Nebulous "It" and Absolutes

[littlemanpoet]

davem: Maybe that's putting too bald a face on it, but I found your comment interesting:

I still don't think the 'wrongness' is accounted for.

Precisely. You are saying what the book said: accounting cannot arrive at an answer, because you're still trying to add things up, and they will not. Your example of Jung and transcendence is an example of numinous experience.

And if that wrongness continues, that's unjust, & we are back at the question of why Eru, or God, allows that injustice. Is bringing right out of wrong, good out of evil, sufficient justification for allowing the 'evil' to go on existing?

This is just another version of asking "why". I think "why" is unanswerable. One has to let go of "why" and move through the suffering to the numinous, that completes the suffering with joy.

It is also telling that, from the Christian tradition again, Christ still bears the scars of his suffering, even in his "perfect", resurrected body, and will forever, according to the texts. So perfection no longer equals "without blemish", but seems to equal "completed and restored to wholeness, even with the signs of suffering still there". Apparently, if one accepts the Christian point of view on this, every scar we bear after our how-ever-many-years of life, may still be visible, whether emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical, or whatever, but will be made part of the perfection of the resurrected body. Sorry if this was offensive to those of you who do not hold to this particular faith; it's the way I think and view the world, and you know, I'm rather glad of it right now.

Completeness seems like the only possible conclusion to suffering, and it seems to be what Tolkien is suggesting not only for Frodo, but for Sam and the rest of the Fellowship as well.

[davem]

I suppose part of the problem is that LotR ends before we see Frodo's final state. We see the broken Frodo setting out for the West, but not what becomes of him. As if the story of Job ended with him sitting in the dust & his friends telling him he must have done something to have brought it on himself.

So, Gandalf can say that he will be like a vessel filled with light for those to see who can, yet Frodo seems unable to see that light in himself. Perhaps it is the light (God) that shines though us that makes our faults, our 'wounds' beautiful. And yet our wounds come so often from our 'sins' - as has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Frodo's wounds are recieved when he gives in or loses hope. So, wrongness & 'evil' are what shape us into what we finally become. No wounds or flaws are ugly when the light shines through them. So, 'forgiveness of our sins' is when the light of God shines through us, making our wounds beautiful. If our sins are not forgiven, the wounds remain ugly because they are not illuminated. The Light shining in the darkness.

So, we can only be beautiful in the eyes of others, never in our own eyes, because we cannot see the light which shines through us, only the light which shines through others. So, we can never see God in ourselves, only in those around us. This reminds me of William's 'Beatrician experience' - seeing God in the beloved. God reveals Himself to us by His light shining through those around us. And He reveals himself to others by His light shining through us.

So all the saints experience themselves as sinners & unworthy, & less than those around them - as Frodo does at the end of LotR. Which, I suppose, means that his 'healing' in the West is perhaps simply (!) about him learning to see himself as others see him.

Or something.

[littlemanpoet]

davem Poignant! Well stated. Moving, too!

I do think it would be more apt to say that the last state we see Frodo in - wounded and going over sea - is more akin to Job repenting in dust and ashes after he has seen God. As you said, we don't see the part of Frodo's story that is akin to Job being blessed with a whole new flock of herds and children and houses, etc. You know, I don't think LotR would have worked if Tolkien had written it that way. I like it better the way it is.

[Bêthberry]

davem, if I may interject something here, I think your point about Frodo is particularly important in terms of the story.

I suppose part of the problem is that LotR ends before we see Frodo's final state. We see the broken Frodo setting out for the West, but not what becomes of him.

It accords first of all with Tolkien's observation in "On Fairy-Stories":

for there is no true end to any fairy-tale

The footnote to this comment (footnote H) elaborates upon it essentially to suggest a reason for this: it takes us out of the limited frame of our own time into timelessness.

Perhaps another example of this 'open-ended narrative' also accords with your thoughts here. Acts of the Apostles, the book of the New Testament which tells of Paul's ministry, ends not with Paul's execution in Rome but with his ministry there. Much is left to the imagination and thought of the reader, as you so ably provide here.

For myself, I would not have wanted a 'complete' resolution to Frodo's fate any more than that of the others who sail West with him, for that would take the story out of the perilous realm, in my humble estimation. If I read your posts correctly, I think this is something you imply as well.

[davem]

LMP, Bethberry,

So, we have Frodo 'repenting'. I wondered at first. Then the question got too big. Has Frodo anything to repent of? If he claimed the Ring in full knowledge of the implications, then, yes. He is, like Job, broken - but broken by his own 'sins', or by God, or by the way things are in the world?

Julian of Norwich wrote 'Our life here is penance'. For what? If our whole life is penance, then not for something we as individuals have done or not done. So penance for what? Being imperfect? Yet that's how we were made. Yet, if our life was not a penance, we could not be remade through suffering into something wholly different - as Tolkien says of Frodo. So, we repent of what we are - no matter who is responsible, or how it came to be that we did not appear already perfected. The 'wrongness' we feel - about the way world is, is because we are 'wrong'. We see as in a Glass, darkly. So everything seems dark. Till the Light shines - or until we can see it, till our eyes are opened. And Lewis said that pain is what opens our eyes, wakes us up. Suffering is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. So, we are awakened, & see beyond this little world, the 'Shadowlands' as he called them - always in shadow because the 'light' seems always to be shining somewhere else, over the next hill, around the next corner. We seem forever to be chasing that light, never realising that the reason it seems far away is because our eyes are darkened. The Light is everywhere, but we see it only in other people & other places. Chasing after God, without realising He is right here. Frodo feels lost, confused, broken, because he can't see himself as we or as God (thanks for that, Helen) see him. And his 'healing' will come when he is finally able to open his eyes & see what's really there, who's really there. So, it all seems 'wrong' simply because we're not able to see that its 'right' - or at least that its well on its way to being so.

Frodo's story cannot be completed - not till our own is completed. Because till ours is completed we won't be able to see Frodo's complete. Or perhaps that should be we cannot hear the Happy ever after of Frodo's story, till our own is told to its end.

On a personal note, I remember, many years ago, walking by a river on a foggy day. Suddenly I had this sense that our lives are 'stories' God tells us, stories that while they are being told, seem absolutely real. But when they're finished we can step back & laugh, or cry. But the stories will go on till the final word of the tale is spoken. And then we shall live 'happily ever after' beyond the stories, whether or not the story itself ended happily, because, after all, it is only a story. As Lewis put it, 'real life has not begun yet'.

And now I'm so far off topic I expect this to be removed not just to another thread but to another site altogether

[mark12_30]

Julian of Norwich wrote 'Our life here is penance'.

Although I respect Julian, here she and I disagree (I think the whole penance thing is obliterated by the power of the cross.) I think our life here is war. And I think that shows Frodo's state thru a clearer lens. Yes, he had stuff to repent for, but I think it was the War that wounded him most.

To quote an old friend-- "This thread is deep, deep..."

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I admit that I have come to this thread late, and while I have done my best to catch up on the full debate, the overwhelming volume and complexity of the posts has defeated me (somewhat) – so if I am about to replicate points that have already been made, please do let me know!

At any event, the first thing that has spurred me to post here is the idea of Frodo and repentence. Davem, you ask (and then answer):

Has Frodo anything to repent of? If he claimed the Ring in full knowledge of the implications, then, yes.

The moment at which Frodo claims the Ring has always struck me as being wonderfully ambivalent on just this point:

“‘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!”

At first glance it does indeed appear as though Frodo is making his own choice, albeit under huge (perhaps, as Tolkien argued, irresistible pressure) from the Ring. But the language is so loaded. Syntactically the sentences as Frodo utters them are clumsy, but they do allow the following two phrases:

“I do not choose now” and “I will not.” This would seem to open the door to the idea that Frodo’s will has been overmastered by the Ring, and that he is not in control anymore. He is “not choosing” for his “will [is] not” his own anymore.

Also, the pattern of this little scene is suggestive that Frodo is not making his own choice here. It begins with the acknowledgement of his heroic act (“I have come” ), then moves into the above ambiguous expressions of intent (that is, he has lost the ability to choose and will to the Ring), and then he claims the Ring as his own. It is only after he has reached the point where he can “not choose” and “will not” that the he claims the Ring.

So, in answer to your question Davem: no, Frodo has nothing to repent of for he did not claim the Ring, the Ring claimed him!

The other thing that I have had flitting through my mind as I read over the posts is Frodo’s parting words to 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.’”

Now, before I started ploughing through this thread, I had always thought that this referred to the sacrifices people made in war to preserve or save the homeland. But now I think about it differently: it seems to me that with the end of the War of the Ring, much that is good and beautiful is passing from Middle-Earth: Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf are all on the same boat with Frodo. These beings are the repository of memory: the memory of Westernesse, and the First Age and of all that is now gone. For them to leave and Frodo to remain means that in Middle-Earth there will no longer be beings who remember the light, but at least one being who remembers the darkness. It’s not that Frodo will remain in Middle-Earth like the blot of ‘sin’ but as a reminder and commemoration of Sauron’s works -- that is, he knows the full nature of the One Ring.

I’m still not entirely happy with this last thought, but it seems intriguing enough (to me at least) to throw out there.