Seeing Stones in Dark Towers by Simon J. Cook

Seeing Stone and Dark Towers

… the foe is always both within and without: the fortress must fall through treachery as well as by assault.¹

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On Emyn Beraid stand three Elf-towers. My February post, In the House of the Fairbairns, identified the most westerly Elf-tower, Elostirion, as the white tower of Frodo's dream in the house at Crickhollow. Meanwhile down on the western border of Mordor, it is pretty much a straight line (up and down the Ephel Dúath) from Minas Morgul to the Tower of Cirith Ungol and on to the Dark Tower of Barad-dûr. In this post I consider the Elf-tower of Frodo's dream in relation to Orthanc, of which he dreams the following night, and these three towers of Mordor, which stand at the end of his quest.

Seeing Stones

A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.²

In the house at Crickhollow, east of the Brandywine, Frodo dreams of Elostirion, the tallest of the Elf-towers to the west of the Shire. The next night, his first in the house of Bombadil, he dreams of Orthanc, a black Númenórean tower: In a dream without light, he is lifted up over the top of a tower from which he sees Gandalf rescued by an eagle. Both dreams are far-seeing visions.

Dreams may have more than one meaning. Last month, I considered the dream of the white tower in relation to Frodo's vision of the shores of Valinor in the house of Bombadil two nights later. This vision is what Frodo might have seen had he climbed the stairs of Elostirion and looked into the Stone within. As such, the first and third far-seeing visions point to the end of Frodo's story, when he departs from Middle-earth in the last fairy-ship. But if we read the first dream with the second, the two together foreshadow the great inland towers of the adventures ahead.

The Seeing Stones are a key to reading Frodo's dreams, as indeed also the map of Middle-earth in the late Third Age. A clear connection between his first and third far-seeing visions emerges into view only once we (i) identify the white tower of the dream with Elostirion, and (ii) observe the footnote in Appendix A that places in Elostirion a palantír that looks only out to sea. A palantír proves also to be at the heart of Gandalf's imprisonment in Frodo's far-seeing dream of Orthanc. On returning to this tower in the narrative, Gandalf breaks the staff of the traitor Saruman, and Wormtongue then hurls the Stone of Orthanc out of a high window. So Gandalf comes to understand how the will of Sauron had entered Orthanc.

As he rides with Pippin to Minas Tirith, Gandalf recalls a few lines of long unheeded ancient Númenórean lore that touch on the palantíri. These Stones were made in Eldamar by the Noldor (maybe by Fëanor), and seven were brought to Middle-earth out of the ruin of Númenor in the ships of Elendil and his sons. The Númenórean exiles used the Stones to 'see far off, and to converse in thought with one another', and so watch over their two kingdoms of Middle-earth.³ Gandalf is vague on the northern Stones. What concerns him are the three that remain in the South, one of which—the Ithil Stone—is now known to be possessed by Sauron. With the Stones of Orthanc and Minas Tirith looking only to Mordor, the backstory of Books III and V of The Lord of the Rings falls into place—the narrative will pass from the fallen wizard in the black tower of Orthanc to the Steward of the White Tower of Minas Tirith, whose fall we observe at close hand.

Through the Ithil Stone the will of Sauron enters Orthanc and Minas Tirith. The Stones in these towers are comparable to Wormtongue in Edoras, the counselor to the king who is an agent of Saruman. The War of the Ring involves great battles between opposing armies, but the real struggles in this story are battles of will. The Ring engenders false fantasies in those who fall within its orbit, while the Stones do not lie. But meanings can be hidden and the will of Sauron is the same in Stone as in Ring. Denethor, who dies with a Stone in his hands, is led to his fall by the same will that called to his elder son Boromir, who died after trying to take the Ring into his own hands.

Both Rings and Stones open one mind to another, and Tolkien's language for such magic is visual, but the magics are distinct. For Frodo, who bears the One Ring and comes to see with an ever-keener eye, the Eye is what he calls his growing feeling of 'a hostile will' that strives to see him.⁴ This is Elvish magic, and the sight is an inner sight, of the mind not the eye. But Sauron has a physical body (with only nine fingers, as Gollum testifies), and when Pippin steals a look in the Orthanc Stone, Hobbit and Necromancer lock eyes. Mutual vision of the eyes of another in two Stones is a silent conversation, with the images within the Stones apparently serving as do the sounds of spoken language, putting the linguistically formulated thought of one mind into another.

The overlapping yet distinct visual magics of Rings and Stones—Eye in a Tower and eyes in Stones—may be responsible for the obscurity of the location of the Ithil Stone at the time of Frodo's quest. It is usually presumed that the Ithil Stone has been removed to the Dark Tower, and the promptness with which Sauron answers Pippin's call supports this. But when Pippin looks in the Orthanc Stone he sees nine Nazgûl flying around the battlements of a tower, which points to Minas Morgul.⁵ There is an obscurity here that is not usual with Tolkien, who most surely gave careful thought to the location of this palantír. My guess is that in the first instance he fudged for practical reasons: Sauron obviously removed the Stone to Barad-dûr, but placing it explicitly in the Dark Tower would have blurred, confused, and diluted the story's central image of the Eye that looks inland from out of a Tower. But it seems to me also that Tolkien artfully exploits this ambiguity of location of the Ithil Stone as the narrative steps from the crossroads below Minas Morgul to the topmost chamber of the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

Minas Morgul

Gollum, Sam, and Frodo look up at what was once Minas Ithil and shone with imprisoned moonlight. Only a few days before, Gollum had recalled sitting by the Great River when he was young, hearing tales of the Tower of the Moon, of the white-walled city where the men with shining eyes long ago built a very tall, silver-white tower, 'and in it there was a stone like the Moon'.⁶ But only a few days before that, Faramir had told how Minas Ithil was taken by Númenórean lords who wore rings of power.⁷ Now it is the abode of the Ringwraiths and named Minas Morgul.

The tower of Minas Morgul gleams with 'a corpse-light'. Before the eyes of the Hobbits, the 'topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.' As Frodo looks up at the road that winds deviously to the gate of the city of the Ringwraiths, a parody of his dream in Crickhollow unfolds. He begins to totter blindly forward, 'as if some force were at work other than his own will'. Gollum and Sam cry, 'Not that way!'

Frodo passed his hand over his brow and wrenched his eyes away from the city on the hill. The luminous tower fascinated him, and he fought the desire that was on him to run up the gleaming road towards its gate.⁸

What has turned the dream in the Shire into a waking nightmare is the Ring. As he turns away from Minas Morgul, Frodo feels the Ring resisting him. Soon afterwards, as the three Hobbits cower above the city of the Ringwraiths, watching the king of the Nine Riders lead an army out of Mordor, Frodo's thoughts are pierced with memories of the wraith-king on Weathertop, thoughts that bind him 'as with a spell'.⁹ The Black Rider halts, and Frodo feels an urgent command to put on the Ring.

This last encounter with a Ringwraith appears to be a victory of Frodo's will. His hand moves not to the Ring but to the phial of Galadriel, and the fell-king resumes the march. But Thomas P. Hillman has recently pointed out the terrible reality of what happens here.¹⁰ The Ring embodies the will of Sauron, and commands Frodo to claim it. Yet Frodo 'felt no inclination now to yield' to the command because he knows that even with the Ring he has not 'the power to face the Morgul-king—not yet.'¹¹ Touching the phial banishes for a moment all thought of the Ring, and Frodo's will is his own again. But his hand moves to phial rather than Ring only because he knows that the Ring will betray him and to obey its command means to lose it. The will that directs Frodo's hand is his own, but it is not the will of the Hobbit who set out from Rivendell. On Mount Doom, Frodo will claim the Ring.

The Stairs of Cirith Ungol

One does not just walk into Mordor. Three Hobbits climb a lot of stairs. Having desired to climb the staircase of the tower of a dream, Frodo in waking life climbs the Straight Stair and the Winding Stair up the Ephel Dúath, two steep external staircases that cut into the Mountains of Shadow the treacherous Pass of Cirith Ungol. Frodo's waking encounter with stairs is a horribly dangerous outdoor ascent into darkness that leads to a very bad place—the tunnel of Torech Ungol, Shelob's lair.

Gollum has led Sam and Frodo into a trap. As the Hobbits ascend the two external staircases, Frodo's inner struggles fade into the background so that, in the tunnel at the top of the stairs, center stage may be taken, first by the treachery of Gollum and then the fierce loyalty of Sam. Sam sees off Gollum and battles Shelob, then, believing his master dead, takes the Ring—and then relents and returns, only to find that Orcs are carrying the unconscious Frodo to the topmost chamber of the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

Wearing the Ring, Sam feels its call as his mind opens to fantasies of self-aggrandizement, but he has too much Hobbit sense to take them seriously. And now Sam discovers that treachery and internal strife, the hallmark of the tower into which the will of Sauron has entered, have played into his hands. Minas Morgul and Cirith Ungol had both sent out parties of Orcs, who met at the body of Frodo and have subsequently fallen out over the spoils. On entering Cirith Ungol, Sam finds that nearly all the Orcs are dead.

Softly Sam began to climb. He came to the guttering torch, fixed above a door on his left that faced a window-slit looking out westward … Quickly Sam passed the door and hurried on to the second storey … He came next to a window looking east …¹²

At the top of the stairs are two locked doors and a dead end. The topmost chamber is reached by a trap-door and the last climb is by ladder. In the highest chamber of this Númenórean watchtower Sam discovers Frodo, naked and fearful and innocent as a child—until he discovers that Sam has the Ring.

'He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can', says Gandalf of Frodo in Rivendell.¹³ The Stone of Minas Tirith was located 'in the topmost chamber' of the White Tower,¹⁴ and possibly we should picture all seven palantíri as set up in high chambers (Aragorn ascends to a high chamber in the Hornburg to look into the Orthanc Stone). But the Tower of Cirith Ungol never housed a palantír. In the topmost chamber of this watchtower on Mordor that rises above the Mountains of Shadow there is a window, but neither Hobbit is said to look out of it. The view in the glass in this high chamber looks within not without, and it reveals the will of Sauron entering Frodo Baggins.

Before Frodo's eyes, Sam changes into an Orc, 'a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth'.¹⁵ Snatching the Ring from Sam, Frodo calls him a thief. Then clasping the Ring in his hand, the mist clears from his eyes and the vision passes. But we have glimpsed what the Ring now is for Frodo and can foresee the drama that awaits on Mount Doom, if not its final resolution.

Barad-dûr and Elostirion

From Cirith Ungol, Frodo and Sam walk to Mount Doom. At the last, Frodo claims the Ring, Gollum dissents, and too late the Eye in the Dark Tower perceives its folly. Gollum reclaims the Ring and falls with it into the fire. With the Ring on which Barad-dûr is founded no more, the Dark Tower crumbles.

The great tale of the War of the Ring is set between the Elf-tower on the western margins of the story and the Dark Tower at its shadowy center. Now, given the Stone in one tower and the Eye (and maybe also Stone) in the other, one might guess that behind this story is a battle of wills between these two towers, the white and the dark. But this is not the story of contending towers told in the Red Book. As we learn in Appendix A, the Stone in the Elf-tower looks only out to sea.

Emyn Beraid in the Third Age is not the place for those who dwell in Middle-earth to gaze inland with a far-seeing vision that spans the map of Middle-earth, seeing through Stones in Númenórean towers all the way to the Eye in the Dark Tower. In the days of the story, the Tower Hills may possibly provide such a window to immortals who watch from a further shore, beyond the map drawn in this tale. Emyn Beraid does become such a place for those who gaze from within  Middle-earth, but only in the next age of the world, and by means of a different artefact.

Early in the Fourth Age, when the Red Book of Westmarch was housed and read aloud in the house of the Fairbairns, Undertowers was quite possibly the very best place in all of Middle-earth from which to gaze inland with far-seeing vision; a seeing with the eye of the mind of one who listens, or even reads: A Hobbit-gaze that comes to span the whole world, from the Sea at the end of the story to the Eye in the Tower at the visible mythological center.

The Red Book takes us on a Hobbit's tour of an earlier age of the world. In the early years after the Dark Tower had fallen and the Stone in the Elf-tower was removed, I feel sure in my bones that some Hobbits finally climbed the stairs of the tall western tower and looked on the sea. But already in those legendary days, now so long ago the years can hardly be counted, the magic was to be found under the Elf-towers. Gathered in the house of the Fairbairns as the Red Book was read aloud, I picture rapt Hobbits slowly turning their faces to the southeast and gazing ever-further inland. Only in ordinary, everyday life did the Hobbits of the Westmarch turn their faces to the Sea.

Acknowledgement

Penning this post was not so hard, but the research was. When I first read The Lord of the Rings I did not get beyond Minas Tirith. When I did read beyond, I found it impossible to picture the Tower of Cirith Ungol other than the staircase that I climbed each morning to reach my classroom at school. Consequently, on returning to this story of my childhood as a subject of scholarly research, I studiously avoided Cirith Ungol. l would like to think that this post was the result of my taking my courage in my own hands. The truth of the matter is that it arose from the conjunction of two utterly unrelated circumstances. On the one hand, a goblin carrying a ladder crossed my path, and on the other a war broke out on my doorstep. Confronted with a choice between looking a hitherto inconceivable reality in the eye and following a goblin’s footsteps through a trap-door and into a high chamber wherein glimmered a mirror of nameless childhood terror, I ascended the ladder.

Facing a peculiarly challenging reading experience, Tom Hillman's Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring (see note 10 below) has proven invaluable in unravelling the many intersecting threads out of which the narrative of the journey into Mordor is woven. No less importantly, I would like to express gratitude to those dedicated admins and moderators whose work is the precondition of those (usually) safe and civil online spaces in which I have explored Tolkien's work with others—a shared exploration without which I could never have seen my way to writing this post. Above all, I am beholden to the goblin.

Works Cited

1. The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," note 23.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "A Conspiracy Unmasked."
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The Palantír."
4. Ibid., "The Passage of the Marshes."
5. Ibid., "The Palantír."
6. Ibid., "The Black Gate is Closed."
7. Ibid., "The Forbidden Pool."
8. Ibid., "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol."
9. Ibid.
10. Thomas P. Hillman, Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2023), 162-164 and 199.
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol."
12. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."
13. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship, "Many Meetings."
14. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Pyre of Denethor."
15. Ibid., "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."