So here is a cool fight scene, and the desperate flight, and Gandalf’s sexy fight with the Balrog, and then a total shock for the Fellowship, but perhaps not so much for us, as Gandalf is jerked out of the story, and then the great escape out of the underground trap, and that’s the end of the Chapter. And I would guess we sense what is afoot: the steady removal of almost all of Frodo’s needed friendly crutches, and the illusions that go with them.
I’m going to do two things here: discuss the Balrog, and talk about what happens to Gandalf while he disappears. The first is not really about LOTR at all: it’s an excursion into Tolkien’s wider work, to see an insight in that work. The second is in order to set the stage for what may also be really happening on Mount Doom. No, I’m not going to tell you now. Deal with it.
Let’s start with the word “Balrog.” Think of it as Elvish slang contraction, the way we say “don’t” for “do not”. The full word is “Valaraukar.”
Let’s stop here and give just a bit of a view into Tolkien’s overall framework for this world that he is frantically trying to fill in the details of. There is God, as far as we can tell completely outside of the world, just its creator (with one possible exception that really doesn’t matter). There are the Children of God, who either have chosen to put themselves entirely in this world until it ends, in order to learn a lesson God is trying to teach them, and because they love the place, or who are in it because they want to create just the world they want to create, and for whom nobody in this world is real, just toys that they control in order to get what they want. That’s Sauron. Before he became head evil honcho, that was the First – Morgoth. The Children of God, including Morgoth and Sauron, are called the Valar and Maiar. The strongest of the Children of God corrupted and controlled by Morgoth (except deputy Sauron) are called the “Valaraukar.”
This is not the translation from the Elvish, but my mental image of a Valarauka is “a mini-God who rips you, mentally and physically, as the Eagles in The Hobbit attack the goblins by ripping their faces from above with their claws.” The whip gives the same image. The raw male power of the size, the mane, the blank physical blackness within give the same image.
What’s the back-story of the Valaraukar? We see them first when Morgoth causes the Sin of Feanor, and then stabs Feanor in the back, and Feanor chases him down to his lair in Middle-Earth, and the Valaraukar all attack Feanor, and Feanor dies.
Throughout the rest of the so-called First Age that begins around now, we see them as generals going out and picking off Elven strongholds one by one, and sometimes the Elves fight back and kill one. And then the “good” children of God, Gods and mini-Gods, show up in an overwhelming force and the Valaraukar, among other Morgoth tools, “wither” before them like rags in a flame.
Except that it doesn’t end there, as we find out now. Sauron, Morgoth’s chief lieutenant, briefly considers going back to being a “good” mini-God and then decides to sneak off and set up shop as a mini-Morgoth in Mordor. And at least one of the Valaraukar, completely independently, frantically runs off and hides from the “good” Gods in the deepest place he can find (yes, Gods have sexes, kind of, although they don’t have God-children; it’s more whether they feel more affinity for males or females, about half of each for the “good” ones, with a few more males than females for the “bad” ones) – where the “good” Gods are least likely to find him – ever. And unless he’s disturbed, he won’t come out – ever.
Except that the Dwarves of Moria disturb him. When Morgoth set up shop, he decided to control people by putting a little piece of himself in everything alive and sentient. It weakened him; but it gave him a point in everyone to control. When the “good” Valar overcame the Valaraukar, they were also overcoming Morgoth and kicking him out of the world completely; but this did not remove the bits of Morgoth that were laying around for folk like Sauron to use, but that also operated on their own hook.
And so, even when Sauron was not “calling out” to those bits and pieces and the “evil creatures” in whom those bits had taken control, the Dwarves got tempted by those bits and got greedy. And tried to eke out true-silver and in the process mine into dangerous territory that they didn’t understand. And in the process they dug down to the Balrog. And he discovered no God was watching and came up and kicked out the Dwarves and set up shop in Moria.
And Gandalf, we find out, is a mini-Valar, and for the third time the “good” Gods are going to get a crack at the Valaraukar (the first time was probably when they all descended into Middle Earth, the second when they almost all get destroyed), and it seems probable to me that it’s for good. And Gandalf utterly destroys what is probably the last Valaraukar, which means destroying its “Godhood”, which is probably much the same as the Elvish “spirit” and is in that alternate world. And the key word in the entire long explanation I have just given you is “third.”
I once was told that fundamentally there are two approaches to writing, and they are like two approaches to sculpting an elephant. In one way, you take a huge block of clay, and scrape away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. That’s the “classical” way. In the other, you take a whole bunch of bits of clay that are lying around, and throw them on, one after the other, until it looks like an elephant. That’s the “romantic” way. In LOTR, Tolkien is classical. He is scraping away all the unnecessary bits of material in this made-up world of his until there is a core, integrated, complete story. In his other writings about Middle-Earth, as he notes in his story Leaf by Niggle, he is romantic. He keeps adding more and more details and mini-stories to his overall framework, like Georges Seurat adding more and more vibrant colors to a pointillist painting, until it seems real and a complete picture of the overall world – although if you look closely it will never be really finished; it just takes on a life of its own.
But in this world, over and over, there is a theme of three. Over and over, Tolkien seems to view history as a classical symphony in which there is a first movement, complete in its story but clearly not completing the whole story, and then a second movement that deals with the incompleteness of the first movement but still does not complete the story, and then a third that finally completes the story. Morgoth tries to screw up the world, and is chained in the world. He is freed, corrupts the Elves, and this time the Gods capture him and thrust him out of the world entirely. But it isn’t finished; the evil he left in everyone is still there, and at the very end of world history he’s going to try to get back in. All that the peoples of Middle-Earth have done to handle his evil will culminate in a representative who will meet Morgoth as he tries to get back into Middle-Earth, and defeat him, and destroy him, and all his evil in the world will also by then be neutralized, and all that Morgoth is will be finally dealt with. Let’s try this; it kind of worked, now we can try this; it almost worked, now we can do this; we did it.
So, as I say, this is unnecessary to understanding the classical LOTR. In LOTR and the appendices, we see only enough of this three-part theme for Elves and Dwarves and Men (and those three stages don’t happen all at the same time – it’s only the very biggest theme that is marked by the First, Second, and Third Ages). But Tolkien wrote a huge amount of other mini-stories, some not so good, some as good as LOTR, to romantically fill in the world of Middle Earth, and if you decide to wade through that, it’s very rewarding to see the first and second themes of so many things in which the third theme occurs in LOTR. Life, Elves, Men. Men tested in the First Age, the “good” survivors going to Numenor and “falling” to Sauron and their home being swallowed up by the Gods’ tidal wave at the end of the Second Age, the survivors fleeing and establishing Gondor and Arnor and then united in triumph over Sauron by Aragorn at the end of the Third Age. The Valaraukar. Yavanna’s light that winds up in the high courtyard of Gondor as the third tree of light.
It’s not everybody’s cup of writing-style tea, nor should it be. It’s just that, for some people, it’s nice to know that at the end of a full and satisfying meal, there’s dessert any time you want it.
And now, Gandalf.
What we find out early in Book III is that Gandalf has been “away.” Here is what he says: “I wandered far, out of space and time, in places that I will not tell. I was sent back.”
Gandalf was not in this world. He has shed his physical body and is back to being a mini-God. He is called back, and therefore almost certainly stops in the Undying Lands and talks with the Valar. And this is the one point in the entire story where there is a clear indication that the Valar have reached in directly and changed what someone is doing. For everything else, their touch is so light that you can find an equivalent psychological and physical (and magical) explanation for it all. As I said, Tolkien plays fair. Even when the Gods do interfere, they interfere subtly, and minimally, and it’s understandable from what comes before, and it’s consistent with their psychology, and it allows everybody before and after to make their own decisions. The Gods are simply telling their tool – except he’s far more than a tool, he has complete choice about the matter – you should do this.
And the core of what he was told and agreed to do seems clear: stay away from Frodo from now on. We can guess already, and the story then confirms it: Gandalf will give in to the temptation of the Ring and the Quest will fail if he meets up with Frodo again before the end on Mount Doom. Don’t go after Frodo.
But there’s another aspect to it, that just might be important. Gandalf will never meet Gollum from now on.
That’s all I’m going to say about that, until much later. You’ll just have to wait. Deal …
p.s. It may amuse you to know that afaik, from the early 1980s until now, a major ongoing argument among Tolkien fans on the Internet is the question of whether Balrogs have wings. As for me, to quote the immortal Lou Costello, I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care (I Don’t Care? Oh, he’s our shortstop!).
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves