Tolkien Tuesday: Reading "The Lord of the Rings: The Scouring of the Shire"
In one of the most powerful chapters in the entire novel, Frodo and his companions have to grapple with the horror and destruction Saruman has wrought on their beloved Shire.
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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
We come at last to one of my favorite chapters of The Lord of the Rings. In my opinion, “The Scouring of the Shire” is one of the most important chapters in the entire novel. It’s the one that demonstrates more forcefully than any other that the defeat of Sauron was but one step in the journey to excise his influence from Middle-earth and that, in fact, the rot has gone far deeper than anyone could have imagined.
When we last saw Saruman he was making his way down the road, bedraggled and quite humiliated as a result of the fall of Isengard and the ruin of all of his grand schemes and designs. As he hinted at during the fateful meeting with Frodo and the others, however, there is still very much more to his power, and as our heroes approach the Shire it soon becomes clear that things are even worse than Butterbur had been hinting and that the Shire has in fact come under the dominion of Saruman. The Wizard has been sinking his claws into from afar for quite some time, thanks in large part to Lotho Sackville-Baggins, who was foolish enough to think that allying himself with someone like Saruman. Others have willingly (or unwillingly, in some cases) gone along with it, and so the Shire has become a sort of Isengard-in-miniature.
Saruman, of course, has reckoned without the inner strength that is a key part of the hobbit character. Unlike, say, Gandalf, who has always seen the true nature of the hobbits, Saruman thinks that they are ripe for the kind of exploitation and cruelty that he has inflicted on the people in the region surrounding Isengard. And, to be sure, he has been remarkably successful in his corruption, but mostly because he has found those within it who are far more willing to put their own interests ahead of the good of the land and its people. Like so many of the other final chapters of The Lord of the Rings, this one comes to feel more and more relevant with each passing year, as we all seem to be surrounded by little Sharkeys and Lothos, petty tyrants who believe that ruthless extraction is its own reward.
I’ve always found the sight of Saruman standing by Bag End to be a particularly haunting one, in large part because we’ve spent so many happy times in this little hobbit-hole. To see it reduced to this state is like a punch in the gut, even more so than the rest of the state of the Shire and the horrible men who are now terrorizing the hobbits with impunity. It says a great deal about Saruman’s fundamental character that he would waste all of his significant gifts and power on this type of pettiness but, from his twisted perspective, it must seem like a fitting comeuppance for the little people who were the architects of his own undoing.
For all of his wiles, however, Saruman is ultimately undone not by the hobbits–despite the desire of many of them to cut him down where he stands–but instead by Gríma, who he has abused and reduced to a creature that is the very epitome of the abject. Even a kicked dog, however, will eventually lash out at its tormentor, and so it proves to be here. He cuts his old master’s throat before being pinned with arrows by the hobbits. So much for the master and his servant who thought to bring all of Middle-earth under their dominion.
It’s hard not to feel at least a bit sorry for Saruman. This is a being, after all, who has dwelt among the Valar, who has seen the light and beauty and majesty of untold years both in Middle-earth and in the West, and yet now he’s reduced to this sad and petty little tyrant. Of all of the villains we meet during the course of the book, it seems safe to say that his fall from grace is the most precipitous, and the tragedy of it all is that it didn’t have to be this way. He could very easily have taken the many opportunities he was given to repent and to do some good, but such was the corruption at his heart, and his pride, that he simply couldn’t bring himself to do so. In some ways, I think that his humiliation is even more complete than Sauron’s, for all that the latter was utterly undone by the destruction of the Ring in Mount Doom. The former Saruman the White has gone from being the master of Orthanc and one of the most powerful beings of Middle-earth to torturing hobbits, and even his last attempt at getting revenge on Frodo is thwarted by both mithril and the hobbit’s clemency. Thus are the wages of sin.
Saruman’s defeat and demise extends even beyond death, for after he is cut down by Gríma his shade (or perhaps it might be more accurate to say the last vestiges of his form as a Maia) rises up from his ruined body and seems to reach out to the West, only to be blown away by the wind. Like Sauron he has been denied any opportunity for redemption. So grave are his crimes, and so severe the damage he’s wrought that there can be nothing for him but to wander shapeless through the land he sought to control.
There’s something even sadder about Gríma, who doesn’t even get a chance to enjoy his final freedom from his cruel master before losing his own life. It makes sense that the hobbits, having been persecuted for so long, would be a bit trigger-happy, but even so, there’s always been a part of me that wished he might have made it out alive. After all, he was presumably a decent enough person at one point, before he too was led astray by a Wizard with a golden tongue.
In the end, of course, it all comes out mostly all right. Through sheer tenacity and force of will the hobbits have managed to reclaim their homeland from the clutches of Saruman. Despite the fact that Frodo and his friends are victorious, however, it’s not an easy thing to heal the scars that the renegade Wizard and his cronies have inflicted on the Shire. It’s hard to escape the fact that there were far too many who were either willing to go along with the regime and its depredations or actively aided and abetted them (Lotho wasn’t the only one engaging in such skullduggery, to be sure). For all that the hobbits are generally good people, there are always a few bad apples, and it will take quite a lot of work to restore this little land to something resembling its own beauty.
The truth, though, is that nothing can ever quite go back to the way it was before the Ring fell into Frodo’s hands and the forces of evil attempted to rule Middle-earth. Much as Frodo will never fully recover from the wound from the Morgul blade, so the Shire will never fully be the same as it was before. As we face our own petty tyrants ruling over us and destroying everything that we hold dear, we must remember not just the strength and endurance of the hobbits–which are surely to be admired–but also just how long of a road lies before us. Our Sarumans and Lothos might think that they can get away with such destruction, but it’s up to us to show them that we are better than this and that, in the end, we will rebuild what they have sought so carelessly to destroy.