This was first published in slightly modified format in the April 2011 issue of Beyond Bree.

“Man always travels along precipices,” Blessed Pope John Paul II said. “His truest obligation is to keep his balance.” Frodo loses his at the Fire after his heart, mind and soul endure a months-long siege of “torture and disruption of personality,” words Tolkien used when speaking of techniques employed during World War II which “would rival that of Mordor and the Ring” (Letters 234) and which certainly describe Frodo’s agony as well. Bit by bit, his will and his very self are eroded as he struggles on, losing even his memories while he, along with Sam, valiantly tries to hold himself together. "Balm" by Armariel says it so beautifully:“I am wrecked, the voice says. Be still, I tell it. It has no right to say such things. Not to the being who is trying with all his small might to keep more pieces from falling, to keep what is left moving along, tearing pieces from himself to patch it.”As Peter Kreeft notes, “the self is saved only when it is lost, found only when really given away in sacrifice. True freedom comes only when you bind yourself to your duty” (“Wartime Wisdom” 46). This Frodo does to the utmost. By the time he reaches the Fire, he has drunk the last dregs of a very bitter cup and emptied it completely. As Gunnar Urang said, “the world is saved, ultimately, not just by grace as overwhelming presence and power but by grace as humble redemptive suffering” (Shadows 117).

Yet for all Frodo’s strength and endurance, he is increasingly aware that his resistance to the demonic assaults on his will is failing. When he reaches the Sammath Naur, worn out physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, he has nothing left with which to defend himself against the last terrible attack. Still, this failure at the end is not a weakness unique to Frodo alone. As he has been shown throughout the Quest, it is simply not possible for our wills to always overcome a stronger one. “Not all evil is chosen,” says Ralph C. Wood in his wonderful book, The Gospel According to Tolkien. “For while evil can subtly seduce, it can also brutally enforce its will. . . The Ring creates a compulsion, in short, that cannot be broken with mere human strength of will” (70, 71). With the Ring’s power to “burn [the] mind away” (LotR V:4, 796), it is no wonder after months of incessant torment that Frodo gives way. It is a moving testament to the incredible strength of his will, fortified by grace and by Sam, that he lasts as long as he does. Tolkien wrote, “But one must face the fact: the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures, however ‘good’; and the Writer of the Story is not one of us” (Letters 252). He notes in another letter, “It is possible for the good, even the saintly, to be subjected to a power of evil which is too great for them to overcome - in themselves” (Letters 252).

So at the same time that Éowyn speaks of feeling as though she stands upon the edge of an abyss, Frodo truly is, as his will crumbles at last. As Gandalf and Aragorn fight at the Black Gate and men are willingly giving their lives in the blind hope that they will be able to give the hobbits the time they need, without any knowledge where they are, the Ring-bearer stands in the Sammath Naur at the very brink of destruction, physically and spiritually.

As Frodo is consumed, Sam hears these terrible words: “I have come . . . But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” (LotR VI:3, 924). This is, however, not the freely willed act it appears to be, and which Frodo later thinks it is. Every word in this tale has been very deliberately chosen to mean very deliberate things. Some of the most respected Tolkien scholars, including Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger, not to mention the Professor himself, consider the words “I do not choose” to mean literally that. Frodo did not claim the Ring; he was claimed by it. His will is, in actuality, the least free it has been the entire time, as he already knew was coming when he tells Sam near the Mountain: “I am almost in its power now. I could not give it up . . .” (LotR VI:3, 916).

Shippey remarks, “It is . . . interesting that Frodo does not say, ‘I choose not to do’, but ‘I do not choose to do’. Maybe (and Tolkien was a professor of language) the choice of words is absolutely accurate. Frodo does not choose; the choice is made for him” (Tolkien 140).

Flieger observes, “His use of choose and will makes it clear that he believes he is acting freely. But the negative, the repeated not is telling evidence that his will has been perverted and his choice preempted” (Splintered 153-54).

Tolkien notes in one of his letters,

"I do not think that Frodo’s was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum - impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) . . . . I do not myself see that the breaking of his mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been - say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock" (Letters 326, 327).

Urang observes,

"Frodo has not developed, or has not been brought, to the point of being able not to succumb . . . What Gollum does is a vindication both of his freedom to pursue his own evil will and of an overruling Providence which exercises its freedom in his willful act. The upshot is that Frodo here seems not to be free to do either good or evil. Tolkien has chosen to emphasize one side of the paradox of grace and freedom, giving the last word to an overriding grace" (Shadows 128).

Sauron rules in Mordor, but even at the Sammath Naur, at the heart of his strength, the Dark Lord’s power is not absolute. It crushes the created, but it has no power over the Creator. Just as God later allows with Job to demonstrate to Satan, He permits evil to do its worst to Frodo’s body and soul so that He may put forth His strength through Frodo’s weakness, that He might show Sauron Who retains charge of all. When Frodo, small, spent and mortal, stands at the edge of the Abyss, completely exposed and defenseless before his Enemy, his soul at the point of its greatest peril, he is also, as he always has been, completely exposed to God. The One knows His child will be broken by the burden in the end, but still He sets him aside from all others to be His Bearer. His. Not what the Ring twists Frodo into, but a holy vessel of the One Who gives him a sacred task none other could perform, for none other was created to do so. When God asks Frodo to be Bearer, He is asking for everything Frodo is, which is what the hobbit gives in the thousands of ‘yes’s, silently offered with each painful breath and step. That he is unable to say ‘yes’ at the end and falls prey to a power under which any other would have broken down much sooner, does not mean he is anything less of a hero, a fact Tolkien heartily agrees with:

"Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), ‘that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named’ (as one critic has said)" (Letters 253).

Indeed, it is only after Frodo fulfills his vocation that his will fails at last. Even if Ring-bearer and Ring-destroyer is thought by others and by Frodo himself to be one and the same, they are actually two different missions in God’s mind, for He knows it is too much for one person to sustain. None of us could bear such a terrible cross and not be crushed by it, which is why Frodo is given companions to help him and why we are also. It is his task to create “a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved” (Letters 326), and this he does perfectly.

When the beleaguered Ring-bearer can no longer say ‘yes’ to God, God says it for him and gives him what the hobbit has relinquished to God: his self and his life. The One turns the ‘no’ that has come from His child’s broken will at the nadir of Frodo’s strength and at the height of the Ring’s into the ‘yes’ foreseen from all eternity. By working through Gollum, God shows that nothing has power over Him, that He can still work His will through whatever instruments He chooses, whether these vessels say ‘yes’ like Frodo and Sam do or whether they do not, even those enslaved to evil. All powers are indeed subdued at the Fire, except for the Power of God that nothing could defeat.

Rolland Hein rightly observes,

"Above and beyond the intentions and purposes of all the characters in the saga stands an overarching Power whose purposes will not fail, but whose workings quietly exist outside the conscious awareness of created beings. Its greatest strength is realized through human weakness. The presence of such Power is glimpsed in the text such as . . . Gandalf’s statement . . . to Frodo that he was meant by a Higher Power to possess the Ring. The sudden transfiguration of Frodo in his struggle with Gollum just prior to the Ring’s destruction further attests to the presence of the supernatural in league with the good. Nowhere in the text are decisions freely made by individual characters or groups abrogated. The One honors without exception the set of the will and works completely through human endeavor. It is, therefore, hardly accurate to call it Fate, as some scholars tend to do. It is the power and purpose of God" (Christian 208).

C. Baillie speaks beautifully of this when she says,

"Love watched him all the way through Mordor. ‘You can do this and you must do this, or I will demand a reckoning of you,’ Love said. Then Frodo came to the brink of utter damnation and fell, and Love said, ‘This is beyond your strength, what I am allowing to happen. Therefore I will not demand reckoning of you. I will save you.’

"In that instant, when [Frodo’s] soul hung imperiled between life and eternal night, he became no longer responsible. The trial had become too much.

"So, no, I don’t think Frodo failed, not morally. Because nothing he could give could save him, only something given to him.

Only Love" (“Frodo”).

This is why we need not fear when everything appears to be falling into ruin around us. We are never alone in the dark. We are helpless by ourselves, and that would be cause for despair if we had only ourselves to depend upon, not relying at all on the power that only God can provide. He will carry us through any difficulty if we allow Him to: “I know the plans I have for you . . . plans for peace, not disaster, reserving a future full of hope for you” (Jer. 29:11). We must trust that God will take care of us, just as Frodo also trusted.

Patti Benson writes wonderfully of this: “Evil found him, and for a brief, terrifying time it took him; but it could not keep him. His light still shone out of the darkness, despite it all. . .” (Mallorn 46).

Additional Reading

‘I do not choose…’ and ‘not a moral failure’ both by Trudy G. Shaw.

Works Cited

Baillie, C. “Frodo and Grace.” Christianity and Middle-earth. Web. 26 Jun 2010.

Benson, Patti. Letter. Mallorn 46 (2008): 5. Print.

Flieger, Verlyn. Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World. Rev. ed. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 2002. Print.

Hein, Rolland. Christian Mythmakers. 2nd ed. Chicago: Cornerstone Press, 2002. Print.

Kreeft, Peter. “Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights About Evil in The Lord of the Rings.” Ed. John G. West, Jr. Celebrating Middle-earth: The Lord of the Rings as a Defense of Western Civilization. Seattle: Inkling Books, 2002. Print.

Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.

---. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66. Print.

Urang, Gunnar. Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the Writing of C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1971. Print.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003. Print.

On Grace and Free Will in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Bilbo exercised his free will throughout his adventure, but he also unconsciously corresponded with the grace he was given. He received this to aid him, not to force him into doing anything. It is clear that he goes against his own self (at least his Baggins side) in choosing paths of peril, but he receives the strength that we do all to enable us to do things we could not do on our own.

            The use of free will and the role of divine providence are two of the great themes throughout The Hobbit and more obviously in The Lord of the Rings. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, interfere with each other or diminish the choices of the one who chosen to receive grace. Rather, they go hand-in-hand, and grace strengthens the chosen one to freely embrace what they may not have otherwise. Bilbo could have chosen not to run down to the Green Dragon that fateful morning after the dwarves came so unexpectedly to his doorstep. He could have turned around when the trip grew miserable. He didn’t have to yell out when he saw the goblins coming through the crack in the cave. He was not compelled to pick up the Ring in that dark tunnel. He could have picked it up and thought ‘what do I need that for?’ and left it on the ground. He could have refused to give into his pity and stabbed Gollum instead. He could have chosen not to aid his dwarven companions after they were bound by spiders or captured by the Elves. The list goes on and on. Frodo could have refused his vocation at Bag End, at the Council, or at any time along the Road to the Fire. Gandalf could have refused death in Moria or refused to choose Bilbo as the last member of Thorin’s party. In The Two Towers movie, Sam could have said, “I’m out of here” after Frodo /the Ring nearly skewers him with Sting. But none of them do this. On some level, completely conscious or not, they accept that they have been chosen for particular roles and paths and they freely decide to walk upon them despite their terror. Gandalf and Frodo both speak of being chosen for their roles in “The Quest of Erebor.” Gandalf says “I dare say [Bilbo] was ‘chosen’ and I was only chosen to choose him; but I picked out Bilbo” (Unfinished Tales 331). Frodo says, “Though I suppose that, whether meant or not Bilbo might have refused to leave home, and so might I. You could not compel us. You were not even allowed to try” (330).

            The aid of grace does not lessen the courage and will of Bilbo or Frodo. It was such aid that gives them the strength to choose pity, compassion, and love so great that they are willing to sacrifice themselves to save others. Frodo’s courage and will was not lessened because he felt that the will of another was speaking through him at the Council. Rather it was enhanced, for he could have chosen to remain silent and not let that other will speak, but he did not. So much of what happens depends on a person’s free decision to choose actions that may be very contrary to one’s own desires but decided upon because it was the right thing to do. Grace strengthens them to say yes to traveling upon perilous roads that they would never chosen on their own. Frodo’s journey very much reflects this. So does Aragorn’s recognition that he goes on a path already set out for him as he freely decides to tread upon the Paths of the Dead, a road he was loathe to use before he discovered it was Ilúvatar’s will for him. It is this potent combination of the use of free will to embrace the divine will even at great cost to oneself that makes this tale resonate with how we should live our own lives. “We choose to be chosen” as Cheryl Forbes said in an article about Frodo’s choice (Christianity Today, December 19, 1975).

            Tom Shippey speaks of this too when he notes that not only can the Road symbolize life, but it could also be

an image of Providence. After all, Bilbo is right about the road outside Bag End leading all the way to Mordor. On the other hand there are on that road, which Frodo takes, thousands of intersections, as also thousands of choices to be made or rejected. The traveller can always stop or turn aside. Only will-power makes the road seem straight. Accordingly, when Bilbo and Frodo say they will pursue it, eagerly or wearily, till it is intersected by other roads, lives, wishes, and will then continue into the unknown, if they can, they are expressing a mixture of doubt and determination – exactly the qualities that Gandalf so often recommends. This has become much stronger and clearer with Frodo. (Road to Middle-earth, p. 188; italics in original)

            In the barrow, Ralph C. Wood notes the use of the “passive voice to indicate that Frodo is being graciously acted upon, even as he himself courageously acts: ‘He found himself stiffening’ (1.151)” (Gospel According to Tolkien, 122).

            Fleming Rutledge also notes this intertwining of destiny and free will when she speaks of the coming of Rohan’s warriors to Gondor.

Were the Rohirrim destined to come just at that moment? Yes. Were they free people? Yes. Were they more or less free because they were . . . riding . . . into their destiny? More. If God has prepared good works for us for walk in (Ephesians 2:10), then it is a joy and a wonder to walk in them. If God is working in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13), then it is our delight and our fulfillment to realize that we are doing exactly what was planned for us to do all along. (Battle for Middle-earth 285; italics in original)

It is clear from these quotes that the paths of all these people have been already set out and only await the free decision of the chosen ones to travel upon them.

Works Cited

Rutledge, Fleming. The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in “The Lord of the Rings.” Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Revised and expanded ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Tolkien, J. R. R. Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003.

This was first published in the December 2012 issue of Beyond Bree. It has been slightly modified since then and adapted in good part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press, 2012), which also includes a chapter on The Hobbit. For more details and to order the book, please visit http://ow.ly/ez2dT.

 The Heroism of Obedience and Love: The Journey of Samwise the Stouthearted

The Gaffer says his youngest son is “crazy about stories of the old days . . . , and he listens to all Mr. Bilbo’s tales” (FR, I, I, 24). Sam makes a point to tell Gandalf that he believes in them too. After the wizard catches the young hobbit eavesdropping on the talk with Frodo about the Ring, Sam begs not to be turned into “anything unnatural” (FR, I, ii, 62). He weeps with joy after he learns that his punishment will actually involve seeing Elves. To his fearful astonishment, he receives his wish far sooner than he expects.

            The morning after meeting Gildor and company Frodo asks Sam whether he still wishes to continue and bluntly tells him it is unlikely that either of them will return. The gardener does not hesitate to state that it is indeed his intention to go on, and if Frodo will not come back, then neither is he. “I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back. . . . I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me” (FR, I, iv, 85).

            Frodo says he does not entirely, but he is content that “Gandalf chose [him] a good companion” (FR, I, iv, 85). It is no coincidence that Sam was born the same year Frodo’s parents died. The younger hobbit always looked out for his master, which is why he joined Merry’s conspiracy to make sure Frodo did not leave the Shire alone. As this evolves into the Quest to destroy the Ring, Sam faces choices throughout the journey as to whether to continue on or to fall away. The loyal servant always puts his master’s needs before his own. “It is the heroism of obedience and love not of pride or wilfulness that is the most heroic and the most moving” (Tolkien Reader 22). Tolkien wrote these words in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son,” but they apply equally well to Sam. The hobbit voluntarily endures torment and terror on the Quest “only for the sake of one he loves beyond everything else” (Bradley 124). “Wherever you go, I will go” (Ruth 1:17). This love approaches “religious devotion” (Bradley 121) by the time he and Frodo are near the Fire.

            Grace enables Sam throughout the tale to fulfill his vocation to take care of his Frodo. He hears the Black Rider’s horse on the way to Crickhollow. He responds to the inspiration to look back as he, Frodo, and Pippin pause to decide what to do after they encounter a stream that cuts across their path and also while they cross the Brandywine. Both times he sees the Rider who seeks them. He is also the only one able to stay awake after Old Man Willow puts everyone else to sleep.

            “I am learning a lot about Sam Gamgee on this journey,” Frodo says (FR, I, xii, 203) after Sam sings about a troll. It is through this hobbit and their friendship, which Ralph C. Wood calls “a thing of exquisite beauty, even holiness” (Gospel 135), that Frodo’s education in love, loyalty, endurance, faith, goodness, and hope primarily comes.

            Sam’s natural hobbit cheerfulness allows him to make light of times of terrible crisis. After he announces his presence at the secret Council of Elrond, all he says of the horrible danger that the Quest will involve is that it is a “nice pickle” (FR, II, ii, 264).

            Galadriel tests the hearts of all the Company in Lothlórien. Sam passes his trial, but he faces a greater one after the Lady of the Wood grants his wish to see the magic of the Elves. Rather than an enjoyable experience, it breaks his heart. He wishes to go home after what he sees in the Mirror, but his heart is firmly in his master’s keeping. He will “go home by the long road with Mr. Frodo, or not at all” (FR, II, vii, 354). Great evil would have come to so much more than the Shire if Sam had not been there all along to strengthen the Ring-bearer’s heart and soul which comes under such brutal assault.

            Sam echoes Boromir’s desire to use the Ring in battle as he tells Galadriel that “I wish you’d take [the] Ring. You’d put things to rights” (FR, II, vii, 357). The hobbit is still innocent of personal knowledge of the Ring’s evil, despite all he has heard from Gandalf and at the Council.

            While Frodo wrestles alone with how to proceed after the Company reach Parth Galen, Sam states with certainty that his master already knows what he has to do and is just trying to gather enough courage to overcome his terror and actually do it. Probably even more than Merry and Pippin, Sam would want to spare his treasure the terrible journey to Mordor, but he does not advocate this at all. He knows what must happen. Love for those dearest to Frodo makes the Ring-bearer decide to go off alone, so they will not die with him; love for Frodo is what makes Sam stick to his side, even if it comes to dying.

            As Frodo tries to make his escape, Sam refuses to be left behind. He is the only one who figures out where the Ring-bearer has gone. After Frodo says he would have been safely away if Sam had not come, shock fills the humble gardener that his beloved master would think such a thing even possible without his Sam looking after him. Frodo acknowledges the truth of this, as he states it is obvious to him now that he and his loyal servant are to remain with each other. For decades Ilúvatar has knit these two souls together, so they would be inseparable for this one task. They would much rather be back home in the sun-filled, idyllic Shire, but they walk, stagger, and crawl to the heart of evil and darkness instead. Frodo learns more and more that “a faithful friend is a sure shelter, whoever finds one has found a rare treasure” (Ecclus./Sir. 6:14).

            Besides Sam’s love for Frodo, he also demonstrates great trust in Galadriel and all things Elven. The rope he brought from Lothlórien allows the hobbits to escape the Emyn Muil. His faith here is stronger than Frodo’s, as is his belief why the rope comes undone when needed.

            One person, however, that Sam never has faith in is Gollum. The gardener goes on much of the journey without any compassion or understanding of why Frodo is so kind to the wretched creature, and he longs for the ruined hobbit’s death. Just before Sméagol speaks his promise about being very good and not letting Sauron have the Ring, Sam has a vision of Frodo as “a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog” (TT, IV, I, 604). The young hobbit also recognizes that his beloved master and the despised Gollum are “in some way akin” (TT, IV, i, 604). This is not the last time Sam has such visions, which, as Anna Slack notes, “accent his integration with the spiritual realm of Middle-earth” (“Slow-Kindled” 138).

            Before Frodo, Sam, and Sméagol enter the Dead Marshes, Frodo tells Sam there is no need to worry about food for a return journey that will not happen. The young gardener weeps over his master’s held hand. He cries also in Shelob’s lair and in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Words of Washington Irving well reflect these times: “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief . . . and unspeakable love.” The same could be said of Sam’s other silent expressions of devotion: the kisses he gives to Frodo’s brow and hand and the times he holds his master’s hand or body while sleeping.

            Everyone else focuses on saving Middle-earth as a whole, but Sam remains intent upon the one person who is dearer to him than anyone. In this concern, he helps save the whole world. One of the ways he does so is thinking he heard Frodo call him after they leave the Marshes, but his master is asleep. Instead he listens to Sméagol and Gollum argue about how to get the Ring.

            After the hobbits enter Ithilien, Sam’s hope for their return journey blooms again after it was temporarily dimmed by Frodo’s pessimistic forecast.

            As Sam watches Frodo sleep, the younger hobbit reveals that he is one who has eyes to see the Ring-bearer’s inner light. One of the most beautiful professions of love comes from this moment: “He was reminded suddenly of Frodo . . . , asleep in the house of Elrond, . . . a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. . . . Sam . . . murmured: ‘I love him. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no’” (TT, IV, iv, 638). This vision allows the gardener to see beyond exterior appearances into Frodo’s true self, for he sees the beautiful, older face that “the Ring’s imposed youthfulness merely disguises” (Klinger 191).

            The smoke from Sam’s cookfire that brings Faramir and his men is one of the many seeming disasters throughout the tale that is actually a great good. The Rangers save the hobbits’ lives as they guide them through dangerous lands where they could well have otherwise faced capture by the evil forces massing to serve Mordor.

            Sam’s first view of a battle comes from the Ranger ambush of the Southrons. He sees up close not only the body of an enemy soldier but also a fellow human being.

            Faramir’s respectful words about Elves silence Sam’s mistrust of the man. After the gardener is upset that he let out the secret that Frodo has the Ring, the Ranger captain comforts him by saying it was meant to be, and that it would, if the man could manage it, work to Frodo’s good. Sam realizes at this time that Faramir has a light to him also. Both hobbit and man recognize the quality of the other is of the highest order.

            At Minas Morgul, Frodo’s will is overcome by the evil there. As he staggers toward the tower, Sam pulls him back. Fleming Rutledge notes that “deliverance is always a sign of God at work, whatever or whoever his agents might be” (Battle 228).

            On the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, Sam gives a powerful meditation on the inspiration found in the tales of perseverance that he and Frodo loved as lads. Astonishment fills the younger hobbit after he realizes that he and Frodo are themselves part of the same story. After Sam wonders whether their own tale will have a good or bad ending, Frodo says it is better not to know. Despair consumes him, as he thinks he already knows the finish, but Sam’s sunny heart enables them both to withstand the darkness.

            Frodo laughs twice after Sam tells him how he imagines their story will be told. Before the terror of Shelob’s lair, the gardener gives his master a moment of true joy. As Rutledge remarks, gladness in the tale is “a sign of salvation and hope” (Battle 161). Gandalf smiled after he heard that Sam was with Frodo. Sam had laughed in Ithilien “for heart’s ease” (TT, IV, iv, 636). The Ring-bearer’s laughter on the Stairs is for the same reason. Part of the reason Ilúvatar placed Sam at Frodo’s side is to ease his heart. As Frodo himself admits, he “wouldn’t have got far without Sam” (TT, IV, viii, 697). For only a short while at the end of their Quest does Sam physically carry his treasure, but for the whole way he carries him mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He is hope-bearer for the Ring-bearer.

            After Gollum arranges the betrayal of Frodo and Sam to Shelob, he return to find them asleep and almost repents. He reaches out to caress Frodo’s knee, but then the Ring-bearer cries out from a nightmare and wakes Sam. The goodness that was growing within Sméagol becomes a blighted stillbirth after Sam strangles it, though not willfully or knowingly. Because he has never borne the wretched creature any good will, the gardener completely misunderstands the tender gesture, and he wonders why the ruined hobbit is “pawing at master” (TT, IV, viii, 699). He calls Gollum a villain, and in the blaze of Sam’s anger, the tender shoots that Frodo had carefully cultivated in the hope that they would bloom instead wither and die. This is not only a tragedy for Sméagol but also for Sam. He sees only “Slinker” and “Stinker,” not the tormented hobbit who was painfully crawling back toward the light. But, as Tolkien acknowledges, “Sam could hardly have acted differently” (Letters 330). Sam has yet to bear the Ring, so he has not seen into Sméagol’s soul as Frodo has. Neither hobbit recognize this moment of Sméagol’s death, though Sam notices the return of Gollum by the wicked green light in the creature’s eyes. The betrayal goes forward.

            In the terrible darkness of Shelob’s lair Sam remembers that Frodo carries the star-glass Galadriel gave. After the Ring-bearer temporarily defeats the monstrous spider by advancing with the phial, the gardener exclaims his desire to hear the Elves sing of such triumph. He embodies once more the remarkable ability hobbits have to recover quickly and completely from terrifying experiences and to hope once more for life beyond the present horror.

            Joy overflows in Frodo, as he runs toward the pass outside the spider’s lair. But Sam feels the oppressive weight of the peril they are still in, and it slows his progress. Shelob soon strikes the Ring-bearer down and readies to carry him off, but then she encounters a far greater foe in Sam: “No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate” (TT, IV, x, 711). The gardener responds to the inspiration to call upon Elbereth and so defeats his monstrous enemy.

            After Sam’s great victory over Shelob, he plunges into terrible grief with the belief that his beloved master is dead. Rage and despair overflow in him, while a black night in which he sits long swallows his shattered heart. After the initial shock wears off, Sam wonders what to do. He remembers the words that he spoke to Frodo the morning after meeting Gildor about having a job to do. He understands these words now to mean that he must leave his master and go on alone.

            Sam touchingly asks Frodo if he understands what he must do. That he speaks to his master as though the Ring-bearer was still alive is further evidence of Faramir’s remark that the gardener’s heart is “shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than [his] eyes” (TT, IV, v, 666).

            Sam holds Frodo’s hand while he holds court with himself to determine exactly what he will go on to do. His choices were easy when his master was alive because all he had to do was follow him, and this overcame his own fears. Now that he is alone and has to make up his own mind, he is afraid that he will make a mistake. He considers pursuing Gollum out of vengeance and even thinks of suicide, but he dismisses both. He does not want to become Ring-bearer because he does not wish to promote himself to an undeserved position. He hears, however, an inner voice that says, “But you haven’t put yourself forward; you’ve been put forward. And as for not being the right and proper person, why, Mr. Frodo wasn’t, as you might say, nor Mr. Bilbo. They didn’t choose themselves” (TT, IV, x, 715).

            With this understanding, Sam continues in his role as a servant. He kisses his master’s brow in farewell and takes the Ring. Before he leaves, he gives another beautiful profession of love: “‘Good-bye, master, my dear! . . . Forgive your Sam. He’ll come back to this spot when the job’s done – if he manages it. And then he’ll not leave you again. Rest you quiet till I come; and may no foul creature come anigh you! And if the Lady could hear me and give me one wish, I would wish to come back and find you again’” (TT, IV, x, 716).

            In the context of this wish/plea/prayer to Galadriel, Sam’s enduring hope comes in the form of his “ability to reinterpret ultimate separation as a hope for reunion” (Klinger 207). Rather than an “empty fall into nothingness” (TT, IV, x, 715), as Sam thought death when tempted to suicide, “death is now envisioned as a ‘quiet rest’ that Sam can eventually share with Frodo, and a reunion that affirms an irrevocable bond” (Klinger 188). This same faith and hope enables Aragorn to see from beyond death to life again, which he tries to convey in his last words to his beloved Arwen. That Sam sees this and not even know his Creator is an astonishing gift from Ilúvatar.

            As Sam looks upon Frodo by the light of the phial, he receives the gift of another vision and sees ahead to a time in which his beloved master appears as one who has “long passed the shadows” (TT, IV, x, 716). The new Ring-bearer then leaves to fulfill the Quest.

            In this horrible lair, “where all his life had fallen in ruin” (TT, IV, x, 716), Sam “begins his rise to supremely heroic stature,” as Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman. “He fights the Spider, rescues his master’s body, assumes the ghastly burden of the Ring, and is preparing to stagger on alone in an attempt to carry out the impossible errand” (quoted in Hammond and Scull 746).

            Sam does not get far, however, before the Orcs discover Frodo’s body. The gardener throws aside his decision to continue and starts to return to defend his master. He receives a tremendous shock after he learns that the Ring-bearer is not dead after all. Sam realizes his heart was aware of this all along. He thinks he made a terrible mistake in leaving Frodo’s body, but he had actually done exactly the right thing. It is vital to the success of the Quest and to his master’s salvation that Sam at first believed what his eyes saw and blind to what his heart knew.

            Sam has struggled with his decision to leave Frodo since he made it, but now there is no longer any doubt in his mind what he must do: rescue his master from the Orcs or die in the attempt. He begins his task, but terror fills him so much that it paralyzes him at one point. He puts the Ring on, which allows him to hear the sound of the Orcs fighting. This restores his hope that success is possible. “His love for Frodo rose above all other thoughts, and forgetting his peril he cried aloud: ‘I’m coming Mr. Frodo!’” (RK, VI, I, 879).

            The magnitude of what Sam wants to do comes back to him, as he looks up at the Tower of Cirith Ungol. He realizes that it would be nigh to impossible to pass the gate unseen. He must do something even harder and enter in by himself.

            As with all Ring-bearers’, Sam feels the terrible power of the demonic object work away at him. It presents him with a fantasy vision of what he could do as Samwise the Strong leading an army to defeat Sauron and turning the wasteland of Gorgoroth into a garden. He resists because just as Galadriel remained herself, Sam remains himself: a heart full of love at his master’s side. Coupled with common sense and humility, it allows the gardener to see through the delusions of the Ring. The gardener has grown much since the Quest began, and he is now a hobbit with “a deep capacity for discernment and reflection” (Gardner et al. 245). He knows his place in the world, and he has no desire to be anywhere or anyone else. In this way he is spiritually akin to Faramir, who does not desire power either. Sam only wants to be the happy gardener of Bag End, not of a whole realm. He desires to be in charge of his master and his master in charge of him. He wants someone over him to cherish and nurture, not people under him. The Ring has nothing with which to tempt him. Ernelle Fife asserts a truth about the hobbit’s life right now: “To have a sense of belonging or of place is to know that one is part of a larger plan, even if that plan seems dark; to be guided by a greater entity or power, even if that power seems to be wearing an Invisibility Cloak” (“Wise Warriors” 149).

            Sam turns from Samwise the Strong back to Samwise the frightened. While he gathers his courage to go into the Tower, he jokes about ringing the bell at the door after the Two Watchers give their horrible cries. During this terrifying time, the gardener’s complete devotion to Frodo and his cheerful hobbit nature give him the ability not to be overwhelmed by his fear. He shrugs his shoulders and continues to demonstrate in many convincing ways that “fear is driven out by perfect love” (1 Jn. 4:18). Only with such motivation is he able to constantly renew his fortitude to face the perils within the Tower. “Tolkien implies that love is an important aspect of heroism, as we see in the way Sam is inspired by his love for Frodo. It is not that Sam’s attention to Frodo supersedes his commitment to the Ring-quest; rather, Sam implicitly understands that love and loyalty are essential to the success of the quest itself” (Gardner et al. 228).

            Another sign of the grace that protects and guides Sam is that he heeds “some deep premonition of danger” (RK, VI, i, 879) and removes the Ring. After it nearly compels him to put it back on, an Orc distracts him by coming down the stairs and looking right at him. This could have ended in disaster, but Snaga does not see a fearful hobbit. Rather, he witnesses an incarnation of Samwise the Strong, who holds a bright sword in one hand and some unseen and powerful threat in the other. The Orc’s flight from Sam so gratifies the gardener, it emboldens him to give chase. He wonders if the terrible cry he heard just before he saw Snaga was from Frodo. This gives him the strength to continue on, even though there be only a corpse to find. He is near to collapse from exhaustion, but he is fed by love.

            Sam reaches his lowest point after he comes to an apparent dead end and fears his master forever lost. But there grace reaches out to touch him once more, and “moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing” (RK, VI, i, 887). At first, his voice is faint, but then it grows stronger, and he thinks he hears an answer. Snaga also hears it, and he inadvertently leads the hobbit to Frodo. “Sam’s song . . . first challenges the overbearing presence of darkness and death with a determined vision of spring and ultimately invokes eternal light. . . . Quite literally, this song propels Sam past a final dead end, opens the last door, and brings about a reversal from death to life” (Klinger 192).

            “Under the most adverse and improbable circumstances, surrounded by the hideous evidence of senseless slaughter, Frodo and Sam share a moment’s happiness and release from the burdens of the Quest” (Klinger 193). As Frodo rests in Sam’s arms, as would a child comforted after a nightmare, “the Ring’s influence is – almost miraculously – suspended or eclipsed” (Klinger 193). This loving reunion has overcome despair, seemingly irrevocable loss, and impossible odds. Sam feels that he could joyfully hold his master forever, but their task still awaits. He rouses his master, best friend, brother, and child with a kiss to the brow and a cheerful voice and “gently takes on himself the task of bringing Frodo to the end of his Quest” (Bradley 121).

            Only shortly afterwards the malevolence of the Ring returns with a vengeance, as Frodo lashes out at Sam and calls him a thief after seeing that his beloved guardian holds the fell thing. The Bearer begs forgiveness after the madness passes, and Sam instantly gives it. Words of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen about how Jesus could love even great sinners reflect how Sam not only sustains his love for Frodo through such trials but deepens it as well: “[Jesus] saw that a jewel had fallen into the mud and though encrusted with foulness that it was still a jewel” (Fulton J. Sheen’s Guide to Contentment 155). “Love is not blind,” Rabbi Julius Gordon said. “It sees more, not less but because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” Sam remembers, adapting the words of Washington Irving, the “innocent eyes of [his] child so can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [His] love ever lives, ever forgives and while it lives, it stands with open arms and gives and gives, the strongest thing in the universe, never failing, enduring forever, always hoping.” The devoted hobbit shows the extent that love freely wills to go. “The measure of love is to love without measure,” St. Francis de Sales said. (Also attributed to St. Augustine.) Only such a love enables Frodo and Sam to struggle to the Fire.

            After Frodo and Sam escape from the Tower, the younger hobbit shows once more the reverence in which he holds in all things Elven. He gives his master his gray cloak to replace the orc-mail shirt that was too heavy for Frodo to bear. Sam also demonstrates his faith in his invocation of Galadriel for light and water (RK, VI, ii, 897).

            In this land of Shadow Sam’s greatest spiritual growth takes place. He sees Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope, which Elbereth had set in the sky so long before to give hope to those in Middle-earth in their struggle against Morgoth. Jane Chance observes, this

sensitivity to spiritual reality is expressed by his understanding of the beauty beneath the appearance of waste, of light beyond darkness, of hope beyond despair.

            This insight is triggered by the appearance of a star above, an instance of divine grace that illumines understanding and bolsters hope . . . (Tolkien’s Art 180)

            Sam receives the comforting knowledge that evil is “a small and passing thing” (RK, VI, ii, 901). There is something greater and above the darkness that he and Frodo travel through. He continues to pour out his love and energy to take care of his master, but he realizes now that there is care for him also. He understands that “the world is in abler hands than his” (Kocher 45), and the task of watching over Frodo does not rest completely on his own shoulders. This realization enables him sleep without worry, even though deep in enemy territory, and while Frodo does, which the gardener never did intentionally before. This sense of security and watchfulness allows him to leave his sleeping master later in search of water.

            Another particular embodiment of Sam’s hope is after the two hobbits see the torches of the Orc host that travels right toward them. A trap is the only thing Frodo sees. Sam allows that this appears true, but he also leaves the door open to the possibility that it is not the unequivocal disaster his master believes. The gardener is right, for by no other means than the forced march the hobbits endure could they have reached the Fire in time and save the army of the West at the Black Gate.

            Within the Black Land Sam struggles most to maintain his hope, which withers and seems to die at times but is always born anew. Even after he wonders whether the job he has to do involves dying beside Frodo at the completion of their task, this does not frighten him. He accepts this possibility, but he immediately expresses his undying wish to see his home, family, and the Cottons again. He knows that he may not, but rather than this fill him with despair, he feels “through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue” (RK, VI, iii, 913). He also notes that the Eucharistic lembas bread fortifies the will, even if it does not fill the belly.

            While Frodo and Sam struggle toward Mount Doom, the gardener takes on more and more responsibility for the completion of the Quest, as the Ring-bearer weakens under the terrible physical and spiritual torment of his burden. It is up to Sam to “set his master’s will to work for another effort” (RK, VI, iii, 915) because he knows “without his insistent courage Frodo cannot complete [the Quest]” (Bradley 122). To aid the Ring-bearer, Sam gives up most of his share of water, food, and sleep. Rather than have such sacrifices weaken him, they strengthen him, for his loving acts are as much an act of the will as his refusal to despair. Only grace could have given him this gift. In fact, the only sacrifice he truly feels he makes is giving up his beloved pots and pans. But even after the hobbits later abandon much of their gear, Sam does not part with any of the Lady’s gifts or with Sting.

            Though Fr. Patrick Hannon does not speak of Frodo and Sam, his words reveal much of their love for each other and the Ring-bearer’s love for all Middle-earth: “And I remember once again that love – fierce and mighty and unrelenting – has no rival. It gives us permission to face unimaginable suffering unafraid” (Geography 47). Frodo endures his suffering because Sam is there; Sam bears his because Frodo is there. They are afraid, but they are there for each other, and this saves them and their world.

            Sam argues with and soundly defeats the voice that attempts to seduce him into giving up all together. His success renews and refreshes him. Throughout the Quest, he wrestles any notion of despair to the ground. He uses every hopeful thought as a shield for himself and for his master, who increasingly has no defenses left against the terrible onslaught of the Ring. Margaret Sinex observes that Sam’s “final fixed resistance to despair . . . is explicitly described as a conscious act of will: ‘no more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it’ (RK, VI, iii, 217)” (“Tricksy Lights” 108). Sinex contrasts this with the despair of Denethor who lost his battle because he only saw one future that he desired, and that was how life had always been for him and the generations before him. “Sam does not presume to set the terms of his future in Middle-earth and he succeeds where Denethor fails in withstanding the temptation of despair through a heroic act of will” (109).

            The Road to the Fire is an increasing agony for Sam and Frodo. Thirst, hunger, and exhaustion torment them. “And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on” (RK VI, iii, 918). They are without water for the last two days of their journey and too parched to eat what little lembas they have left. Grace, will, and love sustain them.

            Sam weeps in his heart because he can no longer cry aloud after he sees his master begin to crawl. He had already sworn that he would carry Frodo and so he does. He expects that his master and the Ring will be a terrible weight that he wonders how he will carry, but he discovers that his burden is light. While the hobbits rest part of the way up the Mountain, grace touches them again as they both hear and heed an urgent call in their hearts to continue on and reach the Road that will bring Sauron his doom.

            After the Ring nearly compels Frodo to put it on, he whispers to Sam for help. The gardener gently takes his master’s hands in his, places the palms together as though in prayer, and kisses them. This breaks the compulsion that was irresistible a moment before. “Sam redeems Frodo in a spiritual sense” at this moment (Gardner et al. 231). The younger hobbit fears that Sauron has discovered them and all will soon be over. Rather than let this paralyze him, Sam immediately takes his master onto his back again and continues to climb ever closer to the heart of the Enemy.

            An even greater moment of providing for Frodo’s salvation is after Sam completes his journey from hating Gollum to having pity on him. As much as the gardener’s love for Frodo is, as Peter Kreeft observes, “the single force most responsible for winning the War of the Ring” (“Wartime Wisdom” 48), even more so is his mercy to Gollum. Sam’s myriad acts of love and sacrifice would have been meaningless if he did not make one more and give up his desire to kill Gollum, whose death he has actively wished for so long. Now that the young hobbit has briefly been a Ring-bearer, he has some dim idea of the torment of the wretched creature. The pity of Bilbo does indeed rule the fate of many, but the pity of Sam rules the fate of all. The humble gardener has no idea how important his restraint will prove to the success of the Quest or to his master’s soul.

            At the Mountain, Sam has another vision of Frodo and sees his shining soul shorn of the veils of flesh that surround it. After this transfiguration, the younger hobbit sees his beloved master as a spent figure gasping for breath and consumed by both Light and Dark. Both visions are true. After the amazing sights of watching Gollum fight with an invisible foe, bite off Frodo’s finger, and fall into the Fire with the Ring, Sam clutches his master’s bleeding hand to his breast and feels nothing but “joy, great joy” (RK, VI, iii, 926). The terrible ordeal is worth it just to hear Frodo say that he is glad his Sam is with him and to see that beloved face free of pain and at peace.

            Even as Mount Doom explodes around them and death seems imminent, Sam does not give up hope. He ably teaches us how to endure suffering with the hope of light beyond the present darkness. This hope he never truly loses, even at the Fire. He accepts that there is a possibility, even a near certainty, that he will not see the dawn with his physical eyes, but he has long gazed upon it with the eyes of his heart and this keeps him going. Sam leads Frodo away from the worst of the destruction. Even after their last strength is spent, Sam’s hope is not; his heart still hopes because it still beats. Correctly is “this jewel among the hobbits” (Letters 88) named by Gandalf, Harthad Uluithiad, Hope Unquenchable (Sauron Defeated 62). At “the pinnacle of the two hobbits’ friendship” (Gardner et al. 246), Sam caresses Frodo’s hand and speaks of how he wishes he could hear their tale told.

            Hope rewards Sam after he wakes in Ithilien to see his treasure sleeping peacefully beside him. Aragorn treats them to the song of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.

            At Bree, Sam has a happy reunion with his pony, Bill. After they return home Frodo testifies to the Gaffer that Sam gave “perfect satisfaction” (RK, VI, viii, 991) as the companion Gandalf said should be taken on the Quest. It took great strength and courage for the younger hobbit to always be there for his master, but in his humility, Sam would not have recognized that he did anything brave or heroic.

            Sam uses Galadriels’s gift of soil from her orchard to restore the Shire back to life. He “longs to stay with Frodo forever” (Bradley 124), but he also wants to be with Rosie. Frodo grants both wishes when he invites his beloved guardian to live with him after wedding Rosie. The younger hobbit has truly gone “there and back again.” All his wishes and dreams have come true.

            Heartbreak shatters Frodo and Sam’s life together after the Ring-bearer reveals that he must leave to seek healing for his wounds in the Undying Lands. Before departing, he gives Sam the hope that they may see each other again. This gives them the strength to part. Frodo makes Sam his heir and predicts how full the life of his “dearest hobbit, friend of friends” (TT, IV, ii, 610) will be. Sam stands at the Grey Havens “far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart” (RK, VI, ix, 1007).

            Sam then returns home to treasure the family and peace that his and Frodo’s sacrifices made possible. A happy marriage of 62 years yields 13 children. He is Mayor for 49 of these years. His transformation from gardener to “one of the most famous people in all the lands” (RK, VI, viii, 991), as Frodo had proudly declared to the Gaffer, is something Aragorn also acknowledges later in renaming Sam Panthael (fullwise) rather than Perhael (halfwise) (Sauron Defeated 126). The humble hobbit has truly become Samwise.

            In the abandoned Epilogue to the tale, Sam tells his eldest daughter, Elanor, of his enduring hope for reunion with his dear master. This time does indeed come after his beloved Rose dies in 1482. Sam leaves Bag End for the last time on Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday, travels to Elanor to give her the Red Book, and the tradition is that he left then for the West. One hopes that he and Frodo “settled down and lived together happily ever after” (FR, II, iii, 266), and at the end of their mortal lives, Sam has his “one wish” spoken so long before in the desolation of Shelob’s lair come forever true.

Works Cited

Bradley, Marion Zimmer. “Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship.” In Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968: 109-127.

Chance, Jane. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. Rev ed. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Fife, Ernelle. “Wise Warriors in Tolkien, Lewis and Rowling.” Mythlore 25, no. 1/2 Issue 95/96 (Fall/Winter 2006): 147-162.

Gardner, Patrick, et al. SparkNotes: “The Lord of the Rings.” New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.

Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. “The Lord of the Rings”: A Reader’s Companion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Hannon, Patrick. The Geography of God’s Mercy: Stories of Compassion and Forgiveness. Chicago: ACTA Publications, 2007.

Honegger, Thomas and Frank Weinreich, eds. Tolkien and Modernity 2. Zollikofen, Switzerland: Walking Tree Publishers, 2006.

The Jerusalem Bible Reader’s Edition, gen ed. Alexander Jones. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

Klinger, Judith. “Hidden Paths of Time: March 13th and the Riddles of Shelob’s Lair.”

            In Honegger and Weinreich, Tolkien and Modernity 2: 143-209.

Kocher, Paul H. Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.

Kreeft, Peter. “Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights About Evil in The Lord of the 

            Rings.” In Celebrating Middle-earth: “The Lord of the Rings” as a Defense of Western

            Civilization, edited by John G. West, Jr. Seattle: Inkling Books, 2002: 31-52.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in “The Lord of the

            Rings.” Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Sheen, Fulton J. Fulton J. Sheen’s Guide to Contentment. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967.

Sinex, Margaret. “‘Tricksy Lights’: Literary and Folkloric Elements in Tolkien’s Passage of the

            Dead Marshes.” In Tolkien Studies Volume II: An Annual Scholarly Review, edited by Douglas Anderson, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2005: 93-112.

Slack, Anna. “Slow-Kindled Courage: A Study of Heroes in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien.” In Honegger and Weinreich, Tolkien and Modernity 2: 115-141.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 

---. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King.

            Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66.

---. Sauron Defeated: The History of “The Lord of the Rings,” Part 4, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

---. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003.

This paper is an expansion of what was originally presented at the 2009 Tolkien Society Seminar “Journeys and Destinations.” Its title at that time was “I have something to do before the end.” It has been since modified and adapted from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press, 2012), which also includes a chapter on The Hobbit.  For more details and to order the book, please visit http://ow.ly/ez2dT. You can also find me on Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/authorannemarie.

Tolkien describes Faramir as a man who is “personally courageous and decisive, but also modest, fair-minded and scrupulously just, and very merciful” (Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien 323). After the Captain of the Ithilien Rangers meets Frodo and Sam, he says he will not lie even to an Orc. The Ring-bearer’s impression of him during the man’s initial interrogation is that “he felt in his heart that Faramir, though he was much like his brother in looks, was a man less self-regarding, both sterner and wiser” (LotR IV:5, 650). Sam recognizes the wizard-like air the man has, which is actually the grace of pure Númenórean blood. Pippin’s first impression is “Here was one with an air of high nobility. . . one of the Kings of Men born into a later time, but touched with the wisdom and sadness of the Elder Race. . . . He was a captain that men would follow, that he would follow, even under the shadow of the black wings” (V:5, 792). Aragorn says of him in the Houses of Healing, “He is a man of staunch will, for already he had come close under the Shadow. . . Slowly the dark must have crept on him, even as he fought and strove to hold his outpost” (V:8, 846). Éowyn sees him as “stern and gentle” (VI:5, 938). Appendix A notes that Faramir “read the hearts of men as shrewdly as his father, but what he read moved him sooner to pity than to scorn. He was gentle in bearing, and a lover of lore and of music, and therefore by many in those days his courage was judged less than his brother’s. But it was not so, except that he did not seek glory in danger without a purpose. He welcomed Gandalf at such times as he came to the City, and he learned what he could from his wisdom” (1031). It is likely then that “Faramir, the quiet student of Gandalf, a man with a Númenórean soul undimmed by his ancestors’ years of life in Middle-earth” (Johnson, “Grief” 124) learned his pity from Mithrandir just as the Maia had learned it from Nienna (Tolkien, Silmarillion 18).

It would seem with these qualities, and because Faramir received the dream first and more often that Boromir came to Rivendell to unravel, that it would have made more sense for Denethor’s younger son to go and become one of the Nine Walkers. It was, however, Ilúvatar’s will that Boromir be the one. If Faramir was part of the Company, he may not have fallen to the lure of the Ring as his brother had, but Frodo’s will perhaps would not found release from the shackles of terror that held it bound. If the Ring-bearer had not chosen the moment he did to separate from the Company because of Boromir’s fall, he may have been captured with his cousins and the Ring come into the custody of either Saruman or Sauron. If Boromir, rather than Faramir, had met Frodo and Sam alone in the woods, he could have taken the Ring then or at Henneth Annûn while surrounded by men loyal to him. Even if Frodo put on the Ring and disappeared as easily as he did at Parth Galen, escape would have been harder with so many men around. He would have had to wear the Ring longer out of necessity, which would make it easier for Sauron to hone in on his position. If he took it off to ensure this did not happen, he could have been either re-captured or taken by the troops of the Enemy marching toward Mordor. He would have no chance to put the Ring back on if he was bound. The Quest could have ended in disaster. Yet it did not because the sons of Denethor are in the places they are meant.

As the younger son, Faramir has no ambition for positions he had no hope for. He is not set from birth to be Steward, or so he thinks, which makes him more free to become whom Ilúvatar intends, rather than who his earthly father would mold him into. “Despite [not being heir], or perhaps because of it, Faramir is a capable leader, a Man more concerned with the welfare of his people than any illusions of transitory power. Such nobility comes easily to him, making him an even better candidate for the stewardship than his more power-hungry brother” (Benne and Forbeck 40). Bradley J. Birzer observes, “Faramir knows his place in creation, and he desires nothing more than to play out Ilúvatar’s role for him” (Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth 86).

Though a man, the Ranger captain resembles the hobbits in his humility and gentleness and the fact that he is a reluctant warrior, though a capable and respected one. He does not love “the bright blade for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness” (LotR IV:5, 656). He does not kill even beasts without great necessity. This saves Gollum’s life and the Quest itself after the Ranger Anborn refrains from shooting what he thinks is black squirrel but is actually Frodo and Sam’s wretched guide. Faramir fights, as the hobbits do, to protect his land and those he loves, but like them, he does not do it for the joy of it, as his brother did or the Rohirrim do. He shares the hobbits’ love of peace, though he understands that sometimes wars must be fought to have such peace. Faramir sees people with hearts and souls rather than cold objects on a chess board to be moved about, spent, and removed, as his more military-minded father viewed the men under him. A smile from the Ranger captain would be real and warm solace, instead of a grimace if any look came from Denethor. Gandalf recognized the young man’s gentle greatness that Denethor despised.

That Frodo and Sam encounter Faramir and his men in Ithilien due to the smoke from the hobbits’ fire, is another of the ‘chance’ meetings which occur throughout the tale. This fortunate event brings about another good from Gollum’s guidance of the hobbits through the Dead Marshes. They arrive at the proper time and place for the Rangers to find them and so escape capture in the woods. The men give them needed shelter and without the extra food that Faramir supplies, the Ring-bearer and his companion would have collapsed days away from the achievement of their Quest.

Birzer notes several other reasons why Faramir is special: “Faramir embodies grace at a number of levels. First, Tolkien had not planned on his appearance. God had created him and inspired Tolkien to include him in the story – or so the Oxford don believed. Second, it was the healing of Faramir, along with Éowyn and Merry, that revealed the true nature and kingship of Aragorn. Third, and perhaps most important, Faramir offers one of the very few obvious allusions to religion [the Standing Silence]” (Myth 86).

Fleming Rutledge recognizes the connection between Aragorn and Faramir: “Like a Christian disciple, as Strider the Ranger, [Aragorn] has been in training for anonymous service for many years. That same self-effacing commitment to ‘valor without renown’ distinguished Faramir from his father Denethor” (Battle for Middle-earth 307).

Another connection between the future King and Steward is that Faramir does not make a rash decision about what to do with the two strangers who come across his path. He shows the same wisdom as Aragorn did in Fangorn Forest in that he does not shoot his potential enemies on sight, but he seeks to find out whether they are indeed foes first. In his initial interrogation of Frodo, Rutledge notes, “Tolkien is giving us another illustration of excellence in leadership. The ensuing dialogue is a display of noble manliness all round” (213).

Faramir admits he has no hope of defeating Sauron, yet he fights on and speaks of his dream that he would see “the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace” (LotR IV:5, 656).

Faramir shows his quality once more as Frodo and Sam must be blindfolded once they near Henneth Annûn. Richard C. West observes, “That he apologizes for this necessity is courtly and courteous, something that might not be expected given the exigencies of war, but it is in character for him. . . [as] one of the noblest characters in the book” (“Name” 7). Another instance of this courtesy asking Frodo for forgiveness for interrogating him harshly at first.

Faramir and his Rangers show their awareness of the spiritual world around them and their connection to it in their observation of the Standing Silence: “We look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be” (LotR IV:5, 661). Faramir gives another indication as he tells Frodo that he knows there are paths he and the Ring-bearer are both fated to take: “In the morning we must each go swiftly on the ways appointed to us” (IV:5, 666). Such faith and trust allow him to make the decision to go against his father’s orders, even at the possible expense of his own life.

After the rocky beginning in which Faramir’s ‘sauce’ angered Sam, the fact “that Faramir seemed to refer to Elves with reverence, . . . won Sam’s respect and quieted his suspicions” (IV:5, 664).

Faramir faces the temptation of the Ring after Sam ‘accidentally’ lets out the fact that Frodo has it and is akin to the gardener in his utter rejection of it. The Ring’s way to his heart is through his desire to finally obtain approval in his father’s eyes: “A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality!” (IV:5, 665). But the temptation has no allure for him. He has already said he would not pick up Isildur’s Bane by the side of the road or use it even if that was the only way to save his beloved home. Michael J. Brisbois observes a great difference between the two sons of Denethor: “Boromir is corrupted by the One Ring because of his desire for power – he believes in winning war by any means necessary. Faramir clearly does not. He is unwilling to sacrifice the virtues he is fighting for. This disregard for power and focus upon virtue is similar to Sam’s focus on simple domestic pleasures – both remain largely unaffected by the Ring because neither desires power” (“Blade” 95).

Faramir already intuitively recognizes the wisdom of a later age: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul” (Mark 8:36/Matt. 16:26). Faramir has strength and love for his land that his father does not. As Elrond and Galadriel have already said of their own lands, the young man would rather lose his beloved home than use the Ring to save it. The three realize such use would destroy their land and that they would lose themselves in the process, as the Ring would possess them rather than they possessing it. Denethor does not have this wisdom, but Faramir has only to look as far as his beloved brother, Boromir, to know how the Ring corrupts the heart and “that there are some perils from which a man must flee” (LotR IV:5, 666). After the Ranger’s triumph, when he does indeed show his quality, he tells Frodo, “If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at others’ asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it” (IV:5, 666).

Faramir resists the allure of the Ring because he knows his potential weakness: “I do not wish to see it, or touch it, or know more of it than I know (which is enough), lest peril perchance waylay me and I fall lower in the test than Frodo son of Drogo” (IV:5, 666). The vow the man previously took not to touch it strengthens the man’s resolve, but he knows just because he triumphed over the temptation once does not automatically mean he would again.

After Faramir asks what the hobbits’ further plans are, Frodo no longer evades the question and openly speaks of his errand. After the grief-stricken the Ring-bearer collapses from exhaustion and stress, the Ranger tenderly takes care of him. The man also comforts Sam, who is upset that he gave away the secret of the Ring. The Ranger tells the gardener that he was meant to seemingly slip up: “Your heart is shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than your eyes,” (IV:5, 666). This revelation would, if the Ranger could manage it, work to Frodo’s good. After Sam praises Faramir for resisting the Ring, the man’s humility deflects it and says that “I had no lure or desire to do other than I have done” (IV:5, 667).

After Frodo begs for Sméagol’s life at the Forbidden Pool and say that “this creature is in some way bound up with my errand,” (IV:6, 671) Faramir, “at the prayer of Frodo,” (IV:6, 674) also gives mercy and spares Gollum’s life after it should have been automatically forfeit. He helps save the Quest, even though the man, as an adept discerner of souls, also recognizes the evil that dwells within the ruined hobbit and fears for his new friends.

Before Frodo and Sam part from Faramir, the discussion between the Ranger and the Ring-bearer brings home the importance of keeping a promise even if there is a possibility it will bring harm to oneself. Frodo has promised to look after Sméagol, and he does not want to go back on this even after Faramir warns him of the possibility of betrayal by Gollum. But the man still does not counsel that Frodo be false to Sméagol. He and Frodo both value being morally upright over physical safety and in keeping their word even if they could be harmed by it. They value their souls over their bodies and their spiritual life over their physical life.

Faramir tells Frodo that he does not hope to meet him again, but he also imagines the possibility that one day they will be together “sitting by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief” (IV:6, 678). While the future is unknown and indeed seems bleak, Faramir still believes in the hope of a better time after the darkness passes. He speaks of this to Éowyn as well. He sees beyond the black night that his father is lost in and dies in. He looks to the dawn that he does not even know for sure will come but which has already risen in his heart. In all this, he is a spiritual twin of Sam, which is a sign of grace in both of them.

Faramir tells Frodo, “You shall go now with my blessing upon you, and upon all your people” (IV:6, 678). At their departure, he equips the hobbits with food and walking staves. He demonstrates his gentleness again as he bids them farewell “after the manner of his people, stooping, and placing his hands upon their shoulders, and kissing their foreheads” (IV:7, 680).

The Ranger meets another of the Little Folk in Gondor. One of the great goods that comes out of Pippin’s gaze into the palantír is the saving of Faramir’s life. Denethor wished to rob his son of this, but it demonstrates another reason Ilúvatar wanted Merry and Pippin as part of the Company. Pippin would not be in a position to aid Faramir if Boromir’s valiant efforts to save him and Merry had not inspired him to offer his service of Denethor and so learn of the Steward’s mad plans. He would not be there at all if he had not looked into the seeing stone, and Gandalf had to spirit him away ahead of the others going to Minas Tirith. Just as Merry is at Éowyn’s side in battle, so “she should not die alone, unaided” (V:6, 823), Pippin is at Denethor’s side so Faramir does not. Ilúvatar places both hobbits exactly where and when they need to be.

After the victory at the Pelennor Fields, Aragorn enters the City as healer. The first he tends to is Faramir, whose reaction to the man diametrically opposes that of Denethor’s. The younger man chooses love, light, and life; the elder scorn, darkness, and death. Faramir waits most anxiously for the return of the king; Denethor has no desire for any king to return, as this would remove him from power. For Faramir, this longing is not a faded dream, just one that has not yet come true. The Ranger captain has already given his heart to this dream-king and immediately surrenders it after the dream becomes flesh: “Suddenly Faramir stirred, and he opened his eyes, and he looked on Aragorn who bent over him; and a light of knowledge and love was kindled in his eyes, and he spoke softly. ‘My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?’” (V:8, 848). In pride and despair, Denethor fled into death so he would not have to say such words. Faramir returns from near-death so he could, using words, as Jane Chances observes, “similar to those of a Christian disciple” (Tolkien’s Art 177).

Miryam Librán-Moreno speculates that, even after all the coldness and trauma that he had suffered from his father for much of his life, Faramir’s feelings for him after the man’s death were “pity, forgiveness and abiding love.” This would match his character, though she admits that such emotions are not recorded because it would break the younger man’s “decorous restraint and modest reserve with uncharacteristic, too-direct self-revelation” (“Parallel Lives” 27).

The fulfillment of the part of Pippin’s vocation which was to save Faramir also saves Éowyn from the despair that held her prisoner. She desires death in battle, as she thinks this is the only way that she can gain the peace she wants. But Faramir’s gentle courting while she is still fragile from her wounds shows her another way. “There are ways to plant healthy coping skills in the garden of the soul, and to help someone reconcile with their losses. Faramir . . . demonstrates the skills needed to assist someone in their recovery from traumatic grief. . . . He connects with her, carefully challenges her beliefs, and gradually adds meaning and purpose to her life” (Johnson, “Grief” 124, 125).

After the men of Rohan and Gondor leave for the Black Gate and the days stretch slowly by with no word, the suspense of those left behind becomes almost intolerable. As they await news, Faramir speaks to Éowyn of hope for the dawn beyond the dark night that may soon descend upon them. He acknowledges the possibility that doom is about to fall upon their world, but his words make clear that he still hopes that it will not, which is the total opposite of what his father had done. Faramir would courageously stare death in the face, sword still in hand, while Denethor had already surrendered to his despair and darkness and fled from the death he feared right into the arms of the death of his own choice.

As Éowyn speaks of feeling that she stands upon the edge of an abyss, Frodo truly does. Both wait upon “some stroke of doom” (LotR VI:5, 941). Then suddenly the man and woman witness in the far distance what could be the end of their world. The greatest manifestation of Faramir’s hope comes as the world seems poised upon utter ruin: “The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny. Éowyn. . . in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure!” (VI:5, 941).

After Faramir asks for Éowyn’s hand, her acceptance frees her from her darkness. Their joining is in fact a gift from Boromir, whose death moved Pippin to offer his service to Denethor.

That Faramir kneels in front of Aragorn to surrender the office of Steward again shows the opposite of reactions between Denethor and his son. Such humility had long deserted the older man who had killed himself so he would not have to kneel to anyone. Faramir is ready to step aside, but Aragorn retains him in his office and tells him the line of Stewards shall continue. He names the younger man Prince of Ithilien as well. One imagines what an excellent counselor and dear friend the new Steward would be to his king.  

Works Cited

Anderson, Douglas, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger, eds. Tolkien Studies Volume II: An

            Annual Scholarly Review. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2005.

Benne, Scott and Matt Forbeck. The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game: The Two Towers

            Sourcebook. Los Angeles: Decipher Inc., 2003.

Birzer, Bradley J. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003.

Brisbois, Michael J. “The Blade Against the Burden: The Iconography of the Sword in The Lord

            of the Rings.” Mythlore 27.1-2 (2008): 93-103.

Chance, Jane. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. Rev ed. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Johnson, Brent D. “Éowyn’s Grief.” Mythlore 27: 3/4 (2009): 117-127.

Librán-Moreno, Miryam. “Parallel Lives: The Sons of Denethor and the Sons of Telamon.”

            Anderson, Drout and Flieger 15-52.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the

            Rings. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton

            Mifflin, 2000.

---. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

            1965-66.

---. The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Illus. Ted Nasmith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

West, Richard C. “‘And She Named Her Own Name’: Being True to One’s Word in Tolkien’s

            Middle-earth.” Anderson, Drout and Flieger 1-10.

 This was originally published in the September 2010 issue of Beyond Bree. It has been since modified and adapted in part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press, 2012), which also includes a chapter on The Hobbit. For more details and to order the book, please visit http://ow.ly/ez2dT. You can also find me at www.pinterest.com/authorannemarie.

My Brother's Keeper: The Spiritual Kinship of Frodo and Sméagol

After Frodo and Sam spot Gollum slinking down the cliff, the creature provides the answer to the Ring-bearer’s earlier wondering whether good or ill would guide him to the next part of his Road. More than anyone else, Sméagol walks in the worlds of both Dark and Light almost as much as Frodo but in opposite ways.

After Gollum slips off the wall, Sam jumps on him. Gollum attacks him, and Frodo draws Sting on their spy to save his friend’s life. The gardener advocates leaving the creature tied up with the rope to die a slow death. Frodo says that they cannot kill him for as yet no ill had been done to them. Sam disagrees and points out that further injury is most likely intended. Frodo does not argue. They both know that Gollum is undoubtedly up to no good. Nonetheless, the Ring-bearer bases his decision on present reality rather than on future possibility. Just because Gollum might, probably even will, harm them is simply not enough for Frodo to condemn him for a crime not yet committed.

During Frodo’s battle between fear and mercy, he recalls Gandalf’s words at Bag End about Bilbo’s pity and his own lack of it. He had made it perfectly clear that he wished his uncle had killed Gollum, but Linda Greenwood observes what happens as the Ring-bearer faces the creature himself.

"As these remembered words internally ring forth, Frodo lays down his sword. His desire for justice dies and he spares Gollum’s life. What is his motive? It seems to be a pure act of pity. His act is motivated by compassion. He acts with a mercy that demands and expects nothing in return, with the ‘Divine Gift-love’, which [C.S.] Lewis explains, enables a man ‘to love what is naturally unlovable . . .’ (Four Loves 128)" (“Love,” 179).

Frodo then speaks aloud to Gandalf, who, as far as he knows, is dead, and assures him that no harm will come to Gollum. The fear that caused the Ring-bearer to wish the wretched being dead has not left him, but what the wizard planted in the hobbit’s heart months earlier now bears fruit. Frodo sees Gollum for the first time, not only with his own eyes but with those of Bilbo’s and Gandalf’s. Fleming Rutledge beautifully makes note of another set: “Sam and Frodo both ‘see’ Gollum, but only Frodo is enabled to see him as God sees him. That sort of sight, as all the Gospels make clear, can be granted only by the grace of God” (Battle, 198). The Ring-bearer’s view of Gollum completely changes at this moment, and he wants Gandalf to know it. With such testimony, Frodo proves what Gimli said at Rivendell about the giving of one’s word strengthening a trembling heart. Pity softens the Ring-bearer’s former hostility, stays his hand, and enables him to give his oath. In some dim way, he realizes “There but for the grace of God go I,” as St. Philip Neri said. Like Bilbo, Frodo has no idea how momentous this decision is for himself and for all Middle-earth.

Through the sacrificial experience of carrying the Ring, Frodo gains insight into compassion for the tormented that he did not have before. The endurance of the painful presence of the demonic object, borne like a crown of thorns, makes possible the tremendous spiritual growth that the hobbit gains on the Quest. Helen Keller observed, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Adversity has indeed cleared Frodo’s sight. Safe in the Shire, well fed, innocent, and happy, the Ring-bearer did not understand how or why pity should be shown to Gollum. Now affected and infected by the same evil that has so long ravaged Sméagol and continues to do so, Frodo understands in the growing dark what was incomprehensible in the bright sunlight. He realizes he has met a kindred spirit, where before the idea that Gollum could be anything like hobbit-kind angered and offended him. Rather than to continue to call for his enemy’s blood, the younger Bearer begins to love his adversary as God instructs us all to do. In his acceptance of his role as his “brother’s guardian” (Gen. 4:9), he dedicates himself to easing the agony of one whose violation by evil is much greater than his own and to guiding him back to the Light.

To Sam’s surprise, Frodo tells Gollum of their intent to enter Mordor and asks for his aid. After Sméagol relieves the torture he had suffered there, Frodo says that if the creature helps him, such would also give the ruined hobbit freedom from Sauron’s domination. An interesting little bit of dialogue takes place toward the end of this conversation.

“Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he’s lost now.”

“Perhaps, we’ll find him again, if you come with us,” said Frodo. (LOTR, 602).

Indeed, Sméagol does begin to re-emerge from Gollum through Frodo’s care. The younger Ring-bearer treats his brother hobbit with a dignity and compassion the tormented being has lacked for centuries. Frodo is careful to call him by his given name and, as God is the one who names, connects Sméagol once more to his Creator. Roger Sale notes, “Sméagol loves the specialness that is Frodo’s care of him” (“Tolkien and Frodo Baggins,” Tolkien and the Critics, 287). The dawning love Frodo receives in return is “the tentative unbelieving response to a caring so unlikely it seems heroic even to the Gollum” (ibid.).Even though the Ring’s corruption has held sway over Sméagol for so long, a little bit of his hobbit nature remains to respond to Frodo, as a flower reacts to sunlight. Though this particular flower is horribly deformed and even pale moonlight is painful to it, it still cannot help but to turn to Frodo’s light. The friendship of Frodo and Sam wonderfully exhibits many of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are outlined by St. Paul as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). But this is perhaps even more moving in the “scarred and beautiful relationship” (“Baggins,” 287) of Frodo and Sméagol. It is within this most unusual love story that Bradley J. Birzer observes the “most telling example” (Sanctifying Myth, 59) of the grace that abounds in Middle-earth. Ralph C. Wood notes, “Frodo calls forth Gollum’s best traits by refusing to focus on his worst ones. Tolkien thus echoes what, in his Confessions, St. Augustine says about God’s own love for him: ‘In loving me, You made me lovable’” (Gospel, 132). After hundreds of lonely years, Sméagol returns this care with as much strength as his atrophied goodness can. Though not speaking of Frodo, Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon sheds light on the hobbit’s care for his fellow Ring-bearer: “By charity we are empowered to love others not only as much as we love ourselves. We are enabled to love others more than ourselves; to love others even as Christ has loved us, by suffering and dying on our cross out of love for others; to love others out of love for God constantly, patiently and generously beyond all human power and expectation” (“Baptism”).

Frodo first expressed this in his refusal to kill without need. He also shows it after Sméagol begs for release from the Elven rope that Sam gently tied around his ankle. The spiritual agony of evil coming into contact with goodness causes the physical pain that Gollum feels. Frodo says that he will not free him unless the creature gives him a trustworthy promise. Sméagol says that he will do what Frodo wants and insists on validating this on the Ring. The younger Bearer demonstrates another part of the discernment, wisdom, and grace that grows in him as he warns his brother hobbit about the peril of doing this. He remains in the Light even as night deepens around and in him. From this perspective, he guides his fellow Bearer and understands what is happening in both their souls. Frodo stands ever more in the same crucible as Sméagol, but he is still outside the prison that traps the latter, though his back is to the gate.

Frodo asks what vow the wretched hobbit wishes to give. Sméagol promises to be good and never to let Sauron regain the Ring. Again the miserable creature says that he must swear on the Precious. Frodo refuses because they both know worse madness would result if the already ruined hobbit sees and touches the demonic object that unites and later divides them. Frodo speaks here of the stage every addict reaches when the craving utterly possesses its victim. After all the time that Sméagol spent searching for it, what exquisite torment it must be for him now to have it so near and still not claim it. Even though Frodo knows the dangers of the terrible thing that he has held against his heart these many months, he is becoming increasingly consumed by it as well. In some ways, only an addict understands another addict.

Frodo accepts Sméagol’s promise and tells Sam to release the creature. The younger hobbit does so reluctantly. He cannot comprehend why his master is so kind, but the Ring-bearer sees more than his Sam does. Behind Gollum stands the suffering soul of Sméagol, and this is who Frodo frees.

After Sméagol chokes on the lembas bread, Frodo says, “I think this food would do you good, if you would try. But perhaps you can’t even try, not yet anyway” (LOTR, 608). In the magnificent BBC Radio adaptation, his voice is sad but also hopeful that one day liberation would come to Sméagol’s soul and enable him to partake of the blessed bread. Frodo recognizes the horrific damage done to Sméagol’s soul by the Ring, for he feels it happening in his own. But he also knows on a deeply intuitive level that the Eucharistic properties of the lembas would have a good effect on his wretched guide if Sméagol’s own spiritual journey advanced further. Gollum’s rejection of the food shows how much those who live in darkness hate anything to do with God. Yet Frodo keeps hoping and trying to “find some sort of entry into [Sméagol’s] imprisoned soul” (Rutledge, Battle, 199).

After Frodo, Sam, and Sméagol come to the Black Gate, the news that the present Ring-bearer intends to enter Mordor this way greatly frightens Sméagol. He begs Frodo not to and offers three alternatives: to keep the Ring, to give it back to him, or to use a more hidden path that he found long ago. After seeing the armies marching to the Gate, Frodo announces that he will trust his guide again in recognition of the fate binding them together. He warns Sméagol once more about the danger that threatens the ruined hobbit’s soul. After Gollum acknowledges the peril that they all face, Frodo says that he does not refers to this but to something particularly connected with Sméagol himself. Frodo goes on to caution his brother Bearer about the choke-hold that the Ring has on the wretched creature’s soul, of the futility of wishing to have the Precious back, and that lust for it may cause Sméagol’s death. Frodo foretells the exact nature of this, though he is unaware that he has done so. Possessive jealousy is perhaps also in play, as he twice tells his would-be rival that the Ring will never be Sméagol’s again. The younger Bearer continues to grow more spiritually attuned to the Ring himself, even as he warns Sméagol of its dangers.

After the Ithilien Rangers find Sméagol enjoying some fish at the Forbidden Pool, Faramir shows restraint in not immediately slaying a possible adversary. The man first seeks out Frodo, who begs for his guide’s life. He says the creature is not aware of the peril he is in and is in some mysterious way connected with the great task of the Ring. Frodo asks Faramir to allow him to go down to Sméagol and offers his own life in exchange if Gollum gets away. The Ring-bearer is so essential to the Quest, yet he is willing to put himself in danger to save another who is also vital.

Richard Purtill remarks, “One of Christ’s least popular commandments has always been that which tells us to ‘love our enemies, do good to those who hate you’ (Lk 6:27). But in Frodo’s treatment of Sméagol, the hobbit who has become Gollum, the monster, we can see this commandment at work in a situation we can believe in” (Lord of the elves and eldils, 2^nd ed., 194).

Even after Frodo’s plea, he still faces the temptation to have Gollum killed after hearing his guide talking. He longs for freedom from this voice, but he fights against the desire and instead saves the wretched creature’s life by the only way available. Frodo knows Sméagol’s ruined mind will probably not understand this and will consider it a betrayal instead. The Ring-bearer feels miserable about this, perhaps partly because he knows how close to reality it is, not only in outward appearance but also in quashed inward wish. It grieves him to deal such a bitter blow to Sméagol’s heart, which had been making tentative steps back to the Light. “[Frodo] despises using treachery even against the treacherous. . . . Even the faithless should be shown faith” (Wood, Gospel, 133).

After the Rangers capture Gollum and bring him before Faramir, the man says that he has so far spared him because of Frodo’s plea. But he adds that he has to know for himself whether the creature is worthy of escaping with his life. Bilbo, Frodo, and Faramir all look into Gollum’s soul and recognize the evil that dwells there, yet they all give mercy nonetheless. This gives the wretched hobbit further opportunity to repent and be cured.

After the interrogation of Gollum ends and Rangers take him away, the ensuing dialogue between Faramir and Frodo brings home the importance of keeping one’s word even if there is a possibility that it will bring harm to oneself. The Captain attempts to persuade his friend against following Gollum for the man has read Gollum’s dark heart. But the Ring-bearer has fully embraced Gandalf’s hope of a cure for his guide and defends him as not completely evil. Ralph Wood notes that

". . . Frodo has a strange respect for Gollum. He discerns, in a deeply intuitive way, that Gollum is divinely destined to play his crucial role. . . . Far more importantly, Frodo believes that Gollum is not fixed in evil, but that he has the capacity to overcome the addictive effects of the Ring. He wants, therefore, to extend at least minimal friendship to this miserable fellow hobbit. There is a tiny ray of light peeking into the prison cell of Gollum’s life, making him long to leave his wretched isolation and to find companionship with another creature of his own kind" (Wood, Gospel, 131).

Frodo speaks of his promise to look after Sméagol and to travel where he goes. The Ring-bearer does not want to go back on this, even after Faramir has warned him that Gollum will betray him. After the Ring-bearer asks if the man would advise him to be false to his guide, the Ranger refrains from giving into the fear and concern which has him long to give this counsel. In their preference for an untainted spiritual life over a compromised one, both Faramir and Frodo show they value being morally upright over physical safety and prize their soul over their body.

From the time they meet, Frodo and Sméagol travel in opposite directions: Frodo into deepening shadows and Sméagol away from them. On the Stairs they meet in the twilight, but the younger Bearer is asleep and does not realize the meeting had come. They travel then into increasing darkness. Their final sundering comes at Mount Doom.

After Sam carries Frodo out of the Sammath Naur, the Ring-bearer demonstrates once more the growth in grace that came from his fearful but willing embrace of his calling. He recalls Gandalf’s words that Gollum would have a special role. The Ring-bearer is intimately aware of the ability of evil to twist one, so his last words about his wretched guide, brother, and betrayer are a plea for forgiveness. This he does from his heart despite the treacheries that were mysteriously necessary parts of his journey.

Works Cited

Birzer, Bradley J. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003.

Greenwood, Linda. “Love: ‘The Gift of Death’.” In Tolkien Studies Volume II: An Annual Scholarly Review. Edited by Douglas Anderson, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger. Morgantown,WV: West Virginia UP, 2005: 171-195.

Hardon, John A., S. J. “Baptism, the Sacrament of Regeneration and the Supernatural Life.” http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Sacraments/Sacraments_008.htm

The Jerusalem Bible Reader’s Edition. Ed. by Alexander Jones. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968.

Purtill, Richard. Lord of the elves and eldils. 2^nd edition. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in “The Lord of the Rings.” Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Sale, Roger. “Tolkien and Frodo Baggins.” In Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Edited by Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968: 247-288.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

———. The Lord of the Rings. 2^nd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003.

This is excerpted in great part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press). Want to read more? Don't miss out! Order your copy at:
http://ow.ly/ez2dT. This was published in Amon Hen, the Bulletin of the Tolkien Society.

Hobbits appear unlikely heroes, but God uses improbable people at times to fulfill a role that He specially designed for them. As is said of David in the Bible, “the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7, NRSV). This fits Bilbo and Frodo, who are also “chosen and selected,” as Gandalf says of the elder Baggins (The Hobbit, 21). There is so much that they, Sam, Merry, and Pippin can teach us. I wish to explore in this essay some of the reasons why they are worthy of emulation.

At the end of Bilbo’s chase after Gollum, the Ring-finder fights within himself one of the most important battles ever waged in Middle-earth. He finds that his would-be murder has unintentionally brought him to the exit, or at least as far as the miserable being is willing to go without risking capture by the goblins. He then stops there, blocking Bilbo’s way. Gollum detects by hearing and smell that the thief of his precious is near. In Bilbo’s desperation to escape with his life, he faces the temptation that to do so, he must slay his adversary. Certainly this could be easily justified as self-defense. The world would know nothing of it. It would take a while for even the goblins to notice that their kind were no longer disappearing with the creature no longer around to eat them.

Luckily for Gollum and all Middle-earth, Bilbo still has the presence of mind to heed the presence of God. The impulse to kill Gollum disappears as fast as it comes. There is absolutely no reason to pity such a terrible thing, yet such springs up in the Ring-finder’s heart and restrains his hand. Though not speaking specifically of the hobbit, Mathews notes, “Time and time again the spiritual decisions of the most consequence are faced by individuals alone” (Lightning, 32). Bilbo intuitively understands what it means to love an enemy, as he feels for an instant the agony of one so long trapped in darkness with no way out of it. This realization turns Gollum from a feared enemy into a fellow human being with a tormented heart and soul.

What also helps Bilbo to decide is the fact that although he knows Gollum wishes to kill him, the evil creature has not actually tried to do so. Bilbo bases his response, as Frodo does later, on what has happened, rather than give into fears of what might happen or even is likely to but has not occurred yet. The elder Baggins has once more laid some important groundwork for the destruction of the Ring and the salvation of his future cousin and heir. No foreknowledge of this moves his heart, however. Rather, he responds even more admirably, for he shows “mercy for mercy’s sake alone” (Ware, God in “Hobbit,” 53; italics in original). The later Quest to destroy the Ring could not have succeeded without others giving this same seemingly imprudent pity. We need to be watchful for such moments in our own life and give mercy if possible. Just as Bilbo has no idea what impact his actions and choices will have on his world, neither do we. As such, we must move cautiously.

Bilbo reveals his inherent decency once more after he decides that he must re-enter the tunnels and search for his missing companions. He has absolutely no desire to go back in, even with a magic Ring, but he conquers his fear and makes the decision to do so. Katharyn Crabbe notes in a parallel between Bilbo and Christ the great love that is ready to lay itself down to save its friends (J. R. R. Tolkien, 41-42). Bilbo receives his reward just for making this brave choice, rather than actually having to follow through after he hears voices and reunites with Gandalf and the dwarves. He also corresponds with the grace to surrender the Arkenstone to Bard and the Elven-king, which foreshadows his giving up of the Ring decades later.

Just as Bilbo was “chosen and selected” for his tasks, so are we and so were Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. The time at Crickhollow proves Aristotle’s words that friendship is “most indispensable for life.” The revelation of the conspiracy formed to ensure that Frodo did not leave on his own stuns the Ring-bearer. Merry tells his cousin of the fear that he, Pippin, and Sam have of what is ahead but also of their determination to follow and face the peril of the Ring with Frodo because of their bond with him. If Sauron had heard these words and understood the power wrapped up in them, “Barad-dûr would have been shaken to its foundations” (Wood, Gospel, 127).

Sauron would also find incomprehensible the innocent excitement of his mighty enemies, as the young hobbits dance around Frodo in celebration that their company is indeed welcome. Their fear has not left them, but the joy of being with the one they love overwhelms it. Implacable malice such as Sauron’s cannot understand such happiness; unwavering hate cannot fathom unconditional, sacrificial love; selfishness cannot penetrate the wisdom of selflessness. Love allows us to do amazing, even otherwise impossible, things, and these hobbits excel at love. “You are worth what your heart is worth,” Blessed Pope John Paul II said. This makes Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin priceless. As the Quest unfolds, the hobbits prove that “a friend is a friend at all times, it is for adversity that a brother is born” (Prov. 17:17).

Frodo’s humble acceptance, first at Bag End and then at the Council of Elrond, to become a vessel through which a higher Power could work shows him the particular reason he was created. He does not know who this Power is, but he belongs to a people who though, as St. Paul says, do not have the law, still keep it as if by instinct, having it written in their hearts (Rom. 2:14-15). As happens to us if we are open to it, Frodo’s mind may not have understood why he responds the way he does, but his heart and soul do. Love and grace speak there in a language that the mind does not always comprehend, but the heart and soul do. Frodo becomes the suffering servant, a sacrificial lamb. It takes great courage to offer himself up to continue as Ring-bearer, to endure and fight against the rape of his mind and soul, and to suffer these demonic assaults for months in order to fulfill his vocation and carry his cross to Mount Doom. He receives extra grace throughout his life to strengthen and prepare him and the greatest grace in having Sam at his side. He also shows mercy, compassion, and true caring for Sméagol. He knows what this wretched creature suffers because violation from and addiction to the Ring torments him also. He is every bit a hero, and as the story unfolds, there is no doubt that he will succeed in his Quest.

Is it a surprise then that evil crushes Frodo at the end? Was he not the hero? Heroes do not fail. There is, however, more than one of these in this tale. The ever-faithful Sam is an even greater one. He would never have considered this true himself, but everyone else, especially Frodo, recognizes this. The Ring-bearer is still one himself, even though he is overcome at last by his burden, which was heavier than anyone should have had to bear. He endured its crushing weight for months with little complaint out of love for the people of Middle-earth. If he could save them, he would do anything to do so. But in the end – or what appears as the end – he cannot save them or himself. Salvation comes from an unexpected, unlooked-for source. Had it not been for Gollum, the Shadow could have covered all the land.

Part of the power of Tolkien’s sub-creation lies in Frodo’s seeming failure. The tale of the War of the Ring resounds in the hearts and souls of generations of readers because of how true it is, rather than pat, happily-ever-after, the-hero-never-shows-any-weakness fairy tales. In reality, even heroes have moments of frailty, doubt, and fear. Frodo and Sam and many others have these, but they also do what they need to do, despite what they feel. Sam struggles with how to proceed after his master’s apparent death, but he goes on because he knows the Quest is too important to fail. Terror fills him in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, but love compels him to continue. The Ring twists Frodo inside out, but he actively fights against it. He continues in his intention to save everyone even after he comes to understand that this will come at the cost of himself. He is spent bit by bit on his journey, poured out like a living sacrifice. His body seems too small for what he has to endure but not his heart. He gives and gives, even as the Ring tears his heart to shreds and weakens his body in its quest to dominate him. Still he holds onto these shreds, as he pushes past his doubts, terror, and despair. He continues on despite starvation and dehydration, not only from his own will but because of Sam’s. He knows even before he sets out that he will not be able to give up the Ring, but he remains completely set on its destruction, even if it means dying with it. He struggles to the point where he must crawl after his suffering and the weight of his burden is too much for him to do anything else.

We must do the same. Frodo’s journey is our own. Like the vast majority of us, he does not fight in combat as do the soldiers of Rohan and Gondor. Like each one of us, his battlefield is in his own mind, heart, and soul. The spiritual warfare that he continually engages in is the same that we must fight on a battleground that we cannot leave until death takes us from it. This knowledge is not meant to discourage us or cause us to despair but to give us patience and strength to endure the battles and win the war. Each one of us is a Ring-bearer of one kind or another in our struggle with fears, troubles, and addictions. We do hateful, hurtful things to those we should love the most. We sometimes give into the seductive call of temptation or anger. We desire things that we know are bad for us and will hurt us or others. Perhaps we try to pull away from them but still want them and cannot part from them without the strength of will to humbly ask for God’s assistance. Tolkien, the master storyteller, received and used inspiration from the Writer of the Story Himself to have his tales resound with such truth.

As we watch Frodo’s struggle, we see that some times we overcome our temptations, and at other times they overcome us. But like him, each time we can get back up after we fall and start the struggle anew. We can walk away from the alcohol, drugs, slot machines, pornography, toxic relationships, or whatever poisons us. We can say no to hate and anger and the hurt and violence it causes. We can choose another path. We may fail many times, but we will succeed in the end if we are open to receive and respond to the grace made available to us.

If we are fortunate, we will have a Sam with us to support us, for this struggle is not one we can win alone. It must be won if we are not to be totally lost. We learn as much or even more from Sam the stouthearted, Sam the loving, as we do from Frodo. This humble gardener is a bright light that shines in the Ring-bearer’s darkening world and in our own. They both give us examples of perseverance, loyalty, and dedication to completing difficult tasks that seem impossible to even survive.

Perhaps our part in the Music is to be a Sam for someone: to love as fiercely and unconditionally as he does; to stand by our Frodo through every hardship; to be their light, strength, and hope; even to be willing to die for them or with them. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone would love and be loved as deeply and purely as Sam loved his Frodo and his Rosie. It would be beautiful. Or perhaps we shall be saved through totally unexpected means or persons due to mercies we give and then receive back.

The glowing example of Sam and Rosie’s love, faithfulness, and devotion is another lesson we sorely need to learn in our era of broken promises and betrayal of friends and spouses. These two hobbits are open to the gift of life, and, surrounded by their many children, they celebrate their golden anniversary and beyond. They show where there is great and true love, many miracles happen.

Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin all discover they are braver than they ever thought they could be, as they do what they need to do out of love. They learn as we have that evil is alive and well in the world but that such powers “cannot conquer for ever!” (LotR VI:7, 687), as Frodo boldly proclaims at the Cross-roads. These tales show that “evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in” (Tolkien, Letters, 76). Out of the darkness and because of the darkness, many heroic acts of love, faith, humility, and self-sacrifice abound.

May the light of these heroes, whose stories Tolkien retold “in this very nick of time,” (LotR II:2, 236) be a beacon for us to draw strength and inspiration from, as we make our own journeys to Mordor or confront the Shadow in other ways and places.

Crabbe, Katharyn. J. R. R. Tolkien. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981.

The Jerusalem Bible Reader’s Edition. Gen. ed. Alexander Jones. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

            1966, 1967, 1968.

Mathews, Richard. Lightning from a Clear Sky. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1978.

New Revised Standard Version Bible. Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

———. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King. 2^nd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66.

Ware, Jim. Finding God in “The Hobbit.” [Colorado Springs, CO?]: SaltRiver, 2006.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003.

This essay was the originally the first I ever wrote years ago now. It has been since significantly modified and taken in good part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in “The Lord of the Rings” (WestBow Press, 2012), which also includes a chapter on “The Hobbit.” For more details and to order the book, please visit www.annemariegazzolo.com. Feel free to like me at www.facebook.com/annemariegazzolo and follow me at www.pinterest.com/authorannemarie.

"It was Pity that Stayed His Hand"

Among the many great lessons that come from the Red Book of Westmarch is the one that teaches the value of pity, mercy, and compassion that various people give to Gollum. The care that comes from the heart is what makes the Quest to destroy the Ring possible. It starts with a lost and terrified hobbit in a dark tunnel, but it ends much later. While it is true that Bilbo’s pity rules the fate of many, it is another’s which rules the fate of all.

At the end of Bilbo’s chase after Gollum, the Ring-finder fights within himself one of the most important battles ever waged in Middle-earth. He finds that his would-be murder has unintentionally brought him to the exit, or at least as far as the miserable being is willing to go without risking capture by the goblins. He then stops there, blocking Bilbo’s way. Gollum detects by hearing and smell that the thief of his precious is near. In Bilbo’s desperation to escape with his life, he faces the temptation that to do so, he must slay his adversary. Certainly this could be easily justified as self-defense. The world would know nothing of it. It would take a while for even the goblins to notice that their kind were no longer disappearing with the creature no longer around to eat them.

Luckily for Gollum and all Middle-earth, Bilbo still has the presence of mind to heed the presence of Ilúvatar. The impulse to kill Gollum disappears as fast as it comes. There is absolutely no reason to pity such a terrible thing, yet such springs up in the Ring-finder’s heart and restrains his hand. Though not speaking specifically of the hobbit, Richard Mathews notes, “Time and time again the spiritual decisions of the most consequence are faced by individuals alone” (Lightning from a Clear Sky 32). Bilbo intuitively understands what it means to love an enemy, as he feels for an instant the agony of one so long trapped in darkness with no way out of it. This realization turns Gollum from a feared enemy into a fellow human being with a tormented heart and soul.

What also helps Bilbo to decide is the fact that although he knows Gollum wishes to kill him, the evil creature has not actually tried to do so. Bilbo bases his response, as Frodo does later, on what has happened, rather than give into fears of what might happen or even is likely to but has not occurred yet. The elder Baggins has once more laid some important groundwork for the destruction of the Ring and the salvation of his future cousin and heir. No foreknowledge of this moves his heart, however. Rather, he responds even more admirably, for he shows “mercy for mercy’s sake alone” (Ware, Finding God in The Hobbit 53; italics in original). Tolkien noted, “[Gandalf] did not mean to say that one must be merciful, for it may prove useful later – it would not then be mercy or pity, which are only truly present when contrary to prudence” (Letters 253).

Decades later, Gandalf and Aragorn seek long and hard for Gollum, but it is in vain until the Ranger providentially finds the hobbit’s footprints on the way home. Aragorn captures the creature and bring him to Mirkwood. Grace protects Gollum once more as the Elves watch over him. They treat him kindly because of Gandalf’s hope for his cure and allow him some limited freedom.

During Frodo’s own battle between fear and mercy, he recalls Gandalf’s words at Bag End about Bilbo’s pity and his own lack of it. He had made it perfectly clear that he wished his uncle had killed Gollum, but Linda Greenwood observes what happens as the Ring-bearer faces the creature himself.

"The pity that Frodo shows Gollum is what brings mercy to himself. In his first meeting with Gollum, Frodo reverses his own desire to kill Gollum because of the fear he feels . . . . The compassion that is first shown by Bilbo, however, becomes the vehicle of Frodo’s salvation. At his first encounter with Gollum, pity overturns Frodo’s initial wish for justice. As Frodo poises his sword at Gollum’s neck to prevent him from doing any more harm, his conversation with Gandalf so many days past comes wafting back to his mind. The prophetic words of Gandalf are the catalyst that stays Frodo’s hand . . . .

"As these remembered words internally ring forth, Frodo lays down his sword. His desire for justice dies and he spares Gollum’s life. What is his motive? It seems to be a pure act of pity. His act is motivated by compassion. He acts with a mercy that demands and expects nothing in return, with the ‘Divine Gift-love’, which [C.S.] Lewis explains, enables a man ‘to love what is naturally unlovable . . .’ (Four Loves 128)" (“Love: ‘The Gift of Death’” 178-179).

Frodo then speaks aloud to Gandalf, who, as far as he knows, is dead, and assures him that no harm will come to Gollum. The fear that caused the Ring-bearer to wish the wretched being dead has not left him, but what the wizard planted in the hobbit’s heart months earlier now bears fruit. Frodo sees Gollum for the first time, not only with his own eyes but with those of Bilbo’s and Gandalf’s. Fleming Rutledge beautifully makes note of another set: “Sam and Frodo both ‘see’ Gollum, but only Frodo is enabled to see him as God sees him. That sort of sight, as all the Gospels make clear, can be granted only by the grace of God” (Battle for Middle-earth 198). The Ring-bearer’s view of Gollum completely changes at this moment, and he wants Gandalf to know it. With such testimony, Frodo proves what Gimli said at Rivendell about the giving of one’s word strengthening a trembling heart. Pity softens the Ring-bearer’s former hostility, stays his hand, and enables him to give his oath. In some dim way, he realizes “There but for the grace of God go I,” as St. Philip Neri said in a much later age. Like Bilbo, Frodo has no idea how momentous this decision is for himself and for all Middle-earth.

Faramir is the next to give mercy. He shows restraint in not immediately slaying a possible adversary after the Rangers find Sméagol enjoying some fish at the Forbidden Pool. The man first seeks out Frodo, who begs for his guide’s life. He says the creature is not aware of the peril he is in and is in some mysterious way connected with the great task of the Ring. Frodo asks Faramir to allow him to go down to Sméagol and offers his own life in exchange if Gollum gets away. The Ring-bearer is so essential to the Quest, yet he is willing to put himself in danger to save another who is also vital.

After the Rangers capture Gollum and bring him before Faramir, the man says that he has so far spared him because of Frodo’s plea. But he adds that he has to know for himself whether the creature is worthy of escaping with his life after it should have been automatically forfeit. Bilbo, Frodo, and Faramir all look into Gollum’s soul and recognize the evil that dwells there, yet they all give mercy nonetheless. This gives the wretched hobbit further opportunity to repent and be cured.

After Frodo walks wearily but upright toward the fulfillment of his vocation at Mount Doom, Sam is left outside the Sammath Naur with Gollum. As it seemed for Bilbo in that dark tunnel long ago, to kill such an evil creature appears the only prudent thing to do. But something keeps Sam’s wrath in check, just as something kept Bilbo’s fear from overwhelming him—the same something actually. After pity can no longer stir Frodo’s heart, it reaches Sam’s because the gardener held the Ring himself and felt a small degree of the agony that each Bearer endures. This tremendous moment of growth for Sam bears within it the final good fruit coming from the torment that the young hobbit felt after his master’s apparent death. He does not hate Gollum any less, but he spares him out of newborn compassion and freely wills to let him live. The extension of mercy at this critical moment is the pinnacle of all that Sam has done for Frodo and the culmination of all that was given previously by Bilbo, the Mirkwood Elves, Frodo, and Faramir. Had just one of these not performed their own act, Sam would not have had his opportunity to choose to do the same. The pity of Bilbo does indeed rule the fate of many, but ultimately the pity of Sam rules the fate of all. All of his myriad other sacrifices have brought him and Frodo this far, but another one is necessary to fulfill the Quest. If Sam had not given up his desire for Gollum’s death, everything else he and Frodo did could have proved vain. But Sam does not act from any of this anymore than Bilbo did in his own equally momentous decision. Only the Writer of the Story knows the consequences of both choices and the others that have come in between.

Mercy, pity, and compassion save Frodo at the Fire after the Ring claims him. He receives what he had freely given. Love is a choice. Pity is a choice. Mercy is a choice. The entire Quest relied on giving these to one not deserving of it but receiving it anyway. Bilbo gave it from his heart. Frodo did so as well after learning how to from Gandalf. Faramir gave it because Frodo begged for it. If just one of them had not, especially Sam, the Quest would have failed. How very much relied on this as each built on what others had done and at the pleading of others. Tolkien noted that

". . . the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. . . . To ‘pity’ [Gollum], to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. [Gollum] did rob him and injure him in the end - but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing any one cd. have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his ‘forgiveness’, he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden"(Letters 234; italics in original).

Another powerful lesson about pity and mercy occurs after Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to the Shire and encounter the Chief of the ruffians at Bag End. On the way there, Merry counsels his cousin not to be gentle with this leader, who turns out to be none other than Saruman. Frodo does not take Merry’s advice even after the wizard murderously assaults him. Sam is hot for retribution, but the Ring-bearer says that no matter what he does not want any aggressive action taken. Rather than respond with like violence, he forgives his attacker without anger or hate and as quickly as Sam has forgiven him his own trespasses. Frodo has learned much about the power of this during the Quest. His active but peaceful resistance to Saruman’s violence is as effective a barrier to harming him as the mithril coat. Clyde Kilby remarks that this compassion “surpasses the norm of ordinary morality. It has the quality of mercy such as Portia calls ‘an attribute of God himself’” (“Mythic and Christian Elements in Tolkien,” Myth Allegory and Gospel 137). Grace gives the Ring-bearer this and the strength to extend it. Even if the wizard had been successful and Frodo’s lifeblood poured out, one knows that his radical words of forgiveness and forbiddance of revenge would have been the same.

Works Cited

Greenwood, Linda. “Love: ‘The Gift of Death’.” In Tolkien Studies Volume II: An Annual Scholarly Review, ed. Douglas Anderson, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger. Morgantown,WV: West Virginia UP, 2005: 171-195.

Kilby, Clyde S. “Mythic and Christian Elements in Tolkien.” In Myth, Allegory and Gospel: An Interpretation of J. R. R. Tolkien/C.S. Lewis/G.K. Chesterton/Charles Williams, ed. John Warwick Montgomery. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Fellowship, 1974: 119-143.

Mathews, Richard. Lightning from a Clear Sky. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1978.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

A/N: This is excerpted in great part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press). For more details and how to order your copy, go to http://ow.ly/ez2dT.

The Measure of Love

"At the center of all the virtuous forces of light and of goodness, Tolkien shows us love. His presentation of this central human ideal is unique and intriguing, for he has presented it as an idea and a feeling lacking any hint of sexual passion. Love in Tolkien assumes an ideal medieval quality – a beatific caritas" (Mathews, Lightning from a Clear Sky 29).

Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mount Doom is a trial of such love. The light of this self-donating and heroically sacrificial love illumines the heart of the Red Book. It does not selfishly take; it selflessly gives and pours itself out on the beloved. Such is agape love, the highest and purest form, “from soul to soul,” as a woman I once knew called it, who was not even familiar with the story but was told by friends about it. It is God’s love. It gives Frodo the power to offer himself up as a living sacrifice, even as his suffering increases and his burden threatens to utterly consume him. It strengthens Sam to carry his beloved master, not only physically but emotionally and spiritually, and to be Hope-bearer for the Ring-bearer.

It is no coincidence that Sam is born the same year Frodo’s parents drown, for there is never a time that Ilúvatar does not watch over him. The Creator takes away two guardians, but He replaces them with another to be ready when the time comes. Sam always sees Frodo’s bright, shining soul, as he has loved it since childhood. He was made to love it, because without this love Frodo cannot do what he was made to do. “The measure of love is to love without measure,” said St. Francis de Sales. (Also attributed to St. Augustine). Frodo and Sam, as do many others in the tale, both show this depth of commitment, which makes “love . . . the dominant emotion in The Lord of the Rings” (Bradley 76) and the “peculiar excellence” of hobbits (Zimbardo 70). Jane Chance adds, “love binding one individual to another, cements together the ‘fellowship’ of the Hobbits in book 1 and later, in book 2, the differing species who form the enlarged Fellowship. The ‘chain of love’ such fellowship creates contrasts with the chains of enslavement represented by Sauron’s one Ring” (Tolkien’s Art 150).

Martin Luther King Jr. said that “everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. . . . You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.” Even though such words were not said in regard to hobbits, they certainly apply. Ilúvatar chooses as His Ring-bearer a small, mortal vessel with a quaking heart, but with a strong will and determination, who allows himself to be offered up “out of love – to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could; and also in complete humility, acknowledging that he was wholly inadequate to the task” (Tolkien, Letters 327).

After Frodo resolves to leave the Company at Parth Galen and strike out for Mordor alone, Sam refuses to be left behind. He would rather die at his master’s side than live without him. After Frodo says he would be safely on his way if Sam had not come, such words scandalize and horrify the gardener that Frodo would ever believe such a thing even possible without his Sam looking after him. The Ring-bearer acknowledges this impossibility as he says, “It is plain that we were meant to go together” (LotR II:10, 397). Ralph C. Wood calls their bond “a thing of exquisite beauty, even holiness” (Gospel 135). Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. says, “Friendship is the highest expression of human love. . . . There is no greater happiness in this life than basking in the love of a friend” (“My divine friend” 80). Though the priest does not speak of hobbits, the bond the Ring-bearer has with Sam, Merry, and Pippin reveals the truth of such words. The Quest shows Frodo that “a faithful friend is a sure shelter, whoever finds one has found a rare treasure” (Ecclus./Sir. 6:14). He makes sure that the enduring love and heroism of Sam, his “dearest hobbit, friend of friends,” (LotR IV:2, 610) receives pride of place in the reverent tribute which makes up his part of the Red Book.

After the Ring-bearer tells Sam near the Dead Marshes that they need not worry about food for the return journey because there would not be one, the gardener cries over his master’s held hand. He weeps also in Shelob’s lair and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. These times well reflect Washington Irving’s words: “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief . . . and unspeakable love.” The same could be said of Sam’s other silent expressions: the kisses to Frodo’s brow and hand and the hand and body he holds while his master sleeps.

Sam makes a beautiful profession of love as he watches Frodo sleep in Ithilien and sees his master’s inner light: “He was reminded suddenly of Frodo . . . asleep in the house of Elrond, . . . a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. . . . Sam . . . murmured: ‘I love him. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no’” (IV:4, 638).

This light shines brighter as Frodo fights through his hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and terror to fulfill his vocation. Even more than his own will to continue, Sam motivates him to keep going after the weight of despair crushes his own hope. The gardener thinks the task itself is hopeless, but he pushes through his own suffering because he has hope and faith in Frodo. Ilúvatar has knit their souls together for decades so that they would be inseparable for this one task. They would much rather be back home in the sun-filled, idyllic Shire, yet they walk, stagger, and crawl to the heart of evil and darkness instead. “It is the heroism of obedience and love not of pride or wilfulness that is the most heroic and the most moving” Tolkien wrote in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” (Tolkien Reader 22). Sam voluntarily endures torment and terror “only for the sake of one he loves beyond everything else” (Bradley 90). Frodo bears it for the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. “And in the last analysis,” Richard Purtill observes, “their self-sacrificing love rises to such heights as to be comparable to the greatest love the world has known” (Tolkien: Myth 77).

The words Mayor Rudolph Guilani used to describe the firefighters of New York fit also Frodo, Sam, and the others who fought for the Light. "There are some people who believe . . . courage represents the absence of fear. We know that is not true. Firefighters are in most ways ordinary people, but they are capable of extraordinary heroism because they do not let fear determine their actions. Their courage is found in letting their love for human life, their sense of duty and obligation to their fellow human beings, cause them to rise above their own immediate concerns. In doing so, they set an example for all of us. They remind us what each of us can become – selfless, courageous, and heroic at the moment when the pressure is greatest. They show us what we all are capable of in the most difficult and dramatic moments of our lives, as well as in the smaller moments all along the way" (Brotherhood xvi).

Linda Greenwood states that

"J. R. R. Tolkien gives reality a ‘new twist’ by writing in the form of myth. . . .

"It becomes a world in which faith without faith becomes faith, hope without hope becomes hope, and myth becomes more real than reality. The catalyst for this freeplay of words and meanings, the element that allows things to turn around and reverse themselves is love. Love . . . allows myth to invade the reality of this world and become fact. In Tolkien’s work, love motivates faith to reach beyond the boundaries of the known, to rekindle hope in the midst of the uncertain. Love turns death into a gift and transforms defeat into victory. This force of love permeates The Lord of the Rings. . . "(“Love: ‘The Gift of Death’” 171).

Many in the tale show in convincing ways that “fear is driven out by perfect love” (1 Jn 4:18). As the examples are quite numerous, only a handful are here given. Merry, Pippin, and Sam follow Frodo out of the Shire, even after they know that great peril lies ahead. Frodo pushes through his fears at Bag End and throughout the Quest. Sam cannot swim, but he does not hesitate to dash into the water after his master starts to leave without him. He does not like heights, but he crosses the rope bridge over the River Celebrant and uses the Elven rope in the Emyn Muil. Frodo refrains from killing Gollum after love in the form of pity takes hold in his heart. As Sam fights Shelob, “No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate” (LotR IV:10, 711). Gimli, Legolas, and the rest of the Grey Company traverse the Paths of the Dead out of love for Aragorn.

Sam gives another beautiful profession of love as he faces the desolation of Frodo’s apparent death. He promises to return and to in effect become a human Greyfriars Bobby, the faithful Scottish dog who remained at his master’s grave until his own death: “‘Good-bye, master, my dear! . . . Forgive your Sam. He’ll come back to this spot when the job’s done – if he manages it. And then he’ll not leave you again. Rest you quiet till I come; and may no foul creature come anigh you! And if the Lady could hear me and give me one wish, I would wish to come back and find you again’” (IV:10, 716).

Astonishment fills Sam after he learns that Frodo is not dead after all. His love again overcomes his fear as he mounts a rescue mission. He cries out “I’m coming Mr. Frodo!” (VI:1, 879) despite his terror of discovery by Orcs. Later he sings to the Ring-bearer during the search in the dread Tower of Cirith Ungol, so Frodo would know that he is not alone in such a terrible place. “Tolkien implies that love is an important aspect of heroism, as we see in the way Sam is inspired by his love for Frodo. It is not that Sam’s attention to Frodo supersedes his commitment to the Ring-quest; rather, Sam implicitly understands that love and loyalty are essential to the success of the quest itself” (Gardner et al. 228). The concern of everyone else is to save Middle-earth as a whole, but Sam’s sole focus in on one person. Because of this devotion, he helps save everyone. It saves Sam himself as he confronts the temptation of the Ring: “In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm” (LotR VI:1, 881).

The tender reunion of Frodo and Sam in the Tower is the most beautiful scene in the tale. Far from erotic, it demonstrates the purity and innocence of their love. “Under the most adverse and improbable circumstances, surrounded by the hideous evidence of senseless slaughter, Frodo and Sam share a moment’s happiness and release from the burdens of the Quest” (Klinger 193). As Frodo lies “back in Sam’s gentle arms, closing his eyes, like a child at rest when night-fears are driven away by some loved voice or hand” (LotR VI:1, 889), “the Ring’s influence is – almost miraculously – suspended or eclipsed” (Klinger 193). Their coming together again has overcome despair, seemingly irrevocable loss, and impossible odds. It leaves Sam feeling that “he could sit like that in endless happiness,” (LotR VI:1, 889) but their task is still ahead. He rouses his master, best friend, brother, and child with a kiss to the brow and a cheerful voice and “gently takes on himself the task of bringing Frodo to the end of his Quest” (Bradley 87).

Sam continues to love even as his heart breaks after Frodo calls him a thief. “Love is not blind,” Rabbi Julius Gordon said. “It sees more, not less but because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” The words of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who spoke of how Jesus viewed sinners, aptly describe how Sam views Frodo, as the Ring torments and twists its Bearer: “He saw that a jewel had fallen into the mud and though encrusted with foulness that it was still a jewel” (Fulton Sheen’s Guide 155).

Sam’s care becomes that of a parent, who loves his child even after the child does unlovable things and who forgives automatically and without thought, because though the act is bad, the child is not. Sam already practices what St. Paul later speaks of: “Bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience” (Eph. 4:2). “Love . . . is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end” (1 Cor. 13:6-8). Words of Washington Irving also fit well here: “A mother’s love endures through all . . . She remembers the . . . innocent eyes of her child so can never be brought to think him all unworthy. A mother’s love ever lives, ever forgives and while it lives, it stands with open arms and gives and gives, the strongest thing in the universe, never failing, enduring forever, always hoping.” Marion Zimmer Bradley notes beautifully, “From [the Tower onward, Frodo] places himself unreservedly and passively in Sam’s hands, allowing Sam to clothe him, to deal out their food, to choose their road. As his will and endurance are sapped by the destructive, tormenting power of the Ring he speaks of himself as ‘naked in the dark’ (III, 215) while every thought and movement of Sam’s reaches an almost religious devotion and tenderness toward easing Frodo’s path, even though he cannot share his torment or even his burden” (“Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship” 88)

Through such loving care, Sam “epitomizes the ideal of servanthood, which, in Christian terms, is the epitome of heroism” (Hein 207). Such words apply equally well to Frodo in his service to his Creator, who he is not even truly aware of but who holds his heart and soul together even as they are torn apart by the terrible malice of the Ring. Ralph C. Wood adds, “To be a servant is to be liberated from self-concern. It is to be so fully devoted to the common good that one hardly thinks of one’s own wants and needs at all” (Gospel 163). Dag Hammarskjöld does not speak of hobbits, but his words could certainly be applied to them: “Love – that much misused and misinterpreted word – for them [medieval mystics] meant simply an overflowing of the strength with which they felt themselves filled when living in true self-oblivion. And this love found natural expression in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and an unreserved acceptance of life, whether it brought them personally of toil, suffering – or happiness” (Markings viii)

Sam constantly renounces his own desires and needs and puts his master’s first. In contrast to Sauron, who is rightly depicted as the Eye, for the ‘I’ is all that he sees, there is no ‘I’ in Sam. There is only ‘you’. The Dark Lord will “eat all the world” (LotR II:3, 623) if he gets the Ring back, but Frodo’s humble gardener is like to a starving mother who feeds her dying child rather than herself, or a mother bird who pecks at her breast to feed her chicks her own blood if she has nothing else. But the nourishment Sam provides his master is much more than just food and drink. Ilúvatar places Sam at Frodo’s side as a reflection of Himself, so that every time the Ring-bearer looks at his gardener, he sees love. Frodo needs this as the Ring’s hatred torment him. Sam gives his master his cloak for a pillow, his arms for a bed, his hand to clasp. He is strength to Frodo’s weakness, peace to his turbulence, hope to his despair, warmth to his coldness, and sweetness to his bitterness. Far more than Galadriel’s phial, the humble servant is the Ring-bearer’s “light . . . in dark places” (II:8, 367). Indeed, the two hobbits are living phials for each other. Ilúvatar is also always with Frodo even when Sam cannot be and sustains both hobbits through His grace and the Eucharistic lembas bread.

"Prayer is being with God or another person” says N. Duncan Sinclair (Horrific Traumata 104; italics in original).Though Sinclair does not speak of hobbits, Sam proves the truth of these words after Frodo feels the compulsion to put the Ring on while near the Fire and whispers to his guardian for help. The gardener gently takes his master’s hands in his, places the palms together as though in prayer, and kisses them. This breaks the coercive power that seemed irresistible a moment before. “Sam redeems Frodo in a spiritual sense” at this moment (Gardner et al. 231).

The terrible journey from Bag End to the Sammath Naur shows that “at the heart of Tolkien’s work, [as] Provost suggests, is a clear religious theme of struggle between power and love” (Agan 45). Frodo’s will is not always strong enough to withstand the lure of the Ring on its own, but it receives strength through the grace-filled presence of others, especially Sam and Elbereth. Only through the renunciation of unlimited power and the embrace of unconditional love are the Ring-bearer and his companion able to make it to Mount Doom.

In the end, the Ring overcomes Frodo’s will, yet he still fulfills his vocation as its Bearer. It takes every single drop of his will, strength, and love to do it, and in so doing, he enables Sam to fulfill his vocation as well. After Frodo has nothing left to give, he is still open to receive mercy from Love itself. C. Baillie speaks beautifully of this.

"Love watched [Frodo] all the way through Mordor. 'You can do this and you must do this, or I will demand a reckoning of you,' Love said. Then Frodo came to the brink of utter damnation and fell, and Love said, 'This is beyond your strength, what I am allowing to happen. Therefore I will not demand reckoning of you. I will save you.'

"In that instant, when [Frodo’s] soul hung imperiled between life and eternal night, he became no longer responsible. The trial had become too much.

"So, no, I don’t think Frodo failed, not morally. Because nothing he could give could save him, only something given to him.

 "Only Love" (“Frodo and Grace,” entropyhouse.com).

The blessing Frodo receives through Arwen’s gift of the voyage West is commensurate with his complete donation of heart, body, mind, and soul.

After Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to the Shire, Sam “longs to stay with Frodo forever,” (Bradley 90) but he also wants to be with Rosie. Frodo grants both wishes for a little while.

Alison Milbank beautifully and profoundly describes the enduring bond the Ring-bearer shares with his beloved guardian and their physical sundering at the Grey Havens.

"The main problem for the reader is how to separate in his or her mind two characters who have been a pair all through the novel, and who belong together. Despite his marriage, parenthood and obvious delight in Shire life, Sam is incomplete without Frodo, and Frodo an attenuated presence without Sam’s earthliness. It is partly a problem of analogy, with Sam the ‘answer’ or common feature that unites Blessed Realm and Shire. . . . Tolkien in his essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’ refers to . . . the ‘Great Eucatastrophe’, when all our bodiliness shall share in some sense with our spirit – our Sam with our Frodo side. For Frodo hardly seems to have a body at all in the later parts of The Lord of the Rings, and even his pains back home in the Shire have a spiritual basis. Sam, on the contrary, is not just a reassuring physical presence but an active agent in the rebuilding of his community, and in forming human relationships. The true happy ending of the novel lies beyond the pages of the book, and yet is anticipated in moments such as Sam and Frodo’s descent from Mount Doom, when Sam, a true Bunyanesque ‘Hopeful’, leads the lost and broken Frodo to safety, just as he had borne Frodo and the Ring up to the summit, and found the burden surprisingly light. Sam is not to be reduced to an allegory of the body, for he is much more than that, but the separation of the two at the Grey Havens is emblematic of the sorrow of the separation of the soul and body at death, while their solidarity gives a taste of the ecstatic reunion of soul and body at the Resurrection" (Chesterton and Tolkien 111).

The image that arises is of Sam as the body that encases the soul, and the light that shines softly from Frodo is the light of the soul from within the body. This surpasses what was my favorite description of their blessed bond: “Their mutual regard is . . . akin to the friendship of Jonathan and David: ‘the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul’ (1 Sam. 18:1)” (Wood, Gospel 136). They are actually closer than this, for they are one soul within one body.

Even after Frodo and Sam physically separate, the gardener has a long and fruitful life with his beloved Rose. We hope the Ring-bearer heals from his wounds and that body and soul reunite at long last across the Sundering Seas, sundered no more.

Works Cited

Agan, Cami. “Song as Mythic Conduit in The Fellowship of the Ring.” Mythlore 26, no. 3/4 Issue 101/102 (Spring/Summer 2008): 41-63.

Baillie, C. “Frodo and Grace.” Accessed January 7, 2012.          http://entropyhouse.com/baillie/candme/essays/frodoandgrace.html.

Baker, Kenneth. “My divine friend.” Editorial. Homiletic & Pastoral Review December 2006: 80.

Bradley, Marion Zimmer. “Men, Halfings, and Hero Worship.” Zimbardo and Isaacs 76-92.

Chance, Jane. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. Rev ed. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Gardner, Patrick and Drake Bennet, John Henriksen and Joel Dodson. SparkNotes:”The Lord of the Rings”. New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.

Greenwood, Linda. “Love: ‘The Gift of Death’.” Tolkien Studies Volume II: An Annual Scholarly Review. Ed. Douglas Anderson, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2005: 171-195.      

Hammarskjöld, Dag. Markings. Trans. Leif Sjöberg and W.H. Auden. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.

Hein, Rolland. Christian Mythmakers. 2^nd ed. Chicago: Cornerstone Press Chicago, 2002.

Hendra, Tony. Brotherhood. New York: American Express Publishing Corporation, 2001.

The Jerusalem Bible Reader’s Edition. Gen ed. Alexander Jones. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

 Klinger, Judith. “Hidden Paths of Time: March 13th and the Riddles of Shelob’s Lair.” Tolkien and Modernity 2. Ed. Thomas Honegger and Frank Weinreich. Zollikofen, Switzerland: Walking Tree Publishers, 2006: 143-209.

Mathews, Richard. Lightning from a Clear Sky. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1978.

Milbank, Alison. Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real. London: T & T Clark, 2008.

Purtill, Richard. J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality & Religion. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003.

Sinclair, N. Duncan. Horrific Traumata: A Pastoral Response to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Binghamton, New York: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 1993.

Sheen, Fulton J. Fulton J. Sheen’s Guide to Contentment. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

---. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66.

---. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003.

Zimbardo, Rose A and Neil D. Isaacs, eds. Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Zimbardo, Rose A. “Moral Vision in The Lord of the Rings.” Zimbardo and Isaacs 68-75.

This was originally published in somewhat different form in the fourth issue of Silver Leaves (2012). It has been since modified and adapted in part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press, 2012), which also includes a chapter on The Hobbit. For more details and to order the book, please visit http://ow.ly/ez2dT

The Sacrifice of Frodo

For Tolkien, “the most important part of the whole work [is] the journey through Mordor and the martyrdom of Frodo” (qtd. in Hammond & Scull 615). The hobbit carries the Ring against his skin like a viper clutched to his heart, which bites him again and again and spreads its poison through him. At the beginning of the Quest, it seduces him into participating in his own corruption or at least tries to do so. After this fails, it grows increasingly coercive and tries to bypass its Bearer’s will altogether.

The terrible struggle against the Ring and the despair it engenders tears Frodo apart. Yet as more of his self is taken away, even his memories, he refuses to surrender. He focuses every drop of his heart, soul, will, and strength into actively fighting his spiritual battle. His torment is also his glory. Peter Kreeft notes, “the self is saved only when it is lost, found only when really given away in sacrifice. True freedom comes only when you bind yourself to your duty” (“Wisdom” 46). This Frodo does to the utmost. Even after all hope leaves him, he goes on, holding onto the shreds of his self and struggling to the point of crawling after deprivation and his burden weaken him so much he can do nothing else. He is spent bit by bit on his journey, hallowed for it and hollowed out by it, poured out as “a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God” (Rom. 12:1). Colin Gunton notes, “Again and again we are reminded of biblical texts about the way the power of God works not through the great forces of history but through the cross” (“Far-Off Gleam” 133). Barry Gordon observed that Frodo is “the Lamb whose only real strength is his capacity to make an offering of himself” (qtd. in Kilby, Tolkien 56).

It is on Frodo and Sam’s dark Road that they feel “the dreadful menace of the Power that waited” (LotR VI:3, 914). Sam sees that his master’s hand “would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them” (VI:3, 914). Other times the faithful gardener watches Frodo’s hand creep toward the Ring and then move away. The Ring slowly devours its Bearer, but immortal grace pours in as the hobbit’s mortal strength pours out. This sustains him in his fight not to be wholly overcome. Clyde S. Kilby observes, “One of the clear evidences of Frodo’s increasing greatness of character is his steady will to resist incredible temptation in the face of growing physical weakness” (“Mythic” 139).

After Sam offers to carry the Ring again, Frodo nearly attacks him in a demonstration of the terrible power the demonic object has over its Bearer. The elder hobbit tells his beloved guardian that he is nearly under the Ring’s control and movingly describes the depth of his agony in the most mystical speech in the tale. “No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire” (LotR VI:3, 916). Frodo is facing the ultimate vulnerability. His ordeal strips every bit of his self away and leaves him exposed to his Enemy. He has no way of knowing when the next attack will come, only that it will and he cannot hide or protect himself from it. Yet even in his darkness, with the wheel of fire as the only illumination he can sense, there is still deep union between him and Ilúvatar, to whom he is even more visible. Frodo has become a burning candle set alight by both Light and Dark, a figure “clothed in flame” (LotR VI:1, 890), as Sam saw by the red light in the Tower chamber. Both Ilúvatar’s love for Frodo and Frodo’s own love for Middle-earth are consuming him, as well as the flaming wheel upon which he lies burning. Evil has forced its way into the hobbit’s soul, but Ilúvatar is already there to sustain His child. It is in great part through the willingly endured agony of both Frodo and Sam that Ilúvatar frees Middle-earth from the scourge of Sauron. Pope Benedict XVI’s meditation on the meaning of “Lead us not into temptation” has relevance for the Ring-bearer at this time.

"But should it not put us in mind of the fact that God has placed a particularly heavy burden of temptation on the shoulders of those individuals who were especially close to him, the great saints, from Anthony in his desert to Thérèse of Lisieux in the pious world of her Carmelite monastery? They follow in the footsteps of Job. . . . Even more, they enjoy a very special communion with Jesus Christ, who suffered our temptations to the bitter end. They are called to withstand the temptations of a particular time in their own skin, as it were, in their own souls. They are called to bear them through to the end for us ordinary souls and to help us persist on our way to the One who took upon himself the burden of us all" (Jesus 164).

The Ring overcomes Frodo at the end, but grace gives him enough strength to withstand its assaults until he can complete his task. It is easy to imagine that he does this not just for the “ordinary souls” of Middle-earth but unknowingly also for all those in this age, who have benefitted from his tremendous example of perseverance and endurance through horrific conflict.

Words of Fr. Jacques Phillipe also fit this time in the hobbit’s life.

"Every Christian must be throughly convinced that his spiritual life. . . must be viewed as the scene of a constant and sometimes painful battle, which will not end until death – a struggle against evil, temptation and the sin that is in him. This combat is inevitable, but is to be understood as an extremely positive reality, because, as Saint Catherine of Siena says, ‘without war there is no peace’; without combat there is no victory. And this combat is, correctly viewed, the place of our purification, of our spiritual growth, where we learn to know ourselves in our weakness and to know God in His infinite mercy. This combat is the definitive place of our transfiguration and glorification" (Searching 9).

This is point Frodo has reached. The Ring-bearer’s death to himself gives us a challenging and inspiring example of what sacrifice in service of Ilúvatar means. Sean McGrath makes note of this.

"And here, in Frodo’s agonizing pilgrimage to Mordor and the cracks of Doom the depth of our sacrifice is at last adequately portrayed. For when God asks us to transcend our present state of being he is asking us to break and spend ourselves as relentlessly as Frodo gives his entire being to the quest. . . . Kazantzakis in St. Francis [speaks of] the explosive emotions involved in surrendering to transformation: . . .

. . . He who never once said to poor unfortunate mankind 'Enough!'

'Not enough,' that is what he screamed at me.

'I can’t go further,' whines miserable man.

'You can!' the Lord replies.

'I shall break in two,' man whines again.

'Break!'" (“Passion” 177-178).

After Frodo begins to crawl, Sam carries him, expecting him and the Ring to be a terrible weight, but the gardener finds his burden light. Gwaihir the Eagle had remarked about how light the resurrected Gandalf was after the Istari’s fight against the demonic Balrog. In Frodo’s struggle against the power of another fallen Maia, he is just as burned away as the Grey wizard was.       

At the Mountain, Sam beholds a vision of Frodo’s shining soul, shorn of the veils of flesh that surround it. He also sees the Ring as the wheel of fire that has slowly burned itself into his master’s being. His sight of Frodo clothed in white but also “untouchable now by pity” (LotR VI:3, 922) shows how close the Ring-bearer is to falling off the edge that other white-robed figures had or could have. Saruman was conquered by his lust for power. Gandalf the White remains angelically good and able to withstand the temptation of the Ring, though completely aware that he would be overcome by it if his will did not remain strong. Galadriel was mightily tempted to fulfill her long-held fantasies but successfully resisted. Standing close to them, but still far enough apart to be alone, is Frodo, his soul on the knife’s edge. Sam’s vision shows an exterior image of the terrible inner battle that Frodo has waged for months, and which he is just about to lose, though not willingly. After this transfiguration, Sam sees his master as a spent figure gasping for breath. Both sights are true. Frodo has given everything he possibly can. As Gunnar Urang notes, “the world is saved, ultimately, not just by grace as overwhelming presence and power but by grace as humble redemptive suffering” (Shadows 117). The Ring-bearer has lived and breathed the lesson of perseverance without sight of light or hope of survival, showing how aptly named he is by Gandalf as Bronwe athan Harthad, Endurance beyond Hope (Sauron Defeated 62). Eglerio!

________

Works Cited

Benedict XVI. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Trans.

            Adrian J. Walker. New York: Doubleday, 2007.                              

Gutton, Colin. “A Far-Off Gleam of the Gospel: Salvation in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.”

            Tolkien: A Celebration. Ed. Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001.

Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion.

            Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Kreeft, Peter. “Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights About Evil in The Lord of the

            Rings.” Ed. John G. West, Jr. Celebrating Middle-earth: The Lord of the Rings as a

            Defense of Western Civilization.Seattle: Inkling Books, 2002.

The Jerusalem Bible Reader’s Edition. Gen. ed. Alexander Jones. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

            1966.

Kilby, Clyde S. “Mythic and Christian Elements in Tolkien.” Myth, Allegory and Gospel: An

            Interpretation of J. R. R. Tolkien/C.S. Lewis/G.K. Chesterton/Charles Williams. Ed. John

            Warwick Montgomery. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Fellowship,1974.

---. Tolkien and The Silmarillion. Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1976. (Kilby does not identify Gordon, but  Bradley J. Birzer does in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, p. 69.)

McGrath, Sean. “The Passion According to Tolkien.” Tolkien: A Celebration.

Philippe, Jacques. Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart.

            Trans. George and Jannic Driscoll. Staten Island, NY: St. Pauls/Alba House, 2002.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.

---. Sauron Defeated: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part 4. Ed. Christopher Tolkien.

            Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Urang, Gunnar. Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the Writing of C. S. Lewis, Charles

            Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1971.

__

This was originally published in Amon Hen, Bulletin of The Tolkien Society and is adapted from my forthcoming book Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings. For more details, please visit http://ow.ly/ez2dt.

For my dear harrowcat's birthday

One Lucky Hobbit: The Spiritual Journey of Bilbo Baggins

The Hobbit may appear on the surface merely a children’s story, but to those with deeper sight, it is much more. What happens in it has a profound effect on the events that follow decades later, and it is through Bilbo’s cooperation with grace that helps many things to unfold as they do. As Katharyn Crabbe noted in an essay about the tale, “Both God and man have a hand in shaping all that happens: God through the medium of grace, which Tolkien calls ‘luck,’ and man through his physical and rational excellences, bravery and sense, which, at their best, represent the God-like in man” (“Nature” 57). Crabbe means for this to apply also to a particular hobbit, but how does this all come to pass to become the great adventure of Bilbo’s life?

During Gandalf’s recounting of his search for a way to defeat Smaug, which he tells in the unfinished tale “The Quest of Erebor,” he speaks of his hope of meeting again with the hobbit who had impressed him during his last visit to the Shire years before. Bilbo had not yet come of age then and was curious about the outside world. After the wizard returns in the spring of 1341, he hears reports that the eccentric hobbit often travels and has gone off yet again. A plan forms in Gandalf’s mind. He knows that Bilbo, though a throughly conventional Baggins, also has a strong streak of Took and shares their unrespectable taste for adventure. From what Gandalf hears and his own memories, Bilbo appears an ideal candidate to help defeat the dragon.

Gandalf admits in his recollections that he later thought it a mistake not to check with Bilbo personally first. The fact that the hobbit just happens to be away at the time, however, is meant to be, for the cloaked Maia could have sought elsewhere if he found out earlier that Bilbo had changed. But anyone other than this particular hobbit would have proved ruinous, for a Power beside Gandalf had selected him, as the wizards hints. “‘I dare say he was ‘chosen’ and I was only chosen to choose him,’” (“Erebor” 331).

All Gandalf had to do was convince Bilbo himself. Though the hobbit makes it perfectly clear he is not at all interested in having any adventures, the wizard is not put off and returns later with the dwarves. Bilbo still feels unqualified for and undesirous of what they want to put him up to and insists that some sort of terrible mistake was made. But as the hobbit listens to the dwarves sing of their gold, his Tookish side begins to assert itself, while terror fills his Baggins side so completely he collapses.

Both parts of Bilbo have been aware for some time that he was “chosen and selected” (Hobbit 21) for some great quest, which only now becomes clear. In the “Erebor” narrative, Gandalf gives his hypothesis of why the hobbit chose to remain unmarried. “I guessed that he wanted to remain ‘unattached’ for some reason deep down which he did not understand himself – or would not acknowledge, for it alarmed him. He wanted, all the same, to be free to go when the chance came, or he had made up his courage” (Unfinished Tales 331). This captures in a nutshell how Bilbo and Frodo were both prepared in advance for their vocations, which ultimately carry the heavy cost of leaving behind all they love but each other.

Before the whole plan for Bilbo to discover, embrace, and fulfill his vocation can fall apart, Gandalf reveals two things he has long kept secret. Sauron had captured and tormented Thorin’s father and taken his Ring from him. Thráin died in the dungeons of Dol Guldur, but not before he passed a map and key to Gandalf. The wizard then heeded an intuition to keep them hidden for nearly a century. Musing in the “Erebor” narrative about the odd luck to still have the things, he says he realized only at Bag End exactly what Providence had put into his hands. The items make Thorin more hopeful about the quest, though the dwarves remain doubtful about Bilbo. Gandalf, however, is most adamant that they include the hobbit in their party. The wizard does not know the future, but, as a Maia, he has a deeper intuition than most. He senses that without Bilbo the other much more important events that are to happen will not occur.

After Bilbo wakes in the morning, he finds the dwarves gone. Gandalf enters shortly afterward and practically forces him out the door. It is still Bilbo’s choice, however, that allows for the success of this push. He could have refused, but instead he hurries down to The Green Dragon without even a handkerchief and allows himself to be drawn into that unique part of the Great Music only he can sing.

The reasons why Bilbo must go on his journey soon begin to manifest themselves. The hobbit imprudently decides to live up to his job title as burglar and picks the pocket of one of the trolls. However foolish this is, much good also comes. After Gandalf comes to the rescue and the trolls turn to stone, this part of Middle-earth is now safe for travelers. Even more importantly, Bilbo providentially finds an Elven knife in the trolls’ cave to use as a sword.

Thorin and company continue on to the Last Homely House. It is in this Elven haven that another ‘chance’ happening takes place, as Elrond discovers and translates the moon letters on the dwarven map. The timing of this is nothing but providential, for, as John Rateliff points out, “one particular phase of the moon would only coincide with a specific night of the year roughly once per century” (History of  The Hobbit 124). The dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf leave refreshed and ready once more to resume their journey.

Another moment of grace occurs after Thorin’s company find shelter in a cave from a raging thunder-battle. A restlessness afflicts Bilbo that does not affect anyone else. The hobbit rouses from an uneasy dream and gives a loud cry after he sees it is actually reality. He sees the last of their ponies disappear into a crack in the wall. What causes Bilbo to wake in time to raise the alarm? It is another hint of the Power watching over them. The hobbit’s cry wakes Gandalf, who is the only one who remains free after goblins pour out of the crack and take everyone else captive.

Gandalf rescues Bilbo and the dwarves, but the goblins nearly apprehend them again. In the confusion, the hobbit gets separated from his companions and trapped underground. In a black tunnel, in what appears to be merely a lucky chance, Bilbo blindly puts his hand down upon a small ring lying on the ground. He puts it in his pocket without much thought and continues on his way. He has no idea what he just picked up, what value it has, or what a profound impact this simple action will have on him, his yet unborn cousin Frodo, and, indeed, on all Middle-earth.

This ring is, of course, none other than the Ring, which just shortly before Bilbo came heard its master’s call and slipped away from its bearer to answer. However, it needs a host to travel, and Ilúvatar makes sure it has the right one. From Gandalf’s comments later to Frodo, it is clear that it is neither Bilbo’s choice nor Sauron’s will that the hobbit find the Ring. This event is unforeseen by anyone other than Ilúvatar, who has carefully placed everything and everyone where they need to be for their parts in the Music. Words of King Alfred the Great apply here. “I say, as do all Christian men, that it is a divine purpose that rules, and not fate.”

In the horrible dark, another fateful meeting takes place when Bilbo comes upon Gollum. The creature challenges him to a riddle-game with two possible endings. If Bilbo wins, Gollum will show him the way out; if Gollum wins, he will eat Bilbo.

While Bilbo desperately seeks for answers, Gollum becomes increasingly hungry and begins to get out of his boat in anticipation of a delicious meal. The wicked creature’s lustful haste, however, gives one of the solutions after he puts his foot in the water and disturbs a fish that leaps out and lands right on Bilbo’s feet. It is “pure luck” (Hobbit 74) that provides the next response. Bilbo wishes to blurt out a plea for more time to think, but all that comes out is “Time!” which is precisely the correct response. The hobbit does not even mean it as an answer, but Ilúvatar provides it.

Bilbo is unaware of this providential guidance, but it is easy to see Ilúvatar’s hand in this, for the hobbit is given the answers he needs at the time he needs them without consciously coming to them himself. As the Prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring states, “In the end Bilbo won the game, more by luck (as it seemed) than by wits; for he was stumped at last for a riddle to ask, and cried out, as his hand came upon the ring he had picked up and forgotten: What have I got in my pocket?” (11). It is clear throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that whenever words such as seem, chance, or luck appear, it is a hint of an invisible Power at work. Bilbo does not actually intend his question to be a riddle. Gollum protests vehemently against the breach in the rules, but he attempts to answer anyway. After he cannot, Bilbo holds the creature to his word that he will show Bilbo the way out. Gollum agrees, but says he must gather some things before they set out. By this he means the Ring, which he plans to use to come upon Bilbo invisibly and have his meal after all. Grieved to discover that his precious is missing, and suspecting the loved and loathed treasure is the answer to Bilbo’s non-riddle, Gollum then asks what the hobbit has in his pocket. Bilbo cannot think of a reason why he should not answer such a seemingly innocuous question, but he refuses out of annoyance and impatience to escape. How different things may have turned out if Bilbo had replied and given the Ring back or had it taken from him!

In Bilbo’s desperate flight from his would-be murderer, grace continues to look after him, as is shown after evil defeats itself yet again. The hobbit puts his left hand in his pocket, and the Ring “quietly slip[s] on to his groping forefinger” (Hobbit 78). This is not an act Bilbo consciously wills but one the Ring initiates, as it does with all its bearers in its desire to be discovered. Yet such malevolent intent saves Bilbo’s life at the precise moment it is most needful. The now invisible hobbit trips and falls, and Gollum goes right past him. If Bilbo was not wearing the Ring, Gollum could have easily overwhelmed him in his vulnerable position, but the fleeing hobbit instead is given a great advantage in being able to pursue his pursuer in the hope of escape rather than blindly running away in the dark.

Richard Mathews notes the Ring is “just the size to fit a hobbit finger” (Lightning from a Clear Sky 13). Of course it was not made to do so, yet it does, just as the size of the Elven knife Bilbo found in the troll’s cave is perfect, which Mathews observes as well. Everything is waiting for Bilbo to find and thus fulfill this part of his vocation.

It is not long after Bilbo begins to chase Gollum that he fights within himself one of the most important battles ever waged in Middle-earth. He finds Gollum has unintentionally brought him to the way out, at least as far as the wretched creature is willing to go without risking capture by the goblins, but then stops there, blocking Bilbo’s way. Gollum then detects by hearing and smell that the invisible ‘thief’ of his precious ring is nearby. In Bilbo’s desperation to escape with his life, he faces the temptation that to do so, he must slay his enemy. Certainly this is something that could be easily justified as self-defense. The impulse to kill Gollum disappears, however, as fast as it comes. Sensing for a moment the agony of the creature, the Ring-finder intuitively understands what it means to love an enemy, and this turns Gollum from a feared adversary into a human being with a tormented heart and soul. By restraining his hand, Bilbo has once more laid some important groundwork for the destruction of the Ring and the salvation of his future cousin and heir. No foreknowledge of this moves his heart, however. Rather he responds even more admirably, for he shows “mercy for mercy’s sake alone” (Ware, Finding God in The Hobbit 53; italics in original). Tolkien notes, “[Gandalf] did not mean to say that one must be merciful, for it may prove useful later – it would not then be mercy or pity, which are only truly present when contrary to prudence” (Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien 253). It is easy to see how this merciful act could well turn out to be fatal for Bilbo, as Gollum is still quite intent on eating him, but new strength gives the Ring-finder the ability to spring forward and over his adversary and leave Gollum unharmed. Providence protects Bilbo from knowing how dangerous this jump was, for if he had leapt any higher, he would have hit the ceiling, exposed himself, and likely been killed before he could recover. Instead, he gets away and reunites with his companions.

At the edge of Mirkwood, Gandalf warns them not to depart from the path and then leaves. After starvation, however, begins to haunt Bilbo and the dwarves, they veer away after seeing mysterious lights in the woods. Each time the lights disappear at their approach and then spring up elsewhere. After the third unsuccessful attempt to reach them, another danger ensnares the company as myriad spider webs bind them.

Bilbo cuts himself free with his Elvish knife, which he christens Sting. The hobbit takes advantage of the lust of evil to destroy its prey. In its hurry, it destroys itself.Bilbo puts on the Ring, and the multitude of spiders spin web after web in an effort to trap their invisible and mocking foe. They nearly succeed, but the tale makes clear luck is on Bilbo’s side. Sting “luckily” destroys one web that is thread too hastily. Bilbo leads the spiders on a merry chase before quietly hurrying back to his captured companions. He reaches them because “luckily” one of the spiders left a thick rope hanging down, which the hobbit uses as a ladder. He kills the spider guarding the prisoners and frees Fili and they release the others.

The next day, the Wood-elves, who have already captured Thorin, take the rest of the dwarves prisoner. Bilbo follows invisibly to the gates of the Elvenking’s palace. He battles again with his fear of continuing, but in the nick of time, he decides to go forward. He finds the cells of his companions and tries to figure out how to free them. Providence guides him much here and guards him from discovery by both the Elves and Sauron, as he is wearing the Ring to avoid capture.

In Bilbo’s investigations, he learns of a grand feast, which the king’s butler and chief of guards decide to start early on their own. Their drinking of a particularly potent wine is another lucky event, which is crucial to the implementation of the hobbit’s rescue plan. It puts the Elves to sleep and allows Bilbo to steal the keys to his companions’ cells and free them.

Bilbo has already made the fortunate discovery of barrels that are regularly taken down from the Elvenking’s palace to Lake-town, and it is into these the hobbit stuffs his companions. His luck is particularly evident here because he forgot to plan for his own escape. Unable to close himself into a barrel, he invisibly clings for dear life to the outside of one. He struggles to get on top of it but cannot. His failure is actually a blessing, for it saves him from either being thrown off or crushed between the barrel and the suddenly and steeply sloping roof.

There are two more moments of grace during the trip to Lake-town. Because the stowaways arrive at the tie-up point at night, the Elves do not inspect the barrels. Upon overhearing Elves talking the next morning, Bilbo realizes to his amazement that forsaking the strict warnings not to leave the path is actually the best thing he and his companions could have done. With the river the only way to get to the town, the only way Bilbo and company could have come is the way they actually did.

Another moment comes after Bilbo and the dwarves reach Smaug’s Mountain. After a few days of trying to find a way in without success, the hobbit has a strange feeling something important is about to happen. With this comes the excitement of a ray of sunlight streaming through the clouds and shining upon the keyhole of the door into the Mountain. Thorin turns the key, and they push against the door that allows them entrance.

Bilbo presses beyond his terror to continue into the darkness, but then he stops after he hears Smaug snoring. “Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait” (Hobbit 197). This is the same spiritual warfare the hobbit fought and won while trapped in the goblin tunnels before he met Gollum. Indeed, Bilbo has grown so much that he enters into Smaug’s dreams as a small but mighty warrior. The hobbit makes his way into the dragon’s treasure room while wearing the Ring and steals a cup.

After Bilbo approaches Smaug the second time, he thinks he knows what is ahead because of what he has endured already, but he does not. The dragon wakes and confronts the invisible hobbit who fills the room with riddles and is confident in his ability to evade the worm. In their conversation, Smaug attempts to drive a wedge between Bilbo and his companions and cause the hobbit to doubt the sincerity of the dwarven promise to share an equal part of the treasure or to share at all. Bilbo tries not to let Smaug’s lies bother him and tricks the worm into revealing his vulnerable spot.

After Bilbo returns to the dwarves, he convinces them they must all hide from the dragon. Smaug leaves to get his revenge against Lake-town and while he is gone, Bilbo enters the worm’s treasury a third time. The dragon-sickness inflames the hobbit’s heart the moment he sees the Arkenstone, but Ilúvatar uses this to bring good out of evil, for it becomes clear that Bilbo is not only meant to find the Ring but also this precious artifact. Bilbo takes it and keeps it secret, though rather guiltily.

The dwarves eventually gather their courage to enter and reclaim what stolen wealth they can. It is then one of the greatest moments of grace in this tale, second only to the finding of the Ring, occurs. Thorin finds and gives Bilbo a coat made of priceless mithril as partial payment for all his services. This is the same mail shirt that later saves Frodo’s life.

The good coming from Bilbo’s temporary fall into dragon-sickness is made clear after he goes into the camp of Bard and the Elvenking and surrenders the Arkenstone. The hobbit does not agree with what Thorin had said and done since other claims were made on the treasure, and so he makes his own moral choice. Bilbo has served the dwarves well and faithfully, and his theft of the Arkenstone is part of this, even if they do not realize it at first. Though it is a wrench to give the jewel away, Bilbo knows where his true treasure lies. All he wants is to go home, have his six meals a day, and smoke his pipe by the fire. His ability to detach himself from the Arkenstone for the greater good prepares him to later part with the Ring. Bilbo knows Thorin will not be pleased after finding out what happened, but the hobbit returns out of loyalty to his friends.

After the Battle of the Five Armies, Bilbo and Gandalf return to the Shire. The hobbit comes home with his worldly treasures in time to stop the remaining auction of his more homely ones. In the aftermath, he discovers not only are his silver spoons beyond recovery, but so is his reputation as a conventional hobbit. The latter does not matter to him because through such loss, he has gained so much more. The Baggins part has decided it is not so bad to be a Took, and the Tookish part has decided it is not so bad to be a Baggins. Bilbo is now free to indulge both sides without fear of conflict.

Just as the tale is at its end, Gandalf makes one of the clearest statements about the role of providential guidance in Bilbo’s life. “You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?” (Hobbit 276). These veiled words become clear after it is understood who preserved Bilbo through his trials. In his embrace of the will of the One who sent him on his way, he has proved a very lucky hobbit indeed.

Works Cited

Crabbe, Katharyn F. “The Nature of Heroism in a Comic World.” Readings on J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Katie de Koster. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. 54-60.

Mathews, Richard. Lightning from a Clear Sky. San Bernardino: Borgo Press, 1978.

Rateliff, John D. The History of  The Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

---. The Hobbit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

---. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

---. “The Quest of Erebor.” Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. 321-336.

Ware, Jim. Finding God in The Hobbit. [Colorado Springs, CO?]: SaltRiver, 2006.

This was originally published in the June 2012 issue of Beyond Bree. It is taken in good part from my book, Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings (WestBow Press, 2012), which also includes a chapter on The Hobbit. To order the book, go to http://ow.ly/ez2dT. You can also find me at www.facebook.com/annemariegazzolo and www.pinterest.com/authorannemarie.

This was originally published on Britta Siemen's blog (tolkienbritta.blogspot.com) October 2015

Janet Brennan Croft states, “One of the grimmest lessons The Lord of the Rings teaches about war is that some of the mental wounds it causes never heal in this world. Frodo is Tolkien’s prime example of the heartbreaking effects of war on certain minds” (War and Works of J. R. R. Tolkien 133). Verlyn Flieger observes:

The peace won for Middle-earth through his efforts is not his to enjoy, and he gets no recognition of his achievement on his return to the Shire he saved. Worst of all, he has lost the Ring he carried for so long and that has left its indelible mark on him… Its loss cannot be made up, and Frodo is bereft of more than a finger. He is like the thousands of returning servicemen…who come back to a world that has no way to understand where they have been or what they have been through. In 1916 they called it shell shock… Now we call it post-traumatic stress disorder. (Interrupted Music 142)

The remarkable poem “The Sea-Bell” provides evidence of the Ring-bearer’s PTSD, if viewed through the lens of its subtitle, Frodos Dreme. Tolkien noted that the hobbit likely did not write the poem himself but that one can observe within it the “dark and despairing dreams which visited him in March and October during his last three years” (Tolkien Reader, “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” [“ATB”] 9). 

While on the Quest to destroy the Ring, Frodo receives several physical wounds, but the relentless mental traumas cause the deepest harm. From any one of them, he likely could have used the “amazing power of recovery” that Gandalf notes hobbits have (LotR III.11.580). But the Ring-bearer receives little time to do this. Even before he reaches Bree, he faces threats from the Black Rider and the barrow-wight. The Morgul-wound he receives on Weathertop places him in deadly peril until Elrond heals him.

More traumas follow from the Watcher in the Water, witnessing Gandalf’s fall in Moria, and the shadowy but real danger of Gollum’s pursuit of the Company. Frodo knows someone follows them, but he does not know if or when he will face betrayal and capture by Orcs or Ringwraiths. Lothlórien offers a respite, but Galadriel’s Mirror also reveals the Eye of Sauron that actively seeks him. 

The damage to Frodo continues to mount after the Company leaves the Golden Wood. The threats to his life include the Orc attack on the River Anduin; Boromir’s fall to the lure of the Ring, the terrible struggle on Amon Hen, the search of the Nazgûl for him, the intense sense of vulnerability and naked exposure to the ever-present Eye, the stress of not knowing at first whether Faramir is trustworthy, the “deadly regard” (IV.9.704) and sting of Shelob, the capture by Orcs and whippings in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, the unwitting re-capture on the way to Mount Doom, and the loss of his finger in the Sammath Naur. These multiple traumas meet Criteria A for PTSD, which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] defines as “[e]xposure to actual or threatened death [or] serious injury” either by “directly experiencing the traumatic event(s) [and/or] witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others” (271).

Criteria B requires that the trauma(s) be relived through dreams, flashbacks, or “recurrent, involuntary and intrusive distressing memories” (DSM 271). “Intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s)” is another element (DSM 271). A flashback of the Ring-bearer’s torment in the Tower of Cirith Ungol could explain the vision Frodo has there of Sam as an Orc. His anniversary illnesses provide even clearer evidence that he continues to suffer from past terrors. On the way home, the Ring-bearer has his first experience with these near the Ford of Bruinen a year after the attack on Weathertop. Frodo suffers physically from his injury and “the memory of darkness is heavy on [him]” (LotR VI.7.967). His companions note that he does not seem aware of them or his surroundings. He does not recover until the end of the next day. Though N. Duncan Sinclair does not speak of the hobbit, his observations about the intensity of flashbacks certainly apply: 

Physically, emotionally, and spiritually the old moment [the original trauma] is relived, not just remembered. The unconscious cannot tell time, and when it projects the [trauma] onto the present moment, the time is both then and now. During some of these instances, the present is dimmed to the point where it is actually lost for periods of time. This is not a loss of reality, as is experienced in certain forms of mental illness. Rather, it is an experience of being captured by a past reality come to life in the present moment. (Horrific Traumata, emphasis in original 53) 

Farmer Cotton witnesses the Ring-bearer’s first March illness upon discovering him “half in a dream,” lamenting the loss of the Ring. By the 25^th, Frodo has recovered, though there is no mention of how long this took. The following October, Sam discovers his master in the throes of another flashback, “looking very strange. He was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away.” This time the illness only “seem[s] to pass” (LotR VI.9.1002). The next March, Frodo makes a concentrated effort to hide his illness from Sam. This time, the Ring-bearer shows more awareness of himself and his surroundings, but there is also no note of a recovery. 

Criteria C includes “Avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders…that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s)” (DSM 271). Frodo does not wish to wear a sword after he wakes in Ithilien, but he reluctantly does so after both Gandalf and Sam say he should. He is adverse to cross the Ford of Bruinen, but he forces himself to do so. Once they come near Weathertop, he pleads for his friends to hurry and does not look at the hill. 

Criteria D is associated with “Negative alterations in cognitions and mood associated with traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred” (DSM 271). These includes “persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself”; “persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others”; and “persistent negative emotional state (e.g. fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame)”; and lack of interest and withdrawal from activities (DSM 272). The guilt-inspired thought that an evil act was freely and actively willed by the person “may be the most devastating of all because it makes you doubt your own goodness as a human being” (Goulston 150). Though no one else blames Frodo for crumbling under the Ring’s demonic assault at the end, “what Frodo himself felt about the events is quite another matter” (Tolkien, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien 327). Frodo carries not only the burden of “nightmare memories of past horrors...but also unreasoning self-reproach: he saw himself and all that he done as a broken failure” (Tolkien, Letters 328). Even after he tells Sam that he knows he is nearly in the Ring’s power, he still considers himself free to decide what to do at the Fire, and so judges his claim of the Ring as an evil choice of his own will. Tolkien noted that Frodo possibly had no memories of his own of that most terrible of all the assaults against his soul and will (Letters 252). It is no wonder then that he believed that he fully willed to claim the Ring himself after Sam told him what he had said: “I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” (LotR VI.3.924). He would consider as no consequence the fact that he spoke in a tone of voice he had never used before. But it is another hint that it was not truly his own voice and will. Tom Shippey remarks, “It is…interesting that Frodo does not say, ‘I choose not to do’, but ‘I do not choose to do’. Maybe (and Tolkien was a professor of language) the choice of words is absolutely accurate. Frodo does not choose; the choice is made for him” (Tolkien: Author of the Century 140). Flieger observes, “His use of choose and will makes it clear that he believes he is acting freely. But the negative, the repeated not is telling evidence that his will has been perverted and his choice preempted” (Splintered Light 153-154, emphasis in original). 

Frodo has not reached this point of understanding yet himself, and so he does not realize that his will was the least free then to make its own choice. With all the other memories stolen from him were the lessons learned after Weathertop, at Minas Morgul, and in Mordor, about the coercive powers of evil to subvert his will to its own. He would only hear those terrible words of seeming free choice echo over and over in his mind, and he would believe them to be his own. Whose else could they be? Anyone who has suffered guilt and depression over what they perceive to be a horrible weakness that they alone have will be familiar with how crippling this false perception can be. But while trapped by it, they do not realize it is false. Flieger notes this “deeper, self-inflicted” injury is Frodo’s “greatest unhealed wound” (“Wounds,” Green Suns and Faërie 291).

After the hobbits rout the ruffians and Frodo resigns as Deputy Mayor, the wounded Ring-bearer “drop[s] quietly out of all the doings of the Shire” (LotR VI.9.1002). Sinclair notes, “The emotional pain of PTSD engrosses the victim to such a degree that there is neither energy nor reason to reach out beyond the self; the inner warfare is profound and consumes from within” (Traumata 68-69).

A traumatized person may also have episodes of disassociation. On the way to Rivendell after the attack on Weathertop, in the Dead Marshes and beyond, at Minas Morgul, in Mordor, and in the grip of his first three anniversary illnesses, Frodo exhibits symptoms of this, either in the form of derealization or depersonalization. The former is “Persistent or recurrent experiences of unreality of surroundings (e.g. the world around the individual is experienced as unreal, dreamlike, distant, or distorted)” (DSM 272). As the shard of the Morgul-blade inches toward the Ring-bearer’s heart, dark dreams plague him. The real world around him grows more shadow-like, and the wraith-world becomes more real. In the Dead Marshes, after Sam tells him not to look at the lights, Frodo responds, “as if returning out of a dream” (LotR IV.2.613). After the hobbits leave the Marshes and the Noman-lands, they see the vileness of the land before them and stand as though “on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks” (IV.2.617). In the Tower of Cirith Ungol, the first thing Frodo asks Sam is “Am I still dreaming?” (VI.1.889). He asks whether he had truly heard singing below him or not. This dreamlike state passes after the vision of Sam as an Orc lusting for the Ring clears away, but it returns while on the tortuous way to Mount Doom. Sam notes that his master does not always seem aware of what is front of him. He also observes Frodo raise his hand, as though to fend off a blow from an invisible foe, which is perhaps a flashback to the Orcs whipping him in the Tower. He vividly describes to Sam that the world around him has become solely the world of the Ring: “No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades” (VI.3.916).

The characteristics of derealization are “Persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one were an outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body (e.g. feeling as though one were in a dream; feeling a sense of unreality of self or body or of time moving slowly)” (DSM 272). The most vivid example of this is at Minas Morgul. Frodo feels detached from his own body, as he senses the powerful force that wishes him to put on the Ring: “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” (LotR IV.8.691). The Ring-bearer has an altered perception of time in Cirith Ungol. “It seems weeks” before Sam comes to rescue him (VI.1.889). 

The severity of PTSD includes factors such as the cause of the trauma, their number, the chance they will reoccur, and “the degree to which the trauma violated your personal boundaries” (Goulston 36). Frodo suffers physical violations by Morgul-blade, Shelob’s sting, Orc whips, and Gollum’s teeth, but the deepest wounds are the ones the Ring causes. Ginna Wilkerson likens the torment the hobbit suffers as akin to domestic violence. But unlike a battered person who may escape, Frodo cannot step away from the torture. He can only resist it and bear it as well as he can. He must keep his assailant with him in the hope of destroying it before it destroys him. More and more he suffers the deprivation of adequate sleep, warmth, food, and water. The Ring creates within its Bearer a sense of isolation and loneliness that cuts him off even from his memories. Its weight is an increasingly unbearable burden. His ordeal slowly strips away every bit of himself, every layer of defense he has against his Enemy and leaves him feeling completely exposed. In the Dead Marshes, he senses “[t]he Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off. Frodo knew just where the present habitation and heart of that will now was… He was facing it, and its potency beat upon his brow” (LotR IV.2.616). He does not know when the next full-scale attack from the Ring will come, only that it will and that he cannot hide or protect himself from it. 

The closer Frodo gets to the Fire, the more the Ring tries to coerce his will. After it can no longer seduce him, it attempts to bypass his will altogether and force itself upon him, which in the end it does. It is no stretch to say that Frodo is brutally and repeatedly raped, not in the form of physical assaults, but in how such attacks affect the ability of the victim’s mind, heart, and will to make a free choice, as it forces one into a situation where one person exerts control over another. Such victims are at high risk of developing PTSD. 

Of all these trials, Frodo leaves moving testimony within the Red Book, but he remains almost silent about his worst pain. Sam twice told him on the Quest not to speak of such things, but he could done so unknowingly. Given his propensity to talk in his sleep, as Gandalf noted in Rivendell, Sam could have recorded “The Sea-Bell” from Frodo’s own lips. Certainly the words haunted the unknown recorder enough to associate the words in the poem with the darkness of the Ring-bearer’s last years. Sinclair notes, “The most corrosive impact of emotional trauma is to be found in the spiritual fabric of persons. This is where the prolonged damage is created” (Traumata 65). This involves the “death of the spirit” and “fragmentation of the self,” which includes loss of hope, intimacy, future, peacefulness, healing memory, spontaneity, wholeness, innocence, trust, and awe (Traumata x). 

The traveler in the poem suffers many of these losses, as does Frodo. If the two are one and the same, it gives heart-wrenching evidence of the depth of the damage done to the Ring-bearer. The call of the sea-bell and the arrival of the ship appear invitations to journey to a far land. A ship is ready to take Frodo as well, who receives the invitation to go West from the Valar via Arwen. The traveler’s arrival at a distant shore begins pleasantly enough. He drinks to his heart’s content and soaks in beautiful sights and songs. But it soon turns to a place of rejection and despair rather than welcome and hope, which brings about a keen loss of intimacy, as any time the sojourner approaches, the music ceases and the singers disappear. No one speaks to him even after his pleas that someone do so. Frodo would have known of the Mirkwood Elves fleeing Bilbo and the dwarves in the same manner, and he faces his own shunning by his fellow hobbits after he returns to the Shire. The hobbits who never left home have no idea what happened ‘out there,’ and they have no desire to know. They do not give the Ring-bearer any support or appreciation, and likely they thought him even more cracked than before. This lack of approval validates and reinforces the self-reproach Frodo feels and causes Sam’s heart to ache.

The traveler’s self-proclamation as king of the land he comes to echoes the moment that in Frodo’s mind, he freely claimed the Ring.“I am the Lord of the One Ring - and of ALL Rings!” the hobbit exclaims in The Lord of the Rings musical (qtd. in Wagner, “Arresting Strangeness,” Silver Leaves 3). Sean T. Collins notes:

The dreme-Frodo additionally attempts to make contact with others by crowning himself a makeshift king, demanding with tongue in cheek that his subjects come forth. For this he is laid low by shadow a year, emerging grey and broken. The guilt of his self-betrayal in Mount Doom, the moment where the Ring finally corrupted him and he proclaimed it his, weighs heavily on him. … His stabbing with the morgul-blade on Weathertop, his use of the Ring – they are still with him, and the nightmare state of undeath they showed him is all his unconscious mind can see for itself in its future. (“Roots and Beginnings,” Vorpalizer.com)

After Frodo’s return to the Shire, he warns his fellow hobbits not to be deceived by the poison of Saruman’s voice, but is he deceived by it himself in the wizard’s prediction of a short life? A sense of a foreshortened future is symptomatic of PTSD.

Both the sojourner in the poem and Frodo suffer from a loss of peacefulness and wholeness. The madness that follows the traveler’s proclamation recalls Frodo’s memories of Sméagol-Gollum: “Like a dark mole groping I went, / to the ground falling, on my hands crawling, / with eyes blind and my back bent. /…/ wandering in wit” (“ATB” 59). The traveler, now more of a trespasser, remains in this pitiful state for a year and a day, then in winter, the boat returns him to where he came from. But there is still no welcome for him. He talks only to himself because those he encounters shun him as though he is not even there. Flieger observes, “He is changed forever, taken out of his time, lost from the otherworld and estranged from his own, very much like Frodo was after his return from Mordor to the Shire, not just ‘falling asleep again’ but caught in a nightmare from which he cannot waken” (A Question of Time 216).

“Where shall I find rest?” Frodo wonders on the way home (LotR VI.7.967). Even though he receives some temporary reprieves at Tom Bombadil’s house, Rivendell, Lothlórien, and Henneth Annún and even laughs and jokes along the way, the bludgeon of repeated trauma and the terrible burden of despair slowly break him. He has nightmares during the Quest and flashbacks afterwards. Peacefulness will not be his to find any longer in Middle-earth. Gandalf’s words about incurable wounds carry increasing weight, as Frodo endures the daily struggle to live in a world and within a shattered self that without the Ring is “dark and empty” (VI.9.1001). His guilt and sense of failure rob him of healing memory and also make him especially vulnerable to the fear that peace will not be available for him anywhere. “If the speaker is Frodo, the reader is being told that he sees himself as irrecoverably lost, condemned to a half life that is no life at all, suspended between two worlds. His sacrifice has led to no redemption. Something in Tolkien wanted the reader to hear Frodo in the poem and to link the poem’s situation with what might have happened to him” (Light 163). Tom Shippey notes that subtitle of the poem points in part to “a sense of ultimate defeat and loss in the hero of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo doubted his own salvation” (The Road to Middle-earth 285).

“I must find the sea! / I have lost myself, and I know not the way, / but let me gone!” (“ATB” 59). Though the traveler speaks these words after he loses his trust of the land where he first found haven but then rejection, Flieger notes, “His despairing cry…recalls Frodo at the end of The Lord of the Rings” (Light 162). The Ring-bearer’s reply to Sam that Rivendell held everything but the Sea demonstrates how much he already longs for it.

“At last there came light in my long night” (“ATB” 59). For the traveler, this means leaving the place that broke him. For Frodo, the possibility of the journey West remains before him and illuminates the dark places of his anguish. Arwen’s two gifts to Frodo signal that she sees the deep but invisible scars that he carries in his mind, heart, and soul. Galadriel’s wish/prayer in her song as the Company leaves Lórien that Frodo would find Valimar shows she sees them as well, far before they are as deep as they would become. These Elven ladies are especially suited to recognize Frodo’s wounds because centuries before they saw similar ones in Celebrían, who had suffered assault by Orcs and fled West to heal from the mental torment. The Valar bless their desire to give Frodo the same light in his dark night that Celebrían had.

The traveler says, “I cast away all that I bore” (“ATB” 60). He abandons the sand from the far land and the sea-bell that had called once and never would again. He has lost the awe of the far shore that was at first so marvelous and then become such an wasteland with no solace or peace for him. This loss is “the inability to believe that there can be anything greater than that which inflicted the original pain…All has been rendered insignificant by the awfulness of the trauma” (Traumata 72). If there was a more powerful presence in Frodo’s life than his torment, such as the love of friends, then he may have stayed. But no, the agony of his shattered heart and spirit is greatest. Christine Chism notes that the empty shell cast away “is what Frodo in his darkest moments feels he has become” (“Middle-earth,” Tolkien the Medievalist 71). The sacrifices he makes in offering his body, mind, heart, and soul to the Quest are so complete that what remains is not enough to sustain him in Middle-earth. Like the traveler, he must abandon the place where he hoped he would find haven. Flieger observes, “Whoever the voice in ‘The Sea-bell’ is intended to be…the words of the poem, the suffering of the speaker, describe an experience all too recognizable to anyone who lived through it, of alienation from the reference points of familiar experience, of a world gone past the point of no return, longing for something it once had and ought to have been able to keep” (Question 224). Frodo tells Sam about this, as it dawns upon the faithful gardener and guardian that his master is not going to Rivendell but leaving Middle-earth all together. 

“But,” said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, “I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.”

“So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.” (LotR VI.9.1006)

Flieger observes, “[T]he speaker in ‘The Sea-bell’ (who may be Frodo, is certainly Tolkien, and very probably all humanity) is important to the myth precisely because he experiences change. He is a man of antitheses, both spiritually and literally between worlds, having lost one and not yet gained another. He is poised in the moment of greatest loss, which paradoxically will bring with it the experience of becoming” (Light 171).

Even though Flieger says the poem is of  “such unmitigated alienation and despair as to negate hope of any kind,” she also notes, “The ‘dreme’ (if it is a dream) should be seen over against another dream which gives a considerably more hopeful…picture. This is Frodo’s last dream in the house of Tom Bombadil” (Light 162). “But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind; a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise” (LotR I.8.132).

On the Quest, Sam taught Frodo about the radical hope which refused to give up no matter how dark and despairing things appeared. If the Ring-bearer’s dreams reflected the fear that the blessing to come West was false, and that, as the traveler in the poem found, he would reach for it and find it empty and himself even more desolate and alone, his courage to make the decision to leave shows he did not allow his doubts to overwhelm him. Sam’s unquenchable hope and the reward it received would give Frodo the strength to believe that, unlike the traveler and unlike his own nightmares, he would not be forsaken by all but born to a new life, that he would not be a rejected trespasser but a welcomed guest. In casting away the empty shell, he readies himself to embrace the possibility of being filled again. In this hope, or the desperation of the traveler, or both, he flees and takes the chance that his fears are not reality and that instead healing and peace await him. The Ring-bearer would no longer be trapped in the Sammath Naur at the moment of his greatest violation and loss, but he would descend the Mountain at last, free at last from the crushing burden of guilt and failure. Let us hope it was so.

Works Cited 

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5^th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

Chism, Christine. “Middle-earth, the Middle Ages, and the Aryan nation: Myth and history in World War II.” Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance. New York: Routledge, 2003

Collins, Sean T. “Roots and Beginnings: ‘The Sea-Bell, or Frodo’s Dreme’ by J. R. R. Tolkien.” Vorpalizer, n.d. 12 July 2013.

Croft, Janet Brennan. War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.

Flieger, Verlyn.“The Body In Question: The Unhealed Wounds of Frodo Baggins.” Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2012.

———. Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005.

———. A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997.

———. Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World. Revised ed. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002.

Goulston, Mark, M.D. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2008

Sinclair, N. Duncan. Horrific Traumata: A Pastoral Response to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Binghamton, New York: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 1993.

Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

———. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Revised and expanded ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 

———. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King. 2^nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66.

———. “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from The Red Book.” The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.

Wagner, Constance C.J. “Arresting Strangeness: Fantasy Fulfilled in The Lord of the Rings on Stage.” Silver Leaves ... from the White Tree of Hope (White Tree Fund, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) 3 (2009/2010): 74-87.

Wilkerson, Ginna. “So Far From the Shire: Psychological Distance and Isolation in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore 27, no. 1/2, Issue 103/104 (Fall/Winter 2008): 83-91. 

One of the most enduring mysteries of Middle-earth is who is that strange figure who wears big boots and loves to sing in nonsensical rhymes, who holds and wields wondrous power over others yet remains unaffected by how that could corrupt, who even the great and terrible Ring cannot rule? For someone seemingly so silly, what important part does he play in the history of Middle-earth as its Third Age closes?

I myself hold with the opinion that Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are Maiar. That does not explain, however, why he remains not only visible while wearing the Ring but apparently completely immune to its allure. Simply being Maia is not sufficient reason, as Gandalf and Saruman are as well. The Grey wizard fears and respects the Ring’s power enough to know that he is not equal to conquering its ability to corrupt him or anyone else. Saruman falls under its sway without even beholding it. How is Tom able to withstand its power so easily? Part of it could be his humility and his utter lack of covetousness and desire to venture beyond the borders he set for his land. He is completely content to be at one with his own little world, not to rule it but to be in harmony and at peace with it. Tom is Master, as Goldberry notes, and the poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” demonstrates this. Several beings try to capture Tom and none succeed. Goldberry herself upon first meeting Tom tries to take him to her underwater home. Old Man Willow, a badger, and a barrow-wight all try to hold him as well, but all of them release Tom at his bidding. This irresistible obedience could make one into another Dark Lord if such power was corrupted, but there is no danger of that in Tom. His strength to command others is great, but it does not flow from a tainted source, as it does from the Ring’s creator or would from anyone who claims it for their own. This is the key as to why the fell object does not have any hold over Tom. Tolkien notes that “if you have as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless” (Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien 179). But, as Tolkien further observes, to be able to continue to live such an existence, there had to be others who take control to confront events that are beyond the concern of those who had renounced everything.

Tom is clear in the Red Book about his refusal to venture beyond a certain point, but his and Goldberry’s presence and actions within these set boundaries have a profound effect on those who travel far beyond them. Tom answers Frodo’s panicked cry after Old Man Willow swallows Merry and Pippin. Their mysterious rescuer subdues the wicked tree and brings them to his home. Again, he could have with the power that is in him done far more than to command that the spirited tree release the hobbits, but he does not. 

As the hobbits hear Goldberry singing, she fills Frodo’s heart with a joy that he does not entirely comprehend. Taryne Jade Taylor observes, “Upon seeing Goldberry and witnessing her power, Frodo has noticed her resonances of the Great Music of the Ainur, although he may not recognize it as such” (“Investigating the Role and Origin of Goldberry in Tolkien’s Mythology,” 153). Rolland Hein also notes the profound effect Goldberry (and later Arwen) have on the Ring-bearer. “These women . . . are . . . creating a desire to achieve great goodness, a sensation of exhilaration and capability, and an inspiration towards the realization of high destiny” (Christian Mythmakers 201). Taylor continues, “Goldberry’s task . . . is not simply to represent goodness and joy, but to cleanse the hobbits” (“Investigating” 153). She notes that Tom and his lady bring back the hobbits’ love of nature, which was damaged by the malice in the Old Forest. They are no longer as naive as they were before leaving the Shire, but they have not lost their “love and innate joy in the world” (ibid. 154). Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware state that “Just to stand in [Goldberry’s] presence was to feel the strength of an unshakable joy, the joy of knowing and celebrating one’s place in the grand scheme of the world” (Finding God in The Lord of the Rings 32). 

After a hearty meal, Frodo asks if Tom heard his cries for help. Tom says no, but his hints to the hobbits make it clear that someone called him to be nearby at that particular moment: “Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it. It was no plan of mine, though I was waiting for you” (LOTR 123-124). This is, of course, not a chance meeting at all, any more than coming upon Gildor was or any of the other fateful encounters to come. They are all part of the Music composed before the dawn of time. When speakers refer to such as fortunate coincidences, and especially when they qualify them as Tom does to imply that the opposite is true, it is because they suspect or know that Providence is instead at work.

Before Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin leave Tom and Goldberry, a vision of the West blesses the Ring-bearer. The River-daughter spiritually fortifies the hobbits for the arduous road ahead by telling them to remain determined to carry on with what they have set out to do. As Taylor notes, she “instills in the hobbits the wisdom, love and hope of Ilúvatar as they were passed to her in the Original Music” (“Investigating” 155).

After Tom rescues the hobbits once more, this time from the barrow-wight, he gives them swords that were wrought many centuries before. During the hunt for the Ring, the Lord of the Nazgûl roused the wights to watch for the Ring-bearer, but this malicious will and that of Old Man Willow was used for good. Without encountering the Willow, perhaps the hobbits would have never met Tom, and without becoming lost in the fog and captured by the wight, they could not have received blades that were made especially with spells against the Witch-king. The wraith’s desire to harm others helps defeat him in the end. Michael Martinez states, “Can it be anything other than an act of divine providence that Merry just happens to be in the right place at the right time to help Eowyn defeat the Lord of the Nazgul? . . . . Ilúvatar could make his will known to some servants (such as Manwë) and through others (such as Aragorn), it follows that he could give Tom (whatever he is) a helping hand in choosing swords for the Hobbits” (“Count, Count, Weigh, Divide,” Understanding Middle-earth 439) Faramir also owes a debt to Tom, for he would have been murdered by his own father if Pippin had not been there to save him. Pippin would not have been there if Tom had not saved his life twice. The Ring could well have returned to its master if Frodo had not roused in the burial mound and cried out to Tom.

Virtually all adaptations of the tale ignore Bombadil completely. Even Tolkien himself notes that Tom “is not an important person - to the narrative” (Letters 178). But in fact, he is very important because there would be no tale without him, at least not the one we know. One shudders to think of what would have happened if the Ring-bearer was offered up in the barrow and the Witch-king and his master been triumphant over all. All of Middle-earth owes a great debt to this mysterious being who seemingly was not concerned with the affairs of the greater world, yet enabled others to play the roles they are meant to because he was involved with what went on within his borders. They in turn enable Tom’s continued existence in contentment because they were willing to leave their peaceful land and go to war.

Works Cited

Bruner, Kurt and Jim Ware. Finding God in The Lord of the Rings. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2001.

Hein, Rolland. Christian Mythmakers. 2^nd ed. Chicago: Cornerstone Press, 2002. 

Taylor, Taryne Jade. “Investigating the Role and Origin of Goldberry in Tolkien’s Mythology.” Mythlore 27, no. 1/2 Issue 103/104 (Fall/Winter 2008): 147-156.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

———. The Lord of the Rings. 2^nd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66. 

Martinez, Michael. Understanding Middle-earth. Poughkeepsie, NY: ViviSphere Publishing, 2003. 

A/N: This was previously published in Amon Hen, the Bulletin of The Tolkien Society.

   There are many journeys the souls of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Dwarves take during the War of the Ring. None are darker or more illuminating than Frodo’s trial of love. The light of this shines through, just as light and love shine through Bilbo’s.

            J. R. R. Tolkien mentioned in a letter to Milt Waldman The Lord of the Rings is seen through the eyes of hobbits “to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in ‘world politics’ of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil)” (Letters 160).           But not all the Wise and Great are ignorant of the special value hobbits have.

            “Bilbo was specially selected by the authority and insight of Gandalf as abnormal: he had a good share of hobbit virtues: shrewd sense, generosity, patience and fortitude, and also a strong ‘spark’ yet unkindled. The story and its sequel are . . . about the achievements of specially graced and gifted individuals. I would say . . . ‘by ordained individuals, inspired and guided by an Emissary to ends beyond their individual education and enlargement’” (Letters 365). Frodo is a “Hobbit of exceptional character. Frodo is also a friend of the Elves, knowledgeable in their language and a lover of their songs. Like Bilbo - or any other good Hobbit - Frodo loves good food and simple comforts, but he is also thoughtful and curious and has a wisdom and strength of character that set[s] him apart” (Gardner et al. 10). What also differentiates the Bagginses from many of their fellow hobbits is their long-suppressed and unhobbit-like thirst for adventure. “Bilbo himself recognizes Frodo as his heir to more than just the good life of Bag End. Rather, he senses in him a questing soul to match, perhaps even surpass, his own” (Wagner, “War” 339). Patricia Meyer Spacks mentions several other traits they share:

Both hobbits possess the same morality, share the same virtues. They are unfailingly loyal, to companions and to principles. They are cheerful in the face of adversity, persistent to the point of stubbornness in the pursuit of a goal, deeply honest, humble in their devotion to those they consider greater than they. And as their most vital attributes they possess ‘naked will and courage.’ (83)

            This last virtue comes from the northern mythologies Tolkien admired and speaks of in his essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” It is no surprise then hobbits receive the most important roles in The Lord of the Rings and its predecessor. In the unfinished tale “The Quest of Erebor,” Gandalf says he knew the type of hobbit he wanted: a combination of adventurous Took and grounded Baggins. He is well aware the choice of Bilbo was not his alone. He was himself selected as the instrument through which another let His will be known (331). The One who truly chose Bilbo did so for a far greater reason than mere burglar. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf makes it clear Frodo was set apart as well.

            Bilbo discovers his long-buried desire for adventure prepares and strengthens him for a life-changing journey. All of Middle-earth benefits as he exercises this atrophied muscle. The Shire and Bag End lend power to Frodo to confront and overcome his fears to embrace his awe-ful calling. Richard Mathews notes the special virtue of hobbit dwellings: “This is ‘comfort’ in its most deeply rooted sense, as it come into Middle English from the Latin and Old French: ‘to strengthen’” (8). Bilbo is strengthened by his adventures, and Frodo is strengthened for them.

            Ryan Marotta notes, “At its heart, Bilbo’s journey is a spiritual one, centered equally on his own development and the transfiguration of the world around him. By allowing himself to grow, Bilbo participates in the growth of Middle-earth” (76). Corey Olsen observes, “Bilbo’s experiences from his journey . . . will do more than change and shape him personally, helping him to value his peaceful life more when he returns to it. His story will reach out to influence others, granting them a measure of the wisdom that Bilbo himself is gaining through his memorable, if often painful, experiences” (216). Both of these remarks easily apply to Frodo as well. Constance G. J. Wagner’s words about Frodo are equally true of Bilbo:

. . . all come away changed because of their connection with this one seemingly simple soul.

Frodo’s freely accepted role as Ringbearer with all its attendant burdens regarding the fate of Middle-earth, makes him a channel of grace - first for those most intimately connected with him; then at the end of his soul journey, for all of Middle-earth. (“Sacramentum” 83; emphasis in original)

            Bilbo has no idea his terrifying experience in the goblin tunnels leads to his vocation as Ring-finder. Indeed, not even Tolkien realized at first all the implications of this. Frodo is aware he is chosen and a doom placed upon him. He does not know who did this or why. Nonetheless both hobbits fearfully and courageously follow the paths laid out for them. The Hobbit’s narrator rightly praises Bilbo as he approaches Smaug: “Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone . . .” (Hobbit 264).

            Bilbo and Frodo repeatedly face this spiritual warfare, the war with the self over fear. As they push past imagined limits, they discover much about strengths they did not know they had. Jim Ware notes, “Oddly enough, the God-directed inner self seems to require conflict for the development of a keen spiritual edge” (138; emphasis in original). Bilbo and Frodo demonstrate this as each trial overcome fortifies them for the next. “Bilbo was blessed, but that doesn’t mean his path was easy. . . . Bilbo was called upon to endure great hardships, sometimes almost more than he could bear. He ended up in tight situations again and again, and he repeatedly faced danger. But because he was blessed, he was eventually delivered from all his troubles” (Strauss 182-183; emphasis in original). These words describe Frodo as well.

            Ilúvatar does not entrust the destruction of the Ring to the strong and mighty. No, He chooses from among the ‘weak.’ The destinies of both Bilbo and Frodo are “meant” to be intertwined with the Ring’s fate. But both Baggineses, not to mention Sam, must choose to cooperate or not with this doom. Bilbo could have dug in his heels and decided to stay home and not follow the dwarves. He could have gone but decided to slay Gollum or refused to give up the Ring after his birthday party.

            The Quest Frodo undertakes is no ordinary fairy tale to seek to gain something of great power. His task is to lose what Bilbo found: in fact to face and to even embrace the peril of the loss of himself. During this long and torturous trial, he could have refused his calling at any number of points. Indeed, he tries to do so, but he always returns to it. Even with his knowledge of the Ring’s evil, he could have chosen to claim it or surrendered to despair and abandoned the Quest. Any of these or other myriad choices the Bagginses make along the way could have destroyed their vocations and Middle-earth with it. Instead they choose to throw away the comfortable, peaceful time they enjoy in the Shire, Rivendell, and other havens to go further into danger. Frodo does not will to do this because the consequences of refusal are too horrific to imagine, but because he can imagine them.

            In Frodo’s devotion to the mission entrusted to him, he gives a wonderful example of total abandonment to Providence. He does not believe he has the strength for the arduous task ahead of him, but he goes forward in trustful obedience. Trudy G. Shaw notes his actions demonstrate “not only . . . courage but also radical faith in that Caller whose existence he knows only from the fact that he’s been called” (“Paradox”).

            Dwight Longenecker notes, “Tolkien presents us with a Christian hero and type of a Christian saint because Frodo, in his faithful obedience and humility, lives out the way of sacrificial love” (“Frodo”).

[Frodo] does not feel the thrill of adventure and does not yearn for glory and recognition. Rather, he views the quest as merely a burden, and a seemingly impossible one at that. He maintains a bearing of great humility throughout the novel, and we sense that it is this very humility, along with his strength of character, that may enable him to succeed in the end. (Gardener et al. 89)

            How lovely Frodo’s melody in the Great Music sounds, as more and more he offers himself up in obedience. The refining fire of the Quest burns away who he was and transforms him slowly and agonizingly from “a simple hobbit into an epic hero bound upon a wheel of fire” (Moorman 212). He chooses for evil to consume him rather than the world and receives particular grace to endure this torment. “Where evil conquers, there is filth, devastation and death. Frodo’s great sacrifice is to have taken the weight of that foulness upon him in order to cleanse the land for the return of life” (Gunton 134). Anna Smol observes:

In order to show adequately the physical deterioration that Frodo’s body undergoes, Tolkien establishes a contrasting beginning point so that we can judge how the healthy, red-cheeked hobbit can become the blind, twitching, slumped and starved body, unable to move on his own, on Mount Doom. The hobbit who laughs with pleasure at the smell of mushrooms rising from Mrs. Maggot’s basket or the lively fellow who saves the best wine for himself and his closest friends, downing the last glass of Old Winyards with gusto as he says good-bye to Bag End becomes, when he reaches his goal, the being who cannot smell, taste, hear, or see anything except the Wheel of Fire. (40-41)

            Ginna Wilkerson likens Frodo’s agony as akin to one who suffers from domestic violence (83-91). But unlike a battered person who may escape, he knows he cannot leave his abuser. He must keep his assailant with him in the hope to destroy it before it destroys him. He defeats his adversary the only way he can. He chooses to take one more breath, one more step toward the one place only he and the One who chose him can bring the Ring to. And this while he believes it will also bring him to his own destruction.

            Through increasingly horrific suffering and devouring despair, the Ring-bearer drains his cup of sorrows to the dregs. He does not let go of his cross until the end when he is overcome and cannot carry it any further. He is a hollow shell, stripped even of his memories. A terribly discordant note threatens to overwhelm Frodo’s part in the symphony that already absorbed the other miscues which tried to impose themselves. Then it, too, is absorbed. Three small, starved, mortal beings, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, bring down a mighty, immortal creature. In their weakness and seeming insignificance, they accomplish what no army could have. Words of Charles Stanley apply to Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, and Aragorn: “Supernatural ministry calls for a total giving of one’s love, time, compassion, gifts, and loyalty. It means being in a position where nothing is held back” (82). Well does Gandalf name the Ring-bearer and Sam, “Bronwe athan Harthad and Harthad Uluithiad, Endurance beyond Hope and Hope unquenchable” (Sauron Defeated 62). Barry Gordon notes:

Middle-earth is saved through the priestly self-sacrifice of the hobbit, Frodo; through the wisdom and guidance of Gandalf the wizard; and through the mastery of Aragorn, the heir of kings.  . . . as each of these agents progressively responds to the demands of the primary office to which he has been called, so he grows in power and grace, and begins to exercise the other two redemptive offices in greater depth.

Always, in this trial, Frodo remains the Lamb whose only real strength is his capacity to make an offering of himself. (“Kingship”)

             Patrick Grant notes, “As the tale ends, Frodo has achieved a heroic sanctity verging on the otherwordly” (174). Verlyn Flieger observes,“For [Frodo] is that most moving of hero types, one whose sacrifice benefits everyone but himself, one who, in saving the world (as Frodo does through Sam and Gollum) loses it” (“Missing”230).

            As Gandalf says of Bilbo, “There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself” (Hobbit 21). Decades later, the wizard notes the same applies to Frodo. They, as well as the invaluable and irreplaceable Sam, Merry, and Pippin, prove again and again what marvelous beings hobbits are.

Works Cited

Flieger, Verlyn. “Missing Person.” Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien. Kent State UP, 2012,223-231.

Gardner, Patrick, et al. SparkNotes: The Lord of the Rings. Spark Publishing, 2002.

Gordon, Barry. “Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings.” Cultural Collections, UON Library, 13 May 2009, uoncc.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/kingship-priesthood-and-prophecy-in-the-lord-of-the-rings/. Accessed August 13, 2018.

Grant, Patrick. “Tolkien: Archetype and Word.” Understanding The Lord of the Rings. Edited by Neil D. Issacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005, 163-182.

Gunton, Colin. “A Far-Off Gleam of the Gospel: Salvation in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien: A Celebration. Edited by Joseph Pearce, Ignatius, 2001, 124-140.

Longenecker, Dwight. “Frodo and Thérèse: The Little Way Through Middle-earth.” National Catholic Register, 5 Oct. 2013, www.ncregister.com/site/article/frodo-and-therese-the-little-way-through-middle-earth. Accessed 17 Sept. 2018.

Marotta, Ray. “An Unexpected Hero.” Silver Leaves . . . from the White Tree of Hope, issue 5, 2014, 73-77.

Mathews, Richard. Lightning from a Clear Sky. Borgo Press, 1978.

Moorman, Charles. “‘Now Entertain Conjecture of a Time’ - The Fictive Worlds of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.” Shadows of Imagination: The Fantasies of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. New Edition. Edited by Mark R. Hillegas,Southern Illinois UP, 1979, 59-69.

Olsen, Corey. Exploring J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.

Shaw, Trudy G. “Frodo as Paradox.” Frodo Lives...Within Us Now, www.frodolivesin.us/Catholicwork/id86.htm. Accessed 3 Jun 2018.

Smol, Anna. “Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War.” The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium. Edited by Christopher Vaccaro,McFarland, 2013, 39-60.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. “Power and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings.” Isaacs and Zimbardo, Tolkien and the Critics, 81-99.

Strauss, Ed. A Hobbit Devotional. Barbour, 2012.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit, illustrated by Jemina Caitlin. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

---. “The Quest of Erebor.” Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, Houghton Mifflin, 1980, 331-336.

---. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

---. The Lord of the Rings. 2^nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1965-66.

---. Sauron Defeated: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part 4. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Wagner, Constance G. J. “Sacramentum Midgard: Frodo as Sacrament to Middle-earth.” Silver Leaves . . . from the White Tree of Hope, issue 4, 2012, 83-87.

---. “The War Within: Frodo as Sacrificial Hero.” The Ring Goes Ever On Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference: 50 Years of The Lord of the Rings. Edited by Sarah Wells, The Tolkien Society, 2008,I:338-342.

Ware, Jim. Finding God in The Hobbit. SaltRiver, 2006.

Wilkerson, Ginna. “So Far From the Shire: Psychological Distance and Isolation in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore, vol.27, no. 1/2, issue 103/104, 2008, 83-91.      

______

I am the author of Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings, Chosen: The Journeys of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, and The Long Way Home, a collection of poems centered about a heroic quest and its aftermath. This is adapted from Chosen. Get your copies at http://ow.ly/ez2dT (Moments), https://bit.ly/2PTRc0L (Chosen). https://bit.ly/2QAp6be (Long) Two fantasy series and another book about lessons from Middle-earth anxiously await their turn to come out. 

Nienna, Lady of Pity and Mercy, and the Fall of Sauron

by 

Anne Marie Gazzolo

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Signum University

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts in Language and Literature

Signum University

Nashua, New Hampshire

March 25, 2020

Merriam-Webster defines pity as “sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy.” It contains several meanings for mercy, many of which reflect the uses J. R. R. Tolkien makes in his legendarium: “compassion or forbearance . . . shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one’s power . . . a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion . . . a fortunate circumstance . . . compassionate treatment of those in distress . . .”

In The Lord of the Rings, the word pity appears 61 times, far more than it does in any other of Tolkien’s works. At times, it is within the context of “What a shame . . . ,” which will not be addressed. Mercy appears 11 times. The pity Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam give to Sméagol-Gollum is critical to save Middle-earth from falling under the Shadow, but none of them initially choose it. Sam sees no value in it after he and Frodo meet the creature with “a dual personality that is manipulative, wicked, and consumed with and by the One Ring” (Sheppard-Goodlett 6). The gardener is more than once openly critical of his master’s choice to extend the same pity Bilbo did. If he could have his way, Gollum would not live long. Faramir is initially reluctant to extend any pity or mercy either, yet Frodo begs him to do so because of what he learned from Gandalf. What stirs the hearts of others in the long history of Middle-earth to extend pity to others, whether allies or enemies? The actions that flow from them are abundant throughout Tolkien’s tales.

Even though the stories of Middle-earth and beyond are set in a far distant, pre-Christian past, Tolkien still abundantly embeds major elements of what later becomes this particular view of life: self-sacrificial love; loyalty; and pity, mercy, and compassion for enemies. Indeed, Ralph C. Wood asserts “love--understood as pity and mercy and forgiveness--[is] the central virtue of The Lord of the Rings” (“Augustinian” 99).

Tolkien began his exploration of the themes of pity and mercy decades before he so prominently features them in The Lord of the Rings. The Vala Nienna is the soul of pity, even though in The Book of Lost Tales, she was originally conceived quite the opposite. It is almost as if her earlier incarnation as the pitiless Fui is the Old Testament version of her, where pity is mentioned over two dozen times but many times in instances that show utter lack of it. To name just one example, “And I will smash them one against the other, father and son together - it is Yahweh who speaks. Mercilessly, relentlessly, pitilessly, I will destroy them” (Jerusalem Bible, Jer. 13:14). This could just as easily be Fui who speaks and acts. This is not at all to equate her with Yahweh as equivalent beings, but she, too, is merciless, relentless, and pitiless in her judgement of the souls she sends to Melko (originally spelt without the ‘r’) (Lost Tales I 77). Nienna, as she appears in every other version of the stories of the Valar but the first, is the New Testament version where mercy is more prevalent. 

There are also many others who reach out in compassion through the millennia to those suffering within Morgoth’s Ring. But it was not this way in the ancient Primary World, where pity for enemies was an alien concept. Wood notes the ancient Greeks only gave it to “the pathetic, the helpless, those who are able to do little or nothing for themselves.  . . .  But pity is never to be given to the heinous and undeserving, for such mercy would deny them the justice that they surely merit” (“Augustinian” 102). Here is the crux of the difference between the mercy of Nienna and the justice of Fui, just as Greek pity is different from that given to Gollum.

Mary Scott notes the disconnect between why the modern reader feels pity while reading the works of Homer and what the author’s original audience felt. The latter may have felt “pity for those who died, not in any modern humanitarian sense but in that, through dying, they had in effect failed” (2). There was also in Homer’s time a complete lack of the worth of an individual as an individual. Men were to protect their wives and children. If they could not or another male kinsman could not in the deceased man’s place, then the women and children were considered valueless (3). Men show pity in offering hospitality to those who cannot repay them, as in a child who must now beg for food after his father’s death and the loss of any value he had in Homeric society (13). The Old Testament is far harsher: “The baby boys all cut to pieces, the baby girls all crushed. They [Babylonians] have no mercy on the fruit of the womb, no pity in their eyes for children” (Isa. 13:18). 

Scott mentions several times the gods feel pity for mortals and act upon it to ease the situations that cause it. This could be to help someone who struggles in a battle, to keep a body from being dishonored after death, or to aid someone who weeps. “In each case, it is possible to discern, from the words or actions that succeed eleos [pity], an impulse to put right, as far as possible, the situation which has caused the god . . . to pity” (9). When “eleos is a positive impulse in favour of someone in trouble, which, when followed up, leads to action on his behalf,” (13) one sees this reflected in the intervention of the Valar upon the plea of Eärendil for succor for the Men and Elves hard beset by the forces of Morgoth. 

R. Marshall and A. Bleakley observe when in the context of Hector’s father, Priam, coming to Achilles, his son’s murderer, to claim the body, eleos has a double meaning that encompasses pity and mercy, just as does the Christian prayer Kyrie eleison, which they note means not only “Lord, have mercy on us” but “Lord, pity us” (11). Achilles has up to this point been a savage and merciless brute even to those who cried out for mercy. He has dishonored Hector’s body. But he finally comes to pity and back to humanity in this encounter with Priam and speaks to the man about sufferings and blessings sent by Zeus to mortals. C. W. Macleod observes, “This is also the fullest and deepest expression in words of Achilles’ pity for the suppliant; for pity, as Homer and the Greeks represent it, is a sense of shared human weakness. And it is pity which is at the heart of Homer’s conception of poetry” (13-14). 

Macleod notes, even though a single god may intervene in the affairs of men and save their lives in battle, the gods are, in the last analysis as a group, apart and indifferent (14). Tolkien takes the opposite stance with Elbereth taking an active role to aid the Children of Ilúvatar who call upon her. Likely it is also Irmo who sends refreshing and prophetic dreams to Frodo, and Ulmo who sends water in Frodo and Sam’s desperate need in Mordor.

Rajat Singh notes another reason for the word pity to be used in ancient literature, which echoes strongly in Tolkien’s works:

For centuries, translators have leaned on the word pity to bind the experiences of classical heroes together with the ordinary lives of their readers, such that their instability offers us a window to glimpse our humanity most viscerally. Pity lets us imagine the other--a quality Aeneas ultimately loses sight of. Yet even the worst of us are capable of acts of grace. This is, after all, the resounding significance of the epic tradition. (n.p.; emphasis in original)

The climax of The Lord of the Rings reveals the grace-filled moment of the destruction of the Ring brought about through the action of the anti-hero Gollum. Marion Zimmer Bradley acutely comments, “He tears Ring and finger from Frodo--but his fall into the Crack of Doom, glossed as an accident of his exaltation, is more, far more, than accidental.  . . . he genuinely saves Frodo, whom he loves as much as he hates, from destruction . . . bringing the accursed Ring and his own long agony to an end . . .” (123; emphasis in original).

Another connection with Tolkien and the ancient view of pity is Singh’s reflection on the Greek word oiktos, which shows a heart unmoved by pity upon the sight of suffering. This is the opposite of what happens when Frodo meets Gollum for the first time, and why Faramir is such a contrast to his father, Denethor. “[Faramir] read the hearts of men as shrewdly as his father, but what he read moved him sooner to pity than to scorn” (LotR 1031). The Steward of Gondor’s heart is cold and close to death where his son’s is warm and living. Singh observes, “Where oiktos reflects a shrinking away from suffering, eleos signals a move toward relief, an ethical response toward reflecting on the pain of others” (n.p.). Denethor flees into suicide rather than face what he thinks is to come. Frodo tells Sam to remove the rope around Gollum’s ankle once he is convinced the creature is in genuine pain. Faramir actively works to heal the emotional trauma that traps Éowyn in such a desolate place. 

There was once a link between pity and piety in a shared Latin root, pietas, or devotion. They are many who model this, either to a person, such as Sam to Frodo, or to a cause: Frodo to the Quest, Aragorn to his long road to kingship and marriage with Arwen, and Gandalf’s far longer sojourn in Middle-earth to strengthen the Free Peoples against Sauron.

Another definition of pity in the ancient world comes from Aristotle. He defines pity as “a feeling of pain caused by the sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friend of ours, and moreover to befall us soon” (113). The effects of evil caused Nienna great grief, as Melkor marred the Great Music and so Arda. Gandalf considers Sméagol’s fall sad. Readers could wonder whether the wretched hobbit deserved the hell of centuries of madness and enslavement to the Ring and Gollum, which is all he gained from what he murdered to obtain.

Aristotle also observes, “In order to feel pity we must also believe in the goodness of at least some people; if you think nobody good, you will believe that everybody deserves evil fortune” (113). Here hinges the two views Frodo has about Gollum. Before he sees the creature face-to-face, he does not believe there is a shred of goodness in the wretched being, who merits nothing but death. Once he does see him, pity wells up in him, just as it did in Bilbo.

Wood notes the great differences between other ancient cultures and what is exercised in Middle-earth and by Primary World Christians. “According to the warrior ethic of antique Germanic and Scandinavian cultures, the offering of pardon to enemies is unthinkable: they must be utterly defeated. For Tolkien the Augustinian Christian, by contrast, love understood as mercy and pity is essential . . . . Christians are called to have pity for those whom we do not trust, even and especially our enemies” (“Augustinian” 102). This is a difficult concept to understand from Frodo’s initial inability when Gandalf proposes it for Gollum to some modern-day cultures. Why give mercy to an adversary and so enable the opportunity for him to do more evil? Yet Tolkien extols these virtues. 

Tolkien makes clear in his letters what he considered pity and what he did not. In regard to whatever feeling William the troll has for Bilbo, Tolkien notes, “I do not say William felt pity -   a word to me of moral and imaginative worth . . . . Pity must restrain one from doing something immediately desirable and seemingly advantageous. There is no more ‘pity’ here than in a beast of prey yawning, or lazily patting a creature it could eat, but does not want to, since it is not hungry” (Letters 191; emphasis in original). 

Regarding Sam’s tragic interference with Gollum’s repentance, Tolkien explains what he means when he tells a correspondent the pity Frodo gave to the wretched creature is from one point of view “wasted.” “In the sense that ‘pity’ to be a true virtue must be directed to the good of its object. It is empty if it is exercised only to keep oneself ‘clean’, free from hate or the actual doing of injustice, though this is also a good motive” (330; emphasis in original).

In a draft of a letter, Tolkien speaks of the victory of the Ring’s destruction despite the collapse of Frodo’s will under the weight of months of demonic torment. “He (and the Cause) were saved - by Mercy: by the Supreme efficacy of Pity and forgiveness of injury” (251-252). 

Because Tolkien considered pity and mercy of such vital importance to the sub-creation that was his life’s work, it continues to enrich myriad lives long after his death. But why were these recurring themes so critical The Lord of the Rings “breathes Mercy from start to finish” (Shippey, Road 145)? Many scholars have addressed the Christian reasons. In an essay in Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien, Kristine Larsen is one of the few who has contemplated the pity of Nienna (189-203). This is surprising because it is such a crucial part of the story of the Ring, for at her feet, Gandalf learns of pity and mercy. What her prize pupil gleans of her wisdom and makes a vital part of himself, he later teaches in word and deed to those he grows closest to in Middle-earth. Because he does, one of the clearest of the great many lessons from the Red Book of Westmarch comes to light in the cases of Gollum and Saruman. As it is impossible to have full knowledge what a person may become in the end, one should extend a hand up if the chance arises for redemption rather than thrust a sword in and end all opportunity. Bilbo’s critical use of pity for Gollum does not come from Gandalf’s counsel but from an even higher source, either Nienna or Ilúvatar Himself.

But before Tolkien discovered Nienna was the essence of pity, he had a radically different view of this essential Vala. In the earliest version of what becomes The Silmarillion, she is “the spouse of Mandos, and is known to all as Fui Nienna by reason of her glooms, and she is fain of mourning and tears. Many other names has she that are spoken seldom and all are grievous, for she is Núri who sighs and Heskil who breedeth Winter, and all must bow before her as Qalmë-Tári the mistress of death” (Lost Tales I 66). Her Gnomish name is Fuil ‘Queen of the Dark’ (253).

Neither Mandos nor Fui can bear the brightness and beauty of Valinor. They take no joy in the Eldar and have little interaction even with each other. They abide in two separate halls with virtually no interior light. 

Fui’s domain is a terrible place, reflective of her own dark heart. “Therein before her black chair burnt a brazier with a single flickering coal, and the roof was of bats’ wings . . .” (77). She labors long to make all who live within the world as completely miserable as possible. Her days are spent “at the distilling of salt humours whereof are tears, and black clouds she wove and floated up that they were caught in the winds and went about the world, and their lightless webs settled ever and anon upon those that dwelt therein. Now these tissues were despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief” (76-77). 

To Fui’s house of horror, all Men come to hear of their fate after death. Some she sends to stay with Mandos. Some she mercilessly drives to Melko for hellish torment. Most she sends on a ship to Arvalin where they will stay not entirely unhappily until the end of the world. Before the ship bears them away, they glimpse Valinor at a great distance and then see it no more. A lucky few are sent to dwell in Valinor (77). 

Christopher Tolkien notes how completely different these ideas are from his father’s later conception of the fate of Men after death, which remains unknown (90). With the exception of those who go to Mandos, he observes how explicitly these locations compare to Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven (92). He remarks the idea of death as a Gift to Men is present from the earliest stages, but not explicitly named, as in the published version of The Silmarillion. In this earliest of tales, death is a gift to only a select few, and it does not come easily to any. Men cannot travel upon Ilweran, the rainbow bridge Oromë fashioned for the Valar, though at times they can see it. For them and most Elves, there is only one path to take, which is “very dark; yet is it very short, the shortest and swiftest of all roads, and very rough, for Mandos made it and Fui set it in its place. Qalvanda is it called, the Road of Death, and it leads only to the halls of Mandos and Fui” (213).

In subsequent versions, Tolkien utterly abandons the merciless and cold-hearted Fui, and Nienna, the soul of mercy and pity, appears. Rather than someone one would not wish to meet even in a well-lit alley, she becomes one the dead seek out, and to whom she brings consolation.

Larsen notes, “Nienna is one of the most powerful of the Valar and plays a central, albeit subtle, role in the legendarium” (190). Fui was anything but subtle. Her power as judger of souls is absent in Nienna, whose power is far different and put to much better use. Rather than avoid the Halls of Mandos as Fui often did, Nienna actively seeks out those who call out for her from there. No one would have thought or desired to do this with Fui, and even if they had plead for mercy and solace, they would have received none that Nienna so generously gives. As dedicated as Fui was to causing grief and mourning, Nienna devotes herself to relieving it. “But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope.  . . . all those who wait in Mandos cry to her, for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom” (Silmarillion 16). Where Fui’s heart was cold, Nienna’s is warm, living, and loving. Fui was just. If she discerned a soul merited entrance to Valinor, she granted it. If otherwise, she dealt out what was appropriate. 

Nienna, however, is merciful. It is impossible to imagine her sending any soul to hell. In the earliest version of the tale of Finwë and Míriel, Nienna advocates for pity over justice for Míriel, who refused the call to return to life after she died shortly after giving birth to Fëanor. The other Valar find her death unnatural and a sorrowful sign of the marring done by Melkor. Nienna’s contribution to the debate opens with, “In the use of Justice there must be Pity, which is the consideration of the singleness of each that cometh under Justice. Which of you Valar, in your wisdom, will blame these Children, Finwë and Míriel?” (Morgoth’s Ring 241). After Mandos initially refuses to release Míriel’s soul from his halls, Nienna again says, “Pity must have a part in Justice” (248). Finwë adds his plea for pity for his wife after he enters the domain of Mandos. Nienna presses her case once more. Mandos releases Míriel’s soul to rejoin her body (249). Fui would have never said these words, even if she was a judge of Elven souls.

An earlier version from The Annals of Aman sheds further light on Nienna’s heart:

For it is said that even in the Music Nienna took little part, but listened intent to all that she heard. Therefore she was rich in memory, and farsighted, perceiving how the themes should unfold in the Tale of Arda. But she had little mirth, and all her love was mingled with pity, grieving for the harms of the world and for the things that failed of fulfilment. So great was her ruth [compassion], it is said, that she could not endure to the end of the Music. Therefore she has not the hope of Manwë. He is more farseeing; but Pity is the heart of Nienna. (Morgoth’s Ring 68)

Nienna’s compassion is so great she pleads for the devil himself, after Melkor comes before his fellow Vala and feigns repentance for all the evil he set loose in the world. He asks for their pardon and vows to help them in all ways, most especially with their efforts to heal the harm he did. “And Nienna aided his prayer; but Mandos was silent.” Melkor fools the unsuspecting Manwë into believing he has indeed reformed his ways, but others are far more suspicious, and they are right to be (Silmarillion 57). 

Larsen notes the quote from the Annals “most clearly articulates Nienna’s cosmic role as the personification of not only sorrow for the evils of the fallen world, but also of pity and its central role in Arda Marred” (197; emphasis in original). “In such a world, there is much need for a lady of mourning, mercy, and pity” (198).

And into such a world comes one who learned much at the feet of Nienna. “Wisest of the Maiar was Olórin. He . . . dwelt in Lórien, but his ways took him often to the house of Nienna, and of her he learned pity and patience” (Silmarillion 18). In a dwelling that must be far more hospitable than Fui’s, Olórin absorbs her wisdom into his heart and brings her heart with him to Middle-earth. He shows it to the Elves, Aragorn, Faramir, and Frodo, so they also carry her message of pity and mercy for those who do evil while within Morgoth’s Ring. Larsen notes it is Gandalf who “most clearly illustrates the handiwork of Nienna in the novel [LotR]. Not only does the wizard understand the importance of pity and mercy in the thread of events that connects the Ring to Gollum, Bilbo, and Frodo, but he practices the virtue regularly” (199-200). Indeed, as Andrew Fenwick observes, he is “the physical manifestation of Pity” (27). As the ambassador of the Valar “he comes bearing their Pity (which is the Pity of the One)” and his Pity begets pity (28). This extends not only to Gollum, but to Sauron’s slaves and Saruman, and indeed, to all in Middle-earth. It is this practice of pity and patience that “allows [Gandalf] to sift through Gollum’s lies, half-truths, and stubborn silences to create a realistic and even moving portrait of Gollum’s former life” (Bebb 9).

The Hobbit introduces readers to Bilbo and to Gollum, “one of [Tolkien’s] most fascinating creations” (Christensen 9). As Bilbo wanders lost in the total darkness of the goblin tunnels, he encounters this being “as dark as darkness” (Hobbit 88). He agrees to play a riddle-game with terribly high stakes: if Bilbo wins, Gollum will show him the desperately sought exit; but if he loses, Gollum will eat him. The game reveals the worldview of both hobbits. Bilbo speaks of life, light, and beautiful things, while Gollum focuses in retaliation for the most part on death, darkness, and decay. Corey Olsen notes the sad story behind the wind riddle. “The wind doesn’t roar; it cries. It doesn’t soar; it only flutters. The wind is described as being nobody and having nothing, and yet it is still always biting, always crying, always muttering. This, of course, is also a perfection description of Gollum’s own nightmare reality . . .” (98). The darkness riddle “also has its autobiographical aspects” (98).

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.

It lies behind stars and under hills,

     And empty holes it fills.

It comes first and follows after,

     Ends life, kills laughter. (Hobbit 93; emphasis in original) 

Gollum’s reason to use this is far more chilling than the pity the wind riddle evokes. Olsen observes, “Those first two lines . . . sound like the ultimate version of the hunting Gollum: undetectable, irresistible.  . . . the dark is Gollum’s true world, his perfected self” (98). 

In the first edition of The Hobbit, before Tolkien discovered the true nature of the Ring and Bilbo was less than truthful in his memoirs about this momentous period in his life, Gollum promises Bilbo an unspecified gift if the hobbit wins the riddle-game. After Bilbo does, he asks Gollum to hold up his end of the bargain. The wretched creature searches hard for the ring he meant to give, but he finally comes back empty-handed. “I don’t know how many times Gollum begged Bilbo’s pardon. He kept on saying: ‘We are ssorry; we didn’t mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only pressent, if it won the competition.’ He even offered to catch Bilbo some nice juicy fish to eat as a consolation” (qtd. in Anderson 325). Bilbo refuses and states instead he will let Gollum out of his promise on the condition the creature guides him out of the tunnels. Gollum gives up on the idea of having Bilbo for a tasty meal and guides the hobbit out until too afraid to go any farther. At this point, they part amicably.  

The two editions agree up to a point and then diverge sharply, and the history of Middle-earth changes profoundly with it. Despite the fact “the riddle-game was sacred and of immense antiquity, and even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played at it,” Gollum decides upon this in the new and improved version (Hobbit 98). Just as in the first version, the creature goes back to his island to fetch his ring “in whose shining symmetry is encased Gollum’s dark soul” (O’Neill 61). This time, however, not as a present to give Bilbo, but as a way to conceal himself in order to slay the hobbit. Upon hearing Gollum’s lament for whatever it was he lost, “Utterly miserable as Gollum sounded, Bilbo could not find much pity in his heart, and he had a feeling that anything Gollum wanted so much could hardly be something good” (Hobbit 101).

After Bilbo sees Gollum remains intent upon his meal, he flees. Luck remains with him throughout his flight. Because the Ring slips itself on his finger, Gollum goes past him without seeing him after Bilbo slips and falls. The Ring-finder stealthily follows his would-be murderer in the hope of finding the way out rather than blindly running away in the dark. He sees his hope fulfilled, only to watch it seemingly snatched from him. Gollum gets him close enough to find his way out, but then blocks his way and detects by senses other than sight the thief of his precious is nearby. A terrible desire to kill Gollum as the only way to save himself surges through Bilbo.

He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped. (Hobbit 106)

Why does Bilbo choose to save this “pathetic, sniveling residue of a life starved by its own selfishness, thoroughly repulsive, and deadly” (McGrath 177), this “masterpiece of nastiness” (Rutledge 26), this “finest depiction of evil ever written” (Peck 45)? Susan Ang and Fleming Rutledge point out the preciseness of Tolkien’s words:

The prose of the first few sentences, with its jerky ragged rhythms, manages to suggest the panicked workings of animal instinct.  . . . Gollum is an ‘it’, a ‘thing’. However, the rhythm then eases into reflectiveness. Gollum is given a name in Bilbo’s thoughts and becomes ‘he’, a person, whose ‘otherness’ . . . [is] suddenly comprehended . . . . There is no need to put out his eyes; Gollum’s days are already lightless.  . . .  This is a moment of immense compassion, both in the modern meaning of this word and in its original (Latin) sense: compassio, ‘I suffer with.’ (Ang 55)

[Tolkien] does not write ‘Bilbo suddenly understood,’ or ‘Bilbo acquired a new strength.’ Bilbo is not the acting subject. Understanding and pity well up; a new strength and resolve lift him; they are active agents.  . . . Bilbo is the passive receipt of understanding and pity, strength and resolve. They come to him from outside himself.  . . . Bilbo is enabled to put his new gifts to work . . . .  (Rutledge 27; emphasis in original)

Louis Markos notes, “Gollum’s ‘life’ is wholly lacking in love, in peace, in purpose. He simply goes on, like a gnawing toothache or a perpetual grudge. Death for him would be a release, a mercy, yet he must continue on, yearning joylessly and hopelessly to regain the very thing that robbed him of his joy and hope” (150). This is life within Morgoth’s Ring for those caught in the webs of evil. For a piercing moment, Bilbo perceives Gollum’s hell. Rutledge claims it is not the creatures’s physical state that touches the Ring-finder so deeply, but “the hopelessness of his bondage” (27).

Markos observes:

The pity that stays Bilbo’s hand is a pure expression of caritas that is born out of Bilbo’s ability to move out of himself (out of his fear, hatred, and disgust) and feel a sympathetic (even empathetic) connection with the loathsome and deceptive Gollum.  . . . the pity that wells up within Bilbo at this decisive moment is not human but divine.  . . .  It is that insight that allows him to love Gollum as a suffering thing in need of grace.  . . . Bilbo takes pity on Gollum, not because he deserves pity but because Bilbo allows himself to be a conduit of a higher pity. (136-37)  

Bilbo sees through the eyes of Nienna and responds as she would. He bases his action on what thousands of years later Jesus tells His followers: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27) and “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Luke 6:36). 

Joe Kraus notes how the Ring provides critical, unwitting aid here. “Bilbo’s invisibility gives him a glimpse into another’s humanity. The power to see and not be seen . . . liberates him and allows him to show mercy in a way that . . . proves essential to Sauron’s downfall” (246). This free, grace-inspired decision enables all the other actions that concern Gollum’s fate and the fate of all Middle-earth. Indeed, Rutledge asserts, “It can’t be stated too strongly: this brief passage in The Hobbit lays out the theological foundation for the climax of The Lord of the Rings” (28).

No foreknowledge of this, however, moves Bilbo’s heart to act as he does. He makes his decision based on present reality, not a nebulous unknown future. He is well aware Gollum is most keen to murder him, but he refuses to kill the creature for a crime not yet committed. Bilbo shows “mercy for mercy’s sake alone” (Ware 53; emphasis in original). He restrains his hand, surrenders the control the Ring gives him over the creature’s life or death and willingly enables his own possible future death at Gollum’s hand.

Ryan Marotta argues:

This is Bilbo’s defining moment of spiritual maturation, the point at which he ceases to be an ordinary hobbit and finally grows into a heroic adventurer.  . . . Bilbo’s act of mercy anoints him as a true hero . . . : it is a willful demonstration of self-control, peace, and in its deepest meaning, love. Bilbo’s simple act of compassion, his choice to preserve the life of another at the risk of his own, completes his metamorphosis from a creature of routine to a being of will, and would ultimately change the fate of Middle-earth. (Marotta 23-24)     

This is the exact opposite of Sméagol’s absolute and unjust control over Déagol’s life and death. Selfless restraint allows Bilbo to escape without shedding blood or taking a life and so preserve the purity of his own soul. Sméagol’s selfish lack of restraint begins his long slide into torment and madness. 

Decades after Bilbo’s life-changing adventure, Frodo embarks on his own. Ang notes, “The Lord of the Rings is steeped in sorrow and death and evil in a way that The Hobbit is not. But there also runs through it the quality of mercy. In The Lord of the Rings, mercy becomes more important than justice” (85). Frodo learns this while he undertakes his own arduous physical and spiritual journey through tremendous beauty and terrible desolation as a direct result of Bilbo’s awe-ful discovery of the Ring and fateful meeting with Gollum. 

Christensen notes the changes to Gollum in the second edition of The Hobbit into a “withered, totally depraved creature dominated by an evil ring and capable of any crime,” are vital because of the part the creature and the Ring will play in these later adventures(10, 27).

Gandalf relates to Frodo Sméagol’s sad fall into darkness begins innocently enough with a curious nature. But the hobbit’s topic of interest was what is in the ground, which brings his head downward, away from life and light, and ultimately into the black night of the mountain where Bilbo finds him centuries later. After Sméagol murders Déagol and acquires the Ring, his slow transformation into Gollum begins. It seems, despite a hobbit nature which is normally more resilient to the malice of the Ring, he falls instantly under its lure. But is this true? His people lived by the river near where the foul object was lost millennia before. Like a poison, Sauron’s treasure may have dripped slowly into Sméagol’s heart and soul for decades, and what appears as instantaneous could well be the consummation of a long seduction. His grandmother exiles him because he becomes “sharp-eyed and keen-eared for all that was hurtful. The ring had given him power according to his stature” (LotR 52). Quincey Vierling Upshaw asserts, “This idea is critical, for it sets the standard for a character’s individual reaction while in close personal proximity to the Ring of Power. While Bilbo, protected by his first act of mercy, appears shielded from the Ring’s full wrath, Frodo too gains a sort of grace by continuing this mercy and his initial revulsion to the concept of an all-powerful weapon” (23). Sméagol cries “a little for the hardness of the world” (LotR 52) without realizing he is the author of his own misery through his growing addiction to the Ring. Slowly he loses touch with his humanity and become more animal-like. He “wormed his way like a maggot” into the depths of the mountains (53). 

By the time Bilbo meets Gollum, he has acquired fish-like qualities as he wriggles and squirms, and his feet are web-like. His sibilant speech is dragon-like. Tolkien describes him with qualities of a spider, frog, and dog once Frodo and Sam meet him. Brent Nelson notes many of these. He also states, “Gollum is continually associated with filth (particularly slime) and all that is bestial, especially in his appetite” (476). 

Verlyn Flieger adds more descriptions. “Gollum is also psychotic, driven mad by his obsession with the Ring,” a “degenerate, feral figure,” “warped and grotesque,” a “twisted, broken, outcast hobbit” who is “maddened by reminders of joy he cannot share” (124, 125, 154, 155). 

Gandalf chillingly relates Gollum’s depraved behavior after leaving the tunnels to seek after the Ring. “The wood was full of the rumour of him, dreadful tales even among beasts and birds. The Woodmen said that there was some new terror abroad, a ghost that drank blood. It climbed trees to find nests; it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles” (LotR 56-57). John Wm. Houghton and Neal K. Keesee note, “Here we have the Ring’s need for a victim, its temptation and deception of that victim into nothingness, and the real evil it brings to the victim as well as to others” (145). 

Gandalf’s recounting of Sméagol’s tortuous existence fails to move Frodo. He considers Gollum “loathsome” and the idea the creature could be at all related to hobbits “abominable” (LotR 53). The wizard, however, advocates for the little bit of Sméagol, who with miraculous tenacity still remains after centuries of torment and bondage to the Ring and Gollum. David Callway observes, “For a creature to possess the Ring for this long and not yet be ‘devoured’ by the dark power and still have hope for a ‘cure,’ or still have a fraction of good tucked away somewhere in his mind, shows strength of will, and it is this strength which earns Gollum the pity of those who understand [how] possessing the Ring can be” (16).

This ‘fraction of good’ is who Gandalf wants Frodo to pity. He validates the hobbit’s suspicion about Gollum’s murderous intentions in initiating the riddle-game with Bilbo. But he wants Frodo to look deeper rather than rush to condemnation. He wants him to look at the wretched creature through the eyes of Nienna and see Sméagol.

Even Gollum was not wholly ruined. He had proved tougher than even one of the Wise would have guessed -as a hobbit might. There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice again, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things. (LotR 53)

After Frodo learns Gollum is responsible for placing his life in deadly danger, he allows his fear to speak for him. “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!” Yet, pity is exactly what Gandalf wishes for Frodo to feel. “Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity” (58).

Rutledge notes not only the importance Tolkien places on pity and mercy by capitalizing the first letters, “but also to hint at the Power from which they emanate. Gandalf’s image of light coming through the tiny chink in Gollum’s mind subtly indicates that the source of the light is outside Gollum’s mind . . . ” (61; emphasis in original). The cure Gandalf hopes for “cannot come from within the person himself; nor, in intractable cases, can the cure come from within a purely human source. Only an intervention from another sphere of power can remove the cause of the paralysis, the insanity, the accursedness” (61; emphasis in original).

Fear, however, continues to override any reason or sympathy in Frodo. He makes it clear once more he finds no pity in his heart for Gollum. Rather, he calls out for justice and death. He still looks at his enemy as Fui would have, or as Anglo-Saxons to come with their belief in wyrd. Gandalf again acknowledges Frodo’s viewpoint as valid. But he also again undercuts it and asks for the hobbit to look at his foe differently. 

Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least. (LotR 58)

Helen Theresa Lasseter notes, “Justice as the inescapable judge for deeds is a key element of wyrd in defining a fated world order.  . . .  Through offering a new foundation for proper action in pity and mercy rather than justice, the implied author [of LotR] implicitly undermines the traditional role of wyrd” (168-169). Wood also offers a perspective on this moment. “. . . pity establishes the fundamental solidarity of giver and receiver. Pity understood as pietas entails responsibility, duty, devotion, kindness, tenderness, even loyalty. In commending Bilbo’s pity for Gollum, therefore, Gandalf is urging Frodo to acknowledge his elemental kinship with ‘that vile creature’” (Gospel 152; emphasis in original). Frodo does not understand this until he meets Gollum face-to-face and takes the creature into his keeping and embraces all that is bound up in pietas. 

Combined with such a deep understanding of pity, Gandalf is also self-aware enough to know the Ring could corrupt him through his exercise of it. He adamantly refuses Frodo’s plea to take the fell object. “Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good” (LotR 60). Twice he begs Frodo not to tempt him. Houghton and Keesee note Gandalf knows his strengths could be twisted into weaknesses and how the Ring would use them both to devour him just as Sauron himself was, while also turning him into a formidable force capable of inflicting great evil upon the world (144).He does not wish to become a shadow of Fui.

The shadow of Fui yet remains though in the words and heart of Boromir at the Council of Elrond. The man assumes Aragorn justifiably killed Gollum after he captured him. Yet Gandalf’s protégé speaks of mercy. “He is in prison, but no worse . . .” (LotR 248). Legolas speaks of mercy and compassion also. “But Gandalf bade us hope still for [Gollum’s] cure, and we had not the heart to keep him ever in dungeons under the earth, where he would fall back into his old black thoughts” (249).

It is no surprise with Gandalf as a mentor, Aragorn lives and breathes the pity of Nienna. After Frodo asks for time alone to decide at Parth Galen which route he will now follow to continue the Quest, the Ranger regards him with “kindly pity” (387). Decades before, the man willingly chose the path of loneliness and exile. For Frodo, this life was thrust upon him. He still freely chose to follow his Road, but it was not the same decision Aragorn made. The burdens Aragorn has carried are not the increasingly terrible weight placed upon the hobbit’s small shoulders. 

Another moment Aragorn shows how much of Nienna’s wisdom he absorbed over the years is after he, Legolas, and Gimli come upon a strange man in Fangorn Forest. The dwarf wonders why the Elf hesitates to shoot. Legolas is aware “some other will” does not wish this. Aragorn says, “We may not shoot an old man so, at unawares and unchallenged, whatever fear or doubt be on us” (481, 482). The Ranger’s reason is the same Bilbo and Frodo use in deciding what to do with Gollum. They all surrender control over another’s life and death and choose mercy over murder.

After Gandalf frees Théoden from Saruman’s deadly grip and exposes Wormtongue as a traitor, the latter begs for mercy and pity. The king freely gives it, but his heart is finely balanced between Nienna and Fui. Gandalf notes it would be just to kill the traitor but also states Wormtongue was not always wicked. He suggests the wretched counsellor have a choice: to either renew his allegiance to Rohan or to return to its enemy, Saruman. Théoden gives the snake his freedom, but states there will be no mercy if they meet again.

By the time Frodo and Sam meet Gollum face-to-face, Peter S. Beagle provides a chilling description of the ruined hobbit but one that also evokes pity:

At the time Frodo takes him, Gollum is, of course, quite mad. The dark, silent centuries of living with the Ring’s hunger, and the torments of Sauron after that, have burned his mind away to a single, glowing cinder of meaningless desire. He is two creatures now, two voices that hiss and chatter in him night and day: Gollum and Sméagol--one no person at all, no I, but the Ring’s thing; the other somehow still alive, still retaining a few shreds of its own will after all this long time, and even able to feel a stunted yearning toward Frodo, whom he must betray. (“Ring” xiii; emphasis in original) 

Rutledge adds, “[Gollum] has become the very epitome of nastiness, so repellent that it is almost impossible to feel any mercy toward him” (198). Yet, this is exactly what the Ring-bearer extends. With Sting at Gollum’s throat, Frodo is in a position to dominate and control his adversary, but like Bilbo, he does not take advantage of it. Gandalf hinted pity would come to him after he saw the creature with his own eyes. With the wretched being now before him, he sees not only with his eyes, but with his heart, and not only with his own eyes, but with Gandalf’s and through him, Nienna’s. He is no longer hungry for justice as he was, and Fui would have been if she could judge the living as well as the dead. Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull mention an unpublished note from Tolkien: “He [Gollum] remained a human being, not an animal or a mere bogey, even if deformed in mind and body: an object of disgust, but also of pity - to the deep-sighted, such as Frodo had become” (447). 

Linda Greenwood notes:
The pity that Frodo shows Gollum is what brings mercy to himself.  . . .

. . . the prophetic words of Gandalf are the catalyst that stays Frodo’s hand . . . .

. . .  What is his motive? It seems to be a pure act of pity. His act is motivated by compassion. He acts with a mercy that demands and expects nothing in return, with the ‘Divine Gift-love’, which [C.S.] Lewis explains, enables a man ‘to love what is naturally unlovable . . .’ (Four Loves 128). (178-9)

What is interesting about this remembered conversation is it is not exactly what Gandalf said, but what Frodo recalls. “Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety” (LotR 601; emphasis in original). Gandalf never said ‘in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety,’ but this is what comes to the frightened hobbit. He well remembers his cry for Gollum’s death after he learned Bilbo’s earlier rescission of a terror-inspired desire to ‘deal out death’ jeopardizes his own life. Frodo stands now at this same crossroad, and despite fear, makes the same choice. He understands justice in a different light. Before he thought it would be perfectly just to kill Gollum for all his crimes, but like Bilbo, he sees it would not be just to kill the creature for a crime not yet committed.

Sam does not understand why his master is kind, but from the first Frodo sees behind and beyond Gollum, to the soul of Sméagol still there suffering after centuries of torment. This is another part of the discernment, wisdom, and grace growing in Frodo, that he would not have had without being in the same crucible as Sméagol. Not yet wholly consumed, the Ring-bearer stands outside the prison the wretched creature is in, though his back is to the gate. He understands what is happening in his soul and in Sméagol’s and guides his fellow Bearer from the viewpoint of light. Lasseter notes, “Such an act of mercy is possible only out of concrete love for another’s personhood--what the person should have been, what he is, and what he still might be” (171). In some ways only an addict can understand another addict. Frodo is doing what every Christian should: to look after another’s soul, to attempt to guide it back, to be “his brother’s keeper” (Gen. 4:10). Wood observes, “Perhaps because Frodo treats him in a civil and polite fashion, Gollum begins to recover his freedom, his Sméagol self. Frodo calls forth Gollum’s best traits by refusing to focus on his worst ones. Tolkien thus echoes what, in his Confessions, St. Augustine says about God’s own love for him: ‘In loving me, you made me lovable’” (Gospel 132).

Kerry Dearborn comments, “Mercy is a fascinating word whose derivation in both Arabic and Hebrew comes from the same root as womb. It means providing a safe place where life can grow and be nurtured. It means becoming a host, where you become the source of life for others” (144; emphasis in original). Though she mentions this in the context of the hospitality offered by the Elves of the Golden Wood, it even more movingly describes Frodo’s efforts to rehabilitate Sméagol. The Ring-bearer actively begins to work toward the cure Gandalf carried hope for. This would be Nienna’s hope also. Frodo calls his new guide by his given name and treats him with a compassion the miserable being lacked for centuries. Though speaking of doctor-patient relationships, the following is apt for the relationship that now forms with ‘Dr.’ Frodo and his ‘patient’: “Entering the mind of the other . . . [is] an essential characteristic of empathy” (Marshall and Bleakley 8).

This unwitting good the Ring provides is key to its eventual downfall. As St. Paul will write millennia later of those in Colossus, Frodo is “clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience” (Col. 3:12). Roger Sale notes, “Sméagol loves the specialness that is Frodo’s care of him.” The cautiously dawning love Frodo receives in return is “the tentative unbelieving response to a caring so unlikely it seems heroic even to the Gollum” (287).Wood adds, “He seems to understand that Frodo has trusted him again and again--not out of mere necessity, but in a desire for friendship” (Gospel 134). Joyana Nicole Richer notes, “Gollum starts to experience a sort of transformation as a result of Frodo’s stern but compassionate love, revealing that even in the most corrupt minds, there is a sliver of hope for love to find a way” (19).

Richard Mathews speaks of this transformation that brings Sméagol to the surface from the depths of Gollum and the stranglehold the Ring has on him:

Every instant of time is in some sense timeless, for the choices made at every moment have the potential for changing the course of all future time and the meaning of past time. Pity, Mercy, Forgiveness are the qualities which make it possible to assume this about time: those driven by greed, possessiveness, hatred are tied irrevocably to the past Fall and to time. Frodo’s act of mercy seems to touch something deep in Gollum, to remind Gollum that he might not be as bad as he has been . . . . (39)

Beagle also mentions there is still a small bit left of hobbit nature to respond to Frodo’s care, as sunlight stimulates a flower. Though this particular flower is terribly malformed by the corrosive power of evil and addiction, and even pale moonlight causes it pain, it still movingly turns to Frodo’s light (“Gollum” 13). 

As Frodo and Sam continue to follow their guide, they meet another of Gandalf’s students in the woods of Ithilien. Tolkien describes Faramir as “modest, fair-minded . . . and very merciful” (Letters 323). This well-respected and beloved man declares he would not lie even to an orc, takes no joy in killing, and even spares the lives of animals if he can. With Gandalf as a mentor, he sees with the eyes of Nienna. He looked upon Boromir with pity at the sad but blessed sight of his brother’s funeral boat. He spares the lives of Frodo and Sam rather than blindly follow the dictates of his land to take any strangers and potential enemies to his father to decide their fate. 

After Faramir and his Rangers take the hobbits to Henneth Annûn, Sam lets slip Frodo has Isildur’s Bane. Much like Aragorn, Faramir holds Frodo in high regard, as he now understands better what a burden the small being carries. The pity for someone suffering stirs his gentle heart, but he also honors the Ring-bearer, as one warrior would honor another, for sacrificially accepting to take this pain upon himself and successfully fight the spiritual battle against the Ring.

Faramir’s regard for Frodo also saves Gollum’s life, for he listens and heeds the Ring-bearer’s advocation for the creature at the Forbidden Pool. There are strong echoes here back to when Bilbo spared the creature. Even the same words could be used in the reasons Frodo gives: “The creature is wretched and hungry . . . and unaware of his danger” (LotR 670). The hobbit even tells Faramir to shoot him if he is not successful in capturing Gollum. The younger Baggins has come a long way from utter lack of pity to now offering his life in Gollum’s place if need be. The lessons of Nienna through Gandalf have taken firm root in his heart. He crawls down to his fellow Ring-bearer using his hands akin to how Gollum himself likes to travel. With a mixture of “pity and disgust” he listens to the creature talk to himself (671). Frodo squelches a brief temptation to tell Anborn to shoot. It grieves him what he actually does seems to Gollum no less a betrayal.

Faramir extends mercy and spares Gollum’s life when at any other time it would have been automatically forfeit. At the same the Ranger captain, as an adept discerner of souls, recognizes the evil that dwells within the creature. He calls him wicked, but Frodo challenges the young man, “No, not altogether wicked” (676). The Ring-bearer advances his advocation of Gollum another step in his insistence the men blindfold him first upon leaving the hidden Ranger refuge, so to reassure his guide there is no evil meant in such an act. Rutledge observes:

The depth of Frodo’s growth in wisdom and charity runs parallel to the increasing pressure from the evil of the Ring.  . . .  The deep reserves of mercy and empathy that we see rising in him now are new; they are not innate. They are gifts given from on high, through Gandalf. Tolkien is telling us that solidarity with others in mercy and sympathy is the only true and lasting antidote to the malignity represented by the Ring. (225)

As Gollum stands upon the brink of repentance on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, Karin Olsson speaks of the power of the remnants of Sméagol that remain:

.  . . .  In this scene he appears for a moment as an old, tired hobbit, completely free from the influence of the Ring. If there had been no goodness in Sméagol from the beginning, there would have been no goodness for Gollum to fall back on after all those years and if Sméagol had never come across the ring, he might never have become evil in the first place . . . . (13-14) 

If only Sam understood this before he unwittingly helps to enable the tragedy of Sméagol’s death. Gollum, conceived and born out of the evil of the Ring and Déagol’s murder, dies in the fires of Mount Doom. Sméagol, the tormented hobbit who despite five centuries of the overwhelmingly toxic presence of Gollum and the Ring still held out against complete annihilation, dies here, unnoticed by Frodo and Sam. David Callaway notes the light Gandalf spoke of “still more powerful than many of the characters expect” winks out (22). How Nienna must have mourned. Who else but a divine or angelic being could have helped him hold on for so long to what little self and sanity remained? Callaway comments Sméagol had no Gandalf to help him as Bilbo did (17). The only hint about what sustained the fractured hobbit, even while under torture in Mordor, is from the unfinished tale “The Hunt for the Ring”: 

[Sauron] did not trust Gollum, for he divined something indomitable in him, which could not be overcome, even by the Shadow of Fear, except by destroying him.

Ultimately indomitable he was, except by death, as Sauron guessed, both from his halfling nature, and from a cause which Sauron did not fully comprehend, being himself consumed by lust for the Ring. (337)

After the decision to embark on what is by all appearances a suicide mission to give Frodo and Sam more time to reach Mount Doom, Aragorn continues to model his actions after his mentor, Gandalf. The uncrowned king takes pity upon those who are unmanned by the terrible doom ahead of them and assigns them another task. Fenwick notes, “Aragorn - in a marked contrast to the Homeric ethos - has as much Pity for the weak as Gandalf” (92). The narrator of the Red Book tells of the profound effects this has. “Then some being shamed by his mercy overcame their fear and went on, and the others took new hope, hearing of a manful deed within their measure that they could turn to, and they departed” (LotR 868).

In the desolation of Mordor, Sam knows it is pointless, and possibly even dangerous, to offer to carry the Ring after Frodo tells of its terrible weight, “but in his pity he could not keep silent” (916).

Sam beholds a vision of Frodo on the slopes of Mount Doom as a white-robed figure “untouchable now by pity” (922). Up to this critical point, the gardener views Gollum as Fui would have. From the time of their first meeting, Sam advocated and wished for Gollum’s death. On the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, he mercilessly verbally attacked Gollum at the moment of his greatest vulnerability, the apogee of his possible redemption, and unknowingly snapped the frail thread upon which Gandalf’s slim hope for the creature’s cure hung. But Sam was not yet a Ring-bearer then. He had not seen or felt in his heart what torment Sméagol suffered all those myriad years, which Sam felt but for a fleeting moment. 

But a moment is enough to change Sam’s heart, just as months of exposure to the malignancy of the Ring prepared the soil for pity to grow in Frodo’s heart. Here it happens to Sam in an instant, as it happened to Bilbo, and for the same reason. In a sudden insight, as his beloved master’s pity fails, he hears the wretched being beg for his life and glimpses “the agony of Gollum’s shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again” (923). Now at the moment Sam has longed for, he resists the temptation to serve out justice. He stays his hand, just as his two masters have. Lisa Hillis points out, “Again the quest might have come to a bitter end, except for the intervention of a force which moves Sam to pity and causes him to spare the wretch” (75). The gardener has at last become a student of Nienna rather than a disciple of Fui. He has learned compassion and empathy, even if he cannot quite understand it himself. He chooses not to act in judgement and condemnation, but he still threatens to carry it out if Gollum does not leave him. April Bates observes, “Although killing Gollum would have been just, it took much more courage to extend grace to someone who so little deserved it, a characteristic which clearly applies to our Christianity today” (5). 

If the pity of Bilbo rules the fate of many, the pity of Sam rules the fate of all. Every other act of it would have come to naught if Sam did not exercise it here. Brian Pentony asserts, “The mercy shown by the hobbits reflects true spiritual growth . . . . All the time the hobbits are confronted with a choice: use the power of the Ring to dominate, defeat, hold the judgement of life and death in their hands, or abandon power and adopt an ethic based on love” (n.p.) Rutledge agrees. “This Mercy (Pity) is the theme that is highlighted by Tolkien perhaps most of all.  . . .  This is the same theological point made by Shakespeare’s Portia, and for Christians it remains the strongest argument against any kind of brutal treatment, including capital punishment” (340).

More than once, Gandalf spoke of his intuition Gollum had his own role to play in the drama of the Ring. At Mount Doom, just as Frodo’s vocation reaches its complete fulfillment, so does Gollum’s, who “attains the antiheroic glory he was so sorrowfully born for” (Beagle, “Gollum” 13). 

Tolkien speaks of the primary roles of pity and mercy in saving Middle-earth and Frodo himself. Because Gollum received them what Gandalf foresaw came about. “. . . a situation was produced in which all was redressed and disaster averted.  . . . Of course, [Gandalf] did not mean to say that one must be merciful, for it may prove useful later - it would not then be mercy or pity, which are only truly present when contrary to prudence” (Letters 253). Tolkien also notes:

 . . . at this point the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would . . . betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. He did rob him and injure him in the end - but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing any one cd. have done for Frodo! (234; emphasis in original)

“Happy the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them” (Matt. 5:7). Not only does Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam escape possession by the Ring because of their mercy to Gollum, they save all of Middle-earth from falling under the Shadow. If they had not, Beagle offers a chilling alternative far too terrible to contemplate: “Without Gollum, Middle-earth might very well have ended as a world of Gollums--hobbits, men and elves alike enslaved to the One Ring, at times vaguely and briefly recalling that once they were other than the Ring. Generations of their descendants will owe an incalculable debt to Gollum, unaware” (“Gollum” 13). This encompasses Gandalf’s whole point to save a life rather than take one, even when it seems just to do so because “even the very wise cannot see all ends” (LotR 58).

What was Gollum’s final fate after his fiery death? Frodo and Gollum were both overcome by the Ring at the Fire, but one was saved, soul and body, and one lost both? Sméagol was in the torment of Hell for centuries already while still walking on the earth. Perhaps this death was a mercy, as well as a judgement. Fui would have justly thrown him into the arms of Melkor to punish his myriad misdeeds in life. Tolkien seems to agree. “Gollum was pitiable, but he ended in persistent wickedness, and the fact that this worked good was no credit to him.  . . . I am afraid, whatever our beliefs, we have to face the fact that there are persons who yield to temptation, reject their chances of nobility or salvation, and appear to be ‘damnable’” (Letters 234). Tolkien considers Sméagol’s inability to decisively win the argument he has with Gollum about the Ring weakens him too greatly to overcome Sam’s harsh words on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol. “After that he was lost,” (235). But Tolkien also notes in a letter to Milton Waldman “nothing but death could heal” Gollum from the power the Ring had over him (qtd. in Hammond and Scull 747). As Nienna pled for Melkor, surely she would have pled for Gollum. If only death could heal Gollum of the wounds the Ring caused, perhaps her tears could also.

Faramir once more acts a conduit of Nienna’s pity in aiding to heal Éowyn from her invisible wounds. John Bowers comments, “The passage recalls Chaucer’s favourite line For pitee renneth sone in gentil herte from the Knight’s Tale, Merchant’s Tale, Squire’s Tale, and Legend of Good Women” (247). In so doing, his own heart receives healing. Brian Johnson notes how specially qualified Faramir is to help the distraught shieldmaiden:

There are ways to plant healthy coping skills in the garden of the soul, and to help someone reconcile with their losses. Faramir, the quiet student of Gandalf, . . . demonstrates the skills needed . . . 

. . . one may wonder how much of Nienna’s wisdom Faramir had picked up over the years. One would almost wonder if Númenórean gardens near Houses of Healing were named Nienna’s Garden. (124)

Aragorn is both merciful and just in banishing Beregond from Minas Tirith for his transgression of killing a fellow guard who tried to block his path in his desperate attempt to save Faramir. Just, because the crime had to be punished; merciful, because he is banished to Faramir’s side in Ithilien.

Frodo’s nonviolent approach to what must be done to scour the Shire of its invaders comes from Nienna’s point of view, as well as his ordeal as Ring-bearer. He endured months of ravaging by the malice of Sauron, so knows overwhelmingly well what hatred and rage does to a soul. He twice advocates for a position of mercy rather than the sword for the ruffians and any hobbits who willingly helped them. He does not want anyone to die if it can be at all helped. He pities even the despised Lotho Sackville-Baggins, something Pippin finds beyond comprehension. Fenwick notes, “Had the hobbits begun their re-possession of the Shire with revenge and not Pity, nothing but evil could have come of it” (102). Frodo is not a pacifist; he merely continues to see through Nienna’s eyes.

The Ring-bearer regards Saruman through this same blessed sight, even after the fallen Maia murderously assaults him. Houghton and Keesee assert, “Saruman is unquestionably evil, and unquestionably powerful; yet even so . . . he is pitiable . . . . Evil such as this must be fought, but fought with pity always in mind” (141). All the other hobbits, with Sam at the forefront, are ready to kill the wizard, but Frodo forbids it for the same reason Gandalf countered the hobbit’s initial desire for Gollum’s death. “He [Saruman] is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it” (LotR 996). Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s observation of how Jesus loved even great sinners reflects Frodo’s view here: “He saw that a jewel had fallen into the mud and though encrusted with foulness that it was still a jewel” (155). 

Rutledge notes what the Ring-bearer extends is “mercy as a force so powerful that it is in itself a weapon - precisely what Martin Luther King and other apostles of nonviolence have taught” (364). Ang adds, “This mercy goes beyond mere compassion or even forgiveness. It is, ultimately, the expression of hope, a belief in the possibility of redemption and change” (87). Clyde Kilby notes the compassion Frodo exercises “surpasses the norm of ordinary morality. It has the quality of such as Portia called ‘an attribute of God himself’” (137). And of Nienna.

Saruman quite rightly observes how greatly Frodo grew spiritually throughout his horrific ordeal, which Fenwick also notes:

The Ring is destroyed but Frodo returns out of Mordor with a far more precious object - the Pity that has allowed him to save the world . . . . In a very real sense, the true quest is not to destroy the Ring but to give Frodo an awareness of the power of Pity equal to Odysseus’ understanding of wisdom; for without that heroic virtue the anterior effects of the quest (the destruction of evil, the return of the hero, the cleansing of the homeland) would have remained forever unachievable. (100)

Frodo’s words astonish and enrage Saruman. He finds pity and mercy incomprehensible, indeed loathsome. “You are wise, and cruel. You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy. I hate it and you!” (LotR 996). Fenwick comments, “Saruman’s rejection of Frodo’s Pity is a rejection of the (divine) Pity of the Valar” (101). Gandalf, Galadriel and now Frodo gave the corrupt Maia several opportunities to return to the light. With increasing bitterness and utter rejection, Saruman made it perfectly clear he had no interest in what would have been extended to him if he had the humility and courage to admit he had done wrong and repented. Beyond his physical life, he at last reaches out for it, but it is too late. The Valar reject him, as he previously rejected them. Frodo’s pity continues even then for the waste of such a life.

So what in the end is the worth of pity and mercy in Tolkien’s view? He provides many answers in his legendarium. Mary Ducey notes:

Ultimately, it is an action of forbearing to harm another, directed to the good of its object, which goes beyond the judgement of justice, done after a personal consideration of the other’s state of being, that is not reducible to pure emotion and is not done in the assurance of reward, but is nonetheless often rewarded in a theistic universe. (301)

Farid Mohammadi observes:

The Medievalist Tolkien had observed keenly about his beloved country’s shortcoming in the matter of having any kind of English Mythology . . . ; he intended therefore, to create and leave to posterity, a long-lasting legacy for his country. Tolkien’s attempt . . . filled and fulfilled the barren souls of the unfortunate people . . . by attracting their attention to rediscovering the existence of Hope, Faith, Chivalric manners, Pity and Mercy. (123)

As a devout Catholic, another reason Tolkien placed such emphasis on pity and mercy for one’s enemies is to give troubled souls the opportunity for redemption and to hope and work toward their cure. Bilbo’s divinely or angelically inspired action began this process for Gollum with Sam’s critical act as the culmination. All who extended pity and mercy to Saruman did so for the same reason. Fenwick observes, “In an age of petty Sarumans and Saurons each trying to establish his own Mordor, Tolkien saw in the power of his faith a way to transcend the limits of self-interest. Rightly or wrongly, Tolkien’s vision is of a universe where Hobbits can overcome the evil of pride incarnate by embracing Pity, thus making the world a better and safer place . . .” (110).

Frodo and Bilbo did not pity Gollum in ignorance of how wicked the creature was. Both hobbits were well aware the wretched being could harm if not kill them. Geoffrey Allen Matthew asserts, “Tolkien paints him realistically to indicate that even a monstrous sinner has hope. He is not clearly black and white. And through his incapability of forsaking goodness entirely, he attests to its potency all the more. His relationship with Frodo starts to cure him of his illness, but in order to be truly free he has to die to his own desires” (27-28). This he ultimately could not do, yet both Bilbo and Frodo gave him the chance to do so through their refusal to kill him.

Love is a choice. Pity is a choice. Mercy is a choice. Larsen argues:

Nienna owes many of her later attributions to virtues Tolkien felt were central to living successfully in our fallen world, namely mercy and pity, and the faith to reach out in our suffering toward a virginal divinity who (in Tolkien’s mind) could both understand and ease our suffering.  . . .  I would . . . suggest that Tolkien meant for us to consider Nienna’s later role in his subcreation as parallel to the role of Mary in the Catholic world. (201)

The actions of either Lady of Sorrows or their devotees is beyond the comprehension of Sauron and Morgoth and all those who practice evil, whether in the Secondary or Primary World. As is said of Morgoth, “to him that is pitiless the deeds of pity are ever strange and beyond reckoning” (Silmarillion 258). And because of this fatal inability to realize “it is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism that alone can defeat evil” (Kreeft 217), the forces of darkness fall under those who practice these virtues. 

Michael C. Haldas observes:

In the end, pity and mercy save Middle-earth. It is pity that comes from the wisdom of the heart that transcends logic and reason. Sauron, and those that follow him, operated in a logical, myopic manner based on reason; Gandalf, Frodo, Aragorn, Sam, and others, operated from a deep sense of conviction in their hearts as to what was right and what was true, and held to values such as pity that trumped any sense of self-preservation. (80)

David Waito adds:

Sympathy is a prerequisite to pity, and knowledge of the Ring’s effect on its wearer is required for one to pity another who has possessed it.  . . . Gollum’s intentions [in the Sammath Naur] were not benign, and he cannot be acclaimed as the savior of the Ring Quest. The true saviors are pity and forgiveness. (171)

The extension of pity, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness would have been beyond the comprehension of Fui as well. 

But not Nienna.

“At the end of days, when the Firstborn and Secondborn meet again . . . the Queen of the Stars [Varda] will not lead the playing of the theme aright, but rather, the Queen of Pity, Mercy, and Mourning. In the end, Nienna will reveal her true power, and her centrality to both the World That Is, and the hope of attaining a better World That Can Be” (Larsen 202). 

One shudders to think what Olórin would have learned from Fui, but he learned instead at the feet of Nienna. 

And that made all the difference. 

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