As even the most casual reader of
The Two Towers would know, there is
a little vignette in which Pippin’s curiosity gets the best of him and
he
sneaks a peek into Gandalf’s Palantir- and nearly gets killed in the
process.
But one little phrase stuck out to me as I read: when Gandalf asks
Pippin
what he saw in the Palantir, it reads that “they all stared at him
except
for Merry, who turned away.” The line piqued my own curiosity, and I
started
a discussion on the Middle-Earth section of the LOTR fan club page, as
to
what everyone thought of that brief but poignant phrase. It generated
quite
a lot of discussion, because no one had really given it any thought
before,
if they had noticed it at all.
Why did Merry turn away from Pippin,
for perhaps the first time in their
lives? This is just a bit of speculation on six little words that are
loaded
with significance, at least to me.
I am sorry, Pippin, but I just cannot look at you right now. I know you
need
to see that I am looking at you, and supporting you silently as
everyone
gazes upon you with a mixture of worry and pity and reproach, but I
just
cannot bear to look at you at the moment.
Why do you have to be this way, Pippin? I know that you know better,
and
I also know that you are not so foolish as you appear to be. Yet after
you
promised me that you would not go near the Palantir, much less take it,
you
do something like this! The least you could have done was wait for me
to
have a look into it too…but that is how you are, always rushing
headlong
into things that you know you should not, perhaps because that is what
everyone
expects you to do, or you think that they do. I know you are still
young,
but you are too old to do something so rash and foolish.
Gandalf named you well- Fool of a Took! Why do you always make it a
point
to do the ridiculous? And does it ever occur to you that when I tell
you
something is not a good thing to do, I might actually tell you for your
own
good, and not merely to keep you from satisfying your curiosity? I know
that
I am only eight years older than you are. But you are still a tweenager
and
I am of age, and that should count for something in how you listen to
what
I have to say to you. I know we are cousins, and we are friends, and we
have
good times together. But I am still older, and there are things that I
have
more sense about than you do at this point in your life. When I told
you
not to meddle in the affairs of wizards, it was not a suggestion!
And I suppose too that it pains me to see you in this situation- being
reprimanded
by Gandalf in front of the rest of our little group, and to see how
miserable
and humiliated you are right now.
But most of all, Pippin, I am so angry at you right now that I could
shake
you until your teeth rattle. You could have been killed just now, by
handling
and looking into something that you knew nothing about. You were lying
there
on the ground, unconscious and trembling…
Why can everyone else stand here and look at you, but I cannot? I will
never
say as much to you, but it is because there is no one standing here
that
loves you so much as I do. I would do anything to protect you, and
fight
anything that wished to harm you. But knowing that you were very nearly
lost
to me tonight because YOU did something foolish…I am furious with you,
Peregrin
Took, and I want you to know that. That is why they can all look at you
right
now, and I cannot. You could have died just now and I would have lost a
piece
of my soul.
Gandalf is kindly leading you aside, to make you comfortable and to
calm
your shattered nerves. I see him lead you aside, and then I turn back
around
and I follow you there to take my place at your side.
You are a fool of a Took and I will tell you so. But what I say about
you
is one thing; how I feel about you is another. I sit here beside you
because
I need to keep an eye on you. It is because you are MY fool of a Took,
and
I love you.
