Frodo and Gollum

“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.

“I Looked For no Such Friendship as You Have Shown. To Have Found it Turns Evil to Great Good.” The Redeeming Friendship of Frodo and Faramir.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 908-909

Friendship is one of the great themes of The Lord of the Rings. Friendship mattered deeply to Tolkien as he had known close friendship in his younger years and then lost those friends in the slaughterhouse of the trenches of the Great War of 1914-18. Early in Frodo’s perilous journey from the Shire came a moment in the cottage of Crickhollow when his friends revealed to him that they knew that he was leaving the Shire and that he was in danger. At first Frodo was dismayed. He had intended to go alone with Sam and in secret. But then Merry replied:

“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin- to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours- closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.”

And later in the story, Gandalf defended the right of Merry and Pippin to go with the Fellowship of the Ring from Rivendell.

“It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they had dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom.”

Of course, Gandalf might have reminded Elrond of his own words at the conclusion of the Council when Elrond recognised that Frodo, the hobbit, had been chosen by a Power greater than his own to carry the Ring to Mordor. It was Elrond who saw that this was “the hour of the Shire-folk” but maybe he did not grasp the true extent of what he had recognised. Maybe he did not see that it was the strength that lies within and above such things as pity, mercy and friendship that would, in words that he himself spoke, “shake the towers and counsels of the great”.

But it is in the very nature of such things as friendship that they have a fragility, a vulnerability, that do not belong to such things as power and control. In his famous treatise on leadership, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “It may be more pleasant to be loved than feared, but it is safer to be feared than loved.” Every lord in Tolkien’s story would understand the truth of those words, even Elrond, and it was in the breaking of trust by Boromir when he tried to take the Ring from Frodo that Frodo’s heart was broken. It was a brokenhearted Frodo who met with Faramir in Ithilien and who learned that this man was not only a mighty captain of Gondor but also Boromir’s brother. Frodo was quickly drawn to this man and longed to put his trust in him but the memory of Boromir’s face transfigured by desire for the Ring was too fresh a memory. It was only Sam’s mistake in revealing that Frodo carries the Ring of Power that both made Frodo terribly vulnerable once more but also allowed Faramir to show his nobility and utter trustworthiness.

So it is that when Frodo bids Faramir farewell as he begins his journey to Mordor once more that he says to his new friend: “It was said to me by Elrond Halfelven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for. Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have shown, To have found it turns evil to great good.”

After Boromir’s betrayal of friendship at the breaking of the Fellowship Frodo attempted to make his journey to Mordor alone and, unwillingly, he had to make three bonds of trust of varying kinds along the way. First he found that he could not go without Sam and it is this friendship that will carry him all the way to Mount Doom. Secondly, he found that he has to trust a guide who would eventually betray him and he knows this to be his fate. But third he would form a deep bond with the brother of the man who betrayed his trust. This is the great evil to which Frodo referred in the words he spoke to Faramir and this is the great good to which that evil is turned. That Frodo will begin the last stage of his journey with the friendship of Faramir in his heart and not the betrayal of Boromir will give him a strength that he will need throughout the terrible ordeal that awaits him.

“Do Not Go to Cirith Ungol!” Some Further Thoughts on an Impossible Decision.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 904-907

I have read this passage from The Lord of the Rings many times over the last fifty years or so and I don’t think I ever quite realised before the pivotal role that it plays in the whole story. Frodo has come to trust Faramir and here this noble figure is offering him safety and the chance to be free completely of the malicious character that is Gollum.

Tolkien reflected on this in a letter that he wrote to Michael Straight early in 1956, replying to a number of questions that Straight had asked him before writing a review for New Republic and he did so in terms of the 6th petition of The Lords Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation”. (The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien Harper Collins 2006 pp. 232-237).

Tolkien compared this petition with the 7th, “But deliver us from evil” and commented that the 6th is both harder and less often considered. Tolkien writes that “the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own salvation is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time”.

So, when Faramir, the “prudent person” says to Frodo that if he chooses to abandon Gollum he will have Gollum escorted to any point on the borders of Gondor that Gollum might name, Frodo replies “I have promised many times to take him under my protection and to go where he led.” Frodo cannot break faith even though it is folly to keep it. Utter folly.

See how Kryztov Marczak imagines the chaos in Shelob’s Lair below the Tower of Cirith Ungol. The path that Frodo must take.

As we saw last week Frodo goes through with Faramir the options that are available to him. To return to the Black Gate is simply impossible and there is no-one apart from Gollum who could guide him into Mordor. And what of returning with Faramir to Minas Tirith?

“Would you have me come to Gondor with this Thing, the Thing that drove your brother mad with desire? What spell would it work in Minas Tirith? Shall there be two cities of Minas Morgul, grinning at each other across a dead land filled with rottenness?”

At the last Faramir respondes with the only words upon which both he and Frodo can agree completely.

“It is a hard doom and a hopeless errand.”

But Faramir hopes, beyond hope, that one day he and Frodo might sit “by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief”. The thought is a tender one and one can only hope that both Frodo and Faramir were comforted from time to time by it on the hard roads that each of them were to take in the weeks ahead, roads that were to take both of them to the verge of death and then to new life beyond them. The Lord of the Rings does not recount these happy conversations but in other writings Tolkien speaks of times like this and we can only hope that the two heroes were able to enjoy one another’s company in this way.

Both Frodo and Faramir have to make choices that are folly. Faramir allows Frodo to go free, bearing the Ring of Power, in the company of a treacherous guide, into Mordor itself. His father cannot forgive him for this and we must think that he dies unreconciled with his son. Frodo goes on with Gollum and is betrayed by him in Shelob’s Lair in Cirith Ungol and attacked and wounded by him in the Cracks of Doom; and Frodo has to live in the knowledge that at the end he did not have the strength to cast away the Ring and was only saved by Gollum’s attack. But both make their choice in freedom in Henneth Annûn. As Tolkien reflected in his letter to Michael Straight, Frodo’s choice (and we must add, Faramir’s also) is a “piece of folly”. But Tolkien also opens the possibility that Frodo’s decision not to kill, or even abandon, Gollum has a mystical quality to it. This quality comes from the belief that any act of goodness has meaning in eternity “even if disastrous in the world of time”. In The Lord of the Rings this eternal quality breaks into the story at the moment when Gollum takes the Ring into the Fire to unmake it. In the stories in which we live we cannot tell what consequences our own choices for goodness will have. Perhaps we will only see disaster in the world of time but we are called to choose the good anyway and to trust.

“Frodo, I Think You Do Very Unwisely in This… I Do Not Think You Should Go With This Creature. It is Wicked.” Frodo and the Wisdom of Unwisdom.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 902-907

When I first sought for a title for this blog and all that I am trying to achieve in reading and rereading The Lord of the Rings at this point in my life I decided to call it Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings because that is what I was looking for. And when I first began to write it twelve years ago I never thought that one day I would be writing about unwisdom and that I would be doing so approvingly. You, my dear readers, must judge if I am right to do so and whether you think that Frodo is right to do as he chooses to do here or whether, with Sam, you will sigh audibly when Frodo declares to Faramir that he will take Sméagol under his protection and that he will go with him to Mordor.

“Frodo, I think that you do very unwisely in this,” said Faramir. “I do not think you should go with this creature. It is wicked.”

“No, not altogether wicked,” said Frodo.

“Not wholly, perhaps,” said Faramir, “but malice eats it like a canker, and the evil is growing. He will lead you to no good.”

And Faramir is right. Gollum has told him that he intends to lead Frodo and Sam into Mordor by way of the pass of Cirith Ungol, or cleft of the spider, and that there is “no other way”. And we know that in that place Gollum will betray Frodo and hand him over to Shelob, deadliest of the children of Ungoliant, a malicious and monstrous spirit in spider form who, long ago, had aided Morgoth in the destruction of the trees of light and in the theft of the silmarils of Fëanor.

Gollum will lead Frodo to no good because he intends to regain the Ring from him and he will not rest until he has done so. We know that and Frodo knows it too. He does not know exactly how Gollum will seek to do him harm but he knows that he intends to do so.

So Denethor is right to call this a fool’s hope when he learns of what his son has done in setting Frodo free and not bringing the Ring to Minas Tirith. Faramir’s action is an act of foolishness and so is Frodo’s. It is utter foolishness to go to Mordor carrying the Ring of Power into the very heart of the Enemy’s power. It is foolishness to entrust the task to a “witless halfling”. And before we leap to Frodo’s defence here and speak of his wisdom we might recall that when Frodo asked Gandalf why he had been chosen for this task and not another, Gandalf replied to him:

“You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.”

Faramir tells Frodo that he does not think that Gandalf, the wise one, would have made the choice that Frodo makes. But even Gandalf has never entered Mordor but only Sauron’s lesser fortress of Dol Guldur. There is no guide that Frodo could possibly choose to take him into Mordor than Gollum and Gollum will only take him there because of his desire for the Ring and it is almost certain that Gollum will betray him.

If wisdom means making the best choice among all available options then surely we must say here that no such choice exists. Faramir cannot think of one and neither could the Council in Rivendell. Frodo must give himself up to a wisdom that is so unwise that maybe the Wise would be incapable of doing it. Maybe this is why all the other members of the Fellowship are given other work to do, absolutely necessary work without which Frodo could never accomplish his mission.

Gandalf did come closest to the unwisdom that Frodo now chooses back in the study at Bag End when he spoke about Gollum.

“My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end…”

Gandalf, more than anyone else in the whole story, knows that there is a Power at work in the story that does not work primarily through the wisdom of making the right choice among available options but a wisdom of such things as Pity. Frodo will make his choice through this wisdom. It will almost cost him his life. It will certainly cost him the possibility of a happy retirement in the Shire among those who love him. But it is through this unwise choice that Middle-earth will be saved.

“There are Locked Doors and Closed Windows in Your Mind, and Dark Rooms Behind Them… But in This I Judge That You Speak The Truth.” Faramir and Gollum in Henneth Annûn.

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

When Sauron interrogated Gollum in Barad-dûr he found to his surprise that there was an inner strength within this pathetic creature that he was unable to break. By means of his tortures he was able, at last, to learn of Baggins and the Shire but he was never able to open the “locked doors and closed windows” in Gollum’s mind or to enter “the dark rooms behind them”.

In the end Sauron deemed that he had learned all that he needed to know and that there was not enough of significance that might dwell within those dark rooms for him to continue his interrogation and so he released him. He even thought that Gollum’s malice might even be of some small use to him in the future. Little did he know that Gollum would eventually bring about his downfall.

Sauron would never acknowledge or accept that Faramir had an advantage that he, in his wisdom, had abandoned long ago. When Faramir, with Frodo’s unhappy assistance, was able to capture Gollum alive in the forbidden pool beneath Henneth Annûn he needed to find out what Gollum knew.

“Do you know the name of this place? Have you been here before?”

If Gollum was unable or unwilling to answer these questions in a satisfactory fashion Faramir would have either to kill him or to bring him captive back to Minas Tirith. No one unless they were judged to be trustworthy could know of the existence of this refuge within Ithilien. The very survival of Faramir and his men depended upon its location remaining a complete secret.

“Slowly Gollum raised his eyes and looked unwillingly into Faramir’s. All light went out of them, and they stared bleak and pale for a moment into the clear unwavering eyes of the man of Gondor. There was a still silence. Then Gollum dropped his head and shrank down, until he was squatting on the floor shivering. ‘We doesn’t know and we doesn’t want to know,’ he whimpered. ‘Never came here; never come again,'”

It is enough. Faramir has learned all that he needs to know. And he has learned this because,wholly unlike Sauron, he is a man of truth.

“I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood,” Faramir had declared to Frodo the previous day when he questioned the hobbit before his men. Faramir speaks the truth and he has an unwavering commitment to the truth and so he recognises truth and he recognises falsehood when he hears them.

We might think that Sauron was seeking for truth when he questioned Gollum in Barad-dûr. He wanted to know what the connection was between Gollum and the Ring and he wanted to know where the Ring might be found. Surely these are both expressions of truth? But Sauron has come to believe that no-one can be trusted unless they fear him and unless they fear the consequences of betrayal more than the consequences of loyalty. The servants of Sauron may have little love, if any, for their master, but they believe that his triumph is inevitable and they want to be on the winning side.

Faramir’s servants also fear his power but they love him too, knowing that he would lay down his life for them. They know that he has not separated truth from goodness and beauty. When he says that he would not even snare an orc with a falsehood they know that he speaks the truth and that he would never be false to them either. And he will not be false to Gollum. Does Gollum recognise this? Does he see anything different in Faramir that he did not see in Sauron? Probably not. For Gollum, his heart twisted by five hundred years possession of the Ring, there is only power, but at this moment the power that Faramir possesses is tempered by a love of truth, beauty and goodness and that makes all the difference.

“He Came to Me Because He Trusted Me at First, I’m Afraid.” Frodo and the Capture of Gollum in the Pool Beneath Henneth Annûn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 893-902

There are passages in The Lord of the Rings that I do not enjoy reflecting upon and this is most certainly one of those passages. The chapter entitled The Window on the West with its revelation of the wisdom of Faramir is one of the most moving in the entire story, and its climactic ending as the exhausted Frodo finally reveals his mission to his astonished host is quite wonderful.

And then it is followed by this description of the capture of Gollum when one noble figure (that is Faramir) discusses the execution of Gollum in a quite manner of fact way, and another (that is Frodo) participates in Gollum’s capture by means of deception. When Frodo went to down to Gollum as the wretched creature hunted for fish in the pool beneath Henneth Annûn he knows that the only way in which he can save Gollum’s life is by lying to him. That is certainly how Gollum sees it.

“Wicked! Tricksy! False!”

Frodo may have saved Gollum’s life but he does so at the price of destroying what trust had been built up between them along the road from the Emyn Muil. After Gollum’s capture Frodo cries out to him: “I’ll go with you, and you shall come to no harm. Not unless they kill me too. Trust Master!”

Gollum’s response to these words is to turn and spit at him.

There have been critics over the years who have dismissed The Lord of the Rings as being morally simplistic, a story in which all the characters on one side are unambiguously good while those on the other are evil. One can only assume that these critics have never actually read the book and certainly not this chapter. There is nothing unambiguous about this incident and most certainly not in the relationship between Frodo and Gollum.

When Frodo first learnt from Gandalf that Gollum is searching for him and searching for the Ring his response was quite simple. It was a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum in the first place in the dark tunnels of the Misty Mountains when they first encountered one another. Gandalf responded that it was Pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand and when Frodo met Gollum himself for the first time he recalled these words when he said that now that he saw Gollum for himself he did pity him.

But Frodo’s pity never deflects him from his mission. The Ring must be destroyed and Gollum will guide Frodo and Sam to Mordor because he has been there before. Frodo always knows that he can never reveal his true purpose to Gollum because Gollum would not countenance it. When on the slopes of Mount Doom Gollum finally realises Frodo’s true purpose his response is to try to kill him. So at every step of the way Frodo is deceiving Gollum.

For Sam it is all much simpler. From the very first he wants to be rid of Gollum finding him utterly disgusting. When Faramir asks Frodo if he should shoot Gollum we read: “If Sam had dared, he would have said ‘Yes!’ quicker and louder.” Sam hates Gollum although when he finally has him at his mercy beneath the Cracks of Doom he finds that he cannot actually kill him in cold blood. He lets Gollum go and so allows the great moment to take place on the edge of abyss within the mountain when Gollum takes the Ring at last and falls with it into the fire.

The Lord of the Rings is shot through with moral ambiguity from beginning to end but that never means that it loses its profoundly moral centre. It does not give way to an amorality in which the only thing that matters is the goal and any means by which the goal can be achieved is justified. Nor does it descend into cynicism and a sense that there is no good nor any point in looking for it or trying to do it. We read that as Faramir’s men carry Gollum wrapped in a blanket up to their refuge behind the waterfall Frodo follows them “feeling very wretched”.

This wretchedness is not merely the unease that someone of liberal sentiments might feel in watching suffering from a safe distance. Frodo is as close to Gollum’s misery as he can possibly get without actually being Gollum. He will pay for the closeness of his relationship to Gollum many times; when Shelob stings him in his lair, in his misery as he lies naked and alone in the tower of Cirith Ungol and when Gollum bites off the finger on which he has placed the Ring in the Cracks of Doom. He will never be free in Middle-earth from the price of his closeness to this creature. We have to imagine in what way he is able to be healed in the Undying Lands. It gives us all hope that this is possible.