LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 10 - The Choices of Master Samwise

[davem]

I suppose in a way I'm 'arguing' in order to keep the debate going - I think this chapter thread alreay has over three times the number of posts the previous one got.

I don't want to imply that your approach is 'wrong' in any objective sense. I can see 'external' references which were probably put in deliberately by Tolkien - the line 'His weariness was growing but his will hardened all the more.' does seem to echo the famous lines from the Battle of Maldon:"Heart shall be harder, strength the keener, spirit shall be the stronger, as our might lessens." I suspect Tolkien was deliberately referencing this verse, & would have expected any reader who knew the Anglo-Saxon poem to pick up on this. If he was aware of the Lilith legend maybe that was also in his mind, but I see little connection between Lilith & Shelob in their backstories, only a vague similarity in the way they are described. If you make that connection that says more about you than about anything Tolkien was doing, consciously or unconsciously. As we see with some of the 19th century mythographers, virtually any myth can be reduced to a 'solar' myth (I'm again influenced by something Flieger has referenced in her latest book!). I think we have to distingiush between what was in the author's mind (whether he or she was aware of it or not) & what is in our minds as we read. We may bring things to the our reading of the text - its probably inevitable that we do - but we have to keep those things seperate from what the author put in there. Yet

Myth & fairy story must, as all art, reflect & contain in solution elements of moral & religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.

If the Lilith legend is an example of 'moral & religious truth (or error)' - ie if it has some 'archetypal' dimension or aspect then that may well have seeped in to the story Tolkien was writing without him realising it - or it may have been placed in there deliberately, as part of the 'consciously so in the revision' process. But either way it is not there 'in the known form of the primary 'real' world'. Shelob is not Lilith transported lock, stock & barrel to Middle earth, neither is Sam one of Beortnoth's retainers deliberately placed into that secondary world. What I mean is, if we take the approach Shelob=Lilith then we'll be neither in Middle earth, in the ancient Middle east, nor in our own 'primary' world, & our whole experience will crumble away before our eyes. Once we cloe the book & come back to our own world we can analyse & deconstruct to our hearts content, but while we're in Middle earth we have to let the story work on us, climb the Tower & look out on the sea. Within Middle earth at least Shelob is 'an evil thing in spider form', not a Middle eastern demon. In discussing The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe Flieger makes the point that when Aslan sacrifices himself in place of Edmund the story 'no longer has its own life but has been put in the service of another story.' I think this doesn't only happen when a writer deliberately writes allegory, but also when we bring too much of our own ideas & experiences to the stories we read - we put the story to to the service of 'another story' - our own.

Your turn....