Wellinghall

“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.

“He Has a Mind of Metal and Wheels; and He Does Not Care For Growing Things”. Treebeard Speaks of The Treason of Saruman.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991,2007) pp.611-617

The home that Treebeard has shown to Merry and Pippin is the fruit of exquisite patience. We might almost say the patience of Nature herself except, as we saw Treebeard speak of the hill upon which he first met the young hobbits, it had only stood there since that part of the world was shaped. There was a history before that moment too.

So, as I wrote last week, the Wellinghall that Treebeard shows to the young hobbits has been a careful crafting of earth, water, growing things and light over many years. It has as much in common with an art installation as it does a dwelling place and, although it has been ages in its making, if Treebeard had brought Merry and Pippin to it just a few days later it would be different. The spring that wells up from beneath the earth would have shaped it in a new way and as the year moved onwards into springtime so the rising of the sap within the trees that are the walls of Wellinghall would subtly transform them and would fill the air with a delicious aroma.

But Saruman is a different matter altogether.

“I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for living things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”

One could hardly find a greater contrast between any two beings than between the minds of these two neighbours. If Treebeard has lovingly worked with Nature for long ages of time both in the making of his home and in his work as a shepherd of the trees Saruman is impatient both with Nature herself and with all living things. As Treebeard puts it, in the mind of Saruman the one needful thing is that it must “serve him for the moment”; and it is worth noting that phrase, for the moment, for as W.H Auden spoke of factory workers, all are “put to temporary use”. Robots are taking the place of those who work in factories and doubtless if Saruman had lived long enough he would have replaced his specially bred orcs, the Uruk-hai, with robots. It might be that his orcs can withstand the sun in a way that other orcs cannot, but eventually it will be possible to create a robot that will be able far to outlast even the strongest orc. And whereas Saruman could not be completely confident about the obedience of his Uruk-hai he need never have any anxiety about robots. The temporary usefulness of any creature that serves him for the moment would have come to an end. And we might even add that the quality of malice which he required in his servants, which was so useful to him, but which required constant attention as with Uglúk’s need to keep reminding his troops that the prisoners were not to be harmed, could be programmed into a robot in a completely reliable manner.

Saruman’s impatient “mind of metal and wheels” is about to be put to the test by the shepherds of trees and by their Huorns, trees that are growing in awareness and becoming more like their shepherds as Treebeard put it. And when it is tested in this manner it will be his impatience that will be his undoing. His anxiety to defeat Rohan quickly will lead him to empty his fortress of Isengard not fearing any enemy nearer by; his weaponry will not be sufficient to drive away either Ents or Huorns; and whereas the Tower of Orthanc, rising out of the very bones of the earth itself and built by Númenorians at the very height of their powers, cannot be assailed by Ents, the walls of Isengard are a fragile thing and easily overthrown.

Perhaps all lovers of “living things” should be grateful for Saruman’s impatience. If he or any like him were able to wait long enough then life itself might be abolished. The Ring of Power is, of course, the ultimate expression of a mind of metal and wheels, a mind that is a machine, at least for that age of Arda. In our own age the principle that made the Rings of Power is at work in new ways and perhaps with even greater effectiveness.

“I Am Not Altogether on Anyone’s Side, Because Nobody is Altogether on My Side.” Treebeard, the Ents and Forests in The World of Middle-earth

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 611-617

The homes in which people live tell you much about them. Of course, many people have little choice in the kind of home in which they live, but even when that choice is limited for people they will still seek to do something to tell a story about themselves. I remember when as a young man I taught in an African school in Zambia I would sometimes go to visit a student’s family in one of the villages nearby. One thing always stood out to me on these visits and that was that the family I visited may have possessed very little but everything was presented with great care and the simple hut was clean and life lived with great dignity. Those who know the descriptions of the simple homes of early settlers travelling west among the American continent will recognise this need for dignity. I came across great poverty in African villages but I did not encounter squalor until I worked as a parish priest in some run down neighbourhoods of Birmingham, England.

Treebeard’s home is an expression of his dignity as the oldest of the Ents and of a carefully crafted balance between earth, the flowing of water over the earth, that which grows in the earth, and light. It is the play of light upon stone, water and tree that gives Wellinghall its particular character. The name in its English form and therefore in the Common Tongue of Tolkien’s Middle-earth comes from the idea of a spring welling up from the earth beneath it and the hall that was built there.

“A little stream escaped from the the springs above, and leaving the main water, fell tinkling down the sheer face of the wall, pouring in silver drops, like a fine curtain in front of the arched bay.”

The “arched bay” had been shaped out of the lower slopes of Methedras, the last of the Misty Mountains and so we are brought into a home in which the worlds outside and inside flow together in a carefully crafted manner. If in a typical western home a great effort is made to create something which keeps the interior quite separate from that which lies outside this is most certainly not the case with Wellinghall.

Treebeard’s home is, as far as he can achieve it, an adaptation to the world of earth, water, tree and light in which he has lived since time immemorial. There is no agriculture or industry within his world. Even his food is derived from the welling waters of the young Entwash that flow through his home although there is clearly some kind of intoxicant that occurs within them, or has been added to them. But it is an intoxicant that energises rather than enervates. We remember that when Merry and Pippin first drank from the waters of the Entwash as they escaped into the forest from the orcs they did not notice that “the cuts and sores of their captivity had healed and their vigour had returned”.

Perhaps what we see in the ecology of Fangorn Forest is what can happen when a very particular set of relationships are able to develop over a long period of time. It is important to note that Fangorn is never presented as a kind of paradise in a way in which Lothlórien appears to be. Treebeard himself speaks of the impact of darkness upon it and his work as the shepherd of the trees is both to protect the forest from external forces that seek to harm it and from the darkness that might destroy it from within.

Even as he speaks with Merry and Pippin we seem to see Treebeard become increasingly aware that he has failed to protect his forest. The depredations that first came with the return of the Númenorians in the Second Age and whose activities led to the large scale destruction of the forest that once had lain right across Eriador and of which the Forest of Fangorn was only its eastern end seem to have been something with which Treebeard had to learned to live with, albeit reluctantly. But now the deliberate destruction of the forest by Saruman is something that he cannot tolerate. It may be that a world in which no-one has really been on the side of the trees and their shepherds is one that has led Treebeard to stay out of the struggles for power and for freedom in the wider world about him. He has not been “altogether on anyone’s side” because “nobody is altogether” on his side but now he realises that unless he chooses a side his forest will be destroyed completely. He has to take action.

No-one is “altogether” on Treebeard’s side but some seek to destroy his world completely.