A Phuulish Fellow

It has often been noted that Tolkien’s two great Dark Lords had quite distinct motivations for their villainy, Melkor/Morgoth being what we might today term ‘Chaotic Evil,’ and Mairon/Sauron being ‘Lawful Evil.’ One was obsessed with destroying Creation because it was not his, the other was obsessed with governing Creation “for its own good.”

To refresh, I can strongly recommend reading Tolkien’s Notes on Motives in The Silmarillion (http://fair-use.org/j-r-r-tolkien/notes-on-motives-in-the-silmarillion/), as found in Morgoth’s Ring (The History of Middle-earth Volume X). Specifically these relevant paragraphs…

Morgoth:

… when Melkor was confronted by the existence of other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and his only notion of dealing with them was by physical force, or the fear of it. His sole ultimate object was their destruction. Elves, and still more Men, he despised because of their weakness: that is their lack of physical force, or power over matter; but he was also afraid of them. He was aware, at any rate originally when still capable of rational thought, that he could not annihilate them: that is, destroy their being; but their physical life, and incarnate form became increasingly to his mind the only thing that was worth considering. Or he became so far advanced in Lying that he lied even to himself, and pretended that he could destroy them and rid Arda of them altogether. Hence his endeavour always to break wills and subordinate them to or absorb them in his own will and being, before destroying their bodies. This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object: Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately destroyed even his own creatures, such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men.

Sauron:

Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.) … Sauron’s love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron’s right to be their supreme lord), his plans, the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself.

Well and good. But this distinction – fascinating though it is – creates an interesting quandary. How did Sauron square his desire for rational ordering of the world with his support for the entity hell-bent on destroying the world? One cannot very well order the world for the material benefit of its inhabitants if both the world and its inhabitants are non-existent. Tolkien cites Melkor’s ability to Get Shit Done as something attractive to Sauron… which is vaguely unsatisfying, since being effective at wrecking Creation ought to still conflict with Sauron’s fundamental temper.

(Tolkien in a subsequent paragraph does note “Sauron had not served Morgoth, even in his last stages, without becoming infected by his lust for destruction”. But being infected by such tendencies is still a long way from wanting to see the world burn, especially because enslavement, rather than annihilation, remains the chief tool in Sauron’s toolbox).

So what, exactly, is going on here? In my opinion, it’s an issue that Tolkien rather leaves dangling… at least so far as his essays are concerned. This question does not impact so much on the actual stories. But if ever there was a fandom that likes to fill in world-building and philosophical gaps, it is this one. I myself have a few ideas, some of which potentially overlap with each other. Which is why I’m writing this blog post at all…

(i) Morgoth lied to Sauron

I have a soft spot for this rationalisation, in part because it is oh-so in-character for Morgoth to lie to even his chief servant, and it even adds a whiff of genuine tragedy to Sauron’s storyline. Under this hypothesis, Morgoth hid his nihilism from Sauron, essentially telling him that “when Arda is mine, you shall have your desires fulfilled.” And poor Sauron – star-struck and intoxicated by the prospect of power – bought the lie wholesale, deluding himself for millennia that Morgoth’s destructive behaviour was simply a means to a positive end. After all, a bit of destruction can be fun, after a hard day’s work running bureaucracy…

(ii) It’s Just Business

Here, Sauron had a much better idea of what he was getting into. He knew full-well what Morgoth was up to, but thought he could still steer his boss in a particular direction (or leech off the opportunities presented by the rebel Ainu), rather like Saruman thinking he could deal with Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. The underlying differences in worldview can be dismissed as Sauron realising that Morgoth’s end-goal was actually impossible, and that his master’s destructive tendencies were self-limiting. Moreover, Morgoth’s power had dispersed into Arda itself. With Morgoth having done the hard metaphysical work, Sauron could simply piggy-back off him, for his own advantage… without his precious plans being overruled or constrained by the Valar.

(iii) Sauron as Macbeth

“I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

Under this scenario, Sauron was initially lured in… realised his mistake, but decided that it is simply too damned hard or painful to repent of his misdeeds, so he might as well double-down on Team Evil. This, of course, is floated as an explicit possibility at the end of the First Age – that Sauron really did sincerely repent, but could not quite bring himself to subject himself to the judgement of the Valar. But such thoughts might actually have occurred earlier in Sauron’s career, potentially multiple times, once he saw Morgoth in action. On the other hand, Sauron does not generally strike me as the self-loathing sort.

(iv) The Lesser Evil

Strange though it sounds, it is potentially possible that Sauron grew to dislike Morgoth, a dislike kept hidden by out-and-out fear. It’s just that he might have seen his master’s destructive eccentricities as less irritating than the dithering, incompetent, and inefficient Valar – Melkor may be an idiot, but he can at least Get Shit Done!

*

Such are my contrived explanations for how a sophisticated planner and administrator could wind up as chief servant (and spiritual successor) to an Anarchistic Toddler. It is also interesting to note that Sauron’s post-First Age career is an ever-deepening descent into cynicism, so far as his treatment of Morgoth goes. The Valaquenta suggests Sauron was less evil, in that “for long he served another and not himself,” but in the Second and Third Ages, the homages become decidedly self-serving. Sauron setting himself up as Melkor’s High-Priest in Númenor was naked pragmatism, not devoted sincerity, while in the Third Age, Sauron was telling his followers that he was Morgoth Returned, which would not have gone down well had his old boss ever learned of it.

(I cannot yet get my hands on The Nature of Middle-earth, but I am aware it includes references to eastern Orcs, who took a dim view of Sauron’s attempt to assume his master’s old mantle. Sauron’s pragmatic motivations for draping himself in Morgoth’s legacy cannot be understated, regardless of what he actually thought of his old boss).

My recent re-read of The Lord of the Rings reminded me of one of the vaguer head-scratchers in Tolkien. The status of the Witch-King of Angmar between his death at the Battle of Pelennor Fields and the Destruction of the One Ring ten days later… was he, in the immortal phrase of The Princess Bride, All Dead or Only Mostly Dead? It’s one of those questions I haven’t settled in my own mind, so today I figured I would share my indecisive musings with the world. As one does.

Recall the basics: on 15th March, T.A. 3019, the Lord of the Ringwraiths meets his doom at the hands of Éowyn and Merry Brandybuck. Merry stabs him behind the knee with the barrow-blade, whereupon Éowyn gets him in his invisible face.

“A cry went up in to the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.”

Ten days later, the One Ring’s destruction ends the power of the Nine Rings, thereby destroying the Ringwraiths altogether.

There are two possibilities for that ensuing ten day period. Either the Witch-King – a mortal Man, whose time on Earth had been unnaturally stretched unto four millennia – immediately receives the Gift of Men, and leaves for what lies beyond the Circles of the World. Or enough of his soul is still bound up with his own Ring, that he is still stuck on Earth as an impotent spirit. His final release only comes ten days later, along with his wraith colleagues.

There are arguments for both positions, so I thought I would sketch them here.

(i) All Dead

Recall that the Witch-King is not immortal in the sense that Sauron is. He’s an incarnate Man, with fëa and hröa, which means he has to play by Aristotlean-style rules rather than the more Platonist rules of the Ainur. Separation of spirit and body is Death, and, as a Man, Death means he must journey to Mandos, and thence Beyond the World for a final reckoning with Eru.

Sauron cannot interfere with this Gift of Men, while the effect of the Rings of Power slows the exterior passage of time. What one sees with the Ringwraiths is that their lifespans have been stretched beyond breaking point – they are not undead in the classic sense, nor true ghosts. Their hröar are still very real – and vulnerable – even if they have now faded into the Unseen Realm. Which in turn arguably means that the Witch-King was All Dead after Pelennor Fields.

This view is further supported by Tolkien’s essay, The Hunt for the Ring (the full Reader’s Companion version), where Tolkien notes the Witch-King’s surprising fear of Frodo Baggins:

[the Witch-king], the great captain, was actually dismayed. He had been shaken by the fire of Gandalf, and began to perceive that the mission on which Sauron had sent him was one of great peril to himself both by the way, and on his return to his Master (if unsuccessful); and he had been doing ill, so far achieving nothing save rousing the power of the Wise and directing them to the Ring. But above all the timid and terrified Bearer had resisted him, had dared to strike at him with an enchanted sword made by his own enemies long ago for his destruction. Narrowly it had missed him…

Escaping a wound that would have been as deadly to him as the Mordor-knife to Frodo (as was proved at the end), he withdrew and hid for a while, out of doubt and fear both of Aragorn and especially of Frodo. But fear of Sauron, and the forces of Sauron’s will was the stronger.

There is an existential fear here, rather than annoyance at the mere inconvenience of losing his body. The Witch-King really does anticipate his own destruction… he might be mighty in spells and dark magic, the sorcerous paraphernalia of his limited serial immortality, but the enchantment of the barrow-blade can break through all of that. It also really does say something that, even for the Lord of the Ringwraiths, Sauron can still inflict the terror of something worse than Death.

(Further in support of this position: there is zero consideration, either from the West or from Mordor, that the Witch-King might ever return, notwithstanding Sauron’s infamous necromantic abilities. This might be a function of limited time-frame, however).

(ii) Only Mostly Dead

The closest Tolkien ever comes to addressing this question directly is in a footnote to Letter 246:

The situation as between Frodo with the Ring and the Eight* might be compared to that of a small brave man armed with a devastating weapon, faced by eight savage warriors of great strength and agility armed with poisoned blades. *The Witch-king had been reduced to impotence. (September 1963).

The Witch-King is not a Sauron or Saruman, of course. His (unseen) body is an integral part of him in a way it is not for them. And yet, rather than taking the Witch-King out of Arda altogether, Tolkien opts for a turn of phrase that evokes Sauron’s post-Ring fate… impotence. The word implies helplessness, of course. But also arguably continued – albeit futile – existence within the Circles of the World.

How could this be explained in the context of the Gift of Men? Well, for a start, there is already the famous exception of the Dead Men of Dunharrow – entrapped by their Oath for over three millennia. So far as the Ringwraiths are directly concerned, we have Gandalf’s comment:

“The power of their master is in them, and they stand or fall by him.” 

Gandalf is clarifying that the flood at the Ford of Bruinen was insufficient to kill the Nine. If the Ringwraiths were merely invisible Men with unnaturally extended life, one could imagine (as Merry actually does) that they are vulnerable to conventional death by drowning. But they are not – these are creatures bound by the power and will of Sauron, as operating through the Nine Rings.

So while the enchantment on the barrow-blade indeed helps kill the Witch-King at Pelennor Fields, there might well have been ten days where the Gift of Men was delayed – that is, the Witch-King’s disembodied spirit was stuck within the Circles of the World, still enslaved by the power of the Ring. Which in turn raises the question of whether he could have eventually been brought back to a more meaningful existence, had the One Ring not been destroyed at Orodruin. The attitude presented in the narrative is that Pelennor Fields was truly the End for the Witch-King, but as noted above, that might have been affected by perceived time constraints.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the One Ring finds its way back to its old master, and the Dark Lord has all the time he needs to engage with such a question. The key is that any return of the Witch-King would not have been after the manner of Sauron’s own various re-embodiments. A dead Man cannot rebuild his own body. No, Sauron would have had to wheel out his fabled necromantic techniques (alluded to in Morgoth’s Ring), perhaps finding another body for his old chief servant.

(Unless, of course, the Dark Lord were feeling sufficiently contemptuous of the Witch-King’s failure to let him stew in impotent undeath. Sauron is notoriously petty, and as noted above, even the Lord of the Ringwraiths was in terror of him. If so, the Witch-King’s fear of destruction might not actually be an allusion to fear of True Death, but rather fear of permanent torment at the hands of his master. It’s enough to make you feel sorry for the guy).

**

Such are my thoughts on this vaguely ambiguous question. My own leaning (and overall preference) is for the second position. I truly love the idea of the Witch-King’s spirit eventually slinking back to the Dark Tower, and having to endure Sauron’s mockery for the rest of time. On the other hand, I can appreciate the idea that Éowyn and Merry do indeed send him to his fate beyond the Circles of the World, out of reach of even the Necromancer himself. It’s these sort of ambiguities – the less-famous ones – that make re-reading Tolkien such a pleasure.