Frodo's Journey: Discover the Hidden Meaning of The Lord of the Rings

by Joseph Pearce

We are told that lembas possesses “a virtue” that is life sustaining in a supernatural sense, without which Frodo and Sam “would long ago have lain down to die.” It has “a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods.” It feeds the will and gives strength to endure, providing mastery over the body “beyond the measure of mortal kind”—that is, above what is humanly possible.

Not knowing the password, the wizard employs all his knowledge of ancient tongues and spells in order to guess the password and command the doors to open. All is in vain. Even the wizard’s unfathomable store of knowledge is insufficient. Eventually he collapses to the ground, “his head bowed, either in despair or in anxious thought.” Then with a startling suddenness, he springs to his feet, laughing. “I have it!” he cries. “Of course, of course! Absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer. . . . The opening word was inscribed on the archway all the time! The translation should have been: Say ‘Friend’ and enter. I had only to speak the Elvish word for friend and the doors opened. Quite simple. Too simple for a learned lore-master in these suspicious days. Those were happier times.”

Gandalf’s final comments display a Chestertonian wisdom and innocence in which simplicity and happiness are melded into synonymous harmony. It is the same wisdom and innocence seen in the hearts of the hobbits and in the happiness and harmony found in the rustic simplicity of the Shire. It is, moreover, the same wisdom and innocence Christ is referring to when, having called a child to Him, He proclaims the following Good News: “Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven.”3 Beyond the learning of lore-masters and the suspicions of the sophisticated is the simplicity of the child and the humility of those who have become like little children. Such are the “friends” to whom the gates of the kingdom of heaven, and the gates of the kingdom of Moria, are opened.

If the rediscovery of childlike simplicity was the key to the kingdom of Moria, the journey Gandalf now embarks on will mark him not simply as being childlike but as being Christlike. On the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, he will lay down his life for his friends in an act of love of which, in Christ’s own words, there is no greater.

Even more explicitly, Tolkien told the American scholar Clyde S. Kilby that the Secret Fire could be likened to the Holy Spirit,8 thereby making Gandalf a veritable and self-proclaimed servant of the Christian God. If this is so, the fire would of course be “secret” because the fullness of Christian Revelation had not yet been shown forth in time—though existing and therefore known in the eternal sphere to which Gandalf belongs—as an angelic being (another fact concealed in The Lord of the Rings but revealed elsewhere in Tolkien’s writings).

In the same letter, Tolkien stated that Gandalf “is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit).” Although there were “no precise modern terms to say what he was,” Tolkien described Gandalf and the other wizards as incarnate angels akin to the Greek messengers sent from the gods to men (or, we might add, the herald angels sent by God to man). “By ‘incarnate,’” Tolkien continued, “I mean they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being ‘killed’, though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labor.” The wizards were “those who know”—adding ominous potency to Gandalf’s description of himself as the servant of the Secret Fire—emissaries from the supernatural order, “sent to Middle-earth, as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon.”10

It is significant that Tolkien makes a point of emphasizing the word sacrifice in his description of Gandalf’s laying down his life for his friends. It is also significant that Gandalf’s death is described as “a humbling and abnegation”; an emptying of himself in submission to the rules of Providence; and the handing of himself, his fellows, and the fate of Middle-earth into the hands of “the Authority that ordained the Rules”—that is, God himself. It is difficult to read this description of Gandalf’s death without seeing parallels with Christ’s submission of Himself to the will of the Father on Golgotha, transforming Gandalf into a figure of the Crucified Christ.