Worthless and Weak

" 'There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; ans still the winding paths lead on into the mountains' heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm's Deep! Happy was the chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them.'

'Then I will wish you this fortune for you comfort, Gimli' said the Elf, 'that you may come safe from war and return to see them again. But do not tell all your kindred! There seems little left for them to do, from you account. Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy dwarves with hammer and chisel might mare more than they made.'

'No, you do not understand,' said Gimli. 'No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down grooves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap -- a mall chip of rock and no more, perhaps in a while anxious day -- so we could work, and as they years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock.'"

I think this passage, more than any other I've read, epitomizes LOTR. Gimli is moved by the simple presence of nature; finding natural caves comparable to the splendor of Khazad-dûm, which had been lost to orcs. Legolas, by comparison, speaks of wishing to see the Fangorn forest, which is the remains of the old forest which once covered middle earth. For both characters, we see a great appreciation of nature, and more-so that the best way to appreciate it is through a passive role, that it is to be observed, and changed only slowly.

Compare this to the description of Orthanc, only a few pages later. There Saruman had built great furnaces, dug great pits and scarred the land with his creation. Tolkien describes it like this:

"A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it had been beautiful; and there great lords had dwelt, the wardens of Gondor upon the West, and wise men that watched the stars. But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived -- for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Baradûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength."

The contrast couldn't be more clear, on the one hand we have those who seek to enjoy nature, content to be a part of it, and on the other we have those wicked men who seek to rule it, and to bend it to their own wills, and instead create monstrosities.

Labels: LOTR