Comfort, and Be Not Afraid, in Middle Earth

“Comfort, Comfort my people,” is a well-known Bible verse, the beginning of Isaiah 40 and the great “gospel of Isaiah,” the second major part of the book of Isaiah. In my readings through Lord of the Rings, the idea of “Be not afraid” and “comfort” sticks out, coming up so many times throughout the hobbits’ journey. Just as “do not fear” is the most repeated commandment in the Bible, so Tolkien included this idea in the world of Middle Earth. Indeed, the words comfort and variation comfortable occur 145 times in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Often the word “comfort” simply comes out in the conversation, such as telling someone to “take comfort in that thought” that has just been shared. When Merry was Gandalf’s passenger, and — rather like the child in the back seat on a long road trip asking “are we there yet?” — mentioned that the rag-tag was tired and would like to lie down, Gandalf replied with several comments about Saruman (The Two Towers, Book 3, The Voice of Saruman), including this: “If it is any comfort to your pride, I should say that, at the moment, you and Pippin are more in his thoughts than all the rest of us.”

When Sam thought Frodo had died, and had decided to leave Frodo and venture forward on his own, Sam lifted up the Phial for one last look at his master’s face, and with the bitter comfort of that last sight Sam turned and hid the light and stumbled on into the growing dark.

Then, when darker times approach, and the world situation is looking bleaker and more dangerous, Gandalf speaks comfort to those around him. As described by Pippin, an event during the first days of his ride with Gandalf on Shadowfax, their flight to Minas Tirith: And hardly had they reached its shelter when the winged shadow had passed over once again, and men wilted with fear. But Gandalf had spoken soft words to him, and he had slept in a corner, tired but uneasy, dimly aware of comings and goings and of men talking and Gandalf giving orders.

A short time later, after Gandalf tells Pippin some of the lore of Minas Tirith and Gondor, Pippin stirred uneasily. “Sleep again, and do not be afraid!” said Gandalf. “For you are not going like Frodo to Mordor, but to Minas Tirith, and there you will be as safe as you can be anywhere in these days.”

Related to this, Pippin is an interesting character study. Behind all the cheer and “hobbit pertness,” and his getting into trouble by doing ill-advised things such as throwing a pebble down an open pit in the ground, and then the evil of stealing the Palantir stone from Gandalf, we find out that Pippin also has some natural timidness and he is often fearful, a quality brought up from time to time, including in book 5 of Return of the King, where much of the narrative is told from his perspective.

Here again I observe one of the many differences from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films — the character of Pippin in the films is that of an arrogant, obnoxious hobbit, not really all that likable. I’ve started reading Matthew Dickerson’s Following Gandalf (published in 2003, and written after the first of the three movies had been released), and he noted a similar thing about the first Peter Jackson film and the portrayal of some of the other characters. As Dickerson pointed out, Jackson’s movie provided incomplete and inaccurate portrayals of Elrond and Galadriel: “the overall images we get of Elrond and Galadriel in the films are not predominantly ones of kindness, love, or understanding—the words used by Tolkien to describe them—but images that are harsh and sinister.” Based on such observations in Following Gandalf, I suspect that in Dickerson’s updated version, A Hobbit Journey, written several years later, he included more such comparisons, of where the later Jackson movies so twisted and distorted the characters in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

So, reader interaction time:  what are some other incidents in Lord of the Rings that stick out to you, that show the theme of comfort in fearful, distressing situations?