[davem]

Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.

Minas Morgul. Tower of Black Magic. The city is ‘illuminated’, but it doesn’t give out light. It is like the candles of death that shine in the Dead Marshes, & its interesting that like them it seems to exert a pull on Frodo. What is it inside him that is being attracted by this ‘unlight’?:

The water flowing beneath was silent, and it steamed, but the vapour that rose from it, curling and twisting about the bridge, was deadly cold. Frodo felt his senses reeling and his mind darkening.

Then suddenly, as if some force were at work other than his own will, he began to hurry, tottering forward, his groping hands held out, his head lolling from side to side.

This is a place of death & darkness, & we will see later that Frodo has given up hope in final victory - yet this seems to strengthen his determination to continue. This ‘odd’ idea of doing the ‘right’ thing simply because it’s right, & even if failure is a foregone conclusion, runs right through the story of LotR. It makes me wonder whether LotR might not still have inspired readers even if the Quest had failed - isn’t it the struggle that moves us as much, if not more than, the outcome?

At last with an effort he turned back, and as he did so, he felt the Ring resisting him, dragging at the chain about his neck; and his eyes too, as he looked away, seemed for the moment to have been blinded. The darkness before him was impenetrable.
Along this path the hobbits trudged, side by side, unable to see Gollum in front of them, except when he turned back to beckon them on. Then his eyes shone with a green-white light, reflecting the noisome Morgul-sheen perhaps, or kindled by some answering mood within. Of that deadly gleam and of the dark eyeholes Frodo and Sam were always conscious, ever glancing fearfully over their shoulders, and ever dragging their eyes back to find the darkening path.

So, Frodo is blinded again, as he was in the Emyn Muil. the darkness is impenetrable, yet still he goes on, because going on is the ‘right’ thing to do.

Weariness and more than weariness oppressed him; it seemed as if a heavy spell was laid on his mind and body. "I must rest," he muttered.

This reminds me of the scene where the Three Hunters feel that ‘some enemy sets its will against us.’ There seems a link between the power exhibited there by Saruman & what Frodo feels here. Yet is this ‘heavy spell’ directed at him by the WK or does it come from the Ring?

Here, yes here indeed was the haggard king whose cold hand had smitten down the Ring-bearer with his deadly knife. The old wound throbbed with pain and a great chill spread towards Frodo's heart.

This reminds us of something we may have forgotten - some wounds can never be wholly healed. Frodo was not entirely cured by Elrond. He bears an unhealable wound. Even if the Quest succeeds Frodo will never again be who he was. He can never go back.

Frodo is defiant even without hope, but something else is going on:

[QUOTEMaybe it was the Ring that called to the Wraith-lord, and for a moment he was troubled, sensing some other power within his valley. ...Frodo waited, like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. And as he waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring. But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not, even if he put it on, the power to face the Morgul-king--not yet.[/QUOTE]

‘He had not the power to face the Morgul King - not yet.’ What the hell does that mean? That soon, or at some point, he [would have the power to face him? Wouldn’t that require him to have claimed the Ring for his own? Frodo ‘knew’ that ‘he had not this power yet’. So this is not Tolkien’s comment on Frodo’s state & the danger he faced, it is Frodo’s own realisation, & perhaps here again we see the temptation to claim the Ring growing on him, see his final ‘fall’ coming. This makes it difficult to argue that at the last Frodo does not fully & consciously claim the Ring...

Then again, we see the inner conflict - the Ring striving against Frodo’s own will:

There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was, and he felt only the beating upon him of a great power from outside. It took his hand, and as Frodo watched with his mind, not willing it but in suspense (as if he looked on some old story far away), it moved the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon his neck. Then his own will stirred; slowly it forced the hand back and set it to find another thing, a thing lying hidden near his breast. Cold and hard it seemed as his grip closed on it: the phial of Galadriel, so long treasured, and almost forgotten till that hour. As he touched it, for a while all thought of the Ring was banished from his mind. He sighed and bent his head.

It seems the Ring (or the WK) can control Frodo’s body, making his arm move towards the Ring, yet it cannot dominate his will. He wills himself to take the Phial. I’m reminded of the scene on Amon Hen, where Frodo sat ‘pierced’ by the two ‘forces’ of the ‘Eye’ & the ‘Voice’. This time the two ‘forces’ seem to be The Ring/WK on one side & Galadriel & the Light of Earendel on the other. Yet, as at Amon Hen, the struggle, the ‘war’ is both an internal struggle of hopes & desires & an external one of cosmic forces...

And Frodo? Victor or Victim. Perhaps he just decides that either alternative is too much of a ‘label’ & just like the humble soul he is, he decides all he can do is his ‘job’:

Frodo raised his head, and then stood up. Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else ever knew about it was beside the purpose.

At this point an interesting image occurs:

He took his staff in one hand and the phial in his other.

Another tarot image - the Hermit!

But what of Gollum in all this?

"I thought you said there was a tunnel," said Sam. "Isn't there a tunnel or something to go through?"
'O yes, there's a tunnel," said Gollum. "But hobbits can rest before they try that. If they get through that, they'll be nearly at the top. Very nearly, if they get through. O yes!"

He just can’t help himself, can he? Why this last comment - does he actually want Frodo & Sam to become suspicious of his motives, just as he is so close to achieving his goal? Or is it that the Smeagol/Gollum conflict is still going on - is Smeagol trying to drop a hint to the Hobbits to watch out, or is he simply so excited by the chance of getting back his Precious that he forgets himself. Or maybe he just thinks they are so stupid that he could even tell them there’s a big hungry spider in the cave & they would still go in there!

Once again Tolkien reiterates his ‘message’ about Frodo’s mental state:

"I don't like anything here at all," said Frodo, 'step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid."

‘So our path is laid’. This leads on to one of the most profound passages in the whole work, the ‘conversation’ about Story. Sam has learned a very important lesson about ‘story’. This is the Hobbit who so many months ago had greeted Gandalf’s ‘punishment’ of sending him off with Frodo with a shout of ‘Hooray!’ He was going off on an adventure to ‘see Elves and all’. Now ‘in the worst places of the story’ - his story - he realises that he has just been landed in something much bigger than he could ever have imagined, but he also realises that like the ‘Great’ stories, (of which his own is merely a small part - like one of the ‘leaves’ on the ‘Tree of Tales’) his own story will never end, even when he himself has passed out of it - ‘Gone West’.

'No, they never end as tales," said Frodo. "But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later--or sooner."

But he also realises something equally important - that we aren’t meant to simply be the ‘stuff of futer memory’ (as Arthur puts it in John Boorman’s Excalibur).

'And then we can have some rest and some sleep," said Sam. He laughed grimly. 'And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning's work in the garden. I'm afraid that's all I'm hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort.

‘Before Enlightenment, chop wood & carry water. After Enlightenment, Chop wood & carry water.’ As the Buddhists have it.

Finally, & most tragically, we return to Gollum:

"Sleep!" said Frodo and sighed, as if out of a desert he had seen a mirage of cool green. 'Yes, even here I could sleep."
"Sleep then, master! Lay your head in my lap."
And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead.
Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned deep in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces.
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 pitiable thing.

And he is redeemed. At that moment he is merely an old Hobbit, broken by centuries of suffering. He, like his companions (& in that moment, in his own mind, they all three are ‘companions’) knows a moment’s ‘peace’. Yet his chance of ‘salvation’ is taken from him. Again this is an inner/outer conflict - Sam is the ‘outer’ force who attacks Smeagol, ‘Gollum’ is the inner one. Smeagol breaks, shatters, & Gollum emerges from the ashes....

Gollum withdrew himself, and a green glint flickered under his heavy lids. Almost spider-like he looked now, crouched back on his bent limbs, with his protruding eyes. The fleeting moment had passed, beyond recall.

.

The ‘paths’ of all three of them are now ‘set’. All have chosen the Road they will take, two of them, Gollum & Sam, in ‘hope’ - of the Ring, & of a morning’s gardening repectively, Frodo in hopelessness, yet all three will plod on to the unknown end. Its funny, though, that they all achieve their ‘destinations’ - Gollum does get his Precious, Sam does get back to his garden, while Frodo, who struggles on towards (what he believes will be) failure & the loss of hope, gets just that.