[davem]

First of all, this post was put together before I read Esty's intro, so it touches on some of the points she introduces without reference to her.

Second of all, this is a long post - but its a significant chapter & I got carried away!
With this chapter we come to the end of the first third of book 6. This final book divides neatly into three sections. The first third ( Tower of Cirith Ungol, Land of Shadow & Mount Doom) tell of the end of the Quest. It is the ‘mythic’ or spritual world that is depicted. The next three (Field of Cormalllen, Steward & the King & Many Partings) take us back to the ‘legendary’ world of Gondor, Rohan & Rivendell. Finally, in the last third (Homeward Bound, Scouring of the Shire & Grey Havens), we will return to the mundane world of Bree & the Shire, but with a final glimpse of the mythic world at the end.

In this chapter, though, we see what is, apparently the end of the struggle. The Ring is brought to destruction, & everyone can go home. Things move inexorably towards their culmination, Frodo, Sam, Gollum & the Ring come to the Fire. The mountain looms ever larger, till it fills the Hobbits vision:

South-eastward, far off like a dark standing shadow, loomed the Mountain. Smokes were pouring from it, and while those that rose into the upper air trailed away eastward, great rolling clouds floated down its sides and spread over the land...

They could not follow this road any longer; for it went on eastward into the great Shadow, but the Mountain now loomed upon their right, almost due south, and they must turn towards it. ..

Such daylight as followed was dim; for here as the Mountain drew near the air was ever mirky, while out from the Dark Tower there crept the veils of Shadow that Sauron wove about himself...

The land was rough and hostile, and yet they made much progress, and ever the Mountain drew nearer...

The Mountain crept up ever nearer, until, if they lifted their heavy heads, it filled all their sight, looming vast before them: a huge mass of ash and slag and burned stone, out of which a sheer-sided cone was raised into the clouds.

Sam realises that, if there is a way home it lies on the other side of that Mountain & that he must pass through the Fire to reach it. The Land of Mordor is a dead land. All life has been leeched out of it to leave nothing but ‘Ashes & dust & thirst’. Even the stones & the mountains seem like ghosts:

A few miles to the north-east the foothills of the Ashen Mountains stood like sombre grey ghosts, behind which the misty northern heights rose like a line of distant cloud hardly darker than the lowering sky.

Tolkien returns to the idea of hope - Sam seems finally to lose hope at one point:

Never for long had hope died in his staunch heart, and always until now he had taken some thought for their return. But the bitter truth came home to him at last: at best their provision would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.

Seems Sam has at last given up, but it isn’t so:

But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt 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.

Sam’s loss of hope is only apparent. Like Gandalf in Moria, it only seemed to die. Actually, it was transformed into something else, something at first unrecognisable for what it was, but actually the same thing but in a more powerful manifestation. He finds the strength to cast aside everything he has carried for so long - even his beloved pans. Yet before the end he will find a new burden - his master, who he will have to carry on his back up the Mountain.

Sam’s inner dialogue is interesting. We again see a Sam who is ‘torn in two:

I reckon we crossed half the distance before we stopped. One more day will do it.' And then he paused.
'Don't be a fool, Sam Gamgee,' came an answer in his own voice. 'He won't go another day like that, if he moves at all. And you can't go on much longer giving him all the water and most of the food.'
'I can go on a good way though, and I will.'
'Where to?'
'To the Mountain, of course.'
'But what then, Sam Gamgee, what then? When you get there, what are you going to do? He won't be able to do anything for himself.'
To his dismay Sam realized that he had not got an answer to this. He had no clear idea at all. Frodo had not spoken much to him of his errand, and Sam only knew vaguely that the Ring had somehow to be put into the fire. 'The Cracks of Doom,' he muttered, the old name rising to his mind. 'Well, if Master knows how to find them, I don't.'
'There you are!' came the answer. 'it's all quite useless. He said so himself. You are the fool, going on hoping and toiling. You could have lain down and gone to sleep together days ago, if you hadn't been so dogged. But you'll die just the same, or worse. You might just as well lie down now and give it up. You'll never get to the top anyway.'
'I'll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind,' said Sam. 'And I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart. So stop arguing!'

‘Who’s arguing?’ one might ask. Sam here sounds like no-one so much as Smeagol-Gollum. ‘There’s no point!’ says one part of him. ‘I don’t care, I’m going to go on anyway!’ the other part of him responds.

So we move towards the end. Gollum reappears to claim his Precious. He attacks Frodo, but is thrown down. Sam sees this event with ‘other vision’:

Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of the Emyn Muil, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the figure there spoke a commanding voice.
'Begone and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.'

This is very interesting. The voice Sam hears may be Frodo’s, but it doesn’t sound exactly like Frodo. The voice Sam hears comes ‘out of the figure’. Is this the voice of the Ring? Is it Frodo or the Ring promouncing sentence on Gollum - or is there by now any difference between them? What Sam sees is almost an amalgam of the two.

Sam finally gets his chance for revenge on Gollum, but at the last moment he cannot bring himself to take it. The final lesson is learnt - pity. Many that live deserve death, & some that die deserve life - can you give it to them?’

Sam's hand wavered. His mind was hot with wrath and the memory of evil. It would be just to slay this treacherous, murderous creature, just and many times deserved; and also it seemed the only safe thing to do. But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum's shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again. But Sam had no words to express what he felt.

Now to the question, one we’ve agonised over on these boards. Does Frodo give in & claim the Ring, or is his will overwhelmed? In an early draft Frodo’s word’s in the Sammath Naur were to have been:

’I have come’ he said. ‘But I cannot do what I have come to do. I will not do it. The Ring is mine.’

rather than

'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!'

The first version implies that his will has been overwhelmed - ‘I cannot do what I have come to do.’ The published version implies that Frodo has willingly chosen to claim the Ring, but still some argue that Frodo was not strong enough to withstand the Ring’s power at that point, so He was not accountable for his actions. CT comments:

Frodo's words 'But I cannot do what I have come to do' were changed subsequently on the B text to 'But I do not choose now to do what I have come to do.' I do not think that the difference is very significant, since it was already a central element in the outlines that Frodo would choose to keep the Ring himself; the change in his words does no more than emphasize that he fully willed his act. Sauron Defeated

Frodo fully willed his act. For whatever reason. He was fully aware, fully conscious of what he was doing. He willed his act. But we all saw that one coming, didn’t we? No-one could have withstood the Ring. Frodo was broken by his struggles. He was one little Hobbit, what chance did he have? Yet in the end he fully willed his act. He knew what he was doing & did it anyway.

The end of the Ring always seems to produce a feeling of ‘What??? Is that it?!!!!’ Its all over so suddenly, in so few words:

Suddenly Sam saw Gollum's long hands draw upwards to his mouth; his white fangs gleamed, and then snapped as they bit. Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm's edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought of living fire.
'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.
There was a roar and a great confusion of noise. Fires leaped up and licked the roof. The throbbing grew to a great tumult, and the Mountain shook.

Nearly 1,000 pages so far, all the battles, the sacrifices, the suffering, the fear of the Ring, the whole world on a knife edge - & that’s it? Three little paragraphs. Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger, prances about & trips up! No wonder both the radio adaptation & the movie go for something more spectacular - a magnificant crescendo in the first, a desperate hand to hand struggle between Frodo & Gollum in the other. What was Tolkien thinking of?

Well, I think Tolkien got it right. First & foremost because the destruction of the Ring is not the culmination of the story - the Return of the king, the Scouring of the Shire & the Grey Havens are the culmination of the story. Its right that the Ring is dispatched in the way it is.

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

‘In the end the Shadow was only a small & passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.’ That’s why the Ring must pass away as it does. In the end it gets the end it is worthy of. If its end was brought about by Eru then it is the ultimate slapdown of Sauron, the ultimate humiliation. ‘Think you’re so great, so terrible? Just watch! Think you’re going to win back your Ring & initiate your ‘Thousand year Reich’? Sorry, son. Look on as I shatter your dreams of power not with a spectacular battle in which you can go down in a blaze of glory, but with a farce, which will leave you humiliated & asking ‘Was that it?’

Think about it. Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, terror of Middle-earth, sitting in Barad dur dreaming dreams of absolute power, only to suddenly become aware of the real danger he is in & to have to watch helplessly as Gollum jigs about, trips up & falls into the lava. Its pure slapstick! The ultimate ‘custard pie’ moment. Sauron dies completely humiliated.

Yet if it all ends in farce for Sauron, it is all too real & painful for Sam & Frodo. They’ve played their parts in the cosmic drama & now have to live with the aftermath. Frodo sits with blood pouring from his maimed hand, & Sam has nothing to bind it with.