The Last Temptation of Galadriel -- Catechism, Gospel, and Fairy-story in 'The Mirror of Galadriel'

In discussing Death as the Gift of Ilúvatar to Men, Tolkien once wrote that a "divine 'punishment' is also a divine 'gift' " (Letters, no. 210). While this subject and this statement are both of prime importance for understanding Tolkien, it is to an easily unnoticed aspect of his words here that I would draw attention.  For Tolkien reveals an encompassing and unexpected vision of two sides of a critical subject. We may see him doing the same elsewhere, in obvious places, as when he shows both the beauty of courage on the Pelennor Fields and the horror of war in the Dead Marshes; or, more subtly, in Gandalf's hearty concession that Gollum deserves death, while nonetheless insisting that mercy be shown him because life and death are not equally in our power. I would argue that another subject of which Tolkien sees both sides is temptation. 

Say 'temptation' of course, and all our thoughts fly to the One Ring, and its gravitational drag on the character, good or bad, of the sentient beings of Middle-earth. We think of the times that Frodo offers the Ring to another, whether implicitly or explicitly. 'Do not tempt me!' Gandalf cries twice, alert with passion and the fear of his own pity (FR 1.ii.61). We think of Galadriel's bemused 'I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer' (FR 2.vii. 365). We think of Strider's gentle 'It does not belong to either of us' when Frodo makes the connection between him, the Ring, and Isildur (FR 2.ii.247). And we smile at the fantasies of Gollum the Great and Samwise the Strong, no less grim for being more foolish (TT 4.ii.633; RK 6.i.901). With Faramir we sigh 'Alas for Boromir! It was too sore a trial!' (TT 4.v.681). And with Sam our hearts break when at the end of the quest Frodo fails. To hear him say 'The Ring is mine' (RK 6.iii.945) is both horrifying and inevitable.

So we should find it no surprise that of the eight times a form of 'tempt' or 'temptation' appears in the text of The Lord of the Rings six are clearly and closely connected to the Ring. Besides the two emphatic uses we've already seen, Frodo is twice tempted to put on the Ring because of what he perceives to be a suggestion (Bree) or a compulsion (Weathertop) from outside himself (FR 1.ix.157; xi.195). When Gandalf the White learns that Frodo and Sam have crossed the river alone, he says that the 'deadly peril' of being 'tempted to use the Ring' 'is removed' (TT 3.v.500). In Mordor, though Sam only briefly bears the Ring, he, too, feels its ineluctable pull (RK 6.i.901):

Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be.

Of the two remaining instances, in one a sleepy Frodo is on watch beside the Great River, struggling against 'the temptation to lie down again', and just about to give in when Gollum appears (FR 2.ix.383-84). It's hard to resist the idea that Frodo's temptation here is similar to those he experienced at Bree and Weathertop, in that yielding to it will expose him to greater danger from someone who is looking for the Ring and watching him. However that may be, Gollum at any rate is being tempted into danger by his desire for the Ring. For, as we are about to discover, Strider knows that Gollum is on their trail and has been trying to capture him (FR 2.ix.384)

Now before considering the last of the uses of 'tempt' within The Lord of the Rings, it will be useful to note the two that are in the book, but not inside the tale proper. The first is in the Prologue, which of course purports to be written by someone within the same world but of a later time and who regards the events of the legendarium as historical. That writer tells us that Bilbo had been 'tempted to slay Gollum with his sword' in order to get away with the Ring and his life (FR Pr.12), but Bilbo's sudden pity for Gollum enables him to resist this temptation that would have made Bilbo no less a murderer than Gollum. And in the synopsis to The Return of the King we find the statement -- 'Faramir ... resisted the temptation to which Boromir had succumbed' -- and so again we see the usage clearly linked to the Ring.

Now, returning to the last of the uses within the tale, we come to the one which is most revealing about the subject of temptation. After the Company's meeting with Celeborn and Galadriel, during which she probed each of their minds, the members talk about their experience with her. Boromir, who only reluctantly and suspiciously entered 'that perilous land' (FR 2.vi.338), speaks of his own:

'To me it seemed exceedingly strange,' said Boromir. 'Maybe it was only a test, and she thought to read our thoughts for her own good purpose; but almost I should have said that she was tempting us, and offering what she pretended to have the power to give. It need not be said that I refused to listen. The Men of Minas Tirith are true to their word.' But what he thought that the Lady had offered him Boromir did not tell. 

(FR 2.vii.358)

We can see here how, at least in Boromir's mind, testing and tempting are two faces of the same coin, differentiated by the good purpose of the one and the ill purpose of the other. Other evidence shows us that Tolkien himself saw testing and tempting as synonymous. Later in this same chapter, when Frodo freely offers Galadriel the Ring, she refuses it and all that accepting it would have entailed. Having done so, she famously comments: 'I pass the test' (FR 2.vii.365-66). In three separate letters, moreover, the only three which mention this moment, Tolkien refers to it each time as the 'temptation' of Galadriel (nos. 210, 246, and 297n.). We may also see in another letter in which Tolkien discussed the 'tests' that 'angelic' beings in the material world were liable to face experiences that he might have equally well have called 'temptations' (Letter no. 156).^[1] So the temptation to claim, or take, or use such power as the Ring offered is not itself the whole of temptation. There is more to it than that.

We can also see a quite similar understanding of temptation/testing in a text that Tolkien, as a devout Catholic who lived long under the guardianship of a priest, would certainly have known, The Catechism of Trent, which communicated the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church for over four centuries. Its most prominent statement on temptation comes in its discussion of the Sixth Petition of the Lord's Prayer, i.e., 'Lead us not into temptation':

Question IX - The meaning of the word "Temptation" and how we are tempted by God. 

But to understand the force of this petition, it is necessary to say what "temptation" means here, and also, what it is "to be led into temptation". "To tempt" is to sound him who is tempted, that, eliciting from him what we desire, we may extract the truth. This mode of tempting does not apply to God; for what is there that God does not know? "All things are naked and open to his eyes." (Heb. 4.13) Another kind of tempting is when, by pushing scrutiny rather far, some further object is wont to be sought for either a good or a bad purpose; for a good purpose, as when someone's worth is thus tried, in order that having been ascertained and known, he may be rewarded and honoured (Job xlii.10ff.), and his example proposed to others for imitation (James v.11); and that, in fine, all may be excited thereby to the praises of God.... 

Question X -- How the Devil Tempts Man  

Men are tempted to a bad purpose, when they are impelled to sin or destruction, which is the peculiar province of the devil; for he tempts with a view to deceive and precipitate them into ruin, and is therefore called in scripture "the tempter" (Matt. iv.3) 

(490-91)*

As we can see here, the distinction in motivation that Boromir draws between 'testing' and 'tempting' resonates with the distinction drawn in the catechism between 'tempting' to 'learn the truth' or to try 'someone's worth', and  'tempting' 'to deceive and precipitate them into ruin'. Being suspicious of Galadriel to begin with because of ignorance, Boromir can hardly be blamed for being uncertain of her motives, even though Aragorn presently rebukes him when he openly suggests that she may be up to no good (FR 2.vi.359). The other members of the Company also felt that they had been tested whether by being offered something or by being asked a hypothetical question. This is true even though no one else seems to have doubted Galadriel's intentions.

All of them, it seemed, had fared alike: each had felt that he was offered a choice between a shadow full of fear that lay ahead, and something that he greatly desired: clear before his mind it lay, and to get it he had only to turn aside from the road and leave the Quest and the war against Sauron to others.

(FR 2.vii.538)

In only two cases do we obtain a reasonably clear indication of the choices Galadriel seemed to be suggesting they could make. Both Merry and Sam felt they had been offered, more or less, the same thing, but Sam's explanation, the only detailed one we get, is remarkable, almost iconic, in its implications:

'If you want to know, I felt as if I hadn't got nothing on, and I didn't like it. She seemed to be looking inside me and asking me what I would do if she gave me the chance of flying back home to the Shire to a nice little hole with – with a bit of garden of my own.' 

(FR 2.vii.538)

Sam's feeling naked before Galadriel because she knows his innermost desires bears a striking resemblance to the statement in the Catechism that 'all things are naked and open to [God's] eyes', words which are themselves a quote from Hebrews 4.13. And, very interestingly, the temptation of the garden returns when Sam is bearing the Ring. Only then it has swollen to such godlike proportions that, although I have already quoted it above, it bears revisiting in full:

Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be.

Now the most direct comparison we can make here is to Boromir's rant to Frodo upon Amon Hen

Boromir strode up and down, speaking ever more loudly; almost he seemed to have forgotten Frodo,while his talk dwelt on walls and weapons, and the mustering of men; and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be; and he cast down Mordor, and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise.

(FR 2.x.398).

Two things distinguish Sam's fantasy and Boromir's here. The first is quite obvious. Boromir's temptation fantasy stops with him defeating Mordor and becoming a great king. Sam's goes far beyond the mortal heroism of overthrowing Barad-dûr to embrace a perspective and powers that border on the divine. The second is that, the Ring already being in his possession,  Sam just had to do 'claim it for his own, and all this could be' (emphasis mine). The scope of this vision, and the turn of phrase in that last sentence, should remind us of Satan's temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

(8) Again the Devil took him up into a very high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, (9) and he said to him: all these I will give thee, if falling down thou wilt adore me. 

(Matthew 4:8-9, emphasis mine)** 

(5) And the Devil led him into a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; (6) And he said to him: To thee I will give all this power, and the glory of them; for they are delivered to me, and to whom I will, I give them. (7) If therefore thou wilt adore before me, all shall be thine.

(Luke 4:5-7, emphasis mine)**

Now the texts of Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13 are quite similar throughout the entire 'temptation in the wilderness', but, more importantly, the word they both repeatedly use here, the word we traditionally render as 'tempt', is the Greek verb πειράζω. The Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek English Lexicon defines this verb as 'to try', 'to tempt', 'to put to the test' in senses both good and bad.^[2]  This is the same word, for example, used to describe the attempts of the pharisees and others to test Jesus with questions about the law and other matters (Matt. 16:1, 22:35; cf. Luke 10:25). Greek expresses these two meanings, which English treats as overlapping, with a single word. Were we to consult the Latin New Testament, there we would also find a single verb, tempto, also defined as 'to try', 'to tempt', and 'to put to the test'.

The close semantic kinship between 'test' and 'tempt' that we see here brings us back to Boromir's uncertainty in the scene in which, as Galadriel herself later admits (FR 2.vii.365), she was 'testing the heart[s]' of the Company. Yet we can now see this moment in a different light. For her role here is that of ὁ πειράζων (as Matt. 4:3 puts it), 'the one who tests' or 'tempts'.^[3]  To meet an elf or fairy, especially a female, and find oneself tested is no strange thing for those who enter the woods of Faërie, which, like the biblical wilderness, is a place of tests and otherworldly encounters.  Unlike the devil in the wilderness, however, Galadriel is not tempting the companions 'with a view to deceiv[ing] and precipitat[ing] them into ruin' -- to borrow the words of the Catechism quoted above -- but testing them 'for a good purpose, as when someone's worth is thus tried.' (Compare Boromir's 'for her own good purpose.'). Nor, despite the evocation of the Catechism and Hebrews 4:13 in Sam's feeling of nakedness, is she God who knows everything. As she herself concedes, she knows what will be only 'in part' (FR 2.vii.357). 

Galadriel thus plays in her own world -- that is to say, within the legendarium -- a role in between those played by God and the Devil in ours. This middle position is consistent with Tolkien's remarks in On Fairy-stories that the Road to Faërie is not the road to Heaven or to Hell (OFS para. 6), an idea with roots that go back beyond the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, which he quotes, to The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune. We may also see a kindred notion in the portrayal of the elves in The South English Legendary, as angels who fell to earth -- but not to Hell -- because they sought to remain neutral in Lucifer's rebellion. Exiles perhaps, like Galadriel and Gildor, but not the damned.

On the other hand, Galadriel's role as 'tester' here is of far greater import than is common in medieval Romances, where the consequences of failing the test are serious, but personal.  Sir Launfal, for example, temporarily loses the favor of his elven lady and is put on trial at Arthur's court, and Sir Gawain comes very close to losing his head to the Green Knight's axe. Galadriel's testing of the hearts of the Company, however, is intimately tied to the quest to destroy the Ring, the most dire matter in all of Middle-earth. We need only recall the famous lines with which she introduces her test: 'your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true' (FR 2.vii.357). In its significance, therefore, her test is far more like the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, even if she and Satan had opposite purposes.

What of the purpose of her test then? If she was not tempting them to their ruin as well as to 'the ruin of all', as Satan tempted Christ, then she was trying their worth. Again we may ask, to what end? If we expand our focus on her words about 'the edge of a knife', we will begin, I think, to get a better idea. These are her words immediately before her testing of them begins:

But even now there is hope left. I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be. But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.

(FR 2.vii.357)

What matters most, is whether the members of the Company are true. Hers is a test of their character, or as Sam later puts it to Faramir, of their quality (TT 4.v.682).  What she seems to offer them can be attained (if at all) only by proving themselves untrue. Thus, Boromir was not far wrong, grasping her means, but mistaking her ends.^[4] The way in which she frames her statement here, moreover, links its terms of hope, peril, help ('avail'), and knowledge intimately together and points directly ahead to her testing of their characters, the most important aspect of which seems to be what it told each of them about themselves. Sam's blushing, Merry's skittish reticence, Frodo and Gimli's blunt refusals to say anything, all suggest that they have seen something significant, while Boromir's boast of trustworthiness and his aspersions on Galadriel are the remarks of a man trying to defend himself from a thought he didn't like having.

We must be careful in treating Boromir's testing here. There are two main dangers. The first is to read the text backwards from Boromir's attempt on the Ring, and, therefore, to oversimplify and obscure what is going on here. The second is to keep our understanding of the portrayal in the book separate from the very different portrayal in Peter Jackson's film.  There, in keeping with Jackson's view of men as weak, we see a Boromir much more troubled from the beginning. He wrestles with the temptation of the Ring well before this moment.  Frodo is aware of this, as is Galadriel who telepathically warns Frodo that Boromir will try to take the Ring.

Jackson has clearly chosen to read Boromir's actions backwards in adapting the books to the screen. In his view of Boromir he has excellent company. For Sam Gamgee sees him in precisely the same way, as he tells Faramir:

Now I watched Boromir and listened to him, from Rivendell all down the road – looking after my master, as you'll understand, and not meaning any harm to Boromir – and it's my opinion that in Lórien he first saw clearly what I guessed sooner: what he wanted. From the moment he first saw it he wanted the Enemy's Ring!

(TT 4.v.680)

But while Sam is excellent at guessing Frodo's mind (FR 2.x.403, 405-06; TT 3.i.419), he is no oracle when it comes to others', especially when he is 'looking after his master' as he admits he was doing with Boromir. He is not always entirely right (or wrong), and when speaking to Faramir he does not know his brother's whole story. To take two outstanding examples, Sam long entertained doubts about Strider, even beyond Weathertop, so much so that Frodo is able to say -- not without some humor -- that Sam 'never quite trusted' Strider until Glorfindel came along (FR 2.i.220). It is also in his zeal to protect his master that he spoils Gollum's best and perhaps only chance at repentance (TT 4.viii.714-16). In the case of Aragorn, he is flat out wrong; in the case of Gollum he mistakes him, critically, in what one could argue was the moment he most needed to get him right.^[5] 

By contrast Galadriel, whatever precisely passed between her and Boromir, did not think it worth mentioning to anyone in the Company as far as we can tell; and when she later speaks to the returned Gandalf she, evidently, expresses her concern in such a way that she seems at least as anxious for him as she may be about him. And Gandalf sees it the same way: 'Galadriel told me that he was in peril. But he escaped in the end. I am glad. It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for Boromir's sake' (TT  3.v.496). It would be hard to see what Galadriel meant by 'avail', if, as a result of her testing him, she knew that Boromir would try to take the Ring and said nothing.

This concern that he was in peril is thus quite revealing. It indicates that her testing of their hearts had to do with the members of the Company being the right people in the right place at the right time. As long as they are all true, hope remains. That she says nothing to any of them about what she learned shows that she tested them for their own sake, so that they would know what they needed to know about themselves in order to go on. When Frodo later inadvertently turns the tables on Galadriel and tests her heart by freely offering her the Ring, he allows her to face the test of character she had set them, but in a far more real and dangerous way. For Frodo has the power to grant her desire. But Galadriel is true even when she is in peril. She passes the test. And so hope remains.

Torn between his fear for Gondor and the power the Ring seems to offer, Boromir falls, but not beyond redemption.^[6] He 'escapes', as Gandalf says. 'Few have gained such a victory', declares Aragorn (TT 3.i.414), who seems unlikely to lie to a dying comrade: they are not speaking of his battle with the Orcs, who defeated him, but of his struggle with the Ring.^[7] But how does he escape his peril? To be sure his failure to seize the Ring is essential, but not decisive on its own. Losing the Ring to Bilbo did not save Gollum. Yet it made his redemption possible.

Ironically -- and here I believe Tolkien is dealing in some very sly irony as he realizes the idea of the 'fortunate fall' -- it is Boromir's physical fall that precipitates his recovery of spirit.  When Frodo slipped on the Ring and vanished, Boromir

gasped, stared for a moment amazed, and then ran wildly about, seeking here and there among the rocks and trees. 

'Miserable trickster!' he shouted. 'Let me get my hands on you! Now I see your mind. You will take the Ring to Sauron and sell us all. You have only waited your chance to leave us in the lurch. Curse you and all halflings to death and darkness!' Then, catching his foot on a stone, he fell sprawling and lay upon his face. For a while he was as still as if his own curse had struck him down; then suddenly he wept. 

He rose and passed his hand over his eyes, dashing away the tears. 'What have I said?' he cried. 'What have I done? Frodo, Frodo!' he called. 'Come back! A madness took me, but it has passed. Come back!'

(FR 2.x.399-400)

Note the hint at something more than random 'chance' in the narrator's suggestion that it was 'as if his own curse had struck him down'. Note, too, the parallel to Bilbo's behavior at Rivendell, where Bilbo, having asked Frodo if he might 'see [the Ring] for just a moment', 'to peep at it again', then reaches for it instead. Seeing Frodo's strong, almost violent reaction, Bilbo 'passed his hand across his eyes. "I understand now", he said.  "Put it away" ' (FR 2.i.232).^[8] Boromir, too, understands now.  Like Galadriel (FR 2.vii.366), and like Gandalf before her (FR 1.ii.61), he has seen the possibilities the Ring offers him, and the consequences. How far the knowledge he gains from Galadriel's test has brought him, aided now by his 'fortunate fall', is summed up in the transition he makes from imagining himself transformed by the Ring into 'a mighty king, benevolent and wise' (FR 2.x.398) to seeing the madness of this vision for what it is (2.x.400), confessing his error, and begging the true king to save his homeland (TT 3.i.414). 

If the visit to the Faërie of Bombadil prepared the hobbits to encounter a world that is larger -- in more than one sense of the word -- than the world to which they are accustomed, the visit to the Faërie of Galadriel^[9] turns the attention of the Company momentarily inward, to the field where the inner battle against the evil of the Ring must be fought even as the outer quest enters its decisive phase. That it does so finds another interesting parallel in the gospel, since it is after Jesus faced his tests in the Wilderness that he began his ministry in earnest. And just as the temptations of Christ range from the mundane (bread) to the grandiose (power), so, too, do the tests of the Company, from Sam and Merry's hole with a bit of garden to Boromir's visions of using the Ring to defeat Sauron, tests which are recapitulated on a grander and darker scale with Sam, Frodo, and Galadriel in the latter half of the chapter.

What Tolkien has done in The Mirror of Galadriel is to re-frame the testing that visitors to Faërie often encounter in a far more serious way. Galadriel does not test the Company merely for the sake of testing them, but neither does she seek to seduce and ruin them. Her testing of them stands upon the same knife edge as the Quest does, and as she herself does. In the understanding of testing and temptation found in the Catechism and the Gospel, and in the parallel between forests in fairy-stories and the wilderness in the Bible, Tolkien discovers a means and a stage that suit the high tone of his tale. And if we recall that he regards the story of Christ as the fairy story that came true (OFS para. 104-05), it only makes sense that he would find that it suits his 'own good purpose'.

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Works Consulted

*The biblical citations presented as footnotes in the Catechism I have converted into inline citations for the sake of ease and clarity.

**The translation is the Douay-Rheims of 1899, a Catholic version, which Tolkien would have been familiar with.

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^[1] Thus:

Why [the Istari] should take [a human] form is bound up with the 'mythology' of the 'angelic' Powers of the world of this fable. At this point in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their exhibition of 'power' on the physical plane, and so that they should do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them. They thus appeared as 'old' sage figures. But in this 'mythology' all the 'angelic' powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or 'gods'. The 'wizards' were not exempt, indeed being incarnate were more likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement). For in his condition it was for him a sacrifice to perish on the Bridge in defence of his companions, less perhaps than for a mortal Man or Hobbit, since he had a far greater inner power than they; but also more, since it was a humbling and abnegation of himself in conformity to 'the Rules': for all he could know at that moment he was the only person who could direct the resistance to Sauron successfully, and all his mission was vain. He was handing over to the Authority that ordained the Rules, and giving up personal hope of success.

^[2] πειράζω occurs in various forms in each text.  We also find the noun πειρασμός and ἐκπειράζω, an intensive form of the verb.  Matthew: πειρασθῆναι -- 'to be tempted' (4:1); πειράζων -- 'one who tempts', (4:3); (Οὐκ) ἐκπειράσεις -- 'thou shalt (not) tempt' (4:7). Luke: πειραζόμενος -- 'being tempted' (4:2); (Οὐκ) ἐκπειράσεις -- 'thou shalt (not) tempt' (4.:12); πειρασμὸν -- 'temptation' (4:13). 'Try' in the definition of course means 'test' -- as in 'you're trying my patience'. 'Try' as in 'try to' is a related, but separate verb.

^[3] My pedantry gene requires me to concede that, since Galadriel is female, we should have ἡ πειράζουσα instead of ὁ πειράζων.

^[4] It may be that the thought of other, similar encounters with Galadriel lies at the back of the suspicions of her 'nets' and 'deceptions' we discover among the Rohirrim: TT 3.ii.432; vi.514.

^[5] TT 4.viii.714-15. See Tolkien, Letters, no. 246. At the moment in question Sam has ample reason to mistrust Gollum and to believe him dangerous. As is often the case in The Lord of the Rings, however, the course that reason dictates is not the correct one.

^[6] Gandalf, for one, believed that both Saruman and Gollum, whose deeds were far worse than Boromir's, could be redeemed (FR 1.ii.59; TT  3.x.577, 583-84). According to Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age even Sauron was once not beyond redemption, if he had sincerely repented (Silmarillion, 285). In The Hunt for the Ring Christopher Tolkien writes of a version in which Saruman considers repentance (UT 346).

^[7] This interpretation of Aragorn's words to Boromir I owe to Corey Olsen.

^[8] Compare also the powerful scene in The Tower of Cirith Ungol (RK6.i.911-12), where passing visions of the Ring cause Frodo to see Sam as an orc.

^[9] By this turn of phrase I am not suggesting that there is more than one Faërie, only that Faërie has different aspects in different places.

Galadriel and the Fall of Gandalf

It's that woman again

My last post looked at Celeborn's famously poor showing as the wisest of the Elves of Middle-earth. Here I want to take a quick look at Galadriel in the same scene.

When all the guests were seated before his chair the Lord looked at them again. 'Here there are eight,' he said. 'Nine were to set out: so said the messages. But maybe there has been some change of counsel that we have not heard. Elrond is far away, and darkness gathers between us, and all this year the shadows have grown longer.'

'Nay, there was no change of counsel,' said the Lady Galadriel speaking for the first time. Her voice was clear and musical, but deeper than woman's wont. 'Gandalf the Grey set out with the Company, but he did not pass the borders of this land. Now tell us where he is; for I much desired to speak with him again. But I cannot see him from afar, unless he comes within the fences of Lothlorien: a grey mist is about him, and the ways of his feet and of his mind are hidden from me.'

'Alas!' said Aragorn. 'Gandalf the Grey fell into shadow. He remained in Moria and did not escape.'

(FR 2.vii.355)

From the very first we can see that she perceives more than he does, not in the sense that she may be wiser or more intelligent than he is, but the juxtaposition of his words and hers suggests that her perceptions take in a wider world, at least as far as Gandalf is concerned. Celeborn and Galadriel do not share altogether the same frame of reference. She speaks of Gandalf as if she can still somehow sense him. She does not know where he is, or what he is thinking, but he is still out there somewhere. 

That Gandalf is 'hidden' in 'a grey mist' is an enticing detail, since when Frodo looks into Galadriel's mirror later in this same chapter, he twice sees a mist: first one that clears to reveal to him a vision of the Sea (FR 2.vii.364), which hobbits, mistakenly, regard as 'a token of death' (FR Pr. 7); and then he sees a 'small ship, twinkling with lights' 'pass away' into 'a grey mist' (FR 2.vii.364). That ship of course is the same one Frodo dreams (or has a vision) of in Fog on the Barrow-Downs (FR 1.viii.135), and upon which he sails into the West in The Grey Havens (RK 6.ix.1030). And in both of these passages the farthest shore is at first obscured by 'a grey rain-curtain'. 

What comes next in this scene is also intriguing. For Galadriel says not a word in response to Aragorn's euphemistic announcement of Gandalf's death. In fact she says nothing at all until he tells the tale up to their arrival at the bridge and the coming of the Balrog. When she does speak, it is to pull Celeborn back from his hasty remarks, to reaffirm that none of Gandalf's deeds were 'needless', and to greet with 'love and understanding' the member of the Company who has in fact suffered the most, Gimli, who has endured the loss of Balin and the dwarves of Moria, has seen his people's worst nightmare drag Gandalf into the abyss, and has so far met a rather hostile reception in Lothlórien (FR 2.vii.356). Is it an accident that she proceeds immediately from this to a statement that directly touches upon her wider perceptions and then to a demonstration of them?

'But even now there is hope left. I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be. But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.' 

And with that word she held them with her eyes, and in silence looked searchingly at each of them in turn. None save Legolas and Aragorn could long endure her glance. Sam quickly blushed and hung his head. 

At length the Lady Galadriel released them from her eyes, and she smiled. 'Do not let your hearts be troubled,' she said. 'Tonight you shall sleep in peace.' Then they sighed and felt suddenly weary, as those who have been questioned long and deeply, though no words had been spoken openly.

(FR 2.vii.357, emphasis mine)

Her statement that she can 'avail' only through her knowledge of the past, the present, and 'in part' the future gives an authority none question to what she says about the hope and the precariousness of their quest. But note also that Galadriel does not say that she knows what may, or what might, or even what will be. She states that she knows some of what shall be. Shall is at least emphatic, and at most denotes necessity. Thus Galadriel here speaks not of possibilities, but of certainties. Yet we can also see her phrase 'in part' reflected in her later remarks about what one may see of the future in her Mirror:

'For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.'

(2.vii.362)

'Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.'

(2.vii.363)

this is beginning to look like an obsession

But for all the caution with which she warns against the indeterminacy of a future which is always in motion, there is something of which she is quite sure, as her use of shall attests. What can Galadriel mean? I believe we need to see her hint that she still perceives Gandalf in context with Gwaihir's statement to Gandalf that Galadriel had sent him looking for him (TT 3.v.502), which in turn leads to a question: why send an eagle to look for someone who had fallen to his death in a profound abyss beneath a mountain range? I would suggest that the future which Galadriel knew in part was Gandalf's death at the hands of the Balrog atop Zirakzigil and his return as Gandalf the White. (Recall that Frodo also sees Gandalf the White without realizing it in the Mirror -- 2.vii.363-64). It was only when Aragorn brought word of his fall at the bridge that she became certain, and stepped in to help keep the Company from straying too far before he returned. A look at the chronology presented in The Tale of Years is revealing here.

January

15. The Bridge of Khazad-dûm, and fall of Gandalf. The Company reaches Nimrodel             late at night.

17. The Company comes to Caras Galadhon at evening.

23. Gandalf pursues the Balrog to the peak of Zirak-zigil.

25. He casts down the Balrog, and passes away. His body lies on the peak.

February

15.* The Mirror of Galadriel. Gandalf returns to life, and lies in a trance.

16. Farewell to Lórien. Gollum in hiding on the west bank observes the departure.

17. Gwaihir bears Gandalf to Lórien.

(RK App. B 1092)

The first thing we may notice is that Galadriel's initial perception that Gandalf was 'hidden' was more accurate than what the Company had actually seen with their own eyes. She learned of his fall when she met the Company on 17 January, but Gandalf did not die until the 25^th. It also seems hardly coincidental that the day on which he returned to life is also the day on which Galadriel brought Frodo and Sam to the Mirror and told them it is time for the Company to move on (FR 2.vii.366).* The facts of the story almost invite us to conclude that Galadriel kept the Company in Lothlórien, 'in the ageless time of that land where days bring healing and not decay' (TT 3.v.503), until Gandalf revived; only then did she send them on their way, rested and recovered from the shock of the loss they thought they had suffered, and tested in ways that prepared them all, even perhaps Boromir**, to be the right people in the right place at the right time.

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*Hammond and Scull (2005) 718, point out that editions prior to 2005 wrongly dated the Mirror episode to 14 February, which does not match the events as described in the text. The episode takes place 'one evening' (2.vii.360), and Galadriel tells Frodo and Sam the Company must depart 'in the morning' (366). Directly after she says this, at the beginning of the next chapter, we read 'That night the Company was again summoned to the chamber of Celeborn' (2.viii.367). The demonstrative that and the adverb again can together refer only to the same evening as in The Mirror of Galadriel. Since the morning on which the Company departs is 16 February, and there is no evidence for an extra day, 15, not 14, February must be the correct date. This has no effect on my argument, but readers with an edition from before 2005 might note a discrepancy that needs to be explained.

**This may seem surprising, but it may be that by confronting Boromir with the temptation he felt to take and use the Ring Galadriel actually saved him. The self-knowledge she gave him created a conflict within him that came to a head on the slopes of Amon Hen. Without that knowledge or that conflict, he could never have pulled himself back and repented for his failed attempt to take the Ring from Frodo. His successful repentance forms an interesting counterpoint to Gollum's failed repentance. So I guess I've just thought up another article. You know, I'm convinced that at the end of one of these veins of mithril is a Balrog. 

Getting to the Bottom of Celeborn

'An evil of the Ancient World it seemed, such as I have never seen before,' said Aragorn. 'It was both a shadow and a flame, strong and terrible.' 

'It was a Balrog of Morgoth,' said Legolas; 'of all elf-banes the most deadly, save the One who sits in the Dark Tower.' 

'Indeed I saw upon the bridge that which haunts our darkest dreams – I saw Durin's Bane,' said Gimli in a low voice, and dread was in his eyes. 

'Alas!' said Celeborn. 'We long have feared that under Caradhras a terror slept. But had I known that the Dwarves had stirred up this evil in Moria again, l would have forbidden you to pass the northern borders, you and all that went with you. And if it were possible, one would say that at the last Gandalf fell from wisdom into folly, going needlessly into the net of Moria.' 

'He would be rash indeed that said that thing,' said Galadriel gravely. 'Needless were none of the deeds of Gandalf in life.'

(FR 2.vii.356)

Oh, darn, another image of Cate Blanchett

For his words here Celeborn earns a gentle rebuke from Galadriel. Her words are third person (he) rather than second (you), and all very politely subjunctive, 'would be' rather than 'is/are', leading to a generalization about a type of person ('that said') rather than a precise comment about a specific individual ('who said').  As such, Galadriel's statement neatly answers the two unreal conditional statements ('had I known.... And if it were possible') with which Celeborn responded to the news of the balrog and the death of Gandalf. In essence, she is saying that Celeborn, appearances notwithstanding, is not the sort of person who would say such things.

And though he accepts her reproof and apologizes at once, readers have been far less forgiving than Galadriel and the members of the Company. Indeed Celeborn is seen as something of a dolt, whose folly here wholly belies Galadriel's statement, only a few moment later, that he is 'accounted the wisest of the Elves of Middle-earth' (FR 2.vii.357). Since he plays little other role, and since the attention shifts almost completely to Galadriel, the rashness of his remarks, spoken 'in the trouble of my heart', is never redeemed. We never get to see the wisdom of which Galadriel speaks. So, readers have long wondered just what it is she's talking about. Indeed Celeborn's wisdom seems chiefly to consist in having married Galadriel.

and another one!

His words and his apology, I would argue, are meant to have a different and a greater effect than a first glance suggests. They aim to reveal how frightening a balrog is, even to the wisest Elf and to indicate how troubling the fall of Gandalf is with the fate of Middle-earth hanging in the balance. Consider the reaction of the otherwise dauntless Legolas, whom the balrog so 'filled...with terror' that he dropped his arrow and cried out in 'dismay and fear' (FR 2.v.329). By contrast, when the Company later encounters the winged Nazgûl the 'sudden dread' Legolas and the others feel does not prevent him from shooting it from the sky just as 'suddenly' (FR 2.ix.387). Aragorn himself, moreover, calls the balrog 'terrible', which he means quite literally, that is to say, it inspires terror; and to Gimli it is Durin's Bane, a race-nightmare of which he speaks with 'dread in his eyes.' It was, as Gandalf said, 'a foe beyond any' of them, and its power posed a serious challenge to his own (FR 2.v.327, 329-331). Small wonder, then, that at the bridge he chose to declare himself.

We must also recall that Aragorn seems to have broken off his account at 'the coming of the Terror,' that is, before the battle at the bridge, in order describe the balrog. This exactly parallels the narrative of events, which pauses to do the same once the balrog comes into view. (FR 2.v.329-330). The Terror which so dismays Legolas that his courage briefly falters at that moment, has its match in the lapse of Celeborn's wisdom in this one. It may also be, given Aragorn's apparent pause in telling the tale, that Celeborn does not yet know that Gandalf threw the balrog down into the abyss, apparently killing it. He may know only that Gandalf saved his companions and perished himself. His '[h]ad I known that the Dwarves had stirred up this evil in Moria again' makes more sense if he does not know that the balrog also fell.  If Gandalf is dead and a balrog is on the loose, that would be a very troubling situation indeed. Nor is Celeborn alone in questioning the wisdom of entering Moria. Aragorn also thought it folly, and warned Gandalf against it (FR 2.iii.286-87; iv.297; vi.333).

But if a close reading provides us a context in which Celeborn does not seem entirely dim, we still never encounter any evidence that allows us to consider him 'the wisest of the Elves of Middle-earth.' If anything, the surefooted grace with which Galadriel steps in to save the situation, gently but firmly correcting her husband and simultaneously winning the heart of a 'glowering' Gimli with her generosity and charm, makes her appear wiser by far than Celeborn.  And everything we see of her hereafter tends only to reinforce this opinion of her wisdom: her power in creating Lothlórien and defending it from Sauron, her humility in refusing the Ring when Frodo freely offers it, and her willingness to let all she loves fade in defense of all else.  In short nothing Celeborn does or says, and nothing anyone else says of him, allows us to reconcile Galadriel's description of him with the impression he initially creates in the reader of not being particularly wise at all.

In part, as I have said, this has to do with the subtlety of the context, which would of course have been plain as day to the man who wrote it. An author's intent is not always perfectly realized on the page; and even if it is, it is not always fully or easily appreciated by readers. In part it also has to do with the way the text developed. Once introduced into the narrative the Lady of Lothlórien quickly became more important than the Lord (The Treason of Isengard 233-66). The combination of the subtlety of the context and the transition from Lord to Lady did Celeborn no favors. 

Yet there may be one more small aspect of the portrayal of Celeborn and Galadriel that we need to consider briefly. It's possible that Tolkien was having a bit of fun with us. We have seen him do this before. At FR 2.iv.298 we have seen him play with the tale of Odin being swallowed by Fenris Wolf. At 1.x.171 he plays with Shakespeare's 'fair is foul and foul is fair' in contrasting the apparent and the real characters of Strider (Macbeth 1.i.10). At TT 4.viii.714 he plays with 'the lean and hungry look' of Cassius in Julius Caesar (1.2.193-96). In larger and more forceful ways at TT 3.iv.484-87, ix.564-69 and RK 5.vi.840-42 he amuses himself with 'Birnam Wood' and 'none of woman born' (Macbeth 4.1.95-96, 108-110; 5.5.31-36, 8.9-16).  I would also argue that the vision of the Kings and Chieftains of the Dúnedain which Bombadil conjures for the hobbits (FR 1.viii.145-46) owes much to the third prophecy -- the vision of the line of Stuart Kings (Macbeth 4.116-140) -- in that same scene in Macbeth which gives us Birnam Wood and 'none of woman born'. But it is never a mere echo of Shakespeare or Norse Myth. Gandalf is not Odin. Strider is not Macbeth. Gollum is not just thin as starvation, but no more to be trusted than Cassius. The wood really does march to war. And the Witch-king is slain by two people, one not a Man, and the other not a man. 

So where might we find a fairy queen in an enchanted wood who is mistaken about the wisdom of her beloved? In A Midsummer Night's Dream of course, where Titania, under an enchantment, falls in love with Bottom. 'Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful', she tells him (3.1.140). Since Puck has just given Bottom, 'the shallowest thickskin of that barren sort' (3.2.13), the head of an ass, Titania is clearly out of her reckoning. Bottom is of course neither wise nor Titania's husband, but Titania's folly is also brief and presently Oberon, her spouse, recalls her to her senses.

Of the points I have made here the one I am most serious about, and most convinced of its value, is the first part of the point about the context in which we need to read this scene. The second part, about the seeming pause in Aragorn's account has to contend with the quite reasonable objection that Celeborn asked to be told 'the full tale', and Aragorn seems to set out to do just that. While I believe that it can contend with that objection, not everyone may be convinced.  And I do think that Tolkien probably is having a bit of fun here, playing Titania and Bottom against Galadriel and Celeborn, but if so it is a mere whiff of a joke meant to underscore the seriously troubling situation that Celeborn believes confronts him.*

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*I will admit that this connection between Tolkien and Shakespeare actually came to me in a dream on or about Midsummer. Blame it on Puck then.

'For this is what your people would call magic, I believe' (FR 2.vii.362)

In The Mirror of Galadriel we encounter a passage that suggests, but does not define, a difference between 'Elf magic' and the sorcery of the Enemy:

'And you?' she said, turning to Sam. 'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf magic?'  

'I did,' said Sam, trembling a little between fear and curiosity. 'I'll have a peep, Lady, if you're willing.' 

(FR 2.vii.362)

Yet the visions Sam and Frodo see in the mirror do not help to clarify the distinction Galadriel feels exists between the two forms of 'magic.' A section of On Fairy-Stories offers us some help here:

We need a word for this elvish craft, but all the words that have been applied to it have been blurred and confused with other things. Magic is ready to hand, and I have used it above ... but I should not have done so: Magic should be reserved for the operations of the Magician. Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief. Art of the same sort, if more skilled and effortless, the elves can also use, or so the reports seem to show; but the more potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment. Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.

(OFS para. 75, emphasis mine)

Turning back to The Lord of the Rings, we may now more easily see the 'deceits of the Enemy' and view Frodo's conversation with Galadriel in a more disturbing light:

'I would ask one thing before we go,' said Frodo, 'a thing which I often meant to ask Gandalf in Rivendell. I am permitted to wear the One Ring: why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?'  

'You have not tried,' [Galadriel] said. 'Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others. 

(FR 2.vii.366)

I have discussed this conversation at length before, and mean to do so again once I have reflected further on what I have noticed here. Frodo is on a complex spiritual journey, as dappled with light and shadow as a wood in summer.  We too often ignore the shadow within him because the light that at times shines from him is more comforting (FR 2.i.223; TT 4.iv.652).  His interest in using the Ring to know the thoughts of others is a darkness that exists in tension with his offer a moment earlier to surrender the Ring to Galadriel.  At the same time this 'technique' he desires to employ is also in tension with the 'art' he tries to practice in the poem he composes commemorating Gandalf earlier in this same chapter (FR 2.vii.359-60), his first use of poetry since being 'enchanted' by the art of elvish minstrelsy in Rivendell (FR 2.i.233).

Gollum before The Taming of Sméagol (IV)

What the reader learns about Gollum by the end of The Council of Elrond comes in two parallel phases at the beginning of Books One and Two. In each book a scene in which we may infer much about Gollum from the behavior of Bilbo and Frodo precedes the more open and direct telling of a tale about him within the larger Tale. In A Long-Expected Party possession of the Ring leads to a tense moment between Gandalf and Bilbo (FR 1.i.33-36), which is balanced by one between Bilbo and Frodo in Many Meetings (2.i.232). Likewise the story Gandalf tells in The Shadow of the Past (1.ii.52-60) finds its counterpoise in the stories of Aragorn and Legolas in The Council of Elrond (2.ii.253-256). In the first instance the two scenes suggest a dark and dangerous character for Gollum; in the second the two scenes establish that character by accounts of his actions. Both times the subject of Gollum vanishes from the narrative as soon as the tale within the Tale is done.

And yet The Council of Elrond contains one piece of information that makes a critical difference: Gollum has escaped the custody of the Elves, but, as Gandalf declares, it is too late for anything to be done about it (FR 2.ii.256). And there the matter of Gollum, which is given so much importance whenever it is raised, again slips away. The Company sets out, facing not only the hardships of a journey in winter, but threats of detection (FR 2.iii.284-85, 290, 294) and destruction (FR 2.iii.287-94; iii.297-99, 308-09), before they even enter 'the long dark of Moria.' Here, on the road that Gandalf led them to 'against their fears' (FR 2.iv.311), Gollum at last approaches the stage, fittingly and in hindsight almost predictably, in the darkness beneath the Misty Mountains:

Yet Frodo began to hear, or to imagine that he heard, something else: like the faint fall of soft bare feet. It was never loud enough, or near enough, for him to feel certain that he heard it; but once it had started it never stopped, while the Company was moving. But it was not an echo, for when they halted it pattered on for a little all by itself, and then grew still 

(FR 2.iv.312)

and then again

As the road climbed upwards' Frodo's spirits rose a little; but he still felt oppressed, and still at times he heard, or thought he heard, away behind the Company and beyond the fall and patter of their feet, a following footstep that was not an echo. 

(FR 2.iv.314)

'Approaches the stage' is precisely it. For all the hints and descriptions, for all the inferences about Gollum we may draw from the behavior of Bilbo and Frodo, even now Gollum himself still hangs just out of reach, like the 'ghost that drank blood [and] ... slipped through windows to find cradles' (FR 1.ii.58). Note how the two descriptions which assert that the sound Frodo heard was 'not an echo' echo each other, and how the certainty that 'not an echo' proclaims is balanced by the uncertainty in phrases like 'to hear, or to imagine that he heard' and 'heard, or thought that he heard.'

It is a wonderful evocation of the darkness and mystery of Moria, playing what the character and the reader do not yet know off against what the narrator will not yet reveal, as well as of the fear of an unknown and unseen pursuer. Gollum becomes one of those elusive secrets that he himself had once wished to discover beneath the mountains (FR i.ii.54). Nothing else may be told at this point. On a first reading we cannot know that the pursuer is Gollum, thought we can reasonably guess that he is no friend to the Company.

And, if anything, the first remote glimpse of him we get makes Gollum seem less real, but more frightening:

A deep silence fell. One by one the others fell asleep. Frodo was on guard. As if it were a breath that came in through unseen doors out of deep places, dread came over him. His hands were cold and his brow damp. He listened. All his mind was given to listening and nothing else for two slow hours; but he heard no sound, not even the imagined echo of a footfall.

His watch was nearly over, when, far off where he guessed that the western archway stood, he fancied that he could see two pale points of light, almost like luminous eyes. He started. His head had nodded. 'I must have nearly fallen asleep on guard,' he thought. 'I was on the edge of a dream.' He stood up and rubbed his eyes, and remained standing, peering into the dark, until he was relieved by Legolas. When he lay down he quickly went to sleep, but it seemed to him that the dream went on: he heard whispers, and saw the two pale points of light approaching, slowly. He woke and found that the others were speaking softly near him, and that a dim light was falling on his face.

(FR 2.iv.318)

'Not even the imagined echo of a footfall' supplies an obvious link to the other two passages, but leans more on the character's belief that he may have been imagining things than on the narrator's surety that he was not.[1] '[G]uessed' and 'fancied' pick up on this in turn, and lead straight to Frodo's conclusion that what he thought he saw was not real. Then, from thinking himself 'on the edge of a dream' while on watch, he seems to move into an actual dream once Legolas takes his place. Even without the feeling of dread that had already come over Frodo, it would be hard to describe this dream as anything but a nightmare. It is reminiscent of the dreams Merry and Pippin had in Bombadil's house (FR 1.vii.127-28), and of the parts of Frodo's dreams at Crickhollow and at Bombadil's that touch upon the Black Riders (FR 1.v.108; vii.127).[2]

But Frodo's dreams are often more than merely dreams, as his vision of Gandalf has already revealed (FR 1.vii.127; 2.ii.261). Something is in fact 'approaching, slowly' – note the emphatic comma, of horror – and only Frodo seems at all aware of it. Yet even now the smoothness with which Frodo slips from waking into dreaming and back again casts doubt on the sounds he has heard. Are the whispers in his dream actually the voices of his friends talking to each other while he sleeps? Are they Gollum? Or just a bad dream?

For now, however, these questions remain unanswered because the tale once again leaves Gollum behind, as more urgent and imminent dangers threaten the Fellowship. The day to which Frodo awakes swiftly leads the companions to the Chamber of Mazarbul, to the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm, and the woods of Lothlórien: Frodo and Sam are injured in an attack by Orcs; a Balrog comes; Gandalf falls; and strife briefly flares between Aragorn and Boromir over entering the enchanted wood (2.iv.318-vi.338). Yet just when they have found refuge with the elves and the danger seems to have passed them by – quite literally, the Orcs having pursued them from Moria – the echo that was not an echo, the dream that was not a dream, emerges from the renewed darkness and silence.

There were no more sounds. Even the leaves were silent, and the very falls seemed to be hushed. Frodo sat and shivered in his wraps. He was thankful that they had not been caught on the ground; but he felt that the trees offered little protection, except concealment. Orcs were as keen as hounds on a scent, it was said, but they could also climb. He drew out Sting: it flashed and glittered like a blue flame and then slowly faded again and grew dull. In spite of the fading of his sword the feeling of immediate danger did not leave Frodo, rather it grew stronger. He got up and crawled to the opening and peered down. He was almost certain that he could hear stealthy movements at the tree's foot far below.

Not Elves; for the woodland folk were altogether noiseless in their movements. Then he heard faintly a sound like sniffing: and something seemed to be scrabbling on the bark of the tree-trunk. He stared down into the dark, holding his breath.

Something was now climbing slowly, and its breath came like a soft hissing through closed teeth. Then coming up, close to the stem, Frodo saw two pale eyes. They stopped and gazed upward unwinking. Suddenly they turned away, and a shadowy figure slipped round the trunk of the tree and vanished.

Immediately afterwards Haldir came climbing swiftly up through the branches. 'There was something in this tree that I have never seen before,' he said. 'It was not an orc. It fled as soon as I touched the tree-stem. It seemed to be wary, and to have some skill in trees, or I might have thought that it was one of you hobbits.’

(FR 2.vi.345)

Here again, as in Moria, the silence is profound, and certainty elusive. But doubts about the existence of a pursuer, who here follows in the wake of the Orcs just as in Moria he had preceded them, soon vanish. Whoever the pursuer may be, he is no longer ‘far off,’ but right at hand ‘scrabbling,’ ‘sniffing,’ ‘climbing,’ and ‘hissing.’ As before, he is approaching ‘slowly.’ Only now the ‘two pale points of light’ seen in Moria are not ‘almost like luminous eyes’ (emphasis mine). They are eyes; Frodo has no doubt. With the report of Haldir, we receive not only a confirmation that Frodo was not dreaming in Moria (at least not at first), but also a suggestion that the figure tracking the company was something like a hobbit, which harmonizes with Gandalf’s assertion back in The Shadow of the Past that Gollum was of hobbit kind, a claim that Frodo had rejected as ‘an abominable notion’ (FR 1.ii.54).

One wonders how to read these last details. Frodo would have known better than anyone that Gollum had pale luminous eyes. Not only had he seen Bilbo’s account of his adventures in his book, but he had likely heard Bilbo tell it multiple times, always at length no doubt, most recently at the Council of Elrond (FR 1.v.105; 2.ii.249: ‘at full length’; Hobbit 82, 88, 93-97). Nor is there any sign that Haldir’s innocent comparison of Gollum to a hobbit provoked any reaction in Frodo. With this information Frodo the character should have been able to recognize Gollum.[3] Yet Frodo, both as character and narrator, remains silent, which places the emphasis of this moment on what we can see of the pursuer, who comes close on the heels of the Orcs, who can climb as they do, who has eyes that glow in the darkness, who sniffs after his prey like a Black Rider (FR 1.iii.75-76), and who now comes closer than ever before: to Frodo he seems even more dangerous than the Orcs themselves.[4] He’s seen by the Elves again the following day, apparently in company with the Orcs or close by them when they are destroyed.[5]

Then he is gone again, for the entire duration of their month’s stay in Lothlórien. Not until the companions have been on the Anduin for four days does he reappear, in two consecutive scenes, each of which we will consider in turn.

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. 

That night they camped on a small eyot close to the western bank. Sam lay rolled in blankets beside Frodo. 'I had a funny dream an hour or two before we stopped, Mr. Frodo,' he said. 'Or maybe it wasn't a dream. Funny it was anyway.' 

'Well, what was it?' said Frodo, knowing that Sam would not settle down until he had told his tale, whatever it was. 'I haven't seen or thought of anything to make me smile since we left Lothlórien.' 

'It wasn't funny that way, Mr. Frodo. It was queer. All wrong, if it wasn't a dream. And you had best hear it. It was like this: I saw a log with eyes!' 'The log's all right,' said Frodo. 'There are many in the River. But leave out the eyes!' 

'That I won't,' said Sam. ''Twas the eyes as made me sit up, so to speak. I saw what I took to be a log floating along in the half-light behind Gimli's boat; but I didn't give much heed to it. Then it seemed as if the log was slowly catching us up. And that was peculiar, as you might say, seeing as we were all floating on the stream together. Just then I saw the eyes: two pale sort of points, shiny-like, on a hump at the near end of the log. What's more, it wasn't a log, for it had paddle-feet, like a swan's almost, only they seemed bigger, and kept dipping in and out of the water. 

'That's when I sat right up and rubbed my eyes, meaning to give a shout, if it was still there when I had rubbed the drowse out of my head. For the whatever-it-was was coming along fast now and getting close behind Gimli. But whether those two lamps spotted me moving and staring, or whether I came to my senses, I don't know. When I looked again, it wasn't there. Yet I think I caught a glimpse with the tail of-my eye, as the saying is, of something dark shooting under the shadow of the bank. I couldn't see no more eyes though. 

'I said to myself: "dreaming again, Sam Gamgee," I said, and I said no more just then. But I've been thinking since, and now I'm not so sure. What do you make of it, Mr. Frodo?'

'I should make nothing of it but a log and the dusk and sleep in your eyes Sam,' said Frodo, 'if this was the first time that those eyes had been seen. But it isn't. I saw them away back north before we reached Lorien. And I saw a strange creature with eyes climbing to the flet that night. Haldir saw it too. And do you remember the report of the Elves that went after the orc-band?

'Ah,' said Sam. 'I do; and I remember more too. I don't like my thoughts; but thinking of one thing and another, and Mr. Bilbo's stories and all, I fancy I could put a name on the creature, at a guess. A nasty name. Gollum, maybe?'

'Yes, that is what I have feared for some time,' said Frodo. 'Ever since the night on the flet. I suppose he was lurking in Moria, and picked up our trail then; but I hoped that our stay in Lorien would throw him off the scent again. The miserable creature must have been hiding in the woods by the Silverlode, watching us start off!'

'That's about it,' said Sam. 'And we'd better be a bit more watchful ourselves, or we'll feel some nasty fingers round our necks one of these nights, if we ever wake up to feel anything. And that's what I was leading up to. No need to trouble Strider or the others tonight. I'll keep watch. I can sleep tomorrow, being no more than luggage in a boat, as you might say.'

'I might,' said Frodo, 'and I might say "luggage with eyes". You shall watch; but only if you promise to wake me halfway towards morning, if nothing happens before then.'

(FR 2.ix.382-83)

This scene brings back three elements we’ve seen before: uncertainty about whether the shadowy figure is a dream or real; luminous, lamplike eyes; and the narrowing of the gap between pursuer and pursued. Only now the approach of the pursuer is not ever slow and ever stealthy as it was in Moria or Lothlórien (FR 2.iv.318; vi.345), but is marked by increasing speed. Gollum is not just keeping pace with them, or coming closer while they are stopped. He is overtaking them, ‘coming along fast now,’ up behind an armed party with four warriors, including Aragorn, who had not been ‘gentle’ to him the last time they had met.[6] Here is the measure of Gollum’s desire for the Ring, and consequently of the threat he poses, that he would risk so much to come close to his Precious when he could have no present hope of regaining it.

Now Frodo and Sam’s conversation about Gollum is also quite intriguing. Sam, presented with much the same evidence that Frodo had possessed, quickly concludes that he has seen Gollum and hesitates only momentarily to name him. Frodo at once agrees, revealing that he had ‘feared’ Gollum was on their trail since their first night in Lórien. So Frodo did not fail to identify Gollum, but rather to name him. This initial refusal to name Gollum, especially after Haldir’s reminder that Gollum is a hobbit-like creature, is a quieter echo of the vehemence with which Frodo scorned Gandalf’s suggestion that Gollum was of hobbit kind, that what had befallen him could have befallen others hobbits he had known, and that he was a miserable creature who should be pitied (FR 1.ii.54-55, 59-60). Without a name, Gollum remains a thing, a creature, a shadow, eyes glowing in the darkness; as an uncertainty he may be frightening, but he is also not quite real.[7] Once Sam speaks up, Gollum can no longer be just a bad dream. He becomes a very real threat that Frodo must confront and cannot deny, as the next scene shows.

In the dead hours Frodo came out of a deep dark sleep to find Sam shaking him. 'It's a shame to wake you,' whispered Sam, 'but that's what you said. There's nothing to tell, or not much. I thought I heard some soft plashing and a sniffing noise, a while back; but you hear a lot of such queer sounds by a river at night.'

He lay down, and Frodo sat up, huddled in his blankets, and fought off his sleep. Minutes or hours passed slowly, and nothing happened. Frodo was just yielding to the temptation to lie down again when a dark shape, hardly visible, floated close to one of the moored boats. A long whitish hand could be dimly seen as it shot out and grabbed the gunwale; two pale lamplike eyes shone coldly as they peered inside, and then they lifted and gazed up at Frodo on the eyot. They were not more than a yard or two away, and Frodo heard the soft hiss of intaken breath. He stood up, drawing Sting from its sheath, and faced the eyes. Immediately their light was shut off. There was another hiss and a splash, and the dark log-shape shot away downstream into the night. Aragorn stirred in his sleep, turned over, and sat up. 

'What is it?' he whispered, springing up and coming to Frodo. 'I felt something in my sleep. Why have you drawn your sword?' 

'Gollum,' answered Frodo. 'Or at least, so I guess.' 

'Ah!' said Aragorn. 'So you know about our little footpad, do you? He padded after us all through Moria and right down to Nimrodel. Since we took to boats, he has been lying on a log and paddling with hands and feet. I have tried to catch him once or twice at night; but he is slier than a fox, and as slippery as a fish. I hoped the river-voyage would beat him, but he is too clever a waterman. 

'We shall have to try going faster tomorrow. You lie down now, and I will keep watch for what is left of the night. I wish I could lay my hands on the wretch. We might make him useful. But if I cannot, we shall have to try and lose him. He is very dangerous. Quite apart from murder by night on his own account, he may put any enemy that is about on our track.' 

The night passed without Gollum showing so much as a shadow again. After that the Company kept a sharp look-out, but they saw no more of Gollum while the voyage lasted. If he was still following, he was very wary and cunning.

(FR 2.ix.383-84)

Once again we begin with Frodo struggling on the margins of sleep, between the ‘deep, dark sleep’ from which Sam wakes him and the ‘dark shape, hardly visible’ of Gollum approaching. Suddenly, however, the verbs become more active and forceful. Gollum’s hand ‘shot out and grabbed’; his eyes ‘shone’ and ‘peered.’ He and Frodo are but a few feet apart, looking straight at each other. The threat has never been greater, and Frodo draws his sword.

As with Sam’s naming Gollum, a threshold is crossed when Gollum comes close enough for his eyes to meet Frodo’s. In the first place Frodo is compelled to admit what he must have known; in the second he is compelled to take action against the threat. It is no surprise after this that Frodo, when asked by Strider why he has drawn his sword, tells him straight out. The surprise – which is of course of the head-shaking, chagrined, no-surprise-at-all kind – is that Aragorn knew Gollum was there all along.

Now if we had only one scene in which either Sam or Aragorn had revealed that he knew about Gollum, I would not find that suggestive. But we have two such scenes in succession, involving the two members of the Company whom Frodo trusts and relies upon most now that Gandalf is gone. In a way that will become entirely clear by the end of the next chapter, The Breaking of the Fellowship, Frodo is isolated and alone because of the Ring, much like Gollum who pursues him like some shadow self from a fairy tale.[8] We have seen previously in A Long-Expected Party, The Shadow of the Past, and Many Meetings how the Ring undermines friendship, love, and honesty even in a good person;[9] and even before learning the truth about the Ring, Frodo had come to spend a worrisome amount of time alone.[10] As we have also seen, moreover, Gollum’s ‘longing for the Ring’ and his desire for revenge on the thief who stole his precious draws him to Frodo (FR 1.ii.57-59). So the Ring drives Frodo away from others, just as it brings him and Gollum together.

Aragorn’s last words on Gollum in this scene also merit our scrutiny: ‘Quite apart from murder by night on his own account, he may put any enemy that is about on our track.’ Not only do they exemplify the danger Gollum poses, but they suggest an erratic and irrational enemy who can veer between contradictory extremes.[11] For, knowing how much Sauron wants the Ring back, the last thing Gollum should do is tell the enemy where the Company is. Yet the link between him and the enemy has been established since The Shadow of the Past (FR 1.ii.59); Orcs rescued him from the Elves (FR 2.ii.255-56); and he and the Orcs have never been far from each other since Moria. 

Indeed from this point on cooperation between Gollum and the Orcs is openly assumed. When Aragorn notices several days later that the birds along the River seem strangely disturbed, he ‘wonder[s] if Gollum had been doing some mischief and the news of their voyage was now moving in the wilderness’ (FR 2.ix.385). Later that night Orcs do attack the Company, and Sam has no doubt it is ‘Gollum’s doing’ (FR 2.ix.386). 

On the night the before the Fellowship is broken, though Gollum has ‘remained unseen and unheard,’ Aragorn ‘nonetheless’ is ‘uneasy’ and cannot sleep: sure enough, Sting reveals that Orcs are nearby (FR 2.x.395). ‘Nonetheless’ dismisses Gollum’s seeming absence as irrelevant. The connection between him and the Orcs remains relevant. And the next day Aragorn states plainly and prudently that ‘we must fear that the secret of our journey is already betrayed’ (FR 2.x.402). Everything tends to confirm his earlier assertion that Gollum is ‘very dangerous’ (FR 2.ix.384).

The last passage about Gollum before his full entry into the story in The Taming of Sméagol confirms this connection to the Orcs. Merry and Pippin, captives of Saruman’s Uruk-Hai, finds themselves being searched by Grishnákh, the leader of a contingent of Mordor Orcs who have crossed the Anduin. Realizing that he knows about the Ring, the hobbits decide to play a perilous game with him (TT 3.iii.455):

For a moment Pippin was silent. Then suddenly in the darkness he made a noise in his throat: gollum, gollum. 'Nothing, my precious,' he added.

The hobbits felt Grishnákh's fingers twitch. 'O ho!' hissed the goblin softly. 'That's what he means, is it? O ho! Very ve-ry dangerous, my little ones.'

Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that Grishnákh knows precisely who Gollum is, and has therefore very likely been in contact with him.[12] The Orc had only recently crossed the river and was likely among the Orcs who were present when Legolas shot the Nazgûl from the sky (FR 2.ix.386-87; TT 3.iii.446-47, 451-52). All of what Aragorn said and feared about Gollum appears to be true.

The passages I’ve considered in this study differ from those in A Long-expected Party, The Shadow of the Past, and Many Meetings/The Council of Elrond in one very important way. There, Gollum is always part of someone else’s tale – that of Bilbo, Gandalf, Aragorn, and Legolas, but not of Frodo – and the possibility that he might enter his tale is never more than hinted at. In The Shadow of the Past, for example, Frodo is not yet prepared to accept that ‘we’re in the same tale still’ (TT 4.viii.712), and he resists Gandalf’s attempt to persuade him otherwise almost as vehemently as Bilbo had resisted Gandalf’s attempt to make him let go of the Ring. 

Here, Gollum, complete with all the unsavory and dangerous characteristics previously laid before us, is on the point of entering Frodo’s tale whether he wishes him to or not. He comes shrouded in darkness and shadow, echoes and dreams, passing from the underworld of a long dead and demon-haunted civilization to the borders of an enchanted realm, Lothlórien, the dream-flower, where ‘the ancient things lived on in the waking world’ (FR 2.vi.349).[13] So he approaches Frodo like some dream, or more properly, some nightmare out of the past, which Frodo seems reluctant to admit is real. It is only when Sam confirms his reality, only when Gollum’s hand seizes some tangible, undeniable part of Frodo’s world (FR 2.ix.384), that Frodo has no choice but to confront his existence and respond properly to the threat, by drawing his sword and telling Aragorn. That Strider has known all along, and is grimly amused – ‘Ah…. So you know about our little footpad, do you?’ (FR 2.ix.384) – reveals Frodo’s denial as much as Aragorn’s watchfulness.

So in the final scenes before Gollum at last enters the narrative in The Taming of Sméagol we see him repeatedly portrayed as a dream or a nightmare, a portrayal which seems to mirror the reluctance of Frodo to accept him as part of his tale. But Gollum’s own increasingly close and bold pursuit of the Ring, when added to Sam and Strider’s clearer assessments of the dangers Gollum poses, compel Frodo to face Gollum more like the threat that he is than a nightmare one is trying to shake off. The next time Gollum comes this close to Frodo, about ten days later,[14] all of that danger will be in play, and Frodo, drawing his sword once more, will at last have the chance to take the step he once wished Bilbo had taken on Gollum: ‘What a pity Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!’ (FR 1.ii.59). Yet in those ten days Frodo will experience two events that will allow him to see Gollum differently.

---

[1]  For Frodo the character the source of the footsteps is at this point an unknown, though he will soon enough guess who it is (FR 2.ix.383-84).  Frodo the narrator of course knows well that this is Gollum. The certainty that the footsteps are not imaginary is far more the narrator’s than the character’s.  This will soon change, however.

[2]  In her too brief study, Dream Visions in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien Studies, 3 [2006] 49), Amy M. Amendt-Raduege cites the use of the word ‘snuffling’ in the Crickhollow dream and later of Gollum (TT 4.i.604, 613; vi.688), to support the assertion that Frodo is here dreaming, prophetically, about Gollum.  She ignores, however, that Frodo is dreaming about "creatures" not a "creature," plus, as we all know, Frodo knows there are at least two Black Riders pursuing him by the time he reaches Crickhollow, one of whom seems to rely rather noticeably on his sense of smell (FR 1.iii.75, 76, 78; iv.87).  Frodo's next dream, moreover, clearly identifies the pursuit he fears as the Black Riders (FR 1.vii.127). So, while it is true that Gollum both sniffs (FR 2.ix.345) and snuffles, it seems far more likely that Frodo is dreaming of the immediate and frightening threat posed by the Black Riders.  On ‘creature’ in The Lord of the Rings, where it is used of both Gollum and the Black Riders, see my Again That Vile Creature, with a Special Guest Appearance by Grendel. 

[3] Note the process of elimination in this passage, going forward but leading nowhere. Frodo knows that the creature is not an Elf. Haldir declares that it is not an orc, but something like a hobbit.

[4]  At 2.ix.383 Frodo reveals that he had thought it was Gollum ‘ever since the night on the flet.’

[5] ‘A strange creature also had been seen, running with bent back and with hands near the ground, like a beast and yet not of beast-shape. It had eluded capture, and they had not shot it, not knowing whether it was good or ill, and it had vanished down the Silverlode southward’ (FR 2.vi.349-50).

[6] Not gentle: FR 2.ii.253. Cf. Gollum’s reaction to the mention of Aragorn’s name by Frodo later on: TT 4.iii.643.

[7] On the words ‘thing’ and ‘creature’ in reference to Gollum, see my Two Observations on Gollum's First Appearance at TT 4.i.612-13; That Vile Creature – An Observation Revisited; and Again That Vile Creature, with a Special Guest Appearance by Grendel.

[8] Consider not only Frodo’s solitary confrontation with Boromir and his consequent decision to go to Mordor alone, but the feeling within the Company that Frodo should say whether they should go to Mordor or Minas Tirith, stay together or split up.

As for the role of shadow, there is of course Hans Christian Andersen’s story, The Shadow, but perhaps more relevant would be George MacDonald’s Phantastes in which Anodos, the hero, is stalked and ultimately imprisoned by his own shadow. Peter Pan’s shadow may also be relevant, since the play was quite popular in Tolkien’s youth and he said of a performance he saw of it in 1910:  ‘Indescribable but shall never forget it as long as I live. Wish E[dith] had been with me’, quoted in Carpenter, Tolkien, A Biography (Boston 1977) 47-48.

[9] Three examples will suffice: in A Long-Expected Party Bilbo accuses Gandalf of wanting his Ring and threatens him with his sword (1.i.34); in The Shadow of the Past Gandalf tells Frodo how Sméagol murdered his friend, Déagol, to obtain the Ring and was then driven out by his own family (1.ii.52-54); in Many Meetings Frodo momentarily sees Bilbo as a Gollum-like creature after his Ring and wishes to strike him (2.i.232). For further discussion, see the first, second, and third studies in the present series.

[10] FR 1.ii.42-42: [Frodo] lived alone, as Bilbo had done; but he had a good many friends…. Frodo went tramping all over the Shire with them; but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times, as Bilbo had done.

As time went on, people began to notice that Frodo also showed signs of good ‘preservation’: outwardly he retained the appearance of a robust and energetic hobbit just out of his tweens. ‘Some folk have all the luck,’ they said; but it was not until Frodo approached the usually more sober age of fifty that they began to think it queer.

[11] Contradictions within Gollum where the Ring is concerned are fundamental, and have been long in evidence: ‘He hated and loved it, as he hated and loved himself’ (FR 1.ii.55).

[12] Gollum will later admit to Frodo and Sam that he had in fact spoken to Orcs ‘before he met master,’ but he tries to place it in the context of his travelling far and speaking to ‘many peoples’ (TT ­­4.iii.642).

[13] The ancientry (to borrow a term from Faramir) of Khazad-dûm receives stress of course in Gimli’s song about Durin the Deathless (FR 2.iv.315-317).  Galadriel’s knowledge of how ‘fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dûm in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone’ (FR 2.vii.356); and her echo of the song’s words about the fall of Nargothrond and Gondolin makes clear how ancient she and Celeborn, ‘the Lord of the Galadhrim,’ are also (FR 2.vii.357).

[14] Gollum and Frodo come face to face on the banks of Anduin on the fourth night out of Lothlórien, which the Company departed on 16 February.  Frodo and Sam capture Gollum on the eastern side of the Emyn Muil on 29 February. See Appendix B in RK 1092.