[Fordim Hedgethistle]

As with the last chapter it's Gollum who comes to the fore here. At the beginning of the chapter he is presented in a way that is relatively shocking, given that he is a "villain" -- first, he recites a piece of poetry. This is no meaningless moment, insofar as poetry has been a marker of 'goodness' and knowledge, even lore and history, in the story. One of Sam's early moments of revelation (that he is more than a simple gardener) came when he sang the song of the Trolls -- hmmm, must like Gollum, Sam's first song was also a commemoration of the earlier adventures of Bilbo. Another link between the two.

The other revelation about Gollum is that he possesses more 'lore' than the hobbits: he knows the history, however dimly, of the Dead Marshes. He remembers when he was a child being told about it and the battle fought there.

It's interesting that the more Gollum directs his attention to memory and what was, the more he moves toward the good. It's when he looks to the future and what he plans to do next that he heads toward evil: he is going to take them to Shelob, he hopes to become "Lord Smeagol? Gollum the Great? The Gollum! Eat fish every day, three times a day, fresh from the sea."

I think there's some interesting things to learn about the nature of the Ring's evil in these moments. It seems to be directed toward the future and toward the gratification of desire, while the contrary to that is directed backward -- not a very 'modern' view of the world. Frodo and Sam are never really travelling to Mordor so much as they are moving away from the Shire: it's what lies behind the, that pushes them forward, and their one desire -- expressed in this chapter -- is to go back. When gollum mimics them and thinks 'back' to his own home, there is hope for him, but when he thinks 'forward' to his dream of becoming "The Gollum" he is lead toward the evil.

So is Sauron a Modern person? His lands look like a modern wasteland, obviously, but more than that he is a forward thinker in that he wants to dominate the future while the hobbits (and moreso the Elves) want to protect the past. . .

This reminds me of a comment made by my fellow countryman Marshall McLuhan: "we drive into the future using the rearview mirror as our guide." I've never been sure what to make of that, but I think that perhaps Tolkien did -- that the only reliable guide we have to our forward motion is where we've been: that those who look and think 'back' can take ethical and moral paths into what's next, while those who think only into or about the future can do so only in relation to what they want from the future: tomorrow is all about what's gonig to happen to me, whereas yesterday is about what's happened to us????