The Lord of the Rings

“Do You Understand, Mr. Frodo? I’ve Got to Go On.” Sam Gamgee Makes The Hardest Choice of His Life.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 956-959

If Sam could have chosen for himself he would never have woken up after fainting beside Frodo’s body but he could not choose for himself. He woke and the world had not changed even though, as far as he was concerned, the worst thing of all had already happened. “The mountains had not crumbled nor the earth fallen into ruin.”

Anyone who has suffered the loss of someone that they have loved deeply will know what Tolkien speaks of here, except it is not the death of Frodo that they mourn. Each person suffers their own grief alone. As we read in the last piece posted on this blog Tolkien was drawn to words written by Simone de Beauvoir who spoke of the unnaturalness of death. He might equally have quoted St Paul who, in his First Letter to the Corinthians spoke of death as the last enemy of all; not as a thing that is naturally a part of life but as something that has invaded from outside. Nothing is able quite to prepare us for death and so nothing prepared Sam for this moment, for the moment in which Sam has to decide what he is going to do next. Even though the very word, next, must sound like the most dreadful obscenity in his heart.

Tolkien writes the process by which Sam comes to a decision as a debate that takes place within him. Not like the debate that took place within the divided soul of Gollum on the road to the Black Gate, the debate between the utterly fallen Gollum, or Stinker as Sam called him, and the all too easily defeated Sméagol, or Slinker. Sam is torn between his love for Frodo and a greater love for the world that both he and Frodo loved and for which, Sam is sure, Frodo has given his life.

“What shall I do, what shall I do?” he said. “Did I come all this way with him for nothing?” And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of their journey. I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.

Sam has come a very long way on this journey. Beginning, as he did, with a simple desire to go on an adventure with Frodo, to see Elves, to look upon wonders, now he has reached the point when all he wants to do is to see something through until its end. But now he wrestles with another question. What is that end?

For a moment his imagination conjures up the image of Gollum cowering before him in a dark corner and he will show no mercy. “But that was not what he had set out to do. It would not be worth while to leave his master for that. It would not bring him back.” Sam even contemplates suicide for a moment, but “that was to do nothing not even to grieve. That was not what he had set out to do.”

But at last Sam realises that he has to go on, to try to finish the task, to cast the Ring into the Fire. And then he finds himself asking the same question that Frodo asked of Gandalf in his study at Bag End. Why should it be me? Gandalf was able to answer Frodo’s question by saying that it was not because of any quality that he possessed but that he should take encouragement from the very fact that indeed he seems to have been chosen. It is the very fact of being chosen that should give him strength. Sam has no Gandalf to answer his questions. Why is he the very last of the company? Why is he left all alone?

There is no one to answer his questions. Sam has to make up his own mind. And that mind is quite enough.

“Let me see now: if we’re found here, or Mr. Frodo found, and that Thing’s on him, well, the Enemy will get it. And that’s the end of all of us, of Lórien, and Rivendell, and the Shire and all.” Suddenly the world becomes bigger once again than it was just a moment before when all Sam could see was his own grief and loss.

And so he places the Ring about his neck, feels the terrible weight that Frodo has borne and is given strength to bear it. For a little while.

“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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee- but almost the touch was a caress.”

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

“For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.”

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

“What are you up to?”

And the moment was lost forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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