Shelob

“Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow.” Sam’s Grief For Frodo in Shelob’s Lair.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 955-956

Shelob is defeated and she lies in terrible pain in the innermost recesses of her lair. Sam has achieved the impossible, a heroic deed beyond imagining and for the briefest of moments the exhilaration of victory floods his whole being.

But then reality strikes a blow that Shelob never could. Frodo lies beside him and all Sam’s efforts to revive him are utterly useless and in vain.

“Frodo, Mr. Frodo!” he called. “Don’t leave me here alone! It’s your Sam calling. Don’t go where I can’t follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo! O Wake up, Frodo, me dear, me dear. Wake up!”

In an interview that Tolkien’s daughter, Priscilla, once gave for a film about her father she spoke about the lifelessness of the whodunit and about how, once you had worked it out or had it revealed to you you never needed to go back to it. But how, when a passage of writing had once moved you deeply that feeling would return each time you came back to it. This is such a passage. Sam’s grief in this moment is utterly real and it strikes you with devastating effect every time you come to this part of the story.

It is all too much for him. He dashes about, heedless of his own safety, “stabbing the air, and smiting the stones, and shouting challenges.” At this moment he would gladly fight Shelob again and again so overwhelming is his despair.

“He’s dead!” he said. “Not asleep, dead!”

It does not matter that we know the story, have read the book, maybe many times, seen the film, and know that “her ladyship” does not kill her prey outright but stuns them with sufficient venom so that she can eat them alive at her leisure later on knowing that they will be helpless to resist her. It does not matter that we know that Frodo will awaken later, a prisoner of the orcs in the tower of Cirith Ungol. All we know at this moment is what we feel as we wait beside Sam in his grief, his desolation.

Tolkien experienced grief and loss in many ways during his life, losing his mother when just a boy, then most of his closest friends in the trenches during the Great War. When C.S Lewis died in 1963 he described the experience as if it were “an axe blow near the roots”. In the same film in which Priscilla Tolkien gave an interview about her father an old interview with the Professor himself was used. At one point Tolkien pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and reads some words written by the French feminist philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir.

“There is no such thing as a natural death because nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.” (From An Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir).

Apart from being a little taken aback that the so-called fusty old reactionary, as many have regarded Tolkien, was capable of quoting the author of The Second Sex, we also need to consider what he was trying to say through this quotation. In the same interview he declares that the central theme of The Lord of the Rings is death. The inescapable nature of death, of the desire to escape it, and as de Beauvoir says, the unnaturalness of death. Surely it is this unnaturalness, this sense that every death is unjustifiable and a violation, that Sam protests against at this moment, raging against Frodo’s death in helpless fury. Surely it is impossible that Frodo can die? Surely impossible that Frodo can die and Sam have to continue to live? Is it not all some outrageous accident that can be overcome?

But Sam is ridiculously helpless against this violation. All he can do is to decide what to do next, even with the sense beating against the walls of his heart that none of it means anything anymore.

Tolkien beats our hearts many times in his story with this sense, at the fall of Gandalf in Moria, at the death of Boromir, at the moment when Éomer sees his sister’s body by the empty garments of the Lord of the Nazgûl whom she has just slain. He never seeks to flinch from the full horror of death. But neither does he hide from the sense, absurd though it might seem at the time, that we have to go on even if, as Aragorn said after Gandalf’s fall, “We must go on without hope”.

“A Elbereth Gilthoniel…” Sam Gamgee’s Pentecostal Song as He Drives Shelob Away From Frodo’s Body.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 952-955

The pages that Tolkien wrote around the terrible scene in Shelob’s Lair weave together light and darkness in a way that is both desperately horrible and exquisitely beautiful. On the one hand we have the insatiable desire of Shelob as she tracks down her prey.

“Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes.” (The Two Towers p. 949)

And then we have Gollum’s treachery luring Frodo and Sam into a trap from which he is sure they cannot escape in order to regain the Ring and then to “pay her back, my precious. Then we’ll pay everyone back.” (The Two Towers p. 947)

But then we have this. 

A Elbereth Gilthoniel
a menel palandiriel
le nallon si di'nguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

O Elbereth Starkindler/ from heaven gazing afar,/ to thee I cry here beneath the shadow of death!/ O look towards me everwhite!

As Shelob gloats over her prey, over Frodo’s body, Sam attacks her with all the ferocity of his love for his master having beaten off Gollum’s attack. But Shelob is mightier, even than all the rage that Sam can muster, and she turns to confront and to kill him. And it is at this most desperate need that Sam looks for some strength in order to stand against her.

And strength comes to him.

It all begins with Sam clutching the phial of Galadriel and with a single word faintly spoken.

“Galadriel”.

Sam is looking for something greater than his own strength and his memory goes back to the Lady of Lothlórien, the maker and giver of the star glass. It is all that he can find within his memory and he calls upon it now. But what comes to him is something far far beyond his memory. Sam sings a song of praise to Elbereth in a language that he does not know. He heard such songs as he dozed in the hall of fire in Rivendell but he had never learnt them. Now they come to him in a Pentecostal moment and in his direst need.

I say Pentecostal not because I think that Sam has suddenly joined a particular religious movement but because, just as the apostles were given the ability to speak in languages that they had never learned on the first Day of Pentecost, so Sam is divinely gifted language that he does not know in his moment of direst need.

When the Elves cried “to thee I cry, here beneath the shadow of death” in the halls of Elrond it was a reflection upon a general spiritual condition and no less meaningful because of that, but when Sam cried out these words he literally stood in the shadow of his own imminent death, and what came to him was the angelic power that the Elves praised and underneath which they lived.

“As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly like a white torch in his hand. It flamed like a star that leaping from the firmament sears the dark air with intolerable light.”

And it is this light that defeats Shelob. She has been wounded by Sting, Frodo’s elven blade that Sam is holding, and one of her eyes has been put out, but it is the light that she cannot bear. “No such terror out of heaven had ever burned in Shelob’s face before.”She retreats into her hole and does not return.

Nothing less than light from heaven could have defeated her and this is one of the few moments within The Lord of the Rings in which Tolkien departs from his usual reserve about expressing the Catholic faith that was so dear to him and even here he does so within the confines of the secondary world that he had sub-created. It is angelic power that comes to Sam, the power of Elbereth, the member of the Valar whom the Elves loved the best, the kindler of the stars under which they first awoke in ancient time, and not the power of Mary, “the Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star”, that was so important to Tolkien.

It is divine power, however mediated, that comes to Sam in this darkest of moments and which defeats Shelob. Tolkien never states this explicitly but in the beauty of Sam’s hymn to Elbereth he opens the door just a little to an even greater beauty for those who want to enter by that door

“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.

“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.

“Lord Sméagol? Gollum The Great? The Gollum!” Sméagol and Gollum Debate What They Should Do About The Ring.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 826-830

An essential difference between Peter Jackson’s version of The Lord of the Rings and the story that Tolkien originally told lies in the character of Gollum and the telling of the inner debate between Gollum and Sméagol that Sam overhears.

Sam hears it because Gollum’s inner life is almost laid bare for all to see. I say almost because Gollum is still capable of deception. Sam hears Gollum speak of She and wonders who that might be but does not find out until he encounters Shelob in her lair.

Jackson gives us the same debate that Sam overhears but with a major difference. In his version the debate is between good and evil. He gives us a sense that within the miserable creature that has guided Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes almost as far as the Black Gate the possibility remains that good might still triumph. Indeed at this point of the story the good Sméagol does seem to triumph over the evil Gollum and the debate ends with Sméagol crying out “I’m free! I’m free!”

But Tolkien gives us a very different version of this debate. Here we see the same Gollum whose mind has been utterly overthrown by his desire for the Ring. When Gollum thinks about the promise that he made to Frodo to “serve the master of the Precious” all that he thinks about is that if he were to regain the Ring then he would be its master and so would have kept the promise. Sméagol, on the other hand, could never be described in any sense as good. In Tolkien’s version of the debate we see a pathetic cringing figure driven mainly by fear. Fear that there might be terrible consequences if he were to break the promise because the promise is held by the Ring and he fears the Ring above all things, and fear that in trying to take the Ring he might be killed because there are two hobbits and only one of him. Sméagol does have some sense of gratitude to Frodo who took the elven rope off his leg but his goodness goes little further than that. And the debate ends, not with Sméagol’s cry of joy that he is free of the control of the Ring and of his Gollum alter ego but with his hand slowly reaching out to seize the Ring, an action that is only prevented by Sam appearing to wake up.

The Ring and its corruption have a complete hold over all that Gollum or Sméagol are. The distinction that Sam makes between them as Slinker and Stinker is pretty accurate. But there is one sense in which Gollum has grown as a character during the long years of his existence. The Gollum who took the Ring by the murder of his friend was a creature with almost minimal ambition. Apart from a desire to hide and to survive all that drove him was a desire to find the roots of things and this desire sent him deep under the Misty Mountains where all he found was darkness.

This all changed when Bilbo took the Ring from him and he began his long search for it. As he searched he began to understand more and more about the thing that he had possessed for so many years and with which he had done practically nothing. And he learnt this most when he fell into the hands of Sauron, the Lord of the Ring. It was from Sauron that he learned about mastery, the ability to rule over others. That is why Gollum refers to Sauron as He. This leads Gollum to develop a fantasy life, one in which he is “Lord Sméagol? Gollum the Great? The Gollum!”. Gollum imagines himself as lord and ruler of all. A life in which he is able to exchange his pathetic cringing existence for one in which all will bow down to him, even the Nazgûl. But even then his ambition is very limited. All he desires with all his mastery is fish “three times a day, fresh from the Sea”.

Last week we thought about Sauron’s desire to see everything and to control it. Gollum’s desire is not very different and like Sauron he does not so much possess his desire but is possessed by it. He would not be the Lord of the Ring so much as to be ruled by it. And is Sauron so very different?

“May It Be a Light to You in Dark Places, When All Other Lights Go Out.” Galadriel Gives a Phial of Light to Frodo.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.365-367

After Galadriel has given a gift of three of her golden hairs to Gimli there remains one last gift to be given, to Frodo, the Ring-bearer who is not last in her thoughts. She gives to him “a small crystal phial” that glitters as she moves it and “rays of white light” spring from her hand.

“In this phial,” she said, “is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”

Frodo remembers the verses that Bilbo chanted about Eärendil in the Hall of Fire in Rivendell, the verses that seemed to Frodo “to fit somehow” into something about which he was dreaming, about “an endless river of swelling gold and silver” flowing over him. This is Frodo’s immersion into the history of light of which he is a vital part and of which Galadriel’s phial is now a living symbol. 

A ship then new they built for him 
of mithril and of elven-glass
with shining prow; no shaven oar
nor sail she bore on silver mast:
the Silmaril as lantern light
and banner bright with living flame 
to gleam thereon by Elbereth 
herself was set, who thither came 
and wings immortal made for him,
and laid on him immortal doom,
to sail the shoreless skies and come 
behind the Sun and light of Moon.

Galadriel herself has been intimately involved in this history from the beginning. It is the story of how Fëanor made three exquisite jewels in which was captured the light of the two trees in Valinor, of Telperion and of Laurelin. Eventually the trees are destroyed by Morgoth with the aid of Ungoliant, the terrible spider-like monster and ancestor of Shelob, who Frodo and Sam will encounter in the tunnels of Cirith Ungol and who Sam will vanquish with the aid of Galadriel’s phial after Frodo is poisoned. After the theft of the Silmarils Fëanor will pursue Morgoth, defying the Valar who forbid him to leave Valinor. Along with his people, the Noldor, he steals ships from the Teleri, slaying them when they try to resist him, and so begins the tragic history of Middle-earth that reaches a climax in The Lord of the Rings.

There is a sense in which the whole of this history is contained in Galadriel’s phial, both in its beauty and its sorrow. The light of the Silmaril that is captured in the phial is a sign of hope to which all the peoples of Middle-earth can look each morning and evening in the star that shines brightly above them. Eärendil brought hope to Middle-earth when it lay prostrate before the power of Morgoth and his star continues to do so today. In the terrible lair of Shelob, in a place where all other lights have gone out, Frodo cries out, “Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!” “Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!” And at this moment when all hope is gone the light of the Silmaril blazes forth and the memory of the fall of Morgoth is rekindled.

But I mentioned sorrow too. For the story of the Silmarils is a story of trust betrayed. I mentioned the kinslaying of Alqulondë when the Noldor stole the ships of the Teleri but I could mention many other sorrows too. In fact one of the great themes of the story of the First Age as recounted in The Silmarillion is the telling of the sorrows of Middle-earth to the Valar. After the death of Beren Lúthien follows him to the underworld and sings to Mandos the most beautiful song in the world, a weaving together of the griefs of the Two Kindreds of Elves and Humankind that reduces the Lord of Death to tears of pity. Indeed we could add to this story that of Eärendil himself whose journey to Valinor is itself a plea to the Valar to take pity upon these kindreds.

Galadriel has been a part of both the sorrow and the beauty. She was a part of the rebellion of Fëanor and the Noldor, albeit reluctantly, but in her rejection of the Ring when it was offered to her by Frodo she displays her adamantine character and so wins a victory over evil that is vital for the success of the task of the Ring-bearer. Her gift to him is a symbol of that victory.

“I am Wounded; it will Never Really Heal”. Frodo Begins to Fade Away From the Shire.

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After Sam and Rosie Cotton are married they move into together with Frodo in Bag End. It is a good arrangement for all. Sam and Rosie have a fine home in which to raise a family together. Frodo has kind and loving friends to watch over him. Sam is close enough to the Gaffer to keep an eye on him. But not too close.

It is the beginning of a golden age in the history of the Shire. Restoration work is underway everywhere and everything returns to how it was but perhaps it is even more beautiful than it was before the troubles. Tolkien gives us a vision, perhaps, of how England might have been restored after the destruction of the Second World War. One thinks of the beautiful medieval city of Coventry that was badly bombed during the war and its ancient cathedral almost completely destroyed. It is a grim joke told by the people of that city that the Luftwaffe only began the destruction of the city. It was completed by the city authorities. It is as if Lotho Pimple and Ted Sandyman had seized control of the country after the war for long enough until they had changed it for ever.

Not so the Shire. The Shire is seized, not by brutalist architects, but by a spirit of merriment. And the spirit is manifested above all in Merry and Pippin. “The two young Travellers cut a great dash in the Shire with their songs and their tales and their finery, and their wonderful parties. ‘Lordly’ folk called them, meaning nothing but good; for it warmed all hearts to see them go riding by with their mail-shirts so bright and their shields so splendid, laughing and singing songs of far away.”

Merry and Pippin bring something new to the Shire in a way that even hobbits, that most conservative of peoples, could receive. They give the Shire back to itself but more itself than ever it was before. And there is one other who does this work also and that is Sam the Gardener who will eventually take the name of Gardener for his family.

Sadly there is one who cannot share this joy, delight and glory and that is Frodo. It is not that Frodo becomes angry or embittered, withdrawing into a windowless inner darkness. It is just that Frodo has been hurt and cannot wholly be healed in Middle-earth.

Sam is away in March in the Year of Plenty on his duties as forester to the Shire. All his attention and his energy is given to looking forward. So he misses March 13th, the day one year before when Frodo lay helpless, poisoned by Shelob, a prisoner of the orcs in Cirith Ungol, and the Ring was gone. On that day Frodo had not known that Sam had taken the Ring in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the orcs but what Frodo relives a year later is not a sense of misery at the failure of the mission but an utter emptiness because the Ring has gone. It is the same emptiness that Gollum felt when Bilbo took the Ring and which was to fuel his obsessive search thereafter. The Ring has a hold over Frodo from which he can never wholly escape.

This is an experience that the Shire cannot share. The story of the Ring and its utterly malevolent maker is something that it has never shared. Even when the Ring was in the Shire it remained hidden and it was only revealed for the briefest of moments in the uncanny goings on at Bilbo’s farewell party. And when the War of the Ring came to the Shire it was through Saruman and his brigand ban, already defeated though able to do some small mischief before being caught. The Shire never shared Frodo’s heroic sacrifice of himself and so it cannot understand it. As Frodo himself says: “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.”

Frodo is the wounded healer, the prophet without honour in his own country. Merry, Pippin and Sam are all closer to the Shire and are able to bring the great story of deliverence to their people in such a way that they can receive it and learn to be grateful for it. For Frodo healing must come somewhere else.

 

“Where Shall I Find Rest?” Frodo Longs For Home. His True Home.

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The hobbits are eager for home and set out for the Shire with Gandalf. It is the sixth of October when they reach the Ford of Bruinen, a place redolent with memory for Frodo as he almost fell into the grasp of the Nazgûl there. The date too is filled with ominous significance. It was on this date a year before that the Nazgûl attacked the camp below Weathertop and Frodo received a wound that almost made him a wraith like them but under their power.

The combination of the two is almost too much for Frodo and he says to Gandalf: “I am wounded with knife, sting and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?”

Right from the very beginning of the quest it has been clear that Frodo and his companions have taken on a task that is too big for them. For the briefest of moments Frodo is excited by the thought of the adventure that lies ahead but soon that excitement is replaced by the unhappy realisation that he must leave the Shire, leave his friends, leave home. And soon it is clear that there are powers in the world that are far greater than he is. Old Man Willow in the Old Forest; the Wight in the Barrow Downs; and most deadly of all, the Nazgûl haunting their every step along the way. Aragorn doubts the hobbits’ capacity for the task. Butterbur fears they behave like gentlemen engaged in nothing more dangerous than a walking holiday.

But that is exactly the point. That is the mysterious wisdom of The Lord of the Rings. This is a task that can only be achieved by those for whom it is too great. Those who might have the capacity to undertake the task, who might be strong enough to carry the Ring to Mordor in order to destroy it are those who are in the greatest danger. Gandalf and Galadriel are both offered the Ring and both reject it despite being profoundly tempted to take it. They have come to realise that it is stronger than they are and that in taking it they would begin the road to becoming the Dark Lord or Lady. Boromir does not understand this believing that his noble spirit is sufficient defence against the Ring and he is almost overthrown entirely.

The task and the Ring itself is most certainly too great for Frodo and he knows that it is. Even he begins to ponder what it might mean to seek to possess and to use the Ring as he shows in his questioning of Galadriel at her mirror. Eventually it will overcome him and only through the strange mercy of Gollum’s attack will he and all Middle-earth be saved.

Frodo is saved but he is broken too. The knife that the Witch King of Angmar drove into his shoulder at Weathertop, the sting of Shelob in her lair, Gollum’s tooth biting the Ring from his finger at the Cracks of Doom and worst of all, the slow, inexorable overpowering that the Ring achieves over him, all these have done their terrible work.

“Where shall I find rest?”

Frodo knows that the return to the Shire will be no true home-coming for him. It may be the same but he will not be. This is a powerful insight and one that Tolkien must have gained on his return from the trenches of the First World War as did so many of his generation. It was not just the journey from the familiarity of home to the horror of the battlefield that lead to a profound sense of displacement but the journey back again to what should have been familiar but was no longer. Frodo puts it this way. “It shall not be the same; for I shall not be the same”.

Frodo knows that if there is to be a place of rest for him then it will be somewhere else than the Shire but he does not know where such a place can be. We might know that this sense of displacement, of homelessness, of exile is that which will lead us in search of our true home but when we are gripped by this it is nothing less than terrible.