Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past
If we tried to reduce The Lord of the Rings to a sort of “greatest hits album” of 10-15 chapters, this is definitely one of them: if you have a favorite quotation from the books, or if you have seen The Lord of the Rings quoted in social media posts or on bumper stickers, etc., there’s a very reasonable chance the words come from this chapter, which is chock full of great lines from Gandalf. It is an embarrassment of riches for me as a reader and it leaves me way too many choices to chew on for this post.
This won’t be our only time to talk at length about Gandalf, but since it’s the last time he’ll be the central figure in a chapter for about half of this book, let’s dig into him as a character for a bit. Of the many depictions I’ve seen of Gandalf, surely John Howe’s paintings are at or very near the top of my list, so I’ll drop a piece of his art here as tonight’s example: https://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=315 The figure seen there is definitely the Gandalf on display in Bag End’s front room throughout basically this entire chapter -- a storm-battered but undaunted old fellow who’s clearly seen many miles and has hung on to a huge proportion of the wisdom that can be earned in that kind of experience. I love how human Gandalf manages to be -- prickly at times with Frodo when he thinks the hobbit is being a little impertinent, self-doubting and even a little scared when addressing what he either failed to do quickly enough or cannot do for Frodo now, as well as confident and almost magnetic in laying out for us huge swaths of the past of Middle Earth that open up a sense of history that The Hobbit, for all its strengths, never really attempts to do. It’s impossible not to be drawn to this depiction of Gandalf, I think, and to imagine yourself in Frodo’s seat near the study’s open window, drinking in these long, riveting passages as the old wizard brings the past to life. Tolkien wants us spellbound by him, since this backstory is crucial to all that is about to take place, and given the idyllic setting of the isolated Shire, it all really does have to be delivered compellingly and at high speed by a trusted outsider, and at this point in the story that’s going to have to be Gandalf.
Gandalf is a little elusive with his language about what he knows and what his purpose is -- he acknowledges to Frodo that he “has known much that only the Wise know” but he never really expands on what it means to be one of “the Wise”. We know from other writings of Tolkien’s that Gandalf is a man on a mission -- not really a man at all, in fact, but the closest thing Middle Earth has to an angel in disguise, one of five Maiar chosen to come to the aid of the creatures of this world to help them fight back against Sauron, the Dark Lord, who is himself a powerful member of the Maiar. He has lived here for centuries under a number of names -- other than Gandalf, the most well-known is Mithrandir, which is the Sindarin name for him, and which means “grey wanderer” -- and seems to have no real aim other than to see Sauron thwarted, if not destroyed. He also appears to be about the only guy left who remembers his orders -- Saruman is, well, we’ll deal with him soon, and Radagast seems to have wandered off into blissful ignorance of the world and its problems, for the most part. The other two are among Tolkien’s most baffling mysteries, but whatever happened to them, it doesn’t relate to us here. Anyway, under the circumstances, I think we’d expect Gandalf to be fairly stressed and maybe more than a little frustrated at having to manage the entire operation alone. I think of that as good enough reason for his occasional testiness here.
But of course Gandalf is mostly not testy -- instead he offers Frodo really beautiful insights into what it means to be someone burdened by duty, as Gandalf is (although he doesn’t acknowledge that burden to Frodo directly). These are the moments you’ll be most likely to know -- when Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time”, Gandalf replies, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” Oof, I felt that right in my 2020. And then later when Frodo, contemplating Gollum, says “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!”, Gandalf’s reply is to say “Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand.” Or when Frodo says that Gollum deserved death, and Gandalf fires back, “Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” What can we make of this Gandalf fellow?
I’m struck by his compassion. For Gollum, in particular -- it took a lot of empathy to piece this story together, given Gandalf’s own account of how hard it was to get straight answers out of him, and so I can imagine the piecing together of these fragments into a whole story that treats Smeagol/Gollum as an agent and a person with real feelings, rather than being the sort of “monster of the week” obstacle he could easily have become. When Frodo initially exclaims about how “loathsome” Gollum is, having heard part of the story, Gandalf replies very calmly, “I think it is a sad story, and it might have happened to others, even some hobbits that I have known.” Gandalf speaks admiringly of Bilbo’s pity, and how it may “rule the fate of many”, but let’s not miss Gandalf’s own pity here, sparing a creature that he and Aragorn (whose cameo here is tantalizingly brief for anybody who knows him) could easily have dispatched after getting the information out of him. And while Gandalf thinks it was Bilbo’s voice that awakened Smeagol’s memories of light and water and the world beyond his darkness, I think he’s seriously under-rating his own ability to help Smeagol access those memories -- the Smeagol/Gollum character we will come to read about in The Two Towers is shaped by that encounter with Gandalf, I think, and for the better. To me, Gandalf plays such a crucial invisible role in that arc, which he is not present for, of course.
And I want to circle back to that sense of his being burdened by duty -- Gandalf has a refreshingly humble opinion of himself, given that he is an immortal being cloaked only temporarily in flesh, and possessed of a level of knowledge and power that rivals the combined intellect and skill of the whole Shire (with Buckland thrown in). I love love love his answer to Frodo, when he asks “Why was I chosen?” since Gandalf’s reply almost seems harsh or bitterly humorous, at first: he says “Such questions cannot be answered. You can be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.” But Gandalf isn’t slapping Frodo’s wrist to punish his pride here, and I don’t think he’s having a joke at his expense, given the context. I think he’s teaching Frodo (and, by extension, us) what it means to have a vocation -- to be called to something. That calling, as he says, is generally not under our control, and it is best not to think of the calling as bringing with it some kind of supernatural ability to accomplish “the thing”, whatever the thing is. The calling is just that -- a call. We answer it as we are able. We do not act because only we could have fixed the problem -- we act because, despite others having as much or more to offer, it is not them who are called, but we are. Gandalf is standing, hunched over in a hobbit hole in a battered grey cloak, while his peer, Saruman, lives lavishly in a resplendent tower, because once they were both called and only Gandalf had ears to hear it. Gandalf already knows this about Saruman, by the way, or at least I think it’s obvious from his descriptions that he knows it on some level, but he’s not quite ready to face it himself -- he’s focused on Frodo and will walk into needless peril (nearly disastrously screwing up his mission) because he can’t quite turn that level of insight on his fellow member of the Istari.
Speaking of a focus on Frodo, I am short-changing him here because he will soon have the spotlight and we’ll have plenty to say about him, but I have to say, the desolate bravery of Frodo telling Gandalf that he will bear the Ring away from the Shire brings a lump to my throat every time. Something about his conviction that his own suffering would be worthwhile if he knew he had saved this place he loves is really inspiring, I think because it’s so selfless -- he acknowledges that he would probably never see it again, under the circumstances. And oh, the heartbreak in those last sentences: “But I feel very small, and very uprooted, and well -- desperate. The Enemy is so strong and terrible.” I mean, who hasn’t felt that way sometimes, and more to the point, who hasn’t felt that way a lot in the last two months, looking at a crisis that is beyond any of our abilities to solve in a lasting way? I’m with you, Frodo. I want to take this journey with you.
And I’ll give Sam Gamgee just a little time here at the end of a very long post -- it’s impossible not to like the Sam we hear at The Green Dragon, arguing with the odious Ted Sandyman and talking glowingly of strange doings among the non-hobbit creatures of Middle Earth. And I’d argue that it’s very hard to like the Sam we encounter at the end of the chapter -- a slinking eavesdropper (regardless of his comments on Bag End’s architectural details) whose bumbling speech patterns and ridiculous mood swings make him fairly pathetic. This isn’t the Sam I will come to love. In part, I think this is intentional on Tolkien’s part -- part of the journey will be Samwise coming to a better understanding of himself and his place in all this, and having him dragged into the adventure like this creates a sort of arc for him. But in part I just think it’s a fumbled ball -- Sam is presented at the end of the chapter as being just a little too dull-witted and simple-minded, a child who can be easily distracted by a shiny thing. The hobbit we come to know is a simple fellow, sure, but I think Tolkien overdoes it here a little, maybe in a not really successful attempt at some comic relief for the end of a very weighty chapter.
I could talk a lot more about this chapter and all its little moments -- even as I’m putting this post together, I’m throwing things over the side like a pilot desperately trying to get a plane to take off despite one engine being out -- but I feel that's as much as I can tackle in one post. I’ll see you here tomorrow, as we take to that road that goes ever on and on in Chapter 3: Three is Company.