The Easterlings

“Suddenly Sam Laughed, For Heart’s Ease Not for Jest.” Frodo and Sam Find Refreshment in Ithilien.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 847-851

You can almost feel the relief in Tolkien’s writing as Frodo and Sam leave the dreadful ash pits of the desolate lands before the Black Gate of Mordor and arrive in the fair land of Ithilien, which, although now under the control of the enemy, has not yet been spoiled.

Frodo and Sam, guided by Gollum, are making their way from the Black Gate down towards the crossing place in the road that runs south towards the sea and east-west from Minas Morgul to Osgiliath, the ancient but ruined capital of Gondor. And as they get further away from the horror of lands that have been utterly ruined by Mordor so their mood begins to change.

Tolkien gives us a rich feast of language so that he can do justice to Ithilien, once the garden of Gondor, far enough from the shadow of the Ephel Death, the mountains of Mordor, to be free of them and yet sheltered by those same mountains from the east wind.

Tolkien was not a meteorologist and so he never discourses in detail about the weather in Middle-earth. His geography, and his meteorology too, is first and foremost mythological and so reflects the way in which the peoples of western Europe saw the world about them in the pre-modern world. The West and the great Atlantic ocean always made that direction one of mystery. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth it is the way to Valinor, the way that the Elves take on their journey to Valinor. It is the way to the Grey Havens, that are themselves a crossroads between worlds. In Europe the wind that comes from the West is warmed by the warm current coming out of the Gulf of Mexico and so it moderates the weather right up into the Arctic Circle in the far north of Norway and brings warm rain to the green lands of western Europe and especially, for Tolkien, to the British Isles that were his native lands.

The East, on the other hand, was always the direction from which danger and threat came. Invading armies always came from the East, whether Saxon, Viking or Norman in the British Isles, or the hordes coming out of the steppes of Central Asia, or the Ottoman Turks coming out of the East up the valley of the River Danube. And the weather that comes out of the East comes out of Siberia and there are no mountain ranges in Europe north of the Alps to provide shelter from the cold east wind or to provide defence from invading armies.

Ithilien is thus a land sheltered from the east and open to the south and west, a land of plenty, and Tolkien’s rich feast of language reflects this.

“Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendents; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam.”

Readers will note the sheer length of that sentence with its profusion of semicolons and Tolkien’s pleasure in writing a list. Each shrub and herb is named until we arrive at the limit of Sam, the gardener’s, knowledge, and we are invited into the unknown, not as a place of danger, but a place to be explored so that new pleasures can be experienced and enjoyed. Tolkien sums it all up through a phrase in which, just for a moment, he leaves the language of the north and strays for a moment into the classical Mediterranean world.

“A dishevelled dryad loveliness.”

And Sam laughs, “for heart’s ease not for jest”. Frodo indeed laughed for jest in the ash pit before the Morranon when Sam recited his verse about the oliphaunt, and it lifted his spirit, breaking the spell of despair in which he was held in the long hours of that day. That laughter broke into his darkness but the dark still lay about him. Sam’s laughter is of a different kind. It is an expression of delight, the laughter of heaven. It is as if as Sam breathes in the rich scents of the garden, this is his outbreath.

So we come into the last place of refreshment for the hobbits before they enter the darkness of Mordor, a moment of grace before they are abandoned to the horror that they alone, unaided, must face. They do not know what lies before them but they are able to draw strength from this place because, unlike Gollum, this is how they have trained their hearts.

A Few Thoughts on Being an Ally of Sauron

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There comes a moment on their journey through Mordor when Frodo and Sam are able to look across the “hateful land” towards Orodruin, Mount Doom and the vast shadow beyond of Barad-dûr. Between them and the mountain they can see the armies of Mordor moving along its roads and the many military camps, some of tents and others like small towns “with straight dreary streets of huts and low drab buildings.” To their surprise it is Men and not Orcs that they can see upon the road.

We have already met some of the allies of Mordor earlier in the story. The force that Faramir and his Rangers of Ithilien ambush near Henneth Annûn, the Corsairs of Umbar that are defeated by Aragorn and the army of the Dead at Pelargir and the army of Harad whose king is slain at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by the charge of Théoden’s knights. In addition to these there are the forces of the Easterlings who dwell near to the great inland sea of Rhûn. What all share in common is that they have long been enemies of Gondor and also allies of Mordor.

Why do those who are not Sauron’s slaves so willingly fight for him? As they journey through the dreary land can they not see that the future that they fight for looks like this? Everything that Sauron touches is spoilt and eventually dies. He values power and control over everything else and it is his power and his control that he values most. The lands of the East may be his allies now but surely the only destiny open to them is to become as much Sauron’s slaves as are the orcs.

Some of humankind have been allies of the dark ever since the First Age, siding then with Morgoth and later from the Second Age with Sauron. It is likely that that some of the Nazgûl, Lords of Men who were given Rings of Power by the Dark Lord, were descendents of these early allies. Others were Númenóreans who had returned to Middle-earth during the Second Age and had fallen under Sauron’s sway. What all shared in common with him was the desire for power and a hatred for the peoples of the West. The glory of the kingdoms of Beleriand in the First Age and then of Númenor in the Second and of Gondor in the Third all excited both envy, resentment and ultimately hatred.

It might be argued that this was not entirely their fault. It is hard to be treated with contempt, to be regarded as deplorables from one generation to another. Even the loyal allies of Rohan feel inferior to Gondor. Denethor’s policy might easily be summarised as “Gondor first…Gondor first”. In fact the words that he actually uses in an angry exchange with Gandalf are, “Gondor alone”. Denethor might need Rohan in time of need but only as an inferior within the alliance. The words of contempt that Théoden and his men actually heard came from the lips of Saruman but might they have come too from Denethor in an unguarded moment?

Sauron certainly shares this contempt as he does for all creatures saving only himself and his lord, Morgoth. But he focuses the resentment of his allies upon Gondor and he offers power, real power. We might be able to see that, as with the Ringwraiths, Sauron’s gifts may bring power but they also ultimately enslave, but when the gift is offered what is most enticing is revenge over an ancient foe and a share in a seemingly inevitable victory. We are more than willing, so it seems, to believe that we might be exceptions to the slavery and the misery.

I end this piece with the word, we, for any wise reader of The Lord of the Rings must know that they or we, too, are capable of falling under Sauron’s spell. All of us are likely to have reasons for envy and resentment at some time or other and the opportunity to have power over someone else will be tempting too. These are the temptations that make us vulnerable to the darkness and its power. Our hearts need to be guarded against them with constant vigilance.