The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 817-822
I once crossed a bog a little like the one that Tolkien describes here. It is not one of my favourite memories of walks that I have taken although I have a certain satisfaction about the way in which I was able to navigate it. I had a long staff with me, a gift from my wife and one that we used to call my Gandalf staff. I used it to reach out to the next tussock ahead of me, to check its firmness, and then sometimes if necessary to use it to swing myself across the pools to firm ground.
My bog was nothing like the size of the Dead Marshes that Frodo and Sam, guided by Gollum, had to cross, but I was very glad when I stood on firm ground once more and could walk freely and easily. The bog that Tolkien describes was based upon his memory of the Battle of the Somme in which water filled the shell holes created by incessant artillery barrages and, in which, fallen soldiers often lay some time before their bodies were recovered.
Soldiers fish in pools at the Western Front in the 1914-18 war that are crossed by bridges made of wooden duckboards.
In his vision of the Dead Marshes Tolkien mythologises this memory. Here it is the Battle of Dagorlad that is recalled, that was fought in the last Great Alliance at the end of the Second Age between the Elves of Gil-galad and the Men of Elendil against the forces of Mordor. Gollum describes it as “a great battle”, fought “before the Precious came”. “Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.”
When Frodo and Sam look down into the pools Sam reacts with horror, looking down at rotting faces illuminated by ghostly candles. Frodo, on the other hand, looks down with a melancholy fascination. Death is beginning to take hold of his imagination as he carries the Ring ever closer to the place of its making. Sam has to move him gently away, both from the deep pools in which he might drown and also from the vision of the dead that holds such a strange fascination for him.
The ghostly candles must surely have come out of Tolkien’s Catholic imagination and therefore originally must have been signs of hope. Candles are lit in memory of the dead at the feast of All Souls at the beginning of November and here they represent light that continues both in the hearts of those who mourn the lost and also in the presence of God. The darkness of death does not have the last word. Light continues to shine. But here in the Dead Marshes everything is corrupted, even light itself. The sun barely breaks through the vapours that rise from the fen. Everything seems to exist in a kind of half-light.
And yet it is this ghostly passage that is Frodo and Sam’s safest way. The firm roads that lie to the east of the marshes are continually patrolled by the forces of Mordor and to the west lies the Anduin that would take them away from their goal to Minas Tirith. Ever, for the members of the Fellowship, it is the dark road that is the best. Gandalf’s fall in Moria takes him through death itself before leading him to return as Gandalf the White. Merry and Pippin’s dark journey as captives of the orcs leads them to Fangorn and to Treebeard. And the whole of the journey of Frodo and Sam from the Emyn Muil onwards is one long dark journey with a brief interlude in Ithilien that leads eventually to the destruction of the Ring and the fall of Sauron. In none of these cases can we say that those who pass through them embrace the experience but they all have to give themselves up to them and each one of them find their journey to be a passage from darkness into light. Perhaps the ghostly candles remain a sign of hope after all.
Candles lit at All Souls
Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings 
This piece is particularly well written, Stephen
Thank you so much, Brenton. After publishing it I told Laura that I had found this a particularly difficult piece to write. If you have the time could you reflect on this a little further.
It’s a good question, Stephen. It just struck me in a literary way beyond the core punchy idea. I think part of it is the definite inclusion of a story you took time to tell that situates me with the text in a new way. The other is there is a feel in the piece that reflects eerie feeling of the marshes,
-The ghostly candles must surely have come out of Tolkien’s Catholic imagination and therefore originally must have been signs of hope. Candles are lit in memory of the dead at the feast of All Souls at the beginning of November and here they represent light that continues both in the hearts of those who mourn the lost and also in the presence of God. The darkness of death does not have the last word. Light continues to shine. But here in the Dead Marshes everything is corrupted, even light itself. The sun barely breaks through the vapours that rise from the fen. Everything seems to exist in a kind of half-light.
Even just the words, mostly Germanic rather than Latinate, that help that aetherial, Gothic atmosphere: Ghostly candles, Catholic, light/light, dead, feast of all souls, mourn, lost, darkness of death, fen, half-light, maybe even corrupt and “vapours”–they make phrases like “light shine” and “presence of God” very stark .
I don’t know if that helps!
I did not notice any of this when writing the piece. Thank you for pointing it out. It isn’t that I don’t give any attention to style but I consciously give most of my attention to content. Like all writers I have been developing a “voice” over the years; finding my own rather than copying someone else’s. Hopefully when I write my next piece that will continue to flow and I won’t get too self-conscious. Thank you for taking the time to reflect on this. I appreciate it.
Apparently, I lost my reply. Good writing is intentional, but often reflects the other things that feed our words: the books we read, especially–but all aspects of our world. It is fun for me to try and awaken to my own writing.
Thank you, Brenton.
This is helpful. I never really got the part about the candles in the Dead Marshes. Now that I’ve read this, I can put the candles alongside Theoden’s “It is not so dark here.”
Now I love your Théoden quote and agree with the context you give it. My take on the candles was an intuition. I have found no textual evidence. I just couldn’t imagine Tolkien, who spent so much of his life in the presence of candles in church, not having this sense in mind when he used the candles in this passage. I am going to assume that the orcs did not have candles but I could be wrong.
“Curse you, Snaga! Trim that wick or I’ll …” You’re right. It doesn’t work at all.
Compared to a really good joke this is going to sound rather dull and you have probably got it anyway but orcs will use anything as a tool but could not use anything for prayer. Candles included.
This piece is very insightful into the nuances of Tolkien’s writing. The connection of the lights within the Dead Marshes to hope while tying in Tolkien’s Catholic background gave more weight to the presence of light in such a dark place. And the fact that Tolkien based the Dead Marshes off his memory of the Battle of the Somme! I never knew that!
Thank you for sharing this, Elizabeth. I have not found any evidence from the text or Tolkien’s writing to support my insight. It is an instinct on my part that Tolkien would have understood candles in a liturgical way as signs of hope. The sad thing is that at this stage in the history of Arda everything has been corrupted by the dark but with Frodo I continue to say “They cannot conquer for ever!”
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