Book 6. My heart returns to its homing. To Frodo.
Oh, and also to Sam, of course.
In this, the first Chapter, Sam nobly overcomes the temptation of the Ring, and Frodo is tortured, and Sam rescues Frodo, and the two escape. I will certainly talk about the first two events. And one other event, not mentioned above.
Quite a lot to get through. Hang on, let’s go.
Let’s look at the temptation of Sam. He walks into Mordor, and suddenly the Ring is at seemingly full force. It’s physically heavy, it feels more fearsome, and it’s talking to him. What is it saying, and how is it saying it?
It’s distorting his vision, and playing on his emotions in the guise of logical reality. He sees himself as a vast shadow. He sees himself as a warrior with a flaming sword, taking leagues-long strides toward victory, and a magician, fashioning a green land out of desolation. It seems like sober sense. But the appeal is really to the senses, and the emotions. It appeals to Sam’s deep desire, to be a hero.
And the rejection is also on two levels. Devotion to, love for the other, for Frodo, opposes the personal appeal of being a hero emotionally. Plain hobbit common sense (and perhaps hobbit stubbornness) opposes the logical disguise. The emotion toward Frodo cancels out the emotional tug of heroism, leaving Sam free to cut through the rhetorical flourishes to the sad reality of being in no position or shape to be such a hero. The Ring never manages to get through to Sam’s instincts.
And now, perhaps, we see why Tolkien bothered with an Introduction, as I mentioned way back in my first piece. For Sam, even now, is far less “high” than Frodo, still mostly the quintessential hobbit. And in the Introduction, Tolkien lays out the core of hobbits, the fundamental things that apply as time goes by. Laughter and enjoyment of simple things. Caring. Stubbornness. Common sense. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a hobbit to get the Ring all the way to the Fire. Or two.
Would Sam have gotten the Ring as far as Frodo? Probably not. He is not “high” enough for that. He has only one of the two essential elements. But that should not detract one iota from the magnificence of his achievement. Not only has he been in the presence of the Ring since the beginning, not really feeling the pull of the Ring although so many others over the course of the journey and the Quest have done so; he has rejected the Ring in Mordor itself, where the power of Sauron over the Ring predominates. Watch Sam, Tolkien told us in the beginning of Book 4. Oh, yes, I should think so, indeed.
And now, reluctantly, to the torture of Frodo.
Sam finds Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. And we learn that in the last few days, Frodo has been tortured, mentally and physically. He has been deprived of sleep. Orcs have gloated over him until he thought he would go mad. And as Sam arrives, Frodo is brutally whipped. And it is that single instance of physical torture that I want to dwell on. Well, no, I don’t want to, but I think it’s important that I do.
Here, from my mismemory, is a description of what corporal punishment was like, I think for the sailor in the British Navy around 1800 from Forester’s Hornblower series, or for the serf in Russia at the time of Ivan the Terrible – I can’t remember which.
You are tied to a whipping post. The whipper may take a cane, which more or less approximates the effect of a whip. Your back is to the whipper. You do not expect the first blow, which lays a stripe of fiery pain across your back. And then a pause of anticipation, and then it happens again. And a pause, and it happens again. And it happens again. By the tenth blow, although you are fit, and hardened, and a man who is ashamed to show pain, you begin to grunt. And it happens again. And your noise grows higher and more desperate. And it happens again. And by the twentieth blow, you begin to shriek. And it happens again. And the pain and shrieks begin to crescendo in your mind. And it happens again. And now they are at an absolute peak. And it happens again. At about the thirtieth blow, you slip into blessed unconsciousness. After the fortieth blow, they cut you down from the whipping post. Your back is no longer a back. It is a bloody, raw, misshapen piece of meat.
And then you recover consciousness, and the real agony begins. And sometimes, men are never the same afterwards.
Yes, Frodo suffered only one of these purposeful strokes, apparently (although he and Sam are also lashed in the run towards Durthang, later on). But Frodo was neither physically muscled and fit, nor hardened to the whip; and the Orc who whipped him was almost certainly expert at getting the maximum amount of pain and terror out of each stroke. No, I find it very believable that Frodo would remember that single whip stroke with the same kind of agony with which he remembered the Morgul-knife on Weathertop and the sting of Shelob. I find it heartbreakingly credible that it would mark Frodo to the end of his life.
That he would never be the same after it.
And finally, the mechanics of madness in the mind.
There is this small, minor incident towards the end of this Chapter. You know. The one where Frodo calls Sam a thief.
And for Sam, this will be the greatest blow of his life. Because, it seems to me, Frodo is not just criticizing Sam. Sam has by now built all of his life, the very meaning of his life, around Frodo. And what Frodo seems to be saying to Sam is: Fundamentally, you are hurting me. You are, in effect, worthless, because you are worthless to me. You have no meaning to your life – or, if there is a meaning, it is about hurting the thing you love most. And so, it is hard to imagine a more hurtful thing for Frodo to say to Sam. A thing that strikes at the very roots of Sam’s being.
And yet, somehow, Sam manages to understand what Frodo tells him, that this is part of Frodo’s illness, his addiction, the power of the Ring. Sam manages not only to understand and forgive Frodo, but to put the incident behind him forever. Never, apparently, does he allude to it or think about it afterwards. There is no lingering bitterness; only the sweet joy when, at the end, the dear Master of the Shire returns.
But I am not here to talk about Sam. I want to talk about what this might mean about Frodo.
Two years ago, I had a bout of dementia, as sometimes happens to older folks after general anesthesia. And it gave me a sensation I call “your foot touches on nothing.” Because, suddenly, you can count on nothing being real – your memories, the people in the room, the tasks you are doing. Mentally, each logical and physical step you take is under question, as if you are descending a staircase and at each step, your foot misses the next rung and you take a sickening plunge into the abyss. All the assumptions of your life are overturned and there is no you there to depend on to get to the next rung. And the next. And the next.
And it can get worse than that. Imagine yourself in a room with a professional, set to determine your state of mind and suspicious that you are in a deep, dangerous psychological state. Imagine that another person is there with you, furious with you for all the things they believe you have done during your delusion and stressed beyond belief. And that person misrepresents, or so it seems to you, the things you are doing and is convincing the professional that you are in this dangerous psychological state. You are crazy. And then you rebut that person, and what you say seems to make sense to the professional, and he nods, yes, you’re not crazy about that. And then that person says, what about this, what about that, and the professional becomes absorbed in the conversation, and when he turns back to you he has completely forgotten that you said anything, and he says to you, yes, you’re crazy.
I’m crazy.
I’m not crazy.
I’m crazy.
And the stress is beyond belief, and your heart is beating hard, hard against your chest, and you can’t believe that you aren’t having a heart attack, and you can’t believe that you won’t die in the next hour, but your heart rate stubbornly refuses to go up, and it goes on and on. And then the fatigue settles over you like a great, heavy weighted blanket, and you’re so tired. So very tired.
And I believe Frodo is feeling a little of this sensation. He realizes he has just had a vision of Sam as a wrinkled, greedy creature that isn’t real. What is real? But Sam isn’t like that person, or like the professional. At every step, with every move and word, Sam says to Frodo, gently, this insanity is bounded. You can detect it. You can deal with it. Because outside of its bounds, you can operate as if your foot is indeed touching on something. It is touching on me. I will tell you, if you need it, what is real and what is not. Indeed, I don’t have to. Just look at my reactions, and see if they accord with your reality.
And so, Frodo is reassured that he can still do the job, that he can handle the Ring’s distortions, at least for now. Or, as I liked to put it, I may be insane, but I’m not crazy.
But it’s still not easy.
Here is one small, small snippet of my life under dementia. I’m tired, and I’m in a hospital bed with an IV attached stretching from a pole from which the water bottle hangs. I must go to the bathroom in a corner of the room separated by drapes to brush my teeth to show the nurse that I can fend for myself, so that someday I can get out of this hospital, get this painful IV needle out of my arm, so that I don’t spend forever in this one small room with no windows and no joy. And I must hurry, because I am moving much slower than normal people, and I must do it slowly, because I must check at every step if everything is real. And so I reach around and untangle the IV cord, which has become tangled around me, and try to stand up, and find I have imagined that I have completed the task, and I sit down and do it again, hurry, slow down, and this time I succeed and stand up and nearly fall pay attention hurry slow down what am I doing oh yes toothbrush the cord is tugging at me I need to bring the pole with me I stubbed my toe pay attention to what oh yes pole hurry slowly god this is taking forever DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT I’m at the drapes is this real what’s tugging at me it’s a pole hurry up why nurse is she real I guess so through the drapes need to pee sit down on toilet god I almost missed where am I nurse what nurse look around toothbrush oh wait I left drapes open don’t want nurse to see this must hurry slowly pole now I can pee funny I don’t feel like it any more was it real omigod I forgot to close the drapes nurse let’s assume she’s real drapes closed done double-check done now I can rest for a moment NO YOU CAN’T hurry slowly pole where toothbrush I’ve done it I can rest funny things have happened haven’t they DON’T THINK LIKE THAT PAY ATTENTION toothbrush no toothbrush yes and now for the toothpaste is it real and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on I’m so tired.
Now think of Frodo doing that every step of the way to Mount Doom. For almost two weeks. 16 hours a day. Little food, little rest. Sometimes horrible sleep. 20,000 minutes. More than a million seconds. Fighting off the Ring. Fighting off madness. And at every step, Frodo’s foot touches on nothing.
I’m so tired, Sam. My dearest friend. My savior. I’m so tired. So very tired.
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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