Master of Middle Earth (7 page)

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
despair, 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. Nothing 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.

In all the
foregoing arrangements of Peoples, and punishment or reward of individuals, the
Valar are the immediate prime movers. But they are acting as executives of the
will of the One, and their power of independent decision is limited. The
Appendices tell of two pivotal events that reveal the outlines of these limits.
When "as a reward for their sufferings in the cause against Morgoth, the
Valar . . . granted to the Edain a land to dwell in . . ."—the island of
Númenor, at the end of the First Age—they could triple the life spans of these
men, but they could not make them undying as were the elves, because they
"were not permitted
to take from them the Gift of Men . . .":
death (emphasis added). The Valar obeyed an edict coming down from above. On
the other hand, they seem to have some discretion in applying this edict to the
half-human, half-elven offspring of the two previous marriages between elves
and men: "At the end of the First Age the Valar gave to the Half-elven an
irrevocable choice to which kindred they would belong." Under the command
to make this choice, Arwen abandons immortality in order to marry Aragorn.

The other occasion
which the Valar clearly do not, perhaps cannot, manage by themselves is the
invasion of Valinor by rebellious Númenoreans demanding immortality. Then
". . . the Valar laid down their Guardianship and called upon the One . .
." who sank Númenor under the waves. These incidents serve to show that
while the Valar have what Tolkien calls incomprehensibly great
"demiurgic" powers,
³
which they use in governing and
guarding the affairs of Middle-earth and which justify the invocation of their
help in prayer by many of its folk, they are only agents of "the One"
and defer to his direct intervention in major emergencies. Beyond this point
Tolkien does not choose to go in defining the relationship of the Valar to
their superior. Why should he? He has told us all he needs to for the
literary-philosophical framework of his tale.