Given Gandalf's affinity for Hobbits, his behavior toward them is sometimes surprising—not as surprising, perhaps, as the moment in Peter Jackson's The Return of the King when Gandalf whacks Denethor up the side of the head, but odd nonetheless. Early on in The Lord of the Rings, of course, Merry and Pippin get on Gandalf's bad side by filching his best skyrocket at Bilbo's going away party; but at that stage, Gandalf merely grabs the two by an ear each and assigns them KP duty.

By the time the fragmented remainders of the Fellowship drag themselves through Rohan, however, Gandalf has some less-than-kind words to share with Pippin. When Pippin absconds with the palantir and is frightened out of his wits by his encounter with Sauron, Gandalf sensitively scolds, "Fool of a Took!"

Granted, Jackson, Walsh and Boyens play a little loose with the text in this scene—okay, pretty darn loose—but the term 'fool' is bandied about with great frequency by Tolkien, too, if not in the same places that Jackson, et al., do so. Pippin, in fact, calls himself a fool. And when Gandalf comments, in Pippin's presence, "There was no lie in Pippin's eyes. A fool, but an honest fool he remains," both word and sentiment are Tolkien's.

Now, in my experience, no one particularly enjoys being called a fool—and a real fool least of all. What are Jackson and Tolkien up to? Why does Gandalf insist on being so down on Pippin?

Fool of a Took

Shortly after arriving at Minas Tirith, Pippin takes up his responsibilities as a Guard of the Citadel, and he and Gandalf look out toward Mordor. Despite Pippin's foolishness (and Gandalf's periodic annoyance with him) Jackson allows them their moment of serious dialog, condensed from Tolkien's text.

Pippin: I don't want to be in a battle, but waiting at the edge of one I can't escape is even worse. Is there any hope, Gandalf, for Frodo and Sam?

Gandalf: There never was much hope. Just a fool's hope. Our enemy is ready, his full strength gathered. Not only orcs, but men as well. Legions of Haradrim from the south, mercenaries from the coast. All will answer Mordor's call. This will be the end of Gondor as we know it. Here the hammer-stroke will fall hardest. If the river is taken; if the garrison at Osgiliath falls, the last defense of this city will be gone.

Pippin: We do have the White Wizard. That's got to count for something. Gandalf?

Gandalf: Sauron has yet to reveal his deadliest servant. The one who will lead Mordor's armies in war, the one they say no living man can kill: the Witch-king of Angmar. You've met him before. He stabbed Frodo at Weathertop.

And Jackson brings us full circle. Weathertop, of course, had also been the scene of great Hobbit foolishness, as Pippin, Merry and Sam unwisely lit a campfire after dark to cook dinner—and when Frodo cried, "Put it out, you fools! Put it out!", Pippin merely remarked, "Oh, that?s nice! Ash on my tomatoes!"

And, characteristically, Pippin really does 'foolishly' hold out hope for Frodo and Sam—even if Gandalf is merely echoing what he's apparently been told by others (as Tolkien notes), not passing judgment on such hope.

Fool of a Steward

But Pippin finally does have to confront real hopelessness. Tolkien and Jackson both recognize the foolishness of Denethor's despair. In the movie, Jackson has Pippin sing for Denethor as his son Faramir rides off to almost certain death in Osgiliath.

Home is behind, the world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow to the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Mist and shadow, cloud and shade
All shall fade. All shall fade.

It's truly sad to see a Hobbit—and the Steward, too—driven to despair. Is that better than foolish hope?

Foolishness in Moria

Of course, the events at Minas Tirith neither culminate nor initiate the Hobbit's loss of innocence. As early as Moria, the entire Fellowship endures (what appears at the time as) the tragic loss of Gandalf at Khazad-dûm. And what leads to this seemingly fatal blow? How is their presence in Moria announced?

In the movies, it's—once again—that fool of a Took. As Gandalf and the others play detective at Balin's tomb, Pippin's literally idle curiosity gets the best of him, and he reaches out to touch an arrow impaled in a rotting corpse. It's precisely the nudge necessary to send the desiccated remains tumbling into a well, followed by a heavy chain and bucket. The orcs and the Balrog awake. "Throw yourself in," Jackson's gruff Gandalf admonishes.

But is it really Pippin's fault? After all, it was Gandalf who led them into Moria—and forces far greater than Pippin block their retreat. And is the tragedy at Khazad-dum really all that great, in the long run? There can be little doubt that Gandalf is of greater use when he is "sent back" than he would have been had he not fallen into the abyss.

Foolishness in Rohan

When the orcs take Merry and Pippin captive, the Hobbits manage to demonstrate remarkable resourcefulness. First, Pippin is alert enough to pester the orcs into caring for Merry's wounds. Then, as the chase progresses, he's smart enough to feign an escape attempt as a means to leave clues scattered on the plains of Rohan. And finally, he and Merry opportunistically flee under the cover of darkness as the orcs squabble and are attacked by the Rohirrim.

There's much greater foolishness to witness in Rohan than that of the Hobbits. Saruman, after all, thinks he can shake the devil's hand and get away with it; Théoden, over long years, has allowed himself to be blinkered by Wormtongue; and the orcs allow their divided loyalties to sabotage their own ill-conceived plans.

Foolishness in Fangorn

Pippin and Merry also fare well in Fangorn. The ents and huorns are slow in responding to threats from the east and the west, and their disdain for haste proves tantamount to cutting off their branches to spite their trunks. But this is a well-established pattern for the sluggish ents, who have, over the millennia, lost the ent-wives and (in cases) allowed themselves to revert to sedentary tree-ishness. Yet right in their backyard, Saruman breeds orcs and wastefully—even maliciously—harvests the ents' beloved trees.

Now, Jackson's ents are a little slower in the uptake than Tolkien's—but the Hobbits' arrival in Fangorn is indeed like the small stones (so Gandalf observes) that start a great avalanche. Without Merry and Pippin, it's doubtful that the ents would have been moved to timely action. In Jackson's version, Pippin is even credited with the crafty maneuver that finally provokes Treebeard. So, who's the fool?

Sensible Foolishness

If we're at all serious about the issue of foolishness in The Lord of the Rings, we pretty much have to admit that there's plenty of foolishness to go around. It's definitely not limited to Hobbits, and certainly not just to Pippin.

In fact, it's arguable that a certain type of foolishness—the seemingly misguided faith that things will turn out for the good—is something of a virtue in Middle-earth. Why? Not because it makes sense, certainly, because seeming foolishness never does. It only seems, well... foolish. But such a faith is a virtue because—when the evidence finally comes in, and the balance sheets are tallied—hope in the greater good is ultimately rewarded. Hope may fly in the face of reason. It may not make any sense, properly speaking; but it's often a more sensible course than mere rationality or despair.

Can we expect casualties along the way? Certainly. Can we always be confident in the specifics of the outcome? No. But we can be assured that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). Tolkien believed in the God of the Bible, the God who "loved the world" (John 3:16)—the God who is "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20).

Now that's reason for hope!

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