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"And She Named Her Own Name": Being True To One's Word in Tolkien's Middle-earth

"And She Named Her Own Name": Being True To One's Word in Tolkien's Middle-earth

RICHARD C. WEST

PICTURE THE SCENE AS THE QUEST OF BEREN AND LUTHIEN COMES TO ITS CLIMAX. THE FORTRESS OF THANGORODRIM, WALLED BY MOUNTAINS, REDOUBTABLE, ALL BUT IMPREGNABLE, HAS DEFEATED SUPERNATURALLY POWERFUL ARMIES OF ELVES AND WILL NOT BE CONQUERED UNTIL THE VALAR (ONE MIGHT SAY THE GODS THEMSELVES) FORM AN ARMY TO COME AGAINST IT. IN THE "NETHERMOST HALL, THAT WAS UP HELD BY HORROR, LIT BY FIRE, AND FILLED WITH WEAPONS OF DEATH AND TORMENT" (S 180) is the throne room of its ruler, attended and guarded by fierce wolves, Orcs, and many Balrog-lords (Lays 296). (We may remember that in a later age a single Balrog proved a formidable enough foe for the Fellowship of the Ring.) On the throne sits a darkly majestic figure. Once he was one of the best and brightest of the Valar, in Tolkien's mythology the godlike or (from a more Christian point of view) the angelic beings who helped imagine and shape the universe before the Creator gave it being, albeit he was one whose contributions often marred the design. Now he is that design's chief adversary (in Hebrew, a satan), seeking to bend that creation to his own selfish will. He is named Melkor, "He who arises in Might" (S 340), but by this time is more often called Morgoth, the Black Enemy (S 341). He is lame in his left foot from a wound inflicted by the mighty Elf-King Fingolfin, who dared to face him in single combat but was killed in a terrible battle. His once-handsome face is scarred by the talons of Thorondor, Lord of Eagles (S 180). On his head he wears an iron crown in which are set the three Silmarils which he stole, and which alone preserve the light and power of the Two Trees that once (before they were destroyed at his instigation) illuminated the land of the Valar.

It is a scene that might daunt the hardiest. Indeed, the great hero Beren, who is in the shape of a wolf, hides beneath the throne, terrified. This is not because he lacks courage, either physical or moral: "...yet was he braver than most," as the narrator of "The Tale of Tinuviel" puts it (Lost Tales II 11). He has been fighting guerrilla warfare for most of his life, slain many fearsome enemies, stood up to an Elf King, endured a harsh imprisonment, deliberately taken an arrow meant for Luthien, and passed through many other perils on the quest to reach this point. He will accomplish many more valorous deeds after this. But in this scene he is facing what, in Tolkien's mythology, is essentially the Devil himself in his very seat of power, and Beren is only a mortal man. To be scared out of one's wits is a touch of realism within the fantasy.

The contrast makes Luthien's courage all the more remarkable. Not only does she confront Morgoth in his inner sanctum before his fiendish court, but she throws off the disguise that has allowed her to enter Thangorodrim, and further, as the summary in chapter XIX of The Silmarillion so startlingly phrases it, "and she named her own name" (S 180). Clever Morgoth had already seen that there was another person under her bat-disguise, recognizing the skin-change magic that had transformed her, so she loses little by discarding that. By giving her true name, however, she has, in mythological terms, placed herself in his power. [1] It is perhaps the single greatest act of courage in the entire history of Middle-earth, which is not lacking in courageous actions.

Luthien takes an enormous chance, but it works. Moreover, it works because she tells the truth. She says she has rebelled against her father by coming, and she has. Her father forbade her to go there, tried to get her to promise not to, and even imprisoned her (however comfortably) to prevent it. She says that the folk of Middle-earth whom she has met speak of the evil of Morgoth and his minions (and they do), but that she does not necessarily believe everything she hears (which is true of anyone) and has come to see for herself (which she has). If perhaps she finds the reality even more appalling than the reports, this need not be mentioned. She admits that Morgoth is wise and powerful, as he is, but does not add that his considerable abilities have been put to evil uses. She teasingly suggests that a place might be found for her in his service, and, well, so it might. She claims to be a good dancer, which is modest given what we have been shown earlier, but is still true. She says she hopes to please Morgoth with her dancing, which she does, and furthermore she succeeds very well
indeed in this. Her plan depends on it, in fact.

Morgoth is himself an accomplished deceiver, but he is disarmed by her truth. Children who rebel against the well-intentioned dictums of their parents are not uncommon, so her tale is quite plausible. He realizes that in any case the daughter of King Thingol will be a valuable hostage. Having taken on the form of an aggressive male, he does not perceive any danger from an apparently delicate maiden (as he might have had it been a warrior who confronted him, whether a man like Beren or a shieldmaiden like Eowyn, or if he had detected an outright lie). Indeed so much has he deteriorated since he descended from the heavens that he lusts after this beautiful creature. So he leaves her free to sing and to dance, feeling he can imprison her later if need be, or otherwise make use of her as he will. Thus she has the opportunity to cast Morgoth and his entire court into an enchanted sleep, she and Beren recover a Silmaril and escape (though not without further difficulty), and evil has defeated itself.

Now, to some extent the analysis above may give a false impression, since the tale of Beren and Luthien was never given a final form by its author. As was typical of Tolkien, the plot remains basically the same from the first version in 1917 onward, but it grows a great deal in the telling. Characters are added (like Gorlim the Unhappy or the faithful King Finrod ) or replaced (as Tevildo Prince of Cats is dropped but Sauron takes over his function) or changed (the minstrel who regularly plays while Luthien dances is initially her brother, later a rival suitor for her hand), motivations are sharpened (asking Beren to obtain a Silmaril is done in jest in the original version, later as a cunning means of sending him to what should be certain death), Beren is sometimes a Man and sometimes an Elf, incidents are added and expanded, and, of course, the names of characters change quite often. My analysis quotes from three separate versions, but it closely follows the late summary, and I think it represents Tolkien's latest thoughts insofar as we can discern them.

A major part of the evolution of the story is that, in the beginning, Luthien Tinuviel does lie. Sometimes. So does Beren. Moreover the narrator gives justification for it. Thus says an Elf named Veanne while telling the "Tale of Tinuviel" to Eriol the mariner: "Now all this that Tinuviel spake was a great lie in whose devising Huan had guided her, and maidens of the Eldar are not wont to fashion lies; yet have I never heard that any of the Eldar blamed her therein nor Beren afterward, and neither do I, for Tevildo was an evil cat and Melko the wickedest of all beings, and Tinuviel was in dire peril at their hands" (Lost Tales II 27). Similarly, earlier in the same version, Beren, captured by Orcs and brought before the Satanic being at that stage called Melko, falsely claims to have come to serve the Dark Lord. And the narrator Veanne offers this opinion: "Now the Valar must have inspired that speech, or perchance it was a spell of cunning words cast on him in compassion by Gwendeling [Luthien's mother, later named Melian], for indeed it saved his life, and Melko ... was willing to accept him as a thrall of his kitchens" (Lost Tales II 15).

Thus at an early stage (these passages date from 1917 into perhaps the mid-1920s) Tolkien found it morally acceptable for his heroes to dissimulate at least in dire circumstances, when it was a choice between lying or losing their lives, and those being deceived were themselves liars having their own weapon turned against them. "Tevildo ... himself a great and skilled liar, was so deeply versed in the lies and subtleties of all the beasts and creatures that he seldom knew whether to believe what was said to him or not, and was wont to disbelieve all things save those he wished to believe true, and so was he often deceived by the more honest" (Lost Tales II 27). Those who lie readily expect others to do the same, and so may be caught in the trap of their own making in the same manner as Tevildo. A common theme throughout Tolkien's fiction is that evil defeats itself in the end, and this is one example. But another theme is that it is dangerous to use the weapons employed by evil even with good intentions to defeat it: the plot of The Lord of the Rings turns on this point, that one who used the One Ring to overthrow Sauron would thereby be corrupted and merely take Sauron's place as a new Dark Lord. The passages in which Tolkien defends the deceit of his heroes show how uneasy he felt about this: they protest too much, bringing in magical helpers, Huan the Hound of Valinor or Melian the Maia or the Valar themselves, to buttress the claim that lying was acceptable in the circumstances. To his Christian sensibilities, lying is too serious a sin to be lightly excused.

Part of the difficulty is that his models were pre-Christian mythologies in which mendacity could be held up as admirable, but even in those the matter is somewhat ambivalent. Homer's Odysseus, besides being a courageous and skilled warrior, is crafty, always ready with a trick, quick to lie and aided by the gods in doing so. Yet the straightforward Achilles, who never stoops to stratagems, was admired as much or more by the ancient Greeks. In Norse mythology the devious Loki works sometimes on the side of good but more often of evil, while Odin the seeker of wisdom is also the patron god of oath-breakers, but it is blunt and honest Thor who appears to have been the most widely worshipped (Davidson passim). For in all times and places people know that for any society to function we must be able to trust one another, yet are aware that people do tell lies and can have a sneaking admiration for a clever trick that can bring success even if it is undeserved. Not to over-state this, however, it must be admitted that appreciation for being true to one's word among our ancestors in pagan societies, while a factor, was muted. Achilles and Thor were admired more for their enormous strength than their (relative) honesty. It is in Jewish and Christian belief that God's word is inviolate. For an illustration of the sensibility common in pagan religions consider the story of Thor's journey to Jotunheim, the land of the Giants, that would have been familiar to any medieval Norseman. The thunder god feels he has been shown up as weaker than the Giants, being (among a number of tests) unable to lift a large cat or empty a drinking horn, when actually he almost moved the Midgard Serpent from encircling the world and nearly drained the seas, but was prevented by supernatural illusion from realizing what was really happening. [2] Part of the point of the story is Thor's divine power, and part is that cunning can overcome even this. Probably the audience appreciated both, yet were on Thor's side that the trickery is unworthy. Thor is often presented as not being overly bright, but that is not so for Loki, who was one of Thor's companions on this journey and was equally deceived.

The early drafts of Tolkien's private mythology show the same ambivalence, with the Valar usually acting like the good angelic powers of the Judeo-Christian tradition (the more so the more he revised it), but sometimes like the crafty pagan gods. When they decide that the evil Melko (as his name stood at that stage of composition) must be imprisoned for the good of everyone else, and so they need to get him out of his underground fortress and preferably without disastrously rending the world to do it, they lie to him with flattering words, promising to build him a magnificent hall if he will return with them to Valinor to take his place as the greatest among them. "Flattery savoured ever sweet in the nostrils of that Ainu, and for all his unfathomed wisdom many a lie of those he despised deceived him, were they clothed sweetly in words of praise..." (Lost Tales II 15). Even Manwe, the chief of the Valar, pretends to do homage to Melko so that they can get close enough to capture and chain him. It is the mighty but hot-tempered Tulkas "who even of policy could not endure to see the majesty of Manwe bow before the accursed one" (Lost Tales I 104) who precipitously seizes Melko before the play-acting can be completed.

There is a curious echo of this phrase in a cancelled passage in the manusсript of The Lord of the Rings, when Gimli states, "But one thing I know, and that is, not for any device of policy would Aragorn set abroad a false tale" (War 425 n. 34). Where Tulkas will not dissemble "even of policy," neither will Aragorn "for any device of policy." Gimli is also one who is truthful, [3] and he respects Aragorn for being above using a falsehood for any political advantage. Yet there are limits to this, and not dishonorable ones. Aragorn spends most of his life concealing his true name and his royal lineage from all but a trusted few, and this is a "device of policy" to keep Sauron from discovering that an heir of Isildur is alive to provide a royal rallying point and possibly unite the enemies of the Dark Lord. But it is not lying to withhold the whole truth from people who do not need to know it, and, whether he is known as Thorongil in Rohan and Gondor or Strider in Bree, he does not dissemble what quality of man he is, and he wins respect. Again and again he risks both his life and his hopes of regaining the throne of his ancestors in order to keep his word to protect the hobbits in the wilderness or the people of Rohan at Helm's Deep. While people who are themselves treacherous may falsely jeer at him as "Stick-at-naught Strider" (FR, I, xi, 193) to good folk he is rightly known as a man true to his word.

Being truthful is not always such an easy thing to do, however virtuous one's intentions. When Thorin Oakenshield is captured by Goblins and questioned by their king as to what he and his fellow Dwarves are doing in their territory, "obviously the exact truth would not do at all" (H, iv, 110). He begins by saying "Thorin the Dwarf at your service," which could be dangerous if taken literally, but it is a formula regularly used when introducing oneself throughout The Hobbit and the ever-helpful narrator affirms this "is merely a polite nothing" (H, iv, 109). He goes on to explain that they took shelter in a cave without any thought of troubling the Goblins, the narrator observes "That was true enough!" (H, iv, 110) and we know this to be the case since Thorin's party had no idea there was anyone else nearby. The further explanation that they are on their way to visit relatives is not so truthful, though in the end they will call an army of their people to come help them defend the treasure they recover from the dragon Smaug. Yet travelers waylaid by bandits are not under any obligation to reveal all their business, so prevaricating a little is a venial sin at worst, particularly when Thorin must know that this is basically another polite nothing that is not going to deceive the Great Goblin. The ethics of the matter are less clear in a parallel scene later (H, viii, 221) when he is similarly questioned by the Elvenking who does have a right to know why his subjects have been disturbed at their woodland revels, and so deserves a truthful reply, but even so the answer that the Dwarves are lost and famished and looking for help should be sufficient truth without telling all about their private quest.

Curiously, the one in The Hobbit who commits perhaps the worst violation of the truth is the titular hobbit himself, Bilbo Baggins. Not that he is really untrustworthy. "I may be a burglar..." he says, "but I am an honest one, I hope, more or less." (H, xvi, 331) and even Thorin, from whom he stole the Arkenstone (though with the noble intention of trying to enable the contending factions to make peace), calls him "good thief" in the end (H, xviii, 348). When he converses with Smaug (in chapter xii) and inadvertently reveals more than he intends, that the cunning old dragon can discern much of the real meaning hidden in riddling talk is because he suspects the hobbit is trying to stick to the truth, though disguising it, rather than inventing outright falsehoods. Bilbo's fault is really an afterthought on the part of his creator, when Tolkien decided to revise the already-published book to record that the hobbit found and confiscated the ring of invisibility, while the tale that he had been given it by its previous owner was an invention to justify keeping it. Gandalf takes this uncharacteristic action by a usually truthful person so seriously that he feels it warrants the close investigation that propels the events of The Lord of the Rings. And Tolkien the author takes it so seriously that he feels that what might appear to some to be a small prevarication provides a credible motivation for Gandalf to act in this way.

Truthfulness is basic to the warp and woof, the underlying structure, of Tolkien's fictional world. The accepted ideal is to tell the truth and to keep one's word, and in general the characters do, while for those who do not, like Grima Wormtongue, this is never treated lightly. Any oath that is given is expected to be kept by the hearers; it is usually intended to be kept by the speaker, and penalties naturally ensue if it is not. [4]

Even the evil characters pay more than lip service to speaking the truth. Gollum does not lie to Frodo, for instance, and on their journey toward Mordor he keeps to the letter of his oath not to harm him, though he does violate it in spirit by misleading him to where Shelob might do the harm. What makes him most distrustful of Frodo is being lured to where Faramir's band can take him prisoner, even though this is done only to save his life, by words that are not lies (Frodo merely asks Gollum to come away with him) but still less than the whole truth. [5] Nor does Gollum cheat during the riddle game with Bilbo (only afterwards does he go back on his promise to guide the hobbit out of the caverns). [6]

There is what might seem like a throwaway line, but which in its casualness indicates how embedded this ideal is in Tolkien's world, in the first encounter of Faramir with the hobbits. In a scene parallel to that in which the entire Fellowship agrees to be blindfolded during the approach to Lothlorien so that Gimli is not singled out for this mistrustful treatment, Faramir has Frodo and Sam blindfolded to protect the secret location of Gondor's military base in Ithilien. That he apologizes for this necessity is courtly and courteous, something that might not be expected given the exigencies of war, but it is in character for him and so not surprising. What is astonishing is that he also says: "'They will give their word not to try and see. I could trust them to shut their eyes of their own accord, but eyes will blink, if the feet stumble'" (TT, IV, v, 281). Faramir is one of the noblest characters in the book [7] and it has not taken much interaction with Frodo and Sam for him to judge astutely that they are of the same mettle, but such trust in the word of relative strangers in a perilous situation indicates what behavior good people in Middle-earth may expect from one another.

This inherent acceptance of truthfulness as what should ideally be part of the natural order seems to me to have two primary sources: Tolkien's Christian religion, and his profession of philology. To a Christian, God is Truth ("I am the way, the truth, and the life"), and His creation reflects this. In Dante's Inferno liars are placed in the eighth of the nine circles of Hell but murderers above them in the seventh circle. A modern ethicist might wish to reverse this, but Dante is being quite orthodox. We might understand this as a theological technicality in that sins of the spirit (such as lying) in Christian terms are much worse than sins of the flesh (such as murder). That is, any sin is bad enough, but harm done to the immortal spirit is worse than harm done to merely mortal flesh. Nor is this all an abstraction without sociological basis. The fabric of society depends on mutual trust, which large lies may harm badly, and which even small lies can erode. Much of the evil done by the likes of Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman or Smaug is ascribed to their mixing truth and falsehood to sow dissension and distrust. [8] And on the individual level, our apparently boundless capacity to lie to ourselves is at the root of many personal as well as societal problems. [9]

Tolkien's professional life was devoted to the study of language, of words. It is in words that we can encapsulate truth, but it is also words that make lies possible. As evil is a corruption of good (to use Christian terms that would be familiar to Tolkien), so lying is a corruption of language. It is all but inevitable that this will become a common theme in his writing. I fancy that Tolkien may have seen the improper use of his field of study almost as a personal affront. Consider, for example, his ire in Letters no. 97 at someone who thought that the name Coventry must come from Convent and that to argue anything else was not "in keeping with Catholic tradition." He shows this to be nonsense, per the actual history of the words. "As convent did not enter English till after 1200 A.D. (and meant an 'assembly' at that) and the meaning 'nunnery' is not recorded before 1795, I felt annoyed" (Letters 112). (The beginnings of the city of Coventry date much earlier, from Roman times.) Since the argument misunderstands and misuses words and prefers ideology to truth, Tolkien does not see it as truly Catholic.

It is related to his profession as a scientific scholar of language that Tolkien was also a wordsmith, a writer of fiction and poetry. Some philosophers have seen fiction and poetry as forms of lying, and the matter has been argued since Plato's Republic. Tolkien's own preference was for "history, true or feigned" (FR, Foreword, 5). That is, a work of fiction mimics what a modern reader would call a factual or "true" history but is understood to be "feigning" this, not to deceive anyone but in a game played by author and reader for aesthetic effect, yet a serious game in which the apprehension of some truth about the human condition is part of the experience. We see both sides of this in "The Hobbit" when Beorn tells Gandalf and Bilbo and the Dwarves: "'It was a good story, that of yours [about fighting Goblins in the Misty Mountains and killing the Great Goblin] ... but I like it still better now I am sure it is true.'" (H, vii, 182). Of course the story is "true" only inside the fictional world, all aspects of which are "feigned history" from the point of view of our primary world. But in this short sentence we see Beorn both enjoying a rousing tale, and wanting it to express something true.

In this Beorn speaks for all readers, and for his author. It was entirely natural for one of Tolkien's Christian upbringing to create a fantasy world in which Truth is so enshrined. Yet he also knew that the ideal of truth must often be tempered with other virtues, such as courtesy, privacy, or just not having a right or need to know someone else's business. And it is only human to want to think that people caught in the sort of tight places that typically occur in tales of adventure may perhaps be forgiven a little trickery to get out alive. There are many scenes in Tolkien's fiction that reflect this tension, far more than the ones mentioned in this essay, though they are representative. Indeed all the tragedy of Middle-earth stems from lies working people's pride and greed and other weaknesses: "Thus with lies and evil whisperings and false counsel Melkor kindled the hearts of the Noldor to strife; and of their quarrels came at length the end of the high days of Valinor and the evening of its ancient glory" (S 69).

But as he wrote and revised his tale of Beren and Luthien penetrating the inner sanctum of Morgoth, it must have pleased him to progress from their having to use outright mendacity, to his final version where Luthien is able to deceive the Father of Lies — without herself telling a single lie.

NOTES

[1] Bilbo, for example, is careful not to reveal his proper name to Smaug (H, xii, 279), just as Sigurd conceals his from Fafnir in the Fafnismal in the Elder (Poetic) Edda, lest they give the dragons that they respectively face power over them. Names also represent power in the
Biblical tradition, as when Adam names the beasts in the Book of Genesis.

[2] The story is told at length by Snorri Sturluson in the Gylfa ginning in the Younger (or Prose) Edda.

[3] When he is insulted at the prospect of being blindfolded in Lothlorien due to Elvish mistrust of Dwarves, he protests "I am known to be true of word" (FR, II, vi, 362).

[4] For a survey of this matter in The Lord of the Rings, see Holmes (249-261).

[5] "It would probably be impossible to ever make him [Gollum] understand or believe that Frodo had saved his life in the only way he could" (TT, IV, vi, 297). Indeed Frodo risks his own life, for he offers himself to be shot if Gollum should slip away.

[6] "For one thing Gollum had learned long long ago was never, never to cheat at the riddle-game, which is a sacred one and of great antiquity" (H, v, 128); quoted from chapter v of the 1st edition of 1937.

[7] "'I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood'" (TT, IV, v, 272).

[8] E.g, "the evil truth was enhanced and poisoned by lies" spread by Melkor (S 128).

[9] There is an extended examination of this matter in Peck.

WORKS CITED

Dante Alighieri. The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the Florentine, trans. Dorothy

L. Sayers. Volume 1: Hell. Harmondsworth, Middlesex and Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1950.

Davidson, H. R. Ellis. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, and Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1964.

Holmes, John R. "Oaths and Oath Breaking: Analogues of Old English Comitatus in Tolkien's Myth." In "Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader", ed. Jane Chance (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004): 249-261.

Peck, M. Scott. People of the Lie: The Hope for Curing Human Evil. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

The Poetic Edda, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Lee M. Hollander. 2nd edition, revised. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962.

---, trans. from the Icelandic with an Introduction by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1929.

Хмм... я, пожалуй, напишу пару мыслей на эту тему... а "продольная история" того самого сюжета пусть подождёт.

@темы: Tolkien, Цитаты