LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 02 - The Passage of the Marshes

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Some other ideas that were supposed to be in my last post but which were apparently lost:

There's an interesting connection between the Dead Marshes and Lorien: both are places of memory, but in different ways. In Lorien the past lives on, but it presents a danger to those who come into contact with it. The peril of the Wood is that one will never want to leave. The Dead Marshes also preserve the past insofar as they contain the decaying/rotting memory of the ancient past -- and like Lorien they present a peril to the unwary -- if you get too close to those images of the past, you can literally drown in them and never leave.

It brings an interesting comparison to the fore between the sterile preservation of Lorien and the mummification of the Dead Marshes. Against the sterility of Lorien the Marshes are a startling fertile place: for all their associations with death and their proximity to Mordor, time passes there, things actually grow and die. The processes of change that are suspended in Lorien are not suspended in the Marsh: the dead are of and in a past that is distinct from the present and future.

[Formendacil]

If I had to pick a "least favourite" chapter in all The Lord of the Rings, I might just pick "The Passage of the Marshes." Not because it's a bad chapter or an unnecessary chapter or a chapter without some thrilling (perhaps one should say "chilling") moments, but because, if you line up all 62 chapters of the book from favourite to least favourite, some chapter is inevitably going to be last.

Like many chapters, "The Passage of the Marshes" is about getting from Point A to Point B. If there is a concrete reason for ranking it my 62nd favourite chapter, it is because the lands traversed in its pages are possibly the least lovely in the entire book. And, yes, I think I would rather visit the Plain of Gorgoroth than the slag-heaps outside the Black Gates. Gorgoroth, one gets the impression, was always hostile to life, that Sauron hasn't really destroyed anything. But the landscape outside the Morannon has been deliberately and harshly mutilated. Even if Tolkien removed the explicit connection to the worst of modern destruction from the Dead Marshes proper, the concept echoes throughout the chapter, especially AFTER the Dead Marshes.

The corpses in the water are one of two highlights in the chapter--the other is the dialogue Sam overhears between Sméagol and Gollum. To talk about the second one briefly, I haven't any real thought to add there, but it does seem to be a point worth noting that Sam is, once again, eavesdropping. Counting Bag End and the Council fo Elrond previously, this is at least the third time--and at least as significant as the previous two. Can we consider this a character trait of sorts?

Going back to the corpses, it is delightfully unsettling coming upon them. I actually noticed a detail that I'd never noticed before that has been lingering with me:

Originally Posted by The Passage of the Marshes

Sam looked back and found that Frodo had lagged again. He could not see him. He went some paces back into the darkness, not daring to move far, or to call in more than a hoarse whisper. Suddenly he stumbled against Frodo, who was standing lost in thought, looking at the pale lights. His hands hung stiff at his sides; water and slime were dripping from them.

--emphasis added

This is immediately before Sam trips and sees what's in the meres, and the reader is kept in the dark with Sam until he does, so we don't know what to fear here... but as a rereader who DOES know, I'm intensely disturbed by Frodo's water-and-slime-dripping hands. I'm not sure I want to know why that detail is being reported--the implication is that this is a recent addition (i.e. Frodo's hands may be expected to be wet and dirty, but not dripping with with water and slime--the dripping implies it has a recent cause).