The Fall of Sauron

“Gandalf! Beyond all Hope You Return to Us in Our Need!”

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 640-645

This is a wonderful piece to write on Tolkien Reading Day, the day on which the Tolkien Society encourage us to read favourite passages from his work. This is one of my favourite passages and I would love to hear from you in the Comments below about the passages that you choose to read this day. Of course, Tolkien would have marked this day in his own life by going to Mass to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, the news from the angel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a child who would be the Saviour of the World. He meant us to weave together in our minds the downfall of Sauron and this good news.

As Aragorn and his companions enter the Forest of Fangorn in search of Merry and Pippin, following the same stream that the young hobbits had two days before, Gimli becomes aware that their task is practically impossible. They have insufficient supplies to do more than starve with the young hobbits even if they find them.

“If that is indeed all that we can do, then we must do that,” said Aragorn. “Let us go on.”

Aragorn has been aware of the impossibility of their task since its beginning. It was Éomer who commented that Aragorn must know little of orcs if he hunted them in the fashion that he did. Aragorn knew that it was unlikely that he would catch up with the orc band and if they did they would likely perish in the attempt to rescue their friends. And even before this he had little hope. “We must do without hope,” he said to the Fellowship immediately after the fall of Gandalf at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and ever since that moment Aragorn has gone on in a state of grim despair until this moment when he knows that it is likely that he has come to Fangorn to die.

The three companions climb the same rock shelf upon which Merry and Pippin met Treebeard two days before and it is from there that they see an old man moving through the woods below them. At first they are convinced that this must be Saruman until the wonderful moment of revelation and of recognition comes.

“”Mithrandir!” Legolas cries out in joy, firing an arrow into the air that bursts into flames as it flies. “Gandalf!” cries Aragorn “Beyond all hope you return to us in our need!”

This moment of revelation, of a renewing of hope, is one of many that come through the story, each one enabling the members of the Fellowship to take the next steps towards the completion, the fulfilment of their journey, until Gollum takes the Ring to the Fire and Sauron falls at last on March 25th in the year 3018 of the Third Age of Arda.

This moment is, as Gandalf says to the three hunters, a turning of the tide. “The great storm is coming,” he says, “but the tide has turned.” And from this point onwards, although Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli will face many dangers they will face each one with a flame of hope burning in their hearts. The return of Gandalf is one of the great moments of eucatastrophe, “when the sudden ‘turn’ comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and hearts desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rents indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.”

These thoughts came from a lecture that Tolkien gave in Oxford in 1938 that he entitled, On Fairy-Stories. In the lecture Tolkien explicitly linked the “sudden ‘turn'” with the Christian Story, the story that he convinced C.S Lewis is “the true myth”, the story that means that all the glimpses of joy that we experience in the reading of fairy-stories and the great myths are not mere wishful thinking but true. All point to the birth of Christ, the moment about which the angel spoke to Mary, as the eucatastrophe of the history of humankind.

Tolkien never wrote explicitly about this in his own stories. He allowed the glimpse of joy as in this moment of joyful revelation when Gandalf is restored to his friends to do its own work in the hearts of his readers, leading all of them towards the true myth to which all myth bears witness.

The Downfall of Sauron

/ stephencwinter / 16 Comments

Gollum falls into the Fire clutching the Ring to his heart and in the confusion that follows Sam is able to carry Frodo to the threshold of the Sammath Naur, the Cracks of Doom, and there he gazes upon the fall of Sauron in wonder and terror.

“A brief vision he had of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant: and then all passed.”

And then all passed.

All the might of the Dark Lord, painstakingly constructed throughout the ages, ever since he first pledged his loyalty to Morgoth, all passes in a moment. Unlike his enemies of the West whose decline has been long but slow Sauron’s passing happens almost in the blink of an eye. At one moment all his attention is given to the battle before the Black Gate and he eagerly, if anxiously, awaits the capture of the Ring and his final triumph over all his foes. Then comes the moment of realisation, fury and terror, as he perceives the Ring in the one place in which it can be destroyed. And then… all passed.

“There rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent; for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell.”

All the might that has held sway over ally, slave or foe for so long is simply blown away.

For the “shape of shadow” that the wind catches is all that Sauron has been and certainly all that he has been since the forging of the Rings of Power. For Sauron chose to create a thing that would be a complete expression of his power, “fraught with all his malice”, and by which he would be able to overcome and control all other peoples. Nine Rings he gave to Lords of Men, tempting them with dreams of power, and so they became the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths. Seven Rings he gave to lords of the Dwarves, tempting them with dreams of wealth, and although they were able to resist his control nevertheless they were diminished in power. The Three Rings of the Elves were not made by him nor did he ever see or touch them and so they did much good in the world and yet they were still bound to the Ruling Ring either to be exposed to his gaze once he held the Ring once more or to pass away in  its destroying.

The Ring gave Sauron great might and yet it also made him vulnerable. He thought that his vulnerability lay in a mighty one siezing the Ring and using it against him. In actual fact it was the impossible deed, the destruction of the Ring, that was the greatest danger that he faced.

What Sauron shows us is the spiritual diminishment of someone who becomes entirely identified with the things that he makes. Fëanor becomes entirely identified with the Silmarils and binds his sons to them as well and in so doing causes untold harm. In a lesser manner Saruman the White falls from greatness both in his desire for the Ring and also in his obsession with the machinery that he creates.

But what of Ilúvatar, the Maker of all? Is not he the one most identified with all that he has made? Here we see the difference between the true and the false maker. The false maker creates in order to own and control. The true maker creates in order to make free, in order that all that the maker creates can be its true self and belong fully to itself, giving or withholding itself freely as it chooses. Sauron never permits this freedom and yet in enslaving others to himself he enslaves himself to the thing that he has made. In making himself great in his own pride through his creation Sauron diminishes himself to such a degree that when the thing that he has made is destroyed what he is most truly is revealed to be mere shadow that passes away.