Saruman’s Wasteland

“You Have Become a Fool, Saruman, and Yet Pitiable.” Gandalf Breaks The Staff of Saruman and Casts Him From The Order of Wizards.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 751-762

Isengard lies in ruins and Saruman is a prisoner within Orthanc. His armies are defeated and now he is caught between two enemies. One, the mighty power that lies within Barad-dûr, knows now that he is a traitor, working only for his own purposes. The others, the King of Rohan who he sought to destroy, the Ents of Fangorn who he contemptuously ignored, and Gandalf who he had once imprisoned and would have sent to Mordor, stand before his doors.

Gandalf and Théoden ascend the steps that lead to the door of Orthanc while the rest of the company await their return below. The Ents remain hidden because Gandalf hopes to persuade Saruman to leave his prison and to come down and feels that if the Ents were present he would fear to do so.

Saruman comes to a window and engages in debate, first with Théoden and then with Gandalf, seeking always to turn things to his own advantage, but as Éomer says to Théoden, “so would the trapped wolf speak to the hounds, if he could.”

Saruman has great power in his voice but by seeking to divide his enemies, speaking singly, first to Théoden and then to Gandalf, he fails in his purpose. First Théoden recalls that Saruman went to war with him unprovoked and murdered children in the Westfold. Then Gandalf recalls his imprisonment within Orthanc. Saruman has done too much wrong to too many to be able to persuade them now that his intentions have been anything but malicious.

But in his speech to Gandalf Saruman reveals what he still believes.

“Much we could still accomplish together, to heal the disorders of the world. Let us understand one another and dismiss from thought these lesser folk! Let them wait upon our decisions.”

Of course, by now, Gandalf knows that when Saruman speaks of we what he really means is I. But even if he didn’t Gandalf has long been a servant and not a master. That is the fundamental difference between the two. Saruman has always regarded others as either more or less powerful than himself. If, like Sauron, they are more powerful, then he will seek to ally himself to them, although he will wait for an opportunity to betray them. It was for this purpose that he sent orcs to capture hobbits and so caught Merry and Pippin. He knew that a hobbit was bearing the Ring, probably taking it to Minas Tirith so that it could be used against the Dark Lord.

This is how Saruman treats the mighty. But for those who he regards as “lesser folk” he has only contempt. The House of Eorl is “a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs” and hobbits are “small rag-tag that dangle” at Gandalf’s tail.

And against Gandalf himself he bears almost uncontrollable fury. He has always regarded Gandalf as a foe. Right from the time when the Valar sent the Istari, the wizards, to Middle-earth to contest with Sauron and to encourage and organise resistance to him, Saruman insisted that he, and not Gandalf, should be the leader of the mission. And Saruman always knew that Cirdan of the Grey Havens had given Narya, one of the three Elven Rings, to Gandalf and not to him. When Gandalf demands Saruman’s staff and the keys of Orthanc Saruman replies in uncontrollable rage.

“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, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those that you wear now.”

Of course, apart from the rather pathetic reference to boots, we know that what Saruman has revealed here is what he desires. He is the one who has always desired power and domination. Like a seed growing to a mighty tree this desire has long lodged in his heart but its full extent, his desire to be Lord of Middle-earth, has only become something fully formed quite recently. Before that it may only have been revealed in jealousy of Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond, and contempt for Rohan or Ents, his near neighbours.

And, at the end, not knowing the consequence, not just of betraying those who had been friends but of the Valar who gave him his mission, he is summoned by Gandalf to stand and hear his judgement and he has no choice but to obey. His staff is broken and he is cast from the Order. Gandalf has the authority to do this and Saruman’s power is broken. God cannot be mocked forever.

“Many Ents Were Hurling Themselves Against the Orthanc Rock; But That Defeated Them.” Why Couldn’t The Ents Destroy Orthanc?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

Last week we thought about how when the Ents destroyed the fortress of Isengard it was if the action of tree roots over a hundred years were “all packed into a few moments.”

But the Tower of Orthanc was different. After Saruman was able to make a hasty retreat into it, only just managing to escape the pursuit of Quickbeam, he got his machinery of war into action and Beechbone was killed by a kind of flamethrower. This threw the Ents into a terrible fury and they launched themselves into an attack upon Orthanc.

“Round and round the rock of Orthanc the Ents were striding and storming like a howling gale, breaking pillars, hurling avalanches of boulders down the shafts, tossing up huge slabs of stone into the air like leaves. The tower was in the middle of a spinning whirlwind. I saw Iron posts and blocks of masonry go rocketing up hundreds of feet, and smash against the windows of Orthanc. But Treebeard kept his head. He had not had any burns, luckily. He did not want his folk to hurt themselves in their fury, and he did not want Saruman to escape out of some hole in the confusion. Many of the Ents were hurling themselves against the Orthanc-rock: but that defeated them. It is very smooth and hard. Some wizardry is in it, perhaps, older and stronger than Saruman”s.”

But Orthanc was not built by wizards but by the Dunedain at the end of the Second Age when Elendil and his people escaped the destruction of Númenor and established the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth. As the power of these kingdoms began to wane it fell into the hands of the Dunlendings who were later allies of Saruman at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Eventually Saruman offered to take possession of the fortress and his offer was gratefully received both by the King of Rohan and the Steward of Gondor and for years after he was a valuable ally to them both and Isengard was an important part of the defences of the West against the growing power that first began to arise in Dol Goldur.

Saruman inherited Orthanc but he built the fortress of Isengard; and it was this fortress that the Ents were able to destroy in a single night. But why did Orthanc remain impregnable? It was from a thought in the comments section following last week’s post that this question began to grow in my mind and I want to try to tackle it this week.

I think that there are two main themes in Tolkien’s thought at work here. One is that as a character begins to invest more and more of themselves, of their essence, into the things that they make, so that essence begins to waste away. A kind of entropy is at work. The greatest example of this is, of course, of Sauron and the Ring. Sauron puts so much of himself into the making of the Ring that when it is finally destroyed he falls with it. But the same principle is at work with Saruman and Isengard. When Merry and Pippin speak dismissively of the one who had them captured and who would have tortured them until he found out all they knew, Aragorn replies that “once he was as great as his fame made him. His knowledge was deep, his thought was subtle, and his hands marvellously skilled.”

The other principle is Tolkien’s sense that when we work in harmony with creation and not seeking mastery over it we are able to make something of real significance and of staying power. So we see the way in which Galadriel makes Lothlórien, a place that Sam Gamgee describes as like being inside a song. And we also listened to Gimli speak of the work that he would do in the glittering caves of Aglarond. Great sculptors speak of finding something within the material that they are working with; something that is essentially present. And in the city of Worcester in England near which I live we could contrast the difference between the gothic beauty of that city’s medieval cathedral and the modernist monstrosity that is the technical college next door to it. The conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton, was once asked to reflect on the unpopularity of new housing developments. His brilliant answer was that if a development were to have the quality of a city like Bath and its beautiful architecture then there would never be an objection to it.

The Royal Crescent in Bath. A beautiful example of Georgian architecture from the 18th century. And the interiors are just as beautiful as the facades.

Scruton, like Tolkien, makes beauty the centre of his thought on the things, and not functionality. When function is subordinate to beauty, in which something is made that is in harmony with the materials that are used and which has a transcendent purpose greater than the agrandisement of the maker then it will last. So Isengard is destroyed in a night and Orthanc is impregnable.

“My Business is With Isengard Tonight, With Rock and Stone.” How The Ents Destroyed Saruman”s Fortress

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

The smoking of pipes at the ruined gates of Isengard had created a quiet mood in which nothing is said but Legolas is anxious to know more about the story of the hobbits after their capture by orcs nine days before. Merry and Pippin spoke of their experience with the Uruk-hai and how they were able to escape amidst the confusion of battle when Éomer’s company attacked. As Gimli said about how Pippin was able to cut his bonds with an orc knife at an earlier point in the story the hobbits were lucky but they were able to seize their luck “with both hands”.

Merry and Pippin went on to speak of their meeting with Treebeard and of Entmoot when the Ents discussed what action they should take against Saruman. Then they spoke of how, at the end of their debate, the Ents “suddenly blew up”, of how they marched upon Isengard, and of how they were followed by huorns who came out of the forest behind them.

They spoke of how, as they reached Nan Curunir, the vale of the wizard, they were met by a tremendous sound of trumpets blaring and thought that they had been discovered by their enemies. But then they had realised that the noise was of the emptying of Isengard as Saruman sent his army to war against Rohan and how for an hour they watched them marching southward towards Helm’s Deep.

Treebeard watched them go and then said to Merry and Pippin, “My business is with Isengard tonight, with rock and stone”.

Tolkien describes how the Ents launched their assault upon the fortress, wonderfully showing how the slow, deliberate action of tree roots over a hundred years, an action about which all householders must be aware, was concentrated into a single night’s furious work.

“They pushed, pulled, tore, shook and hammered; and clang-bang, crash-crack, in five minutes they had these huge gates just lying in ruin; and some were already beginning to eat into the walls, like rabbits in a sand-pit.”

Merry and Pippin go on to describe how the destruction continues, how Saruman tried to respond by means of fire from within his impregnable fastness of Orthanc at the heart of Isengard; and how the Ents diverted the waters of the Isen from its natural course and flooded the fortress, turning Orthanc into an island in the centre of a lake, an island in which Saruman was now a prisoner.

I have already spoken of how, in this powerful piece of description, Tolkien shows how the action of a forest upon a house over many years is concentrated within a single night. We know that if any building is neglected for a period of time nature soon reclaims it, drawing it back into itself as what once seemed to be permanent is shown to be merely temporary. Tolkien did not know of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, in which Lovelock suggested that the earth is a complex self-regulating system within which that which is organic and non-organic interacts in order to maintain the system as a whole but I suspect that he may have been inclined to like it if he did. Many scientists have criticised the hypothesis on the basis that it is teleological, in other words that it is descriptive of a set of conditions that will lead to a particular end, in this case about the survival of planet earth as a place for organic life, but Tolkien was a Christian, and Christians believe that everything is moving towards a conclusion, of a new heaven and a new earth.

In his Music of the Ainur Tolkien places the whole history of the earth within the framework of a single piece of music in which all creatures, both earthly and heavenly are active participants. Only Eru Ilúvatar, only God, knows how the music will end but it will be a beautiful resolution of all that has preceded that end. As the 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich put it, “All shall be well”. There may be a time in which figures like Saruman may triumph but as the Ents show, through their business with the rock and stone of Isengard, they cannot triumph forever.

“The Land Had Changed.” Fangorn Forest Comes to Helm’s Deep. The Revenge of the Trees.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 705-707

It was Gandalf who understood what was happening first. As the host of Rohan rode from Edoras to Helm’s Deep he saw a “darkness brooding about the feet of the Misty Mountains” and asked Legolas to describe what he could see.

“I can see a darkness. There are shapes moving in it, great shapes far away upon the banks of the river; but what they are I cannot tell. It is not mist or cloud that defeats my eyes: there is a veiling shadow that some power lays upon the land, and it marches slowly down stream. It is as if the twilight under endless trees were flowing downwards from the hills.”

At first Gandalf mistook one form of darkness for another, seeing them all as one kind and that kind the darkness of Mordor but as he pondered more he began to realise what he was seeing and so rode towards Isengard. There he asked Treebeard for the help of his Huorns and with them rode back to Helm’s Deep.

Later on Merry spoke of the Huorns to other members of the Fellowship.

“I think they are Ents that have become almost like trees” he said… “There is great power in them, and they seem to be able to wrap themselves in shadow: it is difficult to see them moving. But they do. They can move very quickly if they are angry. You stand still looking at the weather maybe, or listening to the rustling of the wind, and then suddenly you find that you are in the middle of a wood with great groping trees all around you.”

And it is these trees, or perhaps we should call them Ent-trees, that Legolas described to Gandalf and that are now in the Deeping-coomb, the valley below the Hornburg. The hosts of Isengard stand at bay before foes on every side. Théoden and his riders drive them towards the Huorns who block their retreat and Erkenbrand and a thousand men upon foot march towards them, the remnants of a once defeated army that had stood at bay at the Fords of the Isen now victorious once more as they drive their foes before them. And Gandalf rides down upon them revealed for a moment in power and his enemies fall upon their faces in terror. For if there is one thing that orcs understand, perhaps the only thing, it is power. Just an hour before they had been a proud army serving a mighty wizard and about to storm a fortress that had never fallen when defended. Now they are surrounded by power on every side. At last they flee into the mysterious forest and are never seen again.

When Treebeard described Saruman as having a mind of “metal and wheels” who “does not care for living things” he was not merely expressing a difference in taste between himself and the wizard but something much more fundamental. When Saruman emptied Isengard of its defenders in order to conquer Rohan he had no idea of the threat that lay on his doorstep and the reason for this was that he did not care for living things. There are two senses of meaning in the word care that Treebeard used. One is the sense of care as responsibility and it is certainly true that Saruman has no sense of responsibility for living things. But the other sense is that he simply did not think about them very much at all. He assumed that his technology was more potent and effective than any living creature that he had encountered with the exception maybe of Sauron himself and in this he utterly underestimated the forest and its power.

It is one of the greatest feats of Tolkien’s imagination to have thought about how a forest might behave if it were to be able to perform its essential actions not as a plant but as an animal. And what might happen if the growing resentment that a forest might feel about its abuse and mistreatment by others suddenly spilled over. This forest has been abused by a wizard and by orcs for a long time and now, roused by two young hobbits, it takes revenge upon its enemies. Tolkien concentrates the revenge of the living world into a brief period of time. We know that our living planet may move much more slowly than this but if we choose to behave like orcs or fallen wizards in our relationship with life itself our planet will defend itself against us and will eventually win albeit after a conflict with terrible losses. Maybe one day we, like the hosts of Isengard, will be cowering before its latent power.

“It is Likely Enough… That We are Going to Our Doom: The Last March of The Ents.” The Ents Go to War at Isengard.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.623-635

The night that Merry and Pippin spend in Wellinghall is the first since they escaped from the Orcs and the first that they have had in a home, a place of safety, since leaving Lothlórien, and so they sleep long and refreshingly.

Treebeard takes them to Entmoot, the council in which the Ents will deliberate what course of action they must take.

“Deciding what to do does not take Ents as long as going over all the facts and events that they have to make up their minds about”, Treebeard says to the hobbits, and he estimates that this will take a couple of days or so. He sends Merry and Pippin off with a younger Ent called Bregalad or Quickbeam who has already made up his mind about what should be done and the hobbits spend those days in his company as the Moot continues.

It is on the third day, a bleak and windy day, in the afternoon, that all falls silent and then with a great crash and the quivering and bending of the trees that the Ents march towards them.

“We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!”

The Ents are marching to Isengard and to war.

It is through Merry that we learn something about Isengard. Merry is the organiser of the four hobbits, the original company of the Ring that left the Shire some months before these events. He organised the purchase of Crickhollow in Buckland, and, as the real reason why Frodo is leaving Hobbiton became clear it is Merry who made secret preparation for leaving the Shire. He is rather proud that while Pippin spent his days in Rivendell idling away the time he tried to find out as much as he could about what might lay ahead.

“Isengard is a sort of ring of rocks or hills, I think, with a flat space inside and an island or pillar of rock in the middle, called Orthanc. Saruman has a tower on it. There is a gate, perhaps more than one, in the encircling wall, and I believe there is a stream running through it; it comes out of the mountains, and flows on across the Gap of Rohan.”

Orthanc is not Saruman’s work but much older having been built by the Númenorians in the days of Elendil. It was a sign of their decline that during the first part of the Third Age it became a lawless place far from the authority of Minas Tirith and a thorn in the side of the new kingdom of the Rohirrim who had settled in the plains of Calenardhon that lay between the southern end of the Misty Mountains to the north and the mountains of Gondor to the south. So it was that when Saruman took possession of Isengard in 2759 of the Third Age both the Steward of Gondor and the King of Rohan welcomed him gladly seeing him as a valuable ally who would watch over the strategically vital Gap of Rohan.

It would seem that Saruman was able to keep his true intentions secret right until the moment he took Gandalf prisoner during the time in which Frodo was making preparations to leave first Hobbiton and then the Shire, although Treebeard seems to have been aware of these intentions for some time and the presence of orcs in Isengard. Even after going to war with Rohan Saruman was able to keep Théoden from making a strong response through the efforts of Grima Wormtongue his chief counsellor who was able to convince Théoden that Saruman’s true wish was for peace.

It is with the arrival of Merry and Pippin in their pure, gentle and artless simplicity that the dam finally bursts and the slowly simmering anger of the Ents finally comes pouring out of Fangorn and down to Isengard. It is as if Nature herself finally rises up against the powers that would destroy her. But even as the Ents march upon Isengard and upon Saruman Treebeard is aware that Nature may fail, that it is “likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents”. But, he adds, “if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later”. The possibility that disenchanted Nature could yet reawaken and rise against a world of “metal and wheels” was something that the Inklings pondered both through the character of Merlin in C.S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and through Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien allows such a revolt to take place but recognises the heartbreaking fragility of Nature that may yet fall before the walls of Isengard and before technology.

“He Has a Mind of Metal and Wheels; and He Does Not Care For Growing Things”. Treebeard Speaks of The Treason of Saruman.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991,2007) pp.611-617

The home that Treebeard has shown to Merry and Pippin is the fruit of exquisite patience. We might almost say the patience of Nature herself except, as we saw Treebeard speak of the hill upon which he first met the young hobbits, it had only stood there since that part of the world was shaped. There was a history before that moment too.

So, as I wrote last week, the Wellinghall that Treebeard shows to the young hobbits has been a careful crafting of earth, water, growing things and light over many years. It has as much in common with an art installation as it does a dwelling place and, although it has been ages in its making, if Treebeard had brought Merry and Pippin to it just a few days later it would be different. The spring that wells up from beneath the earth would have shaped it in a new way and as the year moved onwards into springtime so the rising of the sap within the trees that are the walls of Wellinghall would subtly transform them and would fill the air with a delicious aroma.

But Saruman is a different matter altogether.

“I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for living things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”

One could hardly find a greater contrast between any two beings than between the minds of these two neighbours. If Treebeard has lovingly worked with Nature for long ages of time both in the making of his home and in his work as a shepherd of the trees Saruman is impatient both with Nature herself and with all living things. As Treebeard puts it, in the mind of Saruman the one needful thing is that it must “serve him for the moment”; and it is worth noting that phrase, for the moment, for as W.H Auden spoke of factory workers, all are “put to temporary use”. Robots are taking the place of those who work in factories and doubtless if Saruman had lived long enough he would have replaced his specially bred orcs, the Uruk-hai, with robots. It might be that his orcs can withstand the sun in a way that other orcs cannot, but eventually it will be possible to create a robot that will be able far to outlast even the strongest orc. And whereas Saruman could not be completely confident about the obedience of his Uruk-hai he need never have any anxiety about robots. The temporary usefulness of any creature that serves him for the moment would have come to an end. And we might even add that the quality of malice which he required in his servants, which was so useful to him, but which required constant attention as with Uglúk’s need to keep reminding his troops that the prisoners were not to be harmed, could be programmed into a robot in a completely reliable manner.

Saruman’s impatient “mind of metal and wheels” is about to be put to the test by the shepherds of trees and by their Huorns, trees that are growing in awareness and becoming more like their shepherds as Treebeard put it. And when it is tested in this manner it will be his impatience that will be his undoing. His anxiety to defeat Rohan quickly will lead him to empty his fortress of Isengard not fearing any enemy nearer by; his weaponry will not be sufficient to drive away either Ents or Huorns; and whereas the Tower of Orthanc, rising out of the very bones of the earth itself and built by Númenorians at the very height of their powers, cannot be assailed by Ents, the walls of Isengard are a fragile thing and easily overthrown.

Perhaps all lovers of “living things” should be grateful for Saruman’s impatience. If he or any like him were able to wait long enough then life itself might be abolished. The Ring of Power is, of course, the ultimate expression of a mind of metal and wheels, a mind that is a machine, at least for that age of Arda. In our own age the principle that made the Rings of Power is at work in new ways and perhaps with even greater effectiveness.

“I Am Not Altogether on Anyone’s Side, Because Nobody is Altogether on My Side.” Treebeard, the Ents and Forests in The World of Middle-earth

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 611-617

The homes in which people live tell you much about them. Of course, many people have little choice in the kind of home in which they live, but even when that choice is limited for people they will still seek to do something to tell a story about themselves. I remember when as a young man I taught in an African school in Zambia I would sometimes go to visit a student’s family in one of the villages nearby. One thing always stood out to me on these visits and that was that the family I visited may have possessed very little but everything was presented with great care and the simple hut was clean and life lived with great dignity. Those who know the descriptions of the simple homes of early settlers travelling west among the American continent will recognise this need for dignity. I came across great poverty in African villages but I did not encounter squalor until I worked as a parish priest in some run down neighbourhoods of Birmingham, England.

Treebeard’s home is an expression of his dignity as the oldest of the Ents and of a carefully crafted balance between earth, the flowing of water over the earth, that which grows in the earth, and light. It is the play of light upon stone, water and tree that gives Wellinghall its particular character. The name in its English form and therefore in the Common Tongue of Tolkien’s Middle-earth comes from the idea of a spring welling up from the earth beneath it and the hall that was built there.

“A little stream escaped from the the springs above, and leaving the main water, fell tinkling down the sheer face of the wall, pouring in silver drops, like a fine curtain in front of the arched bay.”

The “arched bay” had been shaped out of the lower slopes of Methedras, the last of the Misty Mountains and so we are brought into a home in which the worlds outside and inside flow together in a carefully crafted manner. If in a typical western home a great effort is made to create something which keeps the interior quite separate from that which lies outside this is most certainly not the case with Wellinghall.

Treebeard’s home is, as far as he can achieve it, an adaptation to the world of earth, water, tree and light in which he has lived since time immemorial. There is no agriculture or industry within his world. Even his food is derived from the welling waters of the young Entwash that flow through his home although there is clearly some kind of intoxicant that occurs within them, or has been added to them. But it is an intoxicant that energises rather than enervates. We remember that when Merry and Pippin first drank from the waters of the Entwash as they escaped into the forest from the orcs they did not notice that “the cuts and sores of their captivity had healed and their vigour had returned”.

Perhaps what we see in the ecology of Fangorn Forest is what can happen when a very particular set of relationships are able to develop over a long period of time. It is important to note that Fangorn is never presented as a kind of paradise in a way in which Lothlórien appears to be. Treebeard himself speaks of the impact of darkness upon it and his work as the shepherd of the trees is both to protect the forest from external forces that seek to harm it and from the darkness that might destroy it from within.

Even as he speaks with Merry and Pippin we seem to see Treebeard become increasingly aware that he has failed to protect his forest. The depredations that first came with the return of the Númenorians in the Second Age and whose activities led to the large scale destruction of the forest that once had lain right across Eriador and of which the Forest of Fangorn was only its eastern end seem to have been something with which Treebeard had to learned to live with, albeit reluctantly. But now the deliberate destruction of the forest by Saruman is something that he cannot tolerate. It may be that a world in which no-one has really been on the side of the trees and their shepherds is one that has led Treebeard to stay out of the struggles for power and for freedom in the wider world about him. He has not been “altogether on anyone’s side” because “nobody is altogether” on his side but now he realises that unless he chooses a side his forest will be destroyed completely. He has to take action.

No-one is “altogether” on Treebeard’s side but some seek to destroy his world completely.

Sam Gamgee Remembers a Gift to Heal the Hurts of the World.

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As always, Saruman underestimated the capacity of those that he made his foes to undo the harm that he sought to do to them, and he greatly underestimated the power of good in the world. In many ways the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings is a celebration of  that goodness. And the goodness is given graciously and abundantly.

I ended last week’s reflection on the death of Saruman lamenting one who, in Wordsworth’s words, “laid waste his powers”, meaning Saruman, and then hinted at one who, in his labours to restore the Shire discovered power that had lain hidden deep within him. Of course I am speaking of Sam Gamgee.

It is typical of Sam that he gets down to work straight away to remove all traces of Saruman’s malign influence upon the Shire and to begin to restore it “as it ought to be”. Sam finds many willing helpers. Perhaps some hobbits might have been ashamed of their failure to stand up against the invaders and wished to make amends. There might even have been some among the more willing collaborators who might wish to do so also. Let us hope so. Tolkien does not tell us.

But it isn’t until Sam begins to ponder the destruction of the trees and how it might only be his great-grandchildren who might see the Shire as he once knew it to be that he remembers the gift that Galadriel gave him in Lothlórien. It is a box of plain grey wood with no decoration save a single silver G rune set upon it.

“If you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there.”

When Sam at last remembers Galadriel’s gift it is typical of him at this stage in his life that he is more afraid of making wrong use of it than he is confident in his power to use it well. It is Frodo who rightly encourages him saying, “Use all the wits and knowledge you have of your own, Sam… and then use your gift to help your work to help your work and better it.”

It is a fundamental principle of faith and of life that grace perfects nature and so it is with Sam here. It is not that Sam had to start the work in order that the grace given in Galadriel’s gift could build upon it. It is that the person that Sam has always been in potential is now revealed in the grace given to him through the gift.

Galadriel saw Sam’s greatness in his vocation as a gardener. That he was one who could turn a wasteland into a place of abundance. Her gift allowed Sam to discover that in himself. Perhaps Gandalf caught a glimpse of that greatness when he caught Sam by the hair and dragged him through the open window into the sitting room at Bag End. Gandalf may have spoken of punishment in sending Sam with Frodo but the punishment would have been Frodo’s if Sam had been a fool. Gandalf sees enough of what Sam will become to choose him for the great adventure.

Frodo’s challenge to Sam’s wits and knowledge proves sufficient. Sam travels the Shire doing his work. He plants saplings everywhere and places a grain of Galadriel’s gift by each one. He plants the little silver nut that the box contained in the party field at Hobbiton. And then he stands at the Three-Farthing Stone and casts what remains of the earth into the air “with his blessing”.

The result is wonderful and the year 1420 is a “marvellous” year. Even the children are extraordinarily beautiful, the beer becomes a thing of legend and the silver nut proves to be a mallorn, a wonder of the world. Sam’s faithful journey with Frodo, even after seeing the vision of destruction in Galadriel’s Mirror, is rewarded. Perhaps it is his father, the old curmudgeon, the Gaffer, who puts it best. “It’s an ill wind as blows nobody any good… And All’s well as ends Better!”

Sam discovers a greatness and a power within himself, perfected by grace, that  Saruman squandered. Saruman’s soul became the very wasteland that he took pleasure in making. But goodness is the stronger as Sam reveals in his labours.