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Old 11-15-2005, 02:14 PM   #9
Fordim Hedgethistle
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Fordim Hedgethistle has been trapped in the Barrow!
No he wouldn't have, because that's a test he already passed. By saying no to Saruman -- heck, by taking Saruman's place and becoming the White Wizard "as he was meant to be" -- Gandalf demonstrates that he has, like Galadriel, "passed the test." He too would "pass into the West and remain Gandalf".

I think the text anticipates this sort of question with Denethor, who claims that he would have taken the Ring and used it only in the last resort. Denethor is throughout a foil to Gandalf and we see how in their comparison the strengths of Gandalf (fidelity, wisdom, hope) are subverted in Denethor (pride, madness, despair). That Denethor would have used the Ring in the last resort means that his mirror-image (identical, yet reversed) Gandalf would not.

And there's no need to get into this whole "Eru would not have allowed it to go that far" for three very important reasons:

1) Eru already had let things get much worse at least twice before (Feanor's oath and the thousands of years of warring over the Silmarils; the drowning of Numenor).

2) Eru is not God -- there was no guarantee that things were going to turn out well, only a hope. If there were a guarantee that things were going to turn out well, then Gandalf would have known that (having actually met Eru) and Saruman would have never lost hope, because you can't lose what you can't have, and he wouldn't have had hope he'd have had certainty.

3) Eru doesn't really appear in LotR -- he was a creation of the "later" Tolkien; in the tale of LotR the best you've got is hope that in the long run evil will be defeated, but that might not be within the time of this world. The threat of Sauron's total victory over Middle-Earth is real, that much is made completely clear by the Wise.
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