Reflections (5 page)

 

These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating. They were brown shot with a green light. Often afterward Pippin tried to describe his first impression of them. “One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present . . .”
(II, 66)

 

As I said, take note when Tolkien talks of water. The well of the past contains truth, but it stops short at the present. In this, it is like the Hobbits of the Shire, but unlike the Elves, whose pools reflect stars. The Ents, however, unlike Hobbits, who are pragmatic and capable of growth, are grown up and complete as they are. They are hard to budge toward the future. It is a measure of the seriousness of the situation that the Ents are actually persuaded to move, and even then they only move against the lesser evil of Saruman. They are one of the things which will not survive long in a new age. You are meant to feel, and you do, that is a pity: they embody the mature innocence of the Third Age. But you have to look for real help to the Riders of Rohan, the comparative newcomers, who have yet to make history.

Rohan and its grassy plains have been foreshadowed too, in a way, in the Barrow-downs, so that the new theme when it emerges seems entirely in keeping. But here, instead of Tom Bombadil between grass and sky, it is Gandalf who suddenly reappears, with something of the same force. This too is not unheralded, both by Galadriel's Mirror and by the previous pattern of the narrative. Gandalf disappears; sooner or later after that, the Ring is used; sooner or later, after that again, Gandalf reappears, a spearhead for the allies, just as the Ringwraiths are for Mordor. Gandalf's coming to Rohan ought to make one certain that Frodo will put on the Ring again in Mordor.

The Rohirrim are purely Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien lifted them entirely from his study of Old English—even their horses, I suspect, come from the legendary first Saxons in Britain, Hengist and Horsa. They have the Old English heroic culture complete. Tolkien does a delicate job here of differentiating them from Aragorn, who is at once both rougher and more sophisticated, coming as he does from a far older culture. For, as I said, these are a people without a past to whom we should look for the future. If you doubt this, you should contrast the passive roles of the Elf-women with that of Éowyn and the active part she plays, albeit disobediently. But before the Riders can do anything, they have to put their own house in order. Théoden, King of Rohan, has to cast off evil counsel and the weight of age, and then to fight in Helm's Deep—all of which involves such bewildering coming and going that I always have twinges of incredulity about the stamina of Shadowfax. I also have twinges of doubt, as I am sure you are intended to, about the reliability of Rohan, despite their nobility. I go very Welsh, and when the men of Minas Tirith later say, “Rohan will not come,” I shake my head and mutter about perfidious Albion. Tolkien, as a Welsh scholar, may have had this reaction of mine in mind too. Certainly he is once again performing one of his sleights-of-narrative: for the thing at the back of his mind must certainly have been the way the Saxon King Harold had to march north to fight one invasion force in 1066, before rushing south again to fight the Normans, who were the real threat. Again, there is no need for the reader to know this. It comes over very clearly that the Rohirrim are having difficulty disentangling themselves from their own pressing present. Quite early on, you are asking, can they do it in time to be of use to the future?

Parallel to this in time at least, Frodo and Sam and the noxious Gollum are creeping toward Mordor. This is the section foreshadowed in the coda to the first movement, but the landscape is now far more luridly depressing. Vividly in tune with the negative nature of their Quest are the marsh pools containing images of dead people. Again, watch Tolkien with water. What is history now? Similarly, the only virtues they can exercise are negative: endurance, and forbearance toward Gollum. Everything is sterile, for all their heroism. Tolkien begins asserting their heroism from here on, and it obviously exists, like the positive love between Frodo and Sam, but the negatives are so overwhelming that you sense impending failure.

Therefore you feel relief as well as surprise when they run into Faramir and his guerrillas. It is like coming out into the sun. Tolkien does wonders of suggestion here: the landscape is meticulously southern and the ferns are brown with winter, but the herbs Sam uses to cook with are all evergreen, and so is the cedar he makes his fire with. This has to be deliberate. About the same time, the others are meeting the futureless Ents and the pastless Rohirrim: Frodo and Sam meet those who have a long past but also obvious potential for the future. But notice that, when Tolkien typically reinforces his point with water, Frodo and Faramir are both behind the waterfall at the time when they spare Gollum in the pool. But at the time you ignore that hint and realize simply that here is hope, and a potent force for good. You discover that Mordor has only yet spread patchily in Ithilien.

Be that as it may, as the others make their successful onslaught on Isengard, Frodo and Sam also attack a tower, by way of Cirith Ungol and Shelob. This section has been heavily foreshadowed in the Barrows and the mines of Moria, with their unavailing heroisms, and the weight of that makes this one more horrible. It is horrible enough on its own. The indecisions of Sam make it worse. And finally, despite Sting and Galadriel's aid, while the other Hobbits triumph in Isengard, Frodo is taken prisoner, an exact reversal of their respective positions at the beginning of the movement. This reversing is part of the deliberate counterplotting of this whole section.

And now we turn to the marvelous city of Minas Tirith, in nearly the final swatch in the plaiting of this huge penultimate movement. We already admire the place because of Faramir, with whom, in a brief episode, Tolkien has succeeded in dissipating the impression left by Boromir. It adds to the sense of marvel that Minas Tirith is not degenerate and cynical after all. The city has been kept before us one way or another since the Council of Elrond, so that, along with the surprise when we come to it at last, there is a sense of familiarity, as of a hidden theme related to all the others finally emerging from the orchestra. Something of it has been suggested too in the episode back in the Shire when Fatty Bolger is left alone to deal with the Black Riders, and the Hobbits sound their alarm. We are told that the horn “rent the night like fire on a hilltop. AWAKE!” (I, 188). And again in II when the watchfires of Rohan surround the Orcs. Now the beacon fires spring alight round the city as Pippin rides up with Gandalf. The effect is to give Minas Tirith distinctly Christian associations—and why not, since Tolkien has used everything else in our heritage?—because you think at once of “Christians awake!” and that bit of a hymn “How gleam thy watchfires through the night,” which not only adds to the stature of the city, but, as we shall see, casts a little Christianity on Frodo and Sam too.

But it would be daft to see Minas Tirith as Jerusalem, bravely fronting evil. It owes far, far more to the doomed city of Atlantis. With it, Tolkien is working another sleight-of-narrative. Atlantis was very old, wonderfully civilized, and built in a series of terracelike rings. And it was inundated before the dawn of history. By deliberately using and knowing that he was using Atlantis as a model, Tolkien again ensures that the reader gets the message without needing to know: Minas Tirith is doomed. And, as the muster of Mordor proceeds, you cannot see how, even if Rohan comes, that could make much difference.

Rohan is preparing to come. So is Aragorn. In an action heralded in the Barrows, in Moria, and again in Shelob's Lair, Aragorn sets out with his Grey Company to take the Paths of the Dead. Aragorn is of course, as the descendant of the Kings of the North, preeminently qualified to summon those faithless dead in there and make them keep their word at last. But this episode, terrifying as it is, repeats such an often-adumbrated scene that it almost carries the weight of an allegory: you can take the failures of the past, much as Tolkien has by now taken most of Western literary heritage, and force them to do at least some good toward the future. Tolkien would deny this. He says irritably in the foreword to the second edition of
The Lord of the Rings
, “I think that many confuse ‘applicability' with ‘allegory'” (I, 7), and maybe he is right. And watch out. Strewn all around this section are striking examples of the fey or doomed utterance. Aragorn himself says, “It will be long, I fear, ere Theoden sits at ease again in Meduseld” (III, 46). Halbarad says in Dimholt, “This is an evil door, and my death lies beyond it” (III, 59). And in the midst of the battle, the Black Captain himself says, “No living man may hinder me!” (III, 116). This sort of thing has also been heralded, when Aragorn warns Gandalf against entering Moria. Because of that, we are prone to believe these sayings. Then notice that not one of them comes true in the way it suggests. Theoden is killed and never sits in Meduseld. Halbarad is not killed in the Paths of the Dead, but a long way out on the other side. And the Black Captain is hindered by a Hobbit and killed by a girl. Since the bringing about of the future is what this movement is concerned with, we should be troubled.

For, you see, the battle which ought to be final, in which the forces of good throw everything they have at Mordor, is no such thing. It is a magnificent battle, though. One of Tolkien's gifts is being able to rise to the largest occasion. I wait with bated breath every time for Rohan to come, or not come, and sing as they slay. But when it is over, the enemy is still working on Denethor and Mordor is not destroyed. So, in a pattern which is now familiar, there is a coda to this huge movement. By now these codas are definitely forming an “afterward” and looking to the future. In this one, Faramir and Éowyn find healing and love, and the other protagonists debate, in a way that echoes the Council of Elrond, and like that Council, resolve on an act of aggression: they will attack Mordor as a diversion for Frodo. So are we to suppose that this whole movement has been a huge diversion?

Only then does Tolkien take up the story of Frodo and Sam. This is what might be called the slow movement, drear and negative and full of tribulation. Although it is odd that the positive side of the action is compounded of killing and politics, and the negative of love, endurance, and courage, this is how it seems to be. Tolkien insists that the first is valueless without the second. Odd, as I said, particularly as the slight Christian tinge given to Minas Tirith definitely reflects on Frodo, who is now displaying what one thinks of as the humbler Christian virtues; and because the careful plotting of this movement, to make it in most ways the antithesis of the preceding one, keeps bringing, to my mind at least, Clough's poem “Say not the struggle nought availeth.” The force of that poem is that, even if you are not succeeding in your own locality, someone somewhere else
is
.

Anyway, as one side enters glorious Minas Tirith, Frodo and Sam creep into Mordor, its antithesis; and with them Gollum, a sort of anti-Hobbit. This ignoble trio are the only ones likely to succeed. And they fail. Make no mistake, despite their courage, and their wholly admirable affection for one another, and Frodo's near transfiguration, their action is indeed negative. At the last minute, Frodo refuses to throw the Ring into the Cracks of Doom and puts it on instead. Their almost accidental success is due to a negative action both Hobbits performed in the past. Frodo, not lovingly, spared Gollum's life. Sam, not understanding Gollum's loneliness in the marshes, threatened him and turned his incipient friendship to hatred. So Gollum bites off Frodo's finger and falls with it and the Ring into the Cracks of Doom.

Now what are we to make of this? I have of course put it far more baldly than Tolkien does, but it is there for everyone to read. I think the explanation is suggested in the very long coda to the entire story which takes up nearly half the last volume. Most writers would have been content to stop with the destruction of Mordor, or at least after the shorter coda of rejoicing and the celebrating of Nine-Fingered Frodo that follows the fall of Mordor. But Tolkien, characteristically, has a whole further movement, which now definitely is “and afterward . . .”

Before we try to make sense of it, let me draw your attention to another aspect of Tolkien's narrative skill: his constant care to have each stage of his story viewed or experienced by one or other of his central characters. He had to split them apart to do it, but it is a great strength of the narrative, and one not often shared by his imitators. Each major event has a firm viewpoint and solid substance. Things are visualized, and because Hobbits are present, eating and drinking gets done. The overall effect is to show that huge events are composed of small ones, and as was signaled at the beginning, that ordinary people can get forced to make history—forced by history itself. By this stage of the narrative, however, the idea is being proposed in a different form: even the smallest and most ignoble act can have untold effect. And thank goodness for Gollum.

Well, yes. But remember that Gollum only did for Frodo what the Dead did for Aragorn. And indeed much of this coda of codas is concerned with shrinking the scale again, back to the Shire, where the now battle-hardened Hobbits make their bit of personal history by dislodging Saruman, and the Hobbits of the Shire settle down with a happy sigh to draw quietly aside from the path of history. As Tolkien has been unobtrusively pointing out all along, if it were not for such folk, there would be nothing worth doing heroic things for. But we are being lulled again. We must not forget the Sea, nor the very clear statements that an age of the world is passing. Tolkien was not cheating about that—it proves to have passed—but only suggesting that the next age
could
be an age of Sauron. And remember Sauron was never really precisely
there
, unlike all the other characters. Before we are prepared for it, the woodwind nostalgia theme is swelling again, to drown everything else. Sam is saddened to find his actions not remembered. A mallorn tree grows in the Shire. Frodo is ill and finishes writing his history. And at length it becomes evident that the destruction of the Age entails the passing of Elf rings too, along with Galadriel, and Gandalf, whose nature has been concealed in his name all along. And Frodo too. Frodo has become Elvish, quite literally. By his not-doing, however heroic, he has widowed himself from history, just like the Elves, and must now go off upon the Sea like the rest.