The Hero

” Good Night, Captain, my Lord,” Sam Said to Faramir. “You Took the Chance, Sir.” Praise From the Praiseworthy in Henneth Annûn.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 891-892

The effort that Frodo used to speak of his mission openly at last to Faramir was the last that he was able to give that night. As he tried to stand he fell into a swoon, was caught by Faramir and laid upon a bed. Sam was about to lie in another bed beside his master’s but then he paused, bowed low before Faramir and spoke.

“Good night, Captain, my lord,” he said. “You took the chance, sir.”

“Did I so?” said Faramir.

“Yes sir, and showed your quality: the very highest.”

You can feel Faramir wince slightly as he hears these words. He comes from a strictly hierarchical society in which only those of equal or higher rank are permitted to speak so freely to one another. In Gondor only the Prince of Dol Amroth and, of course, Boromir and Denethor, would be permitted to speak to Faramir in this way. Faramir describes Sam as a “pert servant” as he responds to his words, as one who is speaking more freely than he has a right to do, but then he continues:

“But nay the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”

Faramir recognises that in Sam’s courageous service to Frodo, a service that will almost certainly cost him his life, that Sam has won the right to speak freely. The early Greek fathers of the Christian Church had a word for this freedom of speech that is close to the way Sam speaks here. They called it parrhesia, likening it to the way in which Adam was able to speak freely, openly, confidently, face to face with God in the garden, a freedom that had been restored through the obedience of Christ. In recent years some philosophers, such as Michel Foucault, have argued that this freedom of speech is a quality that belongs inherently to all humans although it always comes with a risk. If I speak frankly I may put myself in danger. But Sam is able to make himself equal to Faramir at this moment, not because of some innate quality that he possesses but because he, as Faramir recognises, is himself “praiseworthy”.

And as Faramir speaks here, perhaps he carries within himself his deep sadness that the one person whose praise he desires above all others is the one who will never give that praise to him. Faramir will never hear that praise from his father, Denethor. Eventually Denethor will learn that for a brief moment his son had the Ring of Power, the One Ring, within his grasp, but that he let it go. He will declare bitterly that Boromir would have brought him “a mighty gift” because Boromir would have done his father’s bidding. And in his anger towards Faramir Denethor will go further in his bitter criticism. He will take the love that his son’s men so clearly have for him and he will say that this is only given because his son likes to appear lordly. Faramir has nothing praiseworthy within himself. He is merely an actor; one who is playing a part.

The part that Denethor accuses his son of playing is that of a lord of Númenor. It is merely a game that Faramir indulges himself in while Gondor is in imminent danger of destruction. Faramir, the “wizard’s pupil”, as Denethor bitterly names him, has chosen to play his lordly games, to imagine himself as one of the heroes of an age long ago, to let Frodo and Sam go free, carrying the Ring with them, when what was needed was a weapon, a weapon so great that even Sauron would quail in fear before it.

Sam sees Faramir quite differently from Denethor. Faramir had the opportunity to take the Ring for himself just as Boromir had tried to do so, but he had chosen not to do so. This is a deed, as Sam sees it, worthy of the highest praise. But in one sense Sam sees things just as Denethor does. For Denethor Faramir is who who is an adopter of a pose in order to win popularity. Sam sees something else.

“You have an air too, sir, that reminds me of, of – well, Gandalf, of wizards.”

“Maybe,” said Faramir. “Maybe you discern from far away the air of Númenor. Good night!”

“Forth Eorlingas!” Tolkien and The Restoration of The Heroic in Warfare.

/ stephencwinter / 12 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 682-691

It is important at the outset of these thoughts on warfare in The Lord of the Rings to note that from the arraying of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in gear of warfare before the gates of Edoras to the final victory over the hosts of Isengard before Helm’s Deep there are only twenty-seven pages in the Harper Collins edition of The Two Towers. Compare that to the amount of time devoted to the battle in Peter Jackson’s film of the same name and even before we think about the battle at all we see that this Hollywood action movie treats warfare very differently to the way in which Tolkien does.

Tolkien’s personal experience of warfare was very different to that of the armies who fight in his great story. Harold MacMillan, who was the British Prime Minister in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a fellow officer to Tolkien at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 on whose first day the British army lost 60,000 men killed and wounded. MacMillan was himself one of the wounded and spent several hours hiding in a shell hole and reading Aeschylus in Greek to distract himself from the pain before before being found by British soldiers. In a letter of the time he wrote that “perhaps the most extraordinary thing about a modern battlefield is the desolation and emptiness of it all… One can look for miles and see no human being. But in those miles of country lurk (like moles or rats, it seems) thousands, even hundreds of thousands of men, planning against each other perpetually some new device of death. Never showing themselves, they launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo, and shell.

It was a shell that hit and wounded MacMillan as he led an advance of his men towards the German lines. I quote these lines in a reflection upon Tolkien because they describe with dreadful eloquence the experience of warfare shared by soldiers of both sides in that dreadful conflict and contrast so starkly with the language that Tolkien uses to describe the ride of the Rohirrim to Helm’s Deep. Not that Tolkien ignores the horror of war. Théoden describes the hosts of Isengard as they advance “burning as they come, rick, cot and tree”. But he also writes of the beauty of a host of men about to ride out in defence of their homes and families.

“At the gate they found a great host of men, old and young, all ready in the saddle. More than a thousand were there mustered. Their spears were like a springing wood. Loudly and joyously they shouted as Théoden came forth.”

Tolkien profoundly understood the contrast between the desolate horror that MacMillan described and the heroic language that he used in his own descriptions of battle. Indeed he expressed that contrast in his distinction between the orcs of Mordor and Isengard and, for example, the Riders of Rohan. While the armies of Saruman and of Sauron use all the devices available to them of industrial warfare, the Rohirrim ride into battle carrying spear and sword; and Tolkien’s account is full of acts of individual heroism on the part of the defenders of Helm’s Deep while their enemies are faceless.

What Tolkien achieved in The Lord of the Rings was a restoration of humanity in the brutal and faceless experience of warfare that he knew and which MacMillan described. This means that he is a genuinely modern writer whose war literature can be included alongside A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway or Robert Graves Goodbye to All That. But whereas Hemingway and Graves seek, with great success, to express the experience that MacMillan describes, Tolkien does something quite different. He attempts a kind of redemption of the brutal experience of warfare by restoring the heroic to it. While he understood the experience that Wilfred Owen described in speaking of “these who die as cattle” he restores to those who die a human face and personal heroism.

But I must end where I began. Tolkien never sought to glorify war in his writings. This is perhaps best and most explicitly expressed by Faramir who is a warrior by necessity and not by choice and, of all the characters in The Lord of the Rings speaks most in Tolkien’s own voice.

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all, but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

“I Will Take The Ring, Though I Do Not Know The Way.”

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 260-264

How much we would like to view the hero as someone in an exalted state. The eyes should gaze intently to a distant point, towards the hero’s glorious destiny. The hero will stand alone and the admiring gaze of all will look up into those eyes for how could anyone look down at the hero. And the hero should be beautiful. How could it be otherwise? For the hero is the projection of our longings for ourselves, the exalted self that we long to be or, perhaps, to be with.

Older and wiser heads may smile at such longing with a degree of indulgence, remembering that I used the words, high, lonely and destiny quite recently in this blog reflecting as we did so on the close kinship between Saruman the White and Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew. Am I suggesting that neither Saruman nor Uncle Andrew have never outgrown this rather adolescent longing? I rather think that I am. There is no blame attached to an adolescent being an adolescent but the world is blighted by adolescents who never grow up.

And when we compare these characters to the one who speaks the words of the title of this blog post so quietly and so reluctantly we know that we are talking about something quite different to the self admiration of these outgrown children. For Frodo shares little in common with Saruman. This is not to say that Frodo is completely free of the desire for exaltation. When he sat with Gandalf in his study at Bag End Frodo had felt “a great desire to follow Bilbo” flame up in his heart; a desire “so strong that it overcame his fear”. Perhaps at this point of the story the influence of Narya, the ring that Gandalf bears, is able to warm his heart, though even Gandalf is surprised. It is at that moment when he declares that “hobbits really are amazing creatures”. So there is a place and a time for exaltation but as the story reaches the place in which the decision has to be made concerning the Ring all exaltation, all warmth has gone. Frodo has met the implacable hatred of the Morgul Lord, has felt his blade pierce his flesh, the tiny splinter travel towards his heart. Now as he sits among the Council and listens to the debate about what should be done to the Ring he feels “a dead darkness in his heart”.

The debate continues. Boromir argues that the Ring should be used against Sauron, Elrond says that this is impossible; Glóin asks about the three Elven Rings and Elrond declares that they must remain hidden; Erestor of the Grey Havens speaks of the folly of trying to make the journey to Mordor and Gandalf answers that it is this folly that Sauron is incapable of grasping; and at the last it is Bilbo who asks what messenger should take the Ring to the fire.

No-one answers him. Either because they still feel that it is folly to take the road to Mordor or because they know that for them to carry the Ring is impossible all remain silent. And at the very last it is Frodo’s voice, this time struggling against an overwhelming desire to rest, that speaks “as if some other will was using his small voice”.

“I will take the Ring,” he said, “though I do not know the way.”

After this everything is all quite simple. So it is once the great choices are made. All falls into place around them and the people who make them. Even Sam does not argue against the choice only that Frodo should not go alone. But the choice and the manner of its expression is the most moving moment of the whole story. It is the moral heart of the story. It is made, not at the conclusion of some process of selection with all the qualities of each candidate having undergone careful assessment but simply because one person has been called, has been chosen. And the choosing is like “the pronouncement of some doom”.

Are life’s truly great choices always like this? Do they always feel unavoidable, even inevitable, and yet they still have to be made? And do they always feel like pronouncements of doom? A last judgment against which no argument can be found? Such choices are practically inexpressible. Elrond rightly places Frodo amongst his mighty ancestors even as the heroes gathered in Rivendell had to remain silent as a hobbit stood to speak but even his words feel small against the magnitude of the choice.

Sam Gamgee Finds Strength to Resist The Ring.

/ stephencwinter / 16 Comments

To cry out, “I’m coming Mr. Frodo!” is one thing. Most of us have made promises in a moment of passion that we have regretted later in the cold light of day. It can be one of the bravest things that we ever do in life to keep such a promise long after the initial ardour has gone.

For Sam reality strikes home very soon as he looks out across the plains of Mordor beyond its mountainous defences towards Orodruin, the very mountain that he and Frodo have been trying to reach. It is clear that the task that lies ahead is way beyond his strength and ability. And to enter the Tower of Cirith Ungol is just as impossible. Unless…

There is one thing that he holds that might enable him to defeat his enemies and that is the Ring. Even as he ponders the possibility, “Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr.” Observant readers will note that there no place for Frodo in this fantasy. That is the nature of the Ring. Those who possess it have no heart room for any but themselves. Sam’s fantasy reminds us of Boromir’s, the desire to be the hero of the story and not to share that with anyone else. A moment later and we are reminded of Gandalf and Galadriel and the desire to do good.

“And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit.”

It is a beautiful vision and who is better qualified than Sam to achieve it? Of course when Frodo offered Galadriel the Ring in Lothlórien it was Sam who encouraged her to take it and to put things right. Surely it is the desire of all good people to want to put things right and an obstacle to belief in God for many whose desire is to do good that God does not seem to be interested in putting things right. Well, not as interested as Sam Gamgee and people like, well, me…

Then Tolkien offers us all wise counsel as he describes the inner debate within Sam. It is striking how strong Sam is at this moment as he resists the Ring. Such strength does not come in the moment of crisis for the one who has done no inner work. When Sméagol murdered Déagol in order to take the Ring for himself we are not aware of any inner conflict. Sam’s inner work comprises two spiritual disciplines, one consciously practiced and delighted in, the other so long practiced that he is hardly aware of it even being a moral choice. The one is Sam’s love for Frodo. We noted that Sam’s fantasy had no place for Frodo but as soon as Sam becomes even half aware of this he sends the fantasy packing. The other is more complex, even controversial, and Tolkien calls it “his plain hobbit-sense”.

Sam’s upbringing has had two major influences. One has been the kindness of Bilbo who drew him into the world of imagination and delight. To have received such an invitation has been the greatest joy in Sam’s life and his love for Frodo is an act of gratefulness made deeper by all that they have endured together. The other influence has been the ungentle and highly critical voice of the Gaffer. It is a voice that comes to mind at those points in the story when Sam wants to berate himself for some mistake. The Gaffer’s guiding principle in life is to be satisfied with his lot although it also means defending his small territory, the garden at Bag End and his role in keeping it, with all the strength that he can muster.

Perhaps Sam needed both voices in his head and in his heart. They give him strength in his “hour of trial”. Perhaps too they give us a greater appreciation of what we may have regarded as negative influences as well as thanksgiving for all the love that we have received in our lives.