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“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.

“Adventures, as I Used to Call Them.” Sam Gamgee Ponders the True Nature of Adventure Before the Hobbits Try to Enter the Nameless Land.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.928-935

I doubt whether a tour of Mordor would ever be a commercial success. Imagine it being sold something like this.

The adventure of a lifetime. In fact it will probably end your life. The chances that you will return alive are very small and the guide we will provide will do his best, either to kill you himself or to have you killed by a savage monster of terrible potency. So what’s stopping you from signing up?”

Perhaps a small number of adrenaline junkies might be prepared to take on the odds but most of us want to come back from our holidays, alive and in one piece.

It is in a moment of calm after the long climb up the stairs of Cirith Ungol and before they enter the tunnel that lies between them and Mordor, the Nameless Land as Tolkien calls it here, Sam reflects upon all that he and Frodo have experienced together upon their journey. It has been a long way from Bag End and when we compare the Sam that we first met there as Gandalf hauled him through the window of Frodo’s study by his ear we might say that the inner journey that Sam has taken has been even longer.

As they take a few moments of rest after their long climb Frodo expresses his dislike for their surroundings. “Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid,” he says. And then Sam responds with a speech of great beauty.

“Yes, that’s so… And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind.”

The tales that matter

“The tales that really mattered, or the ones that stayed in the mind.” Sam is looking back on the years of his childhood when he would sit at the feet of Bilbo Baggins at Bag End. It is hard to imagine the Gaffer being a repository of stories unless they were ones of family history. He was more a storehouse of pithy sayings, all of which were intended to be the last word on any subject. Sam certainly remembers these, usually when he becomes aware that what he is doing would meet with his father’s disapproval, but the stories that Bilbo told were a different matter altogether. They opened doors into worlds of wonder and enchantment in Sam’s heart and mind. And they awoke desire there. Sam expressed that desire in the words, “I want to see Elves!”, a desire that was quickly satisfied in his journey in the meeting with Gildor Inglorien and his company while still in the Shire. Frodo asked him then whether he wished to continue now that his longing had been fulfilled and Sam responded by speaking of the need to see something through. We can only imagine that he returned to thoughts of resolution many times in his journey because he speaks in a similar way here.

“I expect that they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on.”

Carl Jung, the great map maker of the human psyche, spoke of this in these terms. “To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my wilful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.”

Sam’s language is very different from Jung’s but they are speaking of the same human experience. Oh, yes, Sam would say, you are speaking of a story that really matters. Oh yes, Carl Jung might reply, I am speaking about God.

“I Am Too Late. All is Lost”. Frodo’s Struggle With Despair Outside Minas Morgul.

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

The overwhelming force that is the army of Minas Morgul has passed down the valley on its way to assault th6e city of Minas Tirith and Frodo is left alone in the shadows at the beginning of the long climb to Cirith Ungol with Sam and Gollum.

Suddenly, despite his escape from the Lord of the Nazgûl, Frodo is overcome by despair.

“Frodo stirred. And suddenly his heart went out to Faramir. ‘The storm has burst at last,’ he thought. ‘This great array of spears and swords is going to Osgiliath. Will Faramir get across in time? He guessed it, but did he know the hour? And who can now hold the fords when the King of the Nine Riders is come? And other armies will come. I am too late. All is lost. I tarried on the way. All is lost. Even if my errand is performed, no one will ever know. There will be no one I can tell. It will be in vain.’ Overcome with weakness he wept. And still the host of Morgul crossed the bridge.”

“And still the host of Mordor crossed the bridge”. Alan Lee depicts the scene that Frodo saw as the Witch King leads his army to war.

Perhaps the choreography that I spoke of in my last post on The Two Towers has had its effect, albeit one that was unintended. The shock and awe was all intended to drain morale from the defenders of Minas Tirith but it is Frodo who is lying on the ground, all hope gone and no strength left to continue his journey. We can imagine that repeated phrase, “all is lost”, resounding over and over again within him, gaining an ever tightening grasp upon his heart. And there is still the terrible climb up the stairs of Cirith Ungol yet to be attempted; a task that will require all the strength that he possesses.

At a moment like this when all seems lost something has to pierce the darkness and for Frodo this something is one of exquisite simplicity. We must assume that Frodo must have fallen into a swoon, overwhelmed by the horror of what he has witnessed, or at least to have appeared to have done so, because it is Sam’s voice that breaks through to him.

“Wake up, Mr. Frodo! Wake up!”

And in those simple words, just for the briefest of moments, Frodo is transported back to the Shire and breakfast is about to be served. Of course the moment cannot last and the awful reality must return but when it does Frodo has strength to resist it. He knows that it is likely that all is in vain, that Gondor will fall before the power that has come against it but it is almost as if this no longer matters. “That what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else ever knew about it was beside the purpose.”

The early fathers of the Christian Church taught that an essential foundation of the spiritual life was a renunciation of despair and this is true. For Frodo this renunciation is expressed in the words “what he had to do, he had to do”. And it is worth emphasising here also, that for Frodo, and for many others also, the spiritual life is not some state of endless bliss but a bloody minded refusal to give in, a determination to go on putting one foot in front of the other. Tolkien puts this wonderfully as he concludes this passage by saying of Frodo that “he prepared to take the upward road”.

Frodo does renounce despair at this point in the story and there is a sense in which he will have to repeat that renunciation over and over again before the end of his journey and when his mind can no longer do so his body will have to do it and when his body can no longer do so Sam will have to carry him and renounce despair for him. But just before the renunciation that we have described here there is that moment of pure grace when another reality than the one he must return to breaks in from outside through Sam’s voice and simple words. This moment of grace will not always be repeated but it comes here, just Frodo has to take the upward road, and it is enough, though barely. Frodo will make the journey to Orodruin.

“Or If He Pleaseth, Through it Pass, and Then The Heaven Espy.” Reflections on a Visit to The Islands of Mull and Iona.

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It is not necessary to die in order to go to heaven. St Catherine of Sienna, a 14th century Italian mystic teaches that for those who are going to heaven every step is heaven. I wish that I could practice this all the time but sadly I don’t. Most of the time I just see the ordinary and not, as the 17th century poet and Anglican parish priest, George Herbert put it in his poem on prayer, the “heaven in ordinary”.

Thankfully there are occasions when I really see the heaven in the ordinary and they encourage me to keep on going. Last week, in a visit that Laura and I made to the Scottish islands of Mull and Iona I enjoyed such an occasion. I will return to my regular blog on Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings again on Saturday but I would like to think about this experience today. Do let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

My photograph of St Columba’s Bay on Iona where the saint first landed 1400 years ago.

Those of you who have followed this blog for some time will know that I love the work of William Blake and that I have often gone back to lines from his Auguries of Innocence, 

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower, 
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 
And eternity in an hour.

And then, surpassing even this moment if such a thing could be possible, was a meal in the Gallery Restaurant in Tobermory at lunch time. Wonderful Italian food was served at unbelievable prices and I ordered a langoustine risotto that was delicious. But the moment that surpassed everything was when I tasted a simple rocket salad. I put some of the rocket into my mouth and entered heaven directly. I have never tasted a dressing like it before and maybe I never will again. I spoke with the young Italian chef before leaving who told me that he was going to be leaving in the next couple of weeks. I told him that if that if this was true then I had been truly blessed to eat his food before he left.

I am aware that these last two paragraphs read a little like a TripAdvisor review and I intend to leave them for others to read there. But the point I wanted to make was that Blake’s point about wild flowers is that an experience of heaven is not limited to wild flowers alone but can be extended to cheese scones and a rocket salad, exquisitely dressed. In fact it can be extended to any human experience. I want to return to George Herbert before I close today. He teaches us the secret to seeing heaven through these experiences. The secret is that we need to choose to look through something and not merely at it. What we have to do is to make it our daily practice to do this.

A man that looks on glass
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.

See you all again on Saturday.

“Maybe It Was the Ring That Called to The Wraith-lord, and For a Moment He Was Troubled.” A Contest of Powers Within the Morgul Vale.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 730-734.

Travelling through Scotland and having forgotten my usual edition of The Two Towers I am grateful to my sister in law, Elinor Farquharson and her husband, Geoffrey, of Edinburgh, for the loan of their single volume edition of The Lord of the Rings.

The short time that the companions spend at the Cross-roads is one of poignant tension between hope and despair, between light and darkness, and Tolkien immediately draws our attention to this at the beginning of the chapter entitled, The Stairs of Cirith Ungol, as Frodo turns his back reluctantly on the West and his face towards the East and to darkness. Gollum leads Frodo and Sam towards the tower of Minas Morgul and up the first steps of a path that crawls upwards “into the blackness above”.

Frodo is exhausted, feeling the great burden of the Ring for the first time since he entered Ithilien, but perhaps there is another power at work. “Weariness and more than weariness oppressed him; it seemed as if a heavy spell was laid on his mind and body.”

All the way through this passage we are aware of many powers at work, sometimes it would seem in contest with one another. The Lord of Minas Morgul, the Witch King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl, is a master of dark magic and he has wreathed the very air about his fastness with spells that rob any who might dare to venture towards it of the will and strength to continue their journey. Tolkien is not explicit about this but when he says that “it seemed as if a heavy spell was laid on his mind and body” there are dark powers at work here.

Perhaps if this were an ordinary day in the foul history of Minas Morgul it would not have been long before Frodo and Sam were discovered. But this is no ordinary day. It is the day upon which Sauron, filled with fear that one of his foes has taken possession of the Ring, sends forth an army to take possession of Minas Tirith, the greatest fortress of his enemies.

“So great an army had never issued from that vale since the days of Isildur’s might.”

And this great army and all the carefully choreographed terror that goes before it and which surrounds it achieves precisely an end for which it was never intended. So great is the energy of the powers both of Minas Morgul and of Barad-dûr that is poured into the departure of the army, an energy whose intention is to terrify the army of Gondor and to rob it of what courage remains to it, that for a brief moment the powers of the Morgul fortress are unaware of what is taking place beneath their very noses. The Ring of Power is passing the armies of Mordor borne by one whose intention it is to destroy it if he can.

And the Ring-bearer is almost caught. The Nazgûl Lord, the king who almost stabbed Frodo to the heart in the dell below Weathertop, pauses for a moment. “He was troubled, sensing some other power within his valley.”

He begins to reach out towards that power just as he did below Weathertop but unlike on that occasion when Frodo felt compelled to put on the Ring this time he is able to resist. He has a strength now that he did not possess before. Eventually this strength will tempt him to take possession of the Ring but now he knows that he does not yet have the power “to face the Morgul-king- not yet”.

That “not-yet” tells us that one day soon he will try to use the Ring, to become its lord, but now it works in Frodo’s favour.

And there is one more power at work. Frodo becomes aware that his hand is moving, unbidden, at least by him, towards the Ring, but as it does so it finds the star-glass of Galadriel, in which the light of the Silmaril, borne by Eärendil into the undying lands and set as a star in the heavens by Elbereth herself. His hand folds about it and the Witch King ceases from his search and moves on.

At this moment the power of the star glass is enough but what if the Witch King had given his entire attention to his search for the power that briefly he is aware is present in his valley? Would Frodo, even aided by the glass, even aided by the Ring, have had the strength to resist? But this test never takes place. It is an exquisite irony that so much has been put into the choreography of the departure of the army of Minas Morgul that the Witch King is distracted, just enough, from finding the very thing that has the power to destroy his lord.

“They Cannot Conquer For Ever!” Frodo Finds the Consolation of Nature and The Desolation of Darkness at The Cross-roads.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 915-919

The journey from the fragrant woodlands of Ithilien to the Cross-roads is marked by a growing sense of threat as, although it is only afternoon, a deepening darkness takes hold of the land, as if, as Sam puts it, the worst storm that ever was is about to break over their heads. The very ground beneath their feet begins to quiver as “a rolling and rumbling noise” is heard all about them.

Frodo descends into deep gloom.

“I’m afraid our journey is drawing to an end.”

The Cross-roads themselves are surrounded by ancient trees “of vast size, very ancient it seemed, and still towering high, though their tops were gaunt and broken, as if tempest and lightening-blast had swept across them, but had failed to kill them or shake their fathomless roots.”

On this occasion nature fails to give comfort to the hobbits. The trees seem to glower over them and as they stand at the Cross-roads and looks eastward towards the Morgul Vale Frodo is “filled with dread”.

But, at that moment, he turns westward as he becomes aware within the deepening gloom that a light is shining.

“Turning towards it, he saw, beyond an arch of boughs, the road to Osgiliath running almost as straight as a stretched ribbon down, down, into the West. There, far away, beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade, the Sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied Sea.”

The light of the setting sun falls upon the statue of a king at the centre of the Cross-roads and at first all the hobbits are aware of is the way in which orcs have desecrated it. The body of the king has been decapitated and its once proud head replaced by “a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead”.

But then in the last gleams of light cast by the setting sun Frodo sees the old head of the king lying by the side of the road and sees that it has been crowned again. Not this time with gold but a “trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed”.

This is a moment in which both dread and hope are held together in utter poignancy. Briefly it is hope that rises in Frodo’s heart and he declares that “they cannot conquer for ever!” before the light is extinguished and it seems that they have been cast into everlasting night.

Which is more real? Are the last gleams of light that fall upon the crown of flowers more real than the darkness that follow them? We are reminded here of the words that St John writes as Judas goes out from the upper room to betray his lord and friend into the hands of his enemies. “And it was night”. Here too we see the struggle between light and dark playing out within a single moment and Tolkien surely alludes to the words of St John as he ends the chapter by saying that “the Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell”.

It is hard not to feel the absolute triumph of darkness at this moment and yet too, the glimpse of hope in the refusal of life to allow the memory of the dignity of the king to be lost forever cannot be forgotten. This moment at the Cross-roads is one of the great moments in The Lord of the Rings. We think too of the crowing of the cockerell at the broken gates of Minas Tirith as day dawns and the sound of the horns of the Riders of Rohan is heard amidst the wreckage. The struggle between light and dark has to be fought within every human heart and the temptation to despair to be fought against, sometimes with every fibre of our being. It may not be his shout of defiance that carries Frodo onwards into his own struggle against the dark but neither is it forgotten as he shoulders his burden once more and marches into the very heart of the darkness. Frodo is not carried by lofty thoughts as he trudges eastward but neither does he give up. His own renunciation of despair is seen in every hard fought step that he takes.

“Around Them Lay Long Launds of Green Grass, Dappled with Celandine and Anemones, White and Blue, Now Folded for Sleep”. The Journey of Frodo and Sam to the Cross-Roads.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 910-915

I am going to make an assumption that Tolkien was not familiar with the work of the great Blues singer, Robert Johnson, and so did not know his classic song, Crossroad, even though the opening lines, “I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees… Asked the Lord above, “Have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please”, seems strangely apposite to Frodo’s situation and state of mind.

As we have been seeing in these last weeks, Tolkien does not allow Frodo and Sam the comfort that they would receive if they could share the same faith that he did, and yet it is clear that they live in a world that is under divine order. For although, as Gollum puts it, they are in “Dangerous places” where “Cruel peoples come this way, down from the Tower”, these same places are, for the time being, absolutely empty, as if they have been prepared for the hobbits to walk along them in complete safety. We have thought about the sequence of events that have led to this being so, but we have also thought about how the best explanation that Frodo and Sam might be able to give to this sequence is luck or wyrd.

Frodo and Sam have to make their journey without comfort or a sense that they are part of a story that is divinely governed. And yet they are not left entirely comfortless. We have seen the comfort that Frodo received through the unexpected friendship of Faramir that “turns evil to great good” and in the next reflection we will think about a particular incident that takes place on this journey at the Cross-roads. And as they make their fearful journey from Ithilien to the Cross-roads Tolkien shows us another form of comfort.

As they make their way Tolkien gives particular attention to the flora of the landscape about them.

“As the third stage of their day’s march drew on and afternoon waned, the forest opened out, and the trees became larger and more scattered. Great ilexes of huge girth stood dark and solemn in wide glades with here and there among them hoary ash-trees, and giant oaks just putting out their brown-green buds. About them lay long launds of green grass dappled with celandine and anemones, white and blue, now folded for sleep; and there were acres populous with the leaves of woodland hyacinths: already the their sleek bell-stems were thrusting through the mould.”

Tolkien gives us a rich account of what readers from England would recognise as a classical woodland landscape in spring time. He also treats us to the word, laund, that the Oxford English Dictionary tells us is an archaic word which “refers to an open, grassy area, especially in a woodland, like a glade or a lawn.” It also tells us that the word is now rarely used. I have made a decision, based upon reading this passage, to use the word whenever I come across such a place. I would never have known about it if Tolkien had not used it here and I feel that my imagination has just been enriched by it.

I recently went on a long country walk through that went, in part, through the kind of woodland scene that Tolkien describes here. The walk took me down to the banks of the River Severn at this point and I saw a profusion of celandine and wood anemone in the launds about me. I took the walk in the last days of March, near the Feast of the Annunciation on the 25th March, the date upon which the Ring goes into the Fire and Sauron falls into nothingness. Spring has come a little earlier here upon the marches of Gondor, but we know that this land lies more under the influence of a Mediterranean type of climate than does England itself and so the flowers that I saw would come a little earlier there. We know too, that these woods lie higher in the mountains than my woodland walk down by the river. And for me there was the added pleasure of having known the farmer, of old Worcestershire stock, who had chosen to set aside this area on his land for wildlife. As he had proudly shown me round his farm just as he was about to hand it over to his son, he spoke of his decision to set a part of it aside as a wildlife reserve. I knew that he was too shrewd a businessman not to receive financial reward for his actions but on the day I walked through these woods I just remembered him with thanksgiving and affection.

My walk through these spring time woods was rich with a feast of sight, sound and smell. The trees had not yet turned green (is this why Tolkien refers to them as “dark and solemn”?) but this allowed the ground underneath them access to sunlight and the spring flowers to proliferate. I felt as if I had stepped into heaven. Did Tolkien feel the same way on spring time walks? Did Frodo feel the same way on his walk to the Cross-roads?