The Path of Wisdom

“Then She Fell on Her Knees, Saying: ‘I Beg Thee!” Éowyn is So Desperate That She is Prepared to Humiliate Herself.

/ stephencwinter / 14 Comments

The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 767-768

It is a grievous thing to witness the humiliation of a proud woman as Legolas and Gimli do the humiliation of Éowyn before Aragorn. I do not know whether Tolkien deliberately draws our attention to this contrast, but shortly after the scene in which Éowyn falls to her knees before the man who has, to her mind at least, rejected her, we read of Arod, the horse who has borne both Legolas and Gimli, standing before the door that leads to the Paths of the Dead, “sweating and trembling in a fear that was grievous to see”. In both cases it is the witnesses that grieve. Legolas and Gimli, proud sons of lords of their people, grieve to see a daughter of the king’s brother, casting aside her dignity in a last and utterly desperate attempt to persuade Aragorn to take her with him to Gondor and the battle. It is a grievous thing for those who hold honour dear to see such a thing. And we see the Dúnedain of the North, for whom the bond between themselves and their horses is a precious thing, grieved to see a horse bereft of its dignity.

Dignity and honour are things precious to us. As we leave the innocence of our childhood behind and begin to enter our adulthood, we do the work of creating a persona. I still remember my first night in a dormitory in an English boarding school, a boy who was fourteen years old, lying in bed with the sleeping forms of four other boys in the beds round about me, making conscious choices about the person I felt I needed to be if I were to be accepted by my fellows. I was no longer going to be the child that had slept in my parents’ home among my younger brothers and sisters just the night before, I had begun the process, quite literally, of re-inventing myself, and presenting a person of dignity to the world, worthy of the world’s respect, was central to that project.

Wise people have said that no-one should give their Self away until they have a Self, strong enough, secure enough, to be able to give. Until that moment comes then it is right and proper that the primary task of each person is to build a strong Self. This is the task in which Éowyn is now engaged and until now she has undertaken this task in acts of service as has been expected of a woman of her status among her people. While for other women among the Rohirrim this has meant serving a household, for her it has meant serving a king. And while others may have regarded such a position as being worthy of honour, for her it has become merely another form of servitude. Later, when she lay near to death in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, Gandalf spoke truly of her in these words:

“Who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

So, as she kneels in desperation before the man she thinks of as her last hope of freedom from her shrinking existence, as she casts aside her dignity and merely asks for pity, we see a woman for whom the creation of a strong Self amidst the choices that seem to lie before her is an impossibility. She will make one more attempt to recover something of that dignity when she asks Théoden to allow her to ride to Minas Tirith among the Rohirrim, but when he refuses her request, she takes the matter into her own hands, going in the disguise of a man, knowing that her abilities as a horsewoman are such that she can match any one of them. And she will reach a place in the battle where she will perform a deed that no man could have done, a deed that will be one of the turning points of the battle.

All of this will be a part of her journey towards Selfhood. The words that she speaks in desperation into the darkness as her life shrinks about her, the words that she cries out to Aragorn in desperation before he takes the Paths of the Dead, her appeal to Théoden to let her ride with the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, her action in going with the riders in the disguise of a man, her battle with the Witch-king of Angmar on the Pelennor Fields, her meeting with Faramir in the Houses of Healing, all of these are stages on her road to Freedom, her road to Selfhood. Such a road can never be a transition from one success after another. The authentic road will always be a road downwards before it can be an upward path.

Gandalf Speaks of How Sméagol Took the Ring and So Became Gollum.

/ stephencwinter / 10 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 51-53

Gandalf is answering a question that Frodo asked him fearfully and desperately.

“How on earth did it come to me?”

 

Frodo is speaking of the Ring of Power forged by Sauron so that he might become lord of all the earth. In a few short minutes Frodo has journeyed from being a hobbit enjoying a comfortable if rather a dull life to one at the very centre of the great events of his age. He has already protested against the apparent injustice of his fate. If Gandalf had invited him to be a part of an adventure he might have responded with more enthusiasm. To go on an adventure would have been a conscious and carefully considered choice, although when Bilbo made that choice it had to be done in haste before the possibility passed him by for ever. Frodo is given no choice. The Ring has come to him and its maker is searching for it.

And so Gandalf gives him a brief overview of the history of the Second and Third Ages, of the evil desire of Sauron and the brave resistance of Elendil of Gondor and Arnor and Gil-galad, the High King of the Elves. He speaks of how Isildur, son of Elendil, cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand but how he failed to destroy it, eventually losing it in an orc ambush in the Gladden Fields in which he lost his life. He tells Frodo how the Ring remained hidden for long years there until it was found by hobbit like creatures near their ancestral home.

 

The Ring was found by Déagol, friend of Sméagol, a friend, that is, until the moment in which Sméagol murdered him because the Ring “looked so bright and beautiful”.  And so began Sméagol’s unhappy career as a creature of power and menace, a career in which he began as a hobbit and ended as Gollum, a name given to him in contempt by his fellows but one that eventually he took for himself, or at least for that expression of himself that was entirely under the power of the Ring.

In Peter Jackson’s films we are given the impression that Sméagol’s decision to murder his friend was because of the overwhelming and entirely malicious power of the Ring and it is true that the Ring plays a key role in the whole unhappy affair. But Tolkien would not allow so simple an explanation. Before the moment of the Ring’s discovery and the murder, Sméagol had a career. We learn that he “was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he into green mounds”. In other words he was a scientist.

 

Now before all the scientists who are among my readers cry out in protest let me say that I do not believe that Tolkien was against the scientific method in and of itself. What he tried to get us to see is that knowledge can never take the place of wisdom. Poor Sméagol may have learnt all that there is about the roots and beginnings of things but he never learnt how to find love, or joy, or peace. He may have stolen a tool that could give him power but he had to trade happiness in order to gain it. As Gandalf was to say later to Saruman, those who break a thing in order to find out what it is leave the path of wisdom. Sméagol, like Saruman, was a breaker, a manipulator, and a fool!

Sméagol’s journey took him deeper into the roots of things, away from the warming sun, the gentle breeze and the kind company of friends and kinsfolk. He went down into the tunnels underneath the mountains, down into the dark. It is the inevitable end for one who chooses power over others in stead of the service of others. The dark may not be physical as it was in Sméagol’s case but it is utterly isolating. It is the reality that comes when someone turns inward, centreing only upon themself, turning away from others.

 

But at last a moment of grace broke into Sméagol’s dark world in the form of a hobbit who was utterly lost. But would Sméagol recognise it when it came?