LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 12 - Flight to the Ford

[Child of the 7th Age]

Davem

As I look at the chapter again, I see more of what you're referring to. I do still think we have to perform a balancing act in terms of Frodo.

But I want to suggest one more angle that we can perhaps use for a slightly different perspective.... I'll warn you in advance that this is going to be long. I didn't know how else to get all this down.

Question: What if Frodo’s self blame is not an isolated response of one individual but part of a larger pattern, with a number of characters displaying uncharacteristically ‘negative’ feelings?

First, there’s Sam. No one mentioned the unusual scene at the beginning of the chapter. After Frodo was wounded and Strider briefly disappeared, Tolkien say this:

Sam plainly was beginning to have doubts again about Strider; but while they were talking he returned, appearing suddenly out of the shadows. They started, and Sam drew his sword and stood over Frodo; but Strider knelt down swiftly at his side.

“I am not a Black Rider, Sam, he said gently, “nor in league with them. I have been trying to discover something of their movements; but I have found nothing…..

The italics are mine. This whole sequence suggests more than a simple case of Sam not being able to see in the dark. It’s a reflection of something happening inside Sam: potentially destructive feelings and behavior have returned, perhaps not as markedly as in Frodo but still fairly evident.

By the time Strider kneels down, Sam could not have mistaken him for a wraith, yet the Ranger feels compelled to provide an extended explanation of who he is and his loyalties. Strider reassures Sam that he is not “in league with them”. This goes beyond seeing people in the dark.

Just two paragraphs later, we get another description of Sam's behavior: “Sam choked with tears.” The Hobbit fears his friend can't resist the wraiths. Yet, in sticky situations even in Mordor, Sam doesn’t normally cry. Nor are these the “good” tears Gandalf later mentions. Given their distressing situation, the tears can only be destructive and futile. Aragorn sees the real reason for the tears and implores Sam: “Don’t despair.” Despair is the last characteristic I normally associate with Sam. Yet here, Sam can not control his negativity.

We get another uncharacteristic instance of self-doubt by Merry when he announces to Strider:

We can not go any further…..What are we to do? Do you think they will be able to cure him in Rivendell, if we ever get ther?”

This is a Hobbit who wasn't afraid to sass back an Orc after he is kidnapped and injured! Yet, here he seems half defeated.

The companions as a whole “dreaded the dark hours” and imagined that the wraiths were “waiting to make some ambush in a narrow place.” Even Strider, though generally resourceful, “seemed tired and heavy-hearted”.

Thus, Frodo’s is not an isolated response, but part of a pattern. One obvious cause for all this is the fear instilled by the wraiths: it hangs over everything in the chapter. Yet there is a second force at work: the land itself. Here it is not a beneficent force, but presents obstacles and reinforce fears. At every step, Tolkien uses phrases like “withered leaves and grass”, “sullen hills”, “somber country of dark trees”, and “the hills began to shut them in.”

Later in the book we will encounter two “wastelands” created by the active hands of living beings – Mordor and Isengaard ( potentially the Shire as well, only the bad guys didn’t get that far.) These are wastelands like those in the modern world: fertile lands where technology and war actively mar and destroy the land.

In this chapter, the fellowship is passing through a different kind of wasteland. It is the one we see in medieval literature: the empty place where no people live. The medieval wasteland usually has the ability to corrupt spirit and defeat the body. Thus, Strider uses the actual term “wilderness” to describe the land they are going through. He clearly sees the shadow that lies over the land, the shadow that is influencing Frodo and Sam to respond in negative ways:

“Who lives in this land? he [i.e. Frodo] asked. “And who built these towers? Is this troll country?”

“No!” said Strider. “Trolls do not build. No one lives in this land. Men once dwelt here , ages ago; but none remain now. They became an evil people, as legends tell…. But that is so long ago that the hills have forgotten them, though a shadow still lies on the land.

The point where we just begin to break the hold of the land over the fellowship is right here in the chapter:

In the morning he work to find that the rain had stopped. The clouds were still thick, but they were breaking, and pale strips of blue appeared between them. The wind was shifting again. …..Strider went off alone, telling the others to remain under the shelter of the cliff, until he came back. He was going to climb up, if he could, and get a lie of the land.

Thus, Aragorn had to get away from the land by going up in order to cast aside its bad influence. Immediately, he is able to see the truth: they have strayed from their path and must now go in a different direction. This is what he tells his companions.

Of course, it’s possible to read all this literally – having to do with geography and such – and to understand everyone’s fears as simply a reaction to bad conditions. But it seems like there is another level of meaning here as well: the land has influenced how they react and feel and they must get back to their true selves if they are ever to break through to Rivendell.

The final moment of joy, when the sun comes flooding in, literally and figuratively, is when they see those old stone trolls. For the first time in the whole chapter, they are able to laugh:

Frodo felt his spirits reviving: the reminder of Bilbo’s first successful adventure was heartening. the sun, too, was warm and comforting.

A few lines later Frodo blithely asserts;

Don’t worry about me….I feel much better.

At least for the moment, Frodo like the others is back to being his true self. He must still fight the wound and the wraiths, but the shadow of the land is receding.

In this chapter, Tolkien continues to play with concepts like “history”, the “past” and ‘remembrance” It is Frodo’s memory of his own past—Bilbo’s deeds—that helps defeat the wasteland in his own head and enables him to laugh. Even more striking is how Tolkien describes the wasteland as “empty and forgetful”: Strider says that even the hills have forgotten what happened here. But Strider then reassures the Hobbits with a statement that shows his own strength as a Dunedain:

“the heirs of Elendil do not forget all things past… and many more things than I can tell are remembered in Rivendell.

So here the remembrance of the past is positive. Without it, I doubt the group would have made it through. How Tolkien loved to play with ideas and turn them round about in each chapter!

[Aiwendil]

Two minor comments that can't pretend to fully address anything said above:

Davem wrote:

Once he is able to rest & make a decision he accepts the task of taking the Ring to the fire - but does he make that choice out of defiance or despair?

I would say neither; rather: he knew that accepting the task was the morally right thing to do, unequivocally, regardless of how he felt about it. I don't know whether he felt despair or defiance or hope or all three; but I think that his decision was made without respect to these things. Later, when he effectively makes the same decision at Amon Hen, Sam correctly analyzes his predicament: he is not trying to make up his mind at all; he knows exactly what he ought to do - he is only working up his courage to actually do it.

Child of the Seventh Age wrote:

Despair is the last characteristic I normally associate with Sam. Yet here, Sam can not control his negativity.

Recall also what he tells himself when he learns that Frodo was not in fact killed by Shelob: "The trouble with you is that you never really had any hope." Also in IV-3 we have "After all, he never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning; but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed."

He does not despair, but only because he can "postpone" it. Shippey cites this passage and argues that Sam is cheerful but not hopeful - one can be cheerful (outwardly agreeable, putting on a good face) with or without real inner hope or joy.

[davem]

The Wasteland is a strange image for Middle earth - where or what is the Grail? The Land is made waste because the Grail has been lost, yet in Middle earth there never was a Grail. There were the Silmarils, of course - did the loss of the Silmarils cause the Land to be laid waste - yet if so, how can it ever be healed, as they can never be won back. The Quest of the Silmarils ended with the First Age. I suppose the Trees could be the primal Grails - in a sense they do reapear at the end of LotR - the White (silver) Tree of Gondor & the Mallorn (gold) Tree of the Shire. Is that it? The Silmarillion proper begins with the Two Trees which are lost, bringing an end to the 'Golden Age', leading to Middle earth's slow, inevitable, descent into the Wasteland state, & it ends with the Two Trees of Middle earth in the Shire & Gondor.

To what extent was the Ring Quest a Grail Quest, as much as an anti-Grail Quest? To have both Aragorn's journey & Sam's end in the birth of new Trees seems symbolic.

It is significant that the more one pays attention to Tolkien's statements about the Land, the more 'alive' it seems, the more a conscious participant in events. The very earth of the Old Forest, not just the trees, seemed to move & have a will of its own. It is perhaps the most intensely 'feminine' presence in the story - certainly, it seems to be the most permanently 'present' feminine presence. It has 'moods', which can be so powerful they overwhelm the individuals who move across its face. Its as if Middle earth herself is also aware of her woundedness & is seeking healing, & that healing is symbolised by the two Trees.

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

There were the Silmarils, of course - did the loss of the Silmarils cause the Land to be laid waste - yet if so, how can it ever be healed, as they can never be won back. The Quest of the Silmarils ended with the First Age. I suppose the Trees could be the primal Grails

I think that the grail-quality of the Silmarils derives in large part from the Trees, since after the destruction of the trees the Silmarils alone contain their untainted light. If we look at the 1920s - 1930s mythology, the Silmarils will in fact be won back at the end of the world, after which Feanor will present them to Yavanna to be broken, and the Trees will be renewed. But the scale of that myth gives it more of a saviour/doomsday quality than a grail quality.