One Who Cannot Cast Away a Treasure at Need Is in Fetters - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 3 Ch 9

(0:05 - 2:18) 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 we are continuing our look at Lord of the Rings from an authorial perspective, what Tolkien was doing as an author as he wrote this long book. And we have reached chapter nine in the Two Towers, which is the chapter called Flotsam and Jetsam. So that's chapter nine in book three, in the way that Lord of the Rings is divided up. So what is going on in this chapter? I'm sure the title itself will remind most of you because it is the chapter in which we hear the story of the fall of Isengard from the point of view of the two hobbits. This very much fits in with the idea about how Lord of the Rings is compiled. The idea that it is a collection of memories by the friends of Bilbo and Frodo who are contributing to the narrative. But here we actually see that recounted in a slab. So a story within a story as Merry and Pippin tell Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn what they have seen. So just to give you a heads up on the structure, when you're reading this chapter, it falls into three parts. So the first is the meeting up with the friends and finding a nice dry place to have some lunch. And then there is the narrative about the Ents attacking Isengard. And I hadn't noticed until I was looking at this more closely that it is first of all Merry talking and then the narrative baton is handed over to Pippin. I'm sure if I had listened to this on the audio version, I would have heard the difference in accents. But reading it, you may not register that because they speak pretty much the same way. There's not much character difference between the two in the pure narrative with some elements of rationalist from Pippin and more cannyness from Merry. That's the main difference between them. (2:19 - 5:00) Anyway, let's look at first of all at the title Flotsam and Jetsam. UK is a maritime nation. It's well known to most people here that flotsam and jetsam are terms particularly associated with the sea. Those things which are floating on the water are flotsam and those things which are jettisoned, like thrown over in a storm to lighten the vessel, that is your jetsam. And this gives the idea that what has happened to Isengard is like a big storm. A big sea has rolled in and nature has taken over and it's now wreckage. And that image of the sea and wreckage is often used by Tolkien. Perhaps it links back to the Numenor idea of the tidal wave that destroys Numenor. It sort of runs through the imagery of Middle Earth, even though the sea is literally on the fringe. But also in this case, it links up with what is going to happen when the waters are released. So an inland sea of a sort is created. Okay, so let's go on to the very short bit, which is the reunion of friends. I think what characterizes this is good humor teasing. Gimli is talking about them as truants, as if they had any choice about being hauled off by the orcs. And so it's all in that note of people who love each other meeting again. One thing I noticed here about Legolas is how he is sort of deprecating about himself and his companions. He says, now the great ones have gone off. The great ones being Gandalf and Theoden. Now, obviously, Aragorn is the great one in terms of the kings or is going to be. But he himself is no lowly member of society. He is the son of a king of the elves, a prince. But he never stands on that, does he? It's interesting the way that Legolas is happy to be part of a company. And that's one thing about him which maybe fits with his reticence. He isn't the first one to speak usually. And so I've noticed this character note just on this read through, and I'll carry on looking out for it, but how Legolas shows his own version of humility by not pushing himself forward, claiming status as some other elf might do. So what happens first is Merry and Pippin provide for their friends lunch. Now, lunch is a very modern word, relatively speaking. (5:01 - 6:10) Back in the old days, you used to break your fast and have dinner later on. Lunch is a meal that was put in to the middle of the day in a sort of Victorian era, luncheon. And so it's quite a new idea. So it is one of those notes which for a prehistory has a modern ring about it. I think we can explain it by being part of a hobbit world which has many periods in the day for eating. So in a sense, it is a translation. We know that the book is thought of as a translation from an earlier time. So this is a modern word coming in to explain one of the hobbit predilections for many meals. And also in a very hobbit fashion, we are measuring time by bread in that Merry is able to say, yes, the bread is so many days old. He can tell how many days have passed since deliveries were interrupted, as he puts it. So again, that's a very hobbitish way of thinking about time passing. The hobbits show themselves as very competent. (6:11 - 6:55) Give them a task involving food and drink and they are your man or your hobbit for the job because they have managed to divide up food for the visitors and kept some good stuff for themselves and their friends. And of course, just to complete this visual that we get, they are unabashed about sitting down a second time. A detail here I hadn't remembered is that in fact, their conversation happens in three places. So first of all, there is where they greet their friends by the fallen gate. Then they go up into this guard room where there's a fire for the actual meal, where it's open to the air. And then they move from there up into the open air. (6:56 - 7:13) So it's quite nice to go back to the book and look carefully at how Tolkien describes each of these places. So you get extra visuals of Middle-earth in your head that you may have glossed in previous reading. So I enjoyed visualizing that as I read it through this time. (7:15 - 8:48) And then there is a recap on what has gone before and it is itself is a prelude about them noticing that the hobbits appear to have grown. Gimli notices that they've got curlier hair and they seem a bit taller. And Legolas is the one who works out what's going on. He says, you have drunk of the waters of the Ents, have you? Which sounds like a sort of folktale thing of you've drunk of the waters of. So yes, he's aware of the legends about the Entish draft. Another thing I noticed here is that when Pippin tries to describe the Ents here, he falters and fails. If you remember earlier, a couple of chapters back, when he's describing their eyes, he's very eloquent. But that is posited as something he has thought up afterwards. So he's had time to compile it and Tolkien chooses to put it in there, in that way, rather than here. Because what he really wants to talk about here is not the Ents themselves, but what the Ents have done. We already as the readers know what Ents are like, so we don't need another description. So they move on. So how are we going to hear this story? Gimli is the one who tells us how. He says, we are beginning the story in the middle. I should like a tale in the right order, starting with that strange day when our fellowship was broken. (8:49 - 9:36) So there's a preference here for putting things in the right order. The Lord of the Rings attempts to do that, though it does circle back a couple of times to tell stories like this that have already happened. It will happen again. And of course, the storyline of Frodo and Sam happens separately. But there is a preference of A to B, a chronological tale in Tolkien, which Gimli represents here. Now, there is a quick recap that is about to happen. But before we get there, we get the detail of the long bottom leaf. It's important because Tolkien refers to it again at the end of this chapter. Aragorn's obviously worrying about it as he's lying there smoking. (9:37 - 13:50) And it also, attentive readers will realize, it sets up what happens at the end, that all is not well in the Shire. And this is a seed that is planted halfway through the story to alert us to that fact. But we also get a nice image here, which I just want to underline, that Strider throws himself on the ground, wraps himself in his cloak. And Pippin says, Strider the ranger has come back. And of course, Strider says he's never gone away. But it's notable that both Pippin and Merry call him Strider very often, not Aragorn. So, he will always be Strider to them. And so, it's fun to see that moment come back. So, we get a recap of what we already know. So, it's well told. So, when we're thinking about choices of an author, don't tell us what we already know. So, we need to sort of hop our way through the account of the captivity, which we know the full details of. And how Tolkien does that is he connects it to the various traces where the stories came together. When the hunters were trying to work out how the hobbits got from one place to another, the dropped knives, the dropped brooch, these all come back. And it's a very economical way of reminding us without retelling us what we already know. But there's also hidden away in this brilliant recap, there's also a really important sentence. Aragorn commends Pippin for his decision to throw away his brooch. One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. And if you think about that as a theme, it could actually be taken as a theme about the ring. If you can't cast it away, you are in fetters to its power. Bilbo, in his struggle, managed to cast it away. When we get to Mount Doom, Frodo is falling, he's fettered by it. He can't throw it away because his grip on his soul is so deep at this point. He cannot cast it away and it needs an outside intervention. And in that way, it reminds me a bit of what happens in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with Eustace and when he becomes a dragon, fantastic part of that story. He cannot get rid of his dragon skin, he needs outside help. In that case, it's Aslan the lion coming to remove his dragon skin. Tolkien takes a really interesting, different approach to this. When we need help, the intervention might not be as direct as an Aslan figure. It can be a creature who is evil in some senses. So help comes from unexpected places and that's a very Tolkienian touch. Anyway, I just thought I'd underline that here because it's a telling phrase that Aragorn says. They have a little discussion about Saruman at this point. We've not yet met him really, only through Gandalf's account of his captivity. And the brief, weird glimpse in the forest, which I've never quite got my head around. It's never quite settled that it could be him, most likely was him. But yeah, it's a note of unease about that, whether it was a projection or if Saruman really did come out. Anyway, he seems mostly to be hiding behind his gates and his towers. And this is where it goes horribly wrong for him. And Merry shows that he has a better grasp of his geopolitical situation than perhaps a Pippin does. Because he says his outlook is poor. Not only is it poor in the sense that he's surrounded by devastation, but whichever side wins, he is going to be a loser. So the start of this story is mostly Merry recounting what happened. There's a fascinating sort of joining up of what happened at Helm's Deep with what happens in this conflict. Tolkien was very methodical, very careful about his timelines. (13:51 - 15:45) And so when the horns leave here, for example, we know where they're going. It all adds up. There's no loose ends. And if he finds the tiniest loose end, he tries his hardest to correct it, which is very commendable. He doesn't just leave it as no one will notice because he noticed he wanted to correct it. So I'm just going to read a little bit of what Merry says about the horns, because I think it's notable that if you're going to do a retelling like this, you need to invest it with the emotion and the experience of the person telling it. And this is one of those moments. So when he's describing the horns, he says he's imagining what it's like to encounter one without Treebeard with him. You stand still looking at the weather, maybe, or listening to the rustling of the wind. And then suddenly you find you are in the middle of a wood with great groping trees all around you. So this recalls a little bit, they're sort of not quite full on horns, but trees on the way to being horns or on the way, coming away from being horns in the old forest who moved the path, who dropped branches. So there's a sense here of the threat of the forest, which Merry is familiar with being a Brandybuck. But you get the sense that he knows just how terrifying these are. And his whole account, and Pippin's as well, is an excellent, vivid retelling, full of this sort of emotional engagement of what he's seeing, not just a bored account, this happened, this happened, this happened. Also their anticipation of what is about to happen. (15:45 - 16:20) Of course, it's artificial, just like a monologue in a play is artificial, in the sense that it's well organised. There's no ums and errs. There's a storytelling flair that feels rehearsed about it. But we don't hold fictional characters to realistic standards, just as fictional dialogue is a little bit different from real dialogue. So if it tells a good story, then it is serving its purpose. So that is what the author is doing here. (16:22 - 17:56) There's also a connection to, they never forget the moments to connect it to the story in the past and the story in the future. So we've seen the long bottom leaf connects us going forwards, but Aragorn and Merry here discuss the half orcs. And they refer to the Southerner in Brie, which probably by this point, most of us have forgotten about. But Aragorn is saying he was probably a spy of Saruman. And this connects to this idea, this thread, which leads to the idea that the Shire is being undermined, because if spies get to Brie, it's only a short hop to the Shire itself. So off we go on the account of the Ents' attack on Isengard. Well worth going back and just if you're looking for a little dip into Tolkien, this is a self-contained episode for you to sit and read for 10, 20 minutes. So we've got this lovely detail of the Ents getting stirred up. So when Treebeard had got a few arrows in him, he began to warm up as if he wasn't already angry enough to get positively hasty, as he would say. So there's an element of humour, but not mocking humour. It's enjoyment, I think, in the nature of the Ents. And Merry goes on to explain just how terrifying an Ent can be. Their fingers and their toes just freeze onto rock and they tear it up like bread crust. Very Hobbit thing to compare something to. They've just been eating stale bread. (17:57 - 19:11) But also he's picking up the fact that their activity is like a speeded up version of the natural world. This is nature hitting back at someone who has abused them. Tolkien also keeps the Hobbit tone in this. Only a Hobbit could tell it this way, because there's this right note in Merry's account. He says that Saruman's wizardry had been falling off recently. And he hasn't got much grit, not much grit, not like good old Gandalf. So we get interjected here, this down to earth, common folk view of these great ones who have gone off, ridden off. He also is corrected because I think the Hobbits tend to be a bit optimistic. Aragorn says, even so, even if his wizardry has fallen off, there are few safe with him, because he has this power over others. And at this point, we get the flip to Pippin being the storyteller. Because Pippin says, oh, the Ents are safe. They know what he did. (19:12 - 19:44) He's actually wrong, isn't he? Because later on, it seems that Saruman talks even tree beard round and escapes or is let out of Orthanc to go and cause much trouble in the Shire. But anyway, Pippin takes over as the narrator. And for him, in fact, because he's the faster, quicker, less thoughtful Hobbit, that's appropriate because he is in the hot phase of battle. (19:44 - 23:56) And he starts with this fabulous scene. Again, a thing I hadn't really noticed so much, so do look at this. There's this wonderful image of Quickbeam chasing Saruman across Isengard by starlight. Again, a scene we've not seen, partly because in the Peter Jackson film, they do this quite quickly all in daylight. Great special effects and everything. But this account includes the pauses in the battle. It lasts over days. So, give me Tolkien's account and I'll let my imagination do the special effects. And there's the tragic loss of Beachbone who burns like a torch, horrible, horrible death, which sends them all mad. And so there is a wonderful description of them hurling iron posts and rocks at Orthanc, but unable to actually hurt the tower. And then Treebeard, who is the oldest living creature, so he's had a few years under his belt. He sees what's going on and he calls for order. Wonderful. The soundscape of this is fabulous. A silence falls and there's this chill laughter from the tower. And then Pippin says, they had been boiling over. Now they became cold, grim as ice and quiet. So another powerful nature process on rock is freeze and thaw, ice. And so this is what being evoked here. And the hobbits are left among the mist and the fog. Basically, they're waiting for something to happen. They're waiting while the engineers get working. And this reminded me of Tolkien's experience in the First World War, where the sappers would mine under the trenches or under the other sappers, the sapping tunnels from the Germans and plant explosives and blow things up. So it's interesting to see that in a way the Ents are doing that. In their case, they're diverting water, but the Royal Engineers are in action here. So whilst the engineers are off doing their work, i.e. the Ents, we get this wonderful Hobbit-y meeting of Gandalf riding in at high speed. And I just want to read it because it is brilliant. As Pippin says, they see this great horse come up like a flash of silver. He halted just by us and looking down at us. Gandalf, I said at last, but my voice was only a whisper. Did he say, hello Pippin, this is a pleasant surprise? No, indeed. He said, get up, you tomfool of a toque, wearing the name of wonder. In all this ruin is Treebeard. I want him quick. Fabulous. Makes me laugh every time. And then we get this moment which ties together some of the hints that have come earlier. Pippin says, I was surprised because neither of them, Treebeard and Gandalf, seemed surprised at all to see each other. And there had been that moment when they had talked about the fall of Gandalf, where there's this strange look in Treebeard's eyes. So perhaps he'd heard rumours. Anyway, everyone is now up to speed on where the Gandalf has survived. And there's a pithy exchange. He certainly, Gandalf has a way of wrangling ents to make them move quickly, where Gandalf gets help with the horns to deal with the army up at Helm's Deep. And then he gets to say hello to the hobbits in the few seconds he has to spare for them. And Pippin says, they ask where he's been. Where I have been, I am back, he answered, in the genuine Gandalf manner. Brilliant stuff. Really enjoy all that. (23:56 - 24:05) Anyway, so that tempo has raised it a bit. And off he gallops, off go the horns. And then there's a wonderful day of waiting. (24:07 - 27:05) And I think Tolkien is really brilliant at capturing these moments where you're waiting on the verge of battle. And then slowly things begin to change. Isengard began to fill up with black creeping streams and pools. They glittered in the last light of the moon as they spread over the plain. Just go back and read that wonderful, wonderful description of the arrival of the water. It has a fantastic cadence. So after that, they're a shorter sentence, great white streams hissed up, smoke rose in billows as the water gets into the inner workings of the industry of Orthanc. And then note how it changes. This is wonderful style. One great coil of vapour went whirling up, twisting round and round Orthanc until it looked like a tall peak of cloud, fiery underneath and moonlit above. So the twisty sentence twists like that cloud description. I've mentioned before that there is something poetic about Tolkien's descriptions and this is another example of that. And then we get this wonderful image of the hobbits. There we sat high up above the floods and watched the drowning of Isengard. Two little figures witness to this momentous occasion. There we sat there. Inversion. There we sat. Not we sat there watching. It gives that sort of underlines this moment. And then we get them saying of all the steams and the fogs that result the next day, it was a misty, moisty morning. That's almost like a nursery rhyme version of misty, moisty is something we might say here in a nursery rhyme. And so that's what settles on in after the battle. And Pippin says he feels safer since Gandalf came back because they were worried with the wizard to deal with as it was put elsewhere. Pippin says I could sleep. So though they're making light of it, they've clearly had a tough time. Both hobbits unable to sleep and who could blame them. So I get a sense here that once Tolkien finished writing that, he sat back and thought, what if I'd forgotten? Because there's this moment when Gimli says, what about Wormtongue? It feels like the author's trying to remind himself, oh, yeah, I've got that little thread to pick up. And then Pippin describes the arrival of Master Wormtongue. And he describes him as a queer, twisted sort of creature. (27:06 - 28:00) This is sense of the evil side is a result of the twisted of the good. Evil isn't his own creation. It takes something good and twists it. And that's carried out here, even in the nature of Wormtongue who could have once have been a good advisor of men, twisted himself into this other shape. And Gandalf hasn't missed a trick here. He has told Treebeard to expect him and has told him to put all the rats in one trap. And then we get one of the things that this moment serves is it shows us a way of seeing the devastation because we watch Wormtongue try and move across it. And Treebeard is watching him. There is a sort of compassion here and he would hike him out if he drowns, but he watches him go through the waters and crawl up the steps like a draggled rat. (28:01 - 28:13) Draggled, not bedraggled. Interesting use of the word there and meaning the same, of course. And that is the completion of the idea of putting the rats in one trap. (28:15 - 28:32) And then the hobbits are given the instruction to prepare for the arrival of guests. And Treebeard has this lovely phrase here just to show how young Rohan is. There have been many lords in the green fields in my time and I have never learned their speech or their names. (28:33 - 29:07) They're just sort of like mayflies passing through. Anyway, but he does look after their needs. And then there's this funny detail here where the Ents say to prepare for 25. When I was reading the reader's companion to this, the Hammond and Skull book, they've worked out or someone's worked out there is actually 26 people. And the suggestion is that maybe they counted Gimli and Legolas as one because they're sitting on the same horse. It could be just an author mistake. (29:09 - 30:11) Why not? But anyway, I thought that was quite funny. And as we come to the end of this excellent chapter, there's no peril in this chapter because it's all over. They're sitting relaxing. So for us, it's a kind of breather chapter after the dramas of Helm's Deep and the peril. So we already knew everybody survived because they're there to tell the tale. So it's like a chapter in which you can expand and relax and lay on your back smoking a pipe equivalent chapter. But it does end on an ominous note because Aragorn who has been smoking away, listening, he's been worrying about that detail of the long bottom leaf. And he concludes, Saruman has secret dealings with someone in the Shire, I guess. And this, of course, is setting up what we see right at the very end of the whole story, that indeed Saruman has been meddling in the things that the hobbits love most. (30:12 - 31:08) So that was Flotsam and Jetsam, a wonderful chapter to read just on its own because it is self-contained with a whole story in it. And we have to wait till the next chapter, Chapter 10, to actually meet the big baddy of this piece, Saruman. So that's a lot to look forward to in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast, brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. 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