[davem]

It seems that Sam has taken over as main character in the story. From now on we will see things through his eyes - which we mostly have done for a good while. We now see Frodo from the ‘outside’, watching his inexorable destruction through the eyes of his servant. Its an interesting approach. We get Sam’s feelings & reactions, his inner dialogue, but not Frodo’s - we only see him & hear his words....except at one point:
Frodo’s dreams

His sleep had been uneasy, full of dreams of fire, and waking brought him no comfort. Still his sleep had not been without all healing virtue: he was stronger, more able to bear his burden one stage further.

In the earlier parts of the tale we had accounts of what Frodo dreamt - the Tower, with Gandalf, the dream vision of the rain curtain. Now the accounts are vague - of fire. Well, the Ring is coming home, back to the place of its birth: the fires that well at the heart of the earth. But are these Frodo’s dreams, or the Ring’s? Is there any difference, & if so, how much. If Sauron & the Ring are ‘one’ so, very nearly, are Frodo & the Ring. Yet Frodo is without hope:

'Still we shall have to try,' said Frodo. 'It's no worse than I expected. I never hoped to get across. I can't see any hope of it now. But I've still got to do the best I can....

'Quietly, Sam,' Frodo whispered. 'There may be others about. We have evidently had a very narrow escape, and the hunt was hotter on our tracks than we guessed. But that is the spirit of Mordor, Sam; and it has spread to every corner of it. Orcs have always behaved like that, or so all tales say, when they are on their own. But you can't get much hope out of it. They hate us far more, altogether and all the time. If 242 those two had seen us, they would have dropped all their quarrel until we were dead.'...

'All right, Sam,' said Frodo. 'Lead me! As long as you've got any hope left. Mine is gone. But I can't dash, Sam. I'll just plod along after you.'..

'Look here, Sam dear lad,' said Frodo: 'I am tired, weary, I haven't a hope left. But I have to go on trying to get to the Mountain, as long as I can move. ..

Things are looking up, Mr. Frodo. Haven't you got some hope now?'
'Well no, not much, Sam,' Frodo sighed. 'That's away beyond the mountains. We're going east not west. And I'm so tired. And the Ring is so heavy, Sam. And I begin to see it in my mind all the time, like a great wheel of fire.'

Frodo repeatedly stresses his lack of hope, but, at the same time, his determination to continue without it. Hope, it seems, is not necessary for Frodo. Something else provides the impetus. But what? What exactly is driving Frodo? The obvious answer is his determination to ‘do the right thing’ in spite of all obstacles. Yet there may be something else - the Ring. Perhaps it is the desire of the Ring that overcomes Frodo’s hopelessness, drives him on into Mordor. At this point we have to wonder whether the desire to destroy it is really uppermost in his mind - his reaction in the Tower may cause us to question that. The Ring, like a ‘wheel of fire’ fills his mind, pushing out all other things:

But this blind dark seems to be getting into my heart. As I lay in prison, Sam, I tried to remember the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton. But I can't see them now.'

The last sentence of the chapter is full of symbolism. Frodo lay ‘like a dead thing’. In effect he has died - the Hobbit who set out from Bag End the previous September is dead & gone, & there is no real going back. He has gone from Hobbit to ‘Orc’ to ‘corpse’. When he says that he does not think it will be his part to strike any blow again one has to wonder whether this reflects a growing spirituality or a growing sense of uselessness & futility.

For Sam, on the other hand, there is one sign of hope after another. He gets his wish for light & water, he sees the star which inspires him, gives him perspective. Yet it is odd that it is Sam, not Frodo (who is most in need of it) who is the recipient of all these signs of hope. Frodo is now ‘plodding along’ without hope, & it is down to Sam to provide not just the practical necessities of food & water, but also the inspiration. Sam, for whatever reason, simply will not give up this ‘stupid’, ‘futile’, job. It is as though someone - Gandalf?, Galadriel?, Eru? - has realised that the burden borne by Frodo is too great, that nothing more can be added to the weight he carries - not even hope - because hope itself may be a burden. Where there is hope of success there is also fear of failure, of having that hope snatched away & trampled into the dust. Frodo plods along for the sake of plodding. Sam goes on with hope, because he can still bear the weight of it. He also goes on in faith - but whether that faith is in Eru (probably not) or simply in Galadriel, & to a lesser extent in his master, is another question, & not really relevant at this point. Frodo is fighting against ‘powers & principalities, Sam against the environment, against hunger & thirst, against Orcs & Gollum.

We have yet another ‘crossing’ of a border into another ‘realm’ - in the earlier parts of the tale these were river crossings the Brandywine, the Bruinen, the Anduin, & here too we have the crossing of a dried up stream. These are points of transition almost, from one level of ‘reality’ to another. This is the final one - all the rest will be crossings back & ‘out’. Further & further in the Hobbits move, to the very centre of earthly power - not Barad dur, but Orodruin, the Sammath Naur, where the Fire wells up from the heart of the earth, the place of creation (of the Ring) & destruction, the place where the Quest was born & where it will reach its culmination, where the ‘light shines in the darkness’, where evil waits to provide its own destruction, to consume itself, & liberate the slaves in its thrall.

The water & light that Sam ‘prays’ for, the star that shines through the cloud & smoke, all demonstrate that even in the heart of hell the Good may be found, that nowhere is completely closed off from hope (except, perhaps, the heart of Frodo the Hobbit).