You guys ever watch The Office back in the day? Not just the U.S. version, but the original U.K. one? They both have a strong thread of despair running through them as is well known, but in the U.S. iteration it gets largely subsumed by the light-hearted tone, good humor, and an irrepressible American optimism that renders us constitutionally incapable of ever wallowing in the darkness for too long, or of ever taking it too seriously. The British version, to put it mildly, serves it straight. The bleakness is perpetually foregrounded, and the humor only serves to highlight it all the more starkly. For the British, hope is a luxury, not a necessity; despair is not the exception to existence but its general rule; and if anything ever goes right, it is a strange thing that has happened.
I was reminded of this innately English pessimism throughout this chapter; we've already discussed how Aragorn post-Moriah claims we no longer live for hope, but only revenge, and now here both Frodo and Sam confess--to their innermost selves if no one else--that neither of them had any real hope for this quest, either. Frodo is determined to cross the Black Gate alone--just as he had always assumed he would have to finally carry this awful burden alone--not because he ever thought he would ever actually make it to Mt. Doom, but only because fate had decreed this his own awful burden to carry, his duty alone to fail in.
Sam, for his part, must admit that the best his native cheerfulness could offer was never any real hope, but only a postponement of despair, one which he can no longer escape now that he stands before the all-too-guarded Black Gate. Even Gollum is just playing an end-game of delaying the inevitable, of not defeating Sauron but just keeping the Ring out of his hands as long as possible; he straight up tells Frodo that he only guided him to the Black Gate to fulfill the terms of his terrible oath to the "Precious," not because he thought Frodo was crazy enough to try to enter! Indeed, Gollum rants and raves that it is a terrible idea to try and enter Mordor at all, that he only offers this highly-specious alternate route because if you must enter Mordor, well, you'll have slightly better luck over at this other place--where Sauron's eye isn't as watchful, "he can't see everything, not yet"--which still isn't all that encouraging.
I don't know why it didn't strike me till this chapter, but this entire series is permeated by a very English pessimism, one that refuses to even entertain the possibility of success. For despite its grand popularity in America, LotR is not an American novel at all. This text is like the U.K. version of The Office, where all of its despair on the surface, where all humor is gallows humor, where all situations are hopeless.
But then also, like The Office, there comes a joke, and someone says something utterly ridiculous, as Sam recites that nursery poem about "oliphaunts" (by far the dumbest poem Tolkien has published yet), and that somehow relieves all the tension and they are all able to carry on besides. For although America's source of confidence lies in our unflagging sense of optimism in the face of all contrary evidence, Britain's, by contrast, lies in their calm certainty that all is hopeless and everything and everyone is terrible, which somehow imbues them with the resolve to continue forward anyways. It's a very English type of despair that almost becomes its own form of optimism.
Almost.
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