Saruman

“The Choice Was Just and It Has Been Rewarded”. Why Did Aragorn Choose to Pursue Merry and Pippin?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 646-653

When Aragorn chose, with Legolas and Gimli, not to follow Frodo and Sam but to go across Rohan in pursuit of the orc band that had taken Merry and Pippin to Isengard it was a brave choice but also one of despair. When he had set out from Rivendell with the rest of the Fellowship his purpose was to fulfil his destiny. Through all that was to lie ahead of him, whether war in Minas Tirith or a journey with the Ringbearer to the Cracks of Doom, he would claim the throne, both of Gondor and Arnor, and he would claim Arwen, daughter of Elrond, to be his bride. For Elrond had told him that only the king, both of Gondor and Arnor, could marry his daughter.

Aragorn longs for his beloved.

Perhaps it was always a desperate hope but, step by step, he was determined to pursue his hope right to the very end. But then Gandalf fell in battle against the Balrog in Moria and his hope was dashed. Not even when Galadriel gave him the green stone of his ancestors, borne by Eärendil himself was his hope truly rekindled. Not even when she said: “Take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the house of Elendil!”

So it was that when the Company was attacked at Parth Galen and Boromir fell and Merry and Pippin seized by orcs Aragorn chose to pursue them. Until that moment he had felt that he had two choices. Either he would go with Boromir to Minas Tirith and play his part in the defence of the city or he would go with Frodo to Mordor and there to do all he could to try to destroy the Ring. He felt in his heart that it was his duty to go with Frodo, especially after the fall of Gandalf, but that same heart longed to go to Gondor where his destiny lay.

Aragorn choosing at a moment of sorrow and despair. Inger Edelfelt depicts the scene.

All this was taken from him at Parth Galen. Boromir fell in battle seeking to defend Merry and Pippin and Frodo set out for Mordor taking Sam with him. What little hope remained to him that he might yet fulfil his destiny was taken from him. What lay ahead was what he knew was a fruitless task. He would pursue the orc band that had taken the young hobbits across the plains of Rohan and probably die in an attempt to free them. The pursuit took him to the Forest of Fangorn where he even wondered whether he might starve to death alongside the companions that he had tried to rescue.

And then he met Gandalf in the very place in which he expected to die beyond all hope. On the one hand he is filled with joy as hope is rekindled. On the other hand he wonders what the vain pursuit of Merry and Pippin was for.

Gandalf speaks to him.

“Come, Aragorn son of Arathorn!” he said. “Do not regret your choice in the valley of the Emyn Muil, nor call it a vain pursuit. You chose amid doubts the path that seemed right: the choice was just and it has been rewarded. For so we met in time, who otherwise might have met too late.”

Aragorn chose a path that that was utterly alien in nature to the dark forces ranged against him. For they saw all things and all creatures as objects merely to be used for their own purposes. This was true from Sauron and Saruman right down to the meanest of orcs. He chose to lay down his life, his dreams and deepest longings, in the service of two figures that seemed to be of little more value than lost luggage. Gandalf describes the choice as just. Aragorn acted justly in choosing to serve the weak. And he speaks of reward. He speaks of a sense that reality itself rewards such choices. Sauron and Saruman would dismiss such talk as mere sentimental drivel and typical of the weakness of people like Gandalf, a weakness that deserved to be swept away. Gandalf, and Aragorn too, have placed their bets upon an entirely different reality. They believe in a universe that is just; not an impersonal even an implacable thing. And, says Gandalf, the choice is rewarded. The universe approves an act of justice and of mercy.

The universe approves the actor justice and mercy. Aragorn would die for Merry and Pippin. Anke Eismann depicts the young hobbits lost in the forest.

“The Enemy Has Failed- so Far. Thanks to Saruman.” What Does Gandalf Mean?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.646-650

The treason of Isengard is one of the saddest stories within all that makes up The Lord of the Rings. One who was chosen by the Valar to rouse the peoples of Middle-earth against Sauron chooses to turn against them and to side with the very power against whom he was sent to fight.

Gandalf has been giving Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli a briefing on the state of affairs in the War of the Ring at this point in the story when he has been reunited with them in Fangorn Forest. He has spoken of how Sauron has no conception of the possibility that his enemies might want to destroy the Ring, being convinced that one of them will seize control of it and use it against him. With this conviction he is concentrating upon attack rather than defence. “If he had used all his power to guard Mordor, so that none could enter, and bent all his guile to the hunting of the Ring, then indeed hope would have faded: neither Ring nor bearer could long have eluded him.”

But what Sauron believes is that it will take time even for the most able of his enemies to learn how to wield the power of the Ring in a way that could ensure victory over him. Gollum, and then Bilbo later, possessed and used the Ring, but neither were able to do much more with it than to make themselves invisible. As Frodo draws nearer to Mordor he begins to become more aware of the Ring’s power threatening to use that power against Gollum in order to frighten him into co-operation, but compared to what Sauron could achieve if he were to regain possession of the Ring this is very small.

Because of this Sauron believes that he has a window of opportunity to strike a blow against his foes that will be strong enough to defeat them. His main goal is to capture Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor and that is where the main part of his attention is focussed. Surely this is the reason why he sent only a small company of orcs to waylay the Fellowship and not a more significant force. His concern would have been that any larger company would have attracted the attention of his enemies and he did not yet have enough control over the territory between Mordor and the Anduin to fight a battle far from home.

So Grishnákh’s force that took part in the attack upon the Fellowship was not particularly large, and disastrously for Sauron, not large enough to force Uglúk’s Uruk-hai to go to Barad-dûr instead of Isengard.

“Already he knows that the messengers that he sent to waylay the Company have failed again. They have not found the Ring. Neither have they brought away any hobbits as hostages. Had they done even so much as that, it would have been a heavy blow to us, and it might have been fatal. But let us not darken our hearts by imagining the trial of their gentle loyalty in the Dark Tower. For the Enemy has failed- so far. Thanks to Saruman.”

Andrea Pipano’s fine depiction of Saruman the White.

Gimli is confused by Gandalf’s words, wondering if what he means by them is that Saruman is not a traitor, but what Gandalf means is that Saruman is not only a traitor to the Valar and the free peoples of Middle-earth but also to Sauron. Saruman wants the Ring for his own purposes. He wishes to become lord of Middle-earth. But he too has failed to seize the Ring. He too has not even been able to capture hobbits. All that he has managed to achieve is, as Gandalf puts it, “to bring Merry and Pippin with marvellous speed, and in the nick of time, to Fangorn, where otherwise they would never come at all.”

Carrying Merry and Pippin to Fangorn. Inger Edelfelt depicts the ironic agents of good at their malicious work.

What Saruman has achieved by attempting to seize the Ring for himself is to make Sauron aware of his treachery. At this point of the story Sauron fears that it might be Saruman who has seized the Ring. Time and again irony has a big part to play within The Lord of the Rings. An action that is meant to do harm turns out to achieve the opposite of its intention. It might even be that irony is not merely a kind of chance event but is woven into the very fabric of reality.

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

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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.

“This Old Man Had a Hat Not a Hood.” Who Did The Three Hunters See Under The Eaves of Fangorn?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.573-577

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have found the site of the battle between the Riders of Rohan and the Orc band who had taken Merry and Pippin but they have found no sign of the hobbits themselves. Now before they continue their search they decide to make camp for the night right under the eaves of an ancient chestnut tree. They build a fire taking care not to cut wood from any living tree but only that which they can gather from the ground about them.

As they rest by their fire they ponder the journey that lies before them, a journey that is likely to take them into the forest itself.

“Celeborn warned us not to go far into Fangorn,” Legolas says. “Do you know why, Aragorn?”

But Aragorn knows little of the forest save that it is old, “as old as the forest by the Barrow-downs, and it is far greater. Elrond says that the two are akin, the last strongholds of the mighty woods of the Elder Days, in which the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept. Yet Fangorn holds some secret of its own. What it is I do not know.”

Alan Lee evokes the wonderful mystery of forests.

The journeys of The Lord of the Rings sometimes lead under the ground, such as the journey through Moria, the Paths of the Dead under the White Mountains between Rohan and Gondor and the path through Shelob’s Lair that passes under the mountains that surround Mordor. Each of these paths hide a deadly peril. The Balrog lurks in the depths of Moria; the Dead haunt the paths under the White Mountains; and Shelob lies in wait for any that might pass through her lair under the mountains of Mordor. All who pass through these dark ways will come to an end of themselves in some way and emerge the other side as different from the self that first entered in.

But the journeys through forests are different in nature. In these journeys a secret is encountered. The hobbits encounter Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest, a strange and delightful wonder. In Lothlórien, the Golden Wood, the Fellowship meet the Lady of the Wood, Galadriel. And in Fangorn Forest Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard, the oldest of the Ents, the Onodrim of which Legolas speaks by the campfire. Each forest is alive, not just as the aggregation of many things, many separate trees and other plants, but as an intelligence that holds all the separate parts together and which is expressed in the secret life hidden therein.

The night passes and Gimli is on watch by the fire when something happens that awakens all three. Or perhaps I should say that two things happen. An old man “wrapped in a great cloak” is seen standing in the firelight but who disappears when challenged by Aragorn. And the other thing is that the horses run off at the same moment.

Shadowfax, Chief of the Mearas.

Gimli is convinced that the old man is Saruman and that he has driven their horses away. He is partly correct in this. The following day the companions will meet Gandalf in the forest. It is one of the great moments of the story. Gimli will ask Gandalf if it was him or Saruman who he had seen by the fire and Gandalf will reassure him that he was not there so it was likely to have been Saruman; that Saruman had not been able to wait for his orcs to bring him the hobbits and with the hobbits the greatest prize of all, the One Ring. But it was not Saruman who drove away the horses. The following morning Aragorn will remark to the others that the horses did not sound as if they were fleeing in terror and Legolas will reply that “they spoke as horses will when they meet a friend that they have long missed.” The friend, as we will learn later, is Shadowfax, the greatest of horses who has drawn near to Fangorn in order to await Gandalf. If the companions knew this they would not have to worry about their horses. As Galadriel told them their paths are laid out before their feet and all they need do is to walk the paths in trust.

Gandalf and Saruman together.

“Give It To Me!” Boromir Tries to Take The Ring From Frodo.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 387-390

We have heard this before. The long speech full of self-justification and fine sounding words. But when we heard this speech before it came from the mouth of Saruman when he gave it to Gandalf in Isengard, calling upon Gandalf to co-operate with him and with Sauron. Do the greatest crimes always require such grandiosity? Are such justifications always couched in terms of a particular action being an exception to moral law?

After Aragorn announced to the Fellowship that the day of choice had come, the day on which they would have to decide whether to make a journey directly towards Mordor on the east bank of the Anduin or to remain on the west bank and go to Minas Tirith, Frodo was given permission to spend an hour in thought alone. And it was during this time that Boromir finds him and begins to declare his mind.

Anke Eissmann depicts the moment when Boromir finds Frodo

The speech begins with kindliness as it must. If the speaker intends to justify a crime then they must first establish their intention to do good.

“Are you sure that you do not suffer needlessly?” Boromir says. “I wish to help you. You need counsel in your hard choice. Will you not take mine?”

Ted Nasmith imagines Boromir as he gives “counsel”

So the speech begins with sweet reason but soon it begins to display the same kind of exceptionalism that we saw in Saruman. He spoke to Gandalf about the failing of the Elves and of “dying Númenor”, and of “weak or idle friends”, and all this is with the intention of justify his own desire to rule and his need to obtain the One Ring in order to do so. Boromir also speaks dismissively of “elves and half-elves and wizards”, of their claim to be wise which he considers to be merely a cloak for timidity. And for Boromir it is “failing Númenor” that is the exception, “true-hearted Men” who “will not be corrupted”. It is the same speech albeit with a different cast of characters and a different exception. And in both speeches what begins with a we ends inexorably with an I.

“The Ring would give me power of Command. How I would drive the hosts of Mordor, and all men would flock to my banner!”

Compare these speeches to the words that Gandalf and Galadriel speak when Frodo offers the Ring to them. They both acknowledge what they might do if they were to possess the Ring and both are tempted to take it so that they might do good through its possession. But both know that the achievement of personal power always ends with a contempt for the lives of others. Others exist merely for the sake of the one who rules. Saruman and Boromir dismiss this refusal of personal power as timidity. Gandalf and Galadriel have both achieved this rejection of power for the sake of personal gain through long inner struggle and it is that struggle that proves vital in the ultimate destruction of the Ring and the overthrow of Sauron.

There is a wonderful moment in The Lord of the Rings in which Tolkien exposes the true reality of the speeches that Saruman and Boromir make and that comes when Gollum makes the same speech to himself, to his Sméagol self, during the journey that he makes with Frodo and Sam through the desolation before Mordor.

“See, my precious: if we has it, then we can escape, even from Him, eh? Perhaps we grows very strong, stronger than Wraiths. Lord Sméagol? Gollum the Great? The Gollum! Eat fish every day, fresh from the sea. Most Precious Gollum! Must have it! We wants it, we wants it, we wants it!”

Gollum the Great

It may be that Gollum’s ambition goes no further than a desire to eat fresh fish three times a day but once you realise that it is the same speech as Saruman and Boromir both make then you realise also that all desire for power for the sake of self-aggrandisement is ultimately as pathetic as is Gollum’s. It is not that Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond reject the use of power, but that power must be wielded for the Common Good and with as much restraint as possible. They also recognise that their part in the story of Middle-earth is soon to reach its conclusion, that they have played their part in it, and they recognise that power must pass to the ordained authority, which is the kingship that Aragorn will bear.

“Give it to me!”

“We wants it, we wants it, we wants it!”

The same speech. The same tragic desire.

“We Must Send The Ring to The Fire”. Elrond Concludes The Debate on What To Do With The Ring.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 257-260

After Gandalf ends his tale about his long journey, his battle with the Nazgûl upon Weathertop that the hobbits and Aragorn had witnessed from a distance and his long ride northward upon the mighty Shadowfax in order to draw some of his enemies, at least, away from the Ring and its bearer, he apologises to Frodo and then asks:

“Well, the Tale is now told, from first to last. Here we all are, and here is the Ring. But we have not come any nearer to our purpose. What shall we do with it?”

What Shall We Do With The Ring?

In response to a consideration of Gandalf’s question Elrond makes brief reference to Saruman’s treachery and the dangers of studying too closely the arts of the Enemy. But he gives his closest attention to a reflection upon Frodo’s story subtly drawing both him and hobbits into the long tale of the years. The Shire is placed at the edge of the great primeval forest and hobbits are named as neighbours to Iarwain Ben-adar, oldest and fatherless, Tom Bombadil of the eastern edge of The Old Forest. Briefly the thought is considered that Bombadil might be asked to be guardian of the Ring but Gandalf swiftly dismisses the idea. “He would be a most unsafe guardian; and that alone is enough”.

Perhaps most significantly Elrond speaks of Frodo and hobbits with respect and some surprise. “Of the tales that we have heard today the tale of Frodo was most strange to me. I have known few hobbits, save Bilbo here; and it seems to me that he is perhaps not so alone and singular as I had thought him. The world has changed much since I was last on the westward road.”

Elrond leaves that thought hanging as the Elves begin to debate whether the Ring should be hidden in some fashion or destroyed. Should it be taken westward to the Undying Lands where it will lie beyond the reach of Sauron? Elrond is confident that those in the Undying Lands would refuse to receive the Ring. For them the memory of Feänor and the corrupting power of the Silmarils will be fresh. Not that the Silmarils were evil in themselves but that Feänor’s absolute desire to possess something that he had made at all costs corrupted him absolutely. It led to the rebellion of the Noldor and the kinslaying at Alqualondë, the only occasion of violent death in the long history of Valinor. Neither the Elves nor the Valar would give welcome to an object of power that was inherently evil.

Ted Nasmith’s imagining of the Kinslaying at Alqualondë

Glorfindel suggests that Saruman’s lie, that the Ring had rolled down the Anduin to the depths of the ocean should be made true. They should cast it there themselves. But Gandalf dismisses this idea. No solution to the problem of the Ring will be permanent save its destruction and so Elrond brings the debate to its conclusion.

“But it seems to me now clear which is the road that we must take. The westward road seems easiest. Therefore it must be shunned. It will be watched. Too often the Elves have fled that way. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril- to Mordor. We must take the Ring to the Fire.”

The taking of the hard road, the road into peril, lies at the very heart of Tolkien’s meditation on the problem of evil. He gives no attention whatsoever to the question of why there is evil in the world. It is here and that is all we need to know. And he rejects the two solutions to the problem of evil in our own time, that either we flee from it to some absolute place of safety or that we overcome it by some greater force, defeating evil with evil. Next week we will give greater consideration to this latter solution thinking about Boromir’s suggestion that the Free Peoples use the Ring against its maker. It is enough to know now that Elrond and the Wise reject this possibility. There is only the hard road. The road into the very heart of darkness allowing it to do its very worst. The way of the cross.

The Hard Road

“Now I Can Take a Night’s Rest, The First Since I Have Forgotten When”. Gandalf is Able to Rest Even While Riding The Storm.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 254-258

The words in this week’s title come in the midst of a passage that is moves at a ferocious pace. From the moment in which Saruman has Gandalf confined to the pinnacle of Orthanc to the moment in which Gandalf apologises to Frodo for failing to keep his promise Tolkien takes us upon a journey that covers most of the western lands of Middle-earth and some east of the Misty Mountains too.

The journey begins with honest Radagast, keeping his promise to gather news and to send it to Gandalf in Isengard, a promise that he keeps even as he rides towards his home in Mirkwood. The Eagles of Manwë, Lord of the Valar, fly over many lands observing “the gathering of wolves and the mustering of orcs” and the ferocious pursuit search for the Ring by the Nazgûl. Gwaihir, the Windlord, takes Gandalf from his prison and carries him to Edoras and the hall of Théoden, King of Rohan, where Gandalf takes a horse, the mighty Shadowfax, who takes him hundreds of leagues even as Frodo and his companions rest in the house of Tom Bombadil and then have their misadventure in the Barrow Downs and their night at The Prancing Pony in Bree.

Ted Nasmith depicts Gandalf’s escape from Orthanc upon Gwaihir

Gandalf arrives in Bree upon the very same day in which the hobbits had set off towards Rivendell with Aragorn and upon receiving this news from Barliman Butterbur with joy he decides to rest.

I have always enjoyed the moment in which Gandalf lays Butterbur’s beer “under an enchantment of surpassing excellence”. Apart from the obvious and enticing pleasure of excellent beer it is a moment in which we gain an insight into his character. Gandalf does not live at a great height in some remote and, to others, inaccessible place. In recent weeks we have poked fun at Saruman’s “high and lonely destiny”. Gandalf, the grey pilgrim, is as much at home in an inn at Bree, smoking his pipe and savouring the pleasure of good beer, as he is amongst the great. Not only does he enjoy simple pleasures for their own sake he also understands their importance in the wider scheme of things. Places of hospitality play a key role in the whole story of The Lord of the Rings. Without them the Ring could never have been taken to Mordor. All along the East-West road through Eriador from Rivendell to Bree to the Shire to the Grey Havens lie such places, places in which the giving of welcome is something that is prized. Such welcome is a inner disposition, an enjoyment of the stranger as well as those who are familiar. And, of course, there are the places along the road that are less known, where unexpected hospitality is given; places like Woodhall and Farmer Maggot’s farm, Crickhollow and Tom Bombadil’s cottage. It is because of the spirit of hospitality that the Quest of the Ring is ultimately successful and Gandalf has spent long years nurturing this spirit.

Places of hospitality in a cold world

Gandalf is a warmer of hearts. He is the bearer of Narya, the ring of fire but this is not external to his character but merely an intensification of it. When Cirdan gave Narya to Gandalf and not to Saruman it was because of a recognition that he was the right bearer of such power. There are other uses that fire can be put to than the warming of hearts. Gandalf saw such uses as a prisoner in Orthanc in Saruman’s “pits and forges”. Places in which creatures are merely put to temporary use, in which shelter is a necessity required to enable production. Later Merry and Pippin will enjoy the hospitality of Isengard but will do so as a spoil of war and not as a freely given gift.

Merry and Pippin enjoy the unintended hospitality of Isengard

That Gandalf does not come to a place like The Prancing Pony in Bree as a figure of terror as do the Nazgûl is because he has chosen not to do so, a choice that he has made over and over again throughout the long and hidden years. That Aragorn and the hobbits are able to enjoy Butterbur’s hospitality too is the fruit of this choice and why Gandalf is able to sleep, albeit briefly, before returning to the great struggle.

“Ours is a High and Lonely Destiny”. Is the Lord of Isengard Saruman or Uncle Andrew?

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 251-254

Scholars of the Inklings speak of a certain cooling of the friendship between Tolkien and C.S Lewis following the publication and subsequent success of Lewis’s Narnia stories. It is not my intention to go into this here but I do want to draw the attention of my readers to a similarity between the speech that Saruman makes to Gandalf and that which Uncle Andrew makes to Digory in The Magician’s Nephew. We might extend that similarity to Weston’s speech, translated by Ransom, to the Oyarsa of Malacandra in Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet even though it was first published seventeen years before The Magician’s Nephew. Each of the speeches are similar in spirit. Each one has the sense of it being, as Tolkien describes Saruman’s speech, “long rehearsed”. And each speech is risible in nature. Lewis is quite explicit in this. Both Weston and Uncle Andrew are treated as laughable by those that they are trying to impress. Tolkien is never explicit in this manner and this might be regarded as a difference between him and Lewis as writers of fiction but I have written in this blog before of the way in which Saruman descends into absurdity as the story progresses. While Gollum’s fall into the fires of Orodruin calls upon our pity and Sauron’s fall into nothingness is a terrible thing, Saruman somehow becomes an unhappy joke. Not that anyone in the story is laughing, except perhaps for Merry and Pippin.

Harold Jig’s excellent imagining of Saruman’s display

I am sure that most of my readers recognised the quotation in the title of this week’s post as coming from The Magician’s Nephew. “Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are free from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.” Uncle Andrew is at one and the same time trying to impress his nephew with his significance while, at the same time, seeking to justify the low mean trick that he has just played upon Polly. In his speech to the Oyarsa in Out of the Silent Planet Weston is also trying to impress his audience while justifying his murder of some of the creatures of Malacandra. “To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race”.

Andrew Ketterley imagines Uncle Andrew’s Mean Trick Upon Polly

And then there is Saruman’s speech to Gandalf. Last week we thought about Saruman’s display of his own significance. The ring upon his finger, the coat of many colours and the magnificence of Isengard itself, are all intended to impress and to intimidate. This is a strategy that works with the Dunlendings but most certainly not with Gandalf. Nor does his speech, however well rehearsed it is.

“The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men that we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see.”

One can only guess that the kind of spirit that Saruman, Uncle Andrew and Weston all display must have been discussed when the Inklings met and certainly it must have been recognised and deplored by Tolkien and Lewis. Each of these characters place themselves within modernity, regarding themselves as its heralds, even its guardians and each of them enthusiastically adopt a chronological snobbery that regards any kind of morality other than the right of the strong to order and exploit the lives of the weak as being contemptible. Tolkien describes this contempt eloquently in his foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings. He speaks of the difference between the War of the Ring to the Second World War that had taken place as he was writing his own work. If, he says, the two had resembled each other more, the Ring would most certainly have been used against Sauron and then he says of Saruman that if he had failed to get possession of the Ring he “would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves”.

All of the works of the Inklings are a critique of this version of modernity and, as we have noted, as well as this version being cruel it is also absurd. We will return to this in next week’s blog.

“He That Breaks a Thing To Find Out What It Is Has Left The Path of Wisdom”. Gandalf Speaks of The Fall of Saruman.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.248-254

“What of Saruman?” It was Galdor, the emissary of Círdan, the shipwright of the Grey Havens, who first asked the question. Why is Saruman not present at the Council? Or why, at least, is he not represented? As Gandalf says himself, “Saruman has long studied the arts of the Enemy himself, and thus we have often been able to forestall him. It was by the devices of Saruman that we drove him from Dol Guldur.”

This driving of Sauron from Dol Guldur had taken place in the same year in which Smaug had fallen, the Battle of the Five Armies had taken place and in which the Ring had been found. It was a year that gained over seventy years of time for the free peoples of Middle-earth to make preparation for the inevitable conflict but we have to observe that no such preparation has taken place. Until this day in Rivendell there has been little communication between Elves and Dwarves and the kingdoms of Men. Gandalf alone has journeyed tirelessly between them and Aragorn has served his apprenticeship in Gondor and Rohan never revealing his true identity, but each realm has largely gone its own way. Perhaps that is why Boromir has some justification in his assertion that Gondor has stood alone against the Enemy. Perhaps too this, in part at least, is why Saruman has made the choices that will soon be revealed to Gandalf.

We have to assume that Gandalf harbours no suspicions regarding Saruman when Radagast the Brown first brings him news regarding the Nazgûl and extends Saruman’s invitation (we might actually say, summons) for Gandalf to meet him in Isengard. That Radagast should be on the road at all is remarkable. Of all the Istari, the order of wizards who came to Middle-earth to rouse its peoples against Sauron, he has been the most private, the most withdrawn, staying close to his home in Mirkwood among the creatures beloved of Yavanna of the Valar. Some have even regarded him to be little more than a plot device, someone to lure Gandalf into Isengard. Certainly Gandalf is impressed that Radagast has made such a journey and this causes him to agree to Saruman’s summons. Impressed enough not to return to the Shire but to entrust a message to Barliman Butterbur to go to Frodo. A message, as we know, that was never sent with all the consequences that we have been considering over the past year.

Gandalf and Radagast the Brown

From the moment that he first enters Isengard Gandalf begins to have misgivings about his choice and Saruman quickly confirms that these are justified. Saruman is wearing a ring on his finger. Is this an imitation of the One Ring, an essay perhaps in the forging of rings of power? Or is it a statement of intent? That Saruman is himself a “power”. And he has created a new coat. He is no longer Saruman the White but Saruman of Many Colours.

Harold Jig imagines Saruman’s self display before Gandalf

“I looked then,” says Gandalf, “and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.”

If Saruman has intended to impress through this careful crafting of his image he most certainly fails. Gandalf prefers white to the breaking of white as if through a prism.

“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

In her wonderful study on logos and language in Tolkien’s world, Splintered Light, Verlyn Flieger contrasts two kinds of breaking and their consequences. On the one hand there is Frodo who in his complete offering up of himself to the task of destroying the Ring is “completely broken down in order that he may be remade”. Flieger refers to Gandalf’s pondering of the transparency that he observes in Frodo as he lies in his bed in Rivendell and contrasts it with Saruman’s display in Isengard. If Frodo is being broken then Saruman breaks down. Frodo offers himself up. Saruman seeks to break in order to gain power. “In his overweening pride, Saruman has broken himself, not, like Frodo, by yielding to a cause greater than himself but by trying to impose himself upon the cause, by endeavouring to control rather than submit”.

Andrea Pipano’s fine imagining of Saruman to suggest why Gandalf does not mistrust him

“In All These Things He Has Been the Chief.” Elrond Calls upon Gandalf to Tell His Part in the Story.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 243-248

After first Gloín, and then Boromir, have spoken of the reasons why they have come to Rivendell Elrond calls upon first Bilbo and then Frodo to speak of how they came to possess the Ring and of how it was brought to Elrond’s halls. Perhaps it is the childlike stature of the hobbits, halflings as they are named by others, that arouses a certain scepticism in their hearers and so it is Galdor who has come from the Grey Havens to represent Cirdan, his lord, who gives voice to this doubt.

“The Wise may have good reason to believe that the halfling’s trove is indeed the Great Ring of long debate, unlikely though that may seem to those who know less. But may we not hear the proofs?”

And so Elrond calls upon Gandalf, declaring that he will have the place of honour as the last to speak, for “in all this matter he has been the chief”.

Gandalf and the Ring at Bag End

We have been in the company, first of Bilbo ever since he first found the Ring deep within the tunnels of the Misty Mountains, and then of Frodo on his journey through the wild pursued by the Nazgûl. At the Fords of Bruinen we heard the cry of the Ringwraiths, “The Ring! The Ring!” as they urged their horses into the foaming waters at the Fords of Bruinen but as Galdor said, the “halfling’s trove” is too big a thing even to accept its identity at the word of Elrond and Gandalf. It is the “peril of the world” whose very existence places all the peoples of the world in the greatest danger whether they know of it or not. This is why Gandalf must offer more than his word and so he begins to tell his part in the story of the Ring.

Gandalf first came to Middle-earth as one of the Istari, seven travellers sent by the Valar “as messengers sent to contest the power of Sauron, and to unite all those who had the will to resist him”. Soon after their arrival a shadow began to fall upon the Greenwood, home to the woodland elves of Thranduil. An evil power had made a stronghold at Dol Guldur in the south of the forest and people began to call the forest, Mirkwood. At first it was thought that the power was one of the Nazgûl but eventually Gandalf went to Dol Guldur and established the truth that the power was Sauron himself who was seeking to gather all the Rings to himself and for news of the One and news of Isildur’s heir. The Istari and the greatest of the Eldar had formed a council in order to resist the Power and on learning that it was Sauron Gandalf urged an assault upon Dol Guldur but Saruman opposed him. Eventually in the year that Bilbo found the One Ring in the Misty Mountains, Smaug the Dragon was slain by Bard of Dale and the Battle of the Five Armies was successfully fought, Saruman finally agreed to an assault upon Sauron. He had learned that Sauron’s servants were searching the Anduin vale near to where Isildur had fallen and he had become alarmed. Sauron retreated from his woodland fortress but only because his work in Mordor was now complete.

The Coming of the Istari to Middle-earth

At all times Saruman sought to allay the fears of the Council concerning Sauron’s search for the Ring.

“Have I not earnestly studied this matter? Into Anduin the Great [The Ring] fell; and long ago, while Sauron slept, it was rolled down the River to the Sea. There let it lie until the End.”

But Gandalf’s fears were never fully allayed and with the help of Aragorn Gollum was found and at last, in the study at Bag End, Gandalf read the words written upon the Ring.

“One Ring to Rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.”

There is no doubt any longer that Frodo’s ring is indeed the One Ring that Sauron seeks.

One Ring to Rule Them All