Weather

“Suddenly Sam Laughed, For Heart’s Ease Not for Jest.” Frodo and Sam Find Refreshment in Ithilien.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 847-851

You can almost feel the relief in Tolkien’s writing as Frodo and Sam leave the dreadful ash pits of the desolate lands before the Black Gate of Mordor and arrive in the fair land of Ithilien, which, although now under the control of the enemy, has not yet been spoiled.

Frodo and Sam, guided by Gollum, are making their way from the Black Gate down towards the crossing place in the road that runs south towards the sea and east-west from Minas Morgul to Osgiliath, the ancient but ruined capital of Gondor. And as they get further away from the horror of lands that have been utterly ruined by Mordor so their mood begins to change.

Tolkien gives us a rich feast of language so that he can do justice to Ithilien, once the garden of Gondor, far enough from the shadow of the Ephel Death, the mountains of Mordor, to be free of them and yet sheltered by those same mountains from the east wind.

Tolkien was not a meteorologist and so he never discourses in detail about the weather in Middle-earth. His geography, and his meteorology too, is first and foremost mythological and so reflects the way in which the peoples of western Europe saw the world about them in the pre-modern world. The West and the great Atlantic ocean always made that direction one of mystery. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth it is the way to Valinor, the way that the Elves take on their journey to Valinor. It is the way to the Grey Havens, that are themselves a crossroads between worlds. In Europe the wind that comes from the West is warmed by the warm current coming out of the Gulf of Mexico and so it moderates the weather right up into the Arctic Circle in the far north of Norway and brings warm rain to the green lands of western Europe and especially, for Tolkien, to the British Isles that were his native lands.

The East, on the other hand, was always the direction from which danger and threat came. Invading armies always came from the East, whether Saxon, Viking or Norman in the British Isles, or the hordes coming out of the steppes of Central Asia, or the Ottoman Turks coming out of the East up the valley of the River Danube. And the weather that comes out of the East comes out of Siberia and there are no mountain ranges in Europe north of the Alps to provide shelter from the cold east wind or to provide defence from invading armies.

Ithilien is thus a land sheltered from the east and open to the south and west, a land of plenty, and Tolkien’s rich feast of language reflects this.

“Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendents; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam.”

Readers will note the sheer length of that sentence with its profusion of semicolons and Tolkien’s pleasure in writing a list. Each shrub and herb is named until we arrive at the limit of Sam, the gardener’s, knowledge, and we are invited into the unknown, not as a place of danger, but a place to be explored so that new pleasures can be experienced and enjoyed. Tolkien sums it all up through a phrase in which, just for a moment, he leaves the language of the north and strays for a moment into the classical Mediterranean world.

“A dishevelled dryad loveliness.”

And Sam laughs, “for heart’s ease not for jest”. Frodo indeed laughed for jest in the ash pit before the Morranon when Sam recited his verse about the oliphaunt, and it lifted his spirit, breaking the spell of despair in which he was held in the long hours of that day. That laughter broke into his darkness but the dark still lay about him. Sam’s laughter is of a different kind. It is an expression of delight, the laughter of heaven. It is as if as Sam breathes in the rich scents of the garden, this is his outbreath.

So we come into the last place of refreshment for the hobbits before they enter the darkness of Mordor, a moment of grace before they are abandoned to the horror that they alone, unaided, must face. They do not know what lies before them but they are able to draw strength from this place because, unlike Gollum, this is how they have trained their hearts.

“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.”

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.

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 Thinks About the Weather

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We can forgive Gandalf for mixing not just two but three metaphors because of who he is. Perhaps he mixes them deliberately in order to leave his hearers in no doubt about the point that he is making. The hearers are the lords of the allies gathered at the gates of Minas Tirith. Denethor and Théoden are dead and Faramir is recovering from his wounds in the Houses of Healing so it is Aragorn, Imrahil of Dol Amroth, Éomer and Elladan and Elrohir, the sons of Elrond who listen to what Gandalf is saying.

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world,  but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

Weather is one of those elements of life over which we have no immediate control although climate is something that we have always had the capacity to influence. Climate usually changes gradually while weather can change from day to day. Those who live on the Atlantic coast of Europe know this very well as the prevailing wind blows from that ocean more often than not. In order to live successfully in such a changeable climate it is necessary to be prepared for it. And those who wish to be happy will learn to enjoy the changes.

Two of my favourite characters in C. S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength are Frank and Camilla Denniston. I know that if I ever met them I would like them. And one of the things that I like about them is their attitude to Weather.

“That’s why Camilla and I got married… We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but Weather. It’s a useful taste if one lives in England.”

And the Dennistons explain to Jane Studdock that we tend to grow up by learning to mistrust attitudes to life that once came quite naturally. Mistrust seems to be something that too many people regard as a necessary life skill. Eventually as they proceed upon this unhappy pathway they come to regard life itself as something to be guarded against. They may fear death but come to exist, and only exist, in a kind of half life. This is the existence that Théoden endured under the tutelage of Wormtongue until Gandalf delivered him and it is no accident that one of the first things that Gandalf did after setting Théoden free was to take him out into the weather, into the rain that was falling.

It has been my habit for a few years now to take my dog out for a walk in the Worcestershire countryside at about 6 in the morning. I do this in every season and whatever the weather. For part of the year I take the walk in the dark, for part of it in the light, and part too in the days when the earth moves from dark to light at that time of the day. No two days are ever quite the same and slowly this walk is teaching me a wisdom for living that is not about mustering sufficient resources to overcome the world about me but about learning to live with the world as my friend.

Next week we will think about Gandalf’s counsel to those gathered in the tents of Aragorn but this week it is this central element within his wisdom that we highlight. We cannot chose the challenges that we will have to face in our lives. We can only choose the manner in which we deal with them.

Next week we will think about how the lords of the West choose to deal with the impossible challenge that faces them.