"Mount Doom" - Jacob's Thoughts

I don't know if I can do this chapter justice.

Even already knowing the end from the beginning, and especially after so many chapters of frankly shaky plotting and poor pacing, the way that Tolkien finally wraps together all of the moving pieces of not only The Lord of the Ring, but his entire Middle Earth mythology, in such a resoundingly satisfying manner--and that without sacrificing the intimacy, humility, and humanity of his central characters--is nothing short of astounding.  If, after all of our many searing critiques of Tolkien's many literary shortcomings, there were any question as to why Lord of the Rings remains the most widely beloved fantasy series of the 20th century, the answer must be that readers are willing to forgive a lot in a story if the climax is strong--and boy does Tolkien have a crackerjack climax!

I think what makes this chapter work so memorably is the strength of its contrasts: the meekness and weakness of the Hobbits contrasted against the apocalyptic grandiosity of their mission; the Hobbits' relentless hopelessness in the first half of this chapter contrasted with Sauron's absolute terror in the second; the complete darkness of Mordor (such that Galadriel's light won't even work anymore--an excellent detail) contrasted with the complete victory of the finale.

And then there's Gollum.

We've all read the books before and we've all seen the movies, so at this point Gollum's role in the final destruction of the Ring is so much a part of the cultural air we breath that it may be easy to forget just what a fantastic twist it really is.  For the question that permeated near the entirety of Book IV is whether Gollum is good or bad, friend or foe, redeemable or irredeemable, an asset or a liability; back in "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol," I posited that "what is most fascinating is that Tolkien's eventual answer to this question will be--Yes."  Now here at Mount Doom, I find that the answer is also, simultaneously, "No."  Gollum never finds redemption, never gets better, never wins release, his story ends as bitter and tragic as it began--but his selfishness and monomania is also what saves the world in the end!  Even more of a Christ-analogue than Strider, Gollum suffers immeasurably so that the rest of us might be redeemed--he is the Judas who ensures the Atonement who is also still Jesus.  It is an enormously complex ending to that particular character arc, one that complicates any easy good-vs-evil narrative in wonderful ways!

What I also noticed this time round is how those same fraught questions of good and evil apply to Frodo and Sam as well!  Frodo finally succumbs to the seductive power of the Ring in the fatal moment--he fails guys, he fails!--but that same seductive power is also what finally gets Gollum to inadvertantly destroy it, too; what was wicked in both Frodo and Gollum is also what saves Middle Earth--it is the Ring that finally trips over its own feet in the end.

Likewise Sam, who had held the Ring the briefest of them all, fails to kill treacherous Gollum when he finally has the chance, because he finally has some faint inkling of the horrible weight Smeagol had carried in his heart all these long ages--earlier, Sam had even briefly transformed into a sort of Gollum when he has that conversation in the dark with himself!--which, again, also ensures that Gollum lives to fulfill his part in the defeat of Sauron.  The one time Sam finally chooses to be the least bit kind to Gollum is the time he gets a rock to the head for it--but, again, is also how he completes the quest.  Gandalf once said that the mercy of Bilbo would determine the fates of many--so, too, did the mercy of Samwise Gamgee.

Perhaps, if we're going to locate any sort of moralizing lesson in Lord of the Rings at all, it is this: not only is no one person completely good or completely bad, but often our goodness and our badness are made up of the same thing.  What obsessed and poisoned Gollum is also what allowed him to save the world; the naivety of Frodo that allowed Gollum to betray him is also what allowed Gollum to destroy the Ring when Frodo betrayed himself.  Our weaknesses are our strengths; our virtues are our vices.

Like I said earlier, what makes this chapter work is it's contrasts--and nowhere are contrasts more extreme than in the human soul, on wonderful display throughout this chapter, even wider and broader and deeper than the depths of Mount Doom.