"The Passage of the Marshes" - Jacob's Thoughts

"I think this food would do you good, if you would try it.  But perhaps you can't even try, not yet anyway."

Oh Frodo, you incorrigible optimist!

What I admire about this chapter is how Frodo and Sam are both right: Sam is right to be deeply suspicious of Sméagol (Gollum's late-night conversation with himself is sure evidence of that), while Frodo is right to be kind, to be this poor creature's first friend in an age, to follow the counsel of Gandalf and example of Bilbo in showing mercy to this miserable wretch.  And not just for altruistic reasons, either: Remember how Frodo and crew could scarcely get through the Old Forest without getting eaten by willow-trees??  And now they're gonna hike frickin' Mordor where the shadows lie?!  These hobbits seriously need Sméagol's help right now. 

I likewise admire how Frodo and Sam are both wrong: for that same late-night conversation should have made clear to Sam that there is still a sliver of an honorable man still lurking deep within Sméagol, one that needs to be fed encouragement and kindness, not hatred and callousness; and Frodo needs to seriously be way less naive about his chances of reforming this murderous creature, of undoing literal centuries of corruption.

I also appreciate how Frodo and Sams' attitudes towards Sméagol are rooted in both their best and their worst motivations: e.g. Sam's suspicions are fueled in part by his love for his master and friend yes, but also by his own xenophobia and hobbit-peavishness.  Frodo's trust in turn is fueled in part by his humanity and decency yes, but also because he understands the seductive hold the Ring wields over his own heart...a fact which he has thus far selfishly neglected to share with Sam.  

Sméagol is just such a delightfully complex character, and he brings out the complexity in others, too!  I do believe we have learned more about Frodo and Sam in just the chapter and a half that Sméagol's been around than in the entire book and a half preceding.

On a less-related note: I'm prepping for my comprehensive exams coming up in 2 short months, which has involved me reading a ton about Anglo-Modernism.  A study I read just the other day, A Shrinking Island by scholar Jed Esty, makes the argument that the Modernist period ends in part because England turns towards its own mythologized pre-modern, folklorish past, as they are cut off from the folklores of other countries due to 1) their massive overseas Empire falling apart (especially in Ireland and India), and 2) the rise of fascism in continental Europe.  He cites examples of this inward turn of the English in the late-period works of TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf...and JRR Tolkien!  Esty's is the first scholarly work I've come across thus far that actually acknowledges Tolkien as a significant writer of this era, citing The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as symptomatic of this late-Modernist turn towards Shires, countrysides, and ancient Breton mythology.  Esty even cites the hobbits as analogous to the English self-perception, as "a race that is parochial, conventional...but capable of immense loyalty, devotion and--when pushed to it--heroism" (122) in the face of the Nazi--er, Mordor--menace. Ironically then, Lord of the Rings, in its self-conscious turn towards the pre-modern, is quintessentially Modern.

I bring this up because the other quintessentially Modern work I encounter over and over again in my readings (to the point that I'm gettin' kinda sick of it), is of course TS Eliot's "The Waste Land."  And what have we here in this chapter?  None other than another Waste Land, one that reminds us why England turned towards its Shires in the first place.  For like Eliot's, this waste land is haunted by the spectres of battlefields, of the ghosts of a lost generation, on an "arid plain" filled with fragments shored against ruins.  Eliot had based his poem upon an ancient Arthurian legend, of knights of the Round Table seeking to break the infertile curse on the land; but now in modern times, though the curse again smites the land, there are no more knights, only these hobbits, these doddering, parochial English hobbits far removed from any sort of heroic past, trudging dutifully across the waste land in the twilight of their age, towards what they are sure is their final end and dissolution.  Shantih, Shantih, Shantih...

Guys, don't let the neo-Medievalism fool you: Lord of the Rings is incredibly Modern!

"The Palantír" - Ben's Thoughts

It's nice how this chapter is such a smooth transition back into the minds of the hobbits. Tolkien is prepping us for our reintroduction to Frodo and Sam in the next book; he eases us into it with the point of view shifting the Merry and Pippin here. After all the time being spent with Aragorn and Friends, who ostensibly know most of what is going on (Aragorn more so than Gimli, of course), it's strange to be back in the heads of the hobbits, who know so little about what is happening and what will be expected of them. In a way, they are just "rag-tag," following Gandalf's tailcoats; it may sting a little, but Merry at least recognizes that very clearly. Pippin is of course more pragmatic about it: "Our whole life for months has been one long meddling in the affairs of wizards." In a way, it's good to be back with you, hobbits. Especially now that the annoying jolly duo of Merry and Pippin is about to be split up for a while.

Pippin and Merry get quite a bit of character development in these few pages, with their separate takes on their situation and Pippin's focus on the "glass ball" that turns out to be quite a serious matter indeed. I wonder if Merry would have been so quick to fall under the spell of the palantír; Merry is just so much more pragmatic and sensible, it seems doubtful to me that the allure of the unknown would have been able to snare him as easily as it did Pippin. Pippin was always the hobbit excited about "adventures," while Merry embarked on the quest out of solidarity with his cousin Frodo. As Gandalf notes at the end of the chapter, "You knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen." But Pippin's impulsiveness turns out to be for the benefit of the good guys; what would have happened if Gandalf had been the first to gaze into the palantír?

In any case, Pippin gets a heck of a sendoff at the end of the chapter, with one of Tolkien's most beautiful conclusory lines in the entire trilogy: "As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stones, seated upon the statute of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind." Things are moving fast now; Saruman has been dealt with and now the true enemy is upon them. It's time to deal with Sauron face to face.

And does the Lord of all evil come off particularly well in this chapter? No, not really, in my estimation. Instead of taking the time to extract any really useful information from Pippin, when he has him under his control, he just jumps to some hasty conclusions and tortures him for fun for a little bit before releasing him. Sauron's undoing will be what we stated before -- he is so sure that the Ring will be used against him by one of the Great or Wise that he never considers the peril approaching his own land. He is so confident that he knows exactly how Pippin and the palantír fit into things that he doesn't bother to confirm his idea; he just proceeds, arrogantly believing that his assumptions are gospel truth. Sauron, for all his power, does not seem very self-aware. He has no concept of his own limitations; his own blind spots. Maybe that's because he is alone at the pinnacle of his own success? He has no confidants, no trusted advisors. He is absolute, and thus he is solitary. So the very existance of absolute power is its own undoing, in Tolkien's portrayal of the Dark Lord, because he cannot possibly be aware of his own weaknesses without others to point them out to him.

We'll learn more and more about Sauron's tactics and points of view in the coming books. I'm interested in analyzing further where he goes wrong and what we can learn from it. And I'm also excited to rejoin my preferred characters within the more contemplative, but more emotionally and thematically expansive Book IV.

"The Voice of Saruman" - Ben's Thoughts

Saruman is such a fascinating character. Sauron is a straightforward, evil-for-evil's-sake, mustache-twirling villain, as we'll see in the next chapter, when he tortures Pippin for no reason other than gloating over his pain and doesn't have the foresight to question the hobbit before severing their contact, so sure is he of his point-of-view. (More on that in the next chapter; this "fixed gaze" theme is something Tolkien continually revisits with Sauron.) But Saruman? We see such glimpses in this chapter of Saruman's nature; his drives and passions; the man he once was and the man he almost started to become again -- and, of course, his ultimate and final rejection of that path.

Gandalf is absolutely correct in saying that Saruman's control is slipping. I'm sure the old Saruman would never have let Eomer's clumsy attempts to brush off Saruman's spell-weaving anger him as much as it does here. But he recovers quickly, with an interesting appeal to Rohan's own history: "the House of Eorl is stained with murder; for they have fought many wars, and assailed many who defied them. Yet with some they have afterwards made peace, none the worse for being politic. I say, Théoden King: shall we have peace and friendship, you and I? It is ours to command." He compares the Rohirrim to himself, without even tacitly admitting he is at fault, and thereby paints them with the same brush as himself. It's a masterful line of rhetoric.

I love that Saruman addresses each and every person that come to face him in turn, molding his description of each to fit his strategy. Gimli is summarily dismissed, his opinions irrelevant, when he objects to Saruman's words: "Far away is your home and small concern of yours are the troubles of this land." Theoden is the "mightiest king of western lands," one he seeks to save from the "unwise and evil counsels" of Gandalf, until Theoden rejects him; then he is referred to as a "dotard" and his house "a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs". Harsh, Saruman. The hobbits, for all his fascination in them, are called "small rag-tag." It's probably telling that the hobbits got a mention at all; Legolas and Aragorn he ignores entirely.

I find it fascinating that Saruman uses the peril of Mordor to his advantage. He insinuates that Gandalf is going to throw the Rohirrim against the might of Sauron: "Still I would save you, and deliver you from the ruin that drwas nigh inevitably, if you ride upon this road which you have taken." And he is not wrong: Gandalf does indeed intend to use every tool at his disposal to distract Sauron from the true peril creeping closer to his borders. The Rohirrim are just another quiver in his arrow to stave off the armies of Mordor until Frodo is able to finish his task. But Saruman's path for the Rohirrim wouldn't be any better; no doubt Saruman would ask them to fight for him in his own struggles with Sauron.

But of course it is Gandalf's conversation with Saruman that is the most compelling. Gandalf waits patiently for Saruman to betray himself in the eyes of the gathered watchers, confident in Theoden's ability to cast off the spell of the wizard's voice. He then laughs off Saruman's invitation to join him in Orthanc, with the amusing line that "the guest who has escaped from the roof, will think twice before he comes back in by the door." And finally, he offers his brother wizard a final chance to redeem himself: "Would it not be well to leave [Isengard] for a while? To turn to new things, perhaps? Think well, Saruman! Will you not come down?"

Tolkien then gives us a rare glimpse into the mind of the wizard: "they saw through the mask the anguish of a mind in doubt, loathing to stay and dreading to leave its refuge. For a second he hesitated, and no one breathed." What would have happened if Saruman had agreed to come down, to counsel with them and work with them in stopping Mordor? A more complex book than LOTR perhaps would have Saruman making that choice, and then enduring on among the forces of the good guys as a Gollum-like character, but Tolkien has set up Saruman to not be able to make that choice. "Pride and hate were conquering him," Tolkien writes. Saruman is too far gone to be able to humble himself to that degree. He is defiant to the end, despite that brief moment of hesitation.

The story of Saruman is of course a story of pride. He was jealous of Gandalf, jealous of the power of Mordor, and eager to lord over Men based on a belief of innate superiority. This Saruman could never throw himself at the mercy of Gandalf. To do so would admit that he had been right all along, and that Saruman had been wrong. Defiant to the last. "Pitiable" indeed, as Gandalf calls him. I think in Saruman there is a lesson and an example for all of us.

"The Taming of Sméagol" - Jacob's Thoughts

Interesting pronoun shifts here--almost as though Tolkien himself was unsure of quite how to properly denominate Book IV's signature creature.  First is the fact that there doesn't appear to be any clear moment when we shift from calling the guy "Gollum" to "Sméagol".  What's more, the two names continue to be used interchangeably, making it all the more difficult to properly track when we're referring to the ring-obsessed demon or the age-old former-hobbit hidden underneath--which of course compounds the confusion Frodo and Sam are likewise feeling about this creature.

Then of course there is just the problematic term "creature" itself--is this a man or a beast?  Tolkien himself can't seem to make up his mind--Gollum/Sméagol is referred in turn as "it" and as "he/him," with little apparent rhyme or reason.  Our erstwhile anti-hero is in turn dehumanized and rehumanized from paragraph to paragraph, sometimes sentence to sentence.  Somehow these endless pronoun shifts have unsettled me more about this character than all of the arid wasteland of Mordor.

Dual-identities is of course  the overriding them of Gollum--as Tolkien likewise makes explicitly clear, Sméagol is Frodo's mirror image, in both the sense of his opposite and his monstrous double.  Has René Girard ever commented on Lord of the Rings?  The famed French philosopher probably thinks such "pop" literature was beneath him, which is a shame, cause Gollum/Sméagol seems custom built for Violence and the Sacred.  For the 1972 study likewise focuses upon monstrous doubles, mimetic desire for the same scarce resources (in this case, the single Ring of Power)--and of course likewise features a "Pharmakos", the Greek root of our English word Pharmacology.  "Pharmakos" is loosely defined by Girard as simultaneously the poison and the cure (like the Ring that both poisons and extends life), which has absorbed all the potential for vengeance and violence of the larger community, and must become the sacrificial scapegoat cast out from society in order to short-circuit the never-ending cycle of retributive violence.

In Girard's model, the scapegoat, since it is the sacred talisman that prevents the spread of self-destructive communal violence, even eventually came to be worshipped, and at last deified, which is thus the ancient root of monarchy.  Hence, Louis XVI was ironically correct to claim divine right for his kingship--which divinity he was literally fulfilling as the sacrificed Pharmakos during the Reign of Terror.  The Pharmakos, then, is both what you desire and what repulses you--the monstrous double.

In one sense, the Ring is clearly the Pharmakos here--it has absorbed all violence and desire for power into itself, and consequently everyone desires it even as they fear it.  It is the scapegoat that must be destroyed to short-circuit the endless cycle of violence.  But Gollum is a Pharmakos, too--and as we all recall of from Return of the King, he is the one who will be killed to bring about this necessary sacrifice of the Ring.  Here is where Tolkien, despite all his other vaguely-drawn characters, makes a key insight into human nature--those who repulse us do so precisely because of how much they are like us, not from how different they are.  Frodo comes to recognize this as well: he sees in Gollum what he could be, indeed what he is already becoming.  The tragedy of Gollum isn't that his addiction got the best of him, but rather that he succumbed for the rest of us, so we wouldn't have to.  To quoth Isaiah, "There is no beauty in him that we should desire him."  By his stripes we are healed.

"The Taming of Sméagol" - Eric's Thoughts

The character of Smeagol/Gollum is iconic, and makes a much delayed entrance into the book here. Riddles in the dark was one of my favorite chapters in the Hobbit.

When Gollum finally appears, I realized how notable Gollum's  absence for over half the book was. It's amazing what Gollum does to pepper up a story where some of the chapters have really dragged. The entrance is delayed, but when it comes it's a true delight. It's foreshadowed properly as well--Gandalf and the Company mention that someone is following them numerous times throughout the book.

There's one scene worth mentioning before Gollum. I still remember the rope scene, where Sam bemoans the loss of the rope by tying it. He gives it one last tug lovingly, and the rope falls. Frodo jokes (and half says it seriously) that he was foolish to trust Sam's knot. Sam takes it as a personal affront. It's a lovely scene, and something that really helps to establish character. Sam becomes one of the best developed characters in the story, and it's scenes like this that really help flesh him out.

Gollum's reputation, of course, precedes himself. When Gollum appears, the Hobbits overpower him, and Gollum weeps. Frodo takes pity on Gollum, and follows Gandalf's advice and shows mercy. Sam, of course, doesn't trust Gollum, and makes that very clear. This is another great way that Tolkien brings characterization. Frodo (foolishly) seems to trust Gollum whole-heartedly, and Sam doesn't buy Gollum's act for a moment.

When Gollum wishes to swear on The Precious, Frodo's corruption shows for a moment. Frodo will not allow it. Period. It's little things like that over the course of the book that hint at Frodo's final decision at Mount Doom.

One thing I always wondered: would Sam had claimed the Ring as his own? Sam, with Frodo the whole time, seems completely immune to the Ring. Even when Sam is reluctant to hand the Ring to Frodo later on, it's not because Sam wants the Ring for his own. It's because Sam is concerned about handing another dose of heroin to a junky who demands it.