Master of Middle Earth (18 page)

The coexistence of
the free peoples of Middle-earth with one another is founded on mutual respect
and appreciation. Radically incompatible with these is the kind of contempt
Boromir expresses for all half-lings, elves and wizards, not to mention
Aragorn, in the scene when he tries to take the Ring from Frodo at Parth Galen.
In this context his saying, "Each to his own kind," is in effect a
proclamation of the superiority of men over other species, of Gondoreans over
other men, and eventually of Boromir over other Gondoreans. In some degree some
members of all the other species are smirched by this sense of the alienness of
other peoples and the peculiar excellence of their own. Summed up in Boromir's
words, which might have come straight from the brain of Sauron, the principle
is at the root of all division on Middle-earth: "Each to his own kind."
The business of
The Lord of the Rings
is to eradicate it inside the
civilization of the West. Aragorn the statesman makes a beginning by reaching
out to the men of the South and the East through treaty and alliance. But for
the most part the bringing of Southrons and Easterlings into full
reconciliation with the West is left as unfinished business.

In his essay
"On
Fairy-stories" Tolkien takes pains to make the point that most good fairy
stories are not "stories about fairies" but about "the adventures
of men in the Perilous Realm." Aragorn is unquestionably the leading man
in
The Lord of the Rings,
which is a fairy tale within Tolkien's broad
definition of the genre, yet he is probably the least written about, least
valued, and most misunderstood of all its major characters. By some critics,
like Roger Sale,
¹
he is completely neglected in favor of Frodo as
central hero; by others, like William Ready, he is dismissed as "almost
too good to be human; he has some of the qualities of a noble horse."
²
Mr. Ready wants him to display "a sharp taste for sin."

It is not clear
why this demand, more appropriate to a realistic novel than to heroic fantasy,
should be made, on penalty of being horsy, of Aragorn alone among the foes of
Sauron. What is clear is that if it were made of all alike it would blur the
clear dichotomy between good and evil on which Tolkien has chosen to build his
epic. Of course, Mr. Ready may mean only that Aragorn has no weaknesses,
suffers no limitation. If so, he is demonstrably wrong. But merely to dwell on
Aragorn's faults in order to refute Mr. Ready's school of criticism would be
too negative a stance for a fair-minded reader to adopt. Our understanding of
this complex man will be better served by showing how his varied qualities
complement or contend with one another, and how he struggles to keep uppermost
those that are best. This is the same struggle that has to be waged under
different guises by all the leaders and many of the followers of the West.
Without it they would not be good. One of Tolkien's major achievements in these
degenerate days is to win our sympathy for their triumph over the evil from
within.

Admittedly,
Aragorn is rather more difficult to know truly than any other important person
in the story. The fault is partly Tolkien's. As noted elsewhere, in the
Introductory Note to
Tree and Leaf
he confessed that during the period
1938-1939 when he first brought Aragorn (disguised as Strider) and the hobbits
together at Bree he "had then no more notion than they had of . . . who
Strider was; and I had begun to despair of surviving to find out."
Consequently, Tolkien had not put into the narrative before then any
preparatory allusions to Strider's real identity, his present reasons for
interest in the Ring, and his many past years of travel and labor connected
with it in the Wild. We do not begin to get most of this essential information
about Isildur's heir until the Council of Elrond several chapters later, and
only in retrospect can understand his actions and feeling at Bree. Even at
Rivendell we may well miss the bare hints which are all that Tolkien finds
space for about Aragorn's love for Arwen since youth. Yet this, along with his
concurrent planning to recover the throne of Gondor, is basic motivation
without a knowledge of which Aragorn remains a mystery. Unless the reader is
very alert to the few obscure references to Arwen scattered here and there
later on, he can easily wake up somewhere in Volume III with a shock of total
surprise at Aragorn's approaching marriage to the lady. Not until the beautiful
"Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" in Appendix A do we fully grasp her
influence upon his life and see him whole.

No doubt Tolkien,
making a literary virtue out of his unforeseen introduction of Strider, plays
up for all they are worth the resulting sense of mystery and the excitement of
gradual discovery of the truth about him. But Tolkien has not escaped the risks
of puzzling readers into misconceptions that are hard to root out even on
rereading the text several times. For instance, the travel-worn stranger with
the "pale stern face" and "dark hair flecked with grey"
sitting in the shadows in the common room of the inn at Bree may seem unduly
secretive until we know his background. His father was killed by Sauron's ores when
he was a baby and he has been reared to manhood by Elrond in Rivendell under an
assumed name to hide him from the Enemy, who would give much to trap the only
remaining man with clear title to the thrones of both the North and the South
Kingdoms. All his life he has been making arduous journeys far east and south
to learn of those regions and peoples at first hand and to spy on Sauron. Under
false names he has fought for both Rohan and Minas Tirith. Chief of the
Dúnedain, he has quietly led them in patrols that have slipped along the
borders of the Shire to guard it and the Ring it holds. They are homeless and
solitary men, these Rangers, as their work demands, and he has become as grim
and stern as any of them. Not the less so because as a young man he fell in
love with the elfin princess Arwen, daughter of Elrond, whom by her father's
command he cannot marry until he regains his throne. The long years pass
without bringing him nearer to either goal, until the Ring reappears. Shortly
before coming to Bree he has returned from a joint search with Gandalf for
Gollum, whom he captured clear down near the borders of Mordor. And within the
past week his Rangers have been routed by incursions of the nine Black Riders
under the command of Angmar, the ancient enemy of his race.

This is the
ambitious, weary and apprehensive prince who impatiently watches the foolish
antics of the hobbits under the suspicious eyes of the crowd in the inn. To his
mind the hobbits badly need taking in hand, as children who are playing games
with the fate of Middle-earth. Having trailed them to Bree after overhearing
their good-byes to Bombadil, he must now undertake to guide them to the safety
of Rivendell. But how to persuade them to accept him—a complete stranger? He
has asked the innkeeper Butterbur to take a message to the hobbits that he
wants to talk to them, and has been ignominiously turned down. Like other folk
in Bree, Butterbur is parochially contemptuous of mysterious Rangers. The
incident has not decreased Aragorn's sense of anger and frustration, but it is
typical of him that he manages to master them. After some mild but unsuccessful
warnings to Frodo in the taproom to be more cautious, he quietly invites
himself into the hobbits' private room and patiently sets out to win their
confidence. He does not make the mistake of being ingratiating; on the
contrary, he starts out with a shock tactic. Because of the debacle in the
common room he treats them like the children they have shown themselves to be,
and proposes to give them unspecified valuable information in exchange for the
"reward" of being allowed to accompany them. The proposal is meant to
be indignantly refused and when it is, Aragon applauds.

Step by step he
arouses the hobbits to the dangers of their situation. He warms them to him by
making fun of his own wayworn appearance which causes the innkeeper to scorn
him: " 'Well, I have a rascally look, have I not?' " he asks Frodo
"with a curl of his lip and a queer gleam of his eye." Aragorn is
hiding here the very real hurt he feels. But when Butterbur enters the room
again with a pointblank warning to the hobbits not to "take up with a
Ranger," thereby disturbing Aragorn's efforts at conciliation, Aragorn
strikes back acidly, asking whether Butterbur is prepared to guard them against
the Black Riders. And the discovery that Butterbur is holding an important
letter from Gandalf to Frodo, which he has totally forgotten to deliver for
months, snaps Aragorn's patience with the "fat innkeeper who only
remembers his own name because people shout at him all day." Aragorn is
capable of lasting anger at laxity and stupidity and ingratitude. These are
still in his mind weeks later at Elrond's Council when he says of his Rangers:
"Travellers scowl at us and countrymen give us scornful names. 'Strider' I
am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his
heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded
ceaselessly." Aragorn will have a long memory for injuries when he ascends
the throne, but he will restrain it with a sense of justice, as at Rivendell he
pulls himself up short with the reminder that his own policy has deliberately
kept the Shire folk ignorant of their own danger: "Yet we would not have
it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be,
and we must be secret to keep them so." The wisdom of such a policy may be
debated, but certainly its intention is generous.

But back to
Bree—Aragorn is deeply shaken with hatred and fear of the Black Riders while he
tries to make the hobbits realize how terrible they are. His face is
"drawn as if with pain, and his hands clenched the arms of his chair . . .
while he sat with unseeing eyes as if walking in distant memory." He is
reliving recent encounters with these living dead, whom he now proposes to face
again, and is perhaps also remembering that his ancestors in the North Kingdom
were obliterated ages ago by Angmar, their captain, his hereditary foe. Aragorn
may resent slurs by others against his conviction of his own high worth, but he
can be curiously humble about it himself when he offers his help to the hobbits
on their journey: "I am older than I look. I might prove useful."

Aragorn's problem
with the hobbits is largely resolved for him by Gandalf's letter of identification.
When Frodo asks him why he didn't reveal himself before as a friend of the
wizard, Aragon gives several practical reasons but ends with the real one,
which is emotional: " 'But I must admit,' he added with a queer laugh,
'that I hoped you would take to me for my own sake. A hunted man sometimes
wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. But there, I believe my looks are
against me.'" He is weary of the pretenses imposed by his life of enforced
disguise, and longs to be given the trust which he is finding out can only be
won by first giving trust himself.

Throughout this
scene Aragorn is holding powerful feelings under rein. Sometimes they escape
for a moment, as with Butterbur. So also in the case of Pippin, whose
well-meant but tactless remark that they would all look as disreputable as
Strider "after lying for days in hedges and ditches" provokes him to
a tart outburst, "It would take more than a few days, or weeks, or years,
of wandering in the Wild to make you look like Strider . . . And you would die
first, unless you are made of sterner stuff than you look to be." And
Sam's persistent doubt that he is the real Strider draws a raw assertion of
power: " 'If I had killed the real Strider, I could kill
you.
And I
should have killed you already without so much talk. If I was after the Ring, I
could have it—
now
!' " That
he could easily take the Ring from the hobbits by force or fraud and use its
magic to win his long-sought throne, and with it the maiden he loves, has not
failed to cross his mind. Like every other leader of the West he is given one
fateful chance to yield to its temptation. But he conquers it and is never
bothered by it again. Taking his hand off his sword, he smiles suddenly.
"I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can serve you, I
will." By confiding to the hobbits his true identity he puts his life in
their hands. And by his pledge of help he subordinates his own ambitions to
their safety as bearers of the Ring.

All of the
foregoing gives us some insight into the strong eruptions of rebellion and the
hidden sensitiveness which Aragorn keeps "under control by a yet stronger
will. He is no Stoic. The apparently endless labors of his lifetime sometimes
seem too much to bear. But in Tolkien's world as in ours it is not required of
a man that he always love his burden or be patient under it—only that he
continue to bear it. Aragorn bears his, usually with a rueful humor. As if
purged by his former outbursts, he accepts with good grace Frodo's observation
that if Aragorn were a spy of Sauron he would "seem fairer and feel
fouler." He laughs as he replies, "I look foul and feel fair. Is that
it?" Repeating the jingle that "all that is gold does not
glitter," which warns the hobbits to look below the surface, and unsheathing
to their gaze the broken sword mentioned in the same rhyme as belonging to the
crownless one who shall be King, he smiles with gentle irony at the now silent
Sam: "Well, with Sam's permission we will call that settled."

From then on he
comes to respect and love the hobbits during the flight to Rivendell, and they
finally to depend on his woodsmanship and courage and to like him, though they
do not yet understand him well enough to love him. Frodo tells Gandalf at the
end of the journey that "Strider saved us ... I have become very fond of
Strider. Well,
fond
is not the right word. I mean he is dear to me;
though he is strange and grim at times. In fact, he reminds me often of
you." Like pupils, like master, though Aragorn has sorrows and ambitions
of a human kind that the wizard can never know. He can joke with the hobbits
about the birds' nests behind the stone trolls' ears but he can also, as they
near Riverdell where Arwen is, sing with a "strange, eager face" and
shining eyes the haunting lay about the love of the man Beren and the elfin
princess Lúthien, which so strangely forecasts his and Arwen's own love. None
of the hobbits has the faintest glimmer of an idea why Aragorn chooses this
particular legend to recite, and neither have we at first reading, thanks to
Tolkien's failure to mention Arwen at all up to that point. But in the light of
later revelations it can dawn on us that the longing for Arwen is a torment, a
joy, a despair, a comfort to Aragorn in a time of little hope. Small wonder
that he is "strange and grim at times," but he seldom speaks of the
life of private emotion stirring within.