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.

--------------------

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.  

 

Face up, Face down with Gollum and Boethius

Recently I saw someone somewhere inline asking about Gandalf's characterization of Gollum in The Shadow of the Past.  

The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.

            (FR 1.ii.53)

The poster wanted to know what was so wrong about his not looking up but down. The characterization starts off well enough, but it begins to feel like something has gone wrong when it reaches "and he ceased ... air." And the last phrase, singled out and pointed to by the colon, reads like a final verdict in a capital case. So why is downward bad? 

It's part of an old notion that looking up, whether to the heavens or to heaven, is something that distinguishes humans from animals. Off the top of my head I am unsure where it started, but it can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Tolkien was certainly familiar with Plato's Timaeus, which along with the Critias, speaks of Atlantis, and helped inspire Númenor. The description from The Shadow of the Past quoted above makes me think that Tolkien would have more likely been drawing on Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, an exceptionally important work in the Middle Ages in Europe. There is even a translation of it into Old English, which has been attributed to Alfred the Great. It probably wasn't really translated by Alfred himself, however, and it's really more of a reboot than a straighforward translation. Tolkien certainly knew both of these works, each of which contains at a similar moment in its fifth book a poem on this difference between humans and animals. First take a look at my translation of a Latin poem from the fifth book of The Consolation of Philosophy. I include the original after that. I've also tried to keep the translation close to the original, line for line, more or less, if not word for word. It's not, however, a literal translation, and I have not tried putting it into verse.

Creatures of such different shapes wander the earth!

Some lie stretched in the dust and sweep it,

And propelled by the strength of their body

They drag a continuous furrow in the earth.

Others beat the air with their light wandering wings

And swim in liquid flight the vast spaces of the heavens.

Still others happily leave their footprints on the ground

Whether crossing green fields or entering a wood.

All these creatures, you see, differ in shape,

Yet their downward gaze can only weigh down their dull senses.

Mankind alone raises its lofty summit higher,

Stands erect and looks down on the earth as trivial.

Unless you have mud for brains, your human form bids  

You raise up your soul also when with face uplifted

You seek the heavens, lest your mind, weighed down

And inferior, sink down when your body is raised higher.

Quam uariis terras animalia permeant figuris!
Namque alia extento sunt corpore pulueremque uerrunt 
Continuumque trahunt ui pectoris incitata sulcum,
Sunt quibus alarum leuitas uaga uerberetque uentos
Et liquido longi spatia aetheris enatet uolatu,
Haec pressisse solo uestigia gressibusque gaudent
Vel uirides campos transmittere uel subire siluas.
Quae uariis uideas licet omnia discrepare formis,
Prona tamen facies hebetes ualet ingrauare sensus.
Vnica gens hominum celsum leuat altius cacumen
Atque leuis recto stat corpore despicitque terras.
Haec nisi terrenus male desipis, admonet figura,
Qui recto caelum uultu petis exserisque frontem,
In sublime feras animum quoque, ne grauata pessum
Inferior sidat mens corpore celsius leuato.

And now my translation of the Old English, followed by the original:

You might have noticed, if you enjoy such thoughts,

That many different creatures exist on the earth.

They have various colors and modes of movement

And forms of many kinds known and unknown.

Some creep and crawl, their whole body pressed to the earth;

they get no help from feathers, they cannot go on foot,

they cannot, as it is their fate, take pleasure in the earth.

Some others walk the earth on two feet,

some do so on four, some on beating wings

soar under heaven. Yet each of these creatures
inclines to the ground, bends its head down,

looks upon this world, wants from the earth

some necessity, some object of desire.

Man alone of God's creatures goes

with his face directed upwards.

By this it is betokened that his faith

and mind should look more up to heaven

than down, lest he turn his soul downward as a beast does.

It is not fitting that any man's mind

be bent downwards and his face upwards.

Hwæt ðu meaht ongitan, gif his ðe geman lyst,
Þætte mislice manega wuhta
geond eorðan farað ungelice.
Habbað blioh and fær bu ungelice
and mæg-wlitas manega cynna
cuð and uncuð. Creopað and snicað,
eall lichoma eorðan getenge;
nabbað hi æt fiðrum fultum, ne magon hi mid fotum gangan,
Eorð brucan, swa him eaden wæs.
Sume fotum twam foldan peððað,
Sume fierfete, sume fleogende
windað under wolcnum. Bið ðeah wuhta gehwylc
onhnigen to hrusan, hnipað ofdune,
on weoruld wliteð, wilnað to eorðan,
sume nedþearfe, sume neodfræce.

Man ana gæð metodes gesceafta
Mid his andwlitan up on gerihte.
Mid ðy is getacnod þæt his treowa sceal
and his modgeþonc ma up þonne niðer
habban to heofonum, þy læs he his hige wende
niðer swa ðær nyten. Nis þæt gedafenlic
þaet se modsefa monna æniges

niðerheald wese and þæt neb upweard.

So the problem with Gollum looking down all the time is that he has stopped being human and become an animal instead. This is analogous to something Boethius says earlier in The Consolation, that "the man who ceases to be human because he has abandoned goodness, turns into a beast since he cannot be transformed into a godlike state" (4.3). It's also worth remembering how Gollum is sometimes called "it" rather than "he," a "creature," a "thing," and is likened to an insect, a spider, and a dog. In fact, all of these words are used of him throughout The Taming of Sméagol. Fittingly, when Frodo and Sam first see Gollum in this chapter, he is "creeping" and "crawling" down the cliff-face head first, words which echo the sixth line in the Old English poem above: "creopað and snicað." I must admit, however, that I'm disappointed to find that "snicað" does not seem etymologically connected to "sneak." It would be so nice to hear Gollum's response to Sam's accusation of "sneaking" on the stairs: "snicð! snicð!" he hiscte."

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).

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).


_____________

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.

Sméagol-Gollum and the Legacy of Pity, part 2

In my last post I pointed out that the author of 'The Tale of Years' 'sees the moment of final transition from Sméagol-Gollum to Gollum in his loss of the Ring to Bilbo'. What I did not note there, but will add now, is that Gollum would agree with this assessment. When Frodo addresses him as Sméagol, Gollum replies:

Don't ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now.'

        (TT 4.i.616)

From these words it would appear that for Gollum, Sméagol somehow continued to exist until he lost the Ring to Bilbo. Gollum seems to scorn him -- the verb describing how Gollum spoke the words in this paragraph is 'cackled'. So we should not mistake his tone in the words I've quoted. There's no sign that he has slipped back into the self-pity of earlier paragraphs, where he sobs and whimpers. The next exchange in the conversation confirms this. 

'Perhaps we'll find him again, if you come with us,' said Frodo.

'No, no, never! He's lost his Precious,' said Gollum.

Gollum is as firm here (and perhaps as judgmental) as Frodo was in The Shadow of the Past when Gandalf suggested that Frodo did not pity Gollum because he had not seen him:

‘I am sorry,’ said Frodo. ‘But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.’

‘You have not seen him,’ Gandalf broke in.

‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’ 

No doubt it was Sméagol, the last of him, that remembered the sun on daisies, at which Gollum, the evil part, grew angry. 

Sméagol-Gollum and the legacy of Pity.

It was some years ago that I first noted differences in the use of the names Sméagol and Gollum. Gandalf only calls him Sméagol when he is trying to persuade Frodo that he is pitiable. Frodo addresses him as Sméagol, but refers to him as Gollum. The Tale of Years in Appendix B, moreover, cleverly signals the changes in him by referring to him differently at different times. He is Sméagol until he murders Déagol for the Ring; then Sméagol-Gollum until he loses the Ring to Bilbo; and always Gollum thereafter.

2463: About this time Déagol the Stoor finds the One Ring, and is murdered by Sméagol.

2470. About this time Sméagol-Gollum hides in the Misty Mountains.

2941: Bilbo meets Sméagol-Gollum and finds the Ring. 

2944: Gollum leaves the Mountains and begins his search for the 'thief' of the Ring

2951: Gollum turns towards Mordor. 

2980: About this time Gollum reaches the confines of Mordor and becomes acquainted with Shelob. 

3001. Bilbo's farewell feast. Gandalf suspects his ring to be the One Ring. The guard on the Shire is doubled. Gandalf seeks for news of Gollum and calls on the help of Aragorn.

3009: Gandalf and Aragorn renew their hunt for Gollum at intervals during the next eight years, searching in the vales of Anduin, Mirkwood, and Rhovanion to the confines of Mordor. At some time during these years Gollum himself ventured into Mordor, and was captured by Sauron. 

3017: Gollum is released from Mordor. He is taken by Aragorn in the Dead Marshes, and brought to Thranduil in Mirkwood. 

About 20 June 3018: Gollum escapes [captivity in Thranduil's realm]

August 3018: All trace of Gollum is lost. It is thought that at about this time, being hunted both by the Elves and Sauron's servants, he took refuge in Moria; but when he had at last discovered the way to the West-gate he could not get out

13 January 3019: Gollum begins to trail the Ring-bearer.

16 February 3019: Gollum in hiding on the west bank observes the departure.

29 February 3019: Frodo descends from the Emyn Muil and meets Gollum.

11 March 3019: Gollum visits Shelob, but seeing Frodo asleep nearly repents.

12 March 3019: Gollum leads Frodo into Shelob's lair.

25 March 3019: Gollum seizes the Ring and falls in the Cracks of Doom. 

Note that from the first his identity as a Hobbit, and in particular a Stoor, like Déagol, is suggested. Note also the reference to his near repentance. Details like these disclose the hand of an author who, so far from merely portraying him as a villain, recognized his humanity, his kinship as a Hobbit, and agreed with Gandalf that Gollum's was a sad story. As the use of the different terms indicates, this author gave some thought to the journey from Hobbit to monster; and sees  the moment of final transition from Sméagol-Gollum to Gollum in his loss of the Ring to Bilbo. Even if the Prologue (14) did not inform us that the appendices were added in Westmarch in the Shire, it would be easy to guess that the author was a Hobbit with some personal connection to the story, likely a Fairbairn and a descendant of Master Samwise, who awoke at the crucial moment on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol and 'blighted' (as Tolkien himself said) Gollum's last chance for repentance. Even in that instant Sam knew he had been wrong to be as harsh as he was to Gollum. 

What the presence of these various descriptions of Gollum in Appendix B tells us is quite moving. It tells us that the pity which Frodo and even Sam came to feel for Gollum was handed down as an enduring legacy to Sam's descendants, and that among them it continued to be thought meaningful. It speaks to the forgiveness Frodo told Sam they should show Gollum since the quest could not have been achieved without him. Even if Gollum remained the villain of the story, some would remember that the sad story of Sméagol lurked behind that of Gollum.

The limits of pity and mercy -- an excerpt from 'To Rule the Fate of Many'

 

        As close as Frodo comes to a fall, however, he never carries out his desires or threats. Unlike Sméagol with Déagol, he does not strike Bilbo or murder Sam, even though they appeared less than human to him in the moment when he saw them as a threat to his possession of the Ring. Conversely, he does not kill Gollum when he has the chance – and justification since Gollum is throttling Sam – because his own experience of the Ring has led Frodo to see him as a person, not a creature, and to pity him. It is at first curious that Frodo does not kill Gollum in their first encounter on Mt Doom, in which he has the upper hand and all pity is gone. Stranger still is how alike his threats here and outside the Black Gate are: death in the fires of Mt Doom. It is almost as if he recalls the first threat while making the second and wishes to remind Gollum of it, too. Though he cannot remember wind or water, tree or grass or flower, the evil thought that with the Ring he has the power to see Gollum cast into the ‘Fire of Doom’ has not faded. But Frodo’s words here outside the Sammath Naur indicate that he regards Gollum as a despised nuisance. Contempt spares Gollum now, just as pity had done before and will soon do again.

        Even so, it is the power of the Ring which has turned Frodo’s pity into contempt and upon which is founded Gollum’s unquenchable ‘lust and rage’. What is the significance of a moral force that can succeed only with the timely assistance of chance that was no chance at all? Its quality is not denied by failure, nor by its success in setting the stage for eucatastrophe. For pity, ‘defeat is no refutation’. In Letter 246, from 1963, Tolkien noted that Frodo’s ‘exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.’ The difference between ‘mercy’ and ‘Mercy’ is worth noting. Earthly pity and mercy could not accomplish the destruction of the Ring, but they were repaid in Pity and Mercy. The redress is that he fails but does not fall. He is delivered from evil. Yet the limits of the pity and mercy of this world stand revealed.

---

Wile E. Coyote and the One Ring

 What does Wile E. Coyote have to do with the One Ring? Consider the words of Gandalf in The Shadow of the Past:

It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him....

The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!

Thus Gandalf provides us with the strongest argument for the supposed agency and sentience of the One Ring. Let us review, however, the events the old wizard is summarizing:

1. The Ring leaves Isildur as he is swimming across a great river, at the bottom of which it remains lost for 2,500 years.
2. Discovered by Déagol, it is taken from him by his murderer, Gollum, who hides in the dark beneath the Misty Mountains with it for another 500 years.
3. Finding Gollum no longer useful -- after 500 years in the dark beneath the Misty Mountains -- it fell out of his pocket to lie on the ground in the same dark beneath those same Misty Mountains, until someone should happen by to pick it up.

If we believe that the Ring consciously chose to leave Isildur, consciously chose Sméagol over Déagol as more apt, and consciously chose to fall out of Gollum's pocket, then the Ring is an idiot on a par with Wile E. Coyote. Every choice the Ring makes ends like one of the Coyote's plans to catch the Road Runner. 

 More to come.

And, yes, Wile E. Coyote does look like he's holding onto a finger.

'Der mentsh* trakht un got lakht': Divine Irony and the Ring Verse.

 Just this morning I was reflecting on the incantatory lines at the heart of the Ring verse:

One Ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

The emphatically repeated 'them' refers as much to the bearers of the other Rings of Power as it does to the Rings themselves. The intent to enslave the bearers was imperfectly realized of course, except in the case of Men. It occurs to me, however, that these verses also reflect the relations of the three agents of the eucatastrophe at Mt Doom, Frodo, Gollum, and Sam, all of whom of course are Ringbearers. The Ring brought them all together and bound them in the literal darkness of Mordor. Frodo 'wouldn't have got far without Sam' (TT 4.viii.712) and 'but for [Gollum]' Frodo 'could not have destroyed the Ring' (RK 6.iii.947). Frodo, however, 'was meant to have the Ring' as much as Bilbo had been (FR 1.ii.55), but it was not the maker of the Ring who intended this.

'[T]here was something else at work', as Gandalf tells Frodo. That 'something' read the Ring verse ironically, in a sense no one else grasped, much like the words that in truth prophesied the Witch-king's death rather than his invulnerability. Just as Éowyn, Merry, and the barrow-blade were brought together as if by chance to belie the obvious meaning of 'not by the hand of man shall he fall' (RK 5.vi.840; App. A 1051), so too, the coming together of Frodo, Gollum, and Sam at Mt Doom reveals new meaning in the Ring verse. 

It is a new meaning such as Eru prophesied to Melkor before the world was made (Silm. 17) :

'.... And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

____________________

*The use of this word here should not be taken to imply that Sauron was ever a mentsh to anyone, anywhere, at any time. 

From Lady Philosophy to Gollum: 'The roots of those mountains must be roots indeed' (FR 1.ii.54)

In telling Gollum's story to Frodo, Gandalf introduces him as follows:

'Long after, but still very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors, for they loved the River, and often swam in it, or made little boats of reeds. There was among them a family of high repute, for it was large and wealthier than most, and it was ruled by a grandmother of the folk, stern and wise in old lore, such as they had. The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.'

(FR 1.ii.62)

The scene starts out like a fairy tale, and all seems well and good as we begin the transition from the formidable matriarch of the family to her grandson. The initial shine imparted by 'most inquisitive and curious-minded' is more glitter than gold, however. For the first often means not just 'curious' but 'unduly or impertinently curious; prying', and the second 'having a curious or inquisitive or strange mind'. 'Curious', too, often has a condemnatory sense: '[d]esirous of knowing what one has no right to know, or what does not concern one, prying'. From here, it is literally and metaphorically downhill. Yet it is more than simply that. Sam, being a gardener, also has his head and eyes turned downwards, often but not always. He has not forgotten what is above. He could never have seen that star above Mordor, had he done so, never have taken from it the lesson of hope and beauty that he did. 

It also seems clear that, however we may construe what happens when he first sees the Ring, Sméagol had begun this 'descent' of his own free will before that day in The Gladden Fields. His choice prepared him for the secrets hidden beneath the Ring's precious beauty. The comfortless dark beneath the Misty Mountains, within which he sought to hide from the light of the sun, was already within him.

All of this makes the following passage from Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy (5 pr. 2) seem rather apposite:

'But [I asked] in this series of closely connected causes is there any freedom of choice for us, or does the chain of Fate constrain the very impulses of human minds, too?'

'There is freedom of choice', [Philosophy] said. 'For no rational nature could exist without freedom of choice being present in it. That which can employ reason of its own nature has the judgement by which it discerns one thing from another; on its own, therefore, it recognizes the difference between what is to be shunned and what is to be desired. Truly what a man judges desirable he pursues, and truly he flees what he thinks must be shunned. So in those creatures in whom reason exists, there is also the freedom of willing and not willing. But I claim that this freedom is not equal in all creatures. 

'For in higher and divine beings there is at hand a penetrating judgement and a will uncorrupted and the power to achieve what is desired. Human souls must be freer in truth when they maintain themselves in contemplation of the divine mind, truly less free when they are dispersed to bodies, and even less so when they are bound to earthly flesh and blood. Truly extreme is their slavery when they have surrendered to their faults and fallen from the possession of their proper reason. For when they cast down their eyes from the light of the highest truth to dark and lower things, at once they live blind in a cloud of ignorance, and are ruined by destructive passions, by yielding and agreeing to which they foster the slavery they have brought upon themselves, and in a certain way, they are captives because of their own freedom. Nevertheless the gaze of Providence, looking out from eternity, descries all these things and establishes what is predestined according to their merits.'

The interplay of free will and Providence in Boethius and Tolkien deserve more attention than I will give it here, especially that final sentence which seems to indicate that what is predestined for us is what we have deserved. That is what is interesting here, not that 'aha! Tolkien's source for this portrayal is in Boethius!'. Quellenforschung, though fun for kids of all ages, needs to earn its keep here by answering the question: 'So what?'.  Here we can see the choices of all those who possess the Ring, or wish to, or fear to, reflected in the descent that Boethius describes. 

That is an essay for another day. It is worth noting, however, the connection between Boethius and Tolkien does not stop with the words I've just quoted above. For the next section, which is in verse, not only confirms the link, because Sméagol-Gollum seeks to hide from the Sun (personified with the capital letter) beneath the Misty Mountains: 'The Sun could not watch me there' (FR 1.ii.54). And perhaps the sun could not, and the Eye could not, but the swift glance of the mind of Ilúvatar could and did.

''All things he sees and all he hears"

Sang honey-voiced Homer 

Of bright Apollo with his clear light;

Yet he cannot break through the inmost

Bowels of the earth or sea with the 

Weak illumination of his rays.

Not so the Founder of the Great World:

To Him as He looks upon all things from above

The Earth with its mass is no obstacle;

Night does not block the stars with its mists;

What is, what was, and what is to come

He perceives with His mind in a single glance;

Since He alone looks upon all things,

You could say that He is the true sun.

(Cons. 5 m. ii)

__________________________

'sed in hac haerentium sibi serie causarum estne ulla nostri arbitrii libertas an ipsos quoque humanorum motus animorum fatalis catena constringit?' 

'est', inquit; 'neque enim fuerit ulla rationalis natura quin eidem libertas adsit arbitrii. nam quod ratione uti naturaliter potest id habet iudicium quo quidque discernat; per se igitur fugienda optandaue dinoscit. quod uero quis optandum esse iudicat petit, refugit uero quod aestimat esse fugiendum. quare quibus in ipsis inest ratio etiam uolendi nolendique libertas, sed hanc non in omnibus aequam esse constituo. nam supernis diuinisque substantiis et perspicax iudicium et incorrupta uoluntas et efficax optatorum praesto est potestas. humanas uero animas liberiores quidem esse necesse est cum se in mentis diuinae speculatione conseruant, minus uero cum dilabuntur ad corpora, minusque etiam cum terrenis artubus colligantur. extrema uero est seruitus cum uitiis deditae rationis propriae possessione ceciderunt. nam ubi oculos a summae luce ueritatis ad inferiora et tenebrosa deiecerint, mox inscitiae nube caligant, perniciosis turbantur affectibus, quibus accedendo consentiendoque quam inuexere sibi adiuuant seruitutem et sunt quodam modo propria libertate captiuae. quae tamen ille ab aeterno cuncta prospiciens prouidentiae cernit intuitus et suis quaeque meritis praedestinata disponit.'

Πάντ᾽ ἐφορᾶν καὶ πάντ᾽ ἐπακούειν
puro clarum lumine Phoebum
melliflui canit oris Homerus;
qui tamen intima uiscera terrae
non ualet aut pelagi radiorum
infirma perrumpere luce.
haud sic magni conditor orbis:
huic ex alto cuncta tuenti
nulla terrae mole resistunt,
non nox astris nubibus obstat; 
quae sint, quae fuerint ueniantque
uno mentis cernit in ictu;
quem quia respicit omnia solus
uerum possis dicere solem.

Again, sternly, 'with other vision' (RK 6.iii.945)

In my post on this subject on 9 May 2020 I did not comment on Sam's use of 'stern' to describe how he saw Frodo 'with other vision' both in the Emyn Muil and on Mt Doom. The persistence of this single word unaltered, while the rest of the description changes and darkens, makes it stand out quite proudly when comparing the two visions. Here are the relevant phrases once more:

a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud

(TT 4.i.618)

stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire.

(RK 6.iii.945)

Sternness is of course commonly associated with a kingly or authoritative manner or appearance. Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir, Faramir, Denethor, Théoden, and Éowyn are all called stern. Frodo is repeatedly called stern as he tries to tame Gollum by means of the Ring (TT 4.i.616, 618 twice;.iii.640, 643). Yet the word has another sense, one long obsolete and unfamiliar to most people today. In Middle and Early Modern English, in authors from Layamon to Shakespeare, it could also mean merciless or cruel. We need look no farther than Tolkien’s own edition of Ancrene Wisse for two most pertinent examples of precisely this sense of the word:

‘He dude him seoluen bitweonen us & his feader þe þreatte us forte smiten ase moder þe is reowðful deð hire bitweonen hire child ant te wraðe sturne feader hwen he hit wule beaten.’

‘He put himself between us and his Father who was threatening to smite us, just as a mother who is merciful puts herself between her child and the wrath of a stern father when he wishes to beat him’.

(187/17-20)

In this first passage we see the sturne feader contrasted with the moder þe is reowðful. Given the father's intent and the mother's compassion or mercy, 'cruel' would be accurately render sturne here. 

Rihtwisnesse, he seið, mot beo nede sturne, ant þus he liteð cruelte wið heow of rihtwisnesse. Me mei beon al to riht wis. Noli esse iustus nimis. In ecclesiaste.

‘Justice’, he says, ‘must necessarily be stern’, and thus he dyes cruelty with the hue of righteousness. But one may be all too righteous. ‘Be not excessively just.’ [It says] in Ecclesiastes.

(138/16-18)

That ‘untouchable now by pity’ follows 'stern' immediately further argues that by the time they reach Mt Doom Frodo’s sternness has gone beyond righteousness towards cruelty. For given the cardinal importance Gandalf assigned to pity and mercy in The Shadow of the Past, a lesson Frodo refused to learn until his own sufferings and the wretchedness of Gollum taught him otherwise, to be beyond pity’s touch simply cannot be good. 

Moreover, there is less to Frodo’s appearing to be ‘a figure robed in white’ than meets the eye. In the Emyn Muil Sam saw him as ‘a mighty lord’ who shone with a light from within, something Sam and Gandalf have seen Frodo do before. Here on Mt. Doom the most important element in the vision is the Wheel of Fire. Here it is the Ring which blazes with a light of its own and which has transfigured the ‘mighty lord’ into an indistinct ‘figure’, an ‘it’ rather than a person. 

The whiteness which robes the figure is also ambiguous, since whiteness can be deceiving. When Frodo becomes able to see beneath the cloaks of the Black Riders, he sees them and their clothing as grey and white (FR 1.xi.195; xii.213). Saruman the White also appears white, when he is so no longer. The dismissive 'but' that follows at once identifies the Wheel of Fire as by far the more important detail. In the end the Wheel is what remains, and thus it is from the Wheel that the voice seems to speak, loud and cruel. 

I'll show myself out (RK 6.iii.946)

'Precious, precious, precious!' Gollum cried. 'My Precious! O my Precious!' And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone. 

(RK 6.iii.946)

'Precious' six times and 'my' twice, which certainly makes clear his view of things:


'Methinks I could not die anywhere
so contented as in the [R]ing's company'

(Henry V 4.i.130-31).

I'll show myself out.

'With other vision' (RK 6.iii.945)

While working on the scenes at Mt Doom lately, I have been staring a lot at the passage quoted just below, and reflecting on the description of what Sam sees here 'with other vision'. The phrase 'a figure robed in white' (all italics mine) at first glance seems to be positive, and thus is not well-matched to the obviously negative phrases on either side of it.

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.  

(RK 6.iii.945)

This passage also directs our attention back to the scene in the Emyn Muil where Sam first saw Frodo and Gollum 'with other vision'. 

For a moment it appeared to Sam that his master had grown and Gollum had shrunk: a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog. 

(TT 4.i.618)

Frodo, as Sam sees him in these two moments, has changed from 'a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud' to a 'figure robed in white'. In each scene what Sam sees is very much tied up with the power of the Ring, by which Frodo is seeking to dominate Gollum. In the Emyn Muil Frodo is doing so for the first time. In the second, they are on the slopes of Mt Doom not far from the Chambers of Fire. As they have gotten closer to the place of the Ring's forging and as Frodo has been slowly worn down by the burden of it, what Sam sees has changed from a mostly positive image to a mostly negative image. The first Frodo sounds more like Gandalf or Aragorn, the pitilessness of the second at once declares a crucial difference, as does his whiteness, which is undermined by its being external and denied by the Wheel of Fire. Even Sam can see it now. The liturgy of their sufferings between the Emyn Muil and the Sammath Naur has changed them, master and servant alike. In the first Sam regards Frodo with admiration and Gollum with contempt. In the second he looks upon them both in sorrow and pity. 

That Sam comes to view his master with pity is hardly a surprise. That in one instant he comes to pity Gollum and to see the disturbing truth of the effect of the Ring on Frodo -- that he is beyond pity and embracing the Ring -- is more remarkable. It also inevitably directs the reader back to the scene on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, in which Gollum is on the point of repentance, but Sam wakes and misunderstands what he is seeing. He rebukes Gollum, but the reader knows he is wrong to do so because the narrator has allowed the reader to see with other vision the truth of this scene.

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing. 

(TT 4.ix.714)

Nor should we allow 'robed in white' to dupe us into thinking that the whiteness must betoken goodness, or that Sam takes it as such (though he has misjudged others, too, in protecting Frodo). Aside from the phrases before and after 'robed in white', our thoughts should quickly turn to Saruman the White, the color of whose robe had been first a lie and then an illusion for quite some time. More relevant here, however, is what Frodo sees at Weathertop, while wearing the Ring, and then at the Ford of Bruinen, while almost in the world of the wraiths himself because of the wound he suffered at Weathertop. He finds he can see beneath the robes of the Black Riders.

In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes;

(FR 1.xi.195)

 and

He could see them clearly now: they appeared to have cast aside their hoods and black cloaks, and they were robed in white and grey. 

(FR 1.xii.213)

There's obviously a great deal more to say about all of these passages and how they fit into the larger picture of how the Ring affects those bearing it and near it as well. For now, the lack of harmony within Sam's vision on Mt Doom is a clue to his own uneasiness about what he's seeing in Frodo moments before he claims the Ring for himself.

Almost the touch was a caress -- TT 4.viii.714

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing. 

(TT 4.viii.714)

This paragraph is so remarkable rhetorically that examining it in great detail will repay the effort. Let's take it a sentence at a time.

1. Gollum looked at them. (4)

2. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face.(9)

3. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. (15)

4. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. (28)

5. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee – but almost the touch was a caress. (24)

6. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.(51)

By separating the sentences as I have done, something becomes immediately clear even without counting the words. Five sentences out of the six are significantly longer than the sentences before them. But the sentences do not just get longer. They become more complicated.

The first sentence has a subject, a verb, and a prepositional phrase. The second has the same structure, but by the addition of two adjectives it evokes an archetypal figure of treachery to a benefactor -- 'Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look' (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.2.195). The third sentence begins exactly as the first two did (subject, verb, prepositional phrase), but adds a second coordinate clause, with four adjectives in rhythmic alliterative pairs to expand upon the first clause. In doing so, the third sentence answers the suggestion of the second: Gollum's lightless eyes reveal only weariness and age.

The fourth sentence is not just compound, but in its second part becomes complex, using three subordinate clauses ('peering...shaking...as if....') to illuminate the action of its first half. It anticipates the betrayal the reader knows is coming and seems to recapitulate silently the debate Sam overheard in the Dead Marshes.

'Then he came back’, the first four words of the fifth sentence, act like a hinge at the paragraph's center, pivoting the Tale away from treachery, and towards the repentance if not the redemption, which the complex, heavily modified second clause and the blunt, breathtaking third declare to be possible at this instant. The dash before 'but' and the emphatic displacement of 'almost' draw the reader's attention like a manicule to the difference between the 'caress' of Gollum's 'trembling hand' here and the 'long fingers flexed and twitching, claw[ing] towards [Frodo's] neck' at the end of the earlier debate (TT 4.ii.634). Here, too, the betrayal hinted at by the 'interior debate' of the fourth sentence is answered by the 'almost the touch was a caress'.

The sixth sentence sweeps up all the long years of Gollum's life into one astonishingly poignant 'fleeting moment'. It depicts that moment for the reader by means of an exceptionally long and complex sentence in the form of a condition contrary to fact. It imagines a circumstance which did not arise and a sight which was not seen, except by the reader; and yet the reader's vision of Gollum here, echoing Bilbo's vision of Gollum in The Hobbit, feels right and true. Recall that the narrator of The Lord of the Rings is usually Frodo and sometimes Sam, not some omniscient third person. As the narrator tells us, they were both asleep. How then can the reader see this if they did not? (A fascinating question I will address elsewhere.) For the moment we will content ourselves with the thought that the prose here is so rhetorically powerful that it can persuade the readers that they have seen something which, except for the last gesture, no one in the book could have seen or told of. 

__________

Here are a few nice touches to be found in this paragraph.

The first word is 'Gollum', and the last is 'thing', which in apposition with 'hobbit'.

Saying that Gollum was 'shrunken' by the years might be meant to call to mind the Cumaean Sibyl, who shrank as she lived on and on without dying.

The last four words -- 'old starved pitiable thing' -- may be scanned as a spondee, a dactyl, and a spondee, which gives a nice, rhythmic ending to the paragraph, a trick of ancient rhetoric Tolkien will have learned in school.

First Steps into Ithilien (TT 4.iv.648-52)

Another excerpt from To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity, and the Ring of Power, a much longer work I am writing at present.

If much of what we have seen in the first three chapters of Book Four traces a descent for Frodo, the next three chapters will show his path turn upward again. For the pity he showed Gollum is Frodo at his best, and confirms the good opinion Gandalf and Bilbo have of him. Soon, though, and in the name of his quest he uses the Ring to dominate a Gollum whom he would not kill and could not set loose. With use, the burden of the Ring increases until in doubt and despair he terrorizes Gollum with the threat of what he, as master of the Precious, would compel him to do ‘in the last need’. This is Frodo at his worst. His vaunting of his power over Gollum here is little different than Boromir’s boast as he tried to seize the Ring: ‘For I am too strong for you, halfling’. That neither Boromir nor Frodo can make good on his threat reveals once more the deception that lies at the heart of any experience of the Ring.

The green memory of the Shire, stirred by Sam’s recitation of Oliphaunt in the choking wasteland before the Black Gate, marks a turning point. It allows Frodo to reclaim some of his humanity, and with it some small hope. For his wish that the ‘third time may turn the best’ desires more than the transactional trust that has subsisted between him and Gollum thus far, an outcome possible only if they also ‘find Sméagol’ and Gollum reclaims his humanity.

Parallel to Frodo’s ascent in these chapters is his departure from ‘the desolation that lay before Mordor’ and entry into ‘Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate’ which ‘kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness’ (TT 4.iv.650). No one who has read The Lord of the Rings with the least attention needs to be reminded of this shift, so aptly described in the two phrases just quoted: from a ‘desolation’, where ‘nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness’ (TT 4.ii.631) to a ‘garden … now desolate’, that is to say, a garden where no one lived.[1] Tolkien’s remarkable selection of the word ‘dryad’ here evokes the immanent loveliness of the land by conjuring the reader’s understanding of the minor deities who lived in the woodlands of Greek Mythology. When we recall that the Old English for ‘dryad’ was ‘ælfen’[2] and that the narrative has been hinting at fairy tales for some time, we can see that the relief and recovery Frodo first experienced upon hearing Sam recite the ‘old fireside rhyme’, Oliphaunt, will continue in Ithilien.[3] But there are no Elves in Ithilien. To Frodo and Sam its woodlands smell of ‘the uplands of the Northfarthing far away’, that is, they smell of home, unlike the woods through which Bilbo passed on his approach to Rivendell eighty year earlier (H 90-91). For the first time in quite a while the hearts of the hobbits are lightened.

Sam and Frodo also feel themselves ‘reprieved’ by being there (TT 4.iv.648-49). Again we encounter a remarkable choice of words. Tolkien uses ‘reprieve’ only here, at the beginning of a section which ends with another, more formal, reprieve, as Faramir and Frodo revisit the question of Gollum’s deserts; and in fact Faramir spares Frodo and Sam the full weight of the law of the land (TT 4.vi.689-93). For even to walk in Ithilien is a capital crime for those not in the service of Gondor. Given Frodo’s words to Gildor about walking ‘in our own Shire’  (FR 1.iii.83), it is likely a measure of the horrors from which they have just emerged that two hobbits of the benignly anarchic Shire do not see this situation as the world-turned-upside-down.

Yet it is just such a world, in which Sam prepares a bit of home-cooking for Frodo as he sleeps just uphill from ‘a pile of charred and broken bones and skulls’, a ‘place of dreadful feast and slaughter’ (TT 4.iv.651). Here, too, Sam and Gollum banter like old comrades about coneys and taters despite their dislike of each other. Both look upon the sleeping Frodo, Sam seeing the same light welling from within him more clearly than he had seen it – we now learn – back in Rivendell (TT 4.iv.652) and which then gave Gandalf the hope that Frodo would become ‘like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can’ (FR 2.i.223). What Gollum sees as he looks at Frodo over Sam’s shoulder we never learn – much as we never learn what Bilbo saw in Frodo’s face in Rivendell which led him to say ‘I understand now…. I am sorry’ (FR 2.i.232) – but if he sees the same light Sam does, he has also ‘shut his eyes and crawled away without a sound’ (TT 4.iv.652). Strikingly juxtaposed with Sam’s expression of love and the light of Frodo, it is a poignant reminder both of the isolation imposed by the Ring and the longing for ‘the sun on daisies’ that may lie long hidden even in the darkest heart.

---

[1] See OED ‘desolate’, adj. and noun, 5 and 6a,which ‘are often combined in actual use’.

[2] For discussion of ‘ælfen’, its use to translate Latin ‘dryas’, and its close kin ‘ælf’, see Alaric Hall, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England (2007). Page numbers to follow once I get home to my bookcase. 

[3] Besides Gollum’s ‘once upon a time’ (TT 4.iii.638), he speaks of ‘wonderful tales’ which ‘we used to tell in the evening, sitting by the banks of the Great River, in the willow-lands, when the River was younger too’ (TT 4.iii.641). These Sam answers with memories of tales the hobbits in the Shire knew, in particular the Oliphaunt (TT 4.iii.646-47). This leads Frodo to imagine a fairy-tale ending: Gandalf, whom he thinks dead, breaks down the Black Gate at the head of a thousand oliphaunts, which he believes mythical (TT 4.iii.647).

Frodo, Boromir, and the Ring: Two Parallels in Characterization

Although we don't often think of Frodo and Boromir as alike, in critical situations with the Ring both react in similar ways.

1)

Boromir:

These half-elves and wizards, they would come to grief perhaps. Yet often I doubt if they are wise and not merely timid.  

(FR 2.x.398, emphasis added)

Frodo:

But into Mordor ... had [Gandalf] ever journeyed there? And here he was a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. 

(TT 4.iii.644, emphasis added)

2)

Boromir:

'Why not get rid of it? Why not be free of your doubt and fear? You can lay the blame on me, if you will. You can say that I was too strong and took it by force. For I am too strong for you, halfling,' he cried; and suddenly he sprang over the stone and leaped at Frodo.  

(FR 2.x.399, emphasis added)

Frodo:

'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, first emphasis original)

In the first set of passages both question the wisdom and courage of Gandalf, among others. In the second set both have violent responses to the question of possessing the Ring. Both are mistaken in their threats and opinions; and both are deceived by the pull of the Ring on their desires.

Two Threats from Frodo

First let's take a look at two passages from Book Four

Things would have gone ill with Sam, if he had been alone. But Frodo sprang up, and drew Sting from its sheath. With his left hand he drew back Gollum’s head by his thin lank hair, stretching his long neck, and forcing his pale venomous eyes to stare up at the sky. 

‘Let go! Gollum,’ he said. ‘This is Sting. You have seen it before once upon a time. Let go, or you’ll feel it this time! I’ll cut your throat.’ 

Gollum collapsed and went as loose as wet string. Sam got up, fingering his shoulder. His eyes smouldered with anger, but he could not avenge himself: his miserable enemy lay grovelling on the stones whimpering. 

TT 4.i.614

and

About an hour after midnight the fear fell on them a third time, but it now seemed more remote, as if it were passing far above the clouds, rushing with terrible speed into the West. Gollum, however, was helpless with terror, and was convinced that they were being hunted, that their approach was known. 

‘Three times!’ he whimpered. ‘Three times is a threat. They feel us here, they feel the Precious. The Precious is their master. We cannot go any further this way, no. It’s no use, no use!’ 

Pleading and kind words were no longer of any avail. It was not until Frodo commanded him angrily and laid a hand on his sword-hilt that Gollum would get up again. Then at last he rose with a snarl, and went before them like a beaten dog. 

TT 4.iii.635

The second of these threats, which took place the night before they reached the Black Gate, is far different than the threat he made in the Emyn Muil. There Sam’s life was clearly in jeopardy, and Frodo’s response justified (TT 4.i.614). Yet had he simply struck Gollum down without warning in defense of Sam, not even Gandalf could have said that he was ‘eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for [his] own safety’ (TT 4.i.615). To use violence, however, or the threat of it merely to compel obedience is an act of terror more suited to an orc chieftain, like Uglúk in Book Three, or to a master of slaves, like Sauron, than it is like the brave hobbit who would not abandon his friends in the barrow a few months earlier, or who held out to Gollum the hope that Sméagol might be found again only a little while after he had threatened him to save Sam’s life. Between that threat and that hope came pity; between that hope and the latter threat came the increasing burden of the Ring, which was made to dominate others. Much is in flux within Frodo as the Ring pulls him one way and his sense of his mission pulls him the other. Within Gollum, too.*

________________________________

*This paragraph is adapted from a chapter in a much larger work I am writing called (at least for now): To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity, and the Ring of Power.

The Dark Lord's Bread and Butter -- 'He'll eat us all'

'Don't take the Precious to Him! He'll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world.' 

(TT 4.iii.637)

Whether by chance or by design two prominent traits of Hobbits converge in Bilbo's likening of himself at the Ring-enhanced age of eleventy-one to 'butter that has been scraped over too much bread' (FR 1.i.32). The first is of course the Hobbits' well-known love of food. The other is their habit of jesting about serious matters. As Merry says to Aragorn in The Houses of Healing

'But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.' 

(RK 5.viii.870)

What makes this fascinating is that in The Shadow of the Past, the very chapter after Bilbo makes his comparison, we find Gandalf comparing the action of the Ring and of Sauron himself to eating and devouring no less than four times (FR 1.ii.47, twice on 55, 57). We find the same in Faramir's description of what had happened to the nine men given Rings of Power by Sauron: 'he had devoured them' (TT 4.vi.692); and elsewhere he calls Sauron 'a destroyer who would devour all' (TT 4.v.672). And as we saw in the quote with which I began, Gollum, too, saw things in similar terms. It's not often Gandalf, Faramir, and Gollum agree.

Given all this, Bilbo's choice to compare himself to food is even more psychologically revealing than at first it seems, which makes its presence here a matter of chance, if chance you call it.

___________________________________

I would very much like to thank Joe Hoffman and Corey Olsen for the friendly banter which we engaged in on the subject of Hobbits and butter, and which in turn led me to this reflection.

___________________________________

'untouchable now by pity' -- Frodo on the slopes of Mt Doom (RK 6.iii.944)

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. 

(RK 6.iii.944)

The disturbing description of Frodo in this passage is fascinating. Frodo is now ‘a figure’, an 'it', not Frodo himself. He is ‘untouchable now by pity’, which given Gandalf’s emphasis on the crucial role of Pity (FR 1.ii.59), can only be a bad thing. That a commanding voice -- whose? -- speaks out of the fire blurs the distinction between Frodo and the Ring, the 'wheel of fire' which he has declared to be the only thing that he can see any more (RK 6.ii.919; iii.938). Indeed they now seem one, though whether it matters any longer whether Frodo has claimed the Ring or the Ring Frodo may be impossible to say.  What of “robed in white”? Gandalf is now robed in white, though Frodo doesn't know that. So was Saruman before he lost his way. Most importantly, perhaps, Galadriel wears white, while black is the color of Sauron and his servants. Is this the nearly fallen Frodo’s vision of himself that we are seeing? Like Galadriel’s projection of herself as a ruling queen? Yet she knew it would all end in despair.

In answer to these questions the text is silent. Yet it is Sam who takes up the Pity that the figure of Frodo has laid down (RK 6.iii.944).

________________________________

Works Consulted

________________________________

Troilus and WHO? (RK 6.x.892-93)

Then Pippin stabbed upwards, and the written blade of Westernesse pierced through the hide and went deep into the vitals of the troll, and his black blood came gushing out. He toppled forward and came crashing down like a falling rock, burying those beneath him. Blackness and stench and crushing pain came upon Pippin and his mind fell away into a great darkness.  

'So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thought said, even as it fluttered away, and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off at last all doubt and care and fear.  And even then as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above: 

'The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!' 

For one moment more Pippin's thought hovered.  'Bilbo!' it said. 'But no!  That came in his tale, long, long ago. This is my tale, and it is ended now. Good-bye!'  And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more. 

(RK 6.x.892-93)

What first drew my attention here is the peculiar use of 'thought' in the second and fourth paragraphs, which is quite similar to its use in the famous scene in which Gollum's two 'thoughts' struggle with each other while Sam listens, fascinated and appalled (TT 4.ii.632-34). While there 'thought' seems very close to what we would call 'personality,' here 'consciousness' is a better fit. The word 'consciousness' did not enter English before the 17th Century, and the meaning in question here -- 'the totality of the impressions, thoughts, and feelings, which make up a person's conscious being. In pl. = conscious personalities' (OED sv. 5, emphasis original) -- seems to have awaited the invention of Locke.  Given Tolkien's linguistic predilections, it is not hard to see why he would have preferred 'thought', since MED þoht (3c, d) offered the requisite meanings.  

I am as yet, however, unaware of any use of þoht to describe situations similar to those we see in these two passages of Tolkien.  (If any reader knows of one, please, do let me know.)  So I began to think that perhaps I should look for passages with similar elements.  Almost immediately Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde came into my mind, specifically the scene in which Troilus dies:

1800   The wraththe, as I began yow for to seye,
       Of Troilus, the Grekes boughten dere;
       For thousandes his hondes maden deye,
       As he that was with-outen any pere,
       Save Ector, in his tyme, as I can here.
1805   But weylawey, save only goddes wille,
       Dispitously him slough the fiers Achille.

       And whan that he was slayn in this manere,
       His lighte goost ful blisfully is went
       Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere,
1810   In convers letinge every element;
       And ther he saugh, with ful avysement,
       The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye
       With sownes fulle of hevenish melodye.

       And doun from thennes faste he gan* avyse
1815   This litel spot of erthe, that with the see
       Embraced is, and fully gan* despyse
       This wrecched world, and held al vanitee
       To respect of the pleyn felicitee
       That is in hevene above; and at the laste,
1820   Ther he was slayn, his loking doun he caste;

       And in him-self he lough right at the wo
       Of hem that wepten for his deeth so faste;
       And dampned al our werk that folweth so
       The blinde lust, the which that may not laste,
1825   And sholden al our herte on hevene caste.
       

(Troilus and Criseyde, V.1800-1825)

(*gon (11a) = 'proceed to', 'set about', 'go to', as in 'go to sleep'.)

Now clearly Pippin's experience here is meant to remind us first of all of Bilbo's at the Battle of Five Armies, when the Eagles came and Bilbo was knocked unconscious, but woke to find himself 'not yet one of the fallen heroes' (Hobbit 298-99). But there's more to it than that. Bilbo has no 'thought' as he loses consciousness. His reflections come after he revives. 

What happens to Pippin's 'thought' is far more like the experience of Troilus' 'goost': both of them laugh and undergo a profound change in attitude towards the troubles of the world of which they are letting go. Each of them believes his tale is over. True, Pippin is not in fact dying, but he thinks he is. So, the contrast between him and Troilus is also noteworthy. His 'thought' flies 'away', but Troilus' 'goost' rises heavenward. Troilus looks back down at the 'woe / of hem that wepten for his deeth so faste' and dismisses it; Pippin hears the 'voices...crying from some forgotten world above' (emphasis added) and dismisses them and the hope the coming of the Eagles should offer. These directions reflect the differences in world view in each work. Chaucer's Troy is Medieval and Christian, whereas Tolkien's Middle-earth is pre-Christian and without any concept of a heaven above. Hence also Tolkien drew on a word like þoht rather than 'goost'. Whether hobbits have any notion at all of a continued existence after death is unknown and doubtful. And perhaps as a final bit of the absurdity that has often attended this once 'fool of a Took', Pippin is ignominiously squashed by a troll he has killed himself, while Troilus, a great warrior, is killed by the greatest of all warriors. In both cases, however, the dignified serenity both Troilus and Pippin attain with their last thoughts is remarkable. For neither of them could be said to have possessed that before.

_____________________

Works Consulted

_____________________