Again That Vile Creature, With A Special Guest Appearance by Grendel

In a series of recent posts I've been analyzing the portrayal of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings prior to his entry to the stage in The Taming of Sméagol.¹ One point I have touched upon is that the way Bilbo and Frodo see Gollum -- whether as an it or as a he, whether as a thing and a creature or as a person -- has a great impact on whether they can and do pity him.  And, though I am not yet ready to address this scene completely here and now, Sam finally attains the ability to pity Gollum at precisely the moment when Frodo, corrupted by the Ring, loses it and sees Gollum as only a thing once more.²

'Down, down!' [Frodo] gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring. 'Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot betray or slay me now.'  

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....  

Sam's hand wavered. His mind was hot with wrath and the memory of evil. It would be just to slay this treacherous, murderous creature, just and many times deserved; and it also seemed the only safe thing to do. But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum's shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again. But Sam had no words to express what he felt.  

'Oh, curse you, you stinking thing!' he said. 'Go away! Be off!'

(RK 6.iii.944)

If you've read my previous posts, the references to Gollum as it and thing and creature will seem familiar, but note also the effect that possession of the Ring has had on Frodo.  Just as Gollum is a shape and a shadow, a creature and a thing, so Frodo is a figure, not now or no longer a him, but also an it.  But even as this figure is 'untouchable now by pity' (a very bad sign), Sam at last discovers that same pity in his own heart, Sam who nevertheless still sees Gollum as a thing.

Clearly, however, Gollum has once again become for Frodo 'that vile creature' which -- not whom -- he thought it a pity that Bilbo did not kill.  Sam's thoughts, among other things, also remind the reader of that moment, and of Frodo's assertion that Gollum was ' "as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy.  He deserves death" ' (FR 1.ii.59).  This signifcant recurrence of the word 'creature' here argues that an examination of the uses of this word throughout The Lord of the Rings might prove interesting.

'Creature/s' occurs 105 times in The Lord of the Rings, 95 times in the tale itself, and 10 times in the prologue, synopses, and appendices.  Usage varies, describing a wide range of living or sentient beings, good, evil, and in between.  From the thinking fox in the Shire (FR 1.iii.72) to Treebeard's rhyme, 'Learn now the lore of living creatures' (TT 3.iv.464); from Gandalf's 'hobbits really are amazing creatures' (FR 1.ii.62) to Elrond's puzzled comment on Bombadil: 'He is a strange creature' (FR 2.ii.265); from Quickbeam and other ents (TT 3.viii.549, 568) to Grishnákh and the fell beasts the Nazgûl ride (TT 3.iii.447; 4.iii.645); and from the kind-hearted description of a post-Lockholes Lobelia as a 'poor creature' (RK 6.ix.1021), and of Bill the Pony as 'a poor old half-starved creature' (FR 1.xi.179), to Frodo's Ring-induced visions of Bilbo as Gollum (or something very like him), and Sam as an orc:

To his distress and amazement [Frodo] found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him.

(FR 2.i.232)

and 

[Frodo] panted, staring at Sam with eyes wide with fear and enmity. Then suddenly, clasping the Ring in one clenched fist, he stood aghast. A mist seemed to clear from his eyes, and he passed a hand over his aching brow.  The hideous vision had seemed so real to him, half bemused as he was still with wound and fear.  Sam had changed before his eyes into an orc again, leering and pawing at his treasure, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and a slobbering mouth.

(RK 6.i.912)

Yet, despite the broad range of usage, the preponderance of uses is decidedly negative. Only 22 of the 95 uses can be called positive or neutral (23% -- see the starred items in the list below).  The other 73 are generally negative, as in the two quotes just above, or specifically describe beings that are evil.  28 of these 73 (38.4%) refer to orcs, trolls, Nazgûl, or other 'creatures of Sauron.'  But even more, 34/73 (45.6%), refer to Gollum.  No other single 'creature' -- not orcs nor even the Nazgûl -- comes close to his total.  So not only does the usage of the narrator (Frodo) show a decided preference for 'creature' as a description of evil beings, but in his eyes Gollum almost seems to define the category.

The evil of these creatures, we should note, lies not just in the eye of the beholder, as does that of the crickets of the Midgewater Marshes (FR 1.xi.183), of Sam as seen by Shelob (TT 4.x.728), or of Sam as seen by Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol (RK 6.i.912).  Rather, they are evil in intention and action.  They are also almost all beings whose original natures have been corrupted, either individually or as a race: Gollum and the Ringwraiths by their rings, and orcs and trolls by the interventions of successive Dark Lords.³

Now here we need to draw attention to an intertextual link with Beowulf, specifically with Tolkien's translation of, and other remarks upon, on the poem. At lines 99-104 the poet mentions Grendel for the first time:

Swa þa drihtguman    dreamum lifdon,
eadiglice,     oð ðæt an ongan
fyrene fremman    feond on helle;
wæs se grimma gæst    Grendel haten,
mære mearcstapa,    se þe moras heold,
fen ond fæsten;

Which Tolkien translates:

Even thus did the men of that company live in mirth and happiness, until one began to work deeds of of wrong, a fiend of hell.  Grendel was that grim creature called, the ill-famed haunter of the marches of the land, who kept the moors, the fastness of the fens....

 (Beowulf, p. 16, ll. 81-85)

Creature renders gæst in line 102 of the Old English, which Bosworth-Toller defines as 'The soul, mind, spirit, spiritus, animus.'  Now one might object that this is just a coincidence, but Tolkien had clearly devoted some thought to the translation of the one word by the other.  In the appendix to his essay, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, he discusses 'Grendel's Titles,' like feond on helle, and in that context he says of gæst:

... it cannot be translated either by the modern ghost or spirit. Creature is probably the nearest we can now get.  Where it is genuine it applies to Grendel probably in virtue of his relationship or similarity to bogies (scinnum ond scuccum), physical enough in form and power, but vaguely felt as belonging to a different order of being, one allied to the malevolent 'ghosts' of the dead.⁵ 

And in his commentary on this same passage Tolkien writes:

The Old English féond on helle is a very curious expression.  It implies, of course, that Grendel is a 'hell-fiend', a creature damned irretrievably. It remains, nonetheless, remarkable; for Grendel is not 'in hell', but very physically in Denmark, and he is not yet a damned spirit, for he is mortal and has to be slain before he goes to Hell.  There is evidently a confusion or twilight in the thought of the poet (and his age) about these monsters, hostile to mankind.  They remain physical monsters, with blood, able to be slain (with the right sword).  Yet already they are described in terms applicable to evil spirits; so here (*102) gæst.

(Beowulf, p.119, emphasis Tolkien's)

And in a note on gæst here Christopher Tolkien points out that '[i]n all the texts of the translation [gæst] is rendered "creature".'  

Consider also part of Gandalf's description of Gollum:

'[t]he wood was full of the rumour of him, dreadful tales even among the beasts and birds.  The Woodmen said that some new terror was abroad, a ghost that drank blood.  It climbed trees to find nests; it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles.'

(FR 1.ii.58)

Ghosts that drink, and climb, and creep, and slip through windows are quite clearly 'physical monsters, with blood, able to be slain.'  Tolkien has taken 'ghost,' the direct etymological descendant of gæst, and used it here much as he has argued gæst is used in line 102 of Beowulf.

Similarly, Faramir says of the Nazgûl: 'to them the Enemy had given rings of power, and he had devoured them: living ghosts they had become, terrible and evil' (TT 4.vi.692).  The Nazgûl, too, were 'physical enough in form and power' -- we should not confuse their invsibility with incorporeality -- else they would not need or even be able to ride horses, to wear cloaks or wield swords, open gates or knock on doors, be washed away by floods or killed by swords. And they, too, as we will recall, are called creatures as well as ghosts.

So we can see that the use of 'creature' to describe Gollum is hardly a neutral term. It does not just dehumanize him, as 'thing' does, but by itself almost defines him as evil, as being 'as bad as an orc,' and like the Ringwraiths themselves.  It classes him among the servants of Sauron, since not only orcs and trolls and wraiths are named 'creature' -- the very slaves of his will -- but so, too, are Saruman and Wormtongue (TT 3.ix.573; RK 6.vi.980), more remote servants who, like Gollum, mean only to serve themselves.⁶ Finally, we can see the link between 'creature' and gæst in Tolkien's thought, which can enhance our understanding of both The Lord of the Rings and Beowulf.

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¹ See Gollum before The Taming of Sméagol (I), Gollum before The Taming of Sméagol (II), Two Observations on Gollum's First Appearance at 4.i.612-613, and That Vile Creature -- An Observation Revisited.

² There is much in this scene on the slopes of Mt Doom that needs to be parsed, but to do so properly, with even the slim hope of a well founded understanding, requires working my way through the entire spiritual and psychological journey of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. That's going to take a while. 

³ Treebeard says that '[t]rolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves' (TT 3.iv.486); and Frodo: 'The Shadow that bred [Orcs] can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own.  I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined and twisted them....' (RK 6.i.914).  Before the time of this tale, orcs had begun to appear who did not fear daylight (TT 4.iii.449, 452; vii.540; RK A.1053), and trolls who 'were no longer dull-witted, but cunning' (FR 1.ii.44; RK F.1132). It nowhere says explicitly in The Lord of the Rings that Orcs were first made by Morgoth from Elves, but that is reasonably inferred from the statements just quoted.  See The Silmarillion (50):

Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes.

Tolkien thought much about the origins of the Orcs in his later years.  See Morgoth's Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One.  The History of Middle-Earth (New York, 1993) x.408-424, a fascinating series of notes and essays in which Tolkien wrestles with the nature of Orcs and its theological implications.

⁴ For a fine discussion of intertextuality in Tolkien and Beowulf, I would like to refer the reader to Sørina Higgins' lecture on the topic in Professor Tom Shippey's current course at the Mythgard Institute, Beowulf Through Tolkien, and Vice Versa, but the recording is not available to the public at this time.  Should that change, I will add the link.

⁵ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, ed. C. Tolkien (London, 2006) p. 35.  The emphasis in the quotation is Tolkien's.

⁶ Gandalf suspected that Gollum had been released from Mordor '[o]n some errand of mischief' (FR 1.ii.59). Frodo also believes this to be true (TT 4.iii.643: 'Were you not rather permitted to depart, upon an errand?'). Which Gollum admits, with an explanation ('Indeed I was told to seek for the Precious; and I have searched and searched, of course I have. But not for the Black One. The Precious was ours, it was mine I tell you.' TT 4.iii.643). He also had had contact with orcs (TT 4.iii.42), perhaps including Grishnákh, who clearly knew who Gollum was (TT 3.iii.455-56).

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Occurrences of 'Creature/s' in The Lord of the Rings.

The Fellowship of the Ring

Prologue p. 2 ('the world after being full of strange creatures beyond count')

Prologue p. 10 ('There were many reports and complaints of strange persons and creatures prowling about the borders [of the Shire], or even over them')

Prologue p. 11 ('[Gollum] was a loathsome little creature')

Prologue p. 12 ('this slimy creature,' i.e. Gollum)

Prologue p. 12 ('[Bilbo] would not use [the Ring] to help him kill the wretched creature at a disadvantage,' i.e. Gollum)

1.ii.44 ('murmured hints of creatures more terrible than [orcs and trolls]')

1.ii.54 (Gollum)

1.ii,58 (Gollum)

1.ii,59 (Gollum)

*1.ii.62 ('Hobbits really are amazing creatures.')

*1.iii.72 ('A few creatures came.... A fox....')

1.iii.83 (black riders)

*1.iii.84 ('[The Elves] are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or of any other creatures upon earth,')1.iv.90 (of a Black Rider: 'A long-drawn wail came down the wind, like the cry of some evil and lonely creature.')

1.v.108 (Frodo dreaming, apparently of Black Riders)

*1.vii.129 (Bombadil speaks of "the strange creatures of the forest")

*1.viii.145 (The narrator, quoting Bombadil's words, " 'free to all finders, birds, beasts, Elves or Men, and all kindly creatures.' ")

1.ix.152 ("[Sam] had imagined himself meeting giants taller than trees, and other creatures even more terrifying")

*1.xi.179 (Bill the Pony: 'a poor half-starved creature')

1.xi.183 ('there were also abominable creatures haunting the reeds and tussocks that from the sound of them were evil relatives of the cricket')

1.xi.189 ('the Riders can use men and other creatures as spies')

2.i.232 (Frodo's vision of Bilbo as 'Gollum')

2.ii.253 (Gollum)

2.ii.255 (Gollum)

*2.ii.265 (Elrond on Bombadil)

*2.iii.284 (No folk dwell here now, but many other creatures live here at all times, especially birds.')2.vi.348 ('...to the east the lands are waste, and full of Sauron's creatures....')

2.vi.350 (Gollum)

2.ix.383 (Gollum, 3 times),

2.ix. 387 ('a great winged creature, blacker than the pits in the night')

The Two Towers

Synopsis: 'Already they had become aware that their journey was watched by spies, and that the creature Gollum, who had once possessed the Ring and still lusted for it, was following their trail.'

3.i.415 ('The River of Gondor will take care at least that no evil creature dishonours his bones')3.iii.447 ('...Grishnákh, a short crook-legged creature, very broad with arms that hung almost to the ground.')

3.iii.450 ('[Pippin] was famished but not yet so famished as to eat flesh flung at him by an Orc, the flesh of he dared not guess what creature.')*3.iii.467 ('Many of the trees seemed asleep, or as unaware of him as of any other creature that merely passed by.')

*3.iv.464 ('Learn now the lore of Living Creatures.')

*3.iv.474 ('Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn'),

*3.iv.480 ('They had expected to see a number of creatures as much like Treebeard as one hobbit is like another')3.vii.536 ('But these creatures of Isengard, these half-orcs and goblin-men that the foul craft of Saruman has bred....')

3.viii.546 ('No Orc or other living creature could be seen.')

*3.viii.549 (Ents: '...and turning again, the riders saw other creatures of the same kind approaching, striding through the tall grass.'

*3.viii.549 (Ents; 'So it seemed to be; for as he spoke the tall creatures, without a glance at the riders, strode into the wood and vanished.')

*3.ix.568 ('Quickbeam is a gentle creature....')

3.ix.573 (of Wormtongue: 'and he looked a queer twisted sort of creature himself.')

4.i.614 (Gollum, twice)

4.i.615 (Frodo remembering his conversation with Gandalf about Gollum at 1.ii.59)

4.i,615 (Gollum)

4.i.617 (Gollum)

4.ii.624 (Gollum, twice)

4.iii.645 ('And these winged creatures that they ride on now...')

*4.iii.645 ('...they can probably see more than any other creature.') This instance and the previous are two parts of the same sentence. So, while I set down the second as neutral, it may be tainted by the first.4.iv.657 (Gollum)

4.iv.657 (again Gollum)

4.vi.685 (Gollum 3 times)

4.vi.686 (Gollum)

4.vi.687 (Gollum)

4.vi.689 (Gollum, 4 times)

4.vi.690 (Gollum)

4.vi.691 (Gollum, twice)

*4.vii.696 ('no living creature, beast or bird, was to be seen, but in these open places Gollum....'). I count this instance as neutral, but the presence of Gollum may give it a whiff of evil.

*4.x.728 ('No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.') 

4.x.728 ('Now the miserable creature was right under her....')  This is Shelob's imagined perspective on Sam during their battle).  See n. on RK 6.i.912.

4.x.733 ('...may no foul creature come anigh you!')

The Return of the King

Synopsis: 'Already they had become aware that their journey was watched by spies, and that the creature Gollum, who had once possessed the Ring and still lusted for it, was following their trail.'

5.iv.815 (Gollum)

*5.v.832 (Ghân-buri-Ghân)

5.vi.840 (the fell beast, twice)

5.vi.841 (the fell beast)

5.x.885 ('the Orcs and lesser creatures of Mordor')

5.x.889 (The Mouth of Sauron speaking of Frodo)

5.x.892 (trolls)

6.i.900 ('the evil land of Sauron where his creatures still lurked')

6.i.911 (orcs)

6.i.914 (orcs)

6.i.912 (Frodo's vision of Sam as an orc,  Cf. Shelob's perspective on Sam above.  If this instance counts as negative, so, too, must that one.

6.ii.929 (Gollum)

*6.iii.934 ('turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue {not unlike Gollum in fact})

6.iii.944 (Gollum, twice)

6.iv.949 ('orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved' in an epic simile)

6.vi.979 (Treebeard, speaking of orcs: 'these same foul creatures')

6.vi.980 (Treebeard, speaking of Wormtongue: 'that worm-creature')

6.vi.980 (Treebeard, speaking of Saruman and Wormtongue: 'such creatures as these')

*6.ix.1021 (The narrator says of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins: 'When the poor creature died next spring....'  Cf. 'Then there was Lobelia. Poor thing....' in the previous paragraph on the same page.)

*6.ix.1029 ('none saw them pass, save the wild creatures' -- interesting, almost a full circle back to the fox and the elves from 1.iii.72)

Appendices

A.1040 (Orcs, and other fell creatures),

A.1067 (Men or other creatures more evil);

B.1087 (Sauron begins to people Moria with his creatures)

Tolkien Reading Day 2015 -- On Friendship

The other day, thanks to +Jeremiah Burns, I read a BBC article on a 98 year old woman whose mother gave her the middle name of 'Somme' in remembrance of the horrific battle in which her father had died some months before she was born.  It was a moving piece.  The woman, Tiny Somme Gray, said she could not sign her name without thinking of the father she had never known.  Her mother did not speak of her husband's death, she told the BBC, or visit the local WWI memorial on which his name was inscribed.  But she made certain her daughter went there and would always remember.  The depth of her sorrow is clear even now, as is the depth of the love and friendship she must have shared with her husband.

Since we were just reading the first version of the story of Túrin in our class on The Book of Lost Tales, Part II at Mythgard, I was reminded of that story, in which Túrin's father, Húrin, goes off to fight in the battle that came to be known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.¹  But in addition to a son, Húrin left behind Morwen, his wife who was carrying their child. Since Húrin did not return from the battle and no news of his fate could be learnt, Morwen named their daughter 'Nienor, which is Mourning' (Unfinished Tales, 73).² 

Stories like this must have been all too common in WWI.  Thousands of children, conceived on a brief visit home or a briefer honeymoon, must have been born to wives who waited in what was most likely stoic dread for the word that their child would be born too late to know its father; or, if these wives were not left pregnant, many of them must have wondered if they would ever have children at all. Among these women was Edith Tolkien, who married Tolkien 99 years ago today, on 22 March 1916, but 'May found [him] crossing the Channel ... for the carnage of the Somme' (Letters, no. 43, p. 53). He was 'a Second Lieut. on 7/6 a day in the infantry where the chances of survival were against you heavily' (Letters, no. 43, p. 53). Their first child, John, was born in November 1917:

She married me in 1916 and John was born in 1917 (conceived and carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great U-boat campaign) round about the battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far-off as it does now [in 1941].

(Letters, no. 43, p. 53)

Even a quarter of a century later everything is seen in terms of the doubt and peril of the war (which seemed to be repeating itself, only worse in March 1941, when England stood entirely alone). What must it have been like for Edith in 1916 and 1917, with letters and telegrams arriving in every town in Britain every day to transform a woman's worst fear into sorrow? I have heard it said that people hated the very sight of the telegram delivery man. 

It was a time of horrors that shattered the mirror of complacency in which Europe had long admired itself.  Old Poets, like Yeats, felt it in The Second Coming.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And Young Poets felt it more so, men like Siegfried Sassoon, a contemporary of Tolkien, who also served in France and wrote many increasingly bitter poems about the war.

Suicide in the Trenches 

I knew a simple soldier boy 
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.  

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again. 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

I could easily find and cite a hundred more poems -- not to mention short stories and novels -- that would bludgeon this point home, but the wonder here is that Tolkien did not become lost as so many others of his time did.³ And I at least always hear an echo of the disillusionment and despair that inform these poems in Frodo's words to Sam in Mordor:

'No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star, are left to me now.  I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.'

(RK 6.iii.937-938)

Frodo knew 'the hell where youth and laughter go.' And so, therefore, did Tolkien. Frodo never returned from that dark wood.  Sam and Tolkien did.  When you read the WWI poets you see the way they feel about England, and how much a part of their affection for their homeland some vision of the English countryside is.  This is especially true early on in the war.  But if you know your Tolkien, it is clear that his vision is much the same as theirs.  His found expression in the Shire.

Because of his faith, because of the stories he began to write down during the war, and probably just as importantly because of his friendship and love with his wife, Edith, who subsequently vanishes from our view into the life of raising her children, and whose presence is lost in the impossible whirlwind of her husband's stories and teaching and better known friendships with C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, Tolkien was able to transform that experience into something greater.  And I don't mean something as pseudo-intellectual as 'he transformed his experience into The Lord of the Rings.'  No, if anything his writing was a tool for him as much as it was a tale for others.  He transformed his experience into a full and round and thoughtful life.  And again I do not mean he sat down to write as a form of therapy.  That was just a large part of the way he approached the world and understood it.

What do most of us know of Edith?  Not much.  But if all we know is just one thing, it is that when she died Tolkien had 'Luthien' inscribed on the headstone, to be joined by 'Beren' when he died two years later. He even said at one point in a letter to his son, Christopher, that Edith had provided the inspiration for the Tale of Beren and Luthien (Letters no. 340, pp. 420-421).  This is of course all quite romantic and charming.  But if all we do is look warmly upon it, and think how sweet it is, we are missing something very important.  The relationship of Beren and Luthien changed their world.  They were not just lovers in the old or new sense of the word.  Through their love and friendship they worked together and accomplished what all the armies of Men and Elves could not; and their love and deeds had an effect that rippled down the ages, and more than once gave birth to hope in darkness. In that respect it is the most important Tale of Middle-Earth, and the Great Tales never do end. 

That is what love and friendship, as Tolkien sees them, can do. 

We should not neglect where the Tale went in remembering the sweetness of where it came from. 

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¹ British killed and wounded at the Somme between July and November 1916 numbered over 350,000. I have long thought that these casualties, combined with Tolkien's memory of Homer, who said that the destructive wrath of Achilles μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ἔθηκε (Iliad 1.2) -- 'put unnumbered woes on the Achaeans' -- was the inspiration (hardly the proper word for something so grim) for the name 'Unnumbered Tears.' μυρία means 'numberless, countless, infinite.' I would be quite surprised if I were the first to point this out.

² I take a liberty here, using the more familiar, later forms of the names Húrin, Morwen, and Nienor. In The Book of Lost Tales, Part II they are called Úrin, Mavwin, and Nienóri.

³ For the WWI poets, see Santanu Das, The Cambridge Companion to the Poets of the First World War (2013); Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology, ed. Tim Kendall (2013); Max Egremont, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew (2014); and John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: On the Threshold of Middle-Earth (2004).

Me, Spock, and Beowulf, All on the Ferry.

In Beowulf, when the hero enters Heorot, the mead hall of King Hrothgar, he is greeted by the king and invited to join them at their feast. Then a man named Unferth, who sits in a position of great honor at the feet of the king, begins to speak, questioning Beowulf in a manner that probes his history and tests his character even as it insults him. Unferth is the king's þyle, his 'orator' or 'spokesman.' Beowulf, unprovoked and undaunted (as the hero no doubt should be), responds in kind, to the delight of the king. Evidently, Beowulf's response told Hrothgar everything he needed to know about him:

                             Then the treasure giver,
Grey haired, battle-famed, knew joy.
The Lord of Bright-Danes had heard Beowulf,
Counted his courage, his strength of spirit. 

Then laughter lifted in the great hall --
Words were traded, Wealhtheow walked in,
Hrothgar's queen....

(Beowulf, 608-13, trans. Williamson)

In his lecture on this scene and the character of Unferth for our Beowulf through Tolkien class, Professor Tom Shippey described the role of the þyle as follows:

'What's a þyle, which is what Unferth is? I think that's rather easy. Both Gríma Wormtongue and Unferth have a place and that place is at the feet of the king. Later on Hrothgar, lamenting the death of one of his men will say "he was my runwita and my rædbora" (1325). Runwita means "a knower of secrets;" rædbora means "giver of advice." And that, I think, is what Unferth is. He is a confidant, someone who knows the king's secrets. He is a "rædbora," someone who gives the king advice, a counselor.

'In fact, if you're thinking of The Godfather, which is often quite a good idea in these circumstances, he is the consigliere to Hrothgar, who is himself the godfather, you might say.... So we could say that Unferth is a counselor, he's a spokesman because of þelcræft [or "þylcræft" = "oratory," the skill of a þyle]. He's very possibly a kind of genealogist. We're often getting these remarks about people being well known. This is an oral culture dependent on memory. You need somebody who remembers everything and you need someone who can say to the king "yes, yes, he is the son of so-and-so, he's the grandson of so-and-so." Important to remember that. Somebody has to do these things and Unferth does it. Tolkien translates, I think very sensibly, that he is the king's "sage." He is the wise man for the king, who is there to give the king advice. He's a mixture of a kind of researcher and possibly also spin doctor.

'And I'd finally suggest that he's a bit like the king's subjunctive mood. He says what the king might be thinking, but the king won't have said it. So that if it's wrong, as it is when he challenges Beowulf, it's retractable. It's not the king's fault. It's his adviser, and you can blame the adviser....'¹ 

Last Friday morning (2/27/15) as I was crossing Long Island Sound on the 11:00 AM ferry out of Orient, NY, I was thinking about this scene and Professor Shippey's commentary on it, which I had just listened to again in my car as I drove to Orient. Suddenly I made a connection I had not thought of before.  I think it arose from the combination of the way Hrothgar waits and watches while Unferth fences with Beowulf, and Professor Shippey's explanation of the role of the þyle as ' bit like the king's subjunctive mood.'  But I remembered a scene in Space Seed, one of the best and most important episodes of the original Star Trek.

In this episode, just in case you've never seen it, the Enterprise discovers a 170 year old ship from earth floating derelict in an unexpected region of space. There is no historical record of such a ship, and they go on board to investigate, finding 84 cryogenic pods with humans inside them, more than 70 of whom are still alive.  One of these humans revives, a magnetic, mysterious man who will identify himself only as Khan.  Kirk and Spock suspect that he and his shipmates might be the genetically engineered supermen who vanished at the end of the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s.  A dinner (or feast, if you will) is held to welcome Khan to the 23rd century.  As they sit at the table, the following conversation takes place:

KIRK: Forgive my curiosity, Mister Khan, but my officers are anxious to know more about your extraordinary journey.

SPOCK: And how you managed to keep it out of the history books.

KHAN: Adventure, Captain. Adventure. There was little else left on Earth.

SPOCK: There was the war to end tyranny. Many considered that a noble effort.

KHAN: Tyranny, sir? Or an attempt to unify humanity?

SPOCK: Unify, sir? Like a team of animals under one whip?

KHAN: I know something of those years. Remember, it was a time of great dreams, of great aspiration.

SPOCK: Under dozens of petty dictatorships.

KHAN: One man would have ruled eventually. As Rome under Caesar. Think of its accomplishments.

SPOCK: Then your sympathies were with --

KHAN (turning to Kirk): You are an excellent tactician, Captain. You let your second in command attack while you sit and watch for weakness.

KIRK: You have a tendency to express ideas in military terms, Mister Khan. This is a social occasion.

KHAN: It has been said that social occasions are only warfare concealed. Many prefer it more honest, more open.

KIRK: You fled. Why? Were you afraid?

KHAN: I've never been afraid.

KIRK: But you left at the very time mankind needed courage.

KHAN: We offered the world order!

KIRK: We?

KHAN: Excellent. Excellent. But if you will excuse me, gentlemen and ladies, I grow fatigued again. With your permission, Captain, I will return to my quarters.

(Kirk stands, and Khan leaves.)

Unify, sir?

With your permission, Captain, I will return to my quarters.

Now I don't believe that the writers of this episode (Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber) were thinking of Beowulf when they composed this scene. I couldn't even guess if they had read it (though the writer of Star Trek: Voyager, Heroes and Demons definitely had²).   Still I would say that the parallel between the scenes in Beowulf and Space Seed is much more illustrative than that between Beowulf and The Godfather. While the positions of Unferth and Hrothgar are indeed analogous to those of consigliere and godfather, it is in Space Seed that we see the parallels in behavior, as Spock questions Khan while Kirk looks on, evaluating Khan's reactions and responses.  

The verbal duel between Spock and Khan all but proves that Khan is the dangerous enemy they suspected he was, and makes amply clear for us the nature and purpose of such an exchange. For while a modern reader of Beowulf might not immediately recognize what Unferth is really doing, there is no mistaking what Spock is up to. Kirk's involvement makes the parallel even clearer.  First he pretends that it is not he, but his officers who have questions for Khan, which allows Spock to begin his 'attack,' as Khan puts it.  

Then, when Kirk moves to defuse the tense situation by claiming that a social occasion is no place for warlike speech, Khan challenges him more directly, saying that he prefers his warfare 'more honest, more open.' At which point Kirk presses his attack even more forcefully than Spock had.  Even so, when the exchange becomes too heated, Khan is allowed to retreat, avoiding a more dangerous confrontation. Like Hrothgar Kirk learns what he wanted to learn. That the king wished to see if the man before him was the sort of man he hoped for, and that the captain wished to see if the man before him was the sort of man he feared him to be, is not a material difference.  

So there I was with Beowulf and Spock on a ferry (a ferry) last Friday morning, thinking these thoughts. A few hours later I got to my hotel outside Boston.  I checked the news and said "Oh, no." Leonard Nimoy had died, at exactly the time I was thinking about him. No, I don't think there's a connection between these two events, not on any level, not even on the spooky chance-if-chance-you-call-it level. Except in my heart, where this wonderful character and the apparently decent man who gave him such persuasive life dwell now forever.  I am even especially glad I was thinking about him just then.  I now have another reason to remember him.

_________________________________ 

Beowulf and Other Old English Poems, edited and translated by Craig Williamson (Philadelphia 2011).  The line numbers cited above are for Williamson's translation; those directly below are from the Old English text.

Þa wæs on salum    sinces brytta
gamolfeax ond guðrof;   geoce gelyfde
brego Beorht-Dena;   gehyrde on Beowulfe
folces hyrde,    fæstrædne geþoht. 

Ðær wæs hæletha hleahtor,   hlyn swinsode,
word wæron wynsume.   Eode Wealhþeow forð
cwen Hroðgares....

(lines 607-13)

A more literal translation would run as follows:

Then the giver of treasure, gray haired and brave in battle, knew joy. The lord of the Bright Danes took hope in [Beowulf's] aid; in Beowulf the shepherd of the folk heard steadfast determination.

There was laughter from the men, it made a sweet sound, his words were pleasing. Wealhtheow, queen of Horthgar, came forth....

_________________________________

¹ Since I was transcribing an audio recording, all punctuation and paragraphing are of course mine. I have tried to faithfully represent Professor Shippey's words, though I am not completely sure whether the word after 'wrong' in the final paragraph is 'as' or 'and.'  The difference, if there is one, is minimal.

Gríma Wormtongue is of course the counselor of King Théoden in The Two Towers. He first appears in the chapter The King of the Golden Hall, in a scene which has much in common with this one.

The recording is proprietary so I may not link to it.

² See the article on Heroes and Demons at Memory Alpha for the comments of Naren Shankar, the writer of this episode, who states that he even went back and researched Beowulf in preparing the story. He was surprised to learn that no one else on the production team had ever read it.  

That Vile Creature -- An Observation Revisited

Last month I posted an observation on Gollum's first appearance as a character in The Two Towers.  I noted then that both this passage (4.i.612-613) and the paragraph in The Hobbit (97) where Bilbo spares Gollum out of pity feature a significant shift in the pronouns used to describe Gollum: the shift from "it" to "he" reflects the failure to maintain the pretense that Gollum is a "thing" and not a person.  It is only in the moment that Bilbo is unable to see Gollum as an 'it,' as a 'thing,' that he discovers pity.

But there's another passage that also deserves mention in this context.  In The Shadow of the Past Gandalf has been explaining to Frodo that Gollum had been captured by Sauron and revealed to him what happened to the Ring and where it was:

'The Shire -- [Sauron] may be seeking for it now, if he has not already found out where it lies.  Indeed, Frodo, I fear that he may even think that the long-unnoticed name of Baggins has become important.'

'But this is terrible!' cried Frodo.  'Far worse than the worst that I had imagined from your hints and warnings.  O Gandalf, best of friends, what am I to do?  For now I am really afraid.  What am I to do?  What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!'

'Pity?  It was Pity that stayed his hand.  Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo.    Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so.  With Pity.'

'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.'  

'Deserves it? I daresay he does.  Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life.  Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.  For even the very wise cannot see all ends.'

(FR 1.ii.59, emphasis Tolkien's)

Admittedly, Frodo never calls Gollum 'it' here, but his words --  'What a pity Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance' --  echo the thoughts that ran through Bilbo's mind -- '...while he had any strength left....He must stab the foul thing' (The Hobbit, 97).  Frodo of course knows the true story of Bilbo and Gollum, and that Bilbo very nearly did 'strike without need.'¹  And that tale is clearly qute present in his mind right now, since he and Gandalf have both brought it up several times already.² That whole scene in The Hobbit in fact underlies much of their conversation here.  It is one of the two main elements that condition Frodo's reaction to what Gandalf is telling him, the other being Frodo's terror of Sauron. Both of these converge in the revelation that Sauron has learned about Bilbo and the Shire from Gollum, which sparks Frodo's harshness here.³

And just as in this passage Frodo recalls the thoughts of Bilbo long ago, so, too, does Frodo remember his conversation with Gandalf later, at another crucial point (TT 4.i.614-615), with Gollum at his feet and his sword at Gollum's throat.⁴  And seeing Gollum makes all the difference.  He pities him, and spares him, just as Bilbo had done.⁵ And here, too, his thinking echoes Bilbo's because he decides that it is not right to kill Gollum outright, and when he has not yet done them any actual harm.⁶

So, given this continuum of recollection, it hardly seems likely that Frodo's words to Gandalf in The Shadow of the Past echo the thoughts of Bilbo in The Hobbit only by coincidence.  But what is by far most interesting is what Frodo does with his memory here.  Not having seen Gollum, he can deny him the humanity that Bilbo saw and pitied. 'That vile creature' is a step backwards from Bilbo's understanding that Gollum was 'miserable, alone, lost.'  To Frodo, here and now, Gollum is 'the foul thing' Bilbo at first felt he must stab and blind, no longer 'he,' but 'it.'

________________________________

¹ Frodo's knowledge of the true story was first established explicitly at: FR 1.i.40; see also FR Pr. 12-13.

² FR 1.ii.48, 54-60.  For further discussion of this scene, see here.

³ Just how extreme Frodo's final statement here is may be gauged from his later statement that 'no hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire' (RK6.viii.1006). His last three words also make an interesting qualification, given that he knows that Gollum murdered Déagol to obtain the Ring. I have to wonder if this is part of the reason Frodo rejects Gandalf's claim that Gollum is a hobbit. The words 'Now at any rate...Orc' must refer to Gollum's new connection with Sauron, whom, Gandalf has implied, sent Gollum out '[o]n some errand of mischief' (FR 1.ii.59)

⁴ It is worth remembering that Frodo does not lower his sword until he feels pity for Gollum.

⁵ Given how vividly his conversation comes back to him here, 'relives this conversation' might be a better description than 'remembers.' He does remember it with interesting differences, however. Some parts of the conversation are left out entirely, and in one case he alters and expands something Gandalf said.  He changes 'Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement' (FR 1.ii.59) to 'Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety' (TT 4.i.615).  It's easy to see how where 'fearing for your own safety' comes from, since Frodo was admittedly terrified during the original conversation. But a detailed analysis of what is included, excluded, and changed will have to await another day.  Christopher Tolkien believes that the differences in wording between The Shadow of the Past and The Taming of Smeagol were accomplished 'perhaps not intentionally at all points.'  See The War of The Ring: The History of Middle-Earth, vol. VIII (2000) 96-97.

⁶ At TT 4.i.615 Frodo says 'No....If we kill him, we must kill him outright,  But we can't do that, not as things are.  Poor wretch! He has done us no harm.' Compare this to Bilbo's 'No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now.  Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet' (The Hobbit, 97).  In earlier drafts of The Lord of the Rings the echo had been even stronger.  Both in The Taming of Smeagol and The Shadow of the Past it was pointed out that killing Gollum would have been 'against the Rules.' Frodo's statement that they cannot kill him 'not as things are' is a survival of this notion of fairness, that it is wrong to kill an unarmed foe who is at your mercy.  See HME as cited above n. 5.

Gollum before The Taming of Sméagol (II)

And I waited.  Until that night when he left this house. He said and did things then that filled me with a fear that no words of Saruman could allay.  I knew at last that something dark and deadly was at work.  And I have spent most of the years since in finding out.

(FR 1.ii.48)

So speaks Gandalf, recounting to Frodo his alarm at the way Bilbo had behaved the night he departed Bag End seventeen years earlier.  We have already seen that Bilbo's behavior that night suggests much about Gollum, that he is jealous of his ownership of the Ring, and of his right to claim it for his own; and that he is willing to kill to keep it.  Gandalf is of course here explaining to Frodo how he became convinced that Bilbo's magic ring was The One Ring. That is his point, but in making it he reveals more about Gollum than the reader had known before:¹

A shadow fell on my heart [when Bilbo found his ring], though I did not know yet what I feared.  I wondered often how Gollum came by a Great Ring, as plainly it was -- that at least was clear from the first.  Then I heard Bilbo's strange story of how he had "won" it, and I could not believe it.  When I at last got the truth out of him, I saw at once that he had been trying to put his claim beyond doubt.  Much like Gollum with his "birthday present".  The lies were too much alike for my comfort. Clearly the ring had an unwholesome power that set to work on its keeper at once.

(FR 1.ii.47-48)

And Gandalf has already delineated for Frodo some of the effects that the 'unwholesome power' of a Great Ring has on its keeper.  In addition to turning the keeper into a liar, who will say anything to justify his claim to the Ring, and someone ready to commit murder to keep it (FR 1.i.34):

A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until every last minute is a weariness.  And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings.  Yet sooner or later -- later, if he is strong or well meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last -- sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him.

(FR 1.ii.47, emphasis Tolkien's)

Frodo's concern here is quite naturally with his ring, the effect it had on Bilbo, and the woe that Sauron's attention might bring down upon The Shire.  But he's as mystified as he is terrified, and so Gandalf proves to him that his ring is The One and begins to narrate its history.  In doing so of course he comes back to Gollum, but he does so in a way that justifies Gildor's later cautioning Frodo about the subtlety of wizards (FR 1.iii.84).  When he reaches Gollum's part in the history of the Ring, Gandalf doesn't tell Frodo that it's Gollum he is speaking of.  Rather, he tells the story of Sméagol and Déagol, two people of whom neither Frodo nor the reader has ever heard before (FR 1.ii.52-54).²

What of them?  From the first the portrayal of Sméagol sounds a troubling note.  For although he is likely of hobbit kind and apparently of good family (FR 1.ii.52-53), he seems to have been strangely different:

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 the trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.

(FR 1.ii.53)

The substance and movement of this description is revealing.  Sméagol is always seeking, but never finding.  He dives, he burrows, he tunnels, ignoring what is green and alive around him.  Note how each clause of the semicolonic structure includes a new element, until the clause after the last semicolon ('and he ceased....') where the use of 'or' begins to exclude the life and beauties of the world above, and this leads to the final full colon and the verdict: 'his head and his eyes were downward.' 

Having described Sméagol's character, Gandalf shows it in action. While Déagol sits in their boat fishing, Sméagol goes 'nosing about the banks' of the river, no doubt ignoring the beauty of the 'great beds of iris and flowering reeds' that cover the Gladden Fields in spring. But he has nevertheless been keeping his eye on Déagol from behind a tree. He sneaks up behind him and demands the ring that not he -- not Sméagol the diver into deep pools -- but Déagol had found at the bottom of the river.

' "Give us that, Déagol, my love," said Sméagol, over his friend's shoulder. 

' "Why?" said Déagol. 

' "Because it's my birthday, my love, and I wants it," said Sméagol. 

' "I don't care," said Déagol.  "I have given you a present already, more than I can afford.  I found this, and I am going to keep it." 

' "Oh, are you indeed, my love," said Sméagol; and he caught Déagol by the throat and strangled him, because the gold looked so bright and beautiful.  Then he put the ring on his finger.'

(FR 1.ii.53)

Even before Sméagol has become the Ring's keeper, with love professed three times he kills a friend to get what he wants. It is impossible to know here where the unwholesome power of the Ring begins and native villainy ends. It's like some black inversion of Peter denying Christ three times before the cock crows, announcing dawn and repentance. 

But for Sméagol only more darkness will come.  Soon the invisibility conferred by the Ring allows him to learn 'secrets, and he put his knowledge to crooked and malicious uses.  He became sharp-eyed and keen-eared for all that was hurtful. The ring had given him power according to his stature' (FR 1.ii.53).  Like the description of his downward looking nature, this, too, ends in a verdict.  The Malice of Gollum (the name he has now earned from his revolted family), will play a role as important in the end as the Pity of Bilbo. It also links him from the first to Sauron, to whom Gandalf has already attributed malice as a motive.³

Gollum's family now 'shunned' and 'kicked him' because of what he had become. Finally his sneaking and spying and thieving caused such strife that 'his grandmother, desiring peace, expelled him from the family and turned him out of her hole' (FR 1.ii.53-54). His own grandmother disowned him.  Again we have something that passes for a judgement -- if your grandmother casting you out is not damning, what is? -- and this is not Gandalf's judgement, but that of Gollum's family at the time.

'He wandered in loneliness, weeping a litttle for the hardness of the world, and he journeyed up the River, till he came to a stream that flowed down from the mountains, and he went that way.  He caught fish in deep pools with invisible fingers and ate them raw.  One day it was very hot, and as he was bending over a pool, he felt a burning on the back of his neck, and a dazzling light from the water pained his wet eyes.  He wondered at it, for he had almost forgotten about the Sun. Then for the last time he looked up and shook his fist at her. 

'But as he lowered his eyes, he saw far ahead the tops of the Misty Mountains, out of which the stream came,  And he thought suddenly: "It would be cool and shady under those mountains.  The Sun could not watch me there.  The roots of those mountains must be roots indeed; there must be great secrets buried there which have not been discovered since the beginning." 

'So he journeyed by night up into the highlands, and he found a cave out of which the dark stream ran; and he wormed his way like a maggot into the heart of the hills, and vanished out of all knowledge.  The Ring went into the Shadows with him, and even the maker, when his power had begun to grow again, could learn nothing of it. 

'Gollum,' cried Frodo.  'Gollum?  Do you mean that this is the very Gollum-creature that Bilbo met?  How loathsome!'

I think it is a sad story,' said the wizard, 'and it might have happened to others, even to some hobbits that I have known.'

'I can't believe that Gollum was connected with hobbits, however distantly,' said Frodo with some heat.  'What an abominable notion!'

(FR 1.ii.54)

First let's consider Frodo's reaction.  While it is difficult to know if he realizes who Sméagol is before Gandalf reveals it, you would guess that the reference to a birthday and a present should at least have made Frodo cock an eyebrow.  What is certain is how Frodo responds to the realization.  He is appalled.  Though Gandalf thinks the story of Sméagol is 'sad,' Frodo finds it 'loathsome,' and he rejects the notion that Gollum was a hobbit, or anything remotely resembling one, as 'abominable.' More than that, besides denying that Gollum could be a hobbit, he calls him that 'Gollum-creature,' thus refusing him any form of humanity at all.  He is a creature, not a person.  And Frodo will keep up this pitiless refrain throughout the scene -- 'What a pity Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance' (FR 1.ii.59).

Now let's ask a question.  Why does Gandalf withhold the name of Gollum? Why doesn't he just say openly and immediately that Gollum and Sméagol are one? Because Gandalf is up to more than merely narrating the history of the Ring, and trying to save the world. As we all know, one of the most important and often quoted sentences in The Lord of the Rings is Gandalf's assertion that

'My heart tells me that [Gollum] has some part to play yet, for good or for ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many -- yours not least.'

(FR 1.ii.59)

Those last few words -- 'yours not least' -- how often we overlook them.  How often we omit them from our discussions of the role of Pity. I know I have certainly neglected them.  We focus on the tides of fate, on 'chance if chance you call it,' on the Rings of Power, and Towers White and Dark, and the doom of Elves and Men, Dwarves and Hobbits; and on the Pity that saves the world from a 'second darkness' (FR 1.ii.51). And it's easy to do so because Pity accomplishes precisely that.

But Gandalf is a wizard, and therefore subtle.  As his words suggest when taken all together, he gives thought to the fate of Middle-Earth, and the Shire, and Frodo, too.  His pity reaches even further, into the future and to all in darkness.⁴ Gandalf suppresses the identity of Sméagol because he is trying to elicit Frodo's pity -- and given Frodo's reaction, he is entirely correct to do so  -- in order to save Frodo also and especially, but, as we shall presently see, not even Gollum is absent from his thoughts.

Previously Gandalf had pointed out that he knew 'once he had got the truth out of [Bilbo]' that his ring 'had an unwholesome power that set to work on its keeper at once' (FR 1.ii.49); that 'sooner or later' a Ring of Power will 'devour' that keeper regardless of his strength or intentions (1.ii.47); and that Bilbo's behavior the night he left had frightened him and convinced him that 'something dark and deadly' was at work.  Since that night, Gandalf has been worried about Frodo, who has been the keeper of the Ring for seventeen years now. Note the shift in Gandalf's tenses, from past when speaking about Bilbo, to the present and present perfect when speaking about Frodo.  His anxiety for Frodo is a constant thing.

'No, I was not troubled about dear Bilbo any more, once he had let the thing go.  It is for you that I feel responsible. 

'Ever since Bilbo left I have been deeply concerned about you, and about all these charming, absurd, helpless hobbits.  It would be a grievous blow to the world, if the Dark Power overcame the Shire; if all your kind, jolly, stupid Bolgers, Hornblowers, Boffins, Bracegirdles, and the rest, not to mention the ridiculous Bagginses, became enslaved.'

(FR 1.ii.49, emphasis original)

Note also how he embeds Frodo firmly in the Shire among his fellow hobbits, yet singles him out. Just as Bilbo and Sméagol, the hobbits, were set apart by the Ring, so, too, is Frodo.⁵  And in answer to Frodo's denial that Gollum could be a hobbit, Gandalf insists upon it, averring that he knows more about the history of hobbits than hobbits do, and that Bilbo and Gollum understood each other as well as only two hobbits could (FR 1.ii.54). When Frodo again rejects this claim, Gandalf uses the assertion that Gollum was a hobbit to introduce his strongest plea for pitying Gollum on his own merits (as it were):

'But there was something else in it, I think, which you don't see yet. Even Gollum was not wholly ruined.  He had proved tougher than even one of the Wise would have guessed -- as a hobbit might.  There was a little corner of his mind  that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark, a light out of the past.  It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice again, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.

'But that of course would only make the evil part of him angrier in the end -- unless it could be conquered. Unless it could be cured,' Gandalf sighed. 'Alas! there is little hope of that for him.  Yet not no hope.  No, not though he possessed the Ring so long, almost as far back as he can remember.  For it was long since he had worn it much: in the black darkness it was seldom needed. Certainly he had never "faded".  He is thin and tough still.  But the thing was eating up his mind, of course, and the torment had become almost unbearable. 

'All the "great secrets" under the mountains had turned out to be just empty night: there was nothing more to find out, nothing worth doing, only nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering.  He was altogether wretched. He hated the dark, and he hated light more: he hated everything, and the Ring most of all.'

(FR 1.ii.54-55)

It all starts off with such promise in the first paragraph. After hearing of the murderous, malicious, sneaking Gollum whose offenses were so rank that his own grandmother cast him out, who shook his fist at the sun and who 'wormed his way like a maggot into the heart of the hills,' we are now afforded a glimpse of the last remnant of Sméagol the hobbit, whom Bilbo the hobbit had touched.⁶  It's a rare, poignant moment that evokes pure pity for Gollum, the last for a very long time.

And yet Gandalf's pity is not blind.  As his contrast between 'the little corner of [Gollum's] mind that was still his own' and the 'evil part of him' suggests, he sees that the largest part of Gollum's mind is evil.  He does not ignore or conceal the evidence of his repulsive deeds of ancient days when he still might have been called Sméagol, or the horror of his current actions now that he has emerged from beneath the mountains to hunt for Bilbo:

'[Mirkwood] was full of the rumour of him, dreadful tales even among the beasts and the birds.  The Woodmen said that there was some new terror abroad, a ghost that drank blood.  It climbed trees to find nests; it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles.'

(FR 1.ii.58)

And his evil has led him inevitably to Mordor, which 'draws all wicked things' (FR 1.ii.58), and from which he has lately returned, so Gandalf thought, '[o]n some errand of of mischief' (1.ii.59).⁷ Given the Ring, given the malice that moves both Gollum and Sauron, it seems inevitable that they meet, and at least appear to be in league.⁸ From murderer of poor Déagol to vampire-like cannibal of children in their cradles, from outcast consumed with self-pity⁹ to vengeful ally of Sauron, Gollum may stir Gandalf's fathomless pity, but that does not alter the truths of his character that the wizard so clearly sees and portrays. The Ring has devoured so much of him that only a little of him has not been 'wholly ruined,' the very last of Sméagol, the bit for which Gandalf has 'not no hope' of a cure (FR 1.ii.55).  Yet even so Gandalf cannot deny that Frodo is right when he declares that Gollum deserves death.  All he can do is urge him to pity, and explain that life is often more complicated than verdicts of death would have them be. Let us turn back again to a fuller quotation of the passage with which we began when we asked why Gandalf did not identify Sméagol:

'Deserves [death]! I daresay he does.  Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.  Can you give it to them?  Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.  For even the very wise cannot see all ends.  I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.  And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring.  My heart tells me that  he has some part to play yet, for good or for ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many -- yours not least.'

(FR 1.ii.59)

That Gollum deserves death is a large part of the reason why Gandalf fails, and why he suppressed the identify of Sméagol in the first place.  He hoped to win Frodo to pity before he knew the truth, and to suggest through the fact that Sméagol was a hobbit, that the same could have happened to Bilbo, and still might happen to him. But Gandalf cannot make an argument strong enough, or present a portrait of Gollum pitiable enough, to overcome Frodo's fear of Sauron and loathing of Gollum, passions which play the same role here as Bilbo's anger and jealousy of the Ring did the night he left.¹⁰ Every time Gandalf appeals to pity, Frodo rejects him, ultimately scorning even his claims of experience.  He does not care that his friend has seen Gollum, and he doesn't want to see him for himself.

Nor is it accidental that Gandalf never refers to Gollum as Sméagol anywhere but in this conversation.  This isn't just Gandalf being clever, as it might at first seem, and using the name as a rhetorical tool.  It also confirms something for us, that for him Sméagol is a remote figure gone so far away that there is little or no hope that he can ever return.¹¹ 'Not no hope' in fact, but almost none.  The same may be said of his attempt.to convince Frodo, who from the start resists Gandalf 'with some heat' (FR 1.ii.54).  And he continues to resist until the moment the subject of Gollum is dropped.  Frodo's last words on Gollum here --  'All the same...even if Bilbo could not kill Gollum....' (FR 1.ii.60) -- are words of unwilling concession and chilling disappointment. They are hardly to his credit, but they reveal the depths of his fear, his loathing, and his failure to comprehend the implications of possessing the Ring that Gandalf has been trying to get across to him.

In A Long-Expected Party we could learn little about Gollum, only what we were able to glean from Bilbo's words and deeds. The Shadow of the Past lends a substance to his character that goes beyond hints and inferences.  Gollum is the murderer of a friend, a cannibal who preys on the young and weak; he is vengeful, resentful, full of justifications and self pity; he is a sneak, a spy, a liar, a spirit of malice; at best he is a tool of Sauron, at worst a servant. He hates even that which he holds most precious.  The Ring and the Dark Power that rules it have devoured him almost completely.

Thus far the portrayal of Gollum.  Given all that Gandalf has said, and all that Frodo learned from Bilbo, Frodo's loathing is entirely justified.  It is also clear that there was a darkness in Gollum before he ever touched the Ring, a darkness that, as it were, responded to its call.  It may have 'an unwholesome power that set[s] to work on its keeper at once,' but it makes a difference who that keeper is.  The touch of the Ring alone is not enough to work the instantaneous corruption of its keeper. It does not have this effect on Bilbo or Frodo, who possess the Ring for many years, or on Gandalf who handles it (FR 1.ii.49-50).  Moreover, the wizard's description of what the Ring would do to him if he took it fits in with this assessment.¹²  And when Frodo says that he will keep the Ring to guard it, Gandalf replies that 'whatever it may do [to you], it will be slow, slow to evil, if you keep it with that purpose' (FR 1.ii.62).  This statement can only remind us of almost the last thing Gandalf says about Bilbo and the Ring:

'What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!' [cried Frodo.] 

'Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.'

(FR 1.ii.59)

Gandalf's Pity is high and pure.  It is written out, along with Mercy, in Mythic Capitals.  It is aware of the crimes or sins of its object, and does not excuse them. It can even agree that those crimes may merit death.  It proceeds, as Saint Augustine would put it, 'with a love of men and a hatred of their sins' ('cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum,' letter 211.11).  When combined with the Mercy that does not 'strike without need' and that spares those who in fact deserve punishment, it comes near to Grace.¹³

Such Pity is impossible for Frodo to comprehend.  Even as he reluctantly concedes the wisdom of Gandalf and Bilbo's pity for Gollum  --  'All the same...even if Bilbo could not kill Gollum....' (FR 1.ii.60) -- he is too afraid, too filled with loathing, and too inexperienced to share the feeling.  The crimes and character of Gollum are too undeniably dark for that, and have been portrayed as such at such great length that it is quite difficult for the reader, who experiences Middle-Earth through the eyes of Frodo (and the other hobbits), to see Gollum except as he does here.  The effects of this will be long-lasting.

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¹ As I pointed out in my first post we cannot assume that the reader has read The Hobbit or the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, and, therefore, knows something about Gollum already. I will discuss the portrayal of Gollum in those texts in my fourth post on this subject.

² In fact no reader, not even one who had read The Hobbit or the Prologue, could have immediately recognized Sméagol as Gollum. The names Sméagol and Déagol and their tale appear here first.  The first clue that Sméagol and Gollum are the same is the mention of his birthday.

³ 'And hobbits as miserable slaves would please [Sauron] far more than hobbits happy and free.  There is such a thing as malice and revenge' (FR 1.ii.49).  But when Frodo asks for an explanation of this statement, Gandalf never gives him one.  Is this because there is no explanation of the malice and vengefulness of evil?

⁴ RK 5.iv.813-814: ' "You think, as is your wont, my lord, of Gondor only," said Gandalf. "Yet there are other men and other lives, and time still to be. And for me, I pity even his slaves." '

⁵ We have already seen in the text that Frodo is set apart from other hobbits, and the Ring has already begun to effect him.  He is not aging normally (FR 1.ii.43), he is restless, he is reluctant to part with the Ring even for a moment (FR 1.ii.49), and cannot bring himself to do anything that might harm it (FR 1.ii.49-50, 60-61). Indeed there is a strong parallel between the behavior of Frodo here and Bilbo's in the scene with Gandalf in chapter one, though obviously matters here never approach violence.

⁶ This passage also lays the foundations for the famous 'two thoughts' scene at TT 4.ii.632-634.  Already there are two of him.

⁷ Cf. Gandalf's account of his interview with Gollum, whom Aragorn captured after he left Mordor (FR 1.ii.57; emphasis Tolkien's):

'He muttered that he was going to get his own back. People would see if he would stand being kicked, and driven into a hole and then robbed. Gollum had good friends now, good friends and very strong. They would help him. Baggins would pay for it. That was his chief thought.' 

In The Hunt for the Ring Tolkien wrote:

But Sauron perceived the depth of Gollum's malice towards those that had 'robbed' him, and guessing that he would go in search of them to avenge himself, Sauron hoped that his spies would thus be led to the Ring.

(UT 357). 

Though this passage harmonizes with what Gandalf thought and said in The Shadow of the Past, that in itself is no proof that Tolkien had this in mind when he was writing that chapter.  Christopher Tolkien, however, argues that The Hunt for the Ring was part of the the writings referred to by his father in a letter of 1964 (not, alas, in The Letters) as being extant at the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, and originally intended for inclusion (UT 11).

⁸ Malice is ascribed directly to Sauron at 1.ii.49, and Gollum is said at 1.ii.53 to have put the fruits of his invisibility to 'malicious uses.' Later, at 2.ii.254 Gandalf speaks of the Ring as being 'fraught with all [Sauron's] malice,' and just over two hundred words later Strider says that '[Gollum's] malice is great and gives him a strength hardly to be believed in one so lean and withered' (2.ii.255). For Gollum's malice, see further TT 4.i.622, vi.688-89, 691; RK 6.iii.943.

Though it should surprise no seasoned reader of The Lord of the Rings, the catalog of characters possessed of malice is nevertheless rather breathtaking. Aside from Sauron (FR 2.ii.269; TT 4.iv.659 ; RK 5.iv.808; ix.879; 6.i.898; 6.iii.935, 942), we have in the order in which it was first used of them: Old Man Willow and the trees of the Old Forest (FR 1.vii.130); Caradhras (FR 2.iii.293); orcs (FR 2.ix,386); Wormtongue (TT 3.vi.520); Minas Morgul/The Nazgul (TT 4.vi.692; RK 5.iv.823); Shelob (TT 4.ix.719, 720, 724; x.728, 730); the Witch King (RK 5.iv.822; vi.841); the Watchers at the Tower of Cirith Ungol (RK 6.i.902, 903, 914); Saruman (RK 6.viii.1018).
 
Cf. Legolas' words upon entering Fangorn -- 'I can catch only the faintest echoes of dark places where the hearts of the trees are black.  There is no malice near us; but there is watchfulness, and anger' (TT 4.v.491) -- with Treebeard's remarks that some trees have bad hearts, and that in some parts of the forest the 'Darkness has never been lifted' (4.iv.468).  This likely refers, at least in part, to the Huorns, 'hundreds and hundreds' of whom dwell 'deep in the darkest dales' (TT 4.ix.565).

⁹ Cf. Gollum's 'weeping a little for the hardness of the world' after he is cast out (FR 1.ii.54).  The world wasn't hard.  He was justly punished by his peers for his misdeeds. And he shakes his fist at the sun, as if it were out to get him.  This is self-pity, and the reverse of that coin is resentment.  Cf. also Gandalf's reference in the same passage to his 'wet eyes.'  Eyes are always wet.  So it is idle to point this out unless 'wet' means 'wet with tears.'  Not idly do the adjectives of Gandalf fall. It's a nice touch.

¹⁰ We might pursue the parallel further. It continues, but with a difference. Frodo, who tries to give the Ring away, resolves to accept the journey before him, but he does not see it as an adventure; he sees it as exile and sacrifice. It is Sam, hauled through the window, who sees it as an adventure, and who gets Frodo to laugh. But his laugh is at the ridiculousness of Sam's fear of Gandalf, not the laugh of heart's ease that bursts from Bilbo afer he relinquishes the Ring. See FR 1.i.35-36; ii.60-64.

¹¹ As Gollum himself says when Frodo first calls him Sméagol: 'Don't ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away a long time ago.  They took his Precious, and he's lost now' (TT 4.i.616).  It is interesting that Frodo, who never call him Sméagol beforehand, begins to do so almost as soon as he actually sees him.  He starts calling him Sméagol the instant he begins to pity him (TT 4.i.615-616).

¹² Gandalf's '[y]et the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do go' (FR 1.ii.61). Not only does this statement suggest a slow process rather than an instantaneous conversion, as does his subsequent declaration that Frodo's intention to keep the Ring to protect it would substantially delay any ill effects the Ring might have (1.ii.62). Consider also Galadriel's response to Sam when he says that, if she had the Ring, she would 'make some folk pay for their dirty work:' 'I would....That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas!' (2.vii.366). Then there's Bombadil, over whom the Ring has no power at all, and who, says Gandalf, 'would soon forget it, or most likely thow it away,' (2.ii.265).

¹³ In letter 246 (p. 320) Tolkien comments on Pity in a footnote, to explain his remark in the text of the letter that 'all Frodo's pity is (in a sense*) wasted' when Gollum failed to repent: '*In the sense that "pity" to be a true virtue must be directed to the good of its object. It is empty if it is exercised only to keep oneself "clean", free from hate or the actual doing of injustice, though this is also a good motive.' Gandalf's pity is clearly of the first kind; Frodo's, when at last he comes to feel it, is a more complicated question, despite the implication of Tolkien's words here that Frodo at that point felt the former, better kind of pity.