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Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Man Who Was Killed

30 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

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"The Man He Killed", Adventure, British Infantry, British Militia, Crimean War, Damrod, Fantasy, Faramir, Frodo, Haradrim, History, Lamellar, Mablung, Middle-earth, military history, Military recruiters, Napoleonic Wars, Sam Gamgee, Second Boer War, The Dynasts, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Thomas Hardy, Time's Laughingstocks, Tolkien, Waterloo, WWI

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always. In this posting, we propose to suggest a connection—one, at the moment, at least, which we can’t prove—between Tolkien and the late-Victorian/Edwardian/Georgian (he was born in 1840 and died in 1928) poet/novelist, Thomas Hardy.

We begin with a quotation from The Two Towers, Chapter 4, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”. Sam and Frodo have been taken by Faramir’s rangers and, with Damrod and Mablung as their minders, they are about to sit out the ambush staged by Faramir to destroy a column of Haradrim. Unthinkingly, Sam has become an eager spectator, and:

“Then suddenly straight over the rim of their sheltering bank, a man fell, crashing through the slender trees, nearly on top of them. He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward, green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.”

The Haradrim are from the far south, but, wherever this man was from, he was wearing a type of armor called “lamellar”, from the Latin word, “lamella”, meaning, “a little, thin plate”, it being a diminutive of “lamina”, “a thin piece of something/a plate, leaf”. It’s a kind of protection worn over many centuries in many parts of the world. Basically, it looks like this:

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It can be made, as the one described, of lamellae of bronze, or of iron, which are sewn to an underlying fabric.

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So, perhaps, this dead warrior looked a bit like this:

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Sam’s curiosity was quickly dampened by the sight—and it makes us wonder if what we are also seeing here is Lieutenant Tolkien’s first glimpse of a dead enemy soldier.

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“It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace—“

It was this brief meditation—abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a Mumak—which reminded us of this Thomas Hardy poem, “The Man He Killed”:

“Had he and I but met
            By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
            Right many a nipperkin!

 

            “But ranged as infantry,
            And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
            And killed him in his place.

 

            “I shot him dead because —
            Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
            That’s clear enough; although

 

            “He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
            Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
            No other reason why.

 

            “Yes; quaint and curious war is!
            You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
            Or help to half-a-crown.”

The language—“nipperkin”, “ ‘list”—and the social situation depicted: “was out of work—had sold his traps” (“traps” being slang of the time for “personal possessions”)—would suggest that the speaker is a working man. Such, along with farm boys, were prime material for military recruiters

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in the Victorian world in which this poem was written (1902—published in Hardy’s Time’s Laughingstocks, 1909 ). The speaker is, in his own words, however, from an earlier day. When Hardy wrote the poem, the Second Boer War (1899-1902) was just ending, but it was hardly a war in which soldiers did as the speaker says, “but ranged as infantry,/and staring face to face,/I shot at him as he at me,/and killed him in his place.” The war had begun with British infantry attacking in spread-out lines, but still very visible on the landscape and it had cost them dearly.

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Their enemy—mostly all militia—that is, part-time soldiers—had dug in from the start.

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British losses had taught them to do the same.

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What the speaker is describing sounds much more like earlier European wars, in which soldiers stood in long lines at a narrowing distance from each other and fired. The last of these, for Britain, had been the Crimean War (1854-56).

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Hardy, however, had a strong interest in the Napoleonic wars of the late-18th-early 19th-centuries, had published a massive dramatic piece, The Dynasts (1904-08), set in that period, and had even twice visited the battlefield of Waterloo (1876, 1896). Thus, we imagine that the poem’s speaker is actually describing something like this:

Lejeune_-_Bataille_de_Marengo.jpg

Had Tolkien read the Hardy poem and perhaps have even been inspired by it? Both scenes include a battlefield, a battle death, and a lingering sense of regret—although Sam hadn’t killed the man from Harad, he displays that same sense of “this was just a person, an ordinary person, once” which gives the Hardy poem its power.

As ever, we leave it to you, dear readers—what do you think?

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

Plot or Blot?

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Uncategorized

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Adventure, An Unexpected Journey, Eagles, Gandalf, Gwaihir, His Dark Materials, Iofur Rakinson, Isengard, Manwe, Middle-earth, Mirkwood, Moth, Ornthanc, Peter Jackson, Philip Pullman, Radagast, Rohirrim, Saruman, Svalbard, The Battle of the Five Armies, The Council of Elrond, The eagles are coming, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Golden Compass, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Tolkien, Wizard

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

This posting is about a puzzle. Recently, while visiting Orthanc to write about Saruman, we bumped into the problem of how Gandalf escaped from there. Our memory was a little unclear about this—we knew that Gwaihir swooped down to rescue him, but why was Gwaihir there in the first place?

Eagles had appeared twice before in our experience of Gandalf, first when they rescued him and his companions from the goblins and Wargs in Chapter 6 of The Hobbit, “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”. Here, the Lord of the Eagles hears the commotion as the Wargs struggle to overcome Gandalf’s fire magic and, gathering up some of his people, flies down to investigate.

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Something similar happens at the Battle of the Five Armies, explained in Chapter 18, “The Return Journey”:

“The Eagles had long had suspicion of the goblins’ mustering; from their watchfulness the movements in the mountains could not be altogether hid.” Thus, they appear self-bid, but, as they are ancient creatures, first made by Manwe and given the role of watchers from the time of the First Age, it’s not surprising that they would act as they did.

Battle of the Five Armies_Final Complete.jpg

In Jackson’s An Unexpected Journey and, again, in his The Fellowship of the Ring, an eagle appears after Gandalf has had a heart-to-heart with a moth.

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With a moth? We asked ourselves. We scratched our heads and wondered: does JRRT use a moth? And, if so, where did the moth come from?

In fact, what really happens is a very neatly constructed piece of plotting on the part of the author, all of which is very nicely laid out in a couple of pages of “The Council of Elrond” during Gandalf’s long narrative.

  1. Gandalf meets Radagast—who is identified, among other talents, as one for whom “birds are especially his friends”—and who says that, if Gandalf needs help with the Black Riders, he needs to apply to Saruman immediately.
  2. In return, Gandalf says to Radagast, “We shall need your help, and the help of all things that will give it. Send out messages to all the beasts and birds that are your friends. Tell them to bring news of anything that bears on this matter to Saruman and Gandalf. Let messages be sent to Orthanc.”
  3. Gandalf goes to Orthanc and, rejecting Saruman’s offer, is imprisoned at its top.
  4. Then, that which was set up in 1 and 2 comes to fruition:

“That was the undoing of Saruman’s plot. For Radagast knew no reason why he should not do as I asked; and he rode away towards Mirkwood where he had many friends of old. And the Eagles of the Mountains went far and wide, and they saw many things…And they sent a messenger to bring these tidings to me.

So it was that when summer waned, there came a night of moon, and Gwaihir the Windlord, swiftest of the Great Eagles, came unlooked-for to Orthanc; and he found me standing on the pinnacle. Then I spoke to him and he bore me away, before Saruman was aware.”

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Although we have solved the puzzle of Gandalf’s escape, we have no answer to why this natural and even elegant piece of plotting wasn’t used in the film any more than we understand why Radagast is turned into the horrible, clownish figure he is in the Hobbit films, having been described in “The Council of Elrond” simply as “a worthy Wizard, a master of shapes and changes of hue; and he has much lore of herbs and beasts, and birds are especially his friends.” And someone who could never be corrupted by Saruman, which is really, we think, why Saruman calls him a fool.

In an earlier posting, we suggested that Saruman, in his desire to ape Sauron, had created, in Isenguard, a mini-Mordor, just as Iofur Raknison, in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, has turned Svalbard into a shabby ursine mockery of a human palace.

lyrasvalbard.jpg

We also suggested that the creators of the Tolkien-derived films, when they began to veer as far from the text as they appeared increasingly to do in the Hobbit films, had become a bit like Saruman themselves, and, like his master, “cannot make real new things of [their] own…” We hesitate to add this, but, could it be that, as in the case of the orcs, they “only ruined them and twisted them…”? (The Return of the King, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”). After all, instead of easy plot lines, we have moths, and, in place of worthy, incorruptible wizards, we have gross clowns.

We are reluctant to end on a negative note, however. After all, just as there are the Rohirrim in The Lord of the Rings films, there are those wonderful eagles at the end of An Unexpected Journey, so why not end with them?

taking-fan-theories-to-a-next-level-the-eagles-are-coming-434375.jpg

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

If you don’t know Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, we very much recommend them—but with this proviso: in the first and second volumes (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife), Pullman’s antagonism towards organized religion is channeled into the “Magisterium”, a believable villainous organization in the world which he has so meticulously and powerfully created. In the third volume (The Amber Spyglass), we feel that that antagonism becomes all-too-apparent and it causes that volume—in our opinion—to lack the more human element and focus of the first two volumes. The first volume can certainly be read on its own and perhaps it says something about the trilogy as a whole that a planned project for filming all three books was eventually cut to a single film of the first book. We recommend this film, as well, but suggest that you read The Golden Compass before you see it.

Smoke and Mirror?

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

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"Slave of the Mirror", acting, actor, Adventure, Aladdin, classical drama, classics, clowns, comedy, Commedia dell'Arte, Disney, drama, Evil Stepmother, Fiction, Galadriel, Genie, Hellenistic, histrio, Jumanji, Magic, Magic mirror, masks, Middle-earth, Moroni Olsen, persona, pretending, Snow White, The Lord of the Rings, theatre, Tolkien, tragedy

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

In our last posting, we thought about Galadriel’s mirror.

galadriel.jpg

We began with the mirror in Disney’s 1937 Snow White, and it occurred to us that we have no backstory for this. Where did it come from? How did it know anything? And, perhaps more important for the story, why did the stepmother believe it?

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We know how wary we would have been– that Snow White mirror freaked us out as children.

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Reconsidering it, we thought it was partially that smoke. But it was also that face. There was a real face behind that mirror, that of the actor Moroni Olsen (1889-1954).

There is also a history behind that face, which appears to be based upon the conventional mask of tragedy, which is often seen paired with that of comedy.

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These masks might have come down to us most recently through the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, in which all the comic characters were masked.

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The masks are much older, however, coming to us from ancient classical drama. The masks we usually see are later Roman versions,

Tragic_comic_masks_-_roman_mosaic.jpgof which there are seemingly many surviving in several media. Older yet are the Greek masks, the images of which survive in many fewer images, mostly on pots.

greekactorswithmasks.jpg

These Greeks masks suggest that the original idea was to make lifelike, if stylized, representations. Later ones– Hellenistic and Roman– are often much more distorted-looking, and it has been suggested that the masks were shaped as the equivalent of megaphones and resonators, and certainly the later ones at least suggest that possibility.

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Certainly, theatres got bigger and more complex after having begun as simple hillsides.

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But we wonder as well about Romans, and earlier non-dramatic uses of masks, perhaps for religious purposes?

The Romans got at least some of their religion from their neighbors to the north, the Etruscans. They may have gotten some elements of their drama from them, as well. A Roman word for actor, histrio, they believed was an Etruscan word, as was the word for mask, persona.

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In their religion, the Romans practiced ancestor worship and used images of their ancestors as part of their ceremonies, perhaps even using masks to impersonate them.

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And there’s that word persona again, and perhaps that’s what masks are all about: impersonation, pretending to be someone you aren’t.

So, what’s spooky about that mask?

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First, there are those empty eyes. Then, there’s that expression, if not fixed, at least limited.

This makes us think about clowns.

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We were frightened by clowns as children– maybe still are.

tvi061ab_wide-185b74c3460d303bcf13ff50d8db7d58e194c07c-s900-c85.jpgWhy are they so scary? Well, for one thing, the clothing is bright and festive, but the face is dead-white and corpse-like, therefore giving a mixed signal of merriment and death at the same time. Perhaps these contradictions should have made the stepmother less trusting (it certainly made us less trusting as children).

After all, this is an empty face– not even eyes behind it.

Magic_Mirror_SnowWhite.jpg

Why should it be telling the truth any more than a clown?

In the Disney movie, the face is referred to as the “slave of the mirror” and we can imagine that this was an attempt indirectly to suggest why the stepmother trusted the mirror. Presumably, it was like Aladdin’s genie–

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in control, at least temporarily, of its possessor– it’s a slave, after all.

Roman comedy, however, and Greek comedy before it, is full of tricky slaves out for their own profit…

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What might it be like, we wonder, if the mirror, although saying “Madame Queen”, was actually stage managing the whole thing for his own sinister purposes? After all, the Snow White story always ends with the death of the stepmother. Does her death free the mirror?

Or, as was once the custom, does a palace servant cover the mirror after the stepmother’s death, and, like Jumanji,

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must it lie on the wall, waiting for its next victim?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC,

CD

Mirror, Mirror

09 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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A Christmas Carol, Denethor, Dickens, Disney, Evil Stepmother, Fates, Fiction, Folktale, Frodo, Galadriel, Gandalf, Gondor, Grimm Brothers, Istari, Kinder und Hausmaerchen, Lothlorien, Magic mirror, Maiar, Middle-earth, mirror, Mordor, Muses, Norns, Norse Mythology, Numenor, Ornthanc, Palantir, Saruman, Sauron, Schneewittchen, Scrooge, scrying stone, Snow White, Story, The Lord of the Rings, The Theogony, Tolkien, Urtharbrunnr, Valar, Yggdrasil

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

This is the second of two postings which, as we said in our last, was originally just one. That earlier draft linked the Palantiri with Galadriel’s mirror, but, on reconsideration, we believed—at least at first–that, in fact, they weren’t so close as we thought and so we separated them.

In our last, we discussed the Palantiri and what might have been a possible inspiration for them. In this posting, we propose to look a little more closely at Galadriel’s mirror (but we promise not to touch the water).

When we speak of mirrors—and, in this case, magic ones—the first one which pops into our mind is from childhood—the mirror in Snow White and the particularly creepy mirror in the 1937 Disney animated film.

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In the original Schneewittchen, first published in the Grimm brothers’ Kinder und Hausmaerchen in the original edition of 1812,

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the mirror belongs to Snow White’s stepmother, of whom the story says (in our translation):

“She was a very beautiful woman, but she was proud and arrogant and couldn’t allow that anyone would surpass her in beauty.”

She monitored her position by means of that mirror:

“She had a wonderful mirror. When she stepped before it and looked at herself within it, she said:

Little mirror, little mirror, on the wall,

Who is the most beautiful in the whole land?

The mirror answered thus:

Madame Queen, you are the most beautiful in the land.”

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This makes us wonder about the stepmother. Was she like so many of the people we see around us every day (and not “everyday”, which is a compound adjective, meaning “commonly” as in “everyday usage does not necessarily equal correct usage in language”), compulsively fiddling with their electronic devices? How often did she go to that mirror and ask that question? As it was attached to the wall, she wasn’t carrying it in her back pocket, so, can we picture her making excuses to the king, to the prime minister, to her ladies in waiting, just so that she could go back to visit it? The text only says that she did—it’s a folktale, after all, and therefore old and so before current addictions were available, but she seems so obsessed—and familiar.

But then comes the day when the answer is:

“Madame Queen, you’re the most beautiful here,

But Snow White is a thousand times more beautiful than you.”

And the story goes on from there to places we don’t intend to follow.  It is interesting, however, that the mirror itself appears to do the talking, not a visible spirit within it, as in the Disney movie, and there is a certain logic to this. After all, normally, a mirror is only a reflecting device: it shows the person who is looking into it, as we see the stepmother doing. Then again, having someone—or something—looking out when you look in raises all sorts of interesting questions: who is it? Where is it? How does it know what it knows and how to speak? Does it have limits?

We might imagine, from her single, repeated question that the woman does. She never, for example, asks “Was there anyone as beautiful before me?” or “Will I always be the most beautiful?” She seems trapped in the moment and, without a greater context, the mirror’s last reply will be that much more shocking.

In contrast, Galadriel’s mirror, is neither on a wall, nor portable. In fact, it’s not really a mirror in the conventional sense at all.

“With water from the stream Galadriel filled the basin to the brim, and breathed on it, and when the water was still again she spoke. ‘Here is the Mirror of Galadriel,’ she said. ‘I have brought you here so that you may look in it, if you will.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

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When Frodo asks what might be seen therein, Galadriel replies:

‘Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal,’ she answered, ‘and to some I can show what they desire to see. But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which is it that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.’ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

There appear to be several possible influences here. In the ancient Greek poem, The Theogony, the Muses are described as knowing past, present, and future (Theogony 380), as they choose the shepherd, Hesiod, to become a poet.

Muses_sarcophagus_Louvre_MR880.jpg

Others have suggested that an influence upon the author here was the Urtharbrunnr, the well of fate, as it may be translated, from Norse mythology, which lies at the foot of the tree called Yggdrasil. Here the Norns, or Fates in Norse tradition, sit to do their work.

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Another possibility yet might be the three Christmases who visit Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and an advantage to pointing to them is that Christmas Yet to Come, although mute, shows Scrooge what turn out to be only “things that yet may be”, as Scrooge, by his change in behavior, diverts fate.

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That sense of potentiality about the future is clearly a very important feature of Galadriel’s Mirror. Lorien is not only a haven from Orcish pursuit,

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but also a testing ground, where the surviving members of the Fellowship are probed by the Lady of the Wood, even as she herself is inadvertently tested when Frodo offers her the Ring. Sam may suffer the most from this, being shown what appears to be the destruction of the Shire and the destitution of his own grandfather.

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And yet, as Galadriel says,

‘But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold.’ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

What Sam sees shakes him for a moment to the point of stepping back from the basin, saying (almost shouting, as the sentence ends with an exclamation point), “I must go home!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”) He recovers immediately, however, resolving, “ ‘No, I’ll go home by the long road with Mr. Frodo, or not at all.’” And thus he, like Galadriel, passes the test and perhaps that’s what the odd word “profitable” means in her explanation. Sam is confronted with what must have been that which he subconsciously dreaded most, but his new resolution ultimately proves the salvation of Middle Earth, on the one hand, and the healing of the Shire by means of Galadriel’s gift of a little Lorien, on the other. And, considering that Sam first appears in the story as an eaves-dropping gardener and hardly a giant elf-warrior, that other adjective, “stranger” may be appropriate, too.

So far, the Mirror has nothing in common with a Palantir, which was clearly designed not as a “scrying stone”, but as a communication device. And yet there is Galadriel’s remark,

“ ‘Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal,’ she answered, ‘and to some I can show what they desire to see.’ “

This strikes us as an ambiguous statement—and probably meant to be. Does Galadriel mean:

  1. people come to ask her, for example, to see their future—implication being that she shows them that, and nothing more
  2. people come, ask, and she shows them what they want to see—implication being that what they see is not necessarily what is real?

When Frodo looks into Mirror, he sees the very last thing he would want to see, however:

“But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

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This is especially true in that:

“Then the Eye began to rove, searching this way and that; and Frodo knew with certainty and horror that among the many things that it sought he himself was one.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

This is clearly not the past or the future, as Frodo sees it, but the all-too-realistic present. And this is not just a present to be viewed. Like the figure in the mirror in the old Disney Snow White, this is someone who would respond directly to what he sees, if he could. And Frodo is aware of this:

“But he also knew that it could not see him—not yet, not unless he willed it.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Does the Mirror have more potential, then? Can it be used as a communication device, like a Palantir? If it can combine the functions of “magic mirror” and Palantir, might the Palantir be able to combine functions, as well?

Certainly Sauron does something which ruins Denethor’s ability to resist Sauron’s view of the future to the point where he attempts to commit flaming suicide along with his one surviving son, having abandoned his city to its fate.

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Denethor, though, is just a human, and rather a vain one, at that.

How would Sauron do the same with one of the Maiar, those beings sent by the Valar to protect Middle Earth from the danger which Sauron represents? Certainly we know that Sauron has communicated with Saruman through the Palantir.

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There may be a clue in Gandalf’s reply to Saruman, just before he is held captive in Orthanc:

“I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

What Gandalf is responding to is:

“A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish,,hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, “The Council of Elrond”)

“Knowledge, Rule, Order”? It’s no wonder that Gandalf replies as he does. Such words sound more like the slogan of a totalitarian state—exactly what Mordor has become under its lidless-eyed master–than those of one of the Istari.

And how did Saruman come to have such a distorted vision of the future? Just as Denethor, bitter over his son’s death and the loss to Gandalf—he thinks—of his younger son, has been shown what must have been an increasingly-bleak picture of Gondor and its fate, so can we imagine that Sauron, sensing a latent arrogance and desire for power in Saruman, has given Saruman the second possible understanding of Galadriel’s statement. He has shown Saruman what Saruman secretly wishes for and, in doing so, he cunningly paints for Saruman, who is just wise enough to know that he will never be Sauron, a picture of an alliance which will grant him his wish. Why does Saruman, who is himself an extremely powerful figure, fall for this? Perhaps he’s like Snow White’s stepmother and limited to one question: “Little globe, little globe, who is the (second most) powerful in Middle Earth?”

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Somewhere Over…Ephel Duath?

02 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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Aragorn, Auntie Em, communication, crystal ball, Denethor, Dorothy, Emerald City, Galadriel, heroine, Kansas, Margaret Hamilton, Middle-earth, mirror, Oxford, Oz, Palantir, Pippin, Professor Marvel, Saruman, Sauron, seeing-stones, skype, The Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Tolkien, Villains, Wicked Witch

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always. This posting is now one of two, but it was originally a single posting in which we discussed both Palantiri and Galadriel’s mirror.

Our first thought had been, in fact, a vague one: what did one see in such things? As we reviewed the various possibilities, we realized that they were, in fact, very different in function (yes, we probably didn’t think long and hard enough—we should have pulled out our spares and dipped into that cask of Longbottom Leaf for a three-pipe problem). So we separated them and here’s the first, on the Palantiri.

We begin in 1939. It’s not a happy time: war in Europe has broken out again after only two decades of peace. The Depression is still lingering. But there is a new film which Priscilla (age 10) has heard about and would very much like to see and her loving and indulgent father has agreed to take her—after all, this is a children’s movie and he, since his first novel was published in 1937, has become a children’s author.

The film was the story of a quest: the heroine, torn from home, acquires a magical object (two, in fact), slowly gathers a disparate band of companions who help her on her way, visits a grand city, has dealings with a wizard, defeats a powerful enemy and returns home, at last, a wiser person.

posterforwoo

In the very year he became a children’s author, the father had begun a new work. Based in part upon earlier materials and interests, as well as upon elements from his 1937 novel, this was to become not, as he thought at first (and his publishers hoped) a sequel to his previous work, but a kind of extension of that work and, in the years in which he continued to work on it, much more.

In the meantime, he sat in the theatre in Oxford and watched a bleak prairie worldkansas

turn into something almost hallucinogenically-technicolored

munchkinland

and filled with small and very energetic people.

munchkins

But the heroine, as we said, has been torn from home and, worse, she arrives and is immediately in trouble with a powerful enemy,

wickedwitchofthewest

having accidentally killed that enemy’s sibling.houseinwwoe

And the story moves on from there—the gathering of the companions

Wizard-of-Oz-w13

the grand city

oz

and, all the while, that powerful enemy is watching.

ball4

This isn’t the first time such a scrying device has been seen in the story. Earlier, the heroine had consulted another magical figure—or so he claimed.

profmarvelswagon Wizard-3-Marvel

What’s particularly interesting about this device is that, unlike crystal balls one remembers from film and books and from general folklore,

crystalball

the one which is actually used sees not the future, but the present.

The Wicked Witch of the West sees Dorothy—as, of course, that’s who they are–

wwowwithball

and Dorothy sees Auntie Em.

crystalballdseesem

(And “Professor Marvel”, as he calls himself, at least pretends to see the present.)

This made us wonder about the Palantiri.

For a useful summary of information about these so-called “seeing-stones”, see the entry for Palantiri at Tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Palantiri, but, in short, they are an ancient communication device. That is, they are unlike the usual crystal ball, which looks into the future (or possibly the past), but are rather like the Middle Earth form of skype.

skype

These items don’t have the security offered by our earthly form, however. Within The Lord of the Rings, we see them used by Saruman

sarumanpalantir

Pippin

Pippinpalantir

and Aragorn

palantirandaragorn

and Denethor.

denethorandpalantir

Aragorn, however, is the only one able to escape the control of Sauron as exerted by the sphere.

the_palantir_of_barad_dur_by_stirzocular-d7xwbi9

Their function as a medium of communication, so different from their usual use, brings us back to Margaret Hamilton, staring into her crystal ball

ball4

and we wondered whether, in that dark late summer of 1939, Tolkien might have sat in a theatre in Oxford, watching the Wicked Witch of the West, and, as he did so brilliantly with so many other things, absorbing, then recreating what he saw for his own purposes. What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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