Theoden

“Tales By The Fireside.” Théoden Touches The Perilous Realm.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 716,717

“Is it so long since you have listened to tales by the fireside?”

So Gandalf asks of Théoden as the King tries to make some sense of what he has just seen as Ents emerge from the magical forest that has come from Fangorn to Helm’s Deep.

I promised last week that we would remain in this reflection on the Perilous Realm that J.R.R Tolkien spent a lifetime pondering and, in the creation of his legendarium, making something that has allowed millions of readers to touch and taste it too.

In his essay On Fairy-Stories Tolkien tells us that a fairy story is not one that is about an elf or a fairy but is about “the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country.” He goes on to say that Faërie is essentially indescribable, that it has “many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole.” Indeed analysis will effectively kill the thing that it seeks to describe. Perhaps it always does, reducing the thing that it has observed to its many parts and so failing to see the whole that it first experienced. Tolkien tells us that Faërie “may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic- but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.”

Pauline Baynes depicts an encounter with the Maenads in the company of Aslan from C.S Lewis’s Prince Caspian.

“The vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.” Have we not here been introduced to the Dark Lord himself, hidden in his fastness of Barad-dûr and his most enthusiastic imitator, Saruman? And isn’t the Ring a perfect example of such a device? Saruman was one who lived long in the Undying Land and knew its beauty and yet became seduced by a desire for power, becoming increasingly frustrated by the long, slow history of beauty that, as Gimli describes so well in speaking of the Caves of Aglarond can only be worked with, “with cautious skill, tap by tap- a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day”. Gimli’s description of the work of a true artist in the presence of beauty is light years away from the work of those “laborious, scientific magicians” Sauron and Saruman, who are endlessly frustrated by the slowness of things to be shaped by their will and who become contemptuous of those who are not willing to work as they do. Essentially they become contemptuous of Ilúvatar and the long slow pace of the music of the Ainur that is the story of Creation itself.

Anna Kulisz evokes the impossibly slow music of the Ainur.

Sauron and Saruman live in the same world as Fangorn and Lothlórien, those expressions within Tolkien’s sub-creation of the Perilous Realm, and yet have no understanding of them or of their magic. Their vulgarity is only capable of reducing the magic of these places to their own that is laborious and scientific. But Sauron’s vulgar creation of the Ring is always a temptation to those who have worked long and patiently with the beauty of Middle-earth. When Galadriel is tempted to take the Ring that Frodo freely offers to her she imagines herself as a Dark Queen crying out that “all shall love me and despair!”

Circe offers Odysseus the cup of longing and despair in John William Waterhouse’s painting of 1891.

It is a misunderstanding of the true nature of evil to imagine Galadriel at this moment as something horrible as Peter Jackson does in the film version of The Lord of the Rings. What the Ring would have given to Galadriel would have been the opportunity to become endlessly and repetitively a terrible beauty that could be seen, desired but never enjoyed. The whole world would be in the thrall of an erotic desire that would endlessly grow in intensity but could never be satisfied. Gimli expresses this when he speaks of “the danger of light and joy”. Legolas rightly praises Gimli for staying faithful to his companions and for giving up the desire that has been awakened within him but Gimli is not comforted by his words.

So perhaps it is safer to keep an experience of beauty within tales by the fireside. As we hear such tales the longing that Gimli knows may perhaps be tasted, may even be a delicious pleasure for a brief moment, but the story will come to an end and it will be time to sleep. Unless, of course, there may be a path that might lead us to an enjoyment of this pleasure; one that never cloys,as the hymn writer puts it.

“The Songs Have Come Down Among Us Out of Strange Places.” Théoden Thinks About The Nature of Fairy-stories.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.716,717

I promised last week that we would return from the doors of Isengard and their unexpectedly merry wardens in order to return to a conversation in the Deeping-coomb between Théoden and Gandalf.

The conversation takes place when Théoden’s company are about to begin their journey, with some reluctance, to Isengard. Legolas has seen eyes amidst the strange wood that has come from Fangorn such as he has never seen before and then three strange shapes come forward from the trees.

“As tall as trolls they were, twelve feet or more in height; their strong bodies, stout as young trees, seemed to be clad with raiment or with hide of close-fitting grey and brown. Their limbs were long, and their hands had many fingers; their hair was stiff, and their beards grey-green as moss.”

The Shepherds of the Trees and Gardens Too as imagined by Luca Bonatti

Tolkien describes Ents here as if we had never met them before although we spent some time among them in the company of Merry and Pippin. But now we see them through different eyes. We see them with wonder through the eyes of Legolas and with fear through the eyes of Gimli and the Riders of Rohan.

Gandalf speaks to Théoden. “They are the shepherds of the trees,” he says to him. “Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick out the answer to your question. You have seen Ents, O King, Ents out of Fangorn Forest, which in your name you call the Entwood. Did you think that the name was given only in idle fancy?”

This is one of the moments in The Lord of the Rings when Tolkien speaks of the themes that he explored in his essay, On Fairy-Stories. As we noted last week this reflection takes place only in scenes involving the Rohirrim. Aragorn and Éomer speak of this when they first meet on the plains of Rohan and now Théoden and Gandalf speak of it together. They speak of “tales by the fireside”, stories told to children. I remember the pleasure of telling stories to my children when they were young. I remember how we would enter the worlds that these tales would evoke as real places. It was one of my favourite moments of the day when all my troubles would be forgotten for a little while. I did not want these moments to end and my wife would have to remind me that the children needed to sleep!

In his essay Tolkien tries to answer the question, “What is a fairy-story?” and as he skilfully dismantle dismantles various attempts to answer the question, offered by scholars or in anthologies of stories such as the collection published by Andrew and Leonora Lang, he draws us ever deeper, and disturbingly, into a realm that he describes as Perilous. He illustrates his point with reference to Walter Scott’s fine poem, Thomas the Rhymer. In it, Thomas, who himself is a poet, meets a beautiful lady who at first he addresses as “The Queen of Heaven”. She replies that this name does not belong to her and that “I am but the queen of fair Elfland, that am hither come to visit thee”. The Queen of Elfland takes Thomas with her to the Perilous Land and he spends seven years there in her company. She describes the road that they will travel together as being neither “the path of Righteousness”, nor “the path of Wickedness” but “the road to fair Elfland”.

Tolkien describes this realm as “wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; scoreless shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” In Tolkien’s own tale it is Lothlórien that is most Perilous. Faramir understands this well and in his meeting with Frodo and Sam says, “If Men have dealings with the Mistress of Magic who dwells in the Golden Wood, then they may look for strange things to follow. For it is perilous for mortal men to walk out of the world of this Sun, and few of old came thence unchanged, ’tis said”.

This is the world of which Théoden and Gandalf now speak and one that I will return to with you next week if you will. At least to think about it if not to go there in truth, for as I have been writing this piece I have been filled with longing to take “the road to fair Elfland” myself.

Galadriel as the Fairy Queen. Cate Blanchett conveyed this so well.

“Welcome, My Lords, to Isengard!” The Doorwardens of Isengard Greet Théoden as He Comes to The Fortress of Saruman.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 716-729

The pages that follow Gimli’s beautiful description of the Caves of Aglarond comprise a long slow journey into the unknown. One might think that Théoden and his company might ride with a light heart after their great victory over the hosts of Isengard but we have already seen the much vaunted plainness of manner of the men of Rohan when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli first met them upon the grassy plains while hunting Merry and Pippin as the Uruk-hai were taking them to Isengard. An occasion when Éomer’s men simply dismissed the strangeness of the three companions as an expression of their wildness. And now, as they encounter the strangeness of the forest that has moved from Fangorn to Helm’s Deep the company who accompany their king descend into an unhappy and, occasionally, frightened, silence.

The uncanny world through which the Riders pass.

At one point Théoden and Gandalf speak together about the nature of stories that are told only to children and we will return to this in more detail next week reflecting in particular on Tolkien’s famous lecture on Fairy Tales but now I will only note that, while Théoden’s sense of wonder is gradually awakened during the ride to Isengard, he does not share this experience with his men. At last as they approach the outer fortifications of Isengard the growing sense of grim bleakness accompanied by menace seems complete.

This mood begins to shift subtly and gradually as they perceive that “the power of Saruman was overthrown”. The doors of Isengard “lay hurled and twisted on the ground. And all about, stone, cracked and splintered into countless jagged shards, was scattered far and wide, or piled into ruinous heaps.”

The riders gaze upon the ruin of Isengard in uncomprehending silence but then become aware that within its midst there are two small grey-clad figures lying upon the rubble at their ease and that beside them there are “bottles, bowls and platters… as if they had just eaten well, and now rested from their labour.” One of the figures seems to be asleep while the other “leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke.”

“Welcome, my Lords, to Isengard!”

Of course we have just met Merry and Pippin once again taking their ease as soldiers will after battle with whatever is available to them. We last saw the young hobbits with Treebeard on the night before the Ents’ assault upon Saruman when he was wondering if they were all going to their doom, whether it might be “the last march of the Ents”. And now the battle is done and victory won and all the tension is released.

And not just for Merry and Pippin. Soon all the company who are with Théoden and Gandalf are laughing too. It is as if the young hobbits have gently escorted the Riders from their shared experience of gathering gloom and mute incomprehension into something quite different and much more pleasant.

I can think of few better examples of bathos, that swift descent, sometimes of the sublime to the ridiculous, sometimes of the uncanny to the familiar, sometimes of the terrifying to the safe, than this. From the ending of the battle at Helm’s Deep to the encounter with the hobbits there are some twenty pages in my edition of The Lord of the Rings and throughout those pages the mood is as I have described it above. At no point does Tolkien relent in his creation of this feeling of anxious, fearful incomprehension. Not until the bubble is burst by two young hobbits. And who better within all Tolkien’s legendarium to take us into a world that is less fearful and gentler than hobbits.

Except for the Riders of Rohan hobbits also belong to the world of folktales and fairy stories. But unlike the dwimmer-craftiness of wizards (Gandalf included) or the terrifying silent presence of the Huorns of Fangorn hobbits are not to be thought a threat. Most of the time, indeed, they are anxious not to appear such. This lack of apparent threat does of course lead to the downfall of the greatest tyrants of this age. Tyrants always seem to fall to those who they have underestimated. But now the young hobbits do as they are most at their ease in doing. They gently help a group of men descend from a state of heightened anxiety and foreboding to a gentler place. While infuriating the friends who lay down all their dreams and ambitions even their lives in pursuing them across Rohan. But that we will return to on another occasion.

“His Horse Was White as Snow, Golden Was His Shield, and His Spear Was Long.” Théoden Rides to Victory at The Battle of Helm’s Deep.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 691-707

I remember sitting beside my wife as we watched the scene in Peter Jackson’s film of The Two Towers when Théoden and Aragorn lead the cavalry charge from the fortress of the Hornburg over the causeway and into the armies of Isengard. She had not been with when I saw it first at a morning screening at my local multiplex so we were sitting together watching it on a DVD in our front room. Laura is the most peaceable of people but as I looked across at her I could see tears in her eyes. Peter Jackson had done his work well, I thought. He had succeeded in portraying the beauty of the heroic act.

What conveys the beauty, I believe, is the unbearable moment in which the hero lays down his life for the sake of life. I ended last week’s reflection by quoting Faramir on this. “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.” It is that which the hero seeks to defend that gives beauty to the sacrifice and brings tears to the eyes of those who watch. The author of the Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood, tells the story of the death of Christ upon the cross in such heroic language. Christ climbs upon the rood, grasping the wood of the cross as a young warrior in order by his death to defeat death itself. In so doing the poet dignifies the hero’s death, a theme that everyone in the cultures of northern Europe would have understood, in a new way. The hero’s death becomes a sacrifice for life in the face of death, for light in the face of darkness and for love in the face of hatred.

Tolkien never states this explicitly although he knew well all the resonances that I have touched upon but as Théoden leads Aragorn and the knights of his household in the last desperate charge at daybreak as the echoing sound of Helm’s horn resounds about him the beauty of the sacrificial deed shines forth and tears come to my wife’s eyes.

The language of the story needs to express this beauty as does the story’s shape. And so in his telling of the story of The Battle of Helm’s Deep Tolkien gives us a beleaguered force falling back before a host of enemies filled with “reckless hate”. At the last Théoden turns to Aragorn as he frets within the Hornburg questioning the wisdom of Gandalf’s counsel that he should lead his host there and says to him:

“I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song-if any be left to sing of us hereafter.”

And as the dawn breaks and the doors of the Hornburg are shattered by an explosion the horn of Helm sounds and Théoden and his knights ride out sweeping all before them.

It is not death itself that is beautiful. A death can be a lonely, hopeless, even meaningless affair. But the setting of the sun at the end of a good day is beautiful even though it will end in darkness. At the Battle of the Pelennor Fields Éomer stands at bay before the host of his enemies. And as he stands by his banner he laughs at despair and cries out:

Out of doubt, out  of dark to the day's rising 
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

For the Rohirrim there is such a thing as a good death and it is one when you have given your all and there is nothing left to give. This was Théoden’s death in the same battle and so he died at peace. At Helm’s Deep events were about to turn in a strange and entirely unexpected way. This is not the day in which Théoden will die but it is his willingness to die that is beautiful.

“And with that shout the king came. His horse was white as snow, golden was his shield, and his spear was long. At his right hand was Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, behind him rode the lords of the house of Eorl the Young. Light sprang in the sky. Night departed.”

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

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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.”

Harold MacMillan as a young infantry officer.

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.”

The Riders of Rohan

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.

“What passing bells for these who die as cattle?”

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.”

“His Hand Met Hers and He Knew that She Trembled at The Touch”. The Beginning of the Story of Éowyn and Aragorn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 677-683

It was at the doors of Meduseld that Aragorn first declared himself and his high lineage. Háma, the door warden had commanded that no weapon be brought into the hall and Aragorn had questioned whether Théoden had the authority to demand this of him.

“It is not clear to me that the will of Théoden, son of Thengel, even though he be lord of the Mark, should prevail over the will of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elendil’s heir of Gondor.”

Aragorn had already declared his lineage to Éomer when they first met on the plains of Rohan and doubtless when Éomer had made defence of his mission to intercept and destroy the company of orcs that were crossing the plains he had spoken of this but if he had then Wormtongue would have dismissed Éomer’s report as the deranged words of some vagabond wandering across Théoden’s lands. But Éowyn would have heard these words and would have seen the mighty warrior who had stood before her uncle in his hall as Gandalf had performed his act of healing and as she saw with her own eyes the transformation of a broken man into a king ready to lead his men to war.

Éowyn has had to live a secret life. Indeed, so secret has it been that when Théoden’s men ask that one from the House of Eorl should lead the people to the defences of Dunharrow he has no idea who they mean. She has been almost invisible to him simply being there to tend to his needs as he descended into decrepitude.

Angelo Montanini depicts Éowyn in her invisibility at the side of Théoden.

Later in the story as Éowyn lies in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith Gandalf will speak of that secret life. Éomer will show that he too was unaware of what lay within his sister’s heart, saying that it was because of Aragorn that she had given way to despair even though he knew that Aragorn bore no blame for this. But Gandalf corrected him.

“My friend… you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.”

Éowyn the warrior as depicted in Deviantart

Tolkien has received considerable criticism over the years about the apparent invisibility of women in his stories. Peter Jackson’s decision to make Arwen an active character in The Fellowship of the Ring giving her the part that is played by Glorfindel in the book is in many ways a response to this criticism. I remember my own surprise when Arwen appeared in the story as a warrior who would resist the Nazgûl but I quickly realised why Jackson would make this choice and accepted it. But the character of Éowyn is no response to criticism. She is Tolkien’s creation and Gandalf’s words show that Tolkien fully understood both the richness of her character and also the injustice of the way in which women had been treated through history in life and in story. In a warrior culture, which Rohan is, it is perhaps inevitable that women would be expected to be servants to men who would be those warriors. But Éowyn has undoubtedly learned skill in arms, perhaps because she was a member of the royal house, perhaps because it amused the teachers of the arts of war to teach this eager young princess. She may have been invisible to Théoden but not to others.

“She is fearless and high-hearted,” Háma says to Théoden when he asks that Éowyn should lead the people to Dunharrow. “All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone.”

Háma may have seen something of what Éowyn truly was but she herself felt the dishonour of her position; to be a mere serving girl in a house of little honour. So it was that when Aragorn appeared in her life he represented something that she longed for. Aragorn put it this way himself in speaking to Éomer.

“In me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.”

Éowyn has been doomed to live a life in shadows until now but like her uncle she too will come to embrace life in all its joy and sorrow. But unlike Théoden, who was restored to himself in a single day, her journey to wholeness will first lead her to false hope in the form of the heir of Isildur and to despair when that hope is taken from her.

Éowyn longs for freedom.

“Now, Lord… Look Out Upon Your Land. Breathe the Free Air Again.” Théoden Begins to Emerge From Dark Thoughts into Free Action.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 671-673

The first thing that Gandalf does after freeing Théoden from the malign influence of Wormtongue is to bring him out from his hall into the chill morning air as winter begins to give way to spring in the world about Edoras, and Théoden gives careful attention to the weather that they encounter.

“From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder, and the lightning far away flickered among the tops of hidden hills. But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding, rolling away southward to the sea. Suddenly through a rent in the clouds behind them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass.”

Meduseld upon the hill top.

This is a passage full of symbolic meaning. The storm coming out of the east being blown away by a wind from the north and light breaking through dark clouds turning everything into silver. So it was that Eorl the Young rode out of the North to deliver Gondor long ago and now deliverance is coming out of the North in the form of the entirely unexpected returning King and the entirely unlikely form of a hobbit going step by step toward Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom.

Like all great writers, Tolkien is capable of offering his readers layers of meaning within his use of imagery, just as his characters, and his readers too, have the capacity to read the same layers of meaning both in the text and in daily experience, if we should choose to do so. We might choose to limit our reading of text and experience to the random elements that make them up but we would be impoverished if we were to to do this. Théoden’s comment as he breathes the air outside his hall is to remark, with austere simplicity that it is not so dark there, but we know from what we have learned about Théoden’s recent experience how much is contained within these words. It is clear that he is choosing to read his experience of weather in a meaningful way and this deliberate giving of meaning will both continue his healing and enable him to enter into the realm of free action once again following his imprisonment within the darkness of his hall.

Gandalf deliberately chooses to bring Théoden into an unprotected experience of weather precisely to bring him into freedom once again. While Wormtongue has sought to persuade him that everything outside the protected realm of Meduseld is a threat of danger that is to be feared, Gandalf does nothing to diminish this sense of threat. Indeed he tells Théoden that he is “come into a peril greater than the wit of Wormtongue” could weave into his dreams. But even as he admits the reality of the peril, Gandalf also shows Théoden the joy of simply being alive and fully alive. Théoden is no longer crippled by fear. If he is to die then he will embrace this reality too and will not fear it.

Théoden under Wormtongue’s Protection.

The contrast between the protected space of a dwelling place and the unprotected reality of the world outside is one that Tolkien often returns to in The Lord of the Rings. Later, in The Return of the King we will learn that Sauron constantly weaves “veils of Shadow” about himself in Barad-dûr. In many ways he is the master-hider from reality, both hating and fearing the real. But if he is the biggest example of the way in which a dwelling place is created primarily by fear of what lies outside it, many others copy him. Even Rivendell and Lothlórien are hidden and protected realms, descendents, in their way, of Nargothrond, Gondolin and Doriath. And although we thought about how in Treebeard’s dwelling in Wellinghall there was little distinction between the world outside it and the world inside nevertheless the Ents sought to make the forest a protected space for the thriving of trees. Maybe only Gandalf lives a pilgrim life that is undefended but he too needs homes in which to rest and be restored. Perhaps at best we need a rhythm of free air and weather, but homes to live in too, and Théoden has lived too long at home and needs to breathe again if he is to find wholeness once more.

Gandalf the Homeless Pilgrim as depicted by Caito Junqueiro

“Wish Me Joy, My Liege-Lord and Healer!” A Happy Ending to the Story of Éowyn and Aragorn.

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After Théoden is laid to rest with the highest honour ever given to a king of Rohan Éomer is proclaimed as the new king. He stands before his people and all his guests as lord of his hall and speaks of joy.

“Faramir, Steward of Gondor, and Prince of Ithilien, asks that Éowyn Lady of Rohan should be his wife, and she grants it full willing. Therefore they shall be trothplighted before you all.”

And then, at last, Éowyn is able to look Aragorn in the eyes without shame or fear and she speaks to him: “Wish me joy, my liege-lord and healer!”

And so the story that began when Aragorn aided Gandalf in the freeing of Théoden from bondage comes to the happiest of endings. Of course this shared story ended when Éowyn gave her heart to Faramir in the gardens of the Houses of Healing and when Aragorn and Arwen were wed on Midsummer Day but at this moment in Meduseld where the story began it ends in joy with the words that they speak freely to each other. For when Éowyn asks for Aragorn’s blessing he is able, freely, to give it.

“I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee. It heals my heart to see thee now in bliss.”

It was not only Théoden who was in bondage in the dark halls of Meduseld but all his people too. His shame was theirs. His sense of impending doom lay heavy upon them also and none more so than the one who most truly loved him for Éowyn loved him as a daughter. It was not just her own unhappiness and shame that she felt as Wormtongue’s grip grew stronger. It was her misery to have to watch a good, kind and brave man who had always loved her shrink into a lizard like creature under the sway of his enemies and to feel helpless as she watched it. But when she saw Théoden freed from bondage and able to fulfil his destiny as king this was denied to her. She was required to fulfil the ancient female role of waiting for men to return either in victory or defeat and she was denied the love of a man who might have given her glory and happiness. Tolkien has been accused of writing stories in which this traditional gender expectation is played out but this is not the story of Éowyn or Tolkien’s greatest female character, Lúthien of Doriath, who fights alongside Beren, her man, as a warrior who is at the very least his equal. Like Lúthien Éowyn refuses to accept the imprisonment that those who think they act in her best interests impose upon her. She follows her heart taking the way of a warrior into battle and following the man who she loves best of all standing by him at the very end defending him against the Lord of the Nazgûl on the Pelennor Fields as his body lays broken beneath his horse.

This is why Aragorn is able to call her back as she lies in the Houses of Healing. Her True Self has never given way to despair. When he anoints her with athelas “an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing… came new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam”. Éowyn has remained entirely true to herself. Aragorn may have been a dream but it was for Théoden that she was ready to lay down her life. And then when she meets Faramir she realises that she is free to say yes to life and to happiness.

Éowyn is a woman of truth who has never compromised her True Self and although brought to the very edge of despair did not give way to this at the end. It is her love that has guider  her most truly and so she can look Aragorn in the eye. There is nothing for her to be ashamed of. She has given her love freely as her brother declared before the company and Aragorn too can bless her without shame. Both are true lovers indeed.

The Funeral of Théoden

/ stephencwinter / 10 Comments

It was 4 years ago when I first wrote about Théoden, a man bound to his chair by the leachcraft of Grima Wormtongue staring miserably at the image of his glorious ancestor, Eorl the Young, the founder of the Kingdom of Rohan. I quoted the Irish poet and priest, John O’Donohue from his wonderful book, Eternal Echoes, in which he writes about the different types of inner prison that we build for ourselves. He could have been writing about Théoden.

“Fear and negativity are immense forces which constantly tussle with us. They long to turn the mansions of the soul into haunted rooms. These are the conditions for which fear and negativity long and in which they thrive. We were sent here to live life to the full. When you manage to be generous in your passion and vulnerability, life always comes to bless you.”

O’Donohue creates a rich contrast between the soul’s true nature described as a spacious and elegant mansion and the haunted room created by fear and negativity. Tolkien gives us the contrast between the richly tapestried walls of Meduseld with the memory of the young hero and the shrivelled and wizened creature imprisoned in his chair. Théoden is shamed by the ancestral hero upon whose image he is forced to gaze each day and his people live in a wasteland. Such is the fate of a people whose king is no longer a source of fruitfulness. It is the fate of the people of the Fisher King in the Parsifal legend. It is the fate of the people of Rohan.

And then Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli come and with their burning ardour overthrow the prisons of Wormtongue and his master, Saruman. The armies of Rohan are no more powerful than before and the threat from their enemies is undiminished but Théoden steps out from his prison and feels the good rain upon his face and the hilt of a sword in the grasp of his hand. Once more this good man is generous in his “passion and vulnerability” and life comes to bless him. He arouses a people who have longed for the opportunity to give their best and their utmost. He restores their pride. In a few short days they defeat the armies of Saruman at Helms Deep and at the very limits of endurance they break the siege of Minas Tirith at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Théoden is overthrown at the last by the Lord of the Nazgûl but dies at peace and without shame as he prepares to meet his ancestors.

And now he makes his return to Edoras in glory as a true king should, honoured by all free peoples. He is laid upon a golden bier and carried on a great wain from Minas Tirith to his home. Merry, the faithful squire who stood bravely at the side of his lord in his final battle rides upon the wain and keeps his arms. Then Tolkien names each member of the Fellowship in their turn.

“Frodo and Samwise rode at Aragorn’s side, and Gandalf rode upon Shadowfax, and Pippin rode with the knights of Gondor; and Legolas and Gimli as ever rode together upon Arod.”

And in Théoden’s funeral procession the Queen Arwen, Celeborn and Galadriel and their people, Elrond and his sons and the princes of Dol Amroth and Ithilien with the knights of Gondor ride to do him honour. “Never had any king of the Mark such company upon the road as went with Théoden, Thengel’s son to the land of his home.”

And Gléowine, the king’s minstrel makes his last song for his lord.

“Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. Hope he rekindled, and in hope ended; over death, over dread, over doom lifted, out of loss out of life, unto long glory”

All of this is a celebration of a few short days after years of darkness and they are right to make this praise. Théoden is so gloriously generous in his passion and vulnerability in those few days that a people is restored and the world is saved. His story is one of the finest that Tolkien tells and it is right that he should end it with such glorious solemnity.

We Are Not Bound For Ever to the Circles of the World, and Beyond Them There is More Than Memory. The Death of Aragorn and Arwen.

/ stephencwinter / 8 Comments

When Arwen made her choice it was with the greatest of men standing before her in his glory. It was Aragorn that she chose even as she bade the twilight farewell. But Elrond knew that the day would come at the ending when her choice would seem hard.

The years of Aragorn’s life were long beyond that of his people. He was a Númenorean in whom the blood of kings ran true “yet at last he felt the approach of old age and knew that the span of his life-days was drawing to an end, long though it had been.”

This was the point in his existence at which Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor, sought to grasp hold of immortality for himself by launching an invasion of the Undying Lands. He believed that the Valar withheld the gift of immortality from Men and gave it to Elves maliciously. Indeed he believed that his own mortality and death was a kind of punishment. And although the followers of Elendil rejected Ar-Pharazôn’s rebellion, in the years of Gondor’s decline they too did all that they could to extend their lives. It was Pippin who gazed in wonder at the great stone city of Minas Tirith even as it was falling into decay with empty houses in every street. “They were silent, and no footsteps rang on their wide pavements, nor voice was heard in their halls, nor any face looked out from door or empty window.”

So Aragorn reaches the moment in life in which a choice must be made. He could choose the sullen resentment of Gondor in its long decline and do all that lay within his considerable power to extend his existence for as long as possible. Or he might even choose the way of rebellion as did Ar-Pharazôn or the Witch King of Angmar. But he chooses to embrace his mortality and not to rail against it.

When Arwen realises that she is about to lose Aragorn she suddenly understands the bitterness of Ar-Pharazôn and pities him. “If this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.”

Aragorn recognises that this is the greatest of tests but he bids her not to be overthrown at it who renounced both the Shadow and the Ring long before. “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

In the early years of the church the Fathers taught that the life of faith begins with the renunciation of despair. This is the great renunciation that opens the way for the daily embrace of goodness, beauty and truth. It is a way that looks the reality of our mortality full in the face and chooses not to be afraid. It is a dying before we die but it is a choice to live. It is the choice not to hold onto life until it becomes stretched out thin. Théoden made this choice when he stepped out of his chair in which he had been withering away and embraced life after the manner of his glorious ancestors. Gollum, on the other hand,  chose the misery of endless existence. Denethor expressed his despair through suicide trying to take Faramir with him. Aragorn turns his face courageously to his mortality and trusts the One who calls him. He does not know what lies ahead. He does not know his own destiny but trusts that love and goodness have the last word.

Arwen is heartbroken at her loss and she is not so sure. Yet she too embraces the mortality that was her choice laying herself to rest on the hill of Cerin Amroth where she chose Aragorn long ago. In a comment on last week’s blog post Tom Hillman suggested that Arwen’s choice might open the door for her people to a destiny that lies beyond the circles of the world. It is a beautiful thought that seems to me to be in keeping with a divine consummation that will unite all things earthly and heavenly. Faery will enrich Humanity and Humankind will open the way to Faery. Of course Tolkien was looking forward to the Incarnation in his great legendarium. The tale of Aragorn and Arwen points to this more than any of his tales. It is a tale of sorrow but not despair and it draws us into its hope even as Arwen’s last words to Aragorn are the calling of the name of his youth, “Estel, Estel!”

Hope! Hope!