And now, although we may not realize it at first, we have reached the destination of the book, the climax, the sad playing out of the story of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. There is too much to cover in one piece. And so, I want to use this piece to tidy up some of the smaller things that got left by the wayside, and set the stage for appreciation of this Chapter. In other words, I want to create a dish made of little bits of leftovers and Tolkien flora, a ratatouille aux restes.
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Of all the poems in LOTR, I confess that there is one that stands out for me, one that resonates most with all my life, one that I find is most accessible to readers and non-readers everywhere.
You know the one. Two Chapters ago. “Beyond all towers strong and high.”
It is the song of the prisoner, yes. It is also the song of the elderly in a hospital or nursing home. It is also the song of the young person trapped in a school or a home full of failure and shut windows, forbidden to roam or meet others like them. It is the song of all who are sensorily deprived, who make a world of their memories. But it speaks to me because it makes a free world of Nature. A freedom of green spring and birds that sing for joy – so much freedom that “The birds that wanton in the air/Know no such liberty”. A freedom of beeches on a starry night. A freedom of the sun and stars riding high and impervious and glorious above human sorrow.
Stone walls do not my prison make, nor iron bars my cage. Because Sam sang a song.
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It was from Tolkien’s LOTR that I first learned the value of a semicolon in writing.
The use of a semicolon is a British writers’ skill, and not typically one of American writers. This is reinforced by American editors, who have been taught in their little grammar textbooks that semicolons are a sign of too much complexity in a sentence, and who therefore root out semicolons by splitting a sentence into multiple sentences in most submitted text with unholy glee. Believe me, I’ve undergone this many times; no use arguing with them, and it doesn’t hurt the text much in most cases. In most cases.
The thing is, the semicolon is a thing of subtle beauty when used right, the subtle in-between emotions of classical music, the French horn of the writer’s orchestra. It’s the end of a sentence, but not yet; and in Tolkien’s hands, it’s like the pause of a wave at its very crest, followed by a graceful subsidence to the real end.
Look at the end of this Chapter, especially after the Ring goes into the Fire, for examples. Because that is where a semicolon is often most useful, at a climax. To give the sense of waves pausing, each time at a higher crest. To give the sense of a lawn mower failing to catch, once, twice, three times, and then bending to the task with a powerful hum. “… we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” “Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and bellowing steam rose up, up, until they toppled with an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land.”
You get no such effect with the run-on sentences of Faulkner and Pynchon, good as they are. In their haste to deify salt and pepper, American writers and editors have forgotten sage.
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Once, when I had heard once too often of readers who “couldn’t get into” LOTR, I tried to figure out where I would send them, where the sheer writerly gifts of Tolkien would most stand out.
Obviously, it couldn’t be the Introduction, which as I’ve noted can bore some readers to tears. It could be the first Chapter, but that is up to a point very like The Hobbit; nothing special. It could be Lothlorien, but there are too many new and strange characters and species intruding. It could be … it could be …
And then I thought of the climax of LOTR, where Frodo fights off Gollum, and marches towards the Crack. And what follows. What I remembered as the most concentrated, most powerful prose in the whole of Lord of the Rings, focused entirely on three characters: Frodo, Sam, Gollum. Seemingly as powerful, and accessible, as a reader could want.
And so, before I tried that, I tried reading that section as I thought such a new reader might see it. And was repelled by the seeming floridness, the seeming exaggeration of the situation.
The reason, I am firmly convinced, is that all Tolkien’s gradual introduction of new/old words, of Shakespearian language, is leading up to this. Our gradual immersion in a “high” world with language resonant with deep history and collective myth. Our understanding of its rich double meanings. Our acceptance of it as an extra dimension of the world. Without such slow immersion, I think, we would find this final scene hard to swallow, and especially Frodo’s dialogue {“On Mount Doom, doom shall fall”), which is almost entirely Shakespearian throughout. With it, well, “Nothing of him but doth change/Into something rich, and strange.”
And so, as you reread this part once again, I ask that you bear in mind once more the long path of changing language that has brought you here. And more than that: how their changing speech and the newly Shakespearian description of the world they swim through has reflected Frodo’s and even Sam’s changing character, and also our changing assessment of the depths of Frodo and Sam.
But not Gollum, alas. Nor Smeagol.
And that thought has more in it than you may think. For one of the saddest parts of that final confrontation with Gollum, for Sam, is that when he finally becomes “high” enough and has experienced enough of the Ring to truly empathize with Gollum, to pity him, he doesn’t have the words to give him that pity, that empathy. Not that Gollum deserves it. But Sam wants to, and can’t. He doesn’t have the language yet, unlike Frodo and us (or, at least, I hope we are beginning to have it). Without the new language that Tolkien and others give us, the language that is not of the every-day, the two tragic fingers of Sam and Smeagol never quite touch. And I begin to wonder how many tragic fingers I have failed to touch, in the poverty of my everyday language.
But that is a thought for tomorrow. For the final push.
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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