All of the next Chapter is the final end of the War of the Ring, now reduced to a squalid, ultimately meaningless sideshow in the Shire, like the end of the Civil War in the Battle of Palmito Beach in Texas. And, by the way, it’s not a battle but a slaughter. 100 ruffians, 70 killed; that would wipe out any regiment. But it’s not at all meaningless to the Shire itself; a defining moment, there. And we see what Gandalf means when he declares all four of the hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, to be among the high and mighty now, each able to take the lead and direct part of a campaign and understand the Big Picture. But in the Big Picture, those are minor considerations.
And we see, really through Sam’s eyes, that Rosie is already feeling possessive and concerned about him, shortly after he gets back, when she tells him first, don’t go hanging around here, go out and do your job, and then, and you check right back here when you’re done, let me know you’re safe. Rosie – another marvelous potential character whom we get to know all too briefly.
But then we come to the end of the Chapter, and we find out that the root of the whole problem in the Shire is Saruman, and Frodo pities him, and shows him mercy, and then he stabs Frodo, and Frodo forgives him, and Saruman reacts with respect, bitterness, and hate. And I want to talk about forgiveness. A little.
For we have seen, imho, with Tolkien how highness can lead to empathy, and empathy to pity, and pity sometimes to love, and empathy sometimes to great love, even through pity. But we have not talked about an alternate path: how highness can lead through these stages from highness to empathy to pity to forgiveness, not love.
And this is not the first time we have heard forgiveness. At the end of all things, Frodo forgave Gollum. Explicitly. But it was the relatively easy type of forgiveness. At that point, Gollum was dead. And yet, is the forgiving of the living Saruman harder? Keep that question in mind.
I have no special insights on forgiveness, nor do I think Tolkien seems to have ones I would recognize. At the end of the day, with so much input from Christianity and other religions, as well as the secular voices of psychologists and social workers and the like, I still feel as if I have no clear idea in the real world exactly who should be forgiven and who not. But one conclusion I have come to in the end: The habit of forgiving can lead to unnecessary pain and suffering to me and others, as the sociopath, the con artist uses this habit to commit additional grave harm; but the habit of not forgiving damns. Damns to revenge-seeking that goes overboard and self-proliferates, like the rage of Feanor that leads to the dreadful oath; damns to eternal unnecessary distancing and loneliness that hurts not only others but me; damns to a lifetime of self-fulfilling fear rather than hope (which is actually one of the ways I use to distinguish the liberal from the conservative and reactionary in the long run).
What’s self-fulfilling fear, by the way (I can’t resist this digression 😊)? Well, it’s related to something I call Groucho Marx Syndrome – and it’s a real if unrecognized psychological condition, imho.
Grouch Marx Syndrome: In the movie Duck Soup, Groucho is Prime Minister of a noble state called Freedonia, menaced by its neighbor. And so he meets with his counterpart in the other country to sort things out. And gets offended at something the envoy says. And slaps his face. And the other man says, “This means war!” And Margaret Dumont immediately tries to smooth things over, and says to Groucho, I’m sure if you extend the hand of friendship to him, this can all blow over. And Groucho agrees, why yes, that would do it. And then he says, But suppose he doesn’t reciprocate? That would be a fine thing! I offer my hand to him, and he refuses to shake it! And by the time the envoy shows up again, Groucho has firmly convinced himself that this has already happened. And slaps the envoy’s face again, because of the imagined renewed insult. And war comes.
The thing is, this is not a comic caricature, I know real people like this. Who are offended once, for whatever reason, and convince themselves that it will inevitably happen again when they meet the person again, and therefore, in their minds, it has already happened. And so, once bitten, forever shy. Again and again. To where there are almost no friendships left. That’s a self-fulfilling fear. That’s Groucho Marx Syndrome.
The point of this – if there is a point, and I’m not convinced of that – is that Saruman may have a touch of GMS. With Saruman, as we see along the road back when he meets Gandalf, it’s gotten very personal. Gandalf, Galadriel – you did this to me. You say you’re not going to do it again? I don’t believe you. I’m going to go to the Shire and slap you all in the face, because in my mind, just maybe, you’ve already done it again. I suspect that Saruman has already gotten in the habit of not forgiving; and now maybe he has Groucho Marx Syndrome.
Now that’s over with, we can get back to forgiveness, and we can focus on it. More specifically, on what I believe is Tolkien’s real insight in this Chapter, and that is the effect of a certain type of forgiveness on the evildoer.
Remember, as I said, Saruman reacts to Frodo’s forgiveness with respect, bitterness, and hate. Let’s focus on the bitterness and hate here, because the respect is quite warranted, the bitterness and hate a bit odd. Here’s one way of looking at it:
In that strange movie, The Boys From Brazil, Laurence Olivier with his mock-New-York-Yiddish accent, straight from Leo Rosten’s Hyman Kaplan, is interviewing a former Nazi death-camp guard whom he has put in prison. And he tricks her, and she is furious at him, and he says to her, “You are not a guard here, madam. You are a prisoner. I may leave here empty-handed, but you,” with all the venom he can muster, “You are not goink anyvhere.”
It is the most hurtful thing he can think of to say to an evildoer. But why is it so hurtful?
The obvious answer is, it reminds the evildoer that he or she is in prison. But that’s nothing, to an evildoer who is convinced that his or her superior intellect will let them escape and do more evil. I believe that what is really conveyed in many cases, in the mind of the evildoer, is: You are unimportant. You are less than nothing to anybody. Nobody cares what you do. Because whatever you do, it is the equivalent of spinning your wheels. Whatever your aim, whoever you wish to impact, you will not succeed in making a dent. You are not worth their attention. And so, you are not going anywhere.
And I suggest that that may be the realization that is coming to Saruman now. That he is powerless. That his actions therefore are meaningless to those affected. No one cares what he is or does. Frodo does not even think him worth the bother of punishing him or protecting others from him. Because you, Saruman, you are not going anywhere.
And I admit that that is what I fantasize happening to Donald Trump. Because as a climate change person, I view him as solely responsible for the deaths of millions, and maybe tens of millions, in the future. Who because of his own solipsism, belief in his own superiority, and vindictive lashing-out has not only embodied climate change denial and what follows from that policy-wise but actively permeated the government with policies directly contrary to mitigation and adaptation. But I do not want him put in prison for this. Oh no.
I want him in the equivalent of an insane asylum, without the shrieking of other inmates. Where the guards are bland, and bureaucratic, and indifferent. Where every outburst is met with absence or sedation, administered impersonally. Where every request is met with standard procedure. Where everything rebounds off a blank white wall. Because you, Mr. Trump, are, as in the scene on the Indian Ocean in E.M. Forster’s Passage to India, going to be faced with an infinitely vast universe in which you are an infinitely small speck. You matter not at all. You are not going anywhere.
And so, I think that perhaps that is the true insight Tolkien is conveying in this final pathetic scene, in which Saruman is then killed and his body and soul symbolically turn to a sketch of a skeleton and a mist that dissolves in the breeze. That forgiveness can be terrible to the evildoer because it conveys, as nothing else perhaps can, in the right circumstances, the reality of the utter insignificance of his evil in the long run, and therefore of himself.
Hence Saruman’s unwilling respect for someone who has shown unexpected highness in (from Saruman’s viewpoint) acutely sensing his likely reaction to forgiveness, and his bitterness and hate toward the deliverer of the message of impotence.
Oh, and one last thing. Remember that I suggested that Frodo’s forgiveness of Saruman might not be harder than his forgiveness of dead Gollum? Well, that’s why. In a world where curses from high people, like Isildur’s on the Dead Men of Dunharrow, have terrible force, Frodo sees that Saruman’s threat to curse the Shire is no more than empty air. And so, in terms of harm to the Shire, Saruman is a dead wizard walking. Little more dangerous than Gollum dead. Certainly not worth risking a cycle of revenge over. Not that hard to forgive, now that you are high enough to feel pity and have forgiven Gollum. Saruman tries to make it personal, to make Frodo forget his highness, with his stab. Frodo eludes the trap.
Oh, and one more thing beyond that. With every decision he makes in the middle of war and fear and hate, Frodo is creating a habit. A habit of forgiveness.
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
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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