LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 6 - Many Partings

[davem]

This is a chapter of endings & partings - as others have pointed out already. As with the previous chapter Frodo appears little - though the cahpter begins & ends with him.

We begin with him seeking out Aragorn & Arwen, who are sitting beneath the White Tree of Gondor. Arwen sings of Valinor - a place she has never seen & now never will see. Its odd that she would sing of the place she has given up forever, but as one of the Half Elven we must assume that she has had the yearning for Valinor in her heart for most of her life. Ever since Legolas heard the cry of the Gulls at Pelargir he has felt a yearning to go into the West & at times it has seemed to overwhelm his thoughts. This little vignette sums up Arwen’s story perfectly. She sits beneath the White Tree, an image of Telperion, & sings iabout the Undying Lands - her Elven heritage will be simply that from now on: image, memory & song. She has chosen mortality & in the end that is all she herself will become.

She gives Frodo both a white jewel (which is only like a star, unlike the gift given to Frodo by her Grandmother which contained the blazing light of the Silmaril, for Arwen is now mortal & can no longer bestow magical gifts) & her place on the Last Ship. Tolkien discussed this gift in his letters & states that Arwen could not have just ‘handed over her ticket’ to Frodo. It seems that she must have discussed it with Gandalf, who authorised it. Again we see the limits imposed by mortality. It seems though, that she has not lost either her insight or foresight:

But in my stead you shall go, Ring-bearer, when the time comes, and if you then desire it. If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed.

She may phrase it in such a way that it seems she is saying ‘just in case’, but it seems likely that she knew, even if Frodo himself did not at that point, that in the end he would suffer beyond endurance & have to depart.

Something that happens on the way back to Rohan I found interesting:

Without haste and at peace they passed into Anorien, and they came to the Grey Wood under Amon Din; and there they heard a sound as of drums beating in the hills, though no living thing could be seen. Then Aragorn let the trumpets be blown; and heralds cried:
'Behold, the King Elessar is come! The Forest of Druadan he gives to Ghan-buri-ghan and to his folk, to be their own forever; and hereafter let no man enter it without their leave!'
Then the drums rolled loudly, and were silent.

This is more or less what he decrees should happen in the Shire. It seems Aragorn will make a habit of this - not simply giving autonomy to other races & cultures, but actually giving them the power to shut themselves off from outsiders.

The funeral of Theoden is a classic Anglo-Saxon one - the songs, the riders. It is almost a straight lift from Beowulf - as was his death on the Pelennor, with the Fell Beast standing in for the Dragon & Eowyn for Wiglaf. The setting & the similarities to the A-S epic serve to link Middle-earth to English history & myth, for it wouldn’t just call to mind Beowulf but also Sutton Hoo & the, at the time of writing, recent discoveries made there.

As far as Hobbits are concerned it is Merry who takes the dominant role in this chapter. He recieves the gift of the horn from Eomer, he stands forward & says goodbye to Theoden, after riding on the wain & bearing the king’s arms. Again we see Merry’s similarity to Bilbo - he set out wanting to see the wide world, & ends up in posession of ‘treasure’ from a Dragon’s hoard.

It all seems as if things are winding down to a ‘happy ever after’ ending. But then we come to Isengard. Treebeard has released Saruman. Did Gandalf suspect he would? After all Saruman did to the Ents Treebeard’s freeing of him seems strange. Did Saruman ‘persuade’ the Ent to let him go? Whatever, it is clear that he is still out there. There are only two possible fates for him - either he will wander off & become a wandering conjuror - a joke, a ‘how are the mighty fallen’ lesson for the people of Middle-earth, or he will play some significant part in the coming events. What he would not do is just repent & become... what? Actually, Tolkien did play with the idea of making him repent - specifically when Merry gives him tobacco later on - but he decided it would take more than that to make him change his ways.

Saruman would rather, it seems, gloat over the sufferings of others (‘Misery loves company’), & if they are not actually suffering he will try to convince them they are. What he cannot get into his head, it seems, is that he is not a ‘power’ any longer. He’s a broken loser, but won’t see it. He still expects to be treated with awe & respect, In fact, he becomes increasingly pathetic: One of the Maiar, an Ainur who sang the world into being in the Great Music ends up stealing a tobacco pouch from a Hobbit - & his end will be worse.

Esty has already mentioned the use of Osanwe (or is it ‘Sanwe’) among Gandalf & the Elves:

Often long after the hobbits were wrapped in sleep they would sit together under the stars, recalling the ages that were gone and all their joys and labours in the world, or holding council, concerning the days to come. If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard, and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro.

I wonder how far Tolkien had developed the concept of Elven telepathy at the time of writing. The idea of them appearing to a wanderer as carven figures ties in with numerous accounts in folklore of standing stones & stone circles actually being people who had been turned to stone. Another name for Stonehenge was ‘The Giants Dance’ & the legend behind the Nine Maiden’s stone circle was that the young women were turned to stone for dancing on the Sabbath.

Quickly fading into the stones and the shadows the grey-cloaked people of Lorien rode towards the mountains;

I noticed on this reading that both Aragorn & Galadriel say farewell in the same manner- Aragorn holds aloft the Ellessar, Galadriel Nenya & a light flashes from both.

We end with the meeting up again with Bilbo, the ‘de-briefing’ of the Hobbits & the gift giving. Bilbo’s gifts are perfectly suitable - gold for Sam, the poorest of them (just what he needs to start a family), good advice for those cocky young so-&-so’s Merry & Pippin, & his books (stories & histories) for Frodo. Bilbo has become so much like a monk in a peaceful monastery, living among books & surrounded by Elves. Although a Hobbit its clear that he belongs here, rather than in the Shire. Its clear that it is a dangerous business, stepping into the Road - for Hobbits at least. None of these five will end their days in the Shire, because their experiences make them too ‘big’ for it.

Frodo’s response to Sam’s praise of Rivendell:

'Yes, something of everything, Sam, except the Sea,' Frodo had answered; and he repeated it now to himself: 'Except the sea.'

not only reflects his ‘Elvishness’, but also confirms that Arwen was right. Frodo has probably been thinking over Arwen’s words to him that morning, & it seems that the seed she planted then has taken root.