CHAPTER 11

WORMS AND LIZARDS

Having returned from the dead resplendent with renewed wisdom and sanctity, Gandalf delves into the mind and motives of Sauron, explaining to Aragorn how the Dark Lord’s pride has rendered him blind to the plans of his enemies. Although Sauron knows the Ring is abroad and suspects it is with the Fellowship that set out from Rivendell, he does not yet perceive the purpose of his enemies. “He supposes that we are all going to Minas Tirith,” Gandalf explains, “for that is what he would himself have done in our place.” In his pride, Sauron fears that a mighty warrior will suddenly appear, wielding the Ring and using its power against him, seeking to cast him down so that the new Ring-bearer can take his place as ruler of Middle-earth. “That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream. In which no doubt you will see our good fortune and our hope.”1

In this short discourse, Gandalf brings to the fore the self-destructive tendency of evil, illustrating how pride’s prejudiced presumption darkens and obscures its ability to judge any situation objectively and clearly. Blinded by its self-centered bias from perceiving the selfless motives of those willing to lay down their lives self-sacrificially, pride is fooled by the humility that it does not possess, thereby unwittingly offering hope and good fortune to the meek of heart who do not see as it sees or act as it acts. This paradoxical weakness at the darkened heart of those who worship strength and power is encapsulated by Théoden. “Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses!” he exclaims to Gandalf. “But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar.”2

“That many times is seen,” Gandalf agrees, reiterating his own words of a few pages earlier: “Strange are the turns of fortune! Often does hatred hurt itself!”3

Nowhere is this self-destructive and self-mutilating aspect of evil depicted more graphically in The Lord of the Rings than in the manner in which the weight of the spiderlike Shelob’s malice is shown to be self-defeating, crushing itself with its own cruel will: “She . . . heaved up the great bag of her belly high above Sam’s head. . . . Now splaying her legs she drove her huge bulk down on him again. Too soon. For Sam still stood upon his feet, and dropping his own sword, with both hands he held the elven-blade point upwards, fending off that ghastly roof; and so Shelob, with the driving force of her own cruel will, with strength greater than any warrior’s hand, thrust herself upon a bitter spike.”4

Often does hatred hurt itself!

This discussion of the self-destructive quality of evil raises the broader question of the way in which Tolkien deals with the nature or supernature of evil in his epic. Considering the parallels with the opening book of Genesis, which Tolkien employs in his telling of the creation myth in The Silmarillion, and in his allegorical connection of the One Ring with the One Sin of Adam and Eve, we shouldn’t be surprised to see similar parallels in his depiction of evil in The Lord of the Rings. There are, for instance, obvious parallels with Genesis in Gandalf’s encounter with Wormtongue in Edoras. “Down, snake!” Gandalf commands Wormtongue. “Down on your belly!”5 Such words resonate inescapably with God’s words to Satan: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”6 As if to ensure that the connection is made, Gandalf again refers to Wormtongue as a snake a few lines later: “See, Théoden, here is a snake!” Lest we should still fail to get the satanic connection, Wormtongue bares his teeth and “with a hissing breath” spits before the king’s feet.7 Thus having poisoned the ear of the king with his envenomed words, reminding us perhaps of the wicked King Claudius in Hamlet, Wormtongue spits like a snake before fleeing from the king’s presence.

Wormtongue is indeed aptly named. Worm, having its root in the Old English wurm or wyrm, means “snake,” “serpent,” “dragon,” or “lizard.” Wormtongue’s name translates, therefore, as “serpent-tongue” or “dragon-tongue.” Once again, Tolkien’s “taste in languages” informs his work with potent symbolic resonance, as it does in the naming of Melkor, the satanic figure in The Silmarillion, of whom Sauron is described as the greatest servant.

Melkor, later known as Morgoth, is Middle-earth’s equivalent of Lucifer, or Satan. Tolkien describes him as the greatest of the Ainur, as Lucifer was the greatest of the archangels. Like Lucifer, Melkor is the embodiment and primeval perpetrator of the sin of pride and is intent on corrupting humanity for his own purposes. Melkor desired “to subdue to his will both Elves and Men, envying the gifts with which Ilúvatar promised to endow them; and he wished himself to have subjects and servants, and to be called Lord, and to be master over other wills.”8

The parallels with the Old Testament become even more obvious when Tolkien describes the war between Melkor and Manwë, who is clearly cast in the role of the archangel Michael, Lucifer’s nemesis. Manwë is “the brother of Melkor in the mind of Ilúvatar [i.e., God]” and was “the chief instrument of the second theme that Ilúvatar had raised up against the discord of Melkor.”9

The link between Melkor and Lucifer is made most apparent in the linguistic connection between them. As a philologist, Tolkien employs language to synthesize his Satan with the biblical archetype. The original spelling of Melkor in the earliest drafts of the mythology is Melko, which means “the Mighty One”; Melkor literally means “He who arises in Might.” Tolkien explains, “But that name he has forfeited; and the Noldor, who among the Elves suffered most from his malice, will not utter it, and they name him Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World.”10 Similarly, Lucifer, brightest of the angels as Melkor is the mightiest, means “Light Bringer,” whereas the Jews named him Satan, which means “enemy” in Hebrew. Linguistically, therefore, Morgoth, Satan, and enemy share the same meaning. They are the same word in three different languages. Morgoth and Satan clearly represent the same primal enemy of humanity. Tolkien’s intention, both as a Christian and as a philologist, in identifying Melkor with Lucifer is plain enough.

In earlier drafts of the mythology that predate the publication of The Lord of the Rings, Melkor’s role parallels that of the biblical Satan. He is the primal bringer of discord into Ilúvatar’s design and he harbors a desire to have dominion in the world contrary to the will of Ilúvatar. In the later versions of the myth, the role of Melko, now known as Melkor, becomes more complex—itself a reflection of Tolkien’s increasing concern with theological intricacy—yet Melko-Melkor-Morgoth remains essentially a depiction of Satan.

Taking his inspiration, perhaps, from the Book of Isaiah (“Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning”)11 Tolkien says of Melkor, “From splendor he fell through arrogance to contempt for all things save himself, a spirit wasteful and pitiless . . . He began with the desire of Light, but when he could not possess it for himself alone, he descended through fire and wrath into a great burning, down into Darkness.”12

Shortly after this description of Melkor, Tolkien introduces Sauron, the dark enemy in The Lord of the Rings. Sauron is described as a “spirit” and as the “greatest” of Melkor’s—alias Morgoth’s—servants, “But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void.”13 This brief depiction of Sauron in The Silmarillion reveals that the evil power in The Lord of the Rings is directly connected to Tolkien’s Satan, rendering implausible a nontheistic interpretation of the book’s deepest moral meaning.

Considering the obvious and obviously intentional linguistic parallels Tolkien employs to connect his Satan figure, Melkor, with his biblical equivalent, and with the brazen connection in the text of The Lord of the Rings of Wormtongue with the serpent in Genesis, it would seem equally obvious, one would think, that the name Sauron is connected linguistically with the Greek word sauros, meaning “lizard” and, by extension, “dragon” or “serpent.” It is, therefore, odd—not to say bizarre—that Tolkien denied any linguistic connection between Sauron and sauros in the draft of a letter written in 1967.14

In Morgoth’s Ring, volume ten of The History of Middle-earth, Tolkien is preoccupied with the figure of Melkor-Morgoth. “Above all,” wrote Christopher Tolkien in his foreword to Morgoth’s Ring, “the power and significance of Melkor-Morgoth . . . was enlarged to become the ground and source of the corruption of Arda.”15 Whereas Sauron’s infernal power was concentrated in the One Ring, Morgoth’s far greater diabolic power was dispersed into the very matter of Arda itself: “[T]he whole of Middle-earth was Morgoth’s Ring.”16 The pride of Melkor-Morgoth had “marred” the whole of material creation just as, according to the Christian doctrine of the Fall, the pride of Lucifer-Satan had marred the very fabric of the world.

If, however, the shadow of Morgoth had fallen across the face of Middle-earth, marring it terribly, Tolkien asserts with Christian hope that the final victory would never belong to Morgoth. “Above all shadows rides the Sun,” Samwise Gamgee affirms in the tower of Cirith Ungol,17 and Tolkien uses the childlike wisdom of the hobbit to express deep theological truths. The sun is a metaphor for Ilúvatar, the All-Father, God Himself, and the shadow a metaphor for evil. The final triumph of good (i.e., God) and the ultimate defeat of evil were spelled out by Ilúvatar in the Ainulindalë at the very beginning of creation.

Referring to Melkor’s introduction of disharmony into the great music of God’s creation, Ilúvatar warned his enemy of the ultimate futility of his rebellion: “And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself had not imagined.”18 Eventually even the evil will of Melkor will understand that all its evil actions have been the unwitting servant of unimaginable providence: “And thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.”19 Sauron is mighty, and Melkor is mightier still, but as Frodo exclaims at the crossroads, “They cannot conquer forever!”20