LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 08 - The Stairs of Cirith Ungol

[Lalwendë]

Firstly, following on from what davem says about Gollum, just a few paragraphs earlier, before Sam goes to sleep, he says:

Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he thinks he's the hero or the villain?

Very soon after this we see Gollum's moment where he displays the last goodness which remains within him, and we are moved by it. But we have to remember Sam's words. Gollum is a character in a story, and though we have the luxury of being able to stand back and comment on him, sympathise with him (and I know I for one do a lot of this), it is not the same as being the character within the story who must deal with Gollum. He is, in Sam's words, better in a story than in 'reality'.

Then there's something else about these words, they foreshadow what is to come, they even foreshadow all our discussions! I wonder how many readers have talked about whether Gollum is a hero or a villain?

Now onto my favourite subject, osanwe. I noticed something really intriguing about the scene with the Witch King. It seems to be a powerful mental confrontation. On the basic level we can see it as the Ring working its powers on Frodo, but then when I think of why the Ring should be doing this, osanwe comes into play:

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. 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.

At that moment the Wraith-king turned and spurred his horse and rode across the bridge, and all his dark host followed him. Maybe the elven-hoods defied his unseen eyes, and the mind of his small enemy, being strengthened, had turned aside his thought.

Frodo must have thought of the Ring as soon as he saw the WK, and if the Ringwraiths indeed have been bestowed with terrible powers of osanwe, then the WK might have been reading Frodo's mind, he might have sensed that something was amiss. Frodo is unable to control his hand, and not only that, to control his thought, he is looking at himself from far away, as though he is quite literally out of his mind!

I think the WK has somehow locked on to the 'something amiss' he senses. He wants the Ring to reveal itself and senses it. Though this time, Frodo exercises Unwill and instead of submitting his thought to the WK, he closes his mind, or literally, as it says in the quote, he turns aside his thought.

So, the phial of Galadriel must include something of the powers of osanwe, which is entirely possible. It is made of the Light of Earendil caught in the waters from her fountain, and Galadriel's Ring is Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, representing water. If indeed, as I've posted on before, the Three Rings were made for purposes to do with osanwe, then could this water also be invested with some of that power?