A Fan's Notes

I suspect that a number of us entered this class as fans of The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit, as well). For example, you may well like Paradise Lost, but I suspect that it's not a work that as many of us choose to read during our summer vacation as we do the LOTR. So, what draws (drew) you to the LOTR? What are some of your memories from your earlier encounters with it? Why do you think this book is so popular? What contributes to its enduring appeal in our time, do you think? In short, why on earth (or Middle Earth) do you love this thing so?

Cheers, SL

Re: A Fan's Notes

My father gave me a copy of The Hobbit when I was eight and I gobbled it up. A few years later I read LOTR and became, well, obsessed.

Over the next few years I read it maybe 20 times. I took careful notes, studied the maps and genealogies, and even tried to construct an Elvish dictionary.

The more deeply I read it, the more I wondered about Tolkien's influences, about languages and how they work, and about the great themes in the book, the interaction between mortal and immortal beings, the nature of evil, etc. I began reading other fantasies by George MacDonald and William Morris, Celtic and Norse mythologies, and finally worked my way all the way back to Homer and Gilgamesh.

I'm not sure now why this one book had such an effect on me. Others have already commented on its verisimilitude. The book seems real because Middle Earth was real to Tolkien. He always talked about discovering words and characters, not inventing them. He took his world seriously and so did I.

I also found Tolkien's sentences beautiful, and I still think his are among the most well-crafted in the English language. Years later, when I read his first drafts of LOTR, I was shocked at how much worse they were the first time around. But apparently he polished each sentence until it shone, and fitted them together into perfectly balanced paragraphs.

None of this would matter if the story itself wasn't compelling - but it was. Tolkien was a rare mixture of dusty Oxford don and village bard. He had a mind capable of astonishing subtlety and complexity, but with a heart that stayed in touch with the simple hungers and fears that drive any good story.

As a result, LOTR has many layers, and the deeper you delve into it, the more it opens before you to reveal yet more layers. I think it is this quality which ensnared me at a tender age, and continues even now to enchant me. Each time I re-read it, I find something new. And the older I get, the more deeply I penetrate into those eternal mysteries with which every great work of literature grapples.

Being a Hobbit

I identify very strongly with the hobbits... little people, asked to do big things and not wanting to, scared and yet strangely fasicinated by life and what they do not know, rejoicing in and reviling their own ignorance and inability to change things or direct their fate, grappling with the realization that you think that you are important, but nobody else even knows that you exist. I just really get that sometimes, and it makes me very proud that some of them are able to take control of their lives and do big things beyond all odds.

Re: Being a Hobbit

This is purley the reason for the existence of hobbits I believe. In Tolkein's world everyone it seems is an epic hero or mighty warrior and yet he grounds this tale in the simple lives of hobbits. The hobbits represent the everyday person, those individuals quietly living out their lives with no dreams of adventure or grandeur. Yet these simple creatures are the ones who save all of middle earth from the evil grasp of Sauron and the Ring of Power. The hobbits show the greatness of the everyday person a reflection of the quiet countrymen who saved Europe during the dark days of World War I. So take pride in being like the hobbits after all everyone is capable of changing the world.

Re: Being a Hobbit

I agree with both Robalyn and Jeff. We are meant to identify with the hobbits - this is what makes LOTR tick.

Every work of fantasy needs a reference point in the "real" world, a way of "grounding" the story. Without this, a fantasy world risks seeming arbitrary or meaningless.

Most fantasy novels solve this problem by starting out in "our" world with ordinary characters not unlike ourselves. Once we accept these characters, the author is free to send them through a magic mirror, or a time machine, or rocket ship, into another world. The reader follows along for the ride and can make sense of what happens by seeing how the protagonist reacts. The "ordinary" protagonist acts as a guide, or a proxy, for the reader.

Tolkien's ingenious solution was to put his ordinary protagonists *inside* the very world he then explores. The hobbits are us, modern people, and though they were born there, Middle Earth is as full of wonders for them as it is for us.

Better yet, instead of sending these hobbits through a magic mirror, he merely impells them to transcend their own provincial attitudes. They move into a wider world step by step, just as we do when we go to college or move to a new town. The magic comes on gradually, in complex ways.

The result is that we care what happens to the hobbits, and Middle Earth eventually matters as much to us as it does to them. Then, when we put the book down and return to our own humdrum lives, that acceptance of magic remains and causes us to see old things through new eyes, and to wonder what's over the next hill. This produces a kind of healing and a sense of release that Tolkien termed "eucatastrophe."

Why is LOTR so Popular?

Why do you think that The Lord of the Rings is so popular? It seems that it is almost like it's a "real" far-off world somewhere! Do you think that it seems tangible because Tolkien included maps, histories, dates etc???

Re: Why is LOTR so Popular?

Good question, Monica. Not only is LOTR more popular than ever, it essentially launched the entire genre of fantasy fiction. The shelves of every bookstore are lined with Tolkien imitators, books full of swords and sorcerors, dungeons and dragons.

Tolkien considered his work to be a kind of fairy tale (on an epic scale). He also considered the New Testament to be a fairy tale, or rather THE fairy tale - not a fairy tale in the sense of being a pretty lie, but a fairy tale in the sense of being about encountering the supernatural (which to Tolkien meant more natural, more real, not unnatural).

Fairy tales, or more generally myths and legends, have been around as long as there have been stories and seem to fulfill a basic human need. Much has been written on this topic.

In his essay "On Fairy Tales", Tolkien talks about why this is. He says that modern people crave a release from the industrial cage they've created for themselves. We are no longer as in touch with nature as our ancestors were and so have lost a sense of wonder and mystery in our daily lives. This produces a kind of sickness, a sadness, an apathy.

Fairy tales have the power to provide consolation and healing, to renew our sense of wonder. LOTR in particular incorporates many of the classic archtypes that stir hearts across all cultures: the hero who jouneys into the underworld and returns, the exiled king who regains his throne, the savior who sacrifices himself to save his people.

It's as if these themes are hard-wired into our brains. I think each of us see ourselves as the hero of our own lives, struggling to regain a throne that is rightfully ours.

Even so, it's not easy crafting a fairy tale for a modern audience. We are sophisticated and skeptical, even jaded. We think we know how the world works, more or less, and are not inclined to believe in leprachauns or unicorns. As a storyteller, how do you get your audience to suspend its disbelief in such things?

Tolkien achieves this difficult task because he believes so deeply in the world he creates. The maps and charts and genealogies are all artifacts of a modern mind exploring and documenting something real and complex. So deep is Tolkien's belief in his world that we start to believe in it ourselves.

There are many other valid answers to this question, like the way LOTR resonates with modern environmental issues and nuclear power struggles, but I think the deeper answer is the older answer: we need stories like this, now more than ever.

Is LOTR a Religious Book?

Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic and he spent much of his life writing a book about good and evil. But there are no churches in his world, nor religions, and barely any discussion of God as such. And Tolkien despised religious allegories (like the Narnia Chronicles by his dear friend C. S. Lewis).

Yet some see LOTR as a deeply religious book. Do you? How so?

Re: Is LOTR a Religious Book?

But there are no churches in his world, nor religions, and barely any discussion of God as such. And Tolkien despised religious allegories

I agree with you, John, and we've talked about this in my class (FYI: There are two classes participating in these discussions), but as I read the book this time around I'm struck by these, for want of a better word, fissures in the text where Tolkien seems to be suggesting something very other worldly (that is, beyond the fabric of that 'other' world he presents to us in LOTR) and, if not religious, then something spiritual/mystical/visionary (and nearly allegorical, perhaps; that is beyond the spiritual sense that others have associated with the elves, say).

Here, for example, is Gandalf in THE TWO TOWERS describing what happend to him after his fight with the Balrog: "Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. Naked I was sent back -- for a brief time, until my task is done" (111). Later in that passage Gwaihir the Windlord says to Gandalf, "The Sun shines through you. Indeed I do not think you need me any more: were I to let you fall, you would float upon the wind." And then, in our reading for this week, in RETURN OF THE KING, Gandalf says in "The Last Debate" chapter: "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary" (160). I wonder what you make of these chapters, John (and others)?

Re: Is LOTR a Religious Book?

Yes, Stuart, I think Gandalf's resurrection (and there really is no other word for it) is the one "fissure" in an otherwise seamless, almost pagan world.

There are a few vague references to a higher power here and there (as when Gandalf speculates that Frodo was "meant" to carry the ring), but for the most part the peoples of Middle Earth exercise free will.

If there is a God in the Judeo-Christian sense, he does not seem involved in an Old Testament kind of way. That is, there is no proactive God burning bushes or raining toads or parting the Red Sea just in the nick of time. His creatures are pretty much on their own. Bad things happen to good people and the forces of evil are not only genuinely dangerous, they are often victorious.

Gandalf's ressurection seems to be the one break in this pattern. His return seems to be a kind of divine intervention - a miracle. It's as if Tolkien's God generally stays aloof but is not above stacking the deck every now and then just enough to give the good guys a fighting chance.

It's also worth noting that while Gandalf the Grey is a cantankerous, feisty, and very human figure, Gandalf the White is, well, holy. He returns as a holy warrior and seems otherworldly - no longer in the same boat with the rest of the characters.

There is something of this otherworldliness in the Elves as well. Elves do not have churches or priests, but then neither do angels. And like angels, Tolkien's elves are often involved in a kind of veneration, looking up at the stars and singing.

As it turns out, Tolkien did devise an extensive mythos, with explicit references to a "one God", a heirarchy of supernatural beings, a long series of angelic battles right out of Milton, and even a Genesis-like creation story that reminds me a little of Blake. You can find all this stuff in the Silmarillion and the many volumes of other writings collected posthumously by his son Christopher.

All this stuff was in Tolkien's head as he was writing LOTR. But it's astonishing how little of it actually appears in the trilogy. Only a phrase or two, in Elvish no less, and one mysterious miracle, but behind these fleeting references are, quite literally, volumes.

Re: Is LOTR a Religious Book?

That's a good point, John, about the difference between Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White, but just how did he become that way? What was the process?

Cryptically, Gandalf says, in "The White Rider" chapter, that Gwaihir lifted him from the top of the mountain after the Balrog was destroyed and took him to Lothlorien: "'Thus it was that I came to Caras Galadon.... I tarried there in the ageless time of that land where days bring healing not decay. Healing I found, and I was clothed in white. Counsel I gave and counsel took. Thence by strange roads I came,...'" And that's all we know of how Gandalf came by the power that enabled him to break Saurman's staff at Orthnanc.

I suppose we can surmise that one or more of the three rings that the elves possess had something to do with his transformation, but beyond that I can see nothing else in LOTR to tell us. Can you help us out here, John (or anybody else in the class)?

Re: Is LOTR a Religious Book?

As I recall, the sequence of events went like this. When Gandalf and the balrog fell into the chasm, the balrog's fires were extinquished but the battle between them continued for some time. Eventually Gandalf pursued the balrog up a winding staircase all the way to a mountain peak. There the balrog reignited and a final battle took place in which the balrog (and much of the staircase) was destroyed.

After the battle, Gandalf lay naked on the snowy slopes for some time before being found by his old pal Gwahir(?) the eagle, who carried him to nearby Lothlorian (Caras Galadan), where Galadriel found some clothes for him and patched him up. In fact he arrived just after the fellowship left.

The mysterious part, what I've referred to as his ressurection, apparently happened while Gandalf was lying naked on that mountain peak. He talked about being "sent back", which seems to imply that he died, went to some kind of afterlife, and returned. The journey Gandalf referred to seems to have been an inner spiritual journey.

Tolkien is deliberately vague about all of this, and indeed about the nature of wizards themselves. There were five wizards, called the istari, and they were neither men nor elves. They arrived "from the west" about 2000 years before the events in LOTR, appearing as old men (who seemed to age only very slowly). There is some speculation in the appendices and elsewhere about the actual identity of these five. Probably they were Maia (spelling?), something like archangels in Tolkien's mythological heirarchy. Balrogs, incidentally, had a similar ancient lineage and so were more or less peers of the istari in the heirarchy.

You mentioned the rings. A little-known bit of trivia is that Gandalf himself was a keeper of one of the three elvish rings. His was the ring of fire, secretly given to him by Cirdan when he first arrived in Middle Earth. On the bridge of Khazad Dum, Gandalf warned the balrog of this when he said he was the "keeper of the secret flame of Arnor" or something like that (I'm at the office away from my books so am doing this by memory).

The other two rings were held by Elrond and Galadriel. Elrond's was the ring of healing which he used, among other things, to heal Frodo after he was stabbed by the nazgul. Galadriel's ring gave her the power to preserve Lorien in an enchanted state (a bit of heaven on earth from an elvish point of view) and to see into the minds of others, as she did with the fellowship.

The keepers of the three rings were aware of each other, in a kind of telepathic contact. This is why Galadriel seemed a tad skeptical when the fellowship arrived and reported Gandalf dead. She was concerned because Gandalf was "hidden" from her, but she didn't sense that he was dead. I think she allowed her people to declare Gandalf dead and compose songs for him, but inwardly adopted a wait-and-see posture.

All of this stuff is very, very subtle to a first-time (or even tenth-time) reader of LOTR, but it's there. There is a subtext beneath much that happens in LOTR. My favorite example of this is the tempation scene between Galadriel and Frodo. If you know Galadriel's past history you begin to appreciate that there's much more at stake for her personally than is apparent on the surface. But that, as they say, is another subject.

Re: Is LOTR a Religious Book?

Thanks for the background information and insights, John. The information about the origins of the wizards and balrogs is very helpful, I think. Some of the other information we know from the book, like that Gandalf was the keeper of one of the rings (revealed in the last chapter of RETURN OF THE KING), or that Galadriel's help to Frodo comes at a very great price ("I did not spend long study on these matters for naught. You have doomed yourselves and you know it.....you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine," Saruman says to Galadriel when the travelers returning from Gondor encounter him on the road back to Rivendell).

I think it's interesting how much readers invest this work of fiction with a sort of historical expectation ("There must be a factual answer to some of the questions!"). Tolkien alludes to this a bit in "Forward" he wrote to the 1960's Ballantine edition, when he talks about the difference between history and allegory: "I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers."

But, of course, we know that Tolkien never finished many of the background books to his great myth when he died, like THE SILMARILLION, and you can see his growth in conception between earlier works like THE HOBBIT and LOTR (Goblins become Orcs, for example). In some senses, our great tour guide and conceiver of Middle Earth was still working these details out when he took his final journey to the west.

Re: Is LOTR a Religious Book?

Well said, Stuart! I particularly like the comparison between history and allegory - this goes to the heart of what makes LOTR work.

Incidentally, not all the clues are contained within LOTR. In the Silmarillion we discover that Galadriel had more at stake even than the dissolution of Lorien (which Saruman summed up so bluntly). She was a prominent figure in a rebellion that happened in a previous age. As a result she was exiled to Middle Earth and her current status was unclear. Most of the elves planned on eventually forsaking Middle Earth and escaping back to the west. But because of her past crimes, Galadriel had no guarantee that she would be permitted to return. Thus the very real possibility existed that, whatever happened to the one ring, she would be left behind, trapped. This adds an extra twist of the blade during her scene with Frodo.

As it turns out, her risky decision to refuse the one ring is what saves her, I think. In doing so she exhibits a wisdom about the ring that she did not have about the Sillmarils, and this evidence of spiritual growth earns her divine forgiveness and a ticket home.

Anyway, I completely agree with you about the way Tolkien was constantly tinkering with his history, deepening it, right up till the end. I think he thought of these constant alterations not as writterly revisions to a text, but as discoveries made by ongoing scholarly research.

This afternoon I was reading through earlier drafts of LOTR (in the volumes published by Tolkien's son Christopher). It's fascinating to see the basic ideas about wizards, rings, etc. evolve. Tolkien worked this stuff out step by step, often changing his mind in the process.

As a writer, I'm impressed by his "negative capability" - the way he trusts his subconscious so completely and discovers characters he knows nothing about. The most famous example was the very origin of The Hobbit. One day while grading papers he suddenly wrote in a margin the first sentence: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." He wrote that sentence without any idea what a hobbit was and then had to discover the rest.

Christopher Tolkien begins his series of books on the early drafts with this quote from a letter his father wrote to W. H. Auden in 1955:

"I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horse-lords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fangorn Forest was an unforseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22."

Tolkien's work is a history, yes, but a history as surprising to Tolkien as it is to us.

On Death and Syntaxes

Is anyone else just a little um, tired frustrated with/of Tolkien's stilted syntax? It is really getting on my nerves. "Brave were the riders" et al. Slow narrative flow, and weary are my eyes. I spend more time than I want to re-arranging the sentence order. AND FOR WHAT? I want some kind of pay off and I want it now.

The above is a comment posted by Kerry on May 28 in our "Epic Lounge" discussions. And yet, on the same day, John, in a posting entitled Re: A Fan's Notes," comments that "I... found Tolkien's sentences beautiful, and I still think his are among the most well-crafted in the English language."

Hmmm. Anyone care to comment and to support one point of view or the other (I would also direct you to Jeff the Edgy Meddler's rather creative response/riposte to Kerry). Okay, Gauntlet's been thrown down. Don't get your hands too dirty.

Cheers, SL

Re: On Death and Syntaxes

Yes, I got quite a chuckle over Kerry's complaint, and enjoyed Jeff's reply as well. But if Kerry thinks Tolkien is bad, I say we strap her down and feed her some Henry James. And if that doesn't cure her impertinence, then it's time to take off the gloves and give her a taste of Finnegan's Wake. She'll be begging for Tolkien before we're through!

Ultimately, though, it's a matter of taste. Kerry is entitled to her opinion, and there are many, even ardent Tolkien fans, who chafe with impatience at some of his longer passages. Perhaps this is the impatience of youth; as I grow older I find myself enjoying those longer passages most of all.

Still, since you threw down the gauntlet, Stuart, I'll see what I can do to rise to Tolkien's defense.

I was initially puzzled by Kerry's implication that Tolkien's sentences were inverted in a Yoda-like way, with the objects thrust before the subjects ("Brave were the riders" instead of "The riders were brave"). I opened my copy to random pages and, at first, found none of this.

But eventually I came across some examples of what we might call "elevated prose." Here is one:

As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening. Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned: the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn. Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kings of stone: still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North. The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; in each right hand there was an axe; upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Numenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the Gates.

Sheer rose the dreadful cliffs to unguessed heights on either side. Far off was the dim sky. The black waters roared and echoed, and a wind screamed over them. Frodo crouching over his knees heard Sam in front muttering and groaning: 'What a place! What a horrible place! Just let me get out of this boat, and I'll never wet my toes in a puddle again, let alone a river!'

'Fear not! said a strange voice behind him. Frodo turned and saw Strider, and yet not Strider; for the weatherworn Ranger was no longer there. In the stern sat Aragorn son of Arathorn, proud and erect, guiding the boat with skilful strokes; his hood was cast back, and his dark hair was blowing in the wind, a light was in his eyes: a king returning from exile to his own land.

This is the kind of syntax that has Kerry sqirming in her seat - but I love it! I think it's a magnificent piece of writing. Maybe if we consider what Tolkien is trying to accomplish in this passage, we might begin to see why he twisted his syntax.

On one level, there's really not much happening in this scene. The fellowship is sailing past some big statues. Really BIG statues, but still: so what?

But for Aragorn this is a pivotal moment. One of the great narrative arcs in LOTR is Aragorn's transformation from the unkempt vagrant of Bree to the king of Gondor. This scene is a turning point in that journey, the first real glimpse of the king that will be. Aragorn has been preparing for this moment for over 80 years, testing himself, resisting the burden of leadership, struggling. This is like the moment Odysseus first sets foot in his kingdom after decades lost at sea - still in disguise but finally ready to reclaim his throne.

Tolkien does not take us inside the mind of Aragorn as many modern novelists would have done. Instead, he attempts to convey the gravity of this internal moment through a description of the external world, in this case the statues and chasm that comprise the threshold Aragorn is passing through.

And how can he do that? The many paintings of this scene, and the astonishing effects from the movie, must come after. Tolkien has only words to paint with.

Notice how he begins from the point of view of Frodo, lightly touches Boromir (for whom this is also a potent moment), then Sam (deathly afraid of boats to begin with), and finally ends with a description of Aragorn's paddling technique. Here, as elsewhere, Tolkien's syntax and word choice shifts according to the character being portrayed, from humble hobbit to grave king.

To make this scene work, he has to make the statues seem so big that the reader will cower in his seat, and so old that the reader will gape in awe as before the pyramids of Egypt. The reader has to understand the weight and history of Gondor in order to grasp what is at stake here. Gondor is not just any kingdom, and Aragorn is not just any king. This is a moment of biblical proportions.

Tolkien's solution at moments like this is to let his language take on the feel of epic verse, in particular the great Norse sagas he was so learned in. By twisting around his syntax he conveys a sense of great age and solemnity. Suddenly these are not a bunch of guys on a camping trip, these are heroes crossing into legend.

I love every sentence of this passage. I like the way he makes the statues big by making the boats small, "frail and fleeting as little leaves". I like the alliteration and the rhythm. Try reading this passage out loud and hear how it sounds.

So Tolkien does twist his syntax now and then, but I think he does it for good reason and with a great deal of precision. But to each his own. One man's 'stilted' is another man's 'elevated'.

Re: On Death and Syntaxes

That's a terrific response you just made, John. I think that passage shows some of the different styles that Tolkien was playing with (the lower vernacular of Sam, and the elevated style of Aragorn, say). I wouldn't presume to speak for Kerry, but I think it might be helpful (to whose gauntlet I'm not sure) to quote a bit of Anthony Lane, writing about "The Hobbit Habit" in the Dec. 10, 2001 issue of THE NEW YORKER.

There's a point in the article (p. 103 to be exact) where he notices how the LOTR "tends, at moments of great import, to back off and scurry into the creaking comforts of outdated syntax." He quotes a sentence from the latter half of THE RETURN OF THE KING to make his point: "'Here now for seven days they tarried, for the time was at hand for another parting which they were loth to make.'" I suspect that it is these sorts of sentences that gives Kerry the heebee-jeebees.

Lane goes on to comment about this sentence that this "is the high style, but it is height without self-consciousness; Joyce climbed up there, too, but his was a parodic quest, and he stripped bare the language of nobility as if removing a suit of armor. Hardly anyone had used it unironically since Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' and to revert to it with a straight face in the nineteen-fifties was to mount a head-on challenge to modernity."

On the very next page of his article, however, Lane quotes another sentence, this one from THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, one that describes one of the baddies in the mines of Moria: "Then a great, flat, toeless foot was forced through below.... His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red." Without mentioning the perhaps uncomfortable racist imagery inherent in the descriptions of the servants of Sauron and Saruman, Lane asks us to "notice how Tolkien shrugs off the fancy phrasing and whacks us hard with Germanic monosyllables. All the years of studying 'Beowulf' have paid off."

Finally, towards the end of his article, Lane asserts that there "is so much that is wrong and flabby with the book, but there is one big thing that Tolkien got right: he got rhythm. His instinct for the procedures of Dark Age sag was as reliable as his indifference to the mores of the machine age, and he soon established a beat -- a basic pulse, throbbing below the surface of the book and forcing you, day after day, to turn the page. We can no more leave Frodo stranded on his mission that his friends can. Not all works of literature share that pulse: the Odyssey has it, "Ulysses" doesn't. This is a way of suggesting that 'The Lord of the Rings' may be the final stab at epic, and there is invariably something risky, if not downright risible, in a last grasp. Tolkien believed that he could reproduce the epic form under modern conditions, and that there was no call to update the epic vocabulary; hence both the mockery that met his enterprise and the more charitable amazement that anyone could strive for such a thing."

It is that pulse, I suspect that you and Kerry and both noticing in your own ways, John, and something that it seems to me many in the class have felt as well (has there been another book that we've read this quarter in our class that has held you more spellbound? Unless I've missed something, I think the answer for most of the class would be a "No."). So cheer up, Kerry. The quarter's almost over, and you can always read FINIGAN'S WAKE and Henry James this summer (and you could certainly read worse. So could John. Ah, but that is a gauntleted argument for another time.

Force of Hobbit

Anytime I read I always find myself wanting more than the book offers. I want more history (and with Tolkein that is saying somehting!) more background. The subject of my curiosity this time around is Smeagol. In my first reading of LOTR about eight years ago Gollum was nothing more to me than a vehicle to move the plot along. This reading finds me focusing more on this lonely creature, more than anyone else. Like John Gardner's Grendel I would love to read a seperate story of the life of Smeagol. I guess my question is who is Gollum?

Gandalf states in the Fellowship of the Ring "Very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of the Wilderland a clever-handed and quiet footed people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind...The most inquisitive and curious minded of that family was called Smeagol(Book I pg. 57)." Gollum came from a family of wealth, so why was he so easily corrupted by a simple golden ring. Once he found the power of the ring Smeagol betrayed his family and friends and ventured into the mountains to find the secrets within. Does anyone know how long ago this occured?

How long did it take to transform Gollum into the pitiful creature we find in The Two Towers "Whatever dreadful paths, lonely and hungry and waterless, he had trodden, driven by a devouring desire and a terrible fear, they had left grievious marks on him (pg. 236)."

I have to wonder if Tolkien had a soft spot for Gollum to have him play such crucial role in the work. After all Gollum destroys the ring, is Tolkien allowing Smeagol a redemption of sorts or is he showing that greed will ultimatley bring about destruction?

Re: Force of Hobbit

This is a really interesting question, Jeff.

Gollumn's age can be found by consulting Appendix B. Smeagol acquired the ring (by murdering Deagol) in 2463, which means he spent about 500 years rotting under the Misty Mountains.

Hobbits had lived in the northern vales of the Anduin where the ring was found for as far back as anyone could remember, but most had migrated westward across the Misty Mountains towards the Shire a thousand years earlier (when Mirkwood first became an evil place). This might suggest something about the dwindling numbers of hobbits, including Smeagol's family, who remained: the dregs of their race.

The harder part of your question - who was Gollum - is fascinating and could be the subject of its own book. Like you, I'd love to see what John Gardner would do with this.

I also think you're on to something when you say that perhaps Tolkien had a soft spot for Gollum. Gollum was the most surprising and vivid character in The Hobbit, a creature from the depths of Tolkien's subconscious. I think Gollum haunted Tolkien, and as the ring grew in his mind as the center of a much larger story, Gollum grew with it. He must have had great fun writing Gollum's monologues. In audio recordings, Tolkien really gets into it.

As others in your class have observed, Tolkien placed great emphasis on the importance of mercy. Gollum allowed Tolkien to explore this idea by comparing Bilbo, who began his possession of the ring with an act of mercy, with Smeagol, who began with an act of treachery. Other characters in LOTR, in particular Frodo and Sam, have an opportunity to exact vengeance on Gollum but again choose mercy and in the end, ironcially, this is what saves them.

Gollum provides a vivid example of the ways in which evil turns on itself. That Gollum of all people should be the one to finally destroy the ring is a grand irony. Even the Christ-like Frodo is ultimately unable to overcome the power of the ring; it is only through Gollum that the ring destroys itself. In an odd way, Gollum saves the savior and is the true hero of the book.

He is also one of the most deeply realized villians in literature. He is at once repellant and intriguing, dangerous and pitiful. The ring can be blamed for part of his wickedness: it bewitched and controlled him. But Tolkien makes it clear that his character was defective from the start. That is, the ring had the power to magnify the evil within Semagol, but not to create it.

Interestingly enough, that initial character defect was simple curiosity. Curiosity, after all, was what impelled Adam and Eve to take their first bite of the apple. In Smeagol's case, though, I think this was not the healthy curiosity of an active mind, but rather a lust for secrets. The ring was alluring not because of its gold, but because of it's gift of invisibility that allowed Smeagol to sneak and pry at will.

I have long believed that one of the best ways to understand any great author is to study his villains. Gollum is clearly worthy of such study. I would be curious to hear more of your thoughts about him.

Re: Force of Hobbit

John, that's just a wonderful response about Gollum, really helpful and eloquent. Thank you so much.

Like you, I'm struck by the moments of Gollum's pitiful self-awareness and neediness, as in these passages in THE TWO TOWERS: "And we're so lonely" (245); "wretched we are... Misery, misery!" (246); "We are lost,... No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty" (335).

Now, a cynic might say, given the rhetorical situation in which Gollum finds himself (in the case of the first two quotes, with Sam and Frodo, in the case of the third, with Faramir and his men), this over five hundred year old hobbit is cunningly trying to persuade his potential prosecutors that he is so wretched that he deserves pity instead of punishment, but I would argue that there's something else going on here, too (and I would suggest that the cynic's argument makes Gollum to be a much less interesting character).

One of the most moving Gollum passages for me is on p. 366 of our edition of this book, when Gollum returns to Sam and Frodo in the pass of Cirith Ungel and finds them asleep together (after he has presumably gone up to Shelob's lair to set up our heroes in a trap): "Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee - but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitable thing."

As powerful as the ring, this passage suggests, is the desire for physical touch, for intimacy with one's fellows, something Smeagol hasn't had for hundreds of years. Of course, speaking of rhetorical situations, we should perhaps consider Tolkien's. Doesn't he HAVE to elicit some pity from us towards Gollum, if we are to understand the grace shown him at the end of the tale (and even before the end, of course)?

And so we have Gollum, a three dimentional character, arguably as interesting as any in the LOTR. What a great point, John makes, that we can understand an author by his/her villains. If so, Gollum makes us wonder, what neediness, what desires so drove our good English Don from Oxford to burn with a such fierce "interior debate" in his own life.

Re: Force of Hobbit

I agree with you on that passage of Gollum being moving. Do you think that this is the turning point in Gollum's life? Before this moment he is evil and consumed by the ring, and after this moment he becomes the hero of the book. Do you think that seeing Sam and Frodo brought out the good in Gollum so that he could become the hero and destroy the ring? Or do you think that he's finally realized what he has missed over these last 500 years and is longing for companionship?

Re: Force of Hobbit

No, I don't think it was a turning point, just a momentary glimpse into the tortured soul beneath the monsterous exterior. When Sam wakes up the spell is broken and Gollum returns to his wicked ways.

And, despite my previous comment, I don't think it's right to say that Gollum is the hero of the book, except in an ironic sort of way. Gollum's only desire was to get the ring back for himself. The ring's destruction was an accident, an accident that could not have happened if Frodo hadn't carried it to brink of Mount Doom. And yet it's also true that Frodo would have failed without Gollum's intervention. Hence the irony.

That said, there is something heroic, or almost heroic, in Gollum's perserverence and cunning. Even if his was the perserverence of an addict it was still no small feat surviving the perils of Mordor and persuing the ring to the very end. Not bad for a 550 year old hobbit.

Re: Force of Hobbit

I don't know. He really wanted the ring. I won't argue with you there, but just before he falls he says:

"'Don't kill us,' he wept. 'Don't hurt us with nassty cruel steel! Let us live, yes, live just a little longer. Lost lost! We're lost. And when Precious goes we'll die, yes, die into the dust.' He clawed up the ashes of the path with his long fleshless fingers. 'Dusst!' he hissed." The Return of the King, p. 923

I think that maybe he knew that no matter what the ring was going to be destroyed, and he says so himself that when the ring is destroyed he will be too. The book says that he "wavered for a moment" (p. 925). Maybe he was thinking about if he should fall into the fire or fall back with Frodo. It could've been one of those moments that you were talking about. What do you think?

Re: Force of Hobbit

I think you make some excellent points, Sarah. When Gollum begs for mercy and seems to foretell his own death - and to long for the release of that death - it's hard to tell how much of that is sincere and how much is stalling for time and saying things he thinks Frodo wants to hear. Probably Gollum himself couldn't tell, so deep is his self-deception.

But this is exactly the way real people are and why Gollum is such a fascinating, three-dimensional character. He is complex and so reasonable minds can differ over his true nature. As in life, there is no final answer.

I think your point about the "wavering" is especially interesting. The whole enormous book comes down to this one frozen instant, as Gollum wavers on the brink. And you're right - there is a delicious ambiguity there. Could it be that in this last moment we see again the same internal struggle we saw at Cirith Ungol when Gollum reached out to caress the sleeping Frodo?

I think Tolkien took great pains to help us see this internal struggle within Gollum and deliberately carried that struggle right into the very last moment. The fate of all Middle Earth hangs in the balance and for a split second Gollum himself, clutching the ring with Frodo's severed finger still in it, quite literally hangs in the balance himself. Could it be that the tiny speck of goodness still alive in him after all these years asserted itself one last time just enough to tip the scales? Or did Gollum in his ecstasy simply slip?

Tolkien wisely avoids any pat answers. The final destruction of the ring is fraught with ambiguities. This leaves each reader the freedom to peel back layer upon layer of irony and come to his or her own conclusions.

Re: Force of Hobbit

I think this conversation between Sarah and John is terrific. I'm learning a lot. One other irony: Sauron who brought so many under his control because of the ring couldn't in the end control Gollum -- because of the ring. The ring controlled and corrupted Gollum to such a degree that he could see nothing beyond attaining the ring for his own ends -- no matter which reading of the ending you believe (whether he wanted the release of falling into fire with it or not). Sauron couldn't control that desperate urge finally, not with all his Nazgul and orcs and trolls.

Facinating. Thanks for your good comments, you two!