Shagrat and Gorbag

“The Gate was Shut. Sam Hurled Himself Against the Bolted Brazen Plates and Fell Senseless to the Ground. He Was Out in the Darkness. Frodo Was Alive but Taken By The Enemy.” Where Can We Find Wisdom in the Ending of The Two Towers?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 964-971

The Lord of the Rings is a book filled with wisdom. Often this is explicit, for example, the moment when Gandalf says to Frodo in the study in Bag End, in speaking of his decision to show mercy to Gollum, that “even the wise cannot see all ends”; and often it is expressed through the actions of wise figures in the story. But in the final pages of The Two Towers we see Sam’s desperate but ultimately futile efforts to catch up with the orcs who have taken Frodo’s body, and we overhear a conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag, the two commanders of the orc companies of Cirith Ungola and Minas Morgul. We learn much from what they say, especially the fact that Frodo is still alive, but we do not learn much wisdom. That is unless you count it as a kind of wisdom to learn from Shagrat and Gorbag how to survive in a world in which the only thing that matters is power.

Let us determine right here that we do not wish to learn the wisdom of the orcs. That even if the time might come in which they and their masters rule the world we will continue to refuse to live by their example and to continue to choose to speak truth, seek for beauty wherever we can find it, and to do whatever good we can, even if we have to pay for this choice with our lives.

We have made our choice. It is the choice that Sam makes in the Nameless Land, and continues to make, even when Frodo becomes incapable of making any choice beyond taking one step of excruciating pain after another. But what of the choices that Sam makes in the last pages of The Two Towers? Can we find any wisdom here?

I said in my last post on this blog that Sam is probably not capable of constructing an argument from first principles. I think that I may have been unfair to him. Listen to these words that he says to himself he learns that Frodo is still alive.

“I got it all wrong!” he cried. “I knew I would. Now they’ve got him, the devils! the filth! Never leave your master, never, never: that was my right rule. And I knew it in my heart. May I be forgiven! Now I’ve got to get back to him. Somehow, somehow!”

These are brave words, even heroic, but are they wise? What would have happened if brave Sam had been found beside Frodo’s body, or in making a futile effort to carry it to a place of safety? I think that we know the answer. Either the orcs would have carried two prisoners off to Barad-dûr or they would have taken Frodo alive while leaving his faithful servant dead upon the path. Sam would have died bravely, maybe even leaving some orcs dead around his body, but Frodo would still be a prisoner and the Ring would have been found. All would have been for nothing.

As it is, Frodo may have been taken but Sam is still free and the Ring has not been found. And as we will see when we next return to their story in The Return of the King, not only will the orcs have carried Frodo into Mordor but on finding his priceless mithril coat a fight for its possession will break out between the orcs of Cirith Ungol and of Minas Morgul and Sam will be able to rescue Frodo without having to strike a single blow.

So what wisdom can we learn? Do we learn that all thought, all planning, is useless? That everything that happens in the world is merely one random event after another? Of course not. Sam is only there to take advantage of his luck because he is deeply principled. If he was guided merely by self interest he would be back in the Shire offering his support to Lotho Sackville-Baggins as he seizes control through a coup d’etat. He would simply swap one master for another. No, it is essential that Sam is a hobbit who loves Frodo, and who seeks truth, beauty and goodness, even and, perhaps most especially, in the darkest places. Sam maybe unaware of the Power that is at work in the world, the Power that meant Bilbo to find the Ring and Frodo to receive it from Bilbo. His only prayer is that the Lady, that is Galadriel, will look after his master. We might think that this prayer is less than adequate but it is honoured nonetheless. Perhaps at the end what we do learn is that the deepest wisdom is not cleverness but goodness. It is Sam’s goodness that is honoured, so that when the gate of Cirith Ungol is opened to him he can enter and set Frodo free.

“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.

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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.