The Ring

“A Fool’s Hope”. Denethor’s Reflections on Frodo’s Mission to Take the Ring to Mount Doom.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 793-796

Let us begin these thoughts by acknowledging one thing. Denethor is right. Frodo’s mission to take the Ring to the fires of Mount Doom is “a fool’s hope”. There is almost no possibility that he will succeed. For such a thing to happen the most unlikely succession of events would have to take place, so unlikely that we might as well say now that there is no chance of success.

Let us imagine a few possibilities. Let us imagine that Frodo is left paralysed by a monster so terrible that no creature has ever escaped her grasp. Then let us imagine that a company of orcs carry his body into their fortress who then slaughter each over the spoils that they find upon him. And then let us imagine that somehow he is able to stagger across Mordor which now resembles something like a vast military encampment. And then at the end, at Mount Doom, let us imagine that his most bitter enemy attacks and takes the Ring from him before falling into the abyss of the fiery mountain and destroying it.

If anyone ever imagined that such a thing could happen, if anyone were ever to plan such a thing, or anything like that, then we would have to call that person a fool. Or even worse than a fool. For to make such a plan would surely be something more akin to a very cruel joke. A joke that would be at the expense first of all of Frodo and Sam, and then at the expense of the whole world.

No, Denethor is right. When Gandalf asks him what his wisdom is we hear these words; and these words are true.

“Enough to perceive that there are two follies to avoid. To use this thing is perilous. At this hour, to send it in the hands of a witless halfling into the land of the Enemy himself, as you have done, and this son of mine, this is madness.”

These words are true. But there are certain reflections that we must make regarding what Denethor says. We agree with him about the madness of Frodo’s mission. And we agree that to use the Ring is perilous. But now we must debate with him a little further.

Let us begin with the words, “witless halfling” and set aside our reaction, even in poor Pippin’s presence, to the insult to hobbits that Denethor makes, and consider that word, witless.

The Oxford Professor of ancient languages who wrote this word knew far more than just the way in which we use it in common parlance today. He knew that it means far more than just being another word for stupid. He knew that our Old English forebears understood wit as being linked to our ability to see. Someone without wit would be therefore someone who was either incapable of seeing or someone who chose not to do so. And here we go back to the Council of Elrond when the wise decided to take a course of action that was beyond seeing, not because it was the best course of action, but because there was nothing else that they could do.

And here we must give consideration to that other word that Denethor uses, the use of the word, perilous. And here we see that beneath Denethor’s wisdom there lies something darker. For to describe a course of action as perilous is not the same thing as to dismiss it altogether. We might choose to enter a burning building in order to rescue a child knowing that what we do is perilous, but we choose to do it because it is the right thing to do. And as soon as we hear Denethor use that word we know that he thinks that there might be circumstances, perilous perhaps, in which he might use the Ring. We have returned to the words that we considered in the last piece on this blog, the words, “uttermost end of need”. And now we know that Denethor has already considered the circumstances in which he would use the Ring, and we know that these circumstances are inevitable. That the “uttermost end of need” will most certainly come.

And so we have these two words, witless and perilous. We must choose between them. We must choose between a course of action whose end we cannot possibly see, and a course of action that is entirely inevitable. And suddenly we know that we must do all we can to turn our backs upon the inevitable and to throw away our lives in doing the unforeseeable. We must do as Gandalf does, and this son of Denethor, and allow a witless hobbit to go into Mordor to do the impossible.

“If You Had Received This Thing, It Would Have Overthrown You.” Because Denethor Desires the Victory of Gondor Above Everything He Has Not the Strength to Resist the Ring.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 793-796

In the last piece on this blog I thought about how Faramir refused to think of the struggle against Sauron simply in terms of winning and losing. For him it was not enough just to want the victory of Gondor. If Gondor were to win by doing evil, for Faramir this would not be a victory worth having. A victory achieved by evil means would mean that evil would be the victor and good would be defeated.

There have been many critics of Tolkien’s work who have dismissed it as a nothing more than a struggle between good and evil, as if such a struggle is merely something banal, and nothing that is at all noteworthy. I suspect that they never read this scene with its debate between father and son, between Denethor and Faramir. For once you have understood the debate it becomes so much harder to say something like, “my country right or wrong”.

We first saw the debate in Faramir when he first met Frodo and Sam. When once he had satisfied himself that the hobbits were not servants of the enemy, or that they had been involved in some way in the death of Boromir, his brother, he began to share with them his own personal philosophy recognising perhaps, particularly in Frodo, one who might be a friend to his soul, to the deepest level of his being. Perhaps it was the same thing that led Goldberry to recognise Frodo as an “Elf-friend”.

And in sharing his personal philosophy we learnt this. That Faramir had no desire merely for Gondor’s greatness. Of course he works for victory, but this is how he understands it.

“I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay not even a kind mistress of willing slaves… I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom”.

I hope that you noticed that phrase: “Not a mistress of many slaves, nay not even a kind mistress of many slaves”. This is so far from his father’s philosophy. It is so far from, “my country right or wrong”.

Denethor may say that he knows that to use the Ring is perilous. He is no fool and has insight into the malignant power of the Ring. But he overestimates his own power to master it. What would he do with the Ring?

“It should have been kept, hidden, hidden dark and deep. Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need”.

And with those words, “the uttermost end of need” we see how Denethor would inevitably fall were the Ring to come to him. We know that Denethor would inevitably judge at some point in the war that the “uttermost end of need” had indeed come. He would judge that defeat was inevitable. Indeed he has almost reached this point already. Then he would take the Ring and attempt to use it against its maker, but his strength would not be enough. Neither strength to use the Ring to defeat the Enemy, nor strength to master the Ring itself and not to mastered by it. As Gandalf says to him:

“You are strong and can still in some matters govern yourself, Denethor; yet if you had received this thing, it would have overthrown you. Were it buried beneath the roots of Mindolluin, still it would burn your mind away, as the darkness grows, and the yet worse things follow that soon shall come upon us.”

Even now, the Ring is burning Denethor’s mind away, even though he does not possess it, just as it burns Saruman’s mind, and Gollum’s for that matter. Simply the desire to possess it and to possess the power that it can give is enough. It is this that is slowly overthrowing Denethor and which Faramir has overcome because Faramir has already won the great victory. He has chosen what is the highest and the best, what is good and beautiful and true.

“The Way is Shut… It Was Made by Those Who Are Dead, and The Dead Keep It, Until The Time Comes.” How Can We Know the Proper Time for Things?

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 775-781

The words in the title for this piece were spoken long before the events described here. Brego, the second King of Rohan, went up the steep path out of the Harrowdale with Baldor his son, that had been cut from the rock in an age long before the arrival of the Rohirrim, the Eorlingas, to the lands where now they dwell. At the door in the mountain they met an ancient man who spoke the words to them before breathing his last.

As we have seen, Baldor decided to dare the door and was seen no more until Aragorn discovered his body within the mountain on the Paths of the Dead, and since that time no one had dared try the door until Aragorn does.

Éowyn tells the company of how Aragorn has passed through the door, “into the shadow from which none have returned”. Éomer’s heart falls as he hears his sister’s words.

“He is lost. We must ride without him, and our hope dwindles.”

But it is Théoden who reminds his companions of the story that we have read, the story of the words spoken to his forefathers, that the Dead keep the way, “until the time comes.”

Has that time come?

We know that Aragorn and the Grey Company have indeed passed through the Door, and that the Dead did not prevent him from doing so but heard his voice and followed him to the Stone of Erech where he called them to fulfil the oath that once they made to Isildur and then broke it. We know that the time has come, and Théoden himself says that Aragorn is “a kingly man of high destiny”, and one that might be able to do a deed that no-one else has dared. But Éomer is not persuaded. Perhaps such a man as Aragorn might be able to dare the Door but to what purpose? To him the way that Aragorn has gone is no more than a private quest, and maybe one that a great hero might endeavour, but surely there are other things to be done?

“Alas that a fey mood should fall on a man so greathearted in this hour of need! Are there not evil things enough abroad without seeking them under the earth? War is at hand.”

Éomer does not know the story that Aragorn does. Nor does he know that Aragorn made his choice because he believed that unless he did so he would not arrive at Minas Tirith in time, and that even if he did get there with the Rohirrim it would be fruitless because the Corsairs of Umbar would be able to sail up the Anduin unopposed and so the Rohirrim would come to a city that had already fallen.

But let us not think of such things now. The question I wish to consider here is the one posed in the title of this piece. How can we ever know the proper time to undertake a particular action? As Éomer says rightly, the only way to find out if the time has come to try the Door is to try it.

The whole of The Lord of the Rings is a story of grasping opportunities as they arise. At the heart of this, of course, is the One Ring itself. Suddenly, and entirely unexpectedly, the Ring that all had believed to be lost appears in the hands of a hobbit. Some, like Gandalf, were prepared for the reappearance of the Ring. No-one expected the Ring to appear in the manner that it did. Gandalf knows that the only thing to do with the Ring is to destroy it. What even he does not expect is that he will find a willing ally in the person of Frodo Baggins, and that this hobbit of the Shire is at first excited to make a journey out of the Shire, and then, against his own wishes but for the sake of his fellows, to offer his very self as Ringbearer.

Everyone at the heart of the story knows that the stakes are so high that everything must be risked in order to destroy the Ring and that every other ambition, however noble, must be set aside for that purpose. So, Aragorn risks everything for this ultimate purpose, while Éomer does not yet know of that purpose and so thinks in terms of important but lesser things, such as his fealty to his king and faithfulness to an ancient oath. Later he will be invited to the Final Debate and learn of higher things. For now, this is enough for him to act as he must do.

“Do You Understand, Mr. Frodo? I’ve Got to Go On.” Sam Gamgee Makes The Hardest Choice of His Life.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 956-959

If Sam could have chosen for himself he would never have woken up after fainting beside Frodo’s body but he could not choose for himself. He woke and the world had not changed even though, as far as he was concerned, the worst thing of all had already happened. “The mountains had not crumbled nor the earth fallen into ruin.”

Anyone who has suffered the loss of someone that they have loved deeply will know what Tolkien speaks of here, except it is not the death of Frodo that they mourn. Each person suffers their own grief alone. As we read in the last piece posted on this blog Tolkien was drawn to words written by Simone de Beauvoir who spoke of the unnaturalness of death. He might equally have quoted St Paul who, in his First Letter to the Corinthians spoke of death as the last enemy of all; not as a thing that is naturally a part of life but as something that has invaded from outside. Nothing is able quite to prepare us for death and so nothing prepared Sam for this moment, for the moment in which Sam has to decide what he is going to do next. Even though the very word, next, must sound like the most dreadful obscenity in his heart.

Tolkien writes the process by which Sam comes to a decision as a debate that takes place within him. Not like the debate that took place within the divided soul of Gollum on the road to the Black Gate, the debate between the utterly fallen Gollum, or Stinker as Sam called him, and the all too easily defeated Sméagol, or Slinker. Sam is torn between his love for Frodo and a greater love for the world that both he and Frodo loved and for which, Sam is sure, Frodo has given his life.

“What shall I do, what shall I do?” he said. “Did I come all this way with him for nothing?” And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of their journey. I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.

Sam has come a very long way on this journey. Beginning, as he did, with a simple desire to go on an adventure with Frodo, to see Elves, to look upon wonders, now he has reached the point when all he wants to do is to see something through until its end. But now he wrestles with another question. What is that end?

For a moment his imagination conjures up the image of Gollum cowering before him in a dark corner and he will show no mercy. “But that was not what he had set out to do. It would not be worth while to leave his master for that. It would not bring him back.” Sam even contemplates suicide for a moment, but “that was to do nothing not even to grieve. That was not what he had set out to do.”

But at last Sam realises that he has to go on, to try to finish the task, to cast the Ring into the Fire. And then he finds himself asking the same question that Frodo asked of Gandalf in his study at Bag End. Why should it be me? Gandalf was able to answer Frodo’s question by saying that it was not because of any quality that he possessed but that he should take encouragement from the very fact that indeed he seems to have been chosen. It is the very fact of being chosen that should give him strength. Sam has no Gandalf to answer his questions. Why is he the very last of the company? Why is he left all alone?

There is no one to answer his questions. Sam has to make up his own mind. And that mind is quite enough.

“Let me see now: if we’re found here, or Mr. Frodo found, and that Thing’s on him, well, the Enemy will get it. And that’s the end of all of us, of Lórien, and Rivendell, and the Shire and all.” Suddenly the world becomes bigger once again than it was just a moment before when all Sam could see was his own grief and loss.

And so he places the Ring about his neck, feels the terrible weight that Frodo has borne and is given strength to bear it. For a little while.

“Do Not Go to Cirith Ungol!” Some Further Thoughts on an Impossible Decision.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 904-907

I have read this passage from The Lord of the Rings many times over the last fifty years or so and I don’t think I ever quite realised before the pivotal role that it plays in the whole story. Frodo has come to trust Faramir and here this noble figure is offering him safety and the chance to be free completely of the malicious character that is Gollum.

Tolkien reflected on this in a letter that he wrote to Michael Straight early in 1956, replying to a number of questions that Straight had asked him before writing a review for New Republic and he did so in terms of the 6th petition of The Lords Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation”. (The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien Harper Collins 2006 pp. 232-237).

Tolkien compared this petition with the 7th, “But deliver us from evil” and commented that the 6th is both harder and less often considered. Tolkien writes that “the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own salvation is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time”.

So, when Faramir, the “prudent person” says to Frodo that if he chooses to abandon Gollum he will have Gollum escorted to any point on the borders of Gondor that Gollum might name, Frodo replies “I have promised many times to take him under my protection and to go where he led.” Frodo cannot break faith even though it is folly to keep it. Utter folly.

See how Kryztov Marczak imagines the chaos in Shelob’s Lair below the Tower of Cirith Ungol. The path that Frodo must take.

As we saw last week Frodo goes through with Faramir the options that are available to him. To return to the Black Gate is simply impossible and there is no-one apart from Gollum who could guide him into Mordor. And what of returning with Faramir to Minas Tirith?

“Would you have me come to Gondor with this Thing, the Thing that drove your brother mad with desire? What spell would it work in Minas Tirith? Shall there be two cities of Minas Morgul, grinning at each other across a dead land filled with rottenness?”

At the last Faramir respondes with the only words upon which both he and Frodo can agree completely.

“It is a hard doom and a hopeless errand.”

But Faramir hopes, beyond hope, that one day he and Frodo might sit “by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief”. The thought is a tender one and one can only hope that both Frodo and Faramir were comforted from time to time by it on the hard roads that each of them were to take in the weeks ahead, roads that were to take both of them to the verge of death and then to new life beyond them. The Lord of the Rings does not recount these happy conversations but in other writings Tolkien speaks of times like this and we can only hope that the two heroes were able to enjoy one another’s company in this way.

Both Frodo and Faramir have to make choices that are folly. Faramir allows Frodo to go free, bearing the Ring of Power, in the company of a treacherous guide, into Mordor itself. His father cannot forgive him for this and we must think that he dies unreconciled with his son. Frodo goes on with Gollum and is betrayed by him in Shelob’s Lair in Cirith Ungol and attacked and wounded by him in the Cracks of Doom; and Frodo has to live in the knowledge that at the end he did not have the strength to cast away the Ring and was only saved by Gollum’s attack. But both make their choice in freedom in Henneth Annûn. As Tolkien reflected in his letter to Michael Straight, Frodo’s choice (and we must add, Faramir’s also) is a “piece of folly”. But Tolkien also opens the possibility that Frodo’s decision not to kill, or even abandon, Gollum has a mystical quality to it. This quality comes from the belief that any act of goodness has meaning in eternity “even if disastrous in the world of time”. In The Lord of the Rings this eternal quality breaks into the story at the moment when Gollum takes the Ring into the Fire to unmake it. In the stories in which we live we cannot tell what consequences our own choices for goodness will have. Perhaps we will only see disaster in the world of time but we are called to choose the good anyway and to trust.

“There are Locked Doors and Closed Windows in Your Mind, and Dark Rooms Behind Them… But in This I Judge That You Speak The Truth.” Faramir and Gollum in Henneth Annûn.

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

When Sauron interrogated Gollum in Barad-dûr he found to his surprise that there was an inner strength within this pathetic creature that he was unable to break. By means of his tortures he was able, at last, to learn of Baggins and the Shire but he was never able to open the “locked doors and closed windows” in Gollum’s mind or to enter “the dark rooms behind them”.

In the end Sauron deemed that he had learned all that he needed to know and that there was not enough of significance that might dwell within those dark rooms for him to continue his interrogation and so he released him. He even thought that Gollum’s malice might even be of some small use to him in the future. Little did he know that Gollum would eventually bring about his downfall.

Sauron would never acknowledge or accept that Faramir had an advantage that he, in his wisdom, had abandoned long ago. When Faramir, with Frodo’s unhappy assistance, was able to capture Gollum alive in the forbidden pool beneath Henneth Annûn he needed to find out what Gollum knew.

“Do you know the name of this place? Have you been here before?”

If Gollum was unable or unwilling to answer these questions in a satisfactory fashion Faramir would have either to kill him or to bring him captive back to Minas Tirith. No one unless they were judged to be trustworthy could know of the existence of this refuge within Ithilien. The very survival of Faramir and his men depended upon its location remaining a complete secret.

“Slowly Gollum raised his eyes and looked unwillingly into Faramir’s. All light went out of them, and they stared bleak and pale for a moment into the clear unwavering eyes of the man of Gondor. There was a still silence. Then Gollum dropped his head and shrank down, until he was squatting on the floor shivering. ‘We doesn’t know and we doesn’t want to know,’ he whimpered. ‘Never came here; never come again,'”

It is enough. Faramir has learned all that he needs to know. And he has learned this because,wholly unlike Sauron, he is a man of truth.

“I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood,” Faramir had declared to Frodo the previous day when he questioned the hobbit before his men. Faramir speaks the truth and he has an unwavering commitment to the truth and so he recognises truth and he recognises falsehood when he hears them.

We might think that Sauron was seeking for truth when he questioned Gollum in Barad-dûr. He wanted to know what the connection was between Gollum and the Ring and he wanted to know where the Ring might be found. Surely these are both expressions of truth? But Sauron has come to believe that no-one can be trusted unless they fear him and unless they fear the consequences of betrayal more than the consequences of loyalty. The servants of Sauron may have little love, if any, for their master, but they believe that his triumph is inevitable and they want to be on the winning side.

Faramir’s servants also fear his power but they love him too, knowing that he would lay down his life for them. They know that he has not separated truth from goodness and beauty. When he says that he would not even snare an orc with a falsehood they know that he speaks the truth and that he would never be false to them either. And he will not be false to Gollum. Does Gollum recognise this? Does he see anything different in Faramir that he did not see in Sauron? Probably not. For Gollum, his heart twisted by five hundred years possession of the Ring, there is only power, but at this moment the power that Faramir possesses is tempered by a love of truth, beauty and goodness and that makes all the difference.

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

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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!”

“I Must Find The Mountain of Fire and Cast The Thing Into The Gulf of Doom. Gandalf Said So. I Do Not Think I Shall Ever Get There.” Frodo Speaks of His Task to Faramir and of Its Impossibility.

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

The shock and fear that followed the revelation of the true identity of Frodo’s burden is at an end but what follows is sheer exhaustion. With the last of his strength Frodo tells Faramir of his mission.

“I was going to find a way into Mordor… I was going to Gorgoroth. I must find the Mountain of Fire and cast the thing into the gulf of Doom. Gandalf said so. I do not think I shall ever get there.”

Faramir stares at Frodo with “grave astonishment”, and rightly so. Alongside Frodo’s declaration at the Council of Elrond that he would take the Ring though he did not know the way this is the only time that Frodo actually speaks of his task in plain speech. There is no attempt at heroic language. No boasting. Merely a quiet statement of what has to be done.

“Gandalf said so.”

Frodo claims nothing for himself. He has been given his orders and now he must carry them out. There is nothing more to be said and Frodo says nothing more. Except, as Faramir knows, that Frodo is attempting something that no-one has ever before tried to do. Later in the story Ioreth of the Houses of Healing will tell her friend that Frodo “went with only his esquire into the Black Country and fought with the Dark Lord all by himself, and set fire to his Tower, if you can believe it.” Of course we know that this is not quite what happened but what Frodo achieved is almost as impossible and Faramir recognises this. His grave astonishment is entirely justified. He knows that he stands in the presence of greatness even as Elrond recognised at Frodo’s first quiet declaration, comparing him to Beren and the great heroes of the First Age.

Only Frodo, as we have seen, does not recognise this, nor ever does. He only thinks in terms of what must be done and of its impossibility.

Hope and hopelessness are themes that Tolkien returns to again and again throughout The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is given the name, Estel, secretly by his mother as she gives herself up to her own death and he spends his life struggling with this destiny, hoping against hope, not with Sam’s cheerful optimism, but a grim determination just to carry on. Frodo is of a similar spirit. There is a job to be done and that is all needs to be said.

What Frodo, and Aragorn, both do, is to give themselves up to something that is greater than themselves. Although Tolkien was himself man of deep Christian faith he never allows the characters in his story the comfort or strength that such faith would bring. Julian of Norwich’s famous declaration that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well” is something about which they know nothing. They must simply do their jobs because they are both necessary and right. Whether they will be rewarded with success is not something that they can know. So Elrond told Gimli’s father, Glòin, on learning of Sauron’s threats against the dwarves of Erebor that there is naught that the dwarves can do “other than to resist, with hope or without it”.

The heroic figures of The Lord of the Rings are denied faith in God in an explicit sense but the goodness, truth and beauty that they both love and fight for sustain them throughout their struggles. Galadriel may speak of “the long defeat” but this does not weaken her resolve. Tolkien did not believe in an arc of history that tends towards justice but in his belief in the resurrection of Christ, “the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest fairy story”, as he put it in a letter, he placed his hope in a final victory that would be one achieved by God alone.

In this sense Tolkien felt closer to the spiritual world of his heroes who had to resist “with hope or without it” than to some general kind of Christian optimism. And so he gives us Frodo, walking step by step towards Mordor even though he does not think that he will ever get there, as a model for our own lives and even as we stare with Faramir’s grave astonishment at him so too do we do the good that we have been called to do both this and every day.

“Not a Mistress of Many Slaves, Not Even a Kind Mistress of Willing Slaves.” Faramir Speaks of Patriotism to Frodo and Sam.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 874-878

As Faramir guides Frodo and Sam towards Henneth Annûn he speaks thoughts aloud that, perhaps, he has not shared with anyone else. We have already met his brother, Boromir and know that he was a man of a very different spirit. Later we will meet his father, Denethor, and we will learn that Faramir could not have shared his heart with him. Denethor, as we will learn, discerned much of what lay in his younger son’s heart and laid the blame for this at Gandalf’s door. There is little doubt that Gandalf was a great influence upon Faramir. As with Frodo in the Shire and Aragorn in Rivendell he found out young men and taught them, but they needed to be young men of the right spirit. That Frodo, Aragorn and Faramir all emerged at exactly the same time must have been the cause of great delight for one who came to teach, as Gandalf had done. For it was through teaching, not through the exercise of power, that Gandalf came to change the world.

Last week we learned that Faramir too had no desire for power if it came from an evil source. He has some sense of the nature of Isildur’s Bane even though he does not yet know that it is the Ring of Power that Sauron made to enable him to rule all things. Now we learn what Faramir believes about power itself and the power of his own country.

“For myself,” said Faramir, “I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Arnor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves.”

Tolkien wrote these words towards the end of an age in which his own country, Great Britain, had ruled over an empire, greater in area and in population, than any that had existed before it. By the time he died, in 1973, most of this empire had gone. One particular empire no longer existed but the idea of empire was as strong as ever. The British Empire had been one of many that had existed throughout world history and after its decline and fall it has not been the idea of empire that has disappeared, merely a particular expression of that idea.

As you can see, I have used the word, decline, in speaking of this history and that is how it is usually understood. For about a century after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Britain was the greatest world power but the story since then has been one of decline. The assumption made here is that the exercise of power, if you have it, is how things are. And when power is spoken of it is military power that we are speaking about. We remember that when Boromir spoke at the Council of Elrond he made reference to the counsel that his host might offer in a somewhat dismissive manner. This “counsel” was all that he expected. It was only when discussion turned to the Ring that he became really interested because he understood this kind of power.

Faramir understood power in a very different way. For him power was meant to be exercised for the good of all; “a queen among other queens”. And the power of Gondor was to be first and foremost power in wisdom, of goodness, beauty and truth. To achieve power in which wisdom was absent was of no value at all. It was a thing to be left by the side of the highway, a piece of rubbish that we notice, if at all, and then pass by.

We might ponder how the history of the Americas, or of Africa, might have been different if Europeans had come, not to conquer but the mutual exchange of teaching and learning. We might wonder in what way the history of the world might have been different. Next week we will think about what part the ability to wage war has to play in such a world. Faramir recognises that this ability will always be necessary in a world in which some will seek dominance over others. After all, he is a soldier himself, and a very good one. But his dream is not the one that Boromir spoke of to Frodo when he tried to take the Ring. He does not wish others to flock to his banner because of his martial prowess. Faramir wishes to be a great teacher. Gandalf, not Saruman or Sauron, is his model.

“I Would Not Take This Thing ,If It Lay By The Highway.” Faramir and Isildur’s Bane.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 874-878

Frodo and Sam are taken towards the secret refuge of Henneth Annûn and Faramir takes the opportunity, having sent his men ahead of him, to speak further with them and to ask them about the matter of “Isildur’s Bane”.

Was it because of this matter that Frodo and Sam had not parted on good terms with Boromir?

Frodo continues to answer cautiously. He will not speak openly of the Ring even though he is beginning to trust this man. The memory of Boromir and his attempt to take the Ring by force is still too fresh.

Faramir remembers how Gandalf, who he remembers as Mithrandir, used to ask of Isildur, and the great battle fought upon Dagorlad at the beginning of Gondor and the ancient legend that Isildur “took somewhat from the hand of the Unnamed, ere he went away from Gondor, never to be seen among mortal men again”.

We know that Gandalf went to Minas Tirith among many other journeys after Bilbo’s Farewell Party in the Shire when, with some necessary persuasion, he left the Ring behind him in Bag End in Frodo’s care. At this point in the story Gandalf had an ever growing conviction of the true nature of Bilbo’s ring but that he still required proof. So it was that he searched in the archives of Gondor for all that he could find of the story of Isildur. We know that he found an ancient document in which Isildur wrote of the taking of the Ring from Sauron’s hand and of how it glowed hot and was adorned with writing that Isildur could not understand though it was written in Elvish script. Isildur was already beginning to fall under the spell of the Ring speaking of it as “of all the works of Sauron the only fair”. Already he spoke of it as “precious to me, though I buy it with great pain”.

Faramir knows nothing of this because Gandalf did not speak of it. Gandalf did not finally know for sure of the true nature of Bilbo’s ring until he threw it into the fire in Bag End and read the letters for himself and he was unwilling to speculate upon it with others knowing that it could be a cause of conflict.

Even though Faramir does not know the true nature of Isildur’s Bane he guesses that it was indeed a cause of conflict between members of the Fellowship, that it might be some kind of weapon.

“I can well believe that Boromir, the proud and fearless, often rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and his own glory therein), might desire such a thing and be allured by it.”

Now we can see why many early readers of The Lord of the Rings thought that it was an allegory about nuclear weapons, about how the decision was made in the Second World War to develop the bomb and to use it in order to end the war against Japan. Faramir himself seems to think that Isildur’s Bane was such a thing. Tolkien made it clear in writing about this that he was developing his idea of the Ring some time before the events of 1945 and indeed the Ring was more than just a weapon. It was made by Sauron to be the means to achieve power and control over all things. It was not, in and of itself, a perfect means to such an end. Even after he made the Ring Sauron was defeated first by Ar-Pharazôn of Númenor and then by the last alliance of Men and Elves when Isildur took the Ring from him. But it was Sauron’s belief that as he grew in power so too the Ring would be the means to make that power absolute. And, of course, he feared the possibility of the Ring falling into the hands of another person of power and being used against him.

Faramir does not regard himself as such a person. Nor does he desire victory at all costs. In this Tolkien gives us a character who, I believe, shows his own belief about the nature of power itself.

“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway! Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”