SOURCE: Chance, Jane. “Knowledge, Language, and Power: The Two Towers.” In The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power, rev. ed., pp. 59-94. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

[In the following essay, Chance examines the effects of the characters' relative level of articulateness in The Two Towers.]

LANGUAGE AND BEING

The Two Towers, [Towers] as much as any of the three parts of The Lord of the Rings, [LotR] dramatizes the power of language to change, control, dominate—and release. The diminution of intelligent life subverted by its own desires is reflected in the simple baby talk of Gollum to his Ring, his “Precious.” And the elevation of intelligent life to supernatural being—the Elves—is similarly reflected in their language and song, their ability as Namers, their hold on the past: “Elves made all the old words” (2:85). Between these two extremes appear other species and types, such as the greedy Orcs (like Grishnákh, who is manipulated by the captured Merry's own words, once the Hobbit understands the Orc's desire) and the long-remembering and all-male Ents (like Treebeard, whose memory and thinking powers are considerable). The Ents have also (like the Elves) composed songs, perhaps more as mnemonic devices than as tributes to history, and have designated certain words to mean ideas (“hill,” for example, is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here for a long time [2:87]).

The astute reader might well ask, Are the Orcs in book 3 merely a deeper echo of Gollum in book 1, broadened into a species inarticulate in its subjugation, divided into warring factions by the opposition between Saruman and Sauron? And are Fangorn and the Ents merely an echo of Old Man Willow in the Old Forest? Is Tolkien intentionally rewriting book 1?

While it is true that Tolkien has moved away from the Hobbits of the Shire and Buckland and into a country ravaged by the conflicts of more powerful warlords, he is not at an imaginative loss here. The trees of the Old Forest are rooted—and envious of those creatures that can move. The Ents can move and in fact have cut off Saruman's escape from Isengard. They are the leaders of trees, tree-herds, like shepherds, taught by the Elves (2:89). Their resistance to and rebellion against Saruman is enhanced by the wizard's own destruction of the trees—Old Man Willow-like, Saruman hates living things and has piecemeal cut down trees of the forest, for he “has a mind of metal and wheels” (2:96). In fact, Ents are not exactly trees, or were not. Treebeard tells Merry, “Sheep get like shepherds, and shepherds like sheep, it is said; but slowly, and neither have long in the world. It is quicker and closer with trees and Ents, and they walk down the ages together. For Ents are more like Elves: less interested in themselves than Men are, and better at getting inside other things. And yet again Ents are more like Men, more changeable than Elves are, and quicker at taking the colour of the outside, you might say. Or better than both: for they are steadier and keep their minds on things longer” (2:89). The Ents are one of the four Free Peoples—Elf, Dwarf, Ent, and Man (2:84).

The tragedy of the Ents is the loss of the Entwives. The Entwives desired order, plenty, and peace—gardens. In contrast the Ents desired wandering, great trees, high woods, and mountain streams. When the Darkness came, gradually the difference between male and female widened until the Entwives became only a memory—lost entirely to the Ents. Division and difference in book 1 threatened the harmony of the Shire community, but the threat was diluted by the political skills of Bilbo (and later Frodo), who incarnated those differences in his (their) own temperament. The mating of different Shire families, different types, resulted in progeny whose understanding transcends the limitations of either parent. But for the Ents and Entwives, regeneration of kind remains an impossibility, and darkness and division mark their history. What the Ents do have is strength—the Trolls (made by the Enemy) counterfeit them, as the Enemy also created Orcs to counterfeit Elves—although, as Treebeard declaims to Merry, “We are stronger than Trolls. We're made of the bones of the earth” (2:113).

The Ents' songs—songs that promised the union of Entwives and Ents—reflect their withering nature and history, except that, as Treebeard notes, “songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely” (2:114). Intelligent tree-herds, these Ents incarnate the idea of growth that stultifies because its intelligence cannot tolerate female difference. (It is interesting that Tolkien sees cultural and biological differences between male and female Ents; in this one specific way he anticipates the French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Hélène Cixous.)

In a sense the Ents also project the masculine division between Saruman and Sauron—and the lack of female principle, which Tolkien identifies with the cultivated garden, order, and plenty, as opposed to the wildness of the distant wood, adventure, and distance. It is this female power of healing, growth, and regeneration that Tolkien associates with the creativity of the Elves (also to be lost by Middle-earth, like the disappearing Entwives) and even, to an extent, in the pastoral Shire. For this reason the emergence at the end, in book 6, of the aptly named wife of Sam—Rose—epitomizes the return of female difference to balance harmoniously with the masculine in the epic's final symbolic “marriage.”

Power, so Tolkien insists, must be shared with those individuals and peoples who are different, in gender, nature, history, and temperament. Those who would lead must tolerate difference in expression, latitude, and space rather than choke, ignore, abandon, repress, or kill it. LotR is the story of difference articulated, nearly crushed, and only then restored. For Tolkien, power involves all that is, has been, and will be allowed to continue. Towers, at the heart of this story, intensifies and explains the nature of difference when domination of one by another is compelled. Let us turn first to book 3.

THE EMPOWERMENT OF THE MARGINALIZED IN BOOK 3

The two strands of the narrative in book 3 (like the two towers of Orthanc and Cirith Ungol in books 5 and 6) symbolize difference and division in the Fellowship and on Middle-earth. Hence the story itself is divided, twin, separated. In the second part—the “upper,” or alto or “commanding,” part of the narrative (or polyphonic drama)—the “superior” representatives in the Fellowship must look for clues about the missing Hobbits Merry and Pippin and also Sam and Frodo (2:5). Like the Entwives, the Hobbits are “lost,” but in another sense the “lost” Hobbits are not so much inferior, unheroic, insignificant (or different) as they are, in reality, more important: the little Hobbits are the story. Tolkien valorizes the marginal and impotent by turning upside down the normal power relationships. Legolas the Elf, Gimli the Dwarf, and Aragorn the Man must search for and follow them; it is a humbling and necessary experience. To do so, these three must decipher riddles—the signs left by the Hobbits to mark their journey. And to detect these signs the three must understand the nature of the Hobbits they are following—they must forget themselves and identify with, or understand, the Hobbit.

One riddle concerns their horses missing in the night (2:116), startled away with gladness. Another concerns the means by which Merry and Pippin escaped from the Orcs (2:117). Legolas understands that the bound Hobbit has escaped from the Orcs by cutting his bonds with an Orc-knife (both bonds and knife remain behind): “But how and why? For if his legs were tied, how did he walk? And if his arms were tied, how did he use the knife? And if neither were tied, why did he cut the cords at all? Being pleased with his skill, he then sat down and quietly ate some waybread! That at least is enough to show that he was a Hobbit, without the mallorn-leaf” (2:117-18). Legolas, though, is not sensitive enough to the ways of Hobbits to unravel the entire story. Aragorn also spots Orc-blood and hoof-prints, thus understanding an Orc was killed and hauled away, with the Hobbit not seen: “But it is a comfort to know that he had some lembas in his pocket, even though he ran away without gear or pack; that, perhaps, is like a hobbit” (2:118). Even Aragorn does not understand why the Orcs did not seek out the other members of the Company but instead turned away, unless they were commanded to seize live Hobbits; he does understand the divisive nature of the Orc enough to imagine Orc treachery for Orc ends (2:119). It is Elf and Man who are more sensitive to the Hobbit nature; Legolas is also sensitive to the dark wood of Fangorn into which the split Company must now descend (“Do you not feel the tenseness?” he remarks [2:120]). And yet even the Dwarf Gimli has learned to accept this Wood-Elf (“though Elves of any kind are strange folk”) and the comfort that Legolas offers him (“Where you go, I will go”) (2:120). It is a strange marriage of opposites, this “fellowship” of Dwarf and Wood-Elf, and yet it epitomizes a type of United Nations of Middle-earth that must eventually allow all different nations to coexist in peace in the coming Fourth Age, of Man.

The reader must also “track” their progress. The characters now command the attention of their reader, again subverting the hierarchical power relationship a less skillful author might imagine inheres in the artistic process, for art does consist of signs, riddles, and clues, which the perceptive tracker pieces together (and which that “tracker” could shut down merely by closing the book). Help is provided by Gandalf the Grey, who (deus ex machina-like) reemerges here as Mithrandir—the White (2:125).

Note that Gandalf speaks in “riddles”: “No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying” (2:127). Gandalf's clarification to Aragorn spells out Tolkien's concept of knowledge of difference as power, to be used successfully by the Fellowship until the ultimate moment in this story. Gandalf the White acknowledges that Sauron understands that the Ring is carried by a Hobbit and attended by a Fellowship, but because Sauron is limited by his own desire, his own self (read, selfishness), he cannot understand the nature and motivations of his adversary, which are so different from his own. Gandalf explains: “He supposes that we were all going to Minas Tirith; for that is what he would himself have done in our place. And according to his wisdom it would have been a heavy stroke against his power. … That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream” (2:127).

Because of Sauron's inability to think like a non-power-seeking Hobbit, he does not guard carefully enough the borders of his own Mordor. He lacks the imagination that propels the small Hobbit to take the offensive—“attacking” Mordor by destroying the one object that could guarantee the diminutive being's power. Furthermore, the divisiveness of the Dark Community has erupted into the treachery of Saruman against his own Master, a rebellion fueled by Saruman's Sauron-like greed for the domination and power afforded by possession of the Ring. And thus Saruman similarly does not understand Hobbit difference enough to use that knowledge as power. In his desire for the Ring, Saruman has plotted to capture Merry and Pippin, which has only brought them more efficiently and quickly to Fangorn—in accord with the Company's quest. Gandalf comments on Saruman's inability to perceive difference, both of Hobbit and of tree: “He does not yet know his peril. There is much that he does not know. I look into his mind and I see his doubt. He has no woodcraft. He believes that the horsemen slew and burned all upon the field of battle; but he does not know whether the Orcs were bringing any prisoners or not. And he does not know of the quarrel between his servants and the Orcs of Mordor; nor does he know of the Winged Messenger” (2:129). Unfortunately, Saruman must have the Ring in order to battle Mordor, and he will not have it; he also fights Rohan, and he does not suspect that the Ents will unite to destroy him and his axes as Saruman has attempted to destroy them one by one.

That the Company was not sure whether the obscure figure they saw was Gandalf or Saruman pinpoints the ambiguity of signs and the difficulty in “reading” (meaning “understanding”) correctly. Gandalf does know the answer to this and many other questions, which makes him dangerous. He also knows that the path to victory passes through death and despair—a path the Company must choose on its own, emulating the metamorphosis of Gandalf as the White. In fighting the Balrog (“In that despair my enemy was my only hope” [2:134]), Gandalf brought him to the Endless Stair where he threw down his enemy, who broke the mountainside. Thereafter Gandalf entered darkness, wandering, and was sent back naked and forgotten, until the Windlord took him again to Lothlórien to be healed (2:134-35). Accordingly, the Company members learn from those Elves the way of their victory:

Near is the hour when the Lost should come forth,
And the Grey Company ride from the North.
But dark is the path appointed for thee:
The Dead watch the road that leads to the Sea.

—(2:136)

What Gandalf means is that his enemy's knowledge (in lieu of his own) provides his only hope of survival, in that the Balrog will attempt to save himself, and therein lies Gandalf's survival. Because Gandalf's situation is so hopeless, he must trust in his adversary's knowledge, which gives him power. Thus he advises the Company, and in particular Aragorn, that their hope lies paradoxically in a path through despair; that their lives can be preserved only through death; and that their future exists only insofar as they acknowledge the mistakes of the past—that is, in the restorative aid of the Dead Company, a foil for them.

From here on in book 3 of Towers the message that knowledge—language—confers power and that the road to hope passes through despair is parlayed by means of various dramatic reenactments of the previous scene. Théoden emerges as a wise leader from the despair successfully wrought by Wormtongue's self-serving and critical words; in contrast, Saruman as a fallen leader refuses all hope in the prison of Orthanc that he has created for himself out of incomplete knowledge. That Wormtongue the bad servant will, by the novel's end, become the ignominious servant “Worm” of the snarling “Sharkey” (or Saruman)—also a bad servant, of Sauron—seems entirely logical and appropriate. That Rohan and Isengard as places that Wormtongue and Saruman control are exchanged for the more humble Shire by the trilogy's end mirrors the epic devolution of the two. Just so, their cleverness diminishes into wordless animality (“Worm,” “Sharkey”) to signal their moral and natural deterioration. In addition, both will help finance the disgusting Lotho Sackville-Baggins in his apparent rise to power back at the Shire, to return us at the end of LotR to its beginning, in “The Long-Expected Party.” In Tolkien, Worm is a worm and Sharkey is a shark—the word for the thing, the name, always reflects its true nature. The two major confrontations of Wormtongue and Saruman with the members of the Fellowship show us how.

In Rohan (chapter 6) the reader (like the Company) confronts the recently erected chauvinistic barrier of language: “It is the will of Théoden King that none should enter his gates, save those who know our tongue and are our friends” (2:143), the guard replies when Gandalf asks why they do not speak in the Common Tongue. (It was not always so in Rohan, we learn later [2:160].) The assumption is that Rohan's own folk will speak their own tongue and thus will pose no threat to their tribe. And yet it is Wormtongue who has imposed this literalistic and superficial barrier to ingress—Wormtongue, the traitor working close to the throne for Saruman (himself a traitor in the “House” of Sauron). In a similar literalism the hall guardians demand that the weapons of the Company be left outside the hall (2:144), an ironic gesture, given the debilitating ruin of king and country wrought not by sword but by tongue, and words, of the king's counselor who encourages him to eat and rest rather than to fight and rule (2:157). Aragorn counters the edict of Rohan with a similar spell as he unbuckles the Blade that was Broken: “Here I set it … but I command you not to touch it, nor to permit any other to lay hand on it. … Death shall come to any man that draws Elendil's sword save Elendil's heir” (2:147). Words here muster greater power than swords, and past words—history—muster greater power than do present words. And so the guard responds admiringly to Aragorn, “It seems that you are come on the wings of song out of the forgotten days” (2:147; my italics).

The conflict is one of wills, and of the wills of two kings, rather than of swords per se. Théoden is (supposedly) king in his own hall, but Aragorn, king of all Men. Who is to say Aragorn is the rightful king to whom even Théoden owes allegiance? And who is to say the staff on which Gandalf leans is an old man's stick or a wizard's wand? Háma the hall guardian ultimately allows Gandalf to pass with staff in hand because “in doubt a man of worth will trust to his own wisdom. I believe you are friends and folk worthy of honour, who have no evil purpose” (2:147). Perhaps Háma has long realized that the “king” in his own hall is ruled by his counselor Wormtongue.

To expose vulnerability (whether of nation or of person) to another means letting down barriers both literal and figurative; Wormtongue has operated and operates now by working on Théoden's fear. Wormtongue reiterates the “bitter tidings” preceding the arrival of “Gandalf Stormcrow”—the death in battle of Théodred, Théoden's son, and the stirrings of the Dark Lord in the East (2:149). Wormtongue even inverts Adam's creative role as Namer (or the Middle-earth equivalent, the Elven role of naming) in churlishly calling Gandalf Láthspell, “Ill-news” (2:149). Furthermore, Wormtongue denigrates the wizard's present mission through a reminder of the past mission to Rohan, along the way discrediting Gandalf's followers as “[t]hree ragged wanderers in grey, and you yourself the most beggar-like of the four!” (2:150). The bringer of ill tidings must himself be evil, and so Wormtongue's skewed and rude logic instructs Théoden, just as the wearer of ragged clothing must himself be a beggar in need of aid.

Gandalf's lesson to Wormtongue (and Théoden and Rohan) reveals clearly that appearances may mask a higher reality—a lesson in symbolism and courtesy. The appearances of the three followers belie their regal identity, that is, as Elendil's heir, Elf, and Dwarf. Moreover, Gandalf reveals that these three are clad in humble raiment because the Elves bestowed that gray clothing on them. But this bestowal is falsely termed by Wormtongue an alliance with the deceptive, web-weaving “Sorceress of the Golden Wood” (2:150), Galadriel herself.

Gandalf then, snakelike, sheds his false outer appearance of the weak old man, dependent on staff, to sing of Galadriel without stain—that is, to reveal the truth, to put on the new person: “The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls” (2:151). Wormtongue twists words and meanings to serve his own purpose, and that of Saruman, but it is not the purpose of truth or of Rohan. Furthermore, Wormtongue's counsel to Théoden has heightened the fear of the old king in order to subvert Théoden's sovereign role to that of the “serving-man,” Wormtongue.

Gandalf's rescue alerts Théoden to light instead of dark, to hope instead of despair, by means of encouraging instead of critical and destructive words. Wormtongue has scolded Théoden, “Did I not counsel you, lord, to forbid his staff? That fool, Háma, has betrayed us!” (2:151), criticizing both Théoden's folly in not listening to Wormtongue and Háma's folly. What exactly does Gandalf say to evoke a change in Théoden that restores him to his rightful place as sovereign? He urges optimism—courage and wisdom—in a respectful manner. Gandalf declares, “Not all is dark. Take courage, Lord of the Mark; for better help you will not find. No counsel have I to give to those that despair. Yet counsel I could give, and words I could speak to you. Will you hear them? They are not for all ears. I bid you come out before your doors and look abroad. Too long have you sat in shadows and trusted to twisted tales and crooked promptings” (2:151).

In short, the suspicions and fears of the hall guardian—and the resistance to differences in language and nationality—reflect the darkness within the tribe and its king, the despair to which all (save Éomer) have succumbed when heeding critical and punitive words. Whom can one trust, if all are untrustworthy? Whom can one trust, if one remains safely incarcerated indoors, too old to venture out into danger? Whom can one trust if one cannot trust oneself? Yet the chief danger to Rohan all along has come from within, from that familiar sameness mistaken as loving and protective—Wormtongue. Once again Tolkien trumpets forth the power of language to destroy and manipulate—or to recuperate and restore. Once again real knowledge depends on a recognition of good beneath superficial difference and seemingly humble appearance.

Facing fear rather than evading it (or protecting against it) and conquering self-pity become Gandalf's counsel once again. As he and Théoden face Mordor, the wizard announces, “[T]hat way lies our hope [read, Frodo and Sam], where sits our greatest fear [read, Sauron]. Doom hangs still on a thread. Yet hope there is still, if we can but stand unconquered for a little while [read, to buy extra time for Frodo and Sam to return the Ring safely]” (2:154). And when Théoden complains of war and evil in that old age he had imagined as deserving peace, while the “young perish and the old linger,” Gandalf reminds him that he no longer wears a sword: “Your fingers would remember their old strength better, if they grasped a sword-hilt” (2:154). Gandalf reminds the king, in short, that kings are kings, whatever their age, because they command in battle and rule. The sword is a symbol of power, both physical and political; to deprive a king of his sword is to deny him his rightful role, to diminish his power. Thus, the converse is true: to return a sword is to acknowledge and respect strength. This the true servant Éomer does: “As [Théoden's] fingers took the hilt, it seemed to the watchers that firmness and strength returned to his thin arm. Suddenly he lifted the blade and swung it shimmering and whistling in the air. Then he gave a great cry. … ‘Arise now, arise, Riders of Théoden!’” (2:155). Trust becomes the operative word of counsel.

Indeed, when Théoden “trusts” that Wormtongue will accompany him to battle, the true cowardice of the false servant stands exposed. The choice that Wormtongue makes reveals his own weak and untrustworthy nature—to stay behind in safety or, if that is not possible, to return to Saruman. Wormtongue's literalism sees Théoden as old, incapable: “But those who truly love him would spare his failing year” (2:158). Saruman's servant fails to understand that love means respect for inner capability—leadership—despite the outer limits of physical strength. Gandalf shows all that which Wormtongue subverts in order to win Éowyn as his prize (2:159). This is the Worm's true goal, this Satan-like seduction of Théoden. The soothing and appealing words of the Snake tempt more, perhaps, but as Théoden acknowledges later of his true servant Éomer, “Faithful heart may have froward tongue” (2:161).

The tribe of Rohan convinces us that the old may be stronger than their appearance suggests; so also we will learn later that the most valorous warrior may indeed be female rather than male. Éowyn, daughter of Éomund, will serve Rohan in battle better than any other Rider from the Mark. She is also awarded lordship of Rohan in their absence. Throughout, ignominious Hobbits, the frail elderly, and the female occupy for Tolkien the most heroic roles. It is interesting to note, given Háma's previous “folly” in admitting the ragged Company with Gandalf's staff, that Háma the hall guardian offers Théoden the advice to make Éowyn lord. Háma's wisdom sees beneath surface difference. This facility that makes Háma an invaluable counselor and a trustworthy “reader” of the text of human character.

THE DEFEAT OF THE DEHUMANIZED IN BOOK 3

The second locus in which knowledge, language, and power emerge as central to victory in a dramatic battle occurs not so much at the literal battle of Helm's Deep as at the final meeting at Orthanc, the palace of Saruman that becomes his prison. There, too, the battle is one of words, one in which Gandalf again functions as a principal to overcome Saruman, a far more cunning adversary than Wormtongue. Like Grishnákh and later Wormtongue, Saruman is a traitor—to the White Council he supposedly leads. As Wormtongue serves Saruman, so Saruman, by reading the palantír, inadvertently and unknowingly serves Sauron, who controls its visions and hence knows its users.

Of the two towers of this second volume, one belongs to Saruman's Orthanc, and the other, to Shelob's Cirith Ungol. And yet even in book 3 the way to that first tower is through the hall of Rohan, where the servant of Saruman has attempted to destroy king and nation. Wormtongue, even in the Shire, will kill his leader after a final verbal abuse—the traitor will once again betray his own “master.” In the second half of Towers Gollum functions with Frodo as a type of Wormtongue to Théoden in the service that he provides, ultimately betraying Frodo and Sam to Shelob (Saruman's counterpart in this second half) as Rohan has been betrayed to Saruman.

Saruman, then, and the spider Shelob (Sauron's “cat”) represent two monstrous “servants” to Sauron. Their two towers project forth their differing powers. “Orthanc” (or Mount Fang, “Cunning Mind”) celebrates in its iconology the intellectual perversion of Saruman. Just so, “Cirith Ungol” (“Pass of the Spider”) typifies in its dramatic purpose (the capture of prey) the physical horror embodied in the greedy Shelob.

Saruman's particular gift has always been his ingenuity, a wizard's knowledge set to the capitalist's profit motive, at whatever the cost. Accordingly, Saruman has interbred Orcs with goblin Men to withstand the coming of the sun and therefore to fight successfully during the day (2:180). This entrepreneur has also enlisted the hate of the Wild Men of the hills for the Men of Gondor and Rohan in the battle against Aragorn and his Company. Saruman's technological mind has sought the wasting of forests and Nan Curunír (the Wizard's Vale), where Isengard is located, to power his factories, smithies, and furnaces. And so Saruman exploits the labor of slaves, and the dark architectonics of Orthanc and wasteland in the once-green valley clarify his self-aggrandizing purpose: riches and power.

For example, Orthanc is surrounded by one protective, great ring-wall of stone, “like towering cliffs” (2:203), perhaps to suggest to the reader its similarity to the one controlling Ring. Only one entrance is carved into the southern wall, and it leads to a tunnel stopped at both ends by iron doors. That the ingenuity of Saruman has been employed to increase the efficiency of his instruments of imprisonment and empowerment is reflected in the excellence of these iron doors: “They were so wrought and poised upon their huge hinges, posts of steel driven into the living stone, that when unbarred they could be moved with a light thrust of the arms, noiselessly” (2:203). Saruman has exchanged the green, fruitful, bowl-shaped plain within the wall for dark stone flags and for chained marble and metal pillars marching in columns. The many houses that he has cut into the walls overlooking the open circle resemble a honeycomb; the plain, too, has been “bored and delved. Shafts were driven deep into the ground; their ends were covered by low mounds and domes of stone, so that in the moonlight the Ring of Isengard looked like a graveyard of unquiet dead” (2:203). Iron wheels revolve; night vapors steam. All roads run to the center of Isengard, where the black rock tower of Orthanc in its construction also mirrors the complexity and violent wickedness of Saruman's own cunning mind, even though the tower was made not by him but by “builders of old” (“yet fit seemed a thing not made by the craft of Man, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills” [2:204]). Saruman rapes Middle-earth in his painful acquisitive progression toward power. The violence of his desire matches the “gaping horns” at the top of Orthanc, “their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives” (2:204).

Saruman's specific contribution to Orthanc—once beautiful and always strong, the residence of great lords and astrologers, or Magi (2:204)—has been its reshaping to what he imagines are his own purposes: “being deceived—for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor” (2:204). Saruman's creativity, then, is a blank, a zero, nothing—a mirror imitation of that destructivity typical of the power of Sauron: “What he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength” (2:204).

What destroys the doors of Isengard is the “Great Sea” that fills the “bowl” of the plain of Isengard and isolates the single tower of Orthanc. The River Isen has been dammed up by the furious Ents in order to flood Isengard's tunnel and thus overwhelm the city. Appropriately, the tree-killer Saruman is overcome by trees—and the rocks of Isengard torn asunder by the root-splitting power of the victimized. Of course the Ents and Huorns cannot best a wizard, but the elemental antagonism (“Wood and water, stock and stone” [2:223]) is fulfilled by their united efforts: “Isengard looked like a huge flat saucepan, all steaming and bubbling” (2:225). What gets “cooked” is of course Saruman.

We might add to Tolkien's empowerment of marginalized peoples and societies the trees—and their Ents and Huorns. The exploited helpless—whether aged, female, childlike, or even plantlike in nature—are urged into heroism and action throughout. Even the childlike (and seemingly superfluous) Merry and Pippin in their separate adventure with Orcs and Ents assume new identities after a heroic metamorphosis into door-wardens: Merry introduces himself as Meriadoc, son of Saradoc; Pippin, as Peregrin, son of Paladin, “of the house of Took” (2:206). We relive the encounter of the Split Company with Háma at the door to the palace in Rohan. The Hobbits prove able enough to withstand the patronizing and frustrated diatribes of Gimli and Legolas as they scold the little fellows for their childish truancy (“You rascals, you woolly-footed and wool-pated truants!” Gimli cries [2:207]). It is Pippin who responds drily, “One thing you have not found in your hunting, and that's brighter wits” (2:207). Even the Company finds itself at odds, the greater and stronger treating the smaller and weaker as literally as do Háma and Wormtongue in the earlier encounter.

Here Théoden is offered the opportunity to greet them with the real authority of a wise leader, and he does. When he learns these are Hobbits—whom he first identifies by the name he knows best, “Holbytlan”—he is corrected by Pippin (“Hobbits, if you please, lord”), and he courteously respects both their language (so different from his) and their otherness by symbolically bowing to them: “No report that I had heard does justice to the truth” (2:207). There is majesty in graciousness and humility, in respect for the Other, Tolkien seems to say. Where Gimli and Legolas fail, at least mildly repeating the errors of Wormtongue, Théoden succeeds well. Even when Théoden acknowledges of the Hobbits that “there are no legends of their deeds, for it is said that they do little,” he never uses this hearsay to denigrate them: “But it seems that more could be said” (2:208). Trust and openness, toleration and good manners—all are qualities necessary in the politic leader Théoden epitomizes.

The meeting between Saruman and Gandalf, however, operates on a different level. Saruman holds power—has held power—because of his voice (as chapter 10 reminds us, “The Voice of Saruman”). “Wormtongue” as a name has hinted at the ability of Gríma to twist language and words to seductive ends (that is, urging Théoden to eat and rest rather than to fight and lead—words of counsel that only at first glance seem thoughtful and solicitous of the king's welfare). Saruman's eloquence far exceeds Wormtongue's because it springs from wizard-cunning masked by kindness and graciousness (all those qualities that the good king Théoden has so amply demonstrated). The difference is that Saruman's voice seems to be separate from his actions—what he says and what he does are twin, dual: “Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard. … Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable” (2:234).

Saruman's voice (and note how disembodied and dehumanized Tolkien imagines it) is evil because its beauty arouses the envy of its listeners: “Desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves” (2:234). The wizard's spell works to seduce them into his power because it makes all other voices (especially voices raised in disagreement) seem “harsh and uncouth” and thereby arouses the anger of its listeners. Saruman's voice seduces by arousing the listeners' admiration for the speaker, who seems so bent on helping and understanding the listener. When Saruman addresses Théoden (“O worthy son of Thengel the Thrice-renowned!” [2:235]), not only does he employ flattery and rhetoric to convince the “mightiest king of western lands” of his desire to aid him in his hour of need—which is what we all want to hear (“Why have you not come before, and as a friend?” [2:235])—but he also deliberately lies and intimidates through fear (“still I would save you, and deliver you from the ruin that draws nigh inevitably, if you ride upon this road which you have taken. Indeed I alone can aid you now” [2:234]). The courtesy and seeming respectfulness of Saruman seem appropriate to the stature of the king he addresses. And the fear of which Saruman reminds the Men of Rohan is omnipresent and all too powerful: “And over their hearts crept a shadow, the fear of a great danger: the end of the Mark in a darkness to which Gandalf was driving them, while Saruman stood beside a door of escape, holding it half open so that a ray of light came through” (2:235).

Desire and fear, the twin weapons of the orator, are reduced to nothing before the level and plain truth, which is what both Gimli the Dwarf (the species closest to earth) and Éomer the good servant, who formerly offended by speaking unwelcome words, offer in response. The first weapon, desire, reminds the Company and Rohan that Orthanc's language always speaks in reverse: “The words of this wizard stand on their heads. … In the language of Orthanc help means ruin, and saving means slaying, that is plain. But we do not come here to beg” (2:235). The second weapon, fear, reminds Théoden of the present situation and the treachery of this “old liar with honey on his forked tongue” (2:236). It is Saruman who is the “trapped wolf,” not they. Théoden chooses the honesty of common folk and speaks plainly himself: “Harsh as an old raven's their master's voice sounded in their ears after the music of Saruman.” And Théoden's refusal to acquiesce leads to Saruman's hissing metamorphosis into snakelike negativity and crushing belittlement (“Dotard!” Saruman then calls Théoden) (2:237).

Saruman's pride so puffs him up that to him all others appear diminished. To the proud, all outside the Self is Other, different. And so Saruman then appeals to Gandalf in what seems “the gentle remonstrance of a kindly king with an erring but much-loved minister. But they were shut out, listening at a door to words not meant for them: ill-mannered children or stupid servants overhearing the elusive discourse of their elders” (2:238-39). Gandalf laughs, however, and asks him only to come down—that is, to humble himself as well as to literally step down from the tower—and thereby admit his error and save himself. The monster that Saruman has become refuses and Gandalf, now the White and superior in the Council to Saruman, casts him out of both the order of wizards and from the Council (2:241). “He will not serve, only command” (2:242) is Gandalf's accurate assessment. But Gandalf will do nothing to him, because he does not long for mastery, and because “[o]ften does hatred hurt itself” (2:243).

The last contest in book 3 belongs to Pippin and Sauron, through the farseeing but dangerous crystal globe of the palantír held by Saruman, at least until Wormtongue heaves it down near his head. The temptation to look into “that which looks far away” (2:258), especially because Pippin has touched it, provokes the most unlikely contest, that between Hobbit and Dark Lord (2:252). The palantír has a magical power like that of the Ring; that Pippin succumbs (as Frodo does to the Ring at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring) is no surprise. And yet the seemingly crushing loss to Sauron (for Pippin faints in terror after his “interrogation”) is actually a victory: Sauron's assumption is that this Hobbit is imprisoned in Orthanc by Saruman and thus the Red Eye will lose precious time because of this error, for the real Ringbearer is nearing Mordor. Once again the Enemy's own literalism, ignorance, and pride reduce his power; once again a marginalized protagonist succeeds because of them.

Humility in Tolkien is always ultimately successful, especially in this case, as it has saved Middle-earth: had Gandalf been tempted to look within, he might have lost the battle with Sauron (2:255). How appropriate that the greatest wizard is rescued from the possibility of his own subversion by the least of the Hobbits. The power of humility and ignominy, and of language (again symbolized by the visionary palantír), will be extended and deepened in the next book, in which the stage is further reduced to an even more crucial Hobbit level.

THE ARTICULATE BODY IN BOOK 4

Isengard and Mordor have managed to communicate by means of the palantír that links Sauron and his “servant” Saruman. The link between books 3 and 4 of LotR is provided by the two towers of Sauron's “servant” Saruman and his “cat” Shelob. This political theme of good and of good service unifies the whole of Towers, just as the dehumanization of culture and civilization darkens into the increasingly interiorized drama of Sam and Frodo, servant and master, in the fourth book. More insistently now, Tolkien will ask, How knowledge, if no language? What power is conferred in the absence of language, at that moment when speechlessness, either silence or disordered sound, crosses into the bestiality of a Shelob? When Sam and Frodo leave the “Window on the West” in book 4, “all about them was silence. The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb” (2:386). What is the significant difference between the dehumanization of a wise wizard and the privileging of the cruel and predatory greed of a powerful giant spider? In what ways is uncontrolled irrationality (Shelob) more dangerous than uncontrolled cunning (Saruman)? Is uncontrolled irrationality even conscious of difference in the way we have been defining it? Can degeneration and reification be undone, moral consciousness retrieved?

In the East, Mordor is named after the Anglo-Saxon word for “death.” Accordingly, the land it names conveys the idea of violence and extinction of the Other. The separation between Self and Other suggests difference; a wise leader will acknowledge and respect differences in order to attract followers. In Mordor, there is no such thing as separation of Self from Other: difference is consumed, swallowed up, by the Self. It is this particularly monstrous and uncivilized tyranny that Shelob represents. Here death means the murder of the Other and therefore the unnatural insistence upon the Self at the expense of the Other. It is no coincidence that, as Frodo and Sam trek through the dead lands, the “wind was chilly and yet heavy with an odor of cold decay” (2:266). Frodo's ironic heroism demands that he move slowly if inexorably toward self-sacrifice—and the Shadow that threatens to extinguish him and the Ring.

Gollum, who follows these “thieves” in the hopes of recuperating his Precious, hates them (2:280), his very hate the seed of murder (Mordor, death). And yet in his incarnation of the death of Other, symbolized by Mordor, he reveals the isolation of the Self that must destroy or assimilate the Other in order to survive. In a telling incident in “The Taming of Sméagol” (chapter 1), Frodo once again has the opportunity to kill Gollum, who has tracked Frodo and Sam to their hiding place near a precipice. Gollum, however, pleads for mercy, identifying himself as the prey of the “cats” (2:280; Frodo and Sam?), and therefore foreshadowing the later attack on Frodo by the farlarger and more predatory “cat” of Sauron, Shelob. Gollum's reason for pleading clemency is his loneliness, his isolation, or—given the seeming singleness of his identity—his nature as difference personified. He is unique, he is one, and in his grotesque singleness, his Otherness, he desires companionship—the acknowledgment that difference is meaningless: “They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses? We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious. And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, want us, yes, yess” (2:280).

The incident also reminds Frodo of his earlier reaction to Gandalf's recounting of the meeting of Bilbo and Gollum, when Bilbo's pity stayed his hand. At the time Frodo's indignation denied him mercy, and yet at this moment, now that Frodo “sees” (read, understands) Gollum, Frodo does in fact pity the degenerate Hobbit (2:281). Frodo's pity urges him to reach out to that tiny speck of Hobbit, of grace, of nonbestiality, still inherent in Gollum's nature, that which separates the nearly inarticulate (“Gollum,” a gulp) from the bestial (such as Shelob). And so Frodo respects Gollum's difference and appeals to their common denominator of Hobbitness by addressing the creature, not by the humiliating and degrading (if accurate) name Gollum but by the original and untarnished name Sméagol (2:283). Frodo also tells him the truth—another gesture of respect: they are headed for Mordor. What Frodo and Gollum share, it appears, is a desire to prevent the Ring (“Precious”) from falling into the power of Sauron. This desire unites them in a common goal: safe passage through the Dead Marshes.

Gollum initially refuses this respect for his difference, apparently preferring his present nonself: “Don't ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now” (2:283). Gollum prefers the easier state of annihilation of consciousness, past, and self in which he exists as Gollum, the name for a sound made when swallowing, like that made when speaking or eating. Frodo offers him the hope of the recovery of self: “Perhaps we'll find him again, if you come with us” (2:283). Frodo treats Gollum-Sméagol as Théoden does Pippin, with respect and courtesy, and Frodo similarly provides leadership by offering encouragement, hope, and praise. Like Théoden, Frodo is motivated by pity, mercy, and love. This arouses in both Pippin and Gollum a latent and grateful desire to serve.

The ceremony of investiture performed on Gollum by Frodo (2:285) invites the doglike Gollum to swear by the Precious to freely do what the lordly Frodo wishes, to be “very very good” and to never let “Him” have the Ring. The feudal relationship between them here seems to heighten their difference: “For a moment it appeared to Sam that his master had grown and Gollum had shrunk: a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog” (2:285). Ironically Gollum will keep his promise to Frodo until he bites off his lord's ring finger. This bite (a final gollum?) serves all far better than he knows and even in treachery enables a rescue of Middle-earth that leads to Gollum's own annihilation. Hobbit Frodo and former Hobbit Sméagol are, however, more same than different at this instant of mutual identification in book 3: “Yet the two were in some way akin and not alien: they could reach one another's minds” (2:285). Their kinship presupposes Gollum has a mind to reach. Gollum has been raised to consciousness and premeditation by a ceremony resembling that of a wedding in its union of opposites—of course one not marked by difference in gender, class, or race but by difference in moral values. After this event Gollum whines and hisses less and is more eager to please because he is now more Other-directed: “He spoke to his companions direct, not to his precious self. … He would cackle with laughter and caper if any jest was made, or even if Frodo spoke kindly to him, and weep if Frodo rebuked him” (2:286). It is Frodo's words of acceptance that catalyze this change in Gollum-Sméagol.

In book 4 the symbolic settings developing these ideas appear in the Dead Marshes, the Garden of Gondor where Frodo, Sam, and Gollum encounter Faramir the Steward, brother to the dead Boromir, and Cirith Ungol. Betrayal and service become polar extremes on a political continuum that ultimately inverts itself: betrayal can in reality be service, just as service (as we have learned, in book 3 through Grishnákh, Wormtongue, and Saruman) can in reality be betrayal. Who is to decide what service is? Who is to decide what betrayal is? And who knows absolutely? Does Gollum in actuality betray Frodo? Does Frodo fail to protect his servant Gollum? And when at the end Master Samwise must make hard choices as Ringbearer, does he choose out of wisdom or out of vengeance? Who is master? Who servant?

Gollum's metamorphosis is marked by a kind of primitive, body-directed song:

The cold hard lands
they bites our hands,
they gnaws our feet.
The rocks and stones
are like old bones
all bare of meat.

—(2:287-88)

That food imagery surfaces in his composition reflects Gollum's obsessions and—as Sam puts it—in general what heroic narrative rarely describes, “the problem of food” (2:288). Can heroism continue if the body is not fed? Sam later quotes his father: “Where there's life there's hope … and need of vittles” (2:392). Gollum also sings a riddle about catching a fish (“never thirsting, ever drinking; clad in mail, never clinking” [2:288]). Food, we recall, has always been the Hobbit's passion. A Hobbit being compelled into a heroic mode, being denied his passion, and having his survival depend on the knowledge of an un-Hobbit in whom he must trust is a most unnatural situation.

The Dead Marshes (east of the Emyn Muil) includes the graves of Men and Elves killed during the Battle of Dagorlad, “when Sméagol was young” (2:297). Along with Orcs the corpses peer out from the water when candles are lit: “They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead” (2:297). This mockery of the Last Alliance (read, representatives of all races united in a common purpose at death) signifies the past failure to resist Sauron. The Marshes thus symbolize death and despair (Mordor) and act as a psychological deterrent to the Fellowship's progress: to move forward they must conquer their own aversion to death and failure, their lack of hope at the possibility of succeeding, the ultimate futility of their mission. How can mere Hobbits succeed against Sauron when led by a treacherous creature like Gollum and when so many have failed in the past?

What keeps them going is that they are attempting not to battle Sauron—to test him in physical combat—but merely to return the Ring to its source. Still, the despair and darkness take their toll on all of them, especially Gollum (who has been captured once before and who is terrified of the Dark Lord) and Frodo. Frodo's Ringbearing wearies him to exhaustion—“He was now beginning to feel it as an actual weight dragging him earthwards” (2:300)—and his awareness of the gaze of the Other stultifies him. It is the latter awareness that Frodo must resist even more than the former, a resistance to being seen, reified, petrified: “The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off” (2:301).

The Eye is not yet aware of where Frodo is, but the Hobbit can sense its ever searching power, Medusa-like in its ability to paralyze. (It epitomizes the criticism directed at the Other, the different: the gaze is one of hostility, wrath, death, annihilation.) For Gollum, “lust of the Ring that was so near” counters the “pressure of the Eye” and conflicts with the promise to guide them that he has made to Frodo (2:301). Only Sam does not notice the “dark cloud that had fallen on his own heart,” so concerned is he with Frodo. The pressure of darkness brings to the fore latent desire and fear. In passing through the Dead Marshes, the Company must struggle with its own dark emotions, the worst of which is despair. Even once past, the land they encounter is a wasteland (“gasping pools … choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about … like an obscene graveyard in endless rows … a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing” [2:302]).

The paramount desolation of the land mirrors the desolation of Gollum's soul: we are exploring the symbolic landscape of degenerate and blasted intelligence. Can moral choices be made at all in the face of such absolute devastation and nothingness? The drama of Gollum-Sméagol is played out in a soul debate in which the Promise vies with the desire for the Ring, liking and respect for Frodo with hatred for Bilbo (who “stole” the Ring) and for Sam (“the nasty suspicious hobbit” [2:304]), all intermingled with fear of Sauron.

The way out—the moral way out, for an immoral being caught between impossible pressures—is to deny culpability for desire by transferring responsibility to some other agency—Shelob in this case (“She might help” [2:305]). If the giant spider kills the Hobbits, then Gollum is free to snitch the Ring and he has not in fact broken his literal Promise to Frodo. This logic involves a neat side-stepping of the moral issue—a means of lessening intolerable pressure through rationalization.

The pressure increases when they discover that Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass where the Teeth (or Towers) of Mordor stand watch, is fully guarded (2:308). This unfortunate circumstance tightens the screws for Gollum, too, once he understands the firmness of Frodo's resolve to continue onward. Gollum does wish to serve his Master; he has brought them to the Gate, as Frodo has requested; he does not wish the Ring to fall into Sauron's hands; and by obeying Frodo he disobeys Sauron, whom he fears and hates. The path Gollum suggests is the path of least resistance, into Shelob's lair (read, the way of rationalization). Does Gollum deceive Frodo by offering him this alternative? Or does he aid him?

Frodo uses the only weapon he has against such easy moral evasion: the harsh clarity of truth. In his foreshadowing the end of LotR, Frodo paints clearly the consequences of Gollum's desire for the Ring: “You will never get it back. In the last need, Sméagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command” (2:314). At the end, Gollum so desires the Ring that he obeys when Frodo apparently commands him to leap into the precipice, but, equally, the Precious ultimately also masters Frodo. Thus, Gollum's final desire (and treachery) indeed represents a final service—to the Precious and to Master Frodo. If both master and servant “fail” against the power of the Ring, their matched failures nevertheless balance against the fate of Middle-earth: the Free Peoples are saved. Gollum's biting off of the ring finger repeats history, given Isildur's cutting of Sauron's finger in the past.

The Tower of the Moon (the alternate way into Mordor, which Isildur originally built) is unguarded, or at least inhabited only by “dreadful things” (2:316)—that is, by Shelob. Is Gollum telling the truth here? Or is he lying in order to obtain the Ring? Frodo believes that Gollum did leave Mordor by means of his own cunning rather than by the directive of Sauron: “For one thing, he noted that Gollum used I, and that seemed usually to be a sign, on its rare appearances, that some remnants of old truth and sincerity were for the moment on top” (2:318). Gollum's consciousness has been enhanced to the point that his sense of self (“I”) has begun to return—that which distinguishes him from mere being (“gollum”) and therefore marks him as capable of moral choice. Indeed, Gollum now speaks in complete sentences rather than baby talk, and his conversation reflects rational patterns of thought.

Good service, in the next few sections of book 4, proves to be more complex and knotty than the good master anticipates. The rabbits that Gollum catches and Sam cooks give them away by their smoke—but Sam, the good servant, betrays them to Faramir, good Steward of Gondor and a helpful friend, who then, Gandalf-like, rescues and revives them with food, water, and, best of all, sleep. Good service leads to better service. Furthermore, when Sam inadvertently reveals the presence of the Ring to Faramir (2:366), his failure (or treachery) does not lead to Faramir's seizure of the Ring (a matching treachery), although it might have. Finally, Faramir, good Steward that he is, wishes to shoot Gollum because he has seen (and fished in) the Forbidden Pool, but is prevented by Frodo, who then “betrays” Gollum's trust by summoning him to be bound by Faramir for his own protection (2:376-77).

Faramir correctly advises Frodo not to trust Gollum (2:381), and yet Frodo has promised to protect him and to follow him to Mordor. To violate that pact would be treachery on Frodo's part: “The servant has a claim on the master for service, even service in fear” (2:375). All of them (except Faramir) in these chapters seem to fail through treachery, but it is apparent treachery only. Even Sam's unthinking desire to cook the rabbits—the providing of physical sustenance to enable clear or moral choices—reflects a strong motivation to serve his master. This it accomplishes better than he might have hoped, because of the resultant rest and refreshment they obtain through Faramir's discovery of them. Even the unwitting revelation of the Ring's presence tests Faramir's service; he succeeds where his brother Boromir has failed. The smoke is a signal, a communication to others, in a land without language. To cook one's food is a sign also of civilization (no raw fish for these Hobbits). And to resist the desire for the Ring proves the excellence of one's stewardship—proves indeed one's humility and lack of selfishness.

The respite in the Garden of Gondor thus opens a “Window in the West” for each of these good servants to see more clearly, to understand (each other and oneself) better, and accordingly to hope more firmly in the future. Given the greatest barrier to their mission—despair, an internal failure of understanding, or the death of the Self, Mordor—the apparent signs of failure here are actually signs of survival, continuation, and life. They do eat; Gollum does come when summoned; Faramir does not kill Gollum, imprison Frodo, or seize the Ring. Sam therefore does serve the mission better than he imagines. And the insight into themselves and into their own resilience and dependability strengthens their hope. The episode thus functions analogously to the palantír episode at the end of book 3: if the palantír allows the gazer to see far, the “Window in the West” allows the gazer to see close, to gaze inward. The episode also functions analogously to the Lothlórien episode in book 2, when Galadriel offers Frodo and Sam the opportunity to look into her mirror and foresee the future in order to arm themselves with the weapon of knowledge (as Gandalf's history of the Ring has armed Frodo with knowledge of the past in book 1).

The City of the Ringwraiths, or the Tower of the Moon, differs from Isengard and the Tower of Orthanc in the emptiness of its intelligence (Orthanc signifies “Cunning Mind”—perverse and perverted intelligence): “In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night” (2:397). The wall and tower of Minas Morgul (“Tower of Black-Magic”) were originally named Minas Ithil (“Tower of the Moon”) before capture and inhabitation by the Nazgûl. In this tower close to Cirith Ungol, “Pass of the Spider,” Frodo's loyalty to his best self and to the mission is tested by his desire to put on the Ring and thus reveals his presence in Mordor to Sauron. The spiritual and intellectual emptiness of Minas Morgul attests to the blankness and indifference to any choice at all as the chief peril to Frodo's success now.

Accordingly, when Frodo desires to put on the Ring as the Black Rider pauses before their hiding place (2:400-401), he initially dissociates himself from the will, moving his hand toward the Ring: “It took his hand, and as Frodo watched with his mind, not willing it but in suspense (as if he looked on some old story far away), it moved the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon his neck. Then his own will stirred; slowly it forced the hand back and set it to find another thing, a thing lying hidden near his breast” (2:401): The Phial of Galadriel counters the nihilism and domination that threaten Frodo, at least here. The Phial also helps him turn away Shelob when the Hobbits reach the top of the stairs and the tunnel guarded by the malicious spider (2:419). (Frodo continues to feel, however, that Shelob's eyes “are looking at me, or thinking about me: making some other plan, perhaps” [2:421].) And the Elven blade Sting cuts through the net of cobwebs halting their progress through the dark tunnel. But neither is sufficient against the malice of Shelob and the treachery of Gollum: Shelob captures Frodo and Gollum lunges at Sam.

These twin adversaries at first glance seem oddly disparate. Gollum has so progressed in moral metamorphosis that his relationship with his master might be characterized as loving and the sameness of the two identified as Hobbit: “Then [Gollum] came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched [sleeping] Frodo's knee—but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing” (2:411).

Perhaps Tolkien manifests the civilization and humanization (Hobbitization?) of Gollum in order to make more horrible Gollum's final treachery in this volume—to allow to be killed what Gollum most loves next to the Precious. Indeed, when Sam surprises him “pawing at master,” Gollum is portrayed as “almost spider-like … crouched back on his bent limbs, with his protruding eyes” (2:411). Surely Gollum resents Sam's label of “sneak”—that is, he resists Sam's intolerance of difference in Hobbit nature. And yet what is spiderlike in Gollum is that unthinking and inarticulate existence that depends for its survival on eating—gollum. As Shelob is described, “she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness” (2:422). The sheer continuation of nature depends on ingestation and reproduction of kind but cares nothing for incest or slaughter of kin—it is mindless and immoral: “Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen” (2:422). She is the gollum counter to Sméagol, “and in past days he had bowed and worshipped her, and the darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret” (2:423).

As the principle of unthinking life indifferent to moral choice, Shelob incarnates the instinct to survive that separates the dead from the existent. Morally and spiritually, however, the malice she represents is also indifferent to all else except sentient Self: “Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her” (2:423). Shelob's desire, then, is for “sweeter meat”—an unabated hunger, as if she were appetite itself (so called Sauron's “cat” [2:424]). For this reason she is more dangerous even than Gollum: no one can use logic to analyze her twisted motivations, as Gandalf does with Saruman, because Shelob is moved solely by appetite in her actions. Tolkien's point is that food exerts a far more primordial and necessary attraction than treasure.

The adversaries of Frodo at the end are many—the will of the Ring (or of Sauron), operating through himself and on Gollum; Sauron himself and his Nazgûl; and the mindlessness of Shelob, his “cat.” What may be less clear (because apparently less important and less clearly defined) are how those same adversaries confront Sam differently and the reasons for his consequent choices in the similarly entitled chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise.”

When Sam becomes Ringbearer, he has had little or no opportunity to exercise mastery of self or self-discipline, a handicap underscored by his own difference from Frodo. Sam's genealogy and family history differ from his master's: he is not Baggins-Took, or an orphan, or the cousin of Bilbo. Furthermore, his vocation and class depend more on manual labor and earth-tilling than on the leisurely pursuit of scholarship and books, as was the case with Frodo and Bilbo. Thus, Ringbearer Sam's uncontrolled anger at Gollum initially urges pursuit of the creature in mirror image of the ancient malice of Shelob: “For the moment he had forgotten everything else but the red fury in his brain and the desire to kill Gollum” (2:427). Later a similar mirroring wrath fuels Sam's attack on Shelob: “No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate” (2:428). The Phial of Galadriel with its light burns Shelob back into her lair. Most important, it is Sam's hearing rather than his vision that is heightened by wearing the Ring after he has determined Frodo is dead, which means that he can understand the Orcs he overhears. This precipitous act of Ring wearing thus affords Sam the miraculous opportunity to learn that Frodo is not dead (2:444) and to change his disastrous course of action from dutiful Ringbearing to the more appropriate, serviceable rescue of his master. Like Frodo, Galadriel, Gandalf, and Faramir, Sam resists the temptation to become Lord of the Ring: he remains what he is, a servant rather than a master. Indeed, Sam's propitious leaving of Frodo for dead convinces the Orcs that this “regular elvish trick” is intended to deter them from capture of the “big fellow with the sharp sword” (2:443).

Through his new linguistic understanding, Sam determines that Frodo lives—for Shelob never binds with cord unless she's hungry—but she “doesn't eat dead meat” (2:444). Sam's lesson here and the lesson in this second volume is not only that knowledge, conveyed through language, is power, but that the source of that knowledge is equally important: “You fool,” Sam says to himself, as the Gollum-like adversary he last confronts, “he isn't dead and your heart knew it. Don't trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best part of you. The trouble with you is that you never really had any hope” (2:444). Like Saruman, Sam has denied hope to himself as well as to Gollum. Like Shelob, he has reacted angrily rather than wisely to this crisis. And like Gollum, he has seemingly abandoned and betrayed his master to dark powers: “Never leave your master, never, never: That was my right rule. And I knew it in my heart. May I be forgiven!” (2:445).

Saruman, Shelob, Gollum, and Sam—unlikely adversaries but all similar in one way or another. From the great knowledge of Saruman to the inarticulation of Shelob is not so great a step—even Saruman is reduced to inarticulate rage when his schemes are foiled. The anger of all leads to murder, Mordor, and the one tower is keyed to the second, at the edge of the wasteland. At the moment Sam is poised to step over that line, his heart and the fullness of its knowledge rescue him. Through recovery of himself he is able to rescue Frodo and thus facilitate the salvation of Middle-earth.