Is Sauron Frodo's shadow?

[Firefoot]

Interesting topic that I missed the first time around.

I think Morthoron hit the nail on the head:

I would say that Frodo did not spend his time becoming Sauron; on the contrary, he did not possess the will or need to dominate. The Ring, more coersive and addictive than any drug, simply took control of him where it was at the zenith of its power, in Orodruin.
...
Therefore, the fall of Sauron occurred precisely because Frodo lacked the intent to become Sauron personified, and his mercy and compassion -- virtues utterly alien to the Dark Lord -- compensated for his inevitably succumbing to a power greater than his weakened spirit could handle.

Without the external struggle against Sauron and the Ring, there is no internal struggle for Frodo. Here, the external creates the internal, quite the opposite of Donaldson's statement.

I'd like to comment on a couple other sections of the article as well:

Remember, of course, that he was a Beowulf scholar himself: he was attracted to Beowulf's epic vision. On the other hand, like all the rest of us he was a modern human being and could hardly have been blind to his own life, his own culture, his own religious and psychological milieu. Like all the rest of us, he was caught - tragically caught - between his ability to respond to epic perceptions and his inability to achieve them. And out of that conflict he forged a rather staggering achievement.

He restored the epic to English literature. Roughly a century after the epic became an impossible literary form, he made it possible to write epics again. But - a crucial
but - he did it by divorcing his work entirely from the real world, by insisting that there is no connection between the metaphors of fantasy and the facts of the
modern reality, by rejecting allegory. He claimed that his work was pure fantasy, that it existed solely for itself. And the subtext of that assertion is that it is indeed possible for us to dream about heroism and transcendental love, about grandeur of identity in all its manifestations - but only if we distinguish absolutely between the epic vision and who we actually are as human beings. Tolkien restored our right to dream epic dreams - but only if we understand clearly that those dreams have no connection to the reality of who we are and what we do. [emphasis mine]

Don't completely agree with this either. Just because a work is not allegorical does not mean it does not have connection to the real world. I think any semblance the Legendarium has to something allegorical comes from Tolkien's desire to create something mythological. I think this line at the end of the Sil says it well:

Here ends the Silmarillion; and if it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and If any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

If this isn't at least a little bit reflective of how Tolkien saw our world, I would be surprised.

Honestly, I don't really see how allegory or metaphor is supposed to make fantasy any more or less real or applicable. Just because the character in Donaldson's book (which I haven't read, for the record) travels back and forth between lands and lives out his struggle in this fantasy land doesn't make that fantasy land any more accessible to me in the real world.

I much prefer Orson Scott Card's viewpoint here (from Xenocide):

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.

And that I think is the power of fiction in general - to express some kind of truth about the world, the human condition, or ourselves, and that I think is what speaks to us. I think Donaldson tries to get at this but seems rather hung up on the allegorical aspect.

And just because I thought that Donaldson's article wasn't totally off base, I'd like to quote a bit that I did quite like and do find applicable to fantasy as a genre, LotR included:

In all the rest of modern fantasy, however, the movement is away from futility. The approach of modern fantasy is to externalize, to personify, to embody the void in order to confront it directly. The characters in fantasy novels actually meet their worst fears; they actually face the things that demean them; they actually walk into the dark. And they find answers.

Apparently, the techniques and resources of fantasy - magic and personification, for example - attract writers who want to challenge the void, defy the notion of futility. Searching as they do for ways to meet their own inner voids, they posit fictional situations which allow them to define answers, allow them to say that, "Man is an
effective passion."

(On the other hand, it seems pretty clear that this was written pre-Game of Thrones, which in my opinion rather contrarily embodies the notion of futility. )

[Mithadan]

I am doing something that I usually do not care to do. I am replying to a post without reviewing the thread for context.

Here ends the Silmarillion; and if it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and If any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

Feel free to disagree, but I very firmly believe that this is Christopher speaking, not JRRT. This is an apology if he got it wrong from what his father intended, which, in retrospect, was a valid apology.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Feel free to disagree, but I very firmly believe that this is Christopher speaking, not JRRT. This is an apology if he got it wrong from what his father intended, which, in retrospect, was a valid apology.

It could be read that way. As you probably know, the actual text is originally from the Valaquenta. It can be found in Morgoth's Ring:

Here ends The Valaquenta. If it has passed from the high and beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

Christopher Tolkien notes that

This passage was used to form a conclusion to the published Silmarillion

So it may be an apology. It's certainly repurposed material and has a very different meaning in the context of Quenta Silmarillion compared to its original position in Valaquenta in which it muses upon the relationship of the fallen Ainur to the fate of the world.

[Pitchwife]

Ivriniel: Agreed that Covenant raping Lena and the repercussions of that act are a big thing in the Chronicles, but I'd say it was a result of the conflict between leprosy and fantasy - of his emotional numbness being unable to cope with a world of healing and beauty. By the time he met their daughter he still wasn't ready to accept the Land as fully real, but at least he was taking it seriously enough not to give in to her attempts at seducing him. (Gosh, that does sound like GRR Martin, doesn't it? Balanced, fortunately, by some healthy and adorable lovemaking - Covenant and Linden on Starfare's Gem, awww! And yes, I love Linden too.)

In the Gap series, on the other hand, sex is mostly linked to issues of power and control - Angus over Morn, Morn over herself (after Angus gives her the control device) and thus over Nick. Different animal, I'd say. (There's also a strong undercurrent of mothers, motherhood and giving birth - Angus's abusive mom, Bryony Hyland and her importance to Morn and Davies, Morn herself, Norna Fasner - even the Amnion by virtue of their name.)

Got to confess btw that I absolutely love Angus - as a literary character, mind you, he's just unforgettable! - , and I cheered for him at the end of This Day All Gods Die, even while empathizing with Morn's relief to be rid of him. No small feat for an author, is it? You know, it occurs to me that he's maybe Donaldson's version of Gollum, or a gollumish character: murderous, depraved, despicable, but also pitiable once you learn more about him, and one who actually repents in the end and finds such redemption as he's capable of.

Yes, Donaldson sticks at nought if the story needs it, does he? And he spares neither his readers nor his characters. Especially not the latter - but although he may grind them in the mud he never leaves them there. Tolkien's protagonists show us what to aspire to, which is a great and noble thing. But Donaldson's protagonists - the ones like Covenant and Linden, or Morn and Angus - show us what we fear we are, or might become - and how to pick ourselves up from guilt and failure, accept and transcend.

Which brings me back to Frodo by the long and crooked. Covenant and Linden both have Despite within them (whether they 'create it' or not, I'm not sure how we got to that debate), both had to learn not to be led by its temptation, and thus they're both called and qualified to combat the exterior Despiser (also because they can wield white gold, which may be tied up with this somehow.) Frodo, On the other hand (as Morth said upthread and Firefoot rightly reminds us), Frodo as we first meet him, before the Ring has a chance to work on him, has none of the Sauronic will to power in him. (Heck, he gave up most of his earthly possessions just to see Bilbo again! Doesn't get much more un-Sauronic, does it? The quotes I gave upthread, where he dominates Gollum, clearly show the influence of the Ring, I'd say.) He has no inner Sauron to overcome to begin with, and therefore can't and needn't combat exterior Evil the way Donaldson's heroes do.

I'm thinking the whole 'creativity and evil' thing might perhaps warrant its own thread, after some searching for precedence, and I still need to digest all that 'spectral' stuff near the end of your post.

Firefoot: Thanks for your perceptive comments! I don't really think Donaldson had applicability on his radar at all. Just because Middle-earth and its history don't mirror our reality in a one-to-one way doesn't mean there's no thematic connection at all - on the contrary, precisely because they don't they can be applied to a wide variety of questions, experiences and contexts, and I don't think Donaldson was so unperceptive not to see that.

But I think he was talking about the characters, not the roles. What he's saying, if I understand him right, is that the archetypal roles of the epic tradition - brave hero, just and rightful king, fair lady, wise mentor, monstrous adversaries, etc. - don't fit our social and emotional experience anymore, and if we try to see ourselves in them we're, well, roleplaying, pretending, dissociating ourselves from our reality.

And he was talking pro domo, of course, because he was writing (or had just written) the story of a modern 'real world' character who finds himself at the cusp of an epic conflict but rejects the heroic role he feels the denizens of the Land are forcing on him, and how in the end he achieves heroism after all in his personal and convoluted way, through guilt and failure. In that he wasn't as far from Tolkien as he thought - the Professor, too, gave center stage to the hobbits in LotR, stand-ins for common people, and turned the more traditionally heroic types like Aragorn and Boromir into support characters.

I love your quote from Card (another author whose works are dear to me)! Didn't Finrod speak to Andreth of that joy by which the Elves discern that they've heard truth? (At least I thought he does, but when I tried to find the quote right now it eluded me like a rabbit hiding in its burrow.) And maybe Donaldson isn't so far from that either with "Joy is in the ears that hear."

[Ivriniel]

Yes, have to agree with you about the leprosy being the overarching foundation of the 'ordinary' world theme. I think since the works were released the world's gone pretty crazy about sex offending, which elevates the perversion themes a little more, but only by societal context, for 'now versus then' and not by author intentions.

Having said that, Lord Foul and perversion were where the mythology always took us, when it was about Donaldsonian 'wrongness'. Violations of natural lore and law. Elena had some kind of creepy crack or line, or something in her mind/psychology that surfaced (Cracks of Doom notion?), I seem to recall, three times. Once in Glimmermere, once somewhere else (forget) and of course at Earthblood day and the Power of Command. And AGAIN, Donaldson in the Andelain-ian summoning of the Dead puts Elena into a horrific confrontation with a partly antiposed facet of her nature, some many thousands of years later, with She who Has No Name.

I liked Nick Succorso, who was the archetypal 'bad boi' and Morn using the zone implant on herself for Nick was, in my mind, not quite how that kind of sexual attraction works in mother nature's world. Sexualisation or sexual attraction to Succorso-ites is an anti-social grounding into sensory purpose, an artefact of human condition, yet most usually comes with great emotional pain in unions founded of perversity, ultimately. We see it a lot in medial and remodernisations of old mythologies. Buffy mythology and Spike. True Blood covered it a lot.

I also very much loved Gap Sickness. As Morn blew up her family OMG! I was hoping Donaldson was going to do more with it than he did.

I wonder, suddenly, about the 'null' areas of mind not mapped out by implications of Gap Sickness. I saw the trilogy as deeply reflecting (again spectral) segments of the social mind. The Spectral Mind could most well have been mapped out in a Gap Sickness juxtaposition. I see psychosis or some types of it implicated in some of these themes in our world. It's a condition with so many varied expressions, and each has some snippet, or feature or metaphysical element of many wondrous human mythologies. The shadow cast by Society's dualism in its demarcation of territorial hold over propriety, ideas, and its meritocracy. Deeply divisionist thinking in the Minds of Might of Men has to create Spectral Shadows in social-collective consciousness. Of course, 'real' is not where I'm taking this, at all, although, as one watches mythologies in film (e.g. Star Wars - dualism in good+sexlessness and evil+evil sex in the Sith), the lines traced by fear as one watches such mythologies (especially those with metaphysical overtones), that draws a line of 'effect' or 'direction' to one's one spectrally haunted areas. All humans seem to have them.

Here then - is my join to Frodo and Tolkien's rendering of 'metaphysical evil' and Frodo-ism. I quite agree with you about Frodo's inheritance of the Ring being very significant, and so, the Gifting, indeed, a critical difference in how the Ring ordinarily works in the Sauronic sense. I'm sure Sauron crafted it as Sméagol's claiming of it shows us. Strangely - Holbytlan folk all through. Sméagol succumbs upon finding it in the battle with Deagol. Yet, Frodo and Bilbo - some 4000 years later - the closest we got to dire battling was in Elrond's halls. And there, we certainly saw the Spectre (Spectral* Theory is one of my new areas of thinking), of Frodo's "Sauronisation".

The author placed us in Frodo's narrative, viewing Bilbo. I have never been quite convinced that what Frodo saw, did not reflect, in part, Frodo's Shadow. Shadows, as we know, via Tolkienism - it's an important theme. In its inverse, I've always never forgotten: ringwraiths and how the living "cast a shadow" in their minds.

That one's 'tricksy hobbitses'. How does a being OF Shadow (Spectral--The Spectral hue of the ghosts of the Middle-Earthian 'good', created by Sauronisation), have a SHADOW cast in its mind????

This, must mean then, for Frodo, viewing Bilbo as Frodo saw a SHADOW of Bilbo lurching in greed and avarice for the Ring--and given Frodo's recent recovery (recall his 'transparency)--it was from there forwards that.....

I never quite trusted Frodo, and I somehow knew there was something at work. He was too quick to volunteer to take the Ring to Mordor. Seriously? He what? After just recovering?

I never trusted the volunteerism from its root. Here, then, my connection to Donaldson as he says "Frodo creating Sauron"....

Footnote:
* Spectral-definition as I use it. The metaphysical dimensions [i.e. 'magic', 'spirit', 'lore', 'spirituality-KINDS'] of collective-social trends, collective beliefs, and the shadows cast by the collective religions that split the universe into --OFTEN --Good versus Evil. A Spectral 'line' or 'layer' or 'level' or 'dimension' can be 'element-ised' [FIRE WATER AIR], 'matter-ised [e.g. FLESH, CYBORG, UNDEAD, UNFLESH, ZOMBIE] if about 'living'. Or it can be matter-ised [Rock-Earth-Elements of Period Table-magic-ised, e.g. 'living stone', 'haunted geo-spiritual 'earth' foundations. Rips in 'time' created by 'new undiscovered elements'--that one's UFO-isable. The Amnion come to mind. They can also be CREATIONIST - 'Elves' 'Ea', and that draws a line to Science and the opposite of Entropy, whatever the heck that might be]. etc

Example:

The Spectral ghost of spiritual beliefs that place 'sexuality' with evil and 'asexuality' with good:

An example is Succubus and Incubus, or Lileth - which are Spectral Shadows and sexualised fears as they caste into cognition, for the Western religiosity, in particular.

[Ivriniel]

Spectral: The definition as I use it. Separate post -

The metaphysical dimensions [i.e. 'magic', 'spirit', 'lore', 'spirituality-KINDS'] of collective-social trends, collective beliefs, and the shadows cast by the collective religions that split the universe into --OFTEN --Good versus Evil. A Spectral 'line' or 'layer' or 'level' or 'dimension' can be 'element-ised' [FIRE WATER AIR], 'matter-ised [e.g. FLESH, CYBORG, UNDEAD, UNFLESH, ZOMBIE] if about 'living'. Or it can be matter-ised [Rock-Earth-Elements of Period Table-magic-ised, e.g. 'living stone', 'haunted geo-spiritual 'earth' foundations. Rips in 'time' created by 'new undiscovered elements'--that one's UFO-isable. The Amnion come to mind. They can also be CREATIONIST - 'Elves' 'Ea', and that draws a line to Science and the opposite of Entropy, whatever the heck that might be]. etc

Example on what I call a "Spectrally Misaligned" one of Western Culture (i.e. 'shadow of the collective social mind' :

The Spectral ghost of spiritual beliefs that place 'sexuality' with evil and 'asexuality' with good:

An example is Succubus and Incubus, or Lileth - which are Spectral Shadows and sexualised fears as they caste into cognition, for the Western religiosity, in particular. Those ones are Western for they conflict with ideas of 'sexual governance' and the Natural, versus Supernatural. I'm not talking about their historical rendition, or place in literature, science or fact. Theologians have a reserved term for what I've done with the definition, but heck, for the life of me I can't remember the word. It's a variation of 'exegesis' that specifically partitions what the social mind does to meaning about spiritual, popular 'terms'