The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) has many themes running through it. In this six-part post (it’s long), I explore one theme I believe to be relevant for our times — the theme of Change. Few books I’ve read deal so deeply with the challenge of Change. At a time when my country is going through its most devastating crisis in 74 years — a crisis threatening to upend so much about who we are — I find it useful to revisit one of my favourite works and see what lessons Tolkien holds for us (spoilers ahead).
PART 1: The Challenge of Change
The challenge of dealing with Change runs quite deeply through not just LOTR, but most of Tolkien’s works. In the The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel of Lothlorien speaks about her (and her partner, Celeborn’s) struggle with the Long Defeat:
…ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin, I passed over the mountains and together through the ages of the world, we have fought the Long Defeat.”
Galadriel (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter “The Mirror of Galadriel”)
The Long Defeat is a Catholic idea that the World is doomed to fight evil, no matter how many victories we score against it. This theme — of evil rising over and over again — is at the heart of Tolkien’s works taken together. The struggle over destroying the One Ring was only the latest in a long line of battles between good and evil. Prior to this, Sauron (LOTR’s arch-villain) had tricked the Kingdom of Numenor into self-destruction. Prior to this, there was an older Dark Lord, Morgoth, who had been defeated and cast out of Tolkien’s world. Long before this, when the world was just being created (by the divine music of Tolkien’s God, Eru), Morgoth had rebelled against Eru by adding his own notes to Eru’s song. In Tolkien’s universe, evil is fated to rise repeatedly, from the dawn of time to its end. Every person is doomed to fight it multiple times.
This idea has parallels in many contexts. Religions other than Catholicism have dealt with similar themes (Eg: The Bhagavad Gita mentions how the characters in the Kurukshetra war reincarnated over and over again, through time, to re-establish dharma in the world). In more secular contexts though, when stripped of value-laden labels like ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘right’, or ‘wrong’, this idea manifests as Change. Change is the constant of our world, ensuring no situation remains stable forever. There’s even a scientific framing of this concept, entropy. In any closed system, entropy always increases due to how thermodynamics work. Therefore, just as characters like Galadriel are doomed to fight evil over and over again, we too are fated to deal with entropy (or Change) in our own universe.
PART 2: Between Comfort and Change
Change isn’t pleasant when our lives are already comfortable. We see this with Bilbo Baggins in the LOTR prequel The Hobbit. Bilbo was a contended person, who liked nothing more than regular breakfast on the table and a smoke on his doorstep after. He had little interest in adventures (“nasty, unpleasant things that make you late for dinner“). When Gandalf the Wizard turns up at his doorstep, looking for someone to take part in an adventure, Bilbo was eager to shoo him away. As it was, Gandalf tricked him into coming along. Bilbo spent much of the journey being miserable. He missed his home in The Shire, the warmth of his fireplace, the regularity of his meals, and handkerchieves (because he forgot to bring one along).
Yet, when we look closely at LOTR’s Hobbits, we notice some contradictions in their attitudes to comfort. The Hobbits’ homeland, The Shire, is one of Tolkien’s loveliest inventions, capturing a pastoral, rural life that the English (and indeed many Indians) romanticise. However, Tolkien was careful to point out its tensions. At the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, an older Bilbo expresses his frustrations with The Shire and a desire to go away:
I want to see mountains again, Gandalf – mountains; and then find somewhere I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell.
Bilbo Baggins (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter: A Long-Expected Party)
It’s a little strange that Bilbo in his older life (at an age we imagine people settling down) would speak about resting outside The Shire. After all, throughout The Hobbit, Bilbo had looked forward to going home again. But the same paragraph hints that life in The Shire isn’t always quiet. Bilbo Baggins spent many years being the subject of rumours, gossip, and controversy. He was never considered normal and people looked down on him for making friends with wizards and dwarves. Most of all, people disliked his history as an adventurer. Yet, they couldn’t help being curious about his life, talking about his hidden treasures and mysterious disappearances. It must have been frustrating. Frodo, his cousin and heir, expresses similar frustrations to Gandalf many years later:
…there have been times when I thought the inhabitants [of The Shire] too stupid or too dull for words, and have felt an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.”
Frodo Baggins (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter: The Shadow of the Past)
The Shire symbolises much of what makes us comfortable – home, family, friends, food. But those who are lucky enough to obtain these things feel frustrated with them over time. They realise they have romanticised the objects they yearn for and that real life is full of cracks. Just like Bilbo, once we sink too much into comfort, our own senses begin yearning for Change. Like Bilbo, we want to see mountains again. It’s easy to see parallels to this in real life. It’s often the comfortable and the well-off who rush to exotic places or fund crazy ventures. On a darker note, it’s usually sheltered people who romanticise war and call for battle with enemy nations. Our bodies and subconscious brains often signal the desire for Change far more clearly than our conscious minds.
Yet, Tolkien doesn’t disparage comfort, or our need to build secure lives. Much of The Fellowship is about the difficulty of accepting that we have to move on. Before setting off on his own adventure, Frodo spends a long time “saying goodbye” to everything he had lived with for decades. He takes months to start. As he steps out on his journey, he mutters “Will I ever look down on that valley again?“. He complains about Change to Gandalf, asking why it had to happen in his lifetime. This prompts one of LOTR’s most famous exchanges:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter: The Shadow of the Past
If there is a single quote from LOTR that captures the tensions of dealing with Change, it’s this. We complain about comfort, but when confronted with Change, we wish to turn back. We spot the abyss in our path and return to the safety of our house. But like the Long Defeat, Change is inevitable in our lives and no matter how much we wish it away, we cannot live without it. The only freedom we have against entropy is in deciding how to deal with it.
PART 3: The Extreme Life of Tom Bombadil
There is one part of the book where Tolkien takes this tension to its extremes — when Frodo and his companions meet Tom Bombadil. It’s one of the most curious portions of LOTR. Tom Bombadil has no connection with the larger story, appears only once in the book, and has almost no impact on the tale’s evolution. If Tolkien had cut Tom Bombadil out altogether, he could have written the rest of the book without changes. Yet, there is one important way to interpret the meeting with Bombadil. It’s where the Hobbits see both their comfortable past and their dangerous future within a microcosm of extremes.
A quick summary of this meeting: The Hobbits have stepped out of The Shire and are journeying through a dense jungle known as The Old Forest. They lose their way, being misled by the Forest’s magic, and end up at its heart instead of its edges. Here, they are attacked by a sentient willow tree (“Old Man Willow”). At this point, Tom Bombadil turns up, rescues them, and takes them to his home where they are cared for by Tom’s wife, Goldberry. Here, they rest for a while, before setting off on their journey again. Just before they leave Tom’s lands, they are once again attacked (this time by ghosts haunting a tomb) and captured. Tom rescues them and sees them leave his lands safely.
The contrasts between Tom Bombadil and the lands he inhabits are striking. His house is a haven of solitude and safety (“Nothing passes the doors or windows save moonlight and starlight“) in a place filled with darkness, deception, and cursed beings. Here, Tom stands as a pillar of stability, a bulwark against Change. Within the borders of his land, nothing can harm or reshape him. Even the One Ring, which twists everyone else to its desires, has no effect on Bombadil, who merely plays with it. Tolkien gives us no explanation of who Tom is or where he came from. There are only hints that he is very old (“Tom was here before the rivers and trees, Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn“) and has lived in that land for eons. He is an extreme example of the stability we all desire: to have nothing harm us, so that we can stay for ages in the most treacherous places; to be so resilient that dangers become curiosities. Who wouldn’t want such a life?
But Tolkien doesn’t get carried away. Even within LOTR, Tom Bombadil is too fantastic an idea to stretch for long. Tom never leaves the borders of his lands and never takes part in the greater story of the Ring. The elders in Tolkien’s world briefly toy with the idea of giving him the One Ring for safekeeping, but Gandalf explains why this is a bad idea:
“It seems he [Bombadil] has a power even over the Ring.”
“No, I should not put it so.” said Gandalf. “Say rather that the Ring has no power over him. He is his own master. But he cannot alter the Ring itself, nor break its power over others. And now, he is withdrawn into a land, within bounds he has set, though none can see them, waiting perhaps for a change of days, and he will not step beyond them.”
The Fellowship of the Ring (Chapter: The Council of Elrond)
Here, Tolkien lays out the problem of being Tom Bombadil. Like everyone else, Tom cannot escape the limits of the world and has to pay a price. Not being affected by Change implies that he cannot make changes himself. He may be unaffected by the One Ring, but he cannot break it for everyone else’s good. He can protect his own land from harm, but cannot march to help others’. A world which allows him that much power would be nothing like ours, and hence, of no use to us fighting our own challenges.
This is an old problem. Think of the United States, with its ability to shut itself behind walls and seas from the rest of the world. Think of “Fortress Europe” and Brexit and the many other attempts to protect ourselves from Change that ravages us. At a more local level, think of gated communities, penthouses, and many other urban forms which try to insulate its residents from the rest of the city. Each of these efforts creates enormous comfort and stability, but has its own limits, its own cracks, and its own set of trade-offs. Without involving itself in the rest of the world, the United States loses the power to promote its own ideals of democracy and freedom, losing ground to rivals like China or Russia. By retreating into a gated community, residents lose the power to understand, empathise and work with other citizens.
PART 4: Our Various Responses to Change
So far, I’ve mostly dealt with the early parts of LOTR and how the Hobbits deal with change as they commence their journey. However, Change sweeps through most of Tolkien’s world in the book and every character has to decide how to deal with it. Saruman the Wizard says (to Gandalf):
The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand; the world of Men, which we must rule.”
Saruman (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter: The Council of Elrond)
For Saruman, Change is an opportunity to grab power. This attitude resembles that of a character from another fantasy series – Petyr Baelish from the G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones (the TV series). Like Saruman, Baelish believes that the chaos brought about by Change is a chance for him to upset the existing order and rise to the top (“Chaos is a ladder“). Their attitudes to Change are not just about seizing opportunities, but about doing so to accumulate power. Others may see Change as a chance to improve things or set them right, but those who use it for personal power are seen to be harmful beings.
More often though, Change brings despair. This is understandable. Most of us spend our lives striving for something, hoping to get somewhere, or to save something for the future. The passage of time (and the Change that accompanies it) can be ruthless in demolishing these dreams. Many of us are condemned to witness the erosion of our goals, without the power to stop it. In The Hobbit, the creature Gollum captures the ruthlessness of time in a riddle that terrifies Bilbo. It’s small wonder many of us are driven to despair:
This thing all things devours,
Gollum to Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit, Chapter: Riddles in the Dark)
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers,
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stones to meal,
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
Two of LOTR’s most tragic characters — King Theoden of Rohan and Lord Denethor of Gondor — portray contrasting facets of such despair. By the time we meet Theoden, he has withered away in response to his kingdom’s decline, enslaved to the magic of Saruman and the whispers of Saruman’s spy, Wormtongue. His body is physically trapped on his throne and he refuses to heed good advice from people who care for him. Sounds familiar? Nowadays, when I read about Theoden, I’m reminded of many of us, trapped in doomscrolling for bad news on Twitter, falling prey to advice from WhatsApp, chained to our desks and sofas, afraid to face our fears.
Sometimes, like Theoden, we need a gruff Gandalf to shake us up, an Aragorn to enable us. Like Theoden, we’ll curse their arrival (or let our Wormtongues curse them for us) and grasp for straws when we are confronted with truth. But Tolkien also gives hope. Over time, Theoden recovered, threw Wormtongue out, picked up his sword and rode into battle twice. Tragically, his fears came true. He lost his life on the battlefield, succumbing to the worst of what he feared. But note how his life changed after being rescued by Gandalf. Instead of isolating himself, he met Change head on, accepting what came his way, as long as he could do what felt right. He needed help (as so many of us do). However once provided support, he could muster the courage to face Change.
“…the World changes and all that once was strong now proves unsure…”
Theoden (The Two Towers, Chapter: Helm’s Deep)
In contrast to Theoden, Denethor cuts a more tragic figure. At first glance, he was the more learned and powerful of the two, but this proved to be more weakness than strength. He believed himself too wise, too learned to fall for Sauron’s traps. Thus, when he spied on Sauron, he didn’t realise that Sauron was misleading him, deliberately showing him vast, immeasurable troops, too many for Gondor to withstand. Denethor was so driven to despair that he gave up everything as lost. Losing his elder son drove him even closer to the abyss. He refused to lead, leaving the command of his city to his other son, Faramir. He had fallen so far that when Faramir was wounded in battle, he gave up his son as lost and decided to burn himself with his son’s body on a funeral pyre. It took all the efforts of Gandalf and the Hobbit Pippin to save Faramir, but Denethor burnt to death.
As with Theoden, Denethor’s fears weren’t exactly false. The enemy was truly strong and it took immense effort to push Sauron’s forces back. But here again, we should notice how differently Theoden and Denethor dealt with their fears. Both were offered Gandalf’s support, but only Theoden chose to take it seriously. Tolkien teaches us an important lesson here – that Change can be intimidating, fearsome, and difficult to understand, but at no point does it automatically dictate our choices. We can still choose our manner of response.
Tolkien also warns us of putting too much faith in past reputations during times of Change. Saruman and Denethor embody this warning in different ways. Both were wise beings, steeped in learning and ancient knowledge. Once events began moving, everyone expected these two giants to be at the forefront of the struggle. Instead, one allied with Sauron in a quest for power and the other gave up. This is often the case with us as well. Think of our current predicament, dealing with a pandemic that is seeing thousands die everyday. How many of our heroes do we see, utilising this moment to profit from a disaster? How many do we see give up, racing to safer lands? Change doesn’t just mean transformations in structures and places. Change will affect people too. The heroes of the past can’t always be relied upon for heroism in the present as well.
In a way, the being who completely failed to respond to Change was Sauron. Sauron was among the oldest and (in his own dark way) wisest beings in LOTR. With eons of experience as exile, servant, lieutenant, and lord, one would have expected him to be smarter in his machinations. Yet, he continued to behave as if this new struggle for the One Ring would be just like the old. He expected to fight lords and commanders, soldiers and weaponry. Even when his minions captured Frodo and Sam trying to enter his realm, it did not occur to him that they were more than just spies. He fell to his doom because he did not imagine his enemies trying a different tactic.
PART 5: The Bittersweet Beauty of Returning Home Changed
We like to believe that once an evil has been defeated, life will swing back to its old rhythms. Many of us imagine time as a pendulum, swinging back and forth from one extreme to another, but otherwise remaining fixed in one place. This is never true. Europe did not return to monarchies after World War 1, Britain did not return to Empire after World War 2. India did not return to Maharajas and Mughals after the British left. Even if we find such times to be “good old days”, we cannot go back to them. As I mentioned before, Change transforms people as much as it does everything else. The same holds true in Tolkien’s world. After Sauron’s defeat, none of the characters went back to leading their old lives.
If anyone has doubts about this, they are quickly dismissed in one of the final chapters of LOTR, The Scouring of the Shire. This is where the impact of Change truly strikes home. After months of wandering in wild lands, the four Hobbits return to The Shire, only to find numerous changes. The Shirefolk have closed their borders and treat outsiders with suspicion. There’s a new boss (“Sharkey”) occupying Frodo’s old house, ruling the countryside. The pastoral landscape has been industrialised. Sharkey’s henchmen patrol The Shire, bullying the Hobbits and seizing what they want from confused, submissive residents. Ultimately, it was left to the four Hobbits, freshly returned from the War of the Ring, to raise The Shire to rebellion against Sharkey and throw him out.
The message of this chapter is pretty clear when interpreted through the lens of Change — that Change will come, even to what you tried to preserve. It’s both poignant and depressing. After all, Frodo originally agreed to set out because he felt The Shire needed to be saved from Sauron’s evil (“I feel that as long as The Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable“). Even though he had destroyed the Ring and defeated Sauron, had he saved The Shire? Frodo felt he had himself lost what he had valued, although others may still benefit from his work:
“I have been hurt too deeply, Sam. I tried to save The Shire and it has been saved, but not for me.
It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: Some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
Frodo Baggins (The Return of the King, Chapter: The Grey Havens)
Ultimately, none of the four Hobbits truly settled in The Shire. Frodo crossed the sea in the search of peace. Sam did live a long and fruitful life, but he too eventually gave up everything and crossed the sea to join Frodo. Merry and Pippin, the other two Hobbits, resided in The Shire for many years, but like Bilbo, they yearned to visit the sites of their old adventures. Merry died in Rohan, while Pippin was buried in Gondor. The Shire was saved for none of them, though they did save it. This is the bittersweet truth that most of us dealing with Change may have to accept; that our happiness may not lie in returning to what once was, even if we succeed in saving what was precious to us. We should conserve something because it’s worth conserving, not because we hope to reap benefits personally.
Lastly, Frodo did not just leave because he had lost interest in The Shire. He had changed himself, physically as well as otherwise. An early knife-wound continued to trouble him for years and he could find no cure for it in this world. Furthermore, his experiences from his journey made it difficult to adjust to the relative peace and quiet of The Shire. While his cousin Bilbo itched to get away from tiresome neighbours and nosy relatives in his old age, Frodo’s struggles were deeper and more internal. While one can compare this to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder experienced by soldiers returning from war, any of us who have experienced significant changes in life may recognise similar feelings upon returning to places of our past. Even if nothing has changed around us, we have transformed ourselves. Hence, things can never go back to the way they were. Personally, this is why I avoid revisiting my old schools or colleges. Something always feels out of place.
PART 6: So What Then? – Concluding with Treebeard
We are living in times of devastating Change, both in India and across the world. If I look back to the 1990s or even the mid-2000s, so many fundamental assumptions we held about the world back then are no longer true. The last few years, especially the two pandemic years, have been particularly harsh. There’s no way I can tell which of my assumptions about my country and the world will stay the same and which will change irrevocably. All I know is that things will not be the same.
What then, should be my attitude towards such immense Change? Honestly, I don’t know. Should I despair like Denethor, or wait for someone to shake me up, as Gandalf did to Theoden? Should I look out for myself like Saruman? I feel more and more like Frodo everyday, wounded by the experiences of what I see around me. However, there are no seas to cross, no white shores where I can escape to seek relief.
There is one character who dealt with change longer than most others in LOTR, whom I haven’t mentioned so far. This is Treebeard, the oldest of the Ents, the Shepherds of the Trees. In a world being torn apart by the likes of Saruman and Sauron on one hand, and Denethor and Theoden on the other, Treebeard refused to take sides. In his eyes, none of the walking creatures (except Elves) truly cared for what he held most precious — the trees he tended (“I’m on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side.”). Therefore, he has no wish to take part in their battles. Treebeard is trying to be Tom Bombadil, but he lacks Tom’s power to protect his lands from Change. Eventually, Merry and Pippin persuade him to change his mind and send the Ents to battle against Saruman. This results in a stunning victory, with the Ents flooding Saruman’s fortress and trapping him in his tower.
Treebeard, more than anyone else in the book, is conscious of the pain of Change and is sympathetic to those who have to deal with it. Yet, his mourning for the days past (when trees stretched from the Old Forest in the north to Fangorn in the south) is tempered by his desire to not hurt or harm any living thing if he could help it. Even in Saruman’s defeat, he shows more sympathy to him than any of the others who’ve met him:
“His heart is as rotten as a black Huorn’s. Still, if I were overcome and all my trees destroyed, I would not come while I had one dark hole left to hide in.”
“No,” said Gandalf. “But you have not plotted to cover all the world with your trees and choke all living things.”
The Two Towers, Chapter: The Voice of Saruman
Gandalf’s reply is one of my favourite lines in all of LOTR. It reminds me of how even something as beautiful and desirable as a tree can become a threat given the wrong circumstances. Had Treebeard been more like the Huorns, the mutated Ents who have become more “tree-ish”, this threat could have been a real one. This is no abstract example, by the way. Tree plantation, a normally noble gesture, has been recently carried out in places where trees never grew, like the Tibetan plateau or degraded grasslands. This has ravaged local ecosystems with invasive tree species. Well-intentioned gestures to combat Change, can wrought dangerous changes themselves.
For sometime now, I’ve been trying to hold myself to what I call the Treebeard Principles. Briefly, the Treebeard Principles can be summarised as follows:
- Mourn for forests which are irreversibly lost.
- Struggle to save forests being lost today.
- Work to restore forests which can be restored.
- But do not choke the world with your trees.
Of course, ‘forests’ and ‘trees’ here can refer to anything I hold precious and not just their literal counterparts. There are two other Treebeard principles, which are unrelated to the other four:
5. You don’t have to take anyone’s side.
6. This shouldn’t stop you from taking sides when it it’s right to do so.
None of these Principles are perfect and all of them are capable of being misused, especially in a world filled with so much cynicism. However, I believe that at present, these are useful guides to work with in a changing world.
It’s a fairly conservative set of principles — they don’t talk too much about how much new worlds in the future will have to offer. This was a deliberate choice. I feel that optimistic and beautiful aspects of our futures will always get attention. There’s no dearth of people raving about smart technologies, self-driving cars, colonies on Mars, autonomous robots and artificial intelligence. But a bright and shiny tomorrow often forgets the subtle and the beautiful that we are losing today. I designed the Treebeard Principles to remind me of these subtle and beautiful presents while I’m drowning in the noise of shiny futures. This is not to denigrate the future — instead, it is to merely acknowledge that we have to deal with the noise around it.
I can write more about how the theme of Change sweeps through LOTR. I’ve left out a lot of things — Gimli’s nostalgia for Moria and the Mirrormere, the changes to Breeland at the end of the novel when people begin migrating to Fornost, Arwen’s choice to stay behind with Aragorn while all her people leave Middle-Earth, the ending of the days of the Elves, rumours of Tolkien’s planned sequel to LOTR, which he apparently abandoned because he felt it too dark — one can go on and on about Lord of the Rings. But I think I’ve written enough for now. Hopefully, we’ll pass through these changes in our times safely.
END
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