"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!
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