Book III, Chapter 10: The Voice of Saruman & Chapter 11: The Palantir
A number of events have conspired to slow my posting about the journey I’m on -- I’ll talk about some of them later, I expect, and some of the factors are national (if not global) and well known. I also set myself up for problems, though, in trying to combine these two chapters, which are both relatively short in page count but which are just packed with material to think about and maybe write about. I’ll try to keep this at a manageable length, though. Anyway, what we’re considering here is the wizard Saruman and the palantir of Orthanc, so here’s an image of the two of them together, clearly having a great time, depicted by Angus McBride: http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/b/b7/Angus_McBride_-_Saruman.gif
The collection of speeches made by Saruman in his flooded prison on the balcony of Orthanc are a real masterwork by Tolkien, whose hand with dialogue is not always as easy as it is with narration. We are meant to understand, of course, that Saruman imbues his words with a magic that makes them especially persuasive to the listener, which explains how powerful they are even to soldiers who have spent days risking life and limb fighting a war against Saruman’s forces. But I think what’s really successful about the sequence is that even we readers, immune (perhaps?) to Saruman’s spells, are able to feel the pull of them a little. (As a brief content warning, I’ll note that I explore verbal/emotional abuse in the two paragraphs that follow, which I know may trigger some painful memories for folks -- I hope you’ll make your own choice about what to skip here, for your own sake.)
Gaslighting has come into common parlance in recent years as society starts to contend pretty seriously with verbal abuse and emotional manipulation, especially the kind of abuse and manipulation that takes place too often inside of broken relationships where one partner (often, but certainly not always, male) entraps the other in a harmful situation. There are different ways that word “gaslighting” has been used, but my approach with it is to stay close to its origins in the movie Gas Light -- gaslighting, to me, is when someone abuses the trust another person has in them by narrating falsehood into the truth of the other person’s life, for the purpose of making them so torn by the gap between what they have actually experienced and what that trusted person tells them they have experienced that it damages them psychologically. Saruman is effectively attempting gaslighting here in public, relying on his reputation as a wise man and a good friend to these folks (and the sound of injury in his voice) to convince them that somehow everything they’ve seen and experienced is wrong, and that rather than being their treacherous enemy, he’s their only true friend. As the narrator notes for us, this kind of approach is more persuasive when it is directed at you -- when you’re a third party, watching him do it to others, you can often see the trick of it, and therefore see through it. My sense is that Tolkien’s argument is that it was only in solidarity with each other that our heroes resisted Saruman’s attempts at persuasion -- alone, each of them might have been convinced that they had judged him too hastily, and that indeed, they were at fault for harming him. Pretty poisonous stuff.
Given our societal context, though, I have to note that I think this plays on more than just the scale of personal relationships -- I think of the ways we have been conditioned by society and its powers to deal with them in this same way. This week, I have watched countless videos depicting brutal and violent police action against unarmed civilians, and then seen the next day as somber police officials in wounded tones talked about how these rioters escalated things and the poor overwhelmed police did all they could even at great personal risk to remain peaceful. These tactics have long worked, at least on white folks like me who weren’t at the protests and saw only what society asked us to see -- only what the media were permitted to see, maybe. But now we have a hundred cameras running at every protest, and we can see each other. And in that solidarity, we can see through the lies fed to us as truth, and understand that the reason it feels as though we are at war is that we are in fact embattled by the very people who claim to be our dearest friends. That, far from needing to apologize to this abusive power and redress their grievances against us, we need to keep pouring clean water into all the dark tunnels of Isengard until its secrets are purged and its evil has been made benign.
The responses in the story itself are pretty remarkable: Saruman forgets, I think, how deeply he has wounded the folks here. He almost gets through to Theoden before Gimli and Eomer in a one-two punch call him out, and Eomer reminds Theoden of the death of his son, Theodred. I think it’s no surprise that after being awakened a little by Eomer reminding him of this fresh grief, Theoden dresses Saruman down to the point where he pledges that “when you hang from a gibbet at your window for the sport of your own crows, then I will have peace with you and Orthanc.” Gandalf knows Saruman far better -- has known him for ages, in fact -- and is less motivated by that kind of personal loss. He laughs, therefore, at Saruman, calling him a jester who missed his calling, and mildly refuses to enter Orthanc, inviting him instead to step forward. Gandalf’s approach is generally thus, I think: to see and seek the good left in someone, or at least their potential to aid the good. It’s the impulse that led him to spare Gollum, and to speak admiringly of Bilbo pitying him. It is to no avail here, but that’s Saruman’s failure, not Gandalf’s. And I love the power within Gandalf at the end of the exchange, when by a few words he can demand that Saruman not depart from the balcony, then cast him out of the Council and shatter his staff of power. Gandalf the White does not play around.
Alas, though, Gandalf the White is not infallible. At the beginning of this chapter, Legolas and Gimli claim places at his side since they are the sole representatives of their kindred present, and Gandalf relents. It’s strangely foolish, then, that one other race of people in Middle Earth is left out -- Meriadoc and Peregrin, our two Hobbit heroes, are simply set aside by everyone present, Gandalf included, despite the fact that they have the same right to stand there that Legolas and Gimli do. And this neglect turns to near disastrous failure, since Pippin is not standing next to Gandalf when Grima foolishly tosses the palantir at his head -- instead, he’s standing well back from the conversation, and is therefore in a position simply to pick up the object and return it to Gandalf. The lure of the palantir that results, and the risks Pippin takes to gaze into it again, are nearly sufficient to bring the entire quest to ruin -- all of which could have been avoided had Gandalf just remembered himself and involved the Shire-folk as equal partners and not as forgotten sidekicks. We all have little stumbles, of course, but this one nearly costs them dearly.
Pippin’s failure, in the subsequent chapter, is depressingly human -- he knows at every step of the way that he’s doing something wrong, but he manages to rationalize each little moment. He’s held the stone once already, what harm would a second time do? Sure it’s wizardry, but he’s been around wizards for months now, right? Merry would help him if he were awake so why not press on alone? This stone’s about palantir-size, Gandalf will never miss it, no harm done, right? The outcome is, as I’ve already said, nearly disastrous, but luckily Sauron is greedy and impulsive -- in fact, arguably it’s helpful that he saw a hobbit at Orthanc, since it will distract The Eye for a while from the Ringbearer as he picks his way towards Mordor. Gandalf is both frustrated and relieved, of course -- classic parenting -- and acknowledges that he probably effed this one up himself letting Pippin touch it in the first place, and then not being more careful with it.
Gandalf presenting the stone to Aragorn is perhaps the first moment in which we really see someone treat the King of Gondor as the King of Gondor -- it’s also a moment, I think, in which we arrive at a better understanding of how special Aragorn is. He’s no wizard, but his status as Elendil’s heir apparently makes powerful magical artifacts like this palantir just another element in his arsenal, and something he will be able to wield, himself, when the time is right. He’s grown as a leader over the course of Book III, and the self-doubting Strider by the falls of Rauros who declared that Gandalf’s faith in him was vain is gone now -- replaced by this king who, still standing basically in the shadow of Isengard, expects that faith to be extended to him again, since he is ready to reclaim his throne.
I love the finish to Book III in part because I have always loved the start to Book V, which I won’t get to for a few days, at least -- Pippin Took clinging to Shadowfax, traveling at top speed, while Gandalf urges the horse on and talks a little with Pippin about his purposes and answers some questions as they go. It’s all the sweetness of that conversation with Frodo in the study at Bag End, with a wizard slowly filling in a hobbit on the history of Middle-earth, combined with all the urgency of Gandalf the White, who seems to have been made for rousing sleeping people into readiness and action. I dig it. And Tolkien’s writing certainly helps me on, bringing the Book to this incredible finish with Gandalf crying --
‘Away now, Shadowfax! Run, greatheart, run as you have never run before! Now we are come to the lands where you were foaled, and every stone you know. Run now! Hope is in speed!’
Followed by the narrator:
“Shadowfax tossed his head and cried aloud, as if a trumpet had summoned him to battle. Then he sprang forward. Fire flew from his feet; night rushed over him.
As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.”
That wind will carry them into Book V, and my heart is nearly carried straight there with them. But first we must return to the starting point of this book -- to the Emyn Muil, that is. And to the Ringbearer and his companion, whose first task, now that they are journeying alone, is The Taming of Smeagol, in Chapter 1 of Book IV.