June 15, 2003

Why Not Kill Wormtongue? (Response to Andrew)
Imlar

Hey Andrew (and all fellow readers)
Sorry to be posting so much these days! It appears that I have finally found a channel for my LOTR obssession! In response to your question Andrew (posted on the 11th), about why they did not slay Wormtongue, I'd say that if we followed that logic, I could also ask:
Why didn't Bilbo slay Gullom in The Hobbit, why didn't frodo and sam kill Gullom when they find them in TTT, and why didn't Sam slay Gullom on the slopes of Mount Doom after he had betrayed them???
This is one of Tolkien's main themes, and the fact that Aragorn stopped Theoden from slaying Grima represented the book very well. You see, Tolkien, in his books, heavily explores the topics of pity and of purpose. It was pity that held back the hobbits from slaying Gullom. After all, he was still a hobbit (somewhere DEEP DEEP inside) and he was not acting completely out of service to the ring: he made his own choices. The hobbits recognized the life in him, and as Gandalf said (not a completely acurate quote) "He may have some purpose yet to fulfill" or something like that... and, if you've read the book, you know very well that he did! I won't say any more;)hehe... Now it's the same thing for Wormtongue. Even though they knew that he was corrupted, and that he knew much about Rohan, Helm's Deep,etc , by killing him, they would be taking a human life---not troll, not orc: human, and not in battle either. As Gandalf says in Moria "Many who die deserve life, and many who live deserve death, but that is not for us to decide." something like that. It was not their place to slay Wormtongue: he still had a LARGE role to play in the book (Those who have read it know what I'm talking about) So ya, he still had a purpose, and like Aragorn said: killing him would not be enough to replace all the lives that were lost because of Wormtongue. It was perhaps even more of a punishment to send him back to his master!! (in the book, Saruman deals with him rather....hum...roughly..haha!) So ya, that's a long answer, but it's a deep question that has a lot to do with the values transmitted by Tolkien through his book. So thumbs up to Jackson for including this scene!

Your fellow fan,
Imlar