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“None Could Rival Her, Shelob The Great, Last Child of Ungoliant to Trouble the Unhappy World.” We learn of the History of Shelob and Her Relationship with Sauron and with Gollum.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 944-948

The contrast is almost absolute. There is Galadriel’s gift. “A light when all other lights go out”. And then there is Shelob: “she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness”.

Galadriel gives light and life and Shelob consumes everything and leaves only darkness.

“Little did she know of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her.”

It is this notion of an existence that is reduced to mere consumption without making, of taking without giving, that disgusts us and, maybe, frightens us. Or it would most certainly frighten us if we were ever to meet it, knowing that one who existed thus would only be interested in us as something to devour and for no other purpose.

Even Morgoth, mightiest of the Valar, who entered into what he thought had been an alliance with Shelob’s sire, Ungoliant, in order to steal the Silmarils from Valinor, an alliance with all the usual boundaries and limits, found his ally’s desire terrifying. For Ungoliant wished to consume the Silmarils too and only a company of Balrogs, armed with whips of fire, were able to drive her off their master.

The word that Tolkien uses to describe the energy that drives both Ungoliant and Shelob her daughter is lust. We tend to use this word to describe an intense sexual desire and in one regard it is clear that Shelob is not driven by this particular desire. Shelob simply wants to eat. But anyone who has ever felt lust for another person will know the temptation is just to reduce all thought of that person to an object to be consumed. This desire that is called lust, at its most potent, contains no wish to give pleasure or delight, no wish to enrich the life of the other. These wishes are irrelevancies to the one who is consumed by lust and by lust alone. Tolkien describes this well in his description of Ungoliant in The Silmarilion. In speaking of her relationship to Morgoth he writes:

“But she had disowned her Master, desiring to be mistress of her own lust, taking all things to herself to feed her emptiness”. (The Silmarilion ,Harper Collins 1999 p76)

It is that phrase, “to feed her emptiness” that describes the lust we are speaking of here most effectively. When we speak of lust in this regard then there is no difference between lust as sexual desire or lust to possess an object as Morgoth desired to possess the Silmarils even though they caused him pain, or lust to devour as Ungoliant wished to devour those jewels and Shelob wishes to devour Frodo and Sam and the Ring. All these are expressions of the same desire, the desire to feed an emptiness within. And ultimately all attempts to feed that emptiness are in vain. Tolkien describes the end of Ungoliant with a devastating finality.

“Of the fate of Ungoliant no tale tells. Yet some have said that she ended long ago, when in her uttermost famine she devoured herself at last.” (Silmarilion p.86)

All people who achieve any self knowledge will come to recognise some form of inner emptiness and the desire to fill it in some way, the desire that we call lust. We may come to fear our own emptiness and that fear may become so unbearable that any object that we can seize upon that will give even a very temporary satisfaction of our hunger will be sought. But the great spiritual teachers tell us that we do not have to fear our emptiness. We can even learn to embrace it. So Meister Eckhart, the great 14th century German mystic and theologian wrote this:

“I never ask God to give himself to me: I beg him to purify, to empty, me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me.”

It seems that it would require a vast leap of the imagination to think of Shelob, or Sauron or Gollum embracing their emptiness as Eckhart encourages us to do but it is actually their refusal to do so that distinguishes them from Galadriel, who “passed the test” when Frodo offered the Ring to her, to take the risk as she saw it of being diminished and to go into the West, to entrust herself to God and not to make herself a private possession. Shelob could have chosen differently, Sauron certainly was offered the opportunity to do so at the end of the First Age and he refused to take it. So both he and Shelob chose their lust and rejected the emptiness that only God can fill.

A POST SCRIPT

I almost never offer an explicit spiritual reflection on The Lord of the Rings because I want to honour Tolkien’s own decision not to do so in his greatest work. He allowed his story to speak for itself which is probably why it has been the best selling work of fiction now for many years. But he comes closest to such a reflection here in Shelob’s Lair at this moment of uttermost peril both in speaking of Shelob’s and Sauron’s lust and in contrasting them to Galadriel and her gift that Frodo uses as he speaks the words from Crist, the Old English poem by Cynewulf that captured his imagination before he began to write his legendarium and which was its wellspring. And it is because of this that I have chosen to depart from my usual practice.

It is also a good moment to write differently as I will be taking a short break from these reflections. Regular readers will know that with my wife, Laura, I have been walking one of the ancient pilgrim ways to the shrine of St James in Santiago da Compostela in northern Spain for the last couple of years, making the way in two stages. We began in Biarritz in south west France in September 2023 and reached the town of Llanes last year having covered about 270 miles. This year our intention is to cover the remaining 270 miles and to complete our pilgrimage. We will be walking the Camino Primitivo across the Picos Europa mountains from Oviedo. This is so named because it is the oldest pilgrim route of all but now less often travelled. I hope to post my next reflection in Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings on Saturday 13th September and maybe to write something about the experience of completing our pilgrimage. For those of you who pray please remember us as we walk this ancient way.

“Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!” What did Frodo Say in Shelob’s Lair?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 942-944

Tolkien knew, perhaps more than almost anyone, that language is far far more than merely sounds that convey meaning. I say, almost anyone, because it was his fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield, whose work on language had the greatest influence upon him. In later years Tolkien would say that he would be giving a lecture when he would recall something that Barfield had said about the same thing and realise that he must correct what he had been about to say.

Barfield’s great contribution to the study of language was to say that the history of language was a history of human experience and that at one time, and in the experience of first nation peoples even to this day, language was a participation in life.

But I do not know if Barfield was able to experience language as Tolkien did. Those who knew Tolkien well said that he could read an ancient text in many languages and sensually enter and participate in the very world from which that text first came.

So it was that just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, when he was still an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, Tolkien read these words in Old English and that never escaped their hold upon him for the rest of his life.

Eala earendel, engla beorhtast, ofer middangeard monum sended.

O, Earendel, brightest of angels, sent to men above Middle-earth.

Earendel is the evening and the morning star, or the planet Venus as we would call her. The brightest of heavenly bodies as we perceive them after the sun and the moon. And when Tolkien read these words he entered the dark world illumined by the light of the star that journeyed from dusk until dawn and felt that light calling to his heart.

O Earendel, brightest of angels.

In Tolkien’s legendarium Earendel becomes Eärendil, a figure who makes the forbidden journey from Middle-earth to Valinor in order to plead with the Valar for aid against Morgoth. The Valar hear his prayer and Morgoth is cast down and the children of Iluvatar set free from bondage. On his journey to Valinor Eärendil took with him the Silmaril that Beren and Lúthien took from Morgoth’s iron crown, one of three jewels, made by Feänor, that contained the light of the two trees, Telperion and Laurelin, that Morgoth and Ungoliant, mother of Shelob, destroyed. It is this jewel that makes the nightly journey through the sky and it is the light of the Silmaril that Galadriel places within the glass that she gives to Frodo.

The words that Frodo speaks at utter need in Shelob’s Lair were first spoken in greeting by Ëonwe, herald of the Valar, to Eärendil on his arrival in Valinor. “Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!” Perhaps it is Ëonwe’s voice that speaks through Frodo at this moment, the “other voice” that speaks “through his, clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit.

So we have these two things brought together as Frodo and Sam are trapped by Shelob. We have the voice of Ëonwe and we have the light of the trees that Shelob’s sire sought to destroy. Shelob had heard the words before made by Elves as a prayer and they had not daunted her. But now, as she hears them spoken by the herald of the Valar and as she is made to gaze upon the light of the star casting aside all the shadows of the eternal night within which she dwelt, she begins to doubt.

Frodo cries out the name of Galadriel, “and gathering up his courage he lifted up the Phial once more. The eyes halted. For a moment their regard relaxed, as if some hint of doubt troubled them. Then Frodo’s heart flamed within him, and without thinking what he did, whether it was folly or despair or courage, he took the Phial in his left hand, and with his right hand drew his sword.”

And then he advances upon Shelob and Shelob retreats before he unbearable light into the darkest recess of her lair.

Tolkien brings the words that first captured his heart many years before into this darkest place. We can only imagine what this meant to him as he wrote them within his story. Of course we know that Shelob’s retreat was only temporary and that she was to sting Frodo in another part of her lair when he was unaware of her presence near. But if she had made good her attack when first she had the hobbits trapped then Sam would not have been free to drive her away from Frodo’s body and the orcs would not have carried Frodo into the tower of Cirith Ungol. The quest of the Ring would have failed right there. Frodo’s prayer at his moment of direst need was not in vain.

“The Lady’s Gift! The Star-glass! A Light to You in Dark Places, She Said it Was To Be.”

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 939-943

Frodo and Sam are lost within the tunnels of Shelob’s Lair and soon become horribly aware of the monster herself. They hear a sound, “a gurgling, bubbling noise, and a long venomous hiss”. Shelob, a demonic power in the form of a giant spider, is creeping up behind them. They are trapped with no way out.

But at such moments strength of which we are usually unaware can come to us. Sam’s hand goes to the hilt of his sword and as it does so Sam remembers where he found it, in another dark place, in the barrow where a wight dwelt, a servant of the Witch King of Angmar. And as his mind went to that place he thinks of their rescuer on that day, Tom Bombadil, whose merry but commanding song was far stronger than that of the wight. If only Tom was near them now. But Sam’s imagination has been awakened in ways in which even a few moments before he could not have predicted. Tom might not be near them but something else is.

“Far off, as in a little picture drawn by elven-fingers, he saw the Lady Galadriel standing on the grass in Lórien, and gifts were in her hands. And you, Ring-bearer, he heard her say, remote but clear, for you I have prepared this.”

Galadriel, one of the last of the Noldor, and kinswoman of Fëanor, mightiest of all craftsmen and women and maker of the Silmarils in which are held the light of the trees, Telperion and Laurelin. These trees were destroyed by Morgoth with the aid of Ungoliant, sire of Shelob, and all that was left of their light was that contained within the Silmarils. These were stolen by Morgoth and he placed them upon his iron crown. One of these were taken by the mighty hero, Beren, with the aid of Lúthien, and this eventually became the morning star whose light was caught within the glass that Galadriel gave to Frodo, to be “a light when all other lights go out”.

Frodo and Sam have already spoken together of how they are a part of a story that is bigger than they are and Sam mentioned the star-glass that Galadriel gave to Frodo in Lothlórien. But it is one thing to speak of something in a moment of relative calm. It is another to recall it at a time of greatest peril.

It is not Frodo who remembers Galadriel’s gift. It is Sam whose memory and imagination are awakened as he puts his hand to the hilt of his sword and who reminds Frodo of the gift that he possesses. And suddenly, in the briefest of moments, a mighty history and all the power contained within it, comes to the aid of the beleaguered friends. The work of the smith who forged Sam’s blade for the hopeless defence of Arthedain against the Witch King and his forces; and most potently of all, the work of Galadriel who, using the skill of her people and her kinsman, Fëanor, crafts the glass that contains within it the light that he once caught within the Silmarils. And Sam’s faithful friendship, there for Frodo at just the right moment.

And all this is brought to bear against Shelob when all seems darkest. Frodo finds a courage that is given to him when all hope of escape has gone.

“Then Frodo’s heart flamed within him, and without thinking what he did, whether it was folly or despair or courage, he took the Phial in his left hand, and with his right drew his sword. Sting flashed out, and the sharp elven-blade sparkled in the silver light, but at its edges a blue fire flickered. Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.”

Tolkien makes quite sure that in his description of Frodo’s heroic act we all read the words, “hobbit of the Shire”. He is no more than this, but no less either. As we saw in the last reflection on this blog Frodo is a dead man walking. He has already given up his life for the sake of the task he has been given to do and so although it is only a hobbit who advances upon the monster it is also a hero who, as Elrond recognised, had earned the right to stand among the mighty Elf-friends of old, “Hador, and Húrin, and Túrin and Beren himself”. And it is in this laying down of his life that he receives a strength so great that even Shelob has to withdraw. For a time at least.

“Night Always Had Been, and Always Would Be, And Night Was All.” Frodo and Sam Enter Shelob’s Lair. The Dark Journeys of The Lord of the Rings.

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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.

“Is This The Only Way, Sméagol?” Frodo Prepares to Enter Shelob’s Lair.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 938, 939

By the time Frodo arrives at the foul smelling entrance to Shelob’s Lair he is already a dead man. Some might call him a dead man walking. Usually that means that others intend to kill him or have him killed. But in Frodo’s case there is a sense in which he has already given up on his own life.

Readers might remember the moment when he arrived at the Black Gate of Mordor and found it shut and impassable.

“His face was grim and set, but resolute. He was filthy, haggard and pinched with weariness, but he cowed no longer, and his eyes were clear. ‘I said so, because I purpose to enter Mordor, and I know no other way. Therefore I shall go this way. I do not ask anyone to go with me.”

Indeed we might go even further back to the moment when the Fellowship was broken and Frodo resolved to make the journey alone. This was not a choice he made out of hubris although he might have developed a feeling that only he could accomplish the task. But after the fall of Gandalf in Moria Frodo lost what hope he might have had. Now he knew that his mission was impossible, that it was beyond him. That it was beyond any of the company. That the Ring was too much for any of them. Of that last certainty he was even more sure after the treachery of Boromir.

So Frodo is hopeless. What I mean by this is that he does not expect to succeed. All he knows is that he is not allowed to give in. He has to keep on going. A few weeks ago we thought about a moment outside the haunted fortress of Minas Morgul when he was tempted to despair having just witnessed the hosts of the Lord of the Nazgûl march past him on their way to besiege Minas Tirith. On that occasion it was the Shire that called to him from a deep unconquered place within his soul, a place that lay deeper even than his despair. And Tolkien told us that “he even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do”.

So when Frodo asked Gollum whether the foul smelling tunnel that lay ahead of them was the only way it was not because he wished to discuss options. And if Gollum had replied that it was the only way, but that what lay before him was a monster, so terrible, that he had little or no chance of getting past it, it would have made little difference to him. We began this piece by describing him as a dead man walking. He has got past the stage of wondering whether he is going to get through this whole thing alive. He simply has to do his duty.

And he has little interest in whether Gollum is trustworthy or not. He has not put his trust in Gollum because he believes Gollum to be worthy of it. He has got past that as well. Sam is angered by Gollum, believing that he is going to betray them. Frodo knows deep within himself that his destiny is bound up with Gollum’s, perhaps in that same secret place within that took him past the despair he felt outside Minas Morgul, that same unconquered place that the darkness still cannot reach. And so he says to Sam:

It’s no good worrying about him now,.. We couldn’t have got so far, not even within sight of the pass, without him, and so we’ll have to put up with his ways. If he’s false, he’s false.”

As we have seen, and will see on other occasions, this grim determination, remarkable though it is, cannot be not enough. He would not have got far without Sam, whose cheerful optimism keeps him going through every hardship; and he would not have got far without Gollum whose knowledge of the way into Mordor is essential to the mission. But without his grim determination that goes deeper than any hope he would not be standing here. He would not be about to walk into Shelob’s Lair. The only way into Mordor.

“The Gleam Faded From His Eyes, and They Went Dim and Grey, Old and Tired.” Did Gollum Come Close to Repenting of The Evil He Planned to Do to Frodo and Sam?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 935-937

Something happens when all the protective layers that surround us are pealed away. As our true self comes into view, vulnerable and undefended, it calls out to everything about it to respond. So when Frodo and Sam rested after the hard climb up the stairs of the Pass of Cirith Ungol before attempting to enter the land of Mordor they began to open their hearts to one another, and as they did so things began to change about them. The very rocks that Frodo had described as accursed seemed to reach out towards them at the sound of their merriment.

“To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them.”

And when Gollum returned later, finding Frodo at rest in Sam’s arms, a strange change seemed to take place within him.

“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 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.”

It is a deeply moving moment but a tragic one too. Tolkien later spoke of how he had tears in his eyes as he wrote this passage. As Gollum hesitantly reached out to Frodo so too did he reach back to the hobbit that he once was before the finding of the Ring, before the murder of Déagol, before his separation from his people and his journey into the hidden darkness at the roots of the Misty Mountains.

“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.”

But neither Frodo nor Sam ever saw this old and weary hobbit, one of their own, because when Sam saw Gollum reaching out towards Frodo he assumed the worst.

“What are you up to?”

And the moment was lost forever.

Had Gollum contemplated the possibility of repentance? We saw him looking back up the pass, shaking his head, engaged in some interior debate. Gollum had been to visit Shelob, the monstrous spirit in spider form with whom he had formed a relationship long before when Sauron had released him from captivity assuming that he would do some mischief in the world, even to bring the Ring to him. Gollum would bring Shelob, always ravenous, prey to consume. The purpose of Gollum’s visit was to inform her that he intended to bring her the hobbits, hoping that he might regain the Ring thereby; but when he saw Frodo and Sam so peacefully sleeping his heart went out to them just for a moment. Would he change his mind about the planned betrayal?

In a letter to Michael Straight, editor of New Republic, (The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, Harper Collins 2006, pp. 232-237) Tolkien spoke about this moment. He spoke of how Gollum had repeatedly, consistently, given in to temptation, was already a thief when the Ring crossed his path, did not defeat the Stinker side of his character in the debate in the slag hole near to the Black Gate, and so “weakened himself for the final chance when dawning love for Frodo was too easily withered by the jealousy of Sam before Shelob’s Lair.”

That phrase, “too easily withered”, tells us Tolkien’s own thoughts about this. Frodo’s kindness had awoken feelings within Gollum that he had not known for many hundreds of years. Tolkien speaks of them as a “dawning love”. But Gollum had murdered a friend before, desiring the Ring above any love, and that desire, combined with his long held resentment against all who he felt had rejected and excluded him, proved to be greater than any affection that might have awoken within him. We too might shed tears for Gollum, for the Sméagol that he once was, but our tears will be for all who choose, often by sheer force of habit, to put themselves beyond the power of love to reach into their hearts.

“Sleep Then, Master. Lay Your Head in My Lap.” Some Thoughts on Sam’s Love For Frodo.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 930-935

In the last post on my blog we watched Frodo shyly, uncertainly, begin to express his feelings regarding Sam. Frodo imagines a father reading the story of his and Sam’s adventures to his child and that child saying to his father:

“And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?”

It’s the closest that either Frodo or Sam have come to expressing how they feel about each other. Frodo is telling Sam that he needs him and that Sam has come to mean a lot to him. As we saw last time this isn’t a democratic relationship, a partnership of equals. Sam has no problem in calling Frodo, Master. Neither does he feel demeaned in any way in doing so. We have looked at other master-servant relationships in recent weeks, in particular that of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but in the 20th century two such relationships come immediately to my mind. Dorothy Sayers creation of Lord Peter Wimsey and his servant, Bunter, and P.G Wodehouse’s creation of Bertie Wooster and his servant, Jeeves. In the former case the relationship began in the First World War in which Bunter served as Lord Peter’s batman. The relationship between them remains formal but it is laced with deep mutual respect, trust and considerable affection. Sayers and Tolkien knew one another, Sayers joining the Inklings from time to time and both shared a similar view of society although Sayers was more critical of it as she showed in her story, Gaudy Night, for example. Wodehouse’s wonderful joke in his Jeeves and Wooster stories is that everyone (apart from Bertie himself) is aware that Jeeves possesses a competence that Wooster entirely lacks but Jeeves is more than content to play the game that Wooster is the master and he the servant.

As we have already discussed, the relationship between Frodo and Sam is based upon Tolkien’s memory of his batman in the trenches. In this respect it is closer to the relationship between Peter Wimsey and his servant, Bunter. But I cannot quite imagine a scene in one of Dorothy Sayers stories ending with Lord Peter lying in Bunter’s lap as it does here with Frodo and Sam.

Many of my readers will be aware that some people in the LBGTQ world have claimed the relationship between Frodo and Sam as queer. I confess that I do not understand the various nuances in queer relationships enough to be able to dismiss this assertion completely out of hand. I am also aware, based upon my life as a straight man, that however straightforward any of my friendships have been with women over the years, I have come to practice a certain reserve, a caution, to prevent the crossing of boundaries. I say this because I do not know all the feelings that Sam, in particular, has for Frodo. But of one thing I am sure, and that is that Sam is deeply respectful of boundaries. They have been ingrained in him by his culture since birth. I only say this because I do not want to simply dismiss the deep love that Sam has for Frodo as if it doesn’t matter or even exist. I am only certain that it exists within carefully, even painfully formed boundaries.

There are boundaries in the relationship between Frodo and Sam but there is also deep tenderness, especially on Sam’s part. And Tolkien is not afraid to show this even though he is describing a relationship between two men. Sam will draw upon this tenderness again and again as the two hobbits draw ever closer to Mount Doom and Frodo withdraws ever further from him as the Ring tightens its grip upon Frodo’s heart. Indeed it is probably only this tenderness that will see them through to their goal together.

As I conclude this reflection I need to make a decision. Is the relationship between Frodo and Sam queer or not? I am going to come down on the side of saying that it is not. And the reason why I am going to make this choice is because I believe it is possible to separate tenderness from sexual attraction. From my experience women are much more capable of taking the risk of expressing tenderness without confusing it with romantic attraction than are men. I regard this as a unhappy shortcoming in many men who struggle with both giving and receiving tenderness. I would argue that one of the characters in The Lord of the Rings who will benefit most from Sam’s considerable ability to show tenderness will be Rosie Cotton who will marry him and bear his children. So will those children as well.

Sam brings his tender heart to his marriage to Rosie Cotton.

“Frodo Wouldn’t Have Got Far Without Sam, Would He Dad?” Frodo Thinks About the Place of Sam Gamgee in His Story and About Both of Them in The Great Tale.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 931-935

Frodo and Sam have come a long way since Gandalf unceremoniously pulled Sam by the ear through the study window at Bag End. And they have travelled far since Frodo’s attempt to escape from all his friends across the Anduin to the Emyn Muil after Boromir’s betrayal and his attempt to take the Ring from Frodo by force. At that point in the story Frodo greeted Sam’s heroic effort to catch up with him, risking his life in the waters of the mighty river, with the words:

“Of all the confounded nuisances you are the worst, Sam!”

The road from the breaking of the Fellowship to the place just below the tunnel into Mordor in the pass of Cirith Ungol has only been a few days but during that time the bonds of friendship between Frodo and Sam have begun to grow deep. Frodo takes the opportunity using the gentle game that he and Sam are playing as Sam imagines Frodo as a character in the kind of story that he loved to hear when he was a child to express something of how he has come to feel about him.

“Why, Sam,” he said, “to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. ‘I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why don’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like. it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?'”

This short speech displays much of the struggle that men have to say what they really feel. It is the last sentence that gets closest to this for Frodo. “I wouldn’t have got very far without you, Sam.” But this shy expression of feeling is wrapped up in teasing and in all the careful formality of relationships between classes that typified the early twentieth century world that Frodo and Sam live in and which they carry into the pre-modern heroic world of the central narrative of The Lord of the Rings. And in passing we might note here how seemingly effortless this travel between worlds is. We hardly notice that that all this conversation about heroic literature takes place in a lighthearted conversation between an officer and his batman (a servant to an officer in the British military) on the front line during the Great War of 1914-18. Are we in the trenches of that terrible conflict or are we in the story of Beren and Lúthien from the First Age of Arda? In fact we are in both stories but most importantly of all, the heroic tale recounted in The Silmarilion is legitimately brought into the twentieth century conversation and re-enchants it.

Sam is the first to point this out, speaking of the tale of Beren and Lúthien.

“But that’s a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it- and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why sir, I never thought of it before! We’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! Its going on. Don’t the great tales never end?”

Some may recall that Bilbo used words very much like this in his despairing cry of, “Don’t adventures ever have an end?” in the hall of fire in Rivendell when he met Frodo there. Both the tragedy and comedy of life come down to each of us from the ancient stories and we must inherit them both. The point is, and Tolkien vividly brings this to life here, is that our lives in modernity are not hermetically sealed against the heroic tales of the past. They still live in us and we in them.

“You May Know, or Guess, What Kind of a Tale it is… But The People in It Don’t Know. And You Don’t Want Them To.” Frodo Speaks About The Best Kind of Stories.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 930-935

“I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?” asks Sam as he and Frodo rest after their climb up the stairs of Cirith Ungol. We thought about this last time and compared the story of Frodo and Sam to that of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, about how Cervantes’ famous characters found themselves in a story that largely came about because Don Quixote had immersed himself for years in tales of medieval chivalry until what he found there became preferable, more real, than what he saw around him in 17th century Spain.

Sam recognises that he and Frodo are in a story. The story is different from the life that he had lived while tending the gardens of Bag End, a story that Sam had come to regard as just a little dull and mundane; a little too predictable. The stories that Sam had learned from Bilbo of Elves and of great heroes were so much more exciting than the every day reality in which he lived. Frodo too was caught up by a longing to go after Bilbo in his discussion with Gandalf in his study in Bag End, a longing that for a moment was greater than the fear that had gripped him when Gandalf told him of the true nature of Bilbo’s ring and of how Sauron was looking for it.

It all felt very different when the question was asked at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell as to who should carry the Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it there. By that point Frodo had suffered the terrible wound inflicted upon him by the Lord of the Nazgûl. Most of his journey to Rivendell had been as a battle field casualty carried on the back of Bill the Pony. If Frodo had ever been caught up with the romance of adventure by the time he had accepted the task of bearing the Ring to Mordor this was long gone by this point.

But Frodo still has the capacity to have his imagination awakened by Sam. When Sam asks what of tale they have landed in Frodo wants to respond, to follow Sam’s train of thought.

“I wonder,” said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.”

I keep on going back to this image. By this point in the story Sam no longer cares about what kind of story he is in. He is guided by his love for Frodo and the need to finish the job.

We don’t want the characters in a story to know how it is going to end because if they did it would spoil the story. It is the very fact that the heroes in our favourite stories don’t know how the story is going to end, and that they keep on going, that makes them the heroes that they are. And in this regard they are completely different in spirit to Sauron. Sauron, by the time we reach this point in the story, has spent three ages in the history of Arda trying to achieve absolute control and to eliminate any unpredictability from all reality. At first he is a servant of Morgoth and then after his master falls at the end of the First Age, he becomes the Dark Lord. But in all this time what he seeks to achieve is power, both over others and over reality itself. Sauron wants to know how the story ends and he exercises all his power to achieve that end. He makes Mordor impregnable against attack and assembles an army so great that even after the defeat at the Pelennor Fields his power is not greatly diminished.

Every reader of The Lord of the Rings is aware of the great irony here. Sauron is convinced that he is in a story that is about power. As a consequence he spends two ages of history trying to amass as much power as possible. That is why he forged the Rings of Power. That is why he is convinced that the one thing he needs is to regain the greatest of those rings. And that is why all his schemes are fatally flawed. In trying to eliminate all uncertainty from the story, in trying to make everything his story, he falls, because stories do not work that way. Frodo and Sam don’t want the characters in the best stories to know how the story is going to end because that will spoil the story. They know that what makes a good story is that very element of uncertainty. And the wonder is that this very element is what makes reality. Frodo and Sam don’t know how their story is going to end. They don’t know if it will have a happy ending. They have “fallen into” this story. They haven’t written it themselves. But in giving themselves up to the uncertainty of their story they allow a deeper reality, one that Sauron has long ago rejected, to do its work.

“I Wonder What Sort of a Tale We’ve Fallen Into?” Sam Gamgee Continues to Think About His and Frodo’s Experience.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 930-935

When I first read Sam’s thoughts about the ancient tales that were to be recorded in The Silmarilion, tales such as that of Beren and Lúthien and their journey to Thangorodrim to wrest a Silmaril from Morgoth’s iron crown they meant nothing to me beyond the lines that I had read of The Lay of Beren and Lúthien in the first book of The Lord of the Rings when Aragorn recounted the story to the hobbits in the camp below Weathertop. I had no idea that these words related to a work upon which Tolkien had spent most of his adult life, the creation of a legendarium within which The Lord of the Rings played just a part.

I did not know these stories but Sam did; and so did Frodo. These characters that Tolkien created came to the early readers of The Lord of the Rings with inner lives that had been formed in a way that no others ever had been in an imaginary work. So as Sam spoke of the story of Beren and Lúthien to Frodo both of them could picture the characters in their mind’s eye and both of them knew what had led those characters to make the journey to Thangorodrim and to achieve the impossible task that lay before them.

See Alan Lee’s wonderful evocation of the journey of Beren and Lúthien to Thangorodrim that is on the front cover of Christopher Tolkien’s edited version of his father’s writings of that story.

It is not possible within this limited space to recount the whole of this story. You will need to read it either within The Silmarilion or in Beren and Lúthien, both of which were lovingly and masterfully prepared for publication from his father’s writings by Christopher Tolkien. There you will read the story that holds such an important place within the imagination that Frodo and Sam both share.

If you do decide to do this then you might come to the conclusion that Sam has become a little too full of himself. Who does he think that he is to compare himself to such an heroic figure such as Beren? Of course the point is that he is not comparing himself with the great hero of old. It is Frodo of whom he is speaking.

“I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!”

As far as Sam is concerned, his part in the story is not particularly important. He is a kind of Sancho Panza to Don Quixote as his master travels about Spain engaged in adventures of medieval chivalry. His task is simply to look after his master and not to do anything that is particularly heroic himself.

Now the adventures of Don Quixote, and his faithful servant, Sancho Panza, in Miguel de Cervantes’ tale, bare some similarity to Frodo and Sam’s. If Sam knew Cervantes’ story he would almost certainly think of himself as a figure like Sancho Panza. But Frodo is no Don Quixote. His adventures are not illusory. He does not tilt at windmills imagining them to be knights at a medieval joust. His task is deadly serious. He has been given an impossible journey to undertake. One upon which the whole world depends. The likelihood is that neither he nor Sam will survive, either to tell the tale or to hear it told.

And there is one thing more. Sancho Panza’s role in his story was to keep his master from getting into too much trouble and to patch things up after they got a little too out of hand. Sam is a hero in his own right and Frodo recognises this, even if he speaks of it here in humorous tones.

“To hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted.”

Frodo speaks in this way because he wants to deflect attention from himself. In fact from both of them. As far as he is concerned he is no hero. Just as Sam puts it he has fallen into a story in which he has no right to be and he wishes that it could simply be done with. But his heart has been cheered by Sam and by the story to which Sam has referred. He is ready to go on and to walk into the darkness with some sense that his journey has meaning.