbling noise” is heard all about them.

Frodo descends into deep gloom.

“I’m afraid our journey is drawing to an end.”

The Cross-roads themselves are surrounded by ancient trees “of vast size, very ancient it seemed, and still towering high, though their tops were gaunt and broken, as if tempest and lightening-blast had swept across them, but had failed to kill them or shake their fathomless roots.”

On this occasion nature fails to give comfort to the hobbits. The trees seem to glower over them and as they stand at the Cross-roads and looks eastward towards the Morgul Vale Frodo is “filled with dread”.

But, at that moment, he turns westward as he becomes aware within the deepening gloom that a light is shining.

“Turning towards it, he saw, beyond an arch of boughs, the road to Osgiliath running almost as straight as a stretched ribbon down, down, into the West. There, far away, beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade, the Sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied Sea.”

The light of the setting sun falls upon the statue of a king at the centre of the Cross-roads and at first all the hobbits are aware of is the way in which orcs have desecrated it. The body of the king has been decapitated and its once proud head replaced by “a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead”.

But then in the last gleams of light cast by the setting sun Frodo sees the old head of the king lying by the side of the road and sees that it has been crowned again. Not this time with gold but a “trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed”.

This is a moment in which both dread and hope are held together in utter poignancy. Briefly it is hope that rises in Frodo’s heart and he declares that “they cannot conquer for ever!” before the light is extinguished and it seems that they have been cast into everlasting night.

Which is more real? Are the last gleams of light that fall upon the crown of flowers more real than the darkness that follow them? We are reminded here of the words that St John writes as Judas goes out from the upper room to betray his lord and friend into the hands of his enemies. “And it was night”. Here too we see the struggle between light and dark playing out within a single moment and Tolkien surely alludes to the words of St John as he ends the chapter by saying that “the Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell”.

It is hard not to feel the absolute triumph of darkness at this moment and yet too, the glimpse of hope in the refusal of life to allow the memory of the dignity of the king to be lost forever cannot be forgotten. This moment at the Cross-roads is one of the great moments in The Lord of the Rings. We think too of the crowing of the cockerell at the broken gates of Minas Tirith as day dawns and the sound of the horns of the Riders of Rohan is heard amidst the wreckage. The struggle between light and dark has to be fought within every human heart and the temptation to despair to be fought against, sometimes with every fibre of our being. It may not be his shout of defiance that carries Frodo onwards into his own struggle against the dark but neither is it forgotten as he shoulders his burden once more and marches into the very heart of the darkness. Frodo is not carried by lofty thoughts as he trudges eastward but neither does he give up. His own renunciation of despair is seen in every hard fought step that he takes.

Denethor Declares that The West has Failed!

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The battle still rages at the walls of Minas Tirith as the Lord of the Nazgûl prepares his final assault, great siege towers built in Osgiliath rolling forward to overwhelm what remains of the city’s defences. But in the Chamber of the Steward in the White Tower the Lord Denethor fights no more. When messengers come seeking orders and telling him that men flee the defences leaving the walls unmanned, his only response is:

“Why? Why do the fools fly? Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn!”

The West has failed.

And all the great vision of the Valar, and of the Free Peoples of the Earth, of Elves and of Humankind, of Valinor and of Númenor, of Gondolin and of Nargothrond, of Rivendell and of Lothlórien, of Arnor and of Gondor, is at an end before the inevitable triumph of the Dark.

The West has failed.

This is not a conclusion that Denethor has drawn based upon what he can see from his windows. This is a belief that he has long held but against which he has fought bravely for as long as he could. Whereas Saruman, with whom he shares the belief, has sought to become an ally to darkness, to reach some accommodation with it, Denethor has refused such a path and has resisted the dark with all his might. He is no traitor. But at the end he bows down before the power of darkness and declares the great story of the West, of which he has been a steward, to be no more than a preparation for a funeral.

The West has failed!

So must all hope fail? Whether we rage, rage against the dying of the light or sit down before its inevitable arrival and quietly despair, going gentle into the night, must darkness fall?

Pippin is a simpler soul than his lord. When Denethor releases him from his service and bids him go to die his response is straightforwardly hobbit-like. “I will take your leave, sir… for I want to see Gandalf very much indeed. But he is no fool; and I will not think of dying under he despairs of life.”

Pippin has no great philosophy of life. For him it is enough that those who to whom he has chosen to give his trust, and at this point of the story this means Gandalf, have not given way to despair. And Gandalf has not given way to despair because long ago he said a great, Yes! to life and to light and to love. He said his, Yes! without dissembling or ambiguity. It was this, Yes! that Cirdan recognised when first Gandalf came to Middle-earth and so gave him Narya, one of the three rings of the Elves, that had power to inspire others to resist tyranny and despair. It was this, Yes! that enabled Gandalf to stand before the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, to declare, “You shall not pass!” and to give himself up to death itself in battle against him. And it is this, Yes! that will enable him to stand alone before the Lord of the Nazgûl when all others have fled.

The early Fathers of the Church taught that repentance, a word that we tend to understand as merely saying sorry for our wrongdoing, was something much more fundamental, much greater than that. It means the renunciation of despair. It means the great, Yes! It does not mean that we hope things are going to turn out for the best. It means a great, Yes! to the Light that shines in the darkness and the darkness can never put it out. And once we have made the great renunciation of despair and through our daily spiritual practice root it deep at the heart of our lives then we will find strength even in the darkest night.