The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 939-942

Frodo and Sam follow Gollum into Shelob’s Lair and enter a darkness such as they had not known since the passage through Moria. But at least in Moria there had been a sense of space and a movement of air. “Here the air was still, stagnant, heavy and sound fell dead. They walked as it were in a black vapour wrought of veritable darkness itself that, as it was breathed, brought blindness not only to the eyes but to the mind, so that even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought. Night always had been, and always would be, and night was all.”

The theme of the dark journey is one that repeats throughout The Lord of the Rings. The journey through Moria that ends in Gandalf’s fall, Aragorn’s passage of the Paths of the Dead with Legolas and Gimli, and here, Frodo and Sam in Shelob’s Lair.

This is a theme that runs through European mythology. Perhaps the most famous example being the journey of Odysseus into Hades in order to meet the blind prophet, Tiresias, and to learn what would befall him in his journey home to Ithaca from the war at Troy. But perhaps readers of Tolkien should turn to another example because he himself would have done so. Tolkien chose to draw from northern European sources because he wished to place his own theology within that world. He was particularly drawn to stories from Finland known as the Kalevala and in particular the tale of the hero, Leminķäinen. Leminķäinen was sent on a journey into the land of the dead, Tuonela, in order to kill the black swan that guarded it. He was killed himself by a blind cowherd and thrown into the waters of the river that runs through Tuonela before being restored to life by his divine mother.

We might think more about Tolkien’s love affair with the Finnish language and the mythology that flowed from it on another occasion but here we will move on from the tale of Leminķäinen to another telling of a dark journey, perhaps one of the greatest of all European literature, the Divine Comedy by Dante (1265-1321). At the opening of the poem, here translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, herself a member of the Inklings, we read these words.

Midway this way of life we're bound upon, 
I woke to find myself in a dark wood, 
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. 

Ay me! How hard to speak of it- that rude 
And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath 
Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood;

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;
Yet there I gained such good, that to convey 
The tale, I'll write what else I found therewith. 

The poet, lost upon his journey “in a dark wood” is at the very gates of hell, above which are written the words:

Lay down all hope, you that go in by me.

Of course we should not try to draw parallels that are too exact between the dark journeys described here, nor are they an exhaustive list. We might add the winter journeys of Beowulf into the fenland in search of Grendel’s mother or Gawain in a search of the Green Knight, both stories that Tolkien knew and translated into modern English. But what they all have in common is that they cannot be escaped. In every tale the hero must take the dark journey that “goes nigh to death” in order to achieve their goal and even find good for themselves.

Frodo’s hell is the journey through Shelob’s Lair into captivity in the tower of Cirith Ungol and the agony of the passage through Mordor to Mount Doom. His purgatory (and we can use this word because Tolkien does himself) is his healing in the Undying Lands. We are not told of his paradise but I think we can be assured that he found it, not as an achievement but as a gift. Whatever work that any of us do in order to pass through hell and purgatory can only take us so far, If we are to enter paradise we can only do so as a gift of pure grace and love. I think that we can be assured that by the time Frodo had completed his “gentle purgatory” as Tolkien called it he knew that whatever came next was exactly that.

But first must come his dark journey through Shelob’s Lair.