LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 9 - The Grey Havens

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

This is truly a chapter of endings, and not just of Frodo’s journey but of his friends. Merry, Pippin and Sam of course will go on, but their path is set before them now pretty clear and Frodo is able even to prophesy about Sam’s fate – becoming, in the end, Elvish indeed, with the power of sight being granted him. It’s also the real ending of the Third Age with the passing of Gandalf and Galadriel; and it’s the ending of Bilbo’s adventures. Since that moment on Mount Doom when Frodo said goodbye to Sam it seems the book has been moving through one ending after another, and of course with the appendices to follow even this is not really the ending, not of the story for – as we have learned – no story ever really ends.

So what is it that makes this chapter the real ending? It is the ending for us, for the readers. We’ve gone so far, and through so much with these characters. We’ve come to know and love them so well and so intimately, that every time I read these pages I do feel as though I am bidding farewell to friends. I never get through the closing pages without weeping, and call me a big softy but I have tears in my eyes right now as I think about it! But Gandalf, as always, has words of wisdom for me:

“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

This time I feel the force of these words of wisdom as I never have before, as this is the first time I have gone through The Lord of the Rings with other people there beside me. It’s always been a solitary act for me, but in this discussion I had your companionship with me on the road. It really does feel as though a fellowship is dissolving.

But again, the book has an answer for me, since the story does not end with the departure of Frodo into the West, but with Sam’s return to his home. That’s the real and enduring beauty of this story, for me: that it can move me to tears every time, but it’s always there for me to come back to when I need it or want it.

“I’m back.”

[Mithalwen]

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above your mast!


There is much I would say about this and other chapters - and I will return and say them... but I feel this belongs here.

[Lalwendë]

And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

What is intriguing me about this now is that I have never really stepped back and wondered how, if the whole story was not written down by Frodo, we know anything at all about what happens when he leaves the Grey Havens. Does anyone else, or rather did anyone else, just accept this end for Frodo as 'fact'?

Sam's final words are as much for the benefit of the reader as they are for himself and those around him. In a sense, we too are 'back'. We have been dragged off from familiar Bag End and taken all the way around Middle-earth, through war, horror and unearthly beauty. Now we are back home again, and we too have to go back to our daily lives. But like Sam we can't forget what we have seen and we will not be the same ever again. I'm sure Tolkien put those parting words there for us as well as for Sam.

[Child of the 7th Age]

You know, Lalwendë , I'm with you. In all the times I've read this chapter, I have never thought about this point before. Davem has shown me something new. Yet, with all respect to the latter, I can't think of this description as simply Sam's imagined wish as to what happened to his friend. I believe it is what happened to Frodo when he sailed West and saw what he had dreamt of in Bombadil's house so long before. After trusting the author for so many pages on such a long journey, I accept his authority to give the reader this information, however and wherever he found it out.

Can there really be a doubt that Frodo made it to Elvenhome when Tolkien discusses this so explicitly in his Letters? We do not know if Frodo found healing but we do know that he made it to the place he foresaw in that mysterious dream. However hurt and despairing Frodo may have been, I can't help feeling that it was inevitable that he leave the Shire and go West. While certainly his injuries and despair fed into this departure, I believe that Frodo's journey to the Blessed Land has roots that go much deeper than this. Why does that dream occur long before Frodo was injured? And who sends that dream? Is it simply a figment of Frodo's vivid imagination? (I can't accept that.) Is it something that Bombadil knows and understands? Perhaps but unlikely.... Or is it a beacon of hope from beyond the bounds of Arda?

And it isn't only the dream that makes me wonder. What is utterly fascinating to me are the notes in HoMe. Yes, I know we don't want to go deeply into the material outside the text. But I don't think we can ignore it here. It's just too important. On page 53 of Sauron Defeated, Christopher Tolkien mentions that years and years before, when Frodo was still Bingo, long before the plot was hatched out, his father wrote these words: Bingo would return to the Shire and make peace, then "settle down in a little hut on the high green ridge--until one day he goes with the Elves West beyond the towers."

This to me is mind boggling. Tolkien changed so much in the story and characters, but this aspect of the Ringbearer he did not change. Even from the beginning, before the author fully understood the nature of the Ring, JRRT had decided that Frodo must go to Elvenhome. This suggests Frodo's departure is inherent to who he was -- not merely a reflection of his brokenness. No one can deny that the brokenness is there, yet so too is the nobility of character. There were moments of anguish and utter despair for Frodo, but most of the time he was able to act with real grace. Certainly, his final words in the book are both poignant and gracious. They are the words of someone still struggling to hold things together. And the voyage to the West was just that -- not a giving up for Frodo but an attempt to regain his health in both a physical and spiritual sense. For me that underscores the bittersweet nature of that final chapter. Frodo must leave because he is broken, but he must also leave because he has grown beyond the Shire. Broken or whole, he would no longer fit in...

I have more ideas about some "smaller incidents" in the early part of this chapter, but will wait till later.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Child

Can there really be a doubt that Frodo made it to Elvenhome when Tolkien discusses this so explicitly in his Letters?

Yes, but..

Whether Frodo came to Tol Eressea is not the question - I don't doubt that he did (I can't see the Grey Ship doing a Titanic ). I was asking how Sam knew what had actually happened to Frodo, or what he had experienced. So much emphasis is placed on LotR being a translation of the Red Book. This is the only inexplicable event - no-one in Middle-earth could have known what happened to Frodo after he left the Havens. The only possibility is that Sam took Frodo's vision in the House of Bombadil as just that: a vision of a future event, &, believing that to be the case, stated it as a fact.

This opens up some very interesting questions - was Frodo's vision a kind of promise on Eru/the Valar's part, sort of 'If you see the Quest through, Frodo, this is what you'll get', or was Frodo somehow stepping outside serial time & seeing an actual future event; so that, in some sense, that 'future' had already happened, his 'story' having already been 'written', so that in his dream he was kind of flipping to the end of the book & reading the last page. He is both participant in, & 'reader' of, his own story. But if Frodo was seeing the end of his own already written story, how much free will did he actually have? Could he have altered his own story by his free choices when he had already seen how it would end? If his vision is a glimpse of his future then everything that happened to him was pre-ordained, already 'written'. Where is free will in this scenario?

Of course, Flieger has already explored this in depth.

But none of this gets us any further in answering the question: how did Sam (or whichever later redactor put it in) know what Frodo saw?

[Child of the 7th Age]

But none of this gets us any further in answering the question: how did Sam (or whichever later redactor put it in) know what Frodo saw?

BTW, I didn't mean that in a literal sense. I wasn't worrying about the sailing ship keeling over (and you weren't either). Those Elves are great sailors! Sorry if I implied that.

But if the image of the white shore is only in Sam's mind, the reader does not know if that reflects the "truth". It is only Sam's hoping and wishing for a friend. (Unless perhaps, Sam has a dream that stems from the same source as Frodo's?)

I guess my gut feeling is this.... This may seem blunt and bald, but this is one point in the story when I am not going to analyze what happened. I am merely going to accept what's written on the paper as a true reflection of Frodo's journey.

If I start pulling this section apart and thinking of "why", it somehow disturbs the "magic" that, for me, is so strong at this point in the book. There is a lot in life I don't understand. This is just one more thing to add to the list. I can't understand where this description or vision comes from, but I can appreciate it. I would prefer to leave Frodo's sailing and the description of the white shores as a mystery. I have no idea if that's just me or anyone else feels this way. Of course, you should go ahead and poke and prod and question. But for me, the emotional tone of these final passages is so rivetting that I can't get beyond that. And, truthfully, I do not want to.... This is one time when the heart leads the head, and I simply follow.

[davem]

Ok, but leaving aside how the account got in there, what is the relationship between Frodo's 'dream' in the House of Bombadil & his 'real' experience of Tol Eressea?