Which hand did Frodo put the Ring on?

A question posted online in a private group set me thinking about which hand Frodo wears the One Ring on. During The Lord of the Rings Frodo puts on the Ring six times: once in the house of Tom Bombadil; once at the Prancing Pony; once at Weathertop; twice on Amon Hen; and once in the Chambers of Fire within Mount Doom. The text mentions which hand he put it on only twice, but it's a different hand each time. That's the curious part.

The first time is on Weathertop:

Not with the hope of escape, or of doing anything, either good or bad: [Frodo] simply felt that he must take the Ring and put it on his finger. He could not speak. He felt Sam looking at him, as if he knew that his master was in some great trouble, but he could not turn towards him. He shut his eyes and struggled for a while; but resistance became unbearable, and at last he slowly drew out the chain, and slipped the Ring on the forefinger of his left hand. 

(FR 1.xi.195, emphasis added)

As we know, putting on the Ring reveals him to the Ringwraiths, who attack at once, and the Witch-king wounds Frodo in his left shoulder with a Morgul-knife. 

A shrill cry rang out in the night; and he felt a pain like a dart of poisoned ice pierce his left shoulder. Even as he swooned he caught, as through a swirling mist, a glimpse of Strider leaping out of the darkness with a flaming brand of wood in either hand. With a last effort Frodo, dropping his sword, slipped the Ring from his finger and closed his right hand tight upon it.

(1.xi.196, emphasis added).

In Rivendell Frodo is healed of the sorcerous wound to the extent that he can be, but Gandalf, and as we later learn (TT 4.iv.652), Sam, can see the effects.

Gandalf moved his chair to the bedside and took a good look at Frodo. The colour had come back to his face, and his eyes were clear, and fully awake and aware. He was smiling, and there seemed to be little wrong with him. But to the wizard’s eye there was a faint change, just a hint as it were of transparency, about him, and especially about the left hand that lay outside upon the coverlet.

        (FR 2.i.223, emphasis added) 

Even before Gandalf looks at him, Frodo has checked his left hand to see how it feels (2.i.221). Sam also takes Frodo's hand for the same reason when he enters subsequently (2.i.223). In both of these passages the text again specifies the left hand. The next time we can tell which hand he uses is in the Sammath Naur, but we don't learn it until Sam wakes up in "The Field of Cormallen." Now it is on his right hand (a different finger, too).

He sat up and then he saw that Frodo was lying beside him, and slept peacefully, one hand behind his head, and the other resting upon the coverlet. It was the right hand, and the third finger was missing. 

(RK 6.iv.951, emphasis added)

A few other passages are also noteworthy. When Sam puts on the Ring while Frodo is a prisoner, he puts it on his left hand (TT 4.x.734). When Frodo and Sam use the phial of Galadriel against Shelob, each of them holds that in his left hand (4.ix.721, 729). In the case of the phial each already has a sword in his other hand. Consider also this passage from "Mount Doom," ten pages before Frodo claims the Ring and (as we can deduce from which hand is later missing a finger, Watson) puts it on his right hand:

Anxiously Sam had noted how his master’s left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn.

(RK 6.iii.935-36, emphasis added)

That Frodo uses his left hand here as if to hide or defend himself, while it's the right hand that's reaching for the Ring, seems quite suggestive. So, although I am not going to speculate about which hand Frodo used the other four times he wore the Ring, or whether his putting it on different fingers on different hands means anything. I will suggest that on balance we may well ask if there's a connection between claiming the Ring and wearing it on the dominant hand, the hand that almost exclusively wields a weapon. For the Ring is a weapon.

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It may also be worth noting that when Tom Bombadil banishes the wight, he holds up his right hand. Also in Chapter Five of second edition of The Hobbit Bilbo reaches into his pocket and slips the Ring on his left hand (Annotated Hobbit 129, 130, 135). In the first edition Bilbo uses his left hand once (Annotated Hobbit 134). Neither edition mentions his right hand.  

 

Frodo, Too, Tips His Hand -- The Threat Outside the Black Gate (TT 4.iii.640)

When Frodo, Sam, and Gollum reach the Black Gate and Frodo declares that he must try to enter Mordor that way, a panic-stricken Gollum slips up and tells Frodo to give him the Ring rather than do anything so foolish. Frodo does not respond to Gollum's suggestion at first, not until he has learned that Gollum knows another way in. After grilling Gollum about it, he decides to trust him once again. Then and only then does he return to the suggestion Gollum had made about the Ring.

‘But I warn you, Sméagol, you are in danger.’

‘Yes, yes, master!’ said Gollum. ‘Dreadful danger! Sméagol’s bones shake to think of it, but he doesn’t run away. He must help nice master.’ 

‘I did not mean the danger that we all share,’ said Frodo. ‘I mean a danger to yourself alone. You swore a promise by what you call the Precious. Remember that! It will hold you to it; but it will seek a way to twist it to your own undoing. Already you are being twisted. You revealed yourself to me just now, foolishly. Give it back to Sméagol you said. Do not say that again! Do not let that thought grow in you! You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end. You will never get it back. In the last need, Sméagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command. So have a care, Sméagol!’

(TT 4.iii.640, italics mine)

Since Gollum is almost the last person Frodo would want to know that he was planning to throw the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, neither he nor Sam have told Gollum why they must get into Mordor. In fact earlier in this very scene Sam reflects on just this: "‘And it’s a good thing neither half of the old villain don’t know what master means to do,’ he thought. ‘If he knew that Mr. Frodo is trying to put an end to his Precious for good and all, there’d be trouble pretty quick, I bet'" (TT 4.iii.639). It was only the night before Sam had overheard Gollum's two sides talking to each other about, among other things, 'what's the hobbit going to do with it, we wonders, yes, we wonders' (TT 4.ii.633).* 

Somehow it never crossed my mind until yesterday that Frodo reveals himself here just as much as Gollum had by suggesting Frodo give him the Ring back. His threat about commanding him to leap from a precipice might well pass unnoticed, but 'cast yourself into the fire' draws attention to itself. What fire? What fire large enough to cast oneself into? Gollum doesn't reply, doesn't ask. Frodo's taunting and threatening him and invoking the power of the Ring thoroughly cows him for the moment. He'll figure it out, however, as he follows Frodo and Sam across Mordor towards the fire of Mount Doom. There, on the road to the Sammath Naur, Gollum will grasp what fire his wicked master had been talking about.

__________________

*It's interesting to note that the phrase, 'we wonders ... we wonders' pops up twice before this moment. 

When Gollum first meets the hobbits, he says 'And where are they going in these cold hard lands. We wonders, yes, we wonders' (TT 4.i.615).

After Gollum attempts to escape, Sam hurls the words back at him: 'And where were you off to in these cold hard lands, Mr. Gollum.... We wonders, aye, wonders' (TT 4.i.617).

A Long-expected Parenthesis -- Textual Clues to How Much of The Lord of the Rings Bilbo Wrote

 

This essay first appeared back in November and December of 2021 as five separate posts, which I have now decided to combine into one, while adding a sixth part with some conclusions in it. When I first got the idea for this post, my idea was to write it up quickly. The more I looked at the evidence I had gathered (with the welcome support and feedback of Joe Hoffman1), the clearer it became that a longer post was in order. The divisions reflect the original posts.

Part One

For some years now I have been inclined to believe that Bilbo is the narrator of the early chapters of The Lord of the Rings. But how far he carried on with the story remains hard to say. I had also heard that Michael Drout had a similar opinion, which he was kind enough to confirm for me, but we didn't have the chance to discuss details. Recently, however, I noticed something about the text that looks very much like it might be a clue. First let's look at what we know.

Bilbo's conversation with Frodo and Sam in Rivendell in Many Partings makes clear that he didn't get very far.

The evening deepened in the room, and the firelight burned brighter; and they looked at Bilbo as he slept and saw that his face was smiling. For some time they sat in silence; and then Sam looking round at the room and the shadows flickering on the walls, said softly:

'I don't think, Mr. Frodo, that he's done much writing while we've been away. He won't ever write our story now.' 

At that Bilbo opened an eye, almost as if he had heard. Then he roused himself. 'You see, I am getting so sleepy,' he said. 'And when I have time to write, I only really like writing poetry. I wonder, Frodo my dear fellow, if you would very much mind tidying things up a bit before you go? Collect all my notes and papers, and my diary too, and take them with you, if you will. You see, I haven't much time for the selection and the arrangement and all that. Get Sam to help, and when you've knocked things into shape, come back, and I'll run over it. I won't be too critical.'

        (RK 6.vi.988)

It has also been long observed that the narrator of the earliest chapters of The Lord of the Rings starts out sounding much like the narrator of The Hobbit, but that changes before too long. Further, we have Tolkien's remarks in letter 151 of September 1954.

Frodo is not intended to be another Bilbo. Though his opening style is not wholly un-kin. But he is rather a study of a hobbit broken by a burden of fear and horror — broken down, and in the end made into something quite different. None of the hobbits come out of it in pure Shire-fashion. They wouldn't. But you have got Samwise Gamwichy (or Gamgee).

In the Letters Tolkien uses 'style' many times, but almost invariably he is speaking of words -- of narrative, diction, and language -- when he does so. It's little likely then that his reference to Frodo's 'opening style' refers to anything but his writing style, a remark he offers as a concession of some regard in which they were a bit alike. We might expect Frodo, then, to begin in a style similar to Bilbo's, but to develop his own reasonably soon. But when does his portion of the narrative 'open'? And when does his style begin to diverge from Bilbo's?

I would suggest that the punctuation gives us a clue. During a recent reading of A Long-expected Party I noticed, not for the first time, that the narrator made an awful lot of parenthetical remarks. I found myself relishing the marvelous running social commentary the narrator was offering on his fellow hobbits. 'For what do we live', we might almost hear him ask, 'but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?' That so much of this commentary is nested in and around parentheses made me wonder. On reflection I could not recall it as a conspicuous feature of the entire work. 

A quick search revealed my impression was correct. The entire Lord of the Rings (removing the appendices) contains 158 parenthetical remarks, 20 percent of which (32/158 = 20.25%) occur in A Long-expected Party. If we discount the 25 instances in the Prologue, which we know was written by a Man rather than a Hobbit, the portion in A Long-expected Party approaches a quarter (32/133 = 24%). Numbers aren't everything of course, but this compares rather well with An Unexpected Party, which contains 25 parenthetical remarks out The Hobbit's total of 120 (25/120 = 20.08%) in The Hobbit as a whole.2

Two thirds (22/32) of the parentheses in A Long-expected Party occur before or during the party up to the reactions of the guests to Bilbo's disappearance (FR 1.i.31: 'with a few exceptions'). Of these 22, 14 are funny per se or in their context, and eight simply add information (e.g., 1.i.22: 'the Old Took himself had only reached 130'). There is, however, not a single parenthesis in all of Bilbo's argument with Gandalf about the Ring or in Frodo's brief conversation with Gandalf after Bilbo has gone. The remarks resume again the following morning in very much the same generally humorous vein. Only two of these ten comments are strictly informational ('two Boffins and a Bolger' and 'old Odo Proudfoot's grandson', both at 1.i.39).

Surely it is noteworthy that a long (5+/21 pages), centrally located, and thematically crucial section of this chapter has none of the types of comments we find on almost every other page of it. True, the two scenes found in these pages (31-36) are much more dramatic, more dialogue than narrative, which leaves less scope for parenthetical remarks; but it is also true that there is nothing that either the characters in these scenes or their narrator found in the least amusing. It is a bitter, uneasy darkness at the heart of the chapter, bracketed, as it were, by the far brighter sections on either side (pp 21-31, 36-42).

Part Two

After the 32 parentheses in A Long-expected Party, the number in The Shadow of the Past plunges to five. Of these one occurs in direct speech (Gandalf: 1.ii.53). Three present genealogical information, always of interest to hobbits (all on 1.iii.42). A fifth wryly signals that Frodo had a bad feeling about the 'significant (or ominous)' approach of his fiftieth birthday (1.ii.43), the age at which 'adventure had suddenly befallen Bilbo.' Since Tolkien always uses 'befall' of evil or at least strange and unpleasant events, this explains the rather proleptic 'ominous' as well as pointing to Frodo as the author of this comment. For Bilbo did not regard his adventure as an evil, even when he came to understand that the Ring was; and Frodo, whatever he may have genuinely felt about 'adventures' before Gandalf told him about the Ring, certainly did not want the 'adventure' he got. It would be no surprise then, though it need not be so, if as narrator Frodo took his disquiet as he neared fifty as ominous.

Three is Company contains seven parenthetical statements, of which four are purely informational (1.iii.65, 68, 70, 81), two are humorous comments on Hobbits (1.iii.71, 77) and one again suggests uncertainty in Frodo's attitude towards something that made him uncomfortable (1.iii.70), namely the conversation he overhears between the Gaffer and a stranger later discovered to be one of the Black Riders.

In A Shortcut to Mushrooms one pokes fun at Sam's disappointment about missing the beer at The Golden Perch (1.iv.88) and the other at the way farmers complain about their prospects (1.iv.92).

A Conspiracy Unmasked provides five, three informational (all at 1.v.98), one showing Sam's mixed emotions about leaving the Shire (1.v.99), and one Frodo's about seeing his and Bilbo's things in the house at Crickhollow (1.v.100).

All three in The Old Forest suggest uncertainty. Merry isn't confident that it is the bonfire glade ahead of them (1.vi.111); Frodo doubts it's even possible to turn back (1.vi.113); and Frodo and Sam think the words Old Tom is singing are 'nonsense', but they aren't entirely sure (1.vi.119).

While the first parenthesis In the House of Tom Bombadil conveys details about the house itself (i.vii.124), the other three highlight Frodo's ambivalence regarding the Ring. Indeed these three seem to work together to accomplish precisely that in the scene with Bombadil and the Ring (all at 1.vii.133). When Old Tom returns it, Frodo suspects trickery '(like one who has lent a trinket to a juggler)'. Having put the Ring to the test by donning it, he is 'delighted (in a way)' and 'laugh[s] '(trying to feel pleased)'. It is as if on some level Frodo wished it were not his Ring, even though compelled to prove that it was. Bombadil's imperviousness to the effects of the Ring seems important to Frodo only in so far as it makes him doubt the Ring.

Fog on the Barrow-Downs is reminiscent of A Long-expected Party, which lacks parenthetical statements in the parts in which no one would find anything amusing. Here the scenes telling of the hobbits' capture by the Barrow-wight have no parenthetical remarks until the narrator reaches the moment when he recounts the awakening of Frodo's courage, a virtue 'hidden (often deeply it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit', and informs the reader that 'though [Frodo] did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) thought him the best hobbit in the Shire' (both at 1.viii.140). There is a gentle humor in the humble concession of the first and the citation of Gandalf as an authority in the second, which suggests a resolution in Frodo we have not seen before, and the narrator's faith in that resolution. As such it marks a strong contrast with the uncertainty we've seen before. 

Once Old Tom appears to rescue them the more broadly humorous commentary returns. just as it does in A Long-expected Party once Bilbo has let go of the Ring and left it to Frodo. The next five parenthetical comments, including one in direct speech by Bombadil (1.viii.144), are either amusing themselves or embedded in an amusing context (1.viii.142, 144, 145). Yet as the hobbits are about to return to the road, ending the passage through Faërie they had begun when they entered The Old Forest, even Bombadil makes a remark parenthetically that could be taken to express uncertainty (1.viii.147): 'Tom will give you good advice, till this day is over (after that your own luck must go with you and guide you)'. As always with Tolkien, however, what is called luck or chance is often far more. Bombadil's mention of luck here nicely balances his answer to Frodo's question upon their first meeting (1.vi.126) and thus bookends their acquaintance:

‘Did you hear me calling, Master, or was it just chance that brought you at that moment?’

Tom stirred like a man shaken out of a pleasant dream. ‘Eh, what?’ said he. ‘Did I hear you calling? Nay, I did not hear: I was busy singing. Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it. It was no plan of mine, though I was waiting for you. We heard news of you, and learned that you were wandering.'

Consider also consider that even as Old Tom tells them they must trust to their luck, Strider -- unbeknownst to the reader and the hobbits (and Bombadil?) -- is on the other side of the hedge dividing the Downlands from the road (1.x.163-64): Strider, whose role and arrival had been foreshadowed that very afternoon outside the barrow in Bombadil's conjuring of visions of the 'sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless' (1.viii.146). He, too, had heard news and was waiting for them, though it was no plan of his to find them here (1.x.163-64). 

When Frodo steps out into the larger world and takes on the task of saving the Shire, he leaves behind the place which defined him, where he was 'the Mr. Baggins of Bag End'; and he does so on the very night when it becomes clear -- to the reader if not immediately to Frodo the character -- that this identity is not quite the advantage it had long seemed to be, even within the Shire. Farmer Maggot's attitudes towards Hobbiton show this, as do those of most of the hobbits who discuss the 'queerness' of the Bagginses in the evening at The Ivy Bush and The Green Dragon. Mr. Baggins may find them 'too stupid and dull for words' at times, but behind their deference they have their own opinions of how strange he and Mr. Bilbo are. When Maggot links Frodo's present troubles to Bilbo's adventures, he is doing no more than voicing to Frodo's face the longstanding common opinion that no good could come of adventures to the 'queer' folk who went on them. 

The larger world in which such adventures take place is far more dangerous in fact than even the most parochial hobbit imagines. Even the more broadminded Mr. Baggins of Bag End fails to grasp that not only is he 'quite a little fellow in the wide world after all', but that the wider world, whether it is the Faërie of The Old Forest, Bombadil, and the Barrow-wights, the world of History, or that blending of both in which a man might walk, will not be fenced out forever. The Ring, which threatens Frodo's identity because he already cannot do with it as he wishes, compels him to leave the place that helps define that identity. 

Part Three

As we saw in Part One and Part Two, the number of parenthetical comments rapidly declines from the first chapter onwards. Thirty-two parentheses in A Long-expected Party alone are followed by thirty-four all told in chapters 2 through 8 of Book 1, from 1.5 parentheses per page (32/21) in chapter one to 1 every three pages (34/107) in the next seven chapters. 

In the section of text I will be discussing here in Part Three, At the Sign of the Prancing Pony starts us off with fifteen in thirteen pages, but from Strider through Flight to the Ford we find only eight in the next fifty-two pages. After At the Sign of the Prancing Pony we find only one more chapter that has a comparable number of parentheses, namely Treebeard, with fourteen. But these two chapters are aberrations. For in the balance of the book only once more do we find as many as five (Window on the West), and only three times do we encounter as many as four (A Knife in the Dark, The Ring Goes South, and The Grey Havens). By contrast there are thirty-four chapters with none at all, and seven with only one. At this point a simple chart (not a single logarithm, Joe) makes all perfectly clear: 

The fifteen parentheses in At the Sign of the Prancing Pony are indeed anomalous as far as the trend of the numbers goes, but not without an explanation as far as Hobbits go. As we saw in A Long-expected Party, the comments are good humored until something unpleasant happens, in this case, until Frodo puts on the Ring. Of the fourteen parentheses in the body of this chapter,3 only one is strictly informational -- 1.ix.151: '(mostly dwarves)'. The rest smile upon the various characteristics of hobbits, touching upon their love of food, drink, genealogy and song as well on their peculiar relationship with the Men of Bree and those who pass through the town. If we bear in mind that the lighthearted parentheticals in Fog on the Barrow-Downs follow the horror of the barrow and round out the chapter on a (generally) much more positive vibe than it had at the start, we can see that At the Sign of the Prancing Pony begins emotionally where the previous chapter ended. This provides us with a story that sweeps more or less happily along from the moment when Frodo does precisely the right thing in the barrow to a moment when he does absolutely the wrong thing at the inn, leading to the rescue of his friends from the wight in the former, and plunging them into grievous danger in the latter.

These two moments help define his relationship with the Ring for Frodo as well as the reader. The decision Frodo faces in the barrow mirrors Bilbo's beneath the Misty Mountains, where he had Gollum's life in his hands. For Bilbo the choice to use the Ring to escape was correct, but for Frodo it would have been wrong; for Bilbo the choice to strike would have been wrong, but for Frodo it was right. Each passed the test. To choose otherwise was to become another Gollum. This is why Gandalf considered the experience in the barrow so crucial. Frodo's situation at Bree also mirrors that of Bilbo at his party. Bilbo, however, put the Ring on intentionally and meant to cause the consternation his disappearance provoked. How the Ring came to be on Frodo's finger in Bree is unclear in the moment, even to Frodo, and draws precisely the sort of comment and attention that Frodo had most wished to avoid. In both cases dark, unpleasant conversations follow, with friends suspected of being enemies. By disappearing, however, Frodo has revealed himself to friends and enemies alike. In fact the two parenthetical comments in the following chapter, Strider, occur in the context of Gandalf's letter, which serves to demonstrate that Strider is a friend despite his rascally looks and Sam's wariness (FR 1.x.167, 169). Once the hobbits have survived the night thanks to Strider, a bit of humor returns with the parentheses in A Knife in the Dark, which smile wanly at Butterbur's insistence that he hadn't slept, Pippin's declaration that he can carry as much as he must, and the hobbits' leaving the 'evil relatives of the cricket' behind in the Midgewater Marshes (FR 1.xi.177, 178, 183). A fourth comment, recounting the happy fate of Merry's ponies who found their way back to Bombadil and thence to Butterbur, hints at a broader happy ending while reminding the reader that the ponies were more sensible when it came to danger than the hobbits (1.xi.179 ; cf. 1.viii.144), a truth which makes quite clear how lucky the hobbits were to meet Strider, just as they had been to meet Bombadil earlier. Strider, as Gandalf and Frodo will both say, is the one who saved [them] from disaster (FR 2.i.220).

Earlier the parentheses helped us see the ambivalence with which Frodo looks down the road ahead of him. We will do well to recall here Bilbo's own inability to make up his mind about the Ring and then to stick to the decision he had made to give the Ring to Frodo, and which he had at least in part arranged his party to enforce. Now they help to illuminate a range of behaviors seen in Frodo and Bilbo alike. These behaviors are at times intentional, at times accidental, at times even heroic. Yet a bad ending is not far off, as we see when Bilbo threatens Gandalf with his sword the night of the party, and when Frodo by betraying his identity and location to the Black Riders endangers the lives of the very friends his courage had saved only the day before. 

The inconsistencies of Frodo's behavior are of a piece with the ambivalence of his feelings, and in these the earliest days of his quest the two give the measure of his burden. What comes next at Weathertop, at the Ford, and in Rivendell will take Frodo further down this road while adding new dimensions to his struggle. He will show courage and insight, hatred of his road and of his enemy, defiance and a wish to dominate those who would dominate him, a willingness to take on the quest to save Middle-earth and the desire to strike even his dearest kin when he reaches for the Ring.

Part Four

Unsurprisingly, given what we've seen in Parts One, Two, and Three of this post, the narrator includes no lighthearted parenthetical comments once the Witch-king stabs Frodo on Weathertop. The only such remark in Flight to the Ford describes the rather grim state, doubly grim for Hobbits, of their provisions by the time they met Glorfindel: 'stale bread and dried fruit (which was now all they had left)' (FR 1.xii.211, emphasis mine). Once Frodo is recovering safely in Rivendell, the commentary picks up again slightly, with one parenthetical in direct speech (Gandalf: FR 2.i.221, sourcing an idiom), one strictly informational (the age of Dáin: 2.i.229), and one in which Frodo, himself just out of his sick bed, curiously wonders whether anyone is 'ever ill in Rivendell'(FR 2.i.230). Again unsurprisingly the serious matters of The Council of Elrond leave no room for such commentary, but once more in The Ring Goes South we find four hobbitish asides of a humorous bent (FR 2.iii.277, 280 twice, 288). Once the fellowship sets out, however, another 48 pages pass before the next such item appears, in Lothlórien (FR 2.vi.346), which notes the hobbits' approval of the food shared with them by the elves on their first night in the Golden Wood. Two hundred and twenty pages then pass before we come to another, in the chapter Treebeard, to which we now turn.

Here we encounter the last significant spike upwards, with fourteen parenthetical remarks. No chapter after Treebeard has more than five. Now Joe Hoffman over at Idiosophy has made several excellent observations and -- what is not necessarily the same thing -- has been quite complimentary of my analyses of these texts. Treebeard does sound like an old hobbit dispensing advice to the young, and Merry and Pippin must have been Frodo's sources for this chapter as well as the preceding chapter, The Uruk-hai (where regrettably neither Uglúk nor Grishnákh sounds like the gaffer or even Ted Sandyman). That eleven of the fourteen parentheses annotate descriptions of Treebeard and the other ents bears out Joe's observation (TT 3.iv.465, 470, 471, 472, 478, 480 five times, 483), which receives further support from the three such comments Treebeard makes himself (TT 3.iv.465, 473 , 476). So, too, and more directly does Pippin's quoted reminiscence about Treebeard's eyes, which the narrator makes clear derives from a later time (TT 3.iv.463): 'often afterwards Pippin tried to describe his first impression of them.'

With Merry and Pippin in these two chapters we see again much the same as we have previously seen with Bilbo and Frodo. Painful and frightening experiences close down the good humor on display in the parentheses. The quarrel with Gandalf, the horror in the barrow, the terrible mistake with the Ring at the Prancing Pony, the abduction by the orcs shows that the Hobbit tendency to make jokes even in serious situations has it limits (RK 5.viii.870). Some experiences are too dreadful for asides. But we can also see their resilience. Once they have left the barrow behind once they have escaped the orcs, their spirits quickly revive. 

As with Frodo in the barrow, the seeds of Pippin's courage begin to grow when things looks darkest for him and Merry as captives of the Uruk-hai. Pippin here started to be less the 'fool of a Took' Gandalf had called him (FR 2.iv.313), just as Frodo there became less one of the 'ridiculous Bagginses' (FR 1.ii.49). We also learn from Pippin that Merry had displayed exceptional bravery when the orcs first attacked them (TT 3.iii.444), though he had not had so far to go. The parallel between Frodo and Pippin here, and through Pippin's recollection to Merry, is maintained by the resumption of parenthetical comments once the danger is behind them. The emergence of Pippin and Merry in book three will be followed by Sam's in book four where he begins to carry the narrative burden, i.e., the tale is told increasingly from his perspective as Frodo becomes more isolated in his lonely struggle with the Ring. The parallel thus signals a shift which I shall follow up on in my next post. 

Part Five

Previously we have noted that parenthetical commentary appears and disappears as the story grows lighter and darker by turns, and that this in general follows the relationship of Bilbo and then Frodo with the Ring. We have also just seen a very similar dynamic occur with Merry and Pippin in Book Three. Though neither of them ever possesses the Ring, it is nevertheless Saruman's lust to acquire it and Sauron's to regain it that motivates their kidnapping by the orcs, thus directly causing the darker and lighter turns the narrative takes in The Uruk-hai and Treebeard. Indeed Merry and Pippin perceive the role the Ring is playing in their captivity, and with desperate audacity play upon Grishnákh's mistaken belief that they have it, wagering their lives for a chance at escape. So here, too, the Ring is intimately connected to the dynamic at work and the parentheses. Since it transfers so smoothly from Bilbo and Frodo to Merry and Pippin, and, as we shall presently see, to Sam, it should also be evident just how closely concerned with the hobbit voice these asides are. 

After the cluster of parentheses in Treebeard a long gap of 155 pages follows (TT 3.iv.483-4.iii.638), empty except for the somewhat knowing comment on the sinister multiple meanings of Orthanc (TT 3.viii.555). An even longer gap of 177 pages before Treebeard (3.iv.465) extends back to The Ring Goes South (FR 2.iii.288), also interrupted only once (2.vi.344). This lack of parenthetical comments elsewhere in Book Three coincides with the general absence of the hobbits from this book despite the crucial role played by Merry and Pippin, a dynamic to be repeated in Book Five. Something similar holds true also in Book Two, where the narrative attends more to the Company as a whole than to the hobbits or Frodo specifically. So darker turns in the narrative connected to the Ring may be the most striking reason for the absence of parentheses, but not the only reason.

In Book 4 parentheses reappear in The Black Gate Is Closed. As I noted in Part 4, in this book Sam begins to carry the burden of the narrative as Frodo becomes increasingly preoccupied by his struggle against the Ring. It is Sam to whom the three parenthesis in The Black Gate Is Closed refer, at least two of which give us Sam's commentary on his own thoughts at the time (TT 4.iii.638, 640), and the third almost certainly does, too (4.iii.647). This last is perhaps the most remarkable since Sam's behavior in the tale here is as lighthearted as his comment on it, recalling Frodo from the darkness of his cares and purpose by this recitation of 'the old fireside rhyme of Oliphaunt' outside the Black Gate of Mordor, and recalling for the reader an earlier such moment where Sam did the same thing in the same way, hands behind his back and all (FR 1.xii.206-208). Consider also the comment in Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit where we learn that Sam is 'a good cook, even by hobbit reckoning' (TT 4.v.653), an art hobbits 'begin to learn before their letters (which many never reach)'. Here we must remember that Sam was called out by name a full chapter and seventeen years before we met him as a hobbit who had learned his letters. As with his pose while 'speaking poetry', the narrator is using the parentheses to remind the reader of how special Sam is. Not only could he cook the cabbages and potatoes which his Gaffer thought he'd be better off minding, but he knew his letters and poetry and great tales, which repeatedly helped to sustain him on the long road into darkness he and Frodo had to walk. His sense of mission comes from his learning his letters. Sam Gamgee had read all the right books.

These parentheses also further mark the shift we saw earlier with Merry and Pippin, a shift away from Frodo as his hobbit comrades step forward and begin to take up the roles they will play until the end of the book. This is not to say that Frodo is becoming less important. Far from it. But his are now not the only small hands that turn the wheels of the world while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. Sam in particular becomes critically important, and increasingly the story of Frodo's journey is seen through his eyes because Frodo's eyes are elsewhere.

Part Six

It seem quite clear then that parenthetical asides are an essential element of hobbitry. When the narrative grows more serious or the hobbits are less central, the down-home folksiness of virtually disappears. This is consistent with the much greater density -- roughly 4 times as much -- of parenthetical comments in The Hobbit, which either is or is based on the memoir written by Bilbo alone. (See note 2 below.) It is also consistent with Tolkien's remark, quoted in part one, that Frodo's style was at first somewhat like Bilbo's, but as the Quest took its toll on the spirits of all the hobbits, the similarity to Bilbo and his style fades.

So how much did Bilbo write? In view of all we've seen above a piece of evidence from the Prologue is quite suggestive (FR 12-13). There we are told that even after Bilbo had admitted to Gandalf, Frodo, and all the Council of Elrond, that story he had put about winning the Ring from Gollum was a lie, he never went back and changed it in his memoirs. The true story was preserved by Frodo and Sam and included as an alternative to Bilbo's original tale, but they did not rewrite his story either. Considering this together with the sudden stop in humorous parenthetical comments as A Long-expected Party shifts from the lightheartedness of the leadup to the party to the darkness and anger of Bilbo's argument with Gandalf about the Ring, it's not unreasonable to conclude that Bilbo got no farther than the moment he put on the Ring at the party and vanished. Consider also that Bilbo suddenly came to a new and painful understanding of the Ring in the moment he looked into Frodo's face at their first meeting in Rivendell. For he saw the look in Frodo's eyes when Frodo wished to strike him for reaching for the Ring. He confesses as much:

The music and singing round them seemed to falter, and a silence fell. Bilbo looked quickly at Frodo’s face and passed his hand across his eyes. ‘I understand now,’ he said. ‘Put it away! I am sorry: sorry you have come in for this burden; sorry about everything. Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story. Well, it can’t be helped. I wonder if it’s any good trying to finish my book? But don’t let’s worry about it now – let’s have some real News! Tell me all about the Shire!’

            (FR 2.i.232)

And even if he tries here to change the subject with a joke, as hobbits do, the next morning at the Council he again says he understands when he disavows and apologizes for having lied about the Ring before:

But I will now tell the true story, and if some here have heard me tell it otherwise’ – he looked sidelong at Glóin – ‘I ask them to forget it and forgive me. I only wished to claim the treasure as my very own in those days, and to be rid of the name of thief that was put on me. But perhaps I understand things a little better now. Anyway, this is what happened.’

(FR 2.ii.249)

Given this, I would suggest that Bilbo either wrote nothing at all, or he stopped with his disappearance from the party. If he couldn't bring himself to change his memoir to reflect the truth he had now admitted and apologized for, that he could write an honest account of his ugly confrontation with Gandalf that night is hard to imagine. If either of these suggestions of mine is correct, then his only written contribution to Frodo's story would be his poems and the snarky notes he left with the gifts for his friends and relatives. 

______________________________________

1 I have found Joe's friendship, humor, and commentary invaluable for some years now. He is also my second if I am challenged to any duels. 

2 The Hobbit is also far more densely packed with parentheses: 120 in 95356 vs 158 in 481,103. The Hobbit also raises its own questions about narrators, which we shall examine elsewhere in connection with the narrators of The Lord of the Rings. The interested reader should look to Paul Edmund Thomas' 'Some of Tolkien's Narrators' in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edd. V. Flieger and C. Hostetter (2000).

3 The one parenthesis not in the body of the text is in a footnote on 1.ix.160 which explains that 'Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She.'

Pre-order 'Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many'

Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many now has a publication date -- 12/12/2023 -- and an ISBN: 9781606354711.

A feature of special note is that the book will be published in paperback, in order to make it more readily available to readers.

It is available for pre-order from most of the usual suspects. As more are rounded up, I will add links here. But to begin with:

Bookshop.org

Book Depository

Barnes and Noble

Amazon.com

Amazon.uk

Amazon.ca

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Amazon.com/mx

Amazon.com.br

Amazon.es

Waterstones

'The Faun's Bookshelf' by Emily Austin Design.

Two Paragraphs and Two Threats Converging in Tolkien (FR 2.ix.382)

Here's a piece of analysis I decided to take out of my book, To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity and the Ring of Power, about which I hope to have an official, public announcement soon. (Absit omen!). I didn't really want to remove it, but I don't think it shows us as much about the argument I am making in my book as it does about Tolkien's ability to construct a scene in a landscape that is more than a backdrop but contributes meaningfully to the way in which this scene from the journey of the Company on the river quite literally flows. The River moves them all along, dividing them, grouping them, moving them apart and back together; and in the eddy and flow of the narrator's attention as it shifts from one character to the next the dreams, thoughts, and anxieties of the members of the Company converge in the two threats threatening them, one from within and one from without. So much of what we've learned about these characters and theirs stories so far is implicit here, and so much that will become clear after the convergence of the threats causes the threads of their stories to separate after the breaking of the Fellowship on Amon Hen and the meeting of Frodo and Gollum in the Emyn Muil.

_____________________

The heart of Legolas was running under the stars of a summer night in some northern glade amid the beech-woods; Gimli was fingering gold in his mind, and wondering if it were fit to be wrought into the housing of the Lady's gift. Merry and Pippin in the middle boat were ill at ease, for Boromir sat muttering to himself, sometimes biting his nails, as if some restlessness or doubt consumed him, sometimes seizing a paddle and driving the boat close behind Aragorn's. Then Pippin, who sat in the bow looking back, caught a queer gleam in his eye, as he peered forward gazing at Frodo. Sam had long ago made up his mind that, though boats were maybe not as dangerous as he had been brought up to believe, they were far more uncomfortable than even he had imagined. He was cramped and miserable, having nothing to do but stare at the winter-lands crawling by and the grey water on either side of him. Even when the paddles were in use they did not trust Sam with one.

As dusk drew down on the fourth day, he was looking back over the bowed heads of Frodo and Aragorn and the following boats; he was drowsy and longed for camp and the feel of earth under his toes. Suddenly something caught his sight: at first he stared at it listlessly, then he sat up and rubbed his eyes; but when he looked again he could not see it any more.

(FR 2.ix.382)

What beautiful paragraphs these are in detail and movement, from character to character, from boat to boat, and from threat to threat. Beginning with the loveliness of Legolas' vivid, dreamlike memory, and Gimli's chivalrous, romantic imaginings, we never expect the uncomfortable turn it takes, with the uneasiness of Merry and Pippin at the disturbing, almost threatening, behavior of Boromir. We then follow Boromir's gaze through Pippin's eyes straight to Frodo in the boat ahead with Strider and Sam. But suddenly and unexpectedly, since our attention has just been directed to Frodo, we find ourselves with Sam instead. But the introduction of Sam here, uncomfortable, unhappy, and untrusted Sam, is a misdirection. It lightens the menace of the sentences on Boromir, but only in order to refocus it a moment later on another threat that is present on the Great River, another one who has his had eyes fixed on Frodo and Frodo's burden for some time now.

It is of course Gollum whom Sam has seen, but the way in which the narrator shifts our gaze from Boromir to Gollum is masterful. Notice how Sam is looking back towards the boats behind his own. Given the previous paragraph, we might expect him to have caught the same look in Boromir's eyes as Pippin had. But it is not so. For just as we followed Boromir's gaze forward to Frodo, but found Sam instead, so, too, we now follow Sam's back, not to Boromir, but to Gollum. When Sam comes to tell Frodo what he has seen, he remarks over and over again on Gollum's eyes, five times in all, thus further pairing these two threats (FR 2.ix.382-83). Nor is this the first time that Frodo has been the object of the intense gaze of Gollum and Boromir (FR 2.vi.345; vii.358; viii.369; ix.383; cf. ix.388). As the day draws near when Frodo must decide between Minas Tirith and Mordor, danger is converging on him from more than one direction. From Gollum of course, as he tracks Frodo down the Great River, but also from his companion Boromir, who, desperate to save his homeland, feels quite keenly the anguish of the choice which lies before Frodo as he sits in the boat just ahead of him with Sam and Strider. And if Gollum, as Boromir himself said, is 'small, but great in mischief' (FR 2.ii.255), what is Boromir?

A Random Thought about Bill the Pony

I was listening to episode 221 of Corey Olsen's Exploring The Lord of the Rings podcast today (I am about 20 episodes behind -- hey, when I retired I no longer had an hour of driving a day. So my podcast consumption plummeted like a sheep in Monty Python), and the subject of why Bill the pony is so called. Everybody not unreasonably assumes that Sam named Bill after his previous owner, the hateful Bill Ferny. There is some evidence to support that Tolkien saw it this way at least in passing, since in one of the drafts he says Sam called the pony 'Ferny' (Treason 173). So between the inference and the evidence, it may well be true that Sam named Bill after his cruel former owner whom Sam had hit in the nose with a thrown apple (FR 1.xi.180), and whom the pony had kicked the first chance it got.

Bill Ferny flinched and shuffled to the gate and unlocked it. ‘Give me the key!’ said Merry. But the ruffian flung it at his head and then darted out into the darkness. As he passed the ponies one of them let fly with his heels and just caught him as he ran. He went off with a yelp into the night and was never heard of again. 

‘Neat work, Bill,’ said Sam, meaning the pony.

(RK 6.viii.999)

Given Sam's love for the pony and loathing of Ferny, it's hard to see why Sam would have given it the name of a villain who had cruelly mistreated it. As a joke? Perhaps, but to me at least that doesn't seem a joke Sam was likely to make. It would seem hurtful to Bill and too good for Ferny. I just don't see it as in his character. Contrast this with the humor we hear of in The Grey Havens, where we learn that the renewed Bagshot Row came to be known as Sharkey's End, a 'purely Bywater joke' for the place where the Saruman met his end (RK 6.ix.1021-22). But Sam was not from Bywater and Saruman was hated. The bitterness of the joke was founded on a very real sense of Saruman's deserts.

Now to be honest I can only admit that my incredulity proves nothing. It's not much of an argument. Yet who else could Bill the pony be named after? Is there any other alternative? There is, though I concede it's not the strongest or most direct. I just like it better.

What if Bill the pony is named after Bilbo? After all Sam loved the old hobbit, whom he met again in Rivendell after many years, and as far as we can tell it was in Rivendell that Sam first began using the name for the pony. It is there in any event that our attention is drawn to this fact. The text, moreover, supplies us with a parallel for a hobbit naming a pony after a beloved friend. In Minas Tirith Frodo gets a pony which he will ride all the way home. He named the pony 'Strider' and the only time its name is mentioned is in conjunction with Bill (RK 6.ix.1027): 

On September the twenty-first they set out together, Frodo on the pony that had borne him all the way from Minas Tirith, and was now called Strider; and Sam on his beloved Bill.

Faramir and the Shards of Boromir's Horn

Quite a while back I came to the conclusion that Faramir doesn't actually see Boromir's funeral boat, as he is convinced he does, but a vision of it, as Frodo insists. It is of course impossible to prove either way; and that is probably as it should be. The mythic aspect of Faramir's vision is far more significant than whether it is factually true. I daresay even Faramir would have thought so, regardless of what he believed. His openness to the idea that the boat could have survived the Falls of Rauros because it came from Lothlórien is sufficient evidence of this notion.

Yet the other day I noticed a detail in The Chronology of The Lord of the Rings, edited by William Cloud Hicklin, and just published as a supplement to volume XIX of Tolkien Studies. In the entry under 28 February 3019, Tolkien wrote 'First shard of horn of Boromir found' (56), and under 30 February* 'Second shard of the horn of Boromir found' (58). Hicklin comments in a single footnote to both entries (57): 'The entries regarding Boromir's horn are in pencil'. Since the Chronology is otherwise written in ink of different colors, the pencil insertions would seem to be later additions. 

Now we already know from TT 4.v.667 that the two shards were found on two different days in two different places, and we know from The Tale of Years in Appendix B (1092) that Faramir saw the boat on 29* February. Thus the first shard was found on 28 February; Faramir saw the boat on 29 February; and the second shard was found 30 February. At some point before 7 March, when Faramir speaks of the shards to Frodo, word of their discovery reaches both Faramir and Denethor. 

What I find curious in all this is that only The Tale of Years gives us a date for Faramir's sight of the boat, and only the Chronology gives us dates for the shards. The Chronology says nothing of the boat after 'Boromir's funeral boat sent down over Rauros' in the entry for 26 February (54). It could be that each text is telling us something different here. 

The silence of the Chronology on Faramir's sighting of the boat may not prove that what he saw was a vision, but it is consistent with that interpretation. As Faramir himself tells Frodo: 'Tidings of death have many wings. Night oft brings news to near kindred, ’tis said' (TT 4.v.665).

________________________________________

* In the Shire Reckoning all months had 30 days, February included.

The Wheel of Fire: Between Thought and Expression

'And the Ring is so heavy, Sam. And I begin to see it in my mind all the time, like a great wheel of fire.'

(RK 6.i.919)

'I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.

(RK 6.iii.937-38)

Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of the Emyn Muil, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.

.... Then the vision passed and Sam saw Frodo Frodo standing, hand on breast, his breath coming in great gasps, and Gollum at his feet, resting on his knees with his wide-splayed hands upon the ground.

(RK 6.iii.943-44)

Mentioned only three times, twice by Frodo and once by Sam, the wheel of fire remains a fascinating, perplexing image. Unlike the Eye of Sauron, the purport of which the narrative makes clear, why Frodo sees the Ring as a wheel of fire receives no discussion and has no self-evident explanation. To the readers in the Primary World, that is, to us, the wheel offers several possibilities. From Greek Mythology we may know that Ixion was bound to a flaming wheel in Tartarus as punishment for his crimes against the gods, and Tolkien was surely alive to what his readers might make of such an image. In a 1944 letter to his son, Christopher, while discussing the power legends hold he expresses his astonishment that someone would choose 'Ixion' as the name for a brand of motorcycles: 'How could a maker of motorbikes name his product Ixion cycles! Ixion, who was bound for ever in hell on a perpetually revolving wheel!' (Letters no. 75, p. 88). From Shakespeare we may know the wheel as one of the tormenting visions of Lear's madness (King Lear 4.v:43-46)

You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like moulten lead.

From history we may know of the medieval torture device sometimes called the 'Catherine wheel', or, more recently, of the wheel to which soldiers were once tied for punishment in a pose that reminded many of crucifixion. It was called Field Punishment No. 1, and, as John Garth has pointed out(1), Tolkien likely witnessed it during the Great War. From the Bible we may know of the wheels and fire appearing in the visions in Ezekiel, though these are associated with cherubim and the glory of God. We may even be familiar with the firework called a Catherine Wheel (evidently not in Gandalf's repertoire), whose swift turning and bright ring of fire creates the illusion of black emptiness rimmed with fire (curious, that). So torment, fire, and otherworldly visions are what the wheel can most readily convey to us, which accords perfectly with what we see of Frodo's experience. 

So much for us, but none of this would have the least meaning for anyone in Middle-earth, and it is for readers within the Secondary World that Frodo supposedly wrote the book. It seems too important and potent an image to think that it is simply a passing artefact of translation(2), like 'express train' in A Long-expected Party (FR 1.i.28), or 'all aboard, Sam'(3) in Three is Company (FR 1.iii.70). Rather, the cluster of associations that the wheel of fire can have for us, the reader in the Primary World, signals the importance of this image for understanding Frodo's relationship with the Ring. That Sam also sees the Ring as a wheel of fire when he looks upon Frodo 'with other vision' on the slopes of Mount Doom (RK 6.iii.943) confirms that it is more than just a vision of torment or madness or divine revelation, but a manifestation of the Ring's irresistible power. To understand this better, we must return to Lothlórien and what Frodo sees in the Mirror of Galadriel.

For the first such image appearing in Frodo's mind is not the wheel of fire, but the Eye of Sauron. After the Mirror shows him a succession of glimpses into the past and possibly the future, an image more real than realistic suddenly commandeers his vision. Catlike, cyclopean, disembodied, bound in flame, empty within and without, the Eye is looking for the Ring, and for him. Although Galadriel does not know all that was visible in the mirror, she knows he saw the Eye. So it is a manifestation of Sauron she is aware of herself, even if it is not his incarnate form, which was recognizably male and presumably Elven to judge by the words of Pippin and Aragorn, who saw Sauron in the palantír (TT 3.xi.592-93; RK 5.ii.780), and of Gollum, who saw him in person (TT 4.iii.641).  

In his next encounter with the Eye, upon Amon Hen, Frodo feels its attention rather than seeing an image of it. At the same time he perceives the 'fierce eager will' behind the Eye, of which he then says 'almost like a finger he felt it, searching for him' (FR 2.x.401). This collocation of eye, will, and finger ought to make clear the metaphorical territory into which Frodo the narrator has strayed as he tries to communicate his experience. That he soon hears a 'Voice', which no one would mistake for a real voice, and which contends with the Eye, only confirms the metaphorical nature of the bodily attributes 'eye' and 'finger'. To be sure, the Voice is Gandalf's, but it is not the voice of Gandalf sitting on a mountaintop shouting out loud.

This approach to the Eye continues in The Passage of the Marshes, where in a single paragraph the narrator all but declares how much of the language used to describe his perception of the Ring and Sauron is metaphorical. The burden of the Ring may grow, but its weight does not actually change as Sam's experience carrying Frodo proves (RK 6.iii.941). The 'Eye' is what he calls 'that horrible growing sense of a hostile will', which seeks to 'pierce all shadows' and 'veils' and 'pin you'. And the metaphor of how he can sense the location of its 'heart' is fine and apt, but it is nevertheless a metaphor. Sauron's Eye is nothing like the sun, not even an invisible sun.

In fact with every step towards the gates of Mordor Frodo felt the Ring on its chain about his neck grow more burdensome. He was now beginning to feel it as an actual weight dragging him earthwards. But far more he was troubled by the Eye: so he called it to himself. It was that more than the drag of the Ring that made him cower and stoop as he walked. The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off. Frodo knew just where the present habitation and heart of that will now was: as certainly as a man can tell the direction of the sun with his eyes shut. He was facing it, and its potency beat upon his brow.

(TT 4.ii.630, emphasis mine)

So powerfully has the Eye been imagined in these three scenes in Lothlórien, upon Amon Hen, and in the Dead Marshes that it comes as something of a surprise to recognize that we get very little of Frodo's perception of it from here on. Frodo the narrator presently comments that Gollum has 'probably' also been feeling 'the pressure of the Eye' (TT 4.ii.630-31), though he also points out, perhaps in belated self-reproach, that Frodo the character didn't give a thought to what Gollum might have been suffering. Twice later on while Sam is wearing the Ring he feels anything but invisible to the Eye he knows is 'searching for him' (TT 4.x.734) and he perceives 'now more strong and urgent than ever, the malice of the Eye of Mordor, searching, trying to pierce the shadows' (RK 6.i.898). Sam's perceptions, however, lack the vividness of Frodo's. As receptive as Sam is to seeing things with 'other vision' -- like the clear light he thinks he sees shining from Frodo sometimes (TT 4.iv.652; cf. FR 2.i.223), or like the, as it were, transfigurations of Frodo he views in the Emyn Muil and on Mount Doom (TT 4.i.618; RK 6.iii.944) -- he never sees the Eye as Frodo does.

At the same time direct and indirect reminders of the Eye abound in mentions of the Red Eye as the livery of Mordor (TT 3.i.416; iii.451; RK 6.i.903) or the red lights like eyes in the Towers of the Teeth and the tower at Cirith Ungol (TT 4.iv.649; x.733-34; RK 6.i.898. 908). Even the flies of Mordor are 'marked like orcs with a red eye-shaped blotch (RK 6.ii.921).(4) Yet like the rest of the eyes, including that of Sauron himself, they fail to see what they most need to see. Instead the buzzing and stinging of the flies and the 'clouds of hungry midges' serve as a grimly humorous parallel to Sam's suffering in the Midgewater Marshes, where he had quipped 'What do they live on when they can't get hobbit?' (FR 1.xi.182-83). The red-eyed orc-gear he and Frodo had been wearing to conceal their identity now seems less important than having skin as thick as an orc's.

Once the hobbits have entered Mordor, however, Frodo the character never speaks of the Eye again, though there are two moments which merit our attention. In the first moment Sam observes his master's behavior, much of which will be familiar.

Sam guessed that among all their pains [Frodo] bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master’s left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn. 

(RK 6.iii.935) 

Again, as in The Dead Marshes, we start with a reference to the burden of the Ring and its seeming change in weight, which will soon be shown to be merely a delusion of the bearer (RK 6.iii.941). So, not everything the Ringbearer experiences or describes as if it were a physical effect or object has physical existence. That's a thought we should hold on to. 

Next Sam's speculations on Frodo's left hand recall his master's perceptions of the Eye back in The Dead Marshes. Only he is actually watching from the outside in, and cautiously describing, the 'potency' of that unseen sun which 'beat upon [Frodo's] brow. This transition from Frodo's internal perceptions in The Dead Marshes to the strictly external perceptions of an excluded Sam in Mount Doom emphasizes the distance between the one experience and the other, with its 'as if' and its 'a dreadful Eye' rather than 'the dreadful Eye.' In view of the phrasing it may be worth recalling here that Sam has not seen, and never will see, the Eye, though he has felt its attention, just as he has felt the burden of the Ring.

The shift in attention then from Frodo's left hand to his right offers a counterbalance more than opposition. In the Dead Marshes we glimpse (TT 4.ii.630), through Sam's anxious eyes, Frodo trying to hide from the gaze of Sauron, but Sam is at a remove, able only to guess at what Frodo sees, and still under the false impression that the physical weight of the Ring grows along with the spiritual burden. In Mordor (RK 6.iii.935), we and Sam are still farther off, shut out entirely from the struggle between the desire that moves Frodo's hand towards the Ring and the will that forces it back again. If in his mind here Frodo sees the Eye or senses its hunting gaze, and raises his left hand to shield himself against it, what does he see or perceive in his mind when he lifts his right hand to reach for the Ring?

In the second moment, we may observe a curious turn. For by chance Frodo 'sees' the Eye when its attention is entirely elsewhere, on the battle outside the Black Gate. It is neither looking for him nor, as at Amon Hen, does it become aware of his gaze: 'but Frodo at that dreadful glimpse fell as one stricken mortally. His hand sought the chain about his neck' (RK 6.iii.942). What Frodo glimpses even for an instant is so powerful, full of such malice and terror, that the mere sight of it strikes him down and his hand reaches for the Ring. Sam has to stop it. Frodo has to beg him. 

There is no hint whatsoever here that Frodo feels any pressure to put on the Ring, as he often tells the reader elsewhere that he did. On some of those occasions the urge clearly comes from outside him, as at Weathertop or with the Black Riders in the Shire. On others it is fear and a desire to escape, as in the Barrow, or fear that Bombadil has not given him back the real Ring and a desire to prove that it is 'his Ring'. Sometimes it is merely that most Bagginsish of desires, to avoid an awkward situation. And course these motives can overlap, as when Frodo wants to disappear in The Prancing Pony, feeling embarrassed as much as compelled. 

Frodo's most recent claim that he felt such an external pressure to put on the Ring, in the Morgul Vale as the Witch-king passed by, is harder to credit. For if the Witch-king had perceived that the Ring was close by and sent out a command to its bearer to put it on, as he had done successfully at Weathertop, it's impossible to believe he would have just marched away. The desire Frodo feels there to put on the Ring is also clearly connected to his desire to defy the Witch-king, as he had done unsuccessfully at the Ford of Bruinen, but he has since grown wise enough to know he does not have the strength, 'not yet' (TT 4.viii.706). These last two words, however, not only reveal his desire to put on the Ring and issue the challenge, but also that he is gauging his and the Witch-king's strengths. 

While Sam has the Ring, he twice finds his hand reaching for it. The only external pressure he feels upon himself is the terror of his situation. In the first instance he is surprised in the pass by the arrival of the orcs, and he takes the Ring in his hand before he realizes it and puts it on without a second thought. His mind is on how its now too late for him to escape and 'save the Ring'. Likewise, once he's inside the tower looking for Frodo, he is again surprised by an orc and reaches for the Ring. Sam, however, is under no illusions about his strength. Previously, when he had the Ring on and was tempted by the fantasy of being 'Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age', he recognized at once that it was a delusion. He may feel the temptation to claim the Ring and challenge Sauron, but he knows how that would end. He knows also that there is a price in torment to be paid for rejecting the fantasy of power so alluring that he can do nothing but want it. He has watched that torment in Frodo, and even in Gollum for some time now.

What Frodo sees in his mind as his hand reaches for the Ring is the wheel of fire, which he has already told Sam he has begun to see in his 'mind all the time, like a great wheel of fire' (RK 6.i.919), and of which he will soon say: 'I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades' (RK 6.iii.938). 

The simile in his mind's eye in his first statement about the wheel becomes the much more vivid metaphor of the second. It proves in fact to be far more than metaphor. For, now that it is visible to his 'waking eyes', it is no longer a description or a comparison that aims to convey meaning by juxtaposing less and more familiar things. It is a vision or a hallucination. 

But the final report on the wheel of fire belongs to Sam, and what he sees the narrator twice calls a 'vision'. Again, keep in mind that the narrator is Frodo who must have relied on Sam to know what Sam saw. When Sam sees with 'other vision', as he does here, what he sees always touches upon Frodo's moral or spiritual state. Such a vision can be simple, as in the clear light which Sam and Gandalf saw shining through Frodo at Rivendell and which Sam and perhaps even Gollum saw again later in Ithilien. The interpretation of this even so may vary. Sam sees it as indicative of what Frodo is, but to Gandalf that light promises much, yet offers no guarantee against the darkness. Or the vision may be far more complex, as in Frodo's vision of Galadriel in Lothlórien where he saw light and darkness, beauty and terror, love and despair combined into a mixture in which the evil elements subvert the good even though the image of the good never entirely vanishes from sight.

Just so here. The white in which the figure is cloaked too easily deceives because it is so often associated with goodness, with Gandalf, with Elbereth, with the White Tree. Saruman, too was cloaked in white , was called the White, and was leader of the White Council. Yet his treachery was not new, just newly revealed, and 'long years of death' will soon be revealed in him (RK 6.viii.1020). Saruman's orcs wear the White Hand as their token. Whatever he may once have been, Saruman has become a walking, talking whited sepulcher. And when Frodo sees beneath the black robes of the undead Ringwraiths, their clothes and faces and hair are white and grey. In the same way neither the 'simple white' worn by Galadriel nor the shining beauty of 'the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the mountain' which she would have put on if she had accepted the Ring would have made her less evil in the end (FR 2.vii.366).

What Sam sees with his 'other vision' is also not described as Frodo, but as a 'figure', which becomes Frodo once again only after the vision passes. This 'figure', moreover, is 'untouchable now by pity.' Now as everybody knows, Gandalf stressed at the outset the crucial role that the pity Bilbo showed Gollum might play (FR 1.ii.59). Despite rejecting Gandalf's argument for pity, Frodo, too, finally came to pity Gollum when they met at last, a scene in which Frodo not only remembered Gandalf's words to him about pity, but in which Frodo actually continued their conversation, speaking aloud to someone he believed to be dead (TT 4.i.615). Sam, moreover, will also pity Gollum and spare his life mere moments after the 'figure' 'untouchable by pity' turns away, presumably to destroy the Ring, so Sam believes, but, as it turns out, to claim the Ring (RK 6.iii.944-47). Without these three moments of pity by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, for someone who does not deserve pity, but death, the Ring does not go into the fire. Divine Pity does not intervene. There is no eucatastrophe on Mount Doom. So, for Frodo to have 'now' become, or to be 'now' seen as, a 'figure' 'untouchable now by pity' cannot be good. 

A remark Gandalf makes to Denethor has a bearing here. Rejecting Denethor's claim that Boromir would have brought him the Ring (RK 5.iv.813), Gandalf tells him that Boromir would not have done so, but 'would have stretched out his hand to this thing, and taking it he would have fallen. He would have kept it for his own, and when he returned you would not have known your son.' So, too, Frodo, 'having stretched out his hand to this thing' and having taken it, is for the moment no longer recognizable. (Remember also how Bilbo and Sam were both suddenly unrecognizable, when Frodo felt they were after his Ring?)

Finally, the 'figure' has the wheel of fire in its hand, the same hand which has repeatedly reached for the Ring, the same hand which Frodo has had increasing difficulty stopping, and the same hand which Sam sees on Frodo's breast clutching the Ring through his shirt (TT 4.viii.706; 6.iii.935, 943-44). And the voice which speaks from the wheel of fire clearly speaks as Frodo: 'You cannot betray me or slay me now' and 'Begone and trouble me no more. If you ever touch me again ....' At least in and for this moment, Frodo and the wheel of fire seem to be one, as if the wheel of fire is to Frodo as the Eye is to Sauron. In the struggle within Frodo between what I shall call the 'Ring-bearer-will' -- that is, 'the Ring is my burden' -- and the 'Ringlord-will' -- that is, 'the Ring is mine' -- the wheel represents Frodo's understanding of what he will become when his will breaks and he claims the Ring for his own, as he presently shall in Sammath Naur. Had Frodo prevailed in his challenge to Sauron -- as he could not have done -- the livery of his Dark Tower would have been the wheel of fire.

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1 John Garth, 'Frodo and the Great War', in The Lord of the Rings 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edd. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. Marquette 2006, p. 50 with no. 51. Garth draws on Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford 1975, pp. 118-19. 

2 Artifact of translation -- In translated works, as The Lord of the Rings claims to be, a translator will at times err in allowing an anachronism or other error to creep into the text because the words chosen to represent the original excel at communicating the idea or image in terms better suited to the reader than to the text. To say that the dragon firework at Bilbo's party passed overhead with a sound like an express train makes perfectly clear to the reader, but makes no sense regarded in context since there were no trains, express or otherwise, in Middle-earth. A perfect example is in Aubrey De Selincourt's translation of book 2, chapter 56 of Livy's History of Rome, where the consul is said to have 'stuck to his guns.' Perfectly clear to the reader, but absurd since guns did not exist in 471 B.C.E.

3 The phrase 'all aboard', like 'express train', has no place in Middle-earth, since it evokes the boarding call used to warn passengers that their boat or train was about to depart. While it fits nicely with 'express train', Tolkien may well have associated the phrase with boats. According to the OED, the phrase's link with trains is far more American than British. If so, that is intriguing since hobbits dislike boats and travel by water and the Sea is symbolic of death to them.

4 All other references to the Eye or uses of the word that invoke it, even proleptically: FR 1.i.34; vii.132-33; 2.ii.274; TT 3.i.414; iii.451, 452; v.499; ix.564; x.582; xi.589; 4.i.605; ii.625, 631, 632; iii.642, 648; iv.651; vii.702; x.733, 738; RK 5.iv.821; ix.879; x.885; 6.i.898 (twice), 903, 907-08; ii.921, 923, 924; iii.935-36, 942 (twice), 946.

The Pity of Théoden (TT 3.vi.519-20)

Gandalf and Frodo's argument over Bilbo's pity and mercy and the death which they agree Gollum deserves versus the healing the wizard hopes Gollum may yet find inform the entire moral structure of The Lord of the Rings (FR 1.ii.59-60). And the moment in which Bilbo showed that mercy is echoed over and over in decisions we see characters make.

We don't often think of Théoden in this connection, however, even though once you see it, it seems so obvious. (The italics are mine.)

'Mercy, lord!' whined Wormtongue, grovelling on the ground. 'Have pity on one worn out in your service. Send me not from your side! I at least will stand by you when all others have gone. Do not send your faithful Gríma away!'

'You have my pity,' said Théoden. 'And I do not send you from my side. I go myself to war with my men. I bid you come with me and prove your faith.'

....

'.... See, Théoden,[said Gandalf] here is a snake! With safety you cannot take it with you, nor can you leave it behind. To slay it would be just. But it was not always as it now is. Once it was a man, and did you service in its fashion. Give him a horse and let him go at once, wherever he chooses. By his choice you shall judge him.'

'Do you hear this, Wormtongue?' said Théoden. 'This is your choice: to ride with me to war, and let us see in battle whether you are true; or to go now, whither you will. But then, if ever we meet again, I shall not be merciful.' 

(TT 3.vi.519-20)     

The King, who has the right to deal out death in judgement (as Frodo did not), now healed by Gandalf, does not need his teaching to show pity and mercy. He does not strike without need, even if Wormtongue's just punishment for his treason should be death. Rather he offers him a chance for healing, a chance to redeem himself. Gandalf affirms the correctness of what would be just as well as the correctness of the mercy the King offers. 

Wormtongue of course rejects Théoden's mercy, only to end up dead months later at the feet of Frodo, who has just once again offered pity and mercy to both Wormtongue and Saruman (RK 6.viii.1019-20).


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My thanks to Matthew DeForrest, whose article, Pity, Malice and Agency in Tolkien's Subcreation, in Critical Insights: The Lord of the Rings, ed. Robert C. Evans, Salem (2022) 227-40, brought Théoden's pity and mercy to my notice in his discussion of those qualities in Tolkien, and in this mirror I saw reflected the scene with Gandalf and Frodo.

Hope Shall Come Again: 'The Choices of Master Samwise' and 'The Children of Húrin'

In 'The Choices of Master Samwise', when Sam believes Frodo to be dead, his anguish leads him to contemplate his own death, by suicide:

He looked on the bright point of the sword. He thought of the places behind where there was a black brink and an empty fall into nothingness. There was no escape that way. That was to do nothing, not even to grieve.

(TT 4.x.732)

When the orcs arrive in the pass and discover Frodo's dead body (as Sam still believes), Sam again imagines his own death:

How many can I kill before they get me? They’ll see the flame of the sword, as soon as I draw it, and they’ll get me sooner or later. I wonder if any song will ever mention it: How Samwise fell in the High Pass and made a wall of bodies round his master. No, no song. Of course not, for the Ring’ll be found, and there’ll be no more songs.

(TT 4.x.735)

In these moments one of the Great Tales of the First Age resonates within Sam's soul. Unlike the many explicit evocations of the Tale of Beren and Lúthien in The Lord of the Rings, the allusions here are far more obscure, to the Tale of the Children of Húrin, where Túrin fell upon his sword, where his sister, Nienor, leaped to her death; and where their father, Húrin, made the heroic last stand to end all heroic last stands. To catch these allusions, however, requires detailed knowledge of a Tale never mentioned at all in The Lord of the Rings. Its two chief figures, Húrin and his son Túrin are scarcely more than names on a list of elf-friends mentioned by Elrond (FR 2.ii.270). Until The Silmarillion was published in 1977, moreover, no other information was available. We don't even know that Húrin and Túrin are father and son. Húrin and his family might as well have been the cats of Queen Beruthiel. Their story seemed just as unknowable. 

What's more surprising is that, as far as I have been able to tell, no one spotted these allusions even after the publication of The Silmarillion. Despite multiple versions of the story appearing across the decades in Unfinished Tales, The Book of Lost Tales I, The Lays of Beleriand, The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Lost Road, The Children of Húrin, and elsewhere.

Part of what we see here is Tolkien's craft. He knows that he can draw on the mythic power of the Tale of the Children of Húrin without needing to draw our attention to the allusions by introducing explanations that would distract from the moment and the momentum of the story; and he can draw on this power in this way precisely because it is mythic and therefore transcends the particular details of the moment. What we see here is yet more evidence for how important these Great Tales are to the narrative and to the characters within it. The connection between the Tale of Frodo and Sam and the larger Tales of which theirs is a part does not need to be made explicit to be effective.

Part of it, finally, is that Sam is on the knife-edge of Tragedy here. If he makes a mistake in his choices, all is lost for him, and all is lost for Middle-earth. Sam, moreover, believing his master to be dead, already sees himself as in a story that has turned tragic. The Tale of the Children of Húrin is the tale for this crisis rather than the Tale of Beren and Lúthien because it is a Tragedy, and Beren and Lúthien, for all of its tragic moments, is a fairy-story that goes beyond sorrow into joy. We talk about Tolkien and fairy-stories far more often than we do about Tolkien and Tragedy. But in On Fairy-stories Tolkien speaks of the two types of story together. Each helps him define the other. He says:

At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

(OFS ¶ 99)

And if the catastrophe that marks a Tragedy cleanses us or purges us by means of fear and pity, then we can see the parallel between Drama and Fairy-stories even more clearly. For the eucatastrophe that is the 'true form' and 'highest function' of a fairy tale cleanses us through Escape, Recovery, and Consolation. It includes the renewed clarity of 'vision' we gain through Recovery (OFS ¶ 83-84). but goes beyond it by allowing a 'vision' of a transcendent reality (OFS ¶ 103).

There is more to be explored here, which I don't have time for right now. For example, an essential aspect of the situation Sam finds himself in here is the battle he has with Shelob directly before he comes to believe Frodo dead. For the narrator there names both Beren, the fairy-tale hero who also fought giant spiderlike monsters, and Túrin, the tragic hero who slew a dragon by stabbing him from below only to learn terrible truths about his own life in doing so. Sam of course is neither of these great heroes, sons of the chieftains of their peoples, and further reflection on these passages may well help us more deeply understanding of On Fairy-stories, The Lord of the Rings, and how the dynamic balance of Tragedy and Eucatastrophe fundamentally shapes Tolkien's Secondary World.

___________________________

If anybody knows of another discussion of these particular allusions to The Children of Húrin in The Choices of Master Samwise, please do let me know. I would be eager to see it. 

The failure of memory and the untold tale (RK 6.iii.937-38)

‘Do you remember that bit of rabbit, Mr. Frodo?’ he said. ‘And our place under the warm bank in Captain Faramir’s country, the day I saw an oliphaunt?’ 

‘No, I am afraid not, Sam,’ said Frodo. ‘At least, I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.’

(RK 6.iii.937-38)

The passage quoted is well known as one of the most moving in The Lord of the Rings, but one factor that gives it such pathos is its remarkable ironic reversal of one of Tolkien's most famous and brilliant devices, namely, the allusion to an untold tale which, since it is to some degree familiar to the characters in the story, helps to create a sense of historical depth for the readers. Here in this passage after 937 pages of being invited to wonder at and be curious about so many of the tales of Middle-earth which The Lord of the Rings does not tell us, the readers, we see Frodo utterly bereft of a knowledge that we possess. This positions the reader beside Sam while Frodo is staring into the abyss and knows he is. In doing so it allows us to pity him in a way we ordinarily cannot.