Book III, Chapter 9: Flotsam and Jetsam
This chapter juxtaposes two incredibly disparate elements from The Lord of the Rings, but they’re both so characteristic of the story -- an idyllic and lavishly appointed meal with friends, and an account of near-apocalyptic destruction of a stronghold of evil -- it’s a little wild to see them sitting side by side. It’s late in the day (well, by the clock it is VERY early), but I don’t want to lose too much momentum here on my journey, so I’ll try to do both sides justice. I will note in passing, though, that this is a chapter I read in the third volume of my Millennium Edition -- so this is the L in TOLKIEN, and Book III’s title is The Treason of Isengard. It’s interesting that that’s the framing here -- not The Waking of Rohan or The Return of the Wizard or whatever else it might have been named. Tolkien’s focus for this book is on Saruman as a traitor -- a very different kind of figure from Sauron in some respects, therefore, though of course in other ways there’s some real overlap.
The first half of the chapter is less eventful but in some ways a lot cozier for me as a reader -- just following Merry and Pippin around a flooded Isengard building as they assemble a tasty meal for everyone, before all retiring outside together to smoke some (pipe)weed and let Legolas look at the sky. It’s very reminiscent of where I started this journey, with shades of Bag End and Farmer Maggot and Crickhollow, the comfort of a good hobbit life on full display. It seems to set the Three Hunters at ease, and goodness knows those boys have earned a break. I do like the little exchange between Pippin and Aragorn, in which Pippin watches him smoke and then, thinking (presumably) about their first encounter at the Prancing Pony, says “Strider the Ranger has come back!” To which Aragorn replies, “He has never been away. . . . I am Strider and Dunadan too, and I belong to both Gondor and the North.” We get more and more glimpses of this division in Aragorn -- which he’s treating as fusion, here -- and I think they’re helpful to growing a sense of him as a character. He’s willing to leave behind his old ways for his obligations in Gondor, but in some ways he doesn’t want to have to make that tradeoff. Who would? Will he still be Strider and Dunadan, the grimy ranger and Bilbo’s fireside poet friend, when he is also Elessar and King of Gondor and Arnor? That’s part of what he’s asking himself.
Once they’ve settled into their ease, outside, Pippin and Merry take it in turns to fill in the story since the breaking of the Fellowship, and much of this is new to us, the reading audience, especially the assault of the Ents on Isengard, which John Howe depicts for us here: http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/f/f3/John_Howe_-_The_Ents_Destroy_Isengard.jpg I do think that Tolkien continues to deliver on the wisdom of the unhasty Ents -- again, far from being self-destructively cautious, as they appear in the films, here their deliberate approach allows them to approach Isengard at the exact right time, slipping quietly into positions after Saruman’s army trudges off to their doom, and catching the wizard unprepared for them. It’s interesting to hear some conversation about Saruman, whom we still haven’t seen “on screen” yet, despite the important role he’s played in the story so far -- Aragorn still finds him dangerous and fears that it would be bewitching to risk a talk with him, and I wonder if the Elven Rings are relevant to the conversation, since the only three people Aragorn thinks of as able to withstand Saruman’s lies on their own are Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, who wear the three rings. But does he know that? I think not?
I do love the Gandalf resurrection reveal scene, since it goes by so quickly -- just Gandalf shouting at the “fool of a Took” and Pippin sitting there awestruck. A classic moment from them both, and a funny little callback to their last encounter in Moria -- Gandalf may be returned with glorious new purpose and power to fight the Enemy, but this crotchety old angel’s still got enough mischief left in him to mess with Peregrin Took’s head while on his way to his next errand. There’s a wonderful haste to Gandalf that’s becoming trademark here -- we can tell as readers that the war with Sauron is heating up, even if we don’t have characters telling us explicitly how, since Gandalf’s speed and lack of any hesitation aren’t really explicable for other reasons. Pippin was a hero for us back in Chapter 3, but he’s about to make another classically dumb Pippin move, so maybe getting a little reminder of his “foolish Took” status here is strategic. There’s more than a little foolishness here, certainly, since Aragorn and the hobbits have all they need to put together a legitimate (if fearful) understanding of what’s happening in the Shire, but they just don’t quite manage it. There will need to be a Scouring, of course -- that’s ahead of us -- but it’s a little bit of a shame they didn’t work it out earlier on their own. Then again, had they done so, we might have lost one or both hobbits to an errand home, and they prove indispensably valuable in connection with the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in The Return of the King.
It’s hard to do justice to the central images of this chapter -- the Ents ripping down stone walls like they’re nothing, terrifying the crap out of Saruman. I think this is one of the places where Tolkien’s imagery is so good that you need to read it yourselves: certainly what he’s doing here is letting Nature have its way, complete with Ent tree-hands that grow like roots and shatter skillful stonework with the strength of centuries. Saruman may have magical powers, but the Ents have an older, more powerful magic yet, at least for these purposes: magic may not be quite the right word, but I don’t know how else to put it. Their wrath is slow to ignite and just as slow to dwindle thereafter -- a reminder to us in the Anthropocene, I think, of what comes of overlooking the natural world and seeing its pains as being less important than our own.
I’m fusing two shorter chapters for tomorrow, or at least that’s my plan, so we will listen together for The Voice of Saruman and then look into The Palantir -- neither of them advisable courses of action -- in Book III, Chapters 10 and 11.