Master of Middle Earth (5 page)

All this is not to
minimize the polarities in tone and scope between
The Hobbit
and its
successor. If
The Hobbit
is a quarry it is one in which the blocks of
stone lie scattered about in a much looser and less imposing pattern than that
in which the epic assembles those which it chooses to borrow. For example,
Bilbo's enemies are serial, not united under any paragon of evil, as is to
happen in the epic.
The Hobbit's
trolls, goblins (ores), spiders, and
dragon know nothing of one another and are all acting on their own. They are
certainly not shown to be servants of the nameless and nebulous Necromancer,
whose only function in the story is to cause Gandalf to leave Bilbo and company
to confront exciting perils unaided for a time. Nor, as has been said, is that
magician linked in any way with the Ring, which comes out of nowhere belonging
to no one. Also, as there is no alliance on behalf of evil so there is none
against it. Dwarves, elves, and men act mainly for their selfish interests,
often at cross-purposes, until
a
coalition is forced upon them by
a
goblin
army hostile to all at the very end. Even then the issue is relatively
localized and not worldwide in its ramifications.

Some of the
places, later to be brilliantly visualized in the epic appear for the first
time in
The Hobbit,
but its geography tends to be rudimentary and
uncertain and it is not given a continental context. Bilbo's home is simply the
Hill. No Shire and no hobbit society surround it. Rivendell is a valley where
the Last Homely House stands, hardly described at all and not resembling the
splendidly civilized palace it is to be. Bilbo's journey leads him
northeastward to Erebor, without the slightest inkling that the broad cities of
Gondor, capitals of the West, lie facing Mordor to the south. The existence of
oceans and Undying Lands somewhere or other is mentioned only in passing. In
fact, since Bilbo's world is never called Middle-earth until we run across a
reference to the constellation of the Wain (stars in the Great Bear) in its
northern sky, we may be pardoned for wondering whether it is any place in
particular, assuming, of course, that we have not read the epic. Tolkien has
not yet learned to take the pains he later takes to make us accept this world
as our own planet Earth and the events of his story as a portion of Earth's
distant pre-history.

The case is the
same for the individual characters and the races in
The Hobbit
who will
reappear in
The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien's abrupt leap from a
children's tale to an epic of heroic struggle requires a radical elevation of
stature for all of them. As the Necromancer of
The Hobbit
is not yet
Sauron, Gandalf is not yet Gandalf. The wizard of the child's story who
"never minded explaining his cleverness more than once," who is
"dreadfully afraid" of the wargs, who tricks Beorn into accepting
thirteen unwanted dwarves into his house, and the like, needs nothing short of
a total literary resurrection to become the messenger sent by the Valar to
rally the West against Sauron. So, too, something drastic will have to be done
to the petulant, cowardly dwarves who, to escape the wargs, sit "up in the
trees with their beards dangling down, like old gentlemen gone cracked and
playing at being boys," if their race is to be capable of producing a
Gimli. Even Elrond the wise is a lesser digit who must be raised to a
considerably higher power. And the elves of Riven-dell and Mirkwood! No
self-respecting elf in the epic would perpetrate the nonsense they sing in
The Hobbit,
or dance and carol on midsummer eve, do disappearing acts at
the approach of travelers in the forest, and the like, as if they were the tiny
nonentities of our debased folklore, as Tolkien everywhere else deplores it.
Nor, happily, can trolls be allowed to go on speaking the bastard cockney of
Tom, Bert, and Bill Huggins. That Tolkien was able to accomplish all such
transmutations successfully bears witness to his possession of an almost
incredible power of mind and art.

Much of this need
for upgrading the characters and the plot of
The Hobbit
arises from
Tolkien's treatment of them in many situations of that tale as seriocomic. He
evidently believes that the children will enjoy laughing at them sometimes, as
a relief from shivering in excitement sympathetically with them at others. In
truth,
The Hobbit
is seldom far from comedy. Tolkien begins by making
Bilbo the butt of Gandalf's joke in sending the dwarves unexpectedly to eat up
all his food, proceeds on to the lamentable humor of the troll scene, hangs his
dwarves up in trees, rolls them in barrels, touched the riddle scene with wit,
makes the talk between Bilbo and Smaug triumphantly ridiculous, and tops it all
off with Bilbo's return home to find his goods being auctioned off and his
reputation for respectable stupidity in ruins. It must be acknowledged that the
comedy is not invariably successful and that Tolkien's wry paternal manner of
addressing his young listeners does not always avoid an air of talking down,
which sets the teeth on edge. Nevertheless,
The Hobbit
was never meant
to be a wholly serious tale, nor his young audience to listen without laughing
often. In contradistinction,
The Lord of the Rings
does on occasion
evoke smiles, but most of the time its issues go too deep for laughter. In the
interval between the two stories the children are sent off to bed and their
places taken by grownups, young or young in heart, to hear of a graver sort of
quest in which every human life is secretly engaged.

Tolkien is not a philosopher
or a
theologian but a literary artist who thinks. Consequently he is not content
merely to narrate a bare series of events but surrounds each high point of the
action in
The Lord of the Rings
with convictions and opinions expressed
by the participants as to its possible place in some larger plan under
execution by greater hands than theirs. Their speculations on such a topic
could easily lead to the familiar vexing, futile debates on predestination,
foreknowledge, contingent futures, free will, and the rest of that thorny
thicket. Tolkien, however, refuses to weigh down his story by letting his
people think or talk like professionals in these areas. Virtually without
exception the elves, men, hobbits, and their allies of the West come to believe
in a moral dynamism in the universe to which each of them freely contributes,
with out exactly knowing how, and without being at all sure how it will
eventually work out in the war against Sauron. But they eschew technical terms
and discuss each crisis not as an intellectual problem but as a stern occasion
demanding concrete choices and chances. Being thoughtful people, though, they
say quite enough in the process to give a good idea of the kind of order in
which they believe and the nature of the planner operating through it.

The first serious
discussion about these matters takes place early in Part I, Book I, when
Gandalf explain to Frodo what the Ring is and how Bilbo came to get it from
Gollum in the caverns under the Misty Mountains: "Bilbo's arrival just at
that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark" was not the
accident it seems but "the strangest event in the whole history of the
Ring so far." At the call of Sauron's will his Ring was leaving Gollum to
return to its maker, but Bilbo found it because "there was something else
at work beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by
saying that Bilbo was
meant
to find the Ring, and
not
by its
maker. In which case you also were
meant
to have it." Plainly
Gandalf is saying that the "something else" which thwarted Sauron was
stronger than he and used this recall of the Ring as a means of putting it,
instead, into the possession of the Dark Lord's enemies through Bilbo. This
intervention, coming just at this juncture, is crucial. Control of the Ring
gives the West its one slim chance of defeating Sauron. Had the Ring remained
with Gollum, or even stayed lost, Sauron's armies were strong enough to win
easily without it, as everyone admits. The free people can overcome him only by
destroying the Ring, and with it the vigor which he himself poured into it in
the Second Age, and which is still necessary to his hold on life in
Middle-earth. Bilbo's picking up the Ring in the dark is the first step on the
long road to Mount Doom.

No conscious
choice of Bilbo's led to his finding the Ring. He did not even know what it was
at the time. But the incident did require of
him
a decision whether or
not to kill Gollum. Out of pity he freely chose not to kill, a choice highly
commended by Gandalf, which won Bilbo the personal "reward" of taking
little hurt from the evil of the Ring. More importantly, Gandalf guesses, he
knows not how, that Gollum is "bound up with the fate of the Ring,"
and that he "has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the
end." This can only be a piece of inspired foresight on Gandalf s part,
however vague its content. He has no rational way of knowing that only Gollum,
stumbling down into the Cracks of Doom with the Ring, will save it from Sauron
at the last moment and accomplish his destruction.

Many of the wise
on Middle-earth have such general glimpses of the future, but they are never
more than vague and unspecific. The future is the property of the One who plans
it. Yet is it fixed in the sense that every link in the chain of its events is
foreordained? It cannot be, because in his encounter with Gollum Bilbo's choice
to kill or not to kill is genuinely free, and only after it has been made is it
woven into the guiding scheme. Tolkien leaves it at that. Human (or hobbitic or
elvish or dwarfish or entish) free will coexists with a providential order and
promotes this order, not frustrates it.

Gandalf has said
that Bilbo was "meant" to find the ring in order to pass it on to
Frodo as his heir. Frodo was "meant" to wear it from then on. But
Gandalf does not assume that Frodo will necessarily do what he was intended to,
though he should. When Frodo, rebelling at first against the duty imposed on
him, asks the natural question, "Why was I chosen?" the wizard can
only reply that nobody knows why; Frodo can be sure only that it was not
because of any surpassing merits he has: "But you have been chosen, and
you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have." The
reasons why one instrument is "chosen" rather than another are not
outwardly visible to any eyes on Middle-earth. Yet Gandalf carefully goes on to
inform Frodo that he is free to accept or reject the choice: .. the decision
lies with you." The option not to cooperate with the grand design is open
to Frodo's will, as it is to that of all other intelligent creatures who are
aware of the issues. Frodo groans but takes up his appointed burden. Sam later
does the same on the trip to Rivendell when he tells Frodo: "... I have
something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see
it through . . ." It is no business of Tolkien's to tell us what would
have happened had these choices been refused by the hob-bits. We are left at
liberty to presume that other persons would have taken their place. For it is
becoming clear that the designer is working against Sauron and would, if
necessary, have brought forward alternative means to confound him.

This impression is
strongly fortified by a passage in Appendix B defining the mission of the five
wizards, led by Gandalf and Saruman, to Middle-earth, as understood by later
chroniclers: "It was afterwards said that they came out of the Far West
and were messengers sent to contest the power of Sauron, and to unite all those
who had the will to resist him; but they were forbidden to match his power with
power, or to seek to dominate Elves or Men by force and fear . . . They came
therefore in the shape of men . . ." Who "sent" them and who
"forbad"? Surely it was either the Valar or the One who established
them as guardians of Middle-earth and whose design they were charged to
administer. It says a good deal about the character of that designer that he
cared enough about the future of Middle-earthly peoples to send messengers to
help them against evil and yet confined that help to education and persuasion,
leaving their wills unforced. Stress is put on the moral side of the struggle
against Sauron and on each person's right to select his own role, or lack of
any role, in it. Being either one of the Valar himself or at least instructed
by them, Gandalf knows as much as any creature can when he suggests a personal
will that "means" and "chooses" as it works out its design.
And no less so when he reminds all comers that they are the final masters of
their own decisions, though what the consequences will be is not for them to
know.

Gandalf had
intended to escort the Ring-bearer to Rivendell to guard him from Sauron's
agents along the way. Tolkien first strips Frodo of protection through
Saruman's imprisonment of Gandalf and then restores it by Frodo's apparently
accidental encounter with Gildor's elves just as he is about to be attacked by
Black Riders. Gildor, knowing how rare the meetings of elves with other
creatures in the woods are, suspects a hidden intention behind this one:
"In this meeting there may be more than chance; but the purpose is not
clear to me, and I fear to say too much." Being no more informed than
anyone else on Middle-earth of the aims of this "purpose," the elf is
reluctant to give any advice that may unduly influence Frodo's choices and so
make them less free. What he can and does do is pass along to "those that
have power to do good" the news that the hobbits are in peril. So warned,
Bombadil, and later Aragorn, arrive at critical moments as substitutes for
Gandalf to give them the aid which he cannot give.