Master of Middle Earth

by Paul H. Kocher

  Arrived at Lórien without Gandalf, the Company seeks the advice of Queen Galadriel, "greatest of Elven women" in Tolkien's phrase, whose life span extends back to the start of the First Age and whose wisdom is unexcelled among her race. But she is unexpectedly chary of making any predictions for them, or for the success of the West in general. She knows what is to come only "in part," she insists, and her mirror reveals not what shall be but only what "may be." Indeed she warns Frodo and Sam that what they see in its waters "is dangerous as a guide to deeds." It mixes up past, present, and future so indistingusihably that the gazer cannot be sure which is which, and in striving to avert a danger he thinks he sees lying ahead he may take the very measures which are necessary to bring it about. All finite knowledge about the future is cursed by this Oedipean paradox. Necessarily so, because it is incomplete and therefore blind in its information about the means which must precede any given consequence. What then? Are all flashes of foreknowledge false? Galadriel does not say so. But it is noticeable that she prefers to rely mostly on rational inferences from what she already knows about the past and present: "I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in chosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be . . . Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife ... Yet hope remains while the Company is true."

  This insight, couched in the most general terms, amounts in essence only to a statement of belief that if the members of the Company remain faithful to their trust they still have a chance. As in all previous instances, even so mild a prediction is made to depend upon their free obedience to moral laws. Later, Galadriel explicitly refuses to forecast whether Sauron will be overthrown: "I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope," but she is willing to assure Gimli that if he survives he will be rich, yet over him gold will not have the dominion it has over other dwarves. A likely enough conclusion from Gimli's stated preference for a strand of Galadriel's hair over all the gold and gems on earth. She is perhaps partly foreseeing, partly only comforting the Company when she urges them not to worry over their indecision about selection of a destination: "Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them." Nothing Galadriel says to them during their stay in Lórien shakes in any way the established doctrine of the epic that their future course is indeed laid out for them, provided they themselves choose to tread it. Her function in the story is to warn them, and herself, to tend to the duty in hand and not rashly to presume that finite minds can outguess the supreme architect who plans the whole.

  Events bear out Galadriel's distrust of all creaturely foreknowledge, including her own. She proves to be only partly right in believing that the success of the Quest rests on the continued loyalty of everyone in the Company. At Parth Galen the evil desire for the Ring long growing in Boromir explodes into a physical attack on Frodo that splits the Company into groups, as it needs to be split, since each group has its own indispensable job to do in the complex compaigns that follow. Frodo, followed by Sam, is shocked into starting off by himself on the stealthy, inconspicuous course of slipping into Mordor in which lies his only possible chance of eluding Sauron's roving eye. Capture of Pippin and Merry by the ores transports them to Fangorn Forest, where they escape just in time to rouse the ents to overwhelm Saruman at Isengard and Helm's Deep. Pursuing the captives, Aragorn meets Éomer, to begin the awakening of Rohan, and meets in the forest the reincarnated Gandalf, who completes the process by freeing Théoden from Wormtongue. In consequence, Saruman's threat to Rohan is wiped out, and the Rohirrim have just enough time to send the army that saves Minas Tirith from the first onset of Sauron's hosts. Even this would not have been enough had Aragorn not been released by Saruman's defeat to ride the Paths of the Dead and so bring the armies of southern Gondor to the aid of the city when the Rohirrim faltered. None of this would have happened had not Boromir succumbed for a time to the spell of the Ring. In retrospect that evil hour was necessary to defeat evil in the long run as nothing else could have.

  The momentum built up by Tolkien earlier for the existence of an unseen design behind all the episodes of his story carries forward into this long sequence of hairbreadth successes stemming from Boromir's fall. Even if Tolkien never said a further word about it we would be inclined to see the finger of Providence in them. But through various spokesmen, especially Gandalf, he keeps up a running commentary to that effect. Hearing from Aragorn in Fangorn what happened at Parth Galen, Gandalf reflects on the unseen significance of the decision, made by Elrond only at the last moment, to include Merry and Pippin in the Company, which allowed Boromir to redeem himself by dying to protect them and which brought the ents into action: "It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for Boromir's sake. But that is not the only part they have to play. They were brought to Fangorn, and their coming was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains." He is using the same language he used to describe Gollum's "part" in the fate of the Ring. All are filling roles written for them by the same great playwright. And Gandalf has to laugh at the irony of the rival ore bands of Saruman and Sauron which captured the two hobbits, thereby serving to promote a good they never meant: "So between them our enemies have contrived only to bring Merry and Pippin with marvelous speed, and in the nick of time, to Fangorn, where otherwise they would never have come at all!" His own reincarnation he interprets as one more move in the plan, for he too has a role: "Naked I was sent back—for a brief time, until my task is done. And naked I lay upon the mountaintop," until an eagle sent by Galadriel brings him to Lórien for healing and consultation. The greater strength that the new White possesses as against the former Grey is needed for his coming labors, and he would never have had it, had not the Balrog first killed him down in the pit.

  The irony of evil bringing forth good continues all through the epic. The flight of Wormtongue to his master Saruman seems at the time of no particular importance. But later, when Gandalf is parleying with Saruman at Orthanc, Wormtongue angrily tries to kill him by throwing down at him the precious Palantír which Saruman would never willingly have parted with and which Gandalf could not have got by force from the impregnable tower, "Strange are the turns of fortune! Often does hatred hurt itself!" Gandalf is moved to exclaim. This is the Palantír into which Pippin surreptitiously looks that night, to be saved partly by Sauron's sadistic urge to torture him in Mordor from having his mind read then and there by the telepathic Eye and all the strategy of the West ruinously exposed. "You have been saved, and all your friends too, mainly by good fortune, as it is called," remarks Gandalf, who does not believe in luck under any name. "As it is called" is reminiscent of Bombadil's "if chance you call it." Théoden expresses the awe of a more ordinary mortal: "Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses! . . . But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar." He too sees how the very qualities of evil are being turned against themselves for other ends. The idea has achieved the wide circulation of a proverb.

  The true importance of Wormtongue's murderous impulse in hurling the Palantír, however, is seen only when Aragorn claims possession of it as Elendil's rightful heir and with it purposely reveals himself to Sauron in order to frighten him into attacking Minas Tirith before his preparations are complete. Aragorn hopes that Sauron will believe that he has assumed the powers of the Ring and that the West must be overrun immediately before he has learned to wield them. Sauron is duly deceived. In Aragorn's place he would have seized the Ring long ago. The ripples of Aragorn's open challenge spread far and wide through the remainder of the story. Sauron never thereafter even suspects that anyone else may have the Ring, least of all Frodo, whom he regards as a petty spy even after his presence in Mordor becomes known. He does launch his armies against the city prematurely. The darkness with which he enshrouds everything spreads despa
ir, certainly, but it also conceals Frodo's movements into Mordor as well as the coming of the cavalry of Rohan. Hasty emergence of the army under Angmar from Cirith Ungol leaves the mountain pass badly and confusedly guarded. Aragorn is enabled to take the pirates of Umbar unprepared. And so the consequences roll on through multitudinous incidents too many to detail but all working to the disadvantage of a mistakenly preoccupied Sauron.

  The direct need for every sort of providential aid and the most direct and unequivocal answers to it come during Frodo and Sam's long ordeal in the dark in Mordor. What finally routs Shelob is a prayer to Elbereth in the elfin tongue, which springs into Sam's mind though he does not know the language. A similar prayer uttered by Sam and Frodo breaks the "will of the Watchers . . . with a suddenness like the snapping of a cord" and lets them escape from the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Meantime, Sam, having to decide whether he should "put himself forward" by taking over the Ring and the mission from the master he thinks dead, realizes that, like Frodo before him, he has "been put forward" by a higher power, must make up his own mind whether to ratify the choice, and does so.

  Then, during a rest from pursuit by ores, while Frodo sleeps, Sam looks up to see far above the murk "a white star twinkle." Smitten by its beauty he understands that "in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach." This is far more than the sighting of the physical beaming of a star. It is a spiritual vision of beauty and permanence which Sauron and his passing vileness can never stain. It puts everything into right perspective for Sam and gives him peace: "Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him." The world is in abler hands than his. A less visionary kind of help is sent later on the very slopes of Mount Doom when Sam has to carry Frodo and finds the burden light, "whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains ... or because some gift of final strength was given . . ." Tolkien guards the secular alternative but his favor is pretty clearly for the religious one. Finally, of course, as Frodo succumbs to the ring at the Cracks of Doom, Gollum, playing out the role for which he has been preserved all through the epic, bites off Frodo's Ring-finger, overbalances (by no accident), and falls with the Ring into the flames below. The irony of evil is consummated by its doing the good which good could not do.

  Providence, therefore, not only permits evil to exist but weaves it inextricably into its purposes for Middle-earth. In the short term it may even allow evil to triumph, and these short terms are often anything but short. Morgoth's tyranny defies the best efforts of elves and men throughout the thousands of years of the first Age until the Valar come against him. Sauron wins again and again in the Second Age until conquered by Númenor, and even then turns defeat into victory by seducing his conquerors into revolt against the Valar. His temporary overthrow in the drowning of Númenor is one which no doubt he would be delighted to repeat in the Third Age, since he then took down with him into the darkness the highest civilization yet achieved by man. Small wonder that with these terrible precedents behind them, the Western leaders in the Third Age almost despair of winning the War of the Ring. By its nature the cosmic order is directed toward good, and in the long run those who cooperate with it must overcome, but who knows how long the run is? Gandalf's retort to Denethor asserting that he too is a steward accepts the possibility that Sauron will overrun the West: "... all worthy things are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come." Morning will come again and good will flourish no matter how complete the devastation wrought by evil seems. This is Gandalf's equivalent of Sam's vision of the star riding high above Mordor.

  Nevertheless, the cost of even a passing victory by Sauron is so dreadful as to call forth the united labors of the free peoples. He will not win if every player accepts the part assigned. Hence the attempts of Gandalf and the rest to educate every player in the importance of his role, freely enacted. Hence also another moral stand, not yet dwelt upon, running from end to end of the epic—the need of everyone in the West to resist the evil inherent in his own nature. Too many Gollums, Boromirs, Sarumans, Denethors, and so on would in effect turn the West into a second Númenor, corrupted and ripe for another flood. Though not the only one, the Ring of course is the chief instrument of temptation by its appeal to the evil within, an appeal made sometimes directly to the baser desires, sometimes more subtly through perversion of the loftiest instincts in the noblest minds.

  As Tolkien writes his tale, he makes it one of the main objects of the providential order to test each of the major characters by putting the Ring within easy grasp if he will but reach out to seize it, or keep it, for himself. With Bilbo, who has the Ring to start with, the struggle is to give it up voluntarily to Frodo at Gandalf's urging. He barely succeeds. Isildur has failed before him. Then Frodo offers it to Gandalf, who vehemently refuses, well knowing that the Ring would turn to perverted ends the pity that is his most characteristic virtue. Aragorn's opportunity comes in the inn at Bree. The Ring is lawfully his, if anybody's, by inheritance from Isildur, and the hobbits are at his mercy. But he turns away and never turns back in all the weeks and months he spends in Frodo's company.

  This is his proof that he is worthy to be king. Elrond's rejection of the Ring took place ages before in the days of the Last Alliance, when he vainly urged Isildur under the walls of Barad-dûr to cast it into the nearby fires. Perhaps hardest of all is Galadriel's refusal to accept it when offered by Frodo in Lórien, because with it she could preserve the existence of that enchanted land which otherwise must pass away.1 In one of the great scenes of the epic she dreams aloud of what might be, then shatters the dream herself: "I pass the test ... I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel." More than the others she is aware that they are all being put to the proof. So the testing goes on, with Boromir at Parth Galen, Faramir in Ithilien, Sam in Mordor. Frodo's trial, of course, is as long as the epic and he does not come out of it unscathed. Among Western captains only Théoden, Saruman, and Denethor are not directly exposed to the fascination of the Ring. For them other tests are set up. Thloden must overcome the hopeless lassitude of old age intensified by Wormtongue. Palantíri are the proximate occasions for the falls of the other two.

  For most of the participants on both sides of the War of the Ring the rewards of virtue or vice are simply the normal consequences flowing from victory or defeat. The free peoples are united to live under the just rule of their rightful King. Sauron's human allies are sent back to their home territories under binding treaties. His ores, those that survive the slaughter, pen themselves in their caves under the mountains. A general purging of evil goes on. Though Sauron cannot be killed, his spirit is driven off the face of Middle-earth, forever to languish impotently in outer darkness. It is not altogether clear whether the same fate befalls Saruman. Coming originally from Valinor, his spirit in the form of a gray mist yearns westward when his body dies, "but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing." This sounds like final dissolution, or at least final exile.

  Consumed in the volcanic explosions of Mount Doom, the Nazgûl perish at last and their spirits presumably go to that abyss that Gandalf warned Angmar was prepared for him, an almost total loss of being in "the nothingness that waits you and your Master." Denethor's final fate as a man is left doubtful. He kills himself in despair, disregarding the warning of Gandalf that suicide is forbidden: "Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death .. . And only the heathen kings, under the Domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death." The flavor of this prohibition is distinctly religious, condemning the practice as "heathen" and ascribing it to pride and despair, mortal offenses in the lexicon of Christianity and other religions. No
thing is added, however, about punishments in an afterlife for Denethor or any other among the free peoples. The epic tends to avoid eschatology.

  The leaving of Middle-earth by the elves is a special case. It is not connected with anything they have done or not done in the War of the Ring, but rather with their disobedience to the command of the Guardian Valar not to pursue Morgoth to Middle-earth in the early years of the First Age. The exile then imposed upon them as a punishment has been expiated by long years of struggle and suffering, their banishment has therefore been revoked, and their deeply implanted longing for their former lands in the Uttermost West is calling them home. As a further spur they have been told, or they foresee, that if they stay on Middle-earth they are destined to undergo a deterioration, "to forget and to be forgotten." The Fourth Age is intended by the One who decides such things to be an Age of Men. So they are returning to live with the Valar as they were meant to do from the beginning. Galadriel is forgiven by the Valar for her former defiances and allowed to accompany her elves overseas "in reward" for what she has done to oppose Sauron, "but above all for her rejection of the Ring when it came within her power."2 For their services involving the Ring, Bilbo and Frodo are the first hobbits to receive the unheard-of privilege of healing their wounds with the elves in the peace of the Undying Lands. Arwen, who has elected to become human by marrying Aragorn, is given the power to surrender to Frodo her seat in one of the boats sailing westward.