In the chapter A Journey in the Dark, Pippin drops a loose stone down a well and an angry Gandalf responds to this by calling him a fool. But was Pippin truly a fool? Let's look at the evidence. Before dropping the stone, Pippin is attracted by the well. Here we can see that the well is acting on Pippin, either by pulling him closer or by implanting the desire to come closer. How this is achieved, we do not yet know, but things will become clear soon for upon looking over the edge, Pippin is struck in the face by a chill air rising out of the well. In folktale, myth and religion, breath and wind are associated with spirits, and a cold wind rising out of the dark depths implies spirits of the dead rising up from the underworld. A similar chill wind is felt by Frodo on the Barrow-downs, as he desperately searches for his companions prior to be captured himself by evil spirits from Angmar who have inhabited the corpses buried there. Later in The Passing of the Grey Company, a chill wind like the breath of ghosts comes down from the mountains. This suggests an association with cold wind and the spirits of the dead which by itself doesn't necessarily mean that Pippin was spiritually attacked by a ghost, but given that something drew him there it certainly suggests that it is possible. The final piece of evidence is Pippin being moved by a sudden impulse. Once again something happened to Pippin. A positive echo of this event happens to Pippin when he and Merry are being held by the Uruk-hai. First in the unbidden vision of Aragorn tracking them and secondly in a sudden thought leaping into his mind to leave behind a sign for his other companions. In both cases, the vision and thought happen to Pippin, perhaps as if coming from without. Given all this evidence, I believe a case can be made for Pippin being the victim of spiritual guerilla warfare rather than a so-called fool.
Pippin: Victim or Fool
- Thread starter Lossadan
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Odola
Well-Known Member
True, but even an adolescent mortal who has outgrown his childhood should have some capacity of combating spiritually induced impulses by using his "common sense" - which is trained in children for this very purpose from a very young age. As such still a fool for not having mastered this yet - especially in a situation when this can have obvious effects of his own and his friends' safety and lives. Even human 12years old can make rational decission in stressfull situations.
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Haerangil
Well-Known Member
It's pippins personality. He is playful, curious and careless, like a child or a cat. That doesn't mean he is not in his own ways intelligent or he even is stupid, but he has a reckless foolishness about him, he is a bit weak of will about these things and as Odola already pointed out, is not very good in restraining himself.Such people exist, even among older adults... it is actually quite common.
Pippin certainly had flaws and I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that he was responsible for working on them. The question I am asking isn't whether or not he had flaws but whether or not the temptation to drop a stone down a well came from within or without? In other words, was it his own mind or a fell spirit that tempted him? I believe that the text supports the second explanation. Pippin's flaws made him vulnerable to the temptation but they weren't the cause of it. Pippin may well be a fool for having flaws that made him vulnerable to this kind of spiritual attack, but I think it would be inconsistent with the evidence provided by the text to say his foolishness was the cause of him dropping a stone down the well.
Jim Deutch
Well-Known Member
I can't help recounting a news story I heard many years ago. A five-year-old boy ran back into the burning house and rescued his baby brother. Now that is some sort of stressful-situation decision-making, all right! Whether it was a rational or an emotional decision is hard to say, but the evidence that it was rational is that he succeeded. In any case, it was most amazing to me, and still is.
Anthony Lawther
Well-Known Member
While there is some evidence that can support the spiritual attack explanation, I don't think it is sufficient to rule out that the motivation came from within. Another possible explanation is a mixture of the two: A spiritual influence attracted him to the well, where he wondered how deep this well is, and his innate curiosity and lack of impulse control led him to drop the stone down to find out the answer to his question.
This action (dropping the stone) is such a relatable, almost commonplace, action that I don't think a spiritual explanation is required. But his attraction to a hole in the floor when all others are maintaining their distance is harder (but not impossible) to explain in mundane ways.
A mix of the spiritual and mundane seems like a possibility to me. It would be interesting to find out if Westron, or any other of the Tolkien languages, could be written in the middle voice. If it does (they do) I can easily imagine Frodo, Sam or Findegil using that voice in places such as this one.