"Mount Doom" - Eric's Thoughts

This chapter IS Lord of the Rings. The whole is greater than the sum. Imagery, character, literal crushing weight. It is a keystone chapter that upholds vast world building by Tolkien. Suddenly everything Tolkien has done wrong seems to work. Not-scary wights in Barrow Downs? World building. Bombadil? Just world building. Feet dragging in Return of the King? World Building.

At this stage, the reader has been through forests, marshes,  mountains, and Elf-Kingdoms. Middle Earth exists, and the reader believes. Tolkien finishes the journey by forcing the hobbits to endure a final march of death:

• As the light grew a little he saw to his surprise that what from a distance had seemed wide and featureless flats were in fact all broken and tumbled. Indeed the whole surface of the plains of Gorgoroth was pocked with great holes, as if, while it was still a waste of soft mud, it had been smitten with a shower of bolts and huge slingstones. The largest of these holes were rimmed with ridges of broken rock, and broad fissures ran out from them in all directions . . . For the hungry and worn, who had far to go before life failed, it had an evil look.

Of course, what would be the external obstacles without internal conflict to match? Tolkien lets the Ring wreck havoc among old friends, foreshadowing Frodo's doom, causing the reader to wonder if Frodo is ready for the final test:

• ‘I can’t manage it, Sam,’ [Frodo] said. ‘It is such a weight to carry, such a weight.’ Sam knew before he spoke, that it was vain, and that such words might do more harm than good, but in his pity he could not keep silent. ‘Then let me carry it a bit for you, Master,’ he said. ‘You know I would, and gladly, as long as I have any strength.’ A wild light came into Frodo’s eyes. ‘Stand away! Don’t touch me!’ he cried. ‘It is mine, I say. Be off!’ His hand strayed to his sword-hilt. But then quickly his voice changed. ‘No, no, Sam,’ he said sadly. ‘But you must understand. It is my burden, and no one else can bear it. It is too late now, Sam dear. You can’t help me in that way again. I am almost in its power now. I could not give it up, and if you tried to take it I should go mad.

• ‘Do you remember that bit of rabbit, Mr. Frodo?’ he said. ‘And our place under the warm bank in Captain Faramir’s country, the day I saw an oliphaunt?’ ‘No, I am afraid not, Sam,’ said Frodo. ‘At least, I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.’

After addressing internal conflict, Tolkien again pivots back to describing the world and painting images:

• The Mountain crept up ever nearer, until, if they lifted their heavy heads, it filled all their sight, looming vast before them: a huge mass of ash and slag and burned stone, out of which a sheer-sided cone was raised into the clouds. Before the daylong dusk ended and true night came again they had crawled and stumbled to its very feet.

Back and forth, internal to external and back to internal, and the mountain and final test only looms ever closer. Mount doom, of course, is more than just a mountain. It represents an impassable obstacle given the Hobbits' weak strength. Frodo cannot do it. He begins to crawl. And whether Tolkien did it purposefully (or was it chance just like Gollum's slip and fall?), Tolkien captures something absolutely brilliant when Sam picks up Frodo and carries him up the mountain:

• As Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms, Sam staggered to his feet; and then to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone, and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring. But it was not so. Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering, or because some gift of final strength was given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty than if he were carrying a hobbit-child pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns or hayfields of the Shire. He took a deep breath and started off.

To Frodo, the Ring's burden is crushing. But to Sam, the Ring weighs absolutely nothing. Tolkien shows that the Ring is merely a psychological burden; it exists solely in the mind of the wearer. Tolkien does not advertise this fact, however. He almost addresses it in passing. Mount Doom (the chapter) is epic in scope but also contains subtleties even the most astute reader might miss given the chapter's page-turning nature.

The strangeness and other-worldliness of the chapter compounds. Gollum attacks, and the attack lights a fire under what life remains in Frodo.  Frodo commands Gollum to be gone, and Sam takes a more practical view: 'Look out!' cried Sam. 'He'll Spring!'

Frodo looked at [Sam], as if at one now far away. 'Yes, I must go on,' he said. 'Farewell, Sam! This is the end at last. On Mount Doom doom shall fall. Farewell!'

(Frodo's comments are to say the least . . . ominous.)

Gollum is defeated and instead of fighting back, curls into a ball. Suddenly Sam then sees "Gollum's shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace of relief ever in life again." Sam forgives Gollum and turns to join Frodo at the summit.

What does Sam find? The light of Galadriel fails, and walls on either side cloven by a great fissure , out of which the red glare came, now leaping up, now dying down into darkenss; and all the while far below there was a rumour and a trouble as of great engines throbbing and labouring.

The light springs up, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.

And in one of the creepiest moments in all of literature, Frodo claims the Ring:

• ‘I have come,’ he said. ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!’

Frodo attacks Sam and knocks Sam out cold. Sometime later, Sam awakes to find Gollum battling an invisible thing:

• Suddenly Sam saw Gollum’s long hands draw upwards to his mouth; his white fangs gleamed, and then snapped as they bit. Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought of living fire.

Of course, we all know what happens. Gollum slips, and with that single unlucky slip Sauron's entire empire collapses.

What to make of this chapter? Has Tolkien dragged the reader through page after page, chapter after chapter, only to reveal that no one is capable of this task? That good conquers evil only as a matter of chance?

Frodo the mild-mannered hobbit is not the first to try this. All of this could have been prevented if Isildur had thrown the Ring into the fires in the first instance, but he could not. Frodo similarly could not. Tolkien suggests that no one has the power to throw the Ring away and destroy it. But then, just maybe, if Frodo had not undergone his long journey and transformation, might if he stepped into Isildur's shoes been capable of destroying it? Could Sam have had the strength to do it if he took it forcefully from Frodo?

The answer from the clues of the text is plainly no, but still the reader is left wondering. Would I have been able to? Would you?