LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 06 - The Forbidden Pool

[davem]

The incident that stood out most strongly for me in this chapter was when Frodo went down to help capture Gollum. So much turns on this single event. The relationship between Frodo & Gollum changes here. Gollum feels Frodo has betrayed him. He feels he is once again alone in the world. He ‘realises’ (wrongly) that his only true companion in life is his ‘Precious’. We read the incident as a tragic misunderstanding on his part - if only he could see that Frodo is trying to save him...

But is it so simple? What does this chapter tell us about what is happening to Frodo? His thoughts at this moment betray something ‘dark’ in his psyche:

"Fissh, nice fissh. White Face has vanished, my precious, at last, yes. Now we can eat fish in peace. No, not in peace, precious. For Precious is lost; yes, lost. Dirty hobbits, nasty hobbits. Gone and left us, gollum; and Precious is gone. Only poor Smeagol all alone. No Precious. Nasty Men, they'll take it, steal my Precious. Thieves. We hates them. Fissh, nice fissh. Makes us strong. Makes eyes bright, fingers tight, yes. Throttle them, precious. Throttle them all, yes, if we gets chances. Nice fissh. Nice fissh!"
So it went on, almost as unceasing as the waterfall, only interrupted by a faint noise of slavering and gurgling. Frodo shivered, listening with pity and disgust. He wished it would stop, and that he never need hear that voice again. Anborn was not far behind. He could creep back and ask him to get the huntsmen to shoot. They would probably get close enough, while Gollum was gorging and off his guard. Only one true shot, and Frodo would be rid of the miserable voice for ever. But no, Gollum had a claim on him now. The servant has a claim on the master for service, even service in fear. They would have foundered in the Dead Marshes but for Gollum. Frodo knew, too, somehow, quite clearly that Gandalf would not have wished it.

‘He could creep back and ask him to get the huntsmen to shoot. They would probably get close enough, while Gollum was gorging and off his guard. Only one true shot, and Frodo would be rid of the miserable voice for ever.

Frodo is disgusted by Gollum - understandably we might think - but this is deeper & darker than mere ‘disgust’. He wants Gollum dead. More than that, he wants to have him executed. Frodo, while appalled by Gollum, this disgusting, creeping thing, knows that Gollum trusts him. He knows that Gollum is a lost, lonely soul, broken by a power that Frodo himself is beginning to know & understand only too well. What’s going on here?

It would be easy to put this down to the stress & fear of the moment, except that Frodo has betrayed this kind of selfish cruelty before. When Gandalf first told him of the true nature of the Ring (The Shadow of the Past) he responded with a pretty cruel desire:

'I should like to save the Shire, if I could--though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them

I pointed this out in the relevant chapter discussion, & the general response was that it was a ‘stress reaction’.

Later, in the Barrow, we see something similar:

At first Frodo felt as if he had indeed been turned into stone by the incantation. Then a wild thought of escape came to him. He wondered if he put on the Ring, whether the Barrow-wight would miss him, and he might find some way out.He thought of himself running free over the grass, grieving for Merry, and Sam, and Pippin, but free and alive himself. Gandalf would admit that there had been nothing else he could do.

Not quite as bad, but it does seem that Frodo has a tendency to respond to stressful, personally threatening situations by wishing to be free of those he feels are endangering him.

It comes out again in Rivendell:

When he had dressed, Frodo found that while he slept the Ring had been hung about his neck on a new chain, light but strong. Slowly he drew it out. Bilbo put out his hand. But Frodo quickly drew back the Ring. To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him.
The music and singing round them seemed to falter, and a silence fell.

I don’t know whether this is all down to the Ring working on his mind. We did see, as I pointed out in the last chapter disussion, Frodo speaking haughtily to Faramir. But this brings us back to the central question about the way the Ring works - is it an exceptionally powerful source of external evil, which overwhelms the individual’s will & forces them to act out of character, or does it merely bring out the ‘evil’ desires in the individual? Has this ‘malicious’ streak always been part of Frodo’s make-up, & merely been exacerbated by the Ring, or are we seeing someone who is essentially good being corrupted?

Whatever, what we see in these examples are situations where the people Frodo wishes to leave to be killed (his companions in the Barrow, wishes to attack himself (Bilbo), or have executed, are all in extremely vulnerable positions, & effectively helpless. What we see in each case is, as I said, Frodo wishing to be rid of those who threaten, endanger or anger him.

So, how much of what we see in these examples is the ‘real’ Frodo, & how much is the Ring working through him? If its the Ring, then Frodo cannot be held accountable. Nor can he be held accountable for his final act at the Sammath Naur - which would not be a surrender to his own desires, but ‘merely’ a breaking of his spirit - as if he himself was not really ‘there’ & it was the Ring finally taking control of his mmind & will as well as his body.

When Tolkien says that at the end Frodo felt like a ‘broken failure’ one could ask whether these feelings centred solely on those final moments at the fire, or whether they grew out of a deeper realisation of his ‘true’ self, & the darkness he found within, a ‘darkness’ which he came to realise had always been there......

To be treated like a ‘saint’, the saviour of the world, while knowing the darker truth, must have been difficult to say the least.