A Most Unquenchable Hobbit! - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 3 Ch 11

0:04 Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I have been running a series over the last few months, well actually it's every year now I think, where we have been slowly reading our way through Lord of the Rings and we have reached chapter 11 in book three, that's basically halfway through the two towers and that chapter is called the Palantir and we'll be taking a look at it primarily with a view to seeing what Tolkien is doing as an author.

0:45 Okay, so first of all, cards on the table. This particular chapter I find really hard to read and that is because it is the chapter where Pippin goes and looks in the Palantir, the seeing stone and I find that a sort of really difficult thing to read or watch is that cringe factor, the oh don't do it, don't do it thing and that is actually a sign of powerful writing. If you have your audience sort of flinching it means that you're really getting at them so it's both good and painful. Your plot has to feel as though it's going to fail as in it's not definitely going to be a happily ever after and this is one of those chapters where we have a knife edge moment which is very well written.

1:37 It's also a chapter which demonstrates the tinkering that Tolkien did. Now he is a famous tinkerer, I mean the Silmarillion was never finished in his lifetime because he was always changing things, doing a little bit more here and there and this chapter shows him tinkering away partly because as we covered in the previous episode on this, that the idea of the Palantir came to him as he was writing. It wasn't something he'd thought through before so it wasn't completely woven in how he wanted it to be so he went back in later editions and slightly changed wording to represent the new status that Palantir had.

2:25 I'm not going to go into the detail of what he did but if you have a first edition and you compare it to later editions you'll see there are slightly different things that Gandalf says and so on. This is because he didn't quite, I mean it's pretty well woven in but he felt as though he needed to digest that idea a bit more and it's also interesting because the Palantir themselves he wrote about in the Unfinished Tales so you can get some extra information about what he thought about them later on by looking at the Unfinished Tales so I would recommend if you've got a copy of the Unfinished Tales, it's only a short bit, go and have a read of that section.

3:09 Okay, so what is the structure of this particular chapter? It's a series of conversations really and I would say it has the theme of unquenchable hobbits and curiosity. That is the thread that everything is strung on. So we've got a Merry and Gandalf conversation, then a Merry and Pippin and then in the center there's a Pippin and Sauron conversation, then there's Gandalf and Pippin and Gandalf and Aragorn and then finally when they're on Shadowfax there's a Gandalf and Pippin long conversation which is different from all the others because it gives a bit more about lore and the history of Middle-earth and so on.

4:01 But it's very much lots of information is conveyed in this particular chapter and of course it falls at the end of Book 3. So for the organizing principle of Lord of the Rings, it falls halfway because it's roughly halfway through the story. So we actually start though, we're still in Isengard, we're about to leave and we get a last glimpse in this book of Treebeard and the Ents. And it's interesting here that one of the things Tolkien does is Merry and Pippin, who are our points of view at this point, they are circling back in their own minds to the first time they meet Treebeard.

4:49 That's quite an elegant way of summing up this episode with the Ents, seeing him being like an old tree stump, his move from the forest to being on the doorstep of Orthanc. And we also get the Ents lined up either side. Now, I do know I've never noticed this detail before. I think I've always read past it a little bit too quickly. But this time, obviously, because I'm doing it for this podcast, I was thinking, well, what does that look like? And it made me think that actually they're like an honor guard escorting out Ferdinand and Gandalf and Aragorn. But it also is an avenue of trees.

5:32 They can be both at the same time. So it's a rather beautiful picture, which I'm pleased I lingered over this time. And it's also a sense that the gardens that used to surround Orthanc are going to be recreated later on, I believe, towards the end. Treebeard calls it the Tree Garth of Orthanc, which is a lovely way of saying it's going to be full of trees and why not an avenue of trees? And as they leave, the riders get as far as the White Hand, which they had met on their way in, which has now been destroyed. And Gandalf sort of sums up this whole episode by saying, the Ents pay attention to every detail.

6:14 They've come out this far and destroyed the last symbol of Saruman's power. So the next section is Merry and Gandalf riding together and having a conversation. And it's mainly the purpose of this conversation is a little bit picking up from the previous chapter about what Saruman's state of mind might be. But it is also and introducing this theme of the unquenchable Hobbit. So Gandalf tells Merry, who makes this comment that he's a ragtag, sort of riding alongside with Gandalf, which is picking up.

6:59 You'll hear the echo from the previous chapter, bringing it forward into here. And Gandalf says, a sneer from him, Saruman, Merryadoc is a compliment. And Merry isn't letting this subject rest and he carries on asking questions. I mean, Gandalf, if you think about it from Gandalf's point of view, he's just had this big showdown with the former head of his order. He's broken his staff and he probably wants just to have a quiet think and Merry is full of questions. And so in response, we get this very Gandalfian phrase, a most unquenchable Hobbit.

7:43 All wizards should have a Hobbit or two in their care to teach them the meaning of the word and to correct them. Now that last bit and to correct them is slightly ambiguous, but I think because the them isn't clear, but I don't think it's to correct the Hobbits, though he does do that quite a lot. I think it's more that the Hobbits correct the wizards when they're being too wizardly and a bit too big for their boots. So it's a character note here on Gandalf that even when he's tired and come out of a major confrontation, he has a sense of humour and he's also doesn't consider himself infallible.

8:28 So we've moved from this heightened confrontation to humour, Gandalf laughs, of course, warmth and relief. But also Merry gives the writer here, gives Tolkien as the author, the curiosity of the Hobbit gives him the chance to regain momentum, so exiting out of this particular episode. If you think of someone doing a floor gymnastics display, they do their amazing flips and they land it, but then they have to move into the next section. Then we're into that next section here.

9:11 And it also gives the, as well as regaining momentum, it also gives Tolkien the chance to explain the stakes. In a big complicated book like this, you may know Lord of the Rings so well, you already understand what the stakes are. But if you go back to thinking what it was like when you first read it, it is a complicated story with a number of different battlefronts with a number of different enemies and so on. Gandalf explains it to Merry, Merry is basically us, stands for the reader in this particular set of questions. And Gandalf says, yes, we have won, but only the first victory, don't put the book down now, we've got lots more to do.

9:55 And that in itself increases our danger. So remember, always keep the tension, keep raising the tension, you've got to keep on raising the stakes, raising the tension. So you may have a little bit of laughter and relief, but the longer perspective is it's not over. Otherwise, you'll lose your audience, won't you? Okay, so Merry is standing in for us, he's giving the author a chance to reiterate what's exactly at stake. I want to draw your attention now to one of those lovely little hidden bits of Tolkien, you know how much I like these, if you've been listening to this. And that is their campsite, where this incident with the Palantir takes place.

10:42 I never really noticed the how specific the details are. In the film, if you're coming at this from a Peter Jackson version, this happens in Edoras, in a building, it's probably easier to film. But actually, isn't it nice to be out in the wild on this journey? And there's a lovely detail here. They lit a fire in a hollow, down among the roots were spreading hawthorn, tall as a tree, rhythm with age, but hail in every limb. Buds were swelling at each twig's tip.

11:23 Buds were swelling at each twig's tip. Quite hard to say. But also very specific. It's a way of telling us where we are in the season. Hawthorns, for anyone who's not in the UK countryside, are a very common hedging shrub. They have spikes on, but they are one of the first shrubs that come into leaf as spring arrives. So the hawthorn has leaves first, then flowers. The blackthorn has flowers first, then leaves. I bet Tolkien knew the difference. And here, we've got the buds coming of the future leaves.

12:06 Anyway, I like how specific this is. I can walk around the countryside where I live, spot the hawthorns and think, yeah, that's the kind of hawthorn they were under. And then we move into the Merry and Pippin conversation. So it's like the second movement, really, in this particular chapter. And note how Tolkien starts to wind up the more immediate danger here. We've laid the bigger stakes, but there's a new danger, which none of them expect is about to happen. Though if you've been reading carefully, you would have picked up some of those warning notes when Pippin ran to pick up the palantir in that section in the previous chapter.

12:49 And we get it sort of starting here where the sour note comes in. It would be like a jarring note in a musical theme. When you're reading this carefully, you can see what's going to happen. And this is where the cringe factor comes because you're given plenty of time to anticipate what he's going to do. And it begins with the prosaic off note of, are you lying on an anthill? Pippin is restless. And this section is given mainly from Merry's point of view. We're still with Merry because Pippin is being secretive. Never a good sign. And he's also speaking as close as he ever gets to Gollum.

13:31 He says, I picked it up. I saved it. Me, me, me. Another very bad sign. Merry, who doesn't realize just how serious this is, he tries to turn Pippin away from those thoughts by mentioning Gildor's saying. And he also just mentioned Sam here. Don't forget that this story is really about Frodo and Sam. He says, Sam used to repeat the saying, do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. We do see a bit of temper from Gandalf, though we see more mercy than temper. But still, he's saying, watch out.

14:11 This really isn't for a hobbit to meddle in. Another sign of danger is that Pippin is being, I would say, a little bit mocking. He talks about Gandalf being like a hen with an egg. It's not that funny. It's sort of funny, but also it's not that funny. And this doesn't feel like the normal Pippin. He's not being straightforward. He hasn't gone up to Gandalf and said, think about the other options. Can I have another look at that, please? That would be what a normal Pippin would do. I really want to know what that's about. Can you show me?

14:52 But no, he is hiding. And basically, he is sneaking. Remember that word that comes up later, doesn't it? Anyway, so Merry goes to sleep without being aware. And then we switch the point of view to Pippin. And this is brilliantly painful. This is why I find it really hard to read. We get this intriguing image of the sleeping Gandalf, which was actually done in the film very well by Ian McKellen. You get the glitter of eyes under his long lashes. He sleeps with his eyes slightly open. And Pippin does this sneaky thing of switching a stone for the palantir so that Gandalf isn't aware that it's gone.

15:37 And then he does this self-justification. He sort of begins to have cold feet. And then he says, oh, well, I can't put it back now. I might as well have a look first. So he's slipping further and further into this sneaky behaviour. And then the point of view shifts. So we do have, this is a third-person narration. And in third-person narration, you can sort of skim in and out of various things. It's very hard to do well, by the way, not the easiest stance to take if you're writing your first novel, because the rules are a bit loose. But here we move from it being sort of Pippin talking to looking at him from the outside.

16:22 And I was thinking, well, what point of view do we have? In a way, it's almost as though the moon is the point of view, because one of the last images we get is the moon looking over at Pippin and he's shown by moonlight. But it's probably more the narrator. It's kind of, we are like the moon looking down with the narrator on Pippin. He bent low over it, it being the palantir, looking like a greedy child stooping over a bowl of food in a corner away from others. Pippin is boyish. He's one of the youngest in the company, if not the youngest. But this isn't a good image of childhood.

17:02 It is greed, that sort of classic greed. And the thing that you've gone away, you've hidden your secret stash, all of these things are massive red warning lights. We're outside his experience. So we're watching him do this. We don't know what he did when he looked into the stone. We only see his reactions. And this is that technique, you hold back the information. And we don't find out until he confesses. So we keep the tension going. Has he basically said, watch out, Sauron, you've got a ring bearer coming towards you?

17:47 Has he said that? That is all the possibilities, which of course is rushing through Gandalf's mind when Pippin's sort of cry alerts everybody. And Gandalf says, the devilry, what mischief has he done to himself and to all of us? Which if you hadn't realised as a reader at this point, that there was anything terribly wrong with what he was doing, though I think you would, this is the moment when you see actually this quest hangs on the edge of a knife. It might fall, it might fail. Then we get the interrogation scene, which is horrific, because if we love Pippin, as we do by now, he's ventriloquising as if possessed by Sauron.

18:39 He says, it is not for you, Saruman. He's speaking in the voice of Sauron. In fact, Pippin, in a sense, is the closest any of the companions have got to Sauron so far. Clearly Frodo sees him through the ring and the whisperings of the ring and Aragorn will later look in the same stone. But Pippin is the first to actually report back, shall we say, what is going on in Barad-dûr. So it is a big, big scene. And notice that Sauron says, to him, a hobbit is it, not a person, just a thing.

19:23 And that is, of course, his attitude to Middle-earth. And then Pippin snaps back into himself and we know he's back in himself because he says, Gandalf, forgive me. The plea for forgiveness is the Pippin voice. So we don't know. Remember, we've kept this tension going. Tolkien's holding back the answers and then Gandalf persuades Pippin to confess. And Pippin upburdens himself of his experience. He explains what he saw. And then it sort of comes to this culmination of, then he came.

20:06 He isn't named, it's italicized. A bit like Voldemort in Harry Potter. It's he who will not be named. He doesn't say Sauron, but he came. And it took me a while. I was thinking, well, is this like the chief Nazgûl? But no, it's happening in Barad-dûr. Of course, technically, Sauron is disembodied. But of course, he could project himself in a shape or a form in a palantir, couldn't he? So I think it all lines up. But he's obviously got a voice and he's got a look. Maybe it's the eye. So I think we have a sense that the presence of Sauron is what Pippin is exposed to.

20:48 But Sauron is not all-knowing. He's too greedy. So he is like the boy crouched over the bowl of food. He wants to get Pippin for himself. So he, equally, Saruman and Sauron both are too greedy. And that is a fatal flaw because he doesn't stop and interrogate Pippin properly. He just says, this dainty is for me, not for you, Saruman. Gandalf is able to see into Pippin's heart. And he says, he's a fool, but an honest fool. He remains. You remain. And he says, I forgive you. And he also pretty much immediately says, my dear Hobbit, he's warmer towards Pippin after this than he has been for a while.

21:33 So that shows the mercy that is the response of Gandalf to these situations where people fail or fail him. And then we get a reference to the first conversation Gandalf had with Merry. He says to Aragorn, who's worried about Pippin as well, Hobbits have an amazing power of recovery. They are unquenchable. And we get a small scene here, which is the shift in Aragorn's position. So if we're thinking about the big character arc of Aragorn, he has been moving closer and closer to Gondor.

22:16 He has declared himself when he arrived in Rohan. He has presented his sword. The sword has been in battle. So he's getting step by step closer. I note the sword was already there and it does not arrive later as in the film version of this. He takes a step towards the return of the king, which is obviously good because we're at the end of this book. And the next time he arrives, he's going to be at the beginning of Return of the King, which is his big moment. When Gandalf asks him to look after the Palantir, he says it is his by right. He's stepping up to become the king of Gondor and Arnor.

22:59 And Gandalf recognizes this moment. He bowed and presented it. It's a formal moment. And we have a gear shift, don't we, in their relationship. They've already been sort of companions on the road, but now it's more like king's counselor and king, which is how it will be in the war councils going forward. And you see the balance in the relationship that Gandalf feels able to counsel and Aragorn feels able to accept part or some of the counsel. So when Gandalf says, take care with this, don't rush to use it. Aragorn says, when have I been hasty or unwary who have waited and prepared for so many long years?

23:48 So he's beginning to say, well, if I'm king, I need to be able to make these decisions on my own, listening to my counselors. And you can see this changing at this moment. It sort of slips by, but I think it is an important moment. The other thing here is that Gandalf is blaming himself. Pippin's caused this ruckus, but he admits to Aragorn, he feels he should have known what was going on. And Aragorn says something quite interesting here. I think this is Tolkien talking to himself, answering his own plot point. At last, we know the link between Isengard and Mordor and how it worked.

24:31 It may have been narratively speaking, a question Tolkien had in his back of his mind. Remember, he didn't know the Palantir existed until Wormtongue threw it out. And then he thought, aha, Palantir. And so he thought, yeah, that will solve this plot problem. So when you're writing, look out for those moments where you can use a detail to tie your plot together more elegantly. And Gandalf goes on to say, it was strangely fortunate he was saved by the Hobbit, perhaps from looking in himself. And Aragorn says, well, don't you think it's time you came out of the shadows? And Gandalf is sort of explaining the strategy.

25:12 We have to use this short while of doubt. We have been too leisurely. We must move. We've got to get ahead. We've got to get in front of the enemy now. We may capitalize on this victory. This does feel like the sort of debates that were going on in World War II. This is being written in the darkest days of the World War. And so he would be thinking of the sort of discussions that were going on in the papers about how to get ahead of the Nazis. So in a way, it feels very real. Is this the right thing to do? Should we show our hand now?

25:53 Should we put our forces there? It has that feeling of reality. And the best fantasy does feel real, doesn't it? And I feel this is one of those little discussions where it's not obvious what they should do. But he knows that speed is needed. And the arrival of the Nazgûl confirms that. An overflight of a Nazgûl heading to Isengard. And Gandalf said something here, which is quite abrupt and it feels a bit like it might have made them panic. But anyway, let not the swift wait for the slow ride. So off he goes, grabbing Pippin without any of Pippin's stuff.

26:34 Gandalf just picks up his own pack and off they go and ride away. And there's a little tiny little scene here where poor old Mary is grumbling after the drama being left behind. And Aragorn says, in his corrective, you might have done worse. So you point the finger at Pippin, but you might have done worse. I don't know. I mean, Mary in some ways has a bit more common sense, doesn't he? But fair enough, we take the point, Aragorn. Who knows what we would have done facing the Palantir. So the last part of this chapter changes gear completely because we get a moment of peace.

27:15 When you've got a character like Gandalf, who feels like a safe haven, if you're with Gandalf, particularly if you're sitting in front of him in a horse, it's hard to imagine something bad is going to happen. It's almost like in the arms of a parent or something for a child. It's got that feeling of safety. And there's time here for Pippin to be the unquenchable hobbit and ask the questions, which are again, the kind of questions we as readers have. So if you've got questions, don't just sort of information dump. Make sure they're part of a question and answer session, which is driven by the plot.

27:55 It feels necessary to have this out here and now. Though we do get a bit more because, of course, Tolkien is fond of his lore. It also is a place for Tolkien to get rid of some of the things that have been bugging him. We know that he had this rhyme going around in his head, which he didn't know what it meant. And here he gets a chance to give an explanation, tall ships and tall kings, that little six line poem. And as ever in Tolkien, it links back to the foundational story for Middle -earth or the men of Middle-earth, which is the fall of Númenor.

28:43 Hobbit curiosity drives this chapter. And we get lots of things said here, which perhaps Pippin himself might not know much about. And a bit like a reader reading this for the first time, some of these names we know nothing about. The Noldor made them. That's the High Elves. So that explains why these Palantir are able to crack the steps, because they are made by the Elves who were the masters, the master smiths from the depths of time. But even there, Gandalf says, but there is nothing that Sauron cannot turn to evil uses, which is one of the themes, isn't it, of Lord of the Rings.

29:30 And it gives Gandalf a chance to review the fall of Saruman. He talks about how it was the fatal step. And remember again, it's this image of someone keeping something for themselves, that greedy child. That was Saruman too. He kept it from the White Council. And it was the step which brought him to fall under the thrall, thralldom of Sauron. But Gandalf, though he is obviously merciful when he can be, he also doesn't hold back. He says, yet he must bear the blame.

30:13 He can't claim to be the victim here. He had a choice. He took the choice, which I think is interesting. And Gandalf is a tough love person. He goes on to describe the functioning of the stones and how in Saruman's case, the biters bit the hawk under the eagle's foot, the spider in the steel web. So Saruman is trapped. And we also get here, which I love, is a glimpse of Gandalf's mind, because it gives him a chance to say what he would most like to see. It reminded me a bit of the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter, where if you look in it, you see what you most want to see.

30:54 A palantir, what you could see with it, what it could reveal is like that too. And it also, of course, reminds us in this world, this fictional world of Galadriel's mirror as well. But anyway, Gandalf says, what does he want to see? He wants to look back to the land where he used to live over in the Undying West. And he wants to see the unimaginable hand and mind of Fëanor. Now, Fëanor is the smith who made the Silmarils. I think he's a bit evil. But there's a Blakean power to him, isn't there? Like a William Blake, the poet, in his famous poem, Tiger, Tiger, burning bright in the forest of the night.

31:39 What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry? It's got that kind of power. There's even some word similarity in that. So it's a Blakean image of Fëanor who ruined things really for the Elves. But anyway, that's the Silmarillion. And going back to the tough love, Gandalf, Pippin begins to excuse himself. Oh, you had this. We need to take responsibility for the things we do wrong as adults, as grown -ups. There isn't a free pass, but there is mercy.

32:19 Even so, though, you can see that Pippin is unquenchable and he's also fundamentally at ease and trusting Gandalf because there's a lovely joke here where Gandalf says, oh, you know, surely that's enough questions for tonight. And Gandalf says, what more do you want to know? And Pippin says, the names of all the stars and of all living things and the whole history of Middle-earth and over heaven and of the Sundering Seas, laughed Pippin. Of course, what less? But I am not in a hurry tonight. So he wants to know that, but not now, Gandalf. So they have an ease, which is a lovely note to strike in this relationship, which has been put through this test.

33:04 And Gandalf goes on to explain how Sauron is really in a cleft stick. He will appear a rebel to Sauron because Sauron will assume Pippin or the Hobbit is in the tower and Sauron is refusing to come and talk to him. He can't imagine that the Palantir has been thrown out a window. It's a bit like he can't imagine the ring will be cast into a fire. It's the same thought here, but it's just in an earlier form of it. Remember what I said at the beginning about tinkering? There's one little note here, which is picked up in the Lord of the Rings, a reader's companion, which is in the lineup, Saruman went and talked to Théoden.

33:48 He mentioned Gimli. He talked to Gandalf. He didn't talk to Aragorn. And I think Tolkien worried that he needed a reason why Saruman doesn't try and win over the future king of Gondor. And so he gives this detail here, which is a tinkering detail to make the plot work, that Aragorn was standing in the armor of Rohan. So maybe Wormtongue didn't have a chance to tell him that Aragorn was there and might tell him later. But it makes sense that Saruman was unaware Aragorn was actually part of the party standing in front of him, even if Wormtongue had mentioned that this person had turned up at Edoras earlier.

34:36 So that nice tinkering moment, Tolkien's fixing his plot. So just to wrap up, we're coming to the end of Book Three now. The note that Gandalf strikes here is the one which keeps the tension going. He says to Pippin, every stride on Shadowfax bears you nearer to the land of shadow. The momentum is going. We're still getting nearer our goal. But we're doing it going backwards over the path we've already gone past. There's a quick nod to the caves that Gimli and Legolas have promised to visit, that kind of thing. In the unfinished tales, in the bit about the Palantir I mentioned, Tolkien explains that Gandalf is actually worrying about Denethor here.

35:22 I looked carefully as I was reading it. He does mention Denethor's name, but it's not something he tells Pippin. So we don't know as a reader that he's worrying about Denethor. He's worrying about what happened to these stones. So it's a hidden message underneath what's going on here. But Tolkien and that's going to be really the plot lead that will be the Pippin, Gandalf, Denethor section when we get to Return of the King. I just want to end on the last paragraph, which I always find a sort of beautiful way of stilling the motion, like finding the place to call cut in this book, which is this wonderful moment as Pippin falls asleep.

36:08 As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling. He and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind. So it's that moment of stillness, but actually still moving, which ends this book in a minor key and we're ready to pick up in book four with Frodo and Sam. So that will be the next episode. Thank you very much for listening.

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