Thursday, Dec. 4
read: The Old Forest; In the House of Tom Bombadil; Fog on the Barrow-Downs
First, a couple of things I forgot to mention before:
* Is Gandalf a war criminal? In “The Shadow of the Past,” he tells Frodo he “put the fear of fire on” poor old Gollum in order to wring information out of him. Gollum is, of course, a special case in the world of Middle-Earth, where generally one can tell how to treat a particular person based on what kind of life-form he happens to be–be nice to Elves, but chop Orcs’ heads off without benefit of a jury trial, that sort of thing. Gollum isn’t so easy to judge. Though he’s essentially a serial killer, he’s far from wholly evil; even if he was, it’s tough to imagine Gandalf torturing even an Orc for information. Most likely the whole thing was a ruse, and Gandalf had no intention of actually burning Gollum, but Gollum himself didn’t need to know that.
* Frodo’s dremes: The first appears at the end of “A Conspiracy Unmasked,” the last chapter before today’s reading, and like most of its successors it’s eerie and quietly disturbing:
“…he seemed to be looking out of a high window over a dark sea of tangled trees. Down below among the roots there was the sound of creatures crawling and snuffling. He felt sure they would smell him out sooner or later.
Sounds like many of my own dreams, actually. Its ending, with the vain struggle to reach the Sea, sets up a recurring theme in the life of Frodo (one later echoed by Legolas); literarily, it reaches its apotheosis in Tolkien’s haunting poem “The Sea Bell.”
On to today’s reading!
* “The Old Forest”–Outside the Shire, and right away things go to pot. I suppose that this chapter is in many ways akin to the troll incident in The Hobbit, though this time the balance between humorous and menacing is tipped slightly in the latter’s favor–all the more so because, as is the case with the characters themselves, by the time you realize the gravity of the situation it’s almost too late. Old Man Willow makes a memorable villain, and his methods (the cracks that swallow up Pippin and Merry, the root that holds Frodo under water) are treeishly malicious. And then, of course, comes Master Bombadil. Sometimes I find myself talking in his rhythm. It’s hard not to do, once the chapter’s over! (See?)
* “In the House of Tom Bombadil”–Like the Shire-bound tree-person Sam described earlier on, and like (say) the Watcher in the Water later on, Bombadil is one of Tolkien’s memorable unclassifiables, people and creatures and incidents who are all the more fascinating for the fact that Tolkien’s world is usually so very classifiable. Tom’s not a wizard, not an Elf, not a Man, not a Hobbit, not a Dwarf–“He is,” as his common-law wife Goldberry puts it. That sounds like a reference to Yahweh’s “I am who am” shpiel to many fans, who interpret it to mean that Bombadil is some sort of incarnation of Illuvatar (the God of the Tolkien cosmos), but a more likely explanation is that he and Goldberry are Maiar–demigod underlings to the Valar, Tolkien’s gods, who in turn serve Illuvatar–who have (I’ve seen it put this way somewhere) gone native. Other Maiar include Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, Sauron, and the Balrog, and Bombadil seems comparable to these cats (keep in mind that the Wizards voluntarily limited their power, which might explain why the Ring clearly could best them while Sauron, Bombadil, and probably the Balrog had no such worries). I love seeing Tom make a mockery of the mighty Ring, and tell stories that go waaaaay back to “before the Dark Lord came from Outside.” And I love the bit about Sam sleeping contentedly, “if logs are content.” That kind of sounds like me, too!
* “Fog on the Barrow-Downs”: It’s a shame they couldn’t work this chapter into the films somehow, because quite simply it’s scary as hell. The sleep that overtakes them so quickly Tolkien doesn’t even bother to describe it; the fog that rolls in out of nowhere; the two standing stones that suddenly loom out of the fog; the cries of “help! help!” in the fog that trail off into screams and then suddenly stop (I wonder if Stephen King had this chapter in mind when he wrote “The Mist”)… I actually found myself on edge, and jumped a little bit when I read the following exchange, which I’d totally forgotten about:
‘Where are you?’ [Frodo] cried, both angry and afraid.
‘Here!’ said a voice, deep and cold, that seemed to come out of the ground. ‘I am waiting for you!’
‘No!’ said Frodo; but he did not run away.
Whoa. Then there’s the crawling arm inside the Barrow to consider–when Amanda and I read the book aloud, she told me that this was the first image that really got to her. What gets to me every time is what Merry says when he wakes up from his wight-induced coma, his mind still mired in the spectral past:
‘What in the name of wonder?’ began Merry, feeling the golden circlet that had slipped over one eye. Then he stopped, and a shadow came over his face, and he closed his eyes. ‘Of course, I remember!’ he said. ‘The men of Carn Dum came on us at night, and we were worsted. Ah! the spear in my heart!’ He clutched at his breast. ‘No! No!’ he said, opening his eyes.
That bizarre outburst sticks in my mind like the glimpse of a dead body in a highway accident. It shows the suffering caused by evil in Tolkien’s world–how real it is, and how it can last even when the lives it ruined are long over. It’s a weird, powerful passage, one of my favorites in the book. (Fortunately it’s followed shortly thereafter by the image of all four hobbits frolicking naked–a Room with a View moment that lightens things up a bit, don’t you think?)
Tomorrow: I feel Bree!