Let's Read Tolkien 52: The Palantír

The sun was sinking behind the long western arm of the mountains when Gandalf and his companions, and the king with his Riders, set out again from Isengard.

The king's party stops for the night in a hollow, and as they bed down, Pippin is obsessed with the orb Gríma threw down from Orthanc. Merry tries to dissuade him, but when everyone else is asleep, Pippin steals the orb from Gandalf and looks into it. Soon enough he screams loudly enough to wake the entire camp.

Under interrogation by Gandalf, Pippin tells that he looked into the stone, and soon enough found himself talking to Sauron himself. Luckily, Sauron seems to have thought that the stone was still in Orthanc, and Saruman was torturing a hobbit he had captured, so he didn't start asking questions.

Afterward, Gandalf discusses the stone with Aragorn and Théoden. They agree that it must be the palantír of Orthanc, brought from Númenor by Elendil. Aragorn, as Elendil's heir, takes charge of it. Just as they've finished their conversation, a Ring-wraith flies over them, riding a winged beast. Gandalf immediately sets off for Minas Tirith, taking Pippin with him to get him away from the Orthanc-stone. As they ride, Gandalf explains what the palantíri were - seeing-stones made by the Noldor in ancient times - and speculates on how the palantír of Orthanc must have been Saruman's downfall; he had kept it secret from the other Wise, and evidently been corrupted through it by Sauron. The chapter ends with Pippin falling asleep as Shadowfax gallops toward Gondor.

**

Unfortunately for the good name of Took, Peregrin son of Paladin seems to be the Fellowship's designated moron: from dropping rocks down wells to sneaking a look at the wizard's special magic rock.

Doing so, I think, makes him the only member of the Fellowship to have actually had a conversation with Sauron. Unless Olórin talked to him before the Fall or something. Still something you can put on your resumé, I guess. The effortless way he lifts the stone from Gandalf again makes you think there's definitely something to this notion of hobbits as burglars.

But there's something about Pippin's telecom experience that I don't entirely understand. When the palantír is thrown from Orthanc, it's described in some detail, and Gandalf says of it first: "It is not a thing, I guess, that Saruman would have chosen to cast away." And second:

Strange are the turns of fortune! Often does hatred hurt itself! I guess that, even if we had entered in, we could have found few treasures in Orthanc more precious than the thing which Wormtongue threw down at us.

So obviously Gandalf has some notion that the orb Wormtongue threw at them is a very special rock indeed. But then at the beginning of this chapter, Gandalf ruminates to Merry:

There was some link between Isengard and Mordor, which I have not yet fathomed. How they exchanged news I am not sure; but they did so.

Later, after Pippin has had his way with the stone, Gandalf says: "But my mind was bent on Saruman, and I did not at once guess the nature of the stone." Aragorn then remarks that now they understand how Saruman communicated with Sauron.

I don't know, maybe I'm reading this poorly, but if Gandalf didn't know what the palantír was, then why did he go on about how it was the best thing they could possibly have got out of Orthanc? Was he that convinced that the best thing Saruman has stashed in his wizard's tower was a cool rock that's hard to break? Maybe it's just me, but the transition from last chapter's "ha ha, Wormtongue threw a super cool treasure at us" to this chapter's "I wonder what this rock is" is a bit jarring. Unless the Lord of the Rings is a role-playing game, and the players forgot everything between sessions again.

In another startling leap from Tolkien's pages into the real world, Palantir is also the name of a surveillance corporation founded by the fascist and vampire wannabe Peter Thiel. In Tolkien's theology, the palantír seems to straddle the line between technology, which is acceptable, and Machine, which isn't; its rightful owner can use it, but it threatens corruption. The kind of surveillance networks that information technology is beginning to make possible, and the naked misanthropy of so many "techbro" entrepreneurs, would have horrified Tolkien, and definitely been, for him, an example of vanity and sin: the Machine writ large.

**

So, that was Book Three: from three guys burying their dead comrade to armies, battles and war. I mentioned that I think Tolkien is better with pacing than he gets credit for; he's also quite good at raising the scope of the story. We've now gone from some hobbits rambling around the countryside to all-out war and wizards, and even a personal appearance from the Enemy himself. Finally, we witness what is I think Aragorn's first act in his capacity as the heir of Elendil and Isildur, and Gandalf rides toward Gondor and the war.

Next time: some entirely different hobbits.