[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Ok, call me a sentimental idiot, but this is easily one of my very favourite chapters as, for me, it is the fullest unravelling of the eucatastrophe of the tale. The ‘real’ climactic moment came in the last chapter, I suppose:

‘Precious, precious, precious!’ Gollum cried. ‘My Precious! O my Precious!’ And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.

This is going back a bit, I know, but a few comments seem necessary: first, I love how here, at the end, the paragraph is NOT about the destruction of the Ring but about the death of Gollum: “he was gone”. It’s almost as though the narrative itself is not going to make Gollum’s mistake and focus on the Ring at this moment, but remain focused instead on the ‘human’ aspect of the story. This moment could have been narrated in two ways – the first is the way Tolkien chose to narrate it: as the story of an individual who has finally lost his identity (he is Gollum here, not Smeagol) falling to his individual death. The other way to narrate it would have made more sense of the story, but would have made for less compelling reading: that narrative would have focused on how Eru or Providence (or luck) pushed the Ring into the fire. And with great anxiety and dread, but to prove an important point (that such a paragraph could have existed at this point) I would conjecture something like:

“And as Gollum gazed upon the Ring” (not the unspecific ‘his prize’) “he stepped too far, and whether it was the buckling of the ground, or some last shred of Smeagol in the creature he had become that willed him to it, or perhaps even luck, he fell into the fire, and the Ring was no more.”

OK, I know how pale that is in comparison to what Tolkien could have done, but I wanted to give an example of this ‘other’ kind of narrative that Tokien did not write.

So why go back a chapter to talk about this one? Because the current chapter maintains and broadens this focus on the human and the individual and intimate, forsaking any narrative that would attempt to place the destruction of the Ring into any ‘wider’ scope. As davem has already pointed out, the first members of the Fellowship whom we see reacting to the success of the Quest are Sam and Frodo, and they have a conversation about their individual love and respect for one another. It’s also interesting that outside Mordor, where the ‘big events’ are really going on, the army is treated to that wonderful image of Sauron being blown away by the west wind, while Frodo and Sam see nothing of the kind just a few miles from Barad-Dur – they are too involved with each other to even see the great events unfold.

This sets up the series of revelations that make this chapter so utterly moving to me. When Frodo awakens to see that Gandalf is alive he reacts with the joy of seeing that his friend is not dead:

’Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’

(This moment hearkens all the way back to the last paragraph of the first chapter, in which we saw foreshadowed Gandalf’s death, when his “cloaked figure quickly vanished into the twilight” and “Frodo did not see him again for a long time” – testimony to how careful a craftsman Tolkien was.)

When Sam sees the Man who has become Aragorn, Son of Aragorn, Elessar Telcontar the Returned King of the Reunited Kingdoms of Anor and Gondor, The Elf-Stone, Dunedain, he cries out:

’Well, if that isn’t the crown of all!…Strider, or I’m still asleep!’

And in the final act that makes me willing to die for this man, Aragorn takes the name of Strider from Sam’s lips with affection and pride.

And then comes the part that gets me misty every time I read it. I shall let it speak for itself:

And when the glad shout had swelled up and died away again, to Sam’s final and complete satisfaction and pure joy, a minstrel of Gondor stood forth, and knelt, and begged leave to sing. And behold! He said:

‘Lo! Lords and knights and men of valour unashamed, kings and princes, and fair people of Gondor, and Riders of Rohan, and ye sons of Elrond, and Dunedain of the North, and Elf and Dwarf, and great-hearts of the Shire, and all free folk of the West, now listen to my lay. For I will sing to you of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.’

And when Sam heard that he laughed aloud for sheer delight, and he stood up and cried: ‘O great glory and splendour! And all my wishes have come true!’ And then he wept.

(As do I each time.)

Here’s Sam at his best – Sauron has fallen, the hosts of the west are free, the minstrel is going to sing a ‘big’ song, and Sam has his moment of uttermost joy for the sake of his dear friend – he’s happy that Frodo is going to be recognized and lauded as Sam feels he should be. It’s a moment of friendship that shatters me with its utter beauty and purity.

It’s also Sam who brings the point home: when he hears of the ‘great’ events that have been taking place while he and Frodo toiled in their individual trials he merely says,

‘But I missed a lot, seemingly.’

I think this is the narrative’s acknowledgment that the feelings of joy that Tolkien called eucatastrophe are not linked to these greater events but to the individual trial and struggle. It’s simply not a historical even but a personal one, and this, I think, is an acknowledgement that eucatastrophe is really the experience of the reader – for the great, deep, tear inducing joy that I feel at this moment is a profoundly personal thing: the reward, almost, for having come so far with these characters. The real quest here is the one that I’ve completed – that all individual readers have completed – so it makes sense that it would culminate with a story like the one we’ve been reading.