Nasmith At the Cracks of Doom
So now we reach the climax of LOTR, and the end of ends, in both senses. And I believe we have done enough so that we can skip past the agonizing final journey, in which the world seems empty of all people, all Nature but Frodo and Sam, and the final night, where Sam and Frodo face alone their final torments and despairs, Sam with the agony of memory, Frodo stripped of even that, and go directly to the final climb.
And now I want to talk about Gollum.
You may remember that, in an earlier piece, I hinted at the possibility of a greater tragedy behind Gollum. And the possibility of tragedy lies in this: that the Valar may have been guiding matters all along, for many, many years.
Here we are at Mount Doom, and the final act is about to play out. Gollum is now Frodo’s Nemesis, and is utterly beyond redemption. And it is absolutely necessary that Gollum be here, a hobbit, for only a hobbit has the skill to avoid, the stamina, the stubborn determination, that gets through the bubble of Mordor and all the way to the Crack of Doom, and we may add for Gollum the lowness of instinct that avoids the gaze of Sauron. It is absolutely necessary, now, for Gollum to take the Ring and complete the Quest. But it was not always so.
It was always likely that Gollum/Smeagol would succumb to the power of the Ring in the end, and descend to the depths of selfish greed and violence and mania where he resides now. And certainly, he has had many, many chances to pull back. But, until the pass into Mordor, it was never inevitable. And so, who brought him to this pass? Was it merely himself, or if others interfered for ill, did it matter? Probably it was. Probably it did not. And yet, I ask you to consider the possibility that it was not, and did.
Start with the slopes of Mount Doom, where Sam and Frodo hear a voice saying, “Now, now, or it will be too late.” Too late for Aragorn, and Gimli, and Legolas, and Pippin, and Gondor. Quick, quick, quick, said the raven of the Valar, humankind cannot bear too much reality. Assume that it is the Valar who are speaking. Assume that it is the Valar whose hand Gandalf senses in this, that Bilbo was meant to have the Ring, that Frodo was meant to have it in turn, that Frodo was meant to assume the Quest. And it is not too much of a stretch now, is it, to say that Gollum or another hobbit like him was meant to recover the Ring from the Gladden Fields?
And so, what do you do, if you are the Valar, and you have chosen your path, your lightest of all touches on the ongoing story of Middle-Earth? You bind Gollum, now that he is the One, irrevocably to his task. No contacts with good, now that he has chosen evil. A deep cave, where all but his hobbit and primal instincts can lie rusting for all the years necessary, beyond and under the notice of Sauron, craftily complementing the urgings of a Sauron-less Ring. And then he emerges, drawn to Sauron by the vestiges of the Ring in his soul, and then re-emerging from Mordor not broken, but bent to become Sauron’s hound, on the trail of Frodo. Which also serves the purposes of the Valar, to have him drawn by an invisible string all the way back to Mordor, as Frodo wends his way there.
But in this process, he meets Gandalf. And Gandalf pities him, and would heal him, if he could. And it seems doable, to Gandalf.
And then we find that Gandalf is drawn away from him, and stays away from him. And when Gollum begins to catch up to Gandalf, in the Mines of Moria, Frodo senses Gollum, but Gandalf apparently does not. And then Gandalf is ripped from the picture, and when he returns he is sent to Rohan. Away from Frodo; also away from Gollum, who he must suspect now is following Frodo. And he is kept away from Gollum, from any attempt at healing Gollum, which might entail Gollum not being there at the end, at Mount Doom. And it seems plausible that that is the way the Valar wanted it.
And I realized with a sickened feeling, when I first followed this chain of logic to this point, that this is like LeGuin’s story of Omelas. The story of a city of joy, of celebration; the story of a city fueled by the horrible sufferings of one small, pitiable figure, to whom all must close their ears. Except for those who choose not to. Those Who Walk Away From Omelas.
And when we see Gollum/Smeagol, he is not pitiable at all, except at a few very brief moments. He hammers in his loathsomeness aggressively, he is in your face about it. It is understandable that he is the one chosen by the Valar. But that is after all these years. All these years in which the Valar have operated. And is there really no alternative? Is there no way they could have chosen to Walk Away From Omelas? Are you sure? As the whimperings of one already flawed creature turned to brute instincts and then to rage and mania? No, the Valar do not know all the Music of the Ainur. They are never sure that there is no alternative.
And so, maybe that is the way we should view Smeagol. Doomed from a small flaw near his birth to be forever the one little child that must suffer and be sacrificed so that others may live. Now so corrupted by the Ring that almost all we catch of the sweetness of his beginning is its rotting aftertaste in Slinker, but still somehow in one last remnant of his own mind the youth with the world beginning to open wide before him, in the spring of the world, tortured ever since. The only One Who Will Never Walk Away From Omelas. From Mordor. From the end and into the beginning.
And so, I would like to tell the story more from Gollum’s point of view, in the movie of my mind. I give you fair warning: There will be a sex change operation in the middle. Just so I can take a different viewpoint. Just because.
. . .
We are on the mountainside, and Frodo has just cast down Gollum. And you tell him to go on, on to the Crack of Doom, and he turns and goes, erect, stiff, tottering like a soldier marionette propelled by invisible strings. And you turn to Gollum. And he pleads and you curse him, and he scuttles off like a spider, around the curve of the mountainside, beyond a rock. And you turn yourself and start laboriously to push one foot higher and then the next, to climb the path, and we catch a glimpse of a figure peering from behind the rock as you do so. And then you are entering the passageway to the Chasm, and there is Frodo, remote, erect, backlit by leaping fires, but it is not Frodo. It is a tall, stern Lord, robed in white, at his breast a great Wheel of Fire. And this Lord speaks to you in a voice like a clarion call, and says, “I do not choose to do what I came to do. The Ring is mine.” And vanishes.
And as he vanishes, there is not a pop, nor a hiss, but a deep chord of the Music of the Ainur. And just as that is fading from hearing, suddenly your view tilts sideways crazily, and wavers, and you crash to the ground. And we see you recovering from the blow, rising and then staggering, staggering, blood streaming from a cut on your forehead, as Gollum flashes by you, drawn unerringly by the source of a shadow stretching from the very edge of the chasm. And then it begins.
And you see, we see at first Gollum first grabbing an invisible hand with both of his long-fingered ones, his face contorted, distorted with rage. And then his muscles take on greater tension, and we see Frodo beginning to resolve himself in the air, as the Ring is almost off, and both Frodo’s hands are fighting Gollum’s pull of the Ring, and Frodo’s face is hideous, as distorted as Gollum’s with rage, and with his own teeth he is ripping, rending, destroying anything of Gollum’s face that he can reach. And then Frodo pulls the Ring back, and vanishes again, and again Gollum pulls, an even greater effort this time. And again Frodo resolves, and then somehow pulls the Ring back on his finger, and then dissolves.
And now we see Gollum making one final, supreme effort, and as he pulls on the Ring he pulls Frodo’s whole hand towards himself. And as Frodo begins to pull the Ring back and re-dissolve himself, now wholly focused on defense of the Ring finger, Gollum grabs the fingers on each side of the Ring finger with each hand, pulls them away from each other in an agonizing splitting motion, and reaches down with his mouth, his long tongue caressing the Ring from beneath as it vanishes, and his great foul teeth swing shut, irresistibly, irrevocably, with a horrible crunch.
And suddenly Frodo appears again, Frodo himself, on his knees, bent over in agony, his other hand clutching the Ring hand with its stump streaming blood, and from Frodo we hear this profound grunt of shock and loss, as if the entirety of his insides had been ripped out, leaving hollowness. But our eyes are on Gollum. For Gollum is holding that blood-drenched finger with the Ring on it, the Ring now gleaming with a blinding blaze of light. And he is saying to it, in his mind, in our minds, now we are complete. There are no more barriers; I have given myself entirely to you; I am thou thyselfe. O my love, O my love, O My Precious, O My Precious!
And he is in her arms, and she in his, and they are in a stately ballroom, lit by candles, by the light of the stars in the high windows far above, he noble in formal attire, she radiant in a beautiful dress, equal partners, swaying, then turning gently, then swinging in increasing giddiness, and they are whirling on the floor, and they are dancing in mid-air, and they are dancing among the stars …
And then her foot touches on nothing.
And suddenly we are back in the world of the cavern of leaping fire, and the chasm, and her foot has missed the edge of the abyss, and she reaches up with her hand to grab on to the edge to pull herself back, and the impact of the grab dislodges the finger and Ring from her grasp, and it begins to fall. Slowly, so slowly.
And he is falling after it, and reaching after it, and his face is downwards, away from her, and she calls to him, come back, come back! Precious! And he ignores her, and it is, I must, she dives after him, slowly, too slowly, come back! Precious! And as she stretches desperately, she sees, we see, the Ring on its finger reaching the fire, and lifted on the crest of a great wave of flame, as his own finger reaches out and then he dissolves into the Ring, which is now gleaming incandescent with the fire of beautiful writing, the exquisite writing of his beautiful soul, and even as her own outstretched hands approach, the writing begins to fade. To melt. To dull into a tawdry lump of metal. And then, as her hands almost reach it, to bland, blank nothingness.
And as she reaches the cresting wave of fire, and it improbably lifts her up, entire, in a final surge, she turns away from the sight. She lies there, looking up. And in her eyes, fully open, is utter, complete loss, and emptiness. And then she turns again, as we see her, looking down, on her side, in her drab little smock of early childhood. And she closes her large staring empty eyes. And she curls up into a ball. And she sticks her thumb in her mouth as a baby going to blessed sleep at night would do, as the descending flame gently, mercifully, frays her from below, and as she recedes from our sight like a tattered memory bathed in fire.
And she is glad to die.
***
I might as well finish this. From Sam’s point of view.
We see Sam limping, staggering to reach Frodo, who is still on his knees in shock. And lifting him up, and staggering with him to the entrance to the passageway, clinging to each other like an elderly couple leaving their home forever. And then they look up, and they see Barad-dur.
And what they see is towers of adamant rising from across the plain, rank on rank, and from them issuing a vast figure of shadow, black-gloved, helm-crowned, robed in darkness, lit only by the fires behind them, reaching out to them, not to the North, a great Hand whose fingers grasp not only at them but at the pale Nazgul on their winged, predator-eyed steeds, His harbingers, His Furies, drawing ever nearer. And just as we see them entire, a great boom! comes from behind Frodo and Sam, a great crack! from the Cracks of Doom, and in an impossibly high surge the flame within the abyss sets the sky on fire. And we see that flame racing along the sky, and reflecting gouts of fire rippling along the ground, away from them, toward the figure, and as it passes the oncoming Nazgul the sky spurts jets of lightning that turn them into torches in mid-air, as they start to spiral down to ruin. And a great wind is whipping up Frodo and Sam’s hair and cloaks and seems to be pacing the lightning and fire, until they reach that vast hooded figure.
And then, for one brief moment, the figure is crowned with lightning, and then the wind seems to reach it. And it begins to waver, like a filmy curtain in the breeze. And then it begins to be translucent, and we see behind it the towers of adamant begin to fall. Like the great fall of an avalanche on a mountainside, or an iceberg from a glacier into the sea. And then like the graceful descent of the towers of a sand castle after the oncoming tide has eaten its foundations. And then the figure frays into nothingness, while we see the impact of its vanishment and the towers’ hammerblow to the ground below rippling along the ground, along the sky towards us, in a great windy roiling of dark cloud and dust mixed with fire. And it reaches us with a whoosh! as the last of the Nazgul flicker out on the plain below. And then all that is left is the embers of the fires on the ground. And the bitter wind. And the darkness.
And then the scene suddenly flickers, as if it were an old-fashioned projector in a movie theater, missing the reel, and then catches again, and we are back. And Frodo is spent, and leaning against you, and turns to you, and says to you with careful, slow, gasping breath, “Dearest Sam. Hobbit of hobbits.” And then, “This is the way of the world.” And then, “Things fail.” And then, “An end – comes.” And he smiles at you, the dear Master of the Shire restored, and then he slumps onto you, flaccid, and you hold him up with failing strength. And the world flickers again, and steadies again.
And you say to this Frodo that might be dead, with your own gasping, failing breath, “What a story we’ve been in!” And then, “Do you think – that – they’ll … ever –” And then the world flickers for a third time. And goes dark.
And then, curiously, it is filled with leafy branches. With the gleaming green leaves and bird-song of a wood in early spring, in mid-afternoon sunshine.
And we see Sam’s face, and Sam’s eyes sleepily opening, and then awake, looking at this sight. And his left hand, groping, finds his pack. And he rolls to his left, and we see, he sees the pack, and he thinks, and maybe we think, that we are back in Ithilien, before we meet Faramir, and he thinks, he blurts out loud, we maybe think with a shock, “Then it was all a dream!” All, all not real. All, all to do over again. And then he hears behind him, through the bird song, a curious, delighted little laugh.
And then he rolls over to his right, and then he staggers to his feet in shock. For there are Gandalf, and Merry, and Pippin, and Aragorn, and Gimli, and Legolas, and Frodo, all robed in white, all gleaming in the light. And he is utterly bewildered. And then he sees Frodo’s hand and cries out “It wasn’t a dream!” For there is Frodo’s hand, and the ring finger is gone, and in its place is a bandage. But if that is true, and certainly Gandalf is dead, and so … and so he turns to Gandalf, who always seems to have the answers, even in the afterlife, and asks, “Am I dead?” And Gandalf says gently, “No, Sam.” And then he says, “A great Shadow has departed.” And then Gandalf smiles, and says, “Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel now?”
And you say, “How do I feel? Well, I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves, like … like … I feel reborn!” And Gandalf says, smiling, “Well, then. Happy birthday, Sam.” And you cannot help it, you blurt out in return, “Well, happy birthday, world!”
And now all your dear companions of the Quest are laughing, and their laughter is like your best friends who have pulled off the best birthday surprise ever, and it is like the peals of victory of the bells of Minas Tirith, of Minas Anor the Tower of the Sun, of the Sun that beams down on you and all that is best and brightest of your friends, and the glorious Nature that surrounds you.
Happy birthday, dear Sam.
Happy birthday, dear world.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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