More lembas thoughts.
Sep. 12th, 2004 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfanWhen I posted my thoughts on lembas a few days ago, I got some nice feedback from lots of folks and some good hard questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tialys, eykar and caraloup. So I have returned to the subject to see if I can’t answer the questions or modify my conclusions. If I misinterpreted anyone's objections, please feel free to correct me!
My starting point – the thought that sent me scurrying through the book looking for lembas – was that the hobbits didn’t seem to derive the kind of benefit from lembas that might be expected from a food supply that was advertised as being able to keep a fully grown human man functioning at a high level.
I’m pretty satisfied with my conclusions about shape, size, taste and texture. They seem right to me, and since Tolkien wavered between “cake” and “wafer” the only other thing I can imagine is a cake that breaks off into wafers, but the portions – the recommended daily allowance if you will – remain the same.
Tialys wondered if it were fair to assume that Sam and Frodo weren’t eating one wafer each per day on the basis of the way that Sam sometimes gives Frodo extra. I’m going to stick to my guns, though. Although Frodo seems to have put Sam in charge of the food as early as the Emyn Muil, he’s still carrying a food bag of his own (probably in case they are accidentally separated) and there are times in the quest when we see him taking care to make sure that Sam gets the sleep, etc., that he needs. Sam would expect Frodo to notice a discrepancy, and the more simple the division of food, the more likely Frodo would be to notice it. A rebuke from Frodo has more power to hurt Sam than any mere physical threat, but he’s already displayed a willingness to deceive Frodo for his own good.
Now, Lembas has special qualities, beyond what might be expected of an energy bar, and those qualities are what we might call “magic”. We should remember, however, that Galadriel is careful to distinguish between what she and her people do and the “deceits of the Enemy.” So there must be a basic difference between the “magic” of the Elves, and the “magic” of the servants of Sauron. (And probably still another difference from both of them to Gandalf and Saruman’s magics. They’re all lumped together in hobbit heads because they’re all equally misunderstood.)
I leaped to the conclusion that one of the ways in which lembas works is physical – it allows the body to burn up reserves and keep on functioning so long as the will and endurance insist on function. Eykar objected to this on the grounds that Elves are mostly spiritual beings and that lembas must directly feed the spirit, and Caraloup objected on the grounds that Galadriel wouldn’t send the hobbits off with something with that kind of malicious side-effect. I’ve thought about it, and while I’m going to emphasize the “acts in part” of my conclusion, I’m sticking to it.
Lembas works, in part, by allowing the body to burn first fat, then muscle, then whatever else it doesn’t need, until the goal is reached or there’s nothing left to burn. As a consequence of that purely physical function, it is less effective on hobbits than it is on others.
Eykar said According to your theory, lembas accelerates the process of starvation by causing the body to consume its reserves more speedily.
Not quite. I think lembas allows the body to exploit its reserves more efficiently. On plain rations -- cram, for example -- Frodo and Sam would have fallen over before they got much past the Morgai and not gotten up again. The ingestion of ordinary foods retards the ability of lembas to feed the will, so there must be something the lembas is doing differently when it's combined with other foods. If lembas is affected by the chemistry of the physical body it also, undoubtedly, has an effect up on the chemistry of the body. Combined with other foods, lembas improves the body’s ability to absorb and use the nutrients in those foods. Used alone, I suspect that the physical aspect functions by preventing the body from going into starvation mode, where fat is conserved, not burned.
Hobbits differ in mass, and I suspect also in metabolism rate from the other humanoid races. (What the dwarves lack in height they make up in muscle.) We’re told that they have a tendency to portliness, at least as they grow older, and for our four traveling hobbits that’s a bonus which we need to remember when we think about their nutritional needs and how much leeway they might have. A few extra inches around the waistline is as useful as a camel’s hump if you need the energy.
It’s easy to gloss over the time spent in Rivendell and Lorien – Tolkien did after all – but it has to be taken into account when you’re considering the general health and appearance of the four Travellers. Frodo, we’re told, spent most of his time in Rivendell with Bilbo. Bilbo, we’re also told, never misses meals. Elven food, by all reports, is appetizing indeed. So it’s a fair assumption that in two months Frodo was able to put back on a good bit of the weight he lost between Bree and Rivendell. It might have been distributed differently, but that would depend on how much physical exercise Frodo was taking and that’s limited by how much time he’s spending with Bilbo who just isn’t up to long rambles in the countryside.
The Elves who helped them prepare their packs for the trip from Rivendell would have had more than a decade’s experience with Bilbo, and I suspect that there was a good bit of food in the packs Bill carried. I can see them loading up a basket with food, looking at each other as if to ask “is that enough?” and then chorusing “hobbits” as they throw in enough extra to feed half a dozen Elves.
In Lorien the members of the Fellowship (except for Legolas) spent most of their time eating, drinking and resting. Now, I can put on ten pounds in a fortnight of vacation, and six meals a day is far beyond me, so, it’s fair to assume that the hobbits left Lorien with some padding for the journey. So, even if the Galadhrim knew that lembas used alone would eat into physical reserves, the hobbits probably looked up to it.
Woops, circular reasoning there. Let's try again...
Caraloup said Overall, I guess I doubt that the lembas' spiritual effects and meaning can be reduced to physiological processes that undermine the positive purpose of the thing. True, Gandalf, Galadriel, and others consciously accept that Frodo's sacrifices may include his own death (despite their sympathy for him), but they also offer what help and support they can provide. The gift of lembas is part of that, not another destructive agent (like the Ring!) that may subvert Frodo's integrity or cause physical harm.
Okay, let's consider the perfect travelling ration -- it tastes good, has some variety, weighs little or nothing, keeps pretty much forever unless you broach the packaging,has a nifty advertising campaign and provides you with all the energy and nutrition which you need to keep going until you reach your destination. Ideally, you might be converting fat into muscle if you're doing work you're not used to, but you wouldn't be losing weight and you wouldn't be tired all the time unless you’re working much harder than was intended. With a little magic thrown in, the perfect ration can also supplement your non-physical strengths to a noticeable degree. It certainly wouldn't leave you too hungry to sleep at night because you need your sleep to function well.
Perfection aside, when a modern traveler goes to select rations the first question has to do with whether or not the stuff provides the necessary nutrition and energy and the other considerations come further down the line. Still, the smaller and lighter and more imperishable you can get your travel food, the less of a trade off you have to make. The first thing to go, of course, is variety. It might get a little boring to have to eat the same thing for every meal after a while, and make you think of other foods you might like to have as a change, but so long as your energy and nutrition requirements are met you shouldn’t be hungry.
Well, not in the more important sense, at least. There are two kinds of hunger – there’s the kind of hunger that is wanting variety or a certain flavor of food – and then there’s the kind of hunger that is a signal of need upon the part of the body. The cravings of pregnant women are infamous, but not so long ago someone sat down and figured out that if you ate pickles with your ice cream it made it easier to absorb and use the calcium which is so necessary a building block in mammalian anatomy. I see the “desire” which lembas fails to satisfy as being hunger of the first sort – a mere wanting – in the case of Elves, Dwarves and Men.
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli subsist on lembas as they run from Rauros to the fringe of Fangorn forest. They report weariness – but identify it as primarily weariness imposed from a distance by Saruman – and cold, but not hunger – not even cravings for different sorts of food. As far as we know they didn’t get another sort of meal till Edoras, which they ate quickly, but without the kind of satisfaction or commentary we’d expect if they were particularly hungry. In fact, you almost get the impression that they only sat down and ate because Theoden needed to eat before the host set out for Helm’s Deep.
Unfortunately for our poor hobbits, I think lembas fails to satisfy their hunger in both senses of the word. Merry and Pippin, in contrast to the three hunters, think that “even lembas does none the worse for a change” and when they get a chance to eat normal foods proceed to eat two meals in short order. (And they’ve had more than lembas, but that’s considered below.)
Now none of the limitations of lembas which I suspect are because of a failure on Galadriel’s part, or any other Elf, but because of the considerations that might have gone into designing it.
You see, it’s when you know that you’ve only got to get by for a short while that you value low encumbrance in a ration more highly than proper nutrition. In emergencies, you know that your body has reserves which can be tapped and in emergencies we’re all willing to tap them. Bur for Elves, this is even moreso. Physical death is, for Tolkien’s Elves, an inconvenience rather than a permanent bar to future satisfactions. Why not burn up the physical body when the need is great enough? It isn’t the important part, after all, and the Elves are sure of rebirth.1
Do we have any magical substances we can consider alongside lembas? Actually, yes. The mirovur of Rivendell, the Entish water, and the orc-draughts and medicine which were forced on Merry and Pippin (and probably Frodo) are all parallels. Each operates in a way which would be considered “magic” in our terms, and each seems to operate on intangibles, like endurance and will, as well as gut and flesh.
Mirovur is used very sparingly – we assume that it is difficult to manufacture and limited in supply. Glorfindel carries something which might be mirovur and uses it on Frodo, although it’s not identified as such. And there’s some question, as the drink Glorfindel gives is “neither warm nor cool in the mouth” and when Gandalf gives them a sip it’s “warm and fragrant” – but most anything which had been kept in a deep warm pocket might seem warm on Caradhras. Glorfindel’s drink, in any case, makes other foods more satisfactory in accompaniment. The “stale bread and dried fruit...seemed to satisfy their hunger better than many a good breakfast in the Shire had done.” (This is also appears to be true of lembas, as we see when Sam and Frodo have a half wafer each to accompany the rabbit stew. “It seemed a feast.”)
The Ent-draughts which Treebeard gives to Merry and Pippin do satisfy need, and at first desire. They eat small pieces of lembas in the morning only because they think that breakfast should involve chewing something, but the drinks are the food of the Ents, and are generally used to sustain quite large beings on a daily basis. There’s a healing quality to them as well, which may be part of what stimulated the hobbits growth. 2 Nevertheless, Merry tells Aragorn and the others, “But Ents only drink, and drink is not enough for content. Treebeard’s draughts may be nourishing, but one feels the need of something solid. And even lembas is none the worse for a change.”
I’ve saved the Orc-stuff for last for a reason. Let’s look at the medicine first. Before it’s used on Merry he’s not just bleeding, he’s unconscious, and for a long time after Pippin has already recovered. A concussion, at the very least, I should think, but the moment that Ugluk uses the medicine on him he’s awake and alert and has no more trouble. When Pippin is forced to drink the Orc draft he feels a heat, and his pains disappear. Both substances are powerful indeed. The hobbits run on nothing but the Orc draught and fear for hours, and are able to refuse dried meat when they are offered it after a second dose is administered. (It doesn’t stop the hobbits from being hungry, I note, but it does give them endurance of a kind.) The Orcs themselves have great endurance, and although I’m not sure if they have any of the draught, their run suggests it.
Once they’ve escaped, Merry says “Lembas does put heart into you! A more wholesome sort of feeling too, than the heat of that orc-draught. I wonder what it was made of? Better not to know I expect. Let’s get a drink of water and wash away the thought of it!”
He’s asked a crucial question here, and one that we should ask too. The Orc stuff is both effective and powerful, but if it didn’t have a hidden cost then the “good guys” would have things just as powerful and immediate. So let’s go back to Galadriel’s comment about magic. The Orc stuff works differently. Now, what do we know about Sauron? That he doesn’t care what he pollutes, destroys, corrupts, or consumes as long as he gets the result he wants. And with the exception of the Ring, where he had to use his own power to achieve the desired results, he prefers to use up the strengths of other folks and hazard their lives before his own. The recipe for the Orc-draught probably starts out with ingredients like Elf-livers and baby brains. He still hasn’t licked the monotony problem, but he’s closer to the perfect ration as far as Orcs are concerned. Easy to carry and keeps them on their feet for hours longer than you’d expect. And it sharply reduces how much they require of other kinds of rations as well, or they’d eat more often.
It doesn’t work as well on hobbits though.
Nothing comes from nothing. If lembas has a “magic” effect than it has to be paid for. There’s a cost somewhere, and I think that the cost comes out of the physical body of the person eating the lembas. Self-sacrifice, however slowly enacted, is far better than climbing to your goal over the bodies of the innocent. But hobbits are small and hungry beings. Pound for pound, they need more food on a daily basis than the people for whom lembas was originally created. Chances are too that Frodo and Sam subsisted on lembas for longer than most people ever needed to. It would be truly helpful battle bread, but the armies that marched in an earlier Age would have had supplies of other sorts for most of their needs. Wanderers like Aragorn might have lembas for an emergency, but could, and would forage for most of their needs.
Are the spiritual effects of lembas dependent on the physical effect? Well, yes, I do think so, but that is not a flaw, or a danger; that is a price to be paid. The balance of spirit and corporeal self is not disrupted by that price, because the magic of lembas lies in its ability to more efficiently transform the energy of the physical form into the energy needed by the more important spiritual form. Without lembas, as the physical body wanes, the spirit wanes too. (Starving people are often depressed, and with good reason.) Lembas overrides that, by feeding the will directly, and the trade is well worth it.
***
Of course (my wandering brain says) I could argue that the balance is thrown off too. I’ve always wondered why Sam and Frodo sleep for so long after they’ve been rescued. Maybe I can blame it on the lembas!
;)
1. And there’s a lovely sidelight of wondering if the Orcs were Elves once, corrupted by the first Enemy are they Elves still, doomed to be reborn in Orcish bodies until some evil compulsion is destroyed and then to exist as Orcs until they are killed and can become Elves again? Or is each Orc possessed of some small part of a long –lost Elf who cannot be reborn until all the fleshly vessels clutching fragments of his parceled out soul are finally smashed to dust?
2. I can’t help wonder how the Entish draught got into the waters of the Entwash river for Merry and Pippin to drink it unawares. Was it a stale batch that Treebeard had poured out upstream? Is it the nature of the river, and Treebeard collects different waters from different springs in his jars to take back to his homes? Or do Ents pee in watersheds? Sorry, that was probably TMI…
tialys, eykar and caraloup. So I have returned to the subject to see if I can’t answer the questions or modify my conclusions. If I misinterpreted anyone's objections, please feel free to correct me!My starting point – the thought that sent me scurrying through the book looking for lembas – was that the hobbits didn’t seem to derive the kind of benefit from lembas that might be expected from a food supply that was advertised as being able to keep a fully grown human man functioning at a high level.
I’m pretty satisfied with my conclusions about shape, size, taste and texture. They seem right to me, and since Tolkien wavered between “cake” and “wafer” the only other thing I can imagine is a cake that breaks off into wafers, but the portions – the recommended daily allowance if you will – remain the same.
Tialys wondered if it were fair to assume that Sam and Frodo weren’t eating one wafer each per day on the basis of the way that Sam sometimes gives Frodo extra. I’m going to stick to my guns, though. Although Frodo seems to have put Sam in charge of the food as early as the Emyn Muil, he’s still carrying a food bag of his own (probably in case they are accidentally separated) and there are times in the quest when we see him taking care to make sure that Sam gets the sleep, etc., that he needs. Sam would expect Frodo to notice a discrepancy, and the more simple the division of food, the more likely Frodo would be to notice it. A rebuke from Frodo has more power to hurt Sam than any mere physical threat, but he’s already displayed a willingness to deceive Frodo for his own good.
Now, Lembas has special qualities, beyond what might be expected of an energy bar, and those qualities are what we might call “magic”. We should remember, however, that Galadriel is careful to distinguish between what she and her people do and the “deceits of the Enemy.” So there must be a basic difference between the “magic” of the Elves, and the “magic” of the servants of Sauron. (And probably still another difference from both of them to Gandalf and Saruman’s magics. They’re all lumped together in hobbit heads because they’re all equally misunderstood.)
I leaped to the conclusion that one of the ways in which lembas works is physical – it allows the body to burn up reserves and keep on functioning so long as the will and endurance insist on function. Eykar objected to this on the grounds that Elves are mostly spiritual beings and that lembas must directly feed the spirit, and Caraloup objected on the grounds that Galadriel wouldn’t send the hobbits off with something with that kind of malicious side-effect. I’ve thought about it, and while I’m going to emphasize the “acts in part” of my conclusion, I’m sticking to it.
Lembas works, in part, by allowing the body to burn first fat, then muscle, then whatever else it doesn’t need, until the goal is reached or there’s nothing left to burn. As a consequence of that purely physical function, it is less effective on hobbits than it is on others.
Eykar said According to your theory, lembas accelerates the process of starvation by causing the body to consume its reserves more speedily.
Not quite. I think lembas allows the body to exploit its reserves more efficiently. On plain rations -- cram, for example -- Frodo and Sam would have fallen over before they got much past the Morgai and not gotten up again. The ingestion of ordinary foods retards the ability of lembas to feed the will, so there must be something the lembas is doing differently when it's combined with other foods. If lembas is affected by the chemistry of the physical body it also, undoubtedly, has an effect up on the chemistry of the body. Combined with other foods, lembas improves the body’s ability to absorb and use the nutrients in those foods. Used alone, I suspect that the physical aspect functions by preventing the body from going into starvation mode, where fat is conserved, not burned.
Hobbits differ in mass, and I suspect also in metabolism rate from the other humanoid races. (What the dwarves lack in height they make up in muscle.) We’re told that they have a tendency to portliness, at least as they grow older, and for our four traveling hobbits that’s a bonus which we need to remember when we think about their nutritional needs and how much leeway they might have. A few extra inches around the waistline is as useful as a camel’s hump if you need the energy.
It’s easy to gloss over the time spent in Rivendell and Lorien – Tolkien did after all – but it has to be taken into account when you’re considering the general health and appearance of the four Travellers. Frodo, we’re told, spent most of his time in Rivendell with Bilbo. Bilbo, we’re also told, never misses meals. Elven food, by all reports, is appetizing indeed. So it’s a fair assumption that in two months Frodo was able to put back on a good bit of the weight he lost between Bree and Rivendell. It might have been distributed differently, but that would depend on how much physical exercise Frodo was taking and that’s limited by how much time he’s spending with Bilbo who just isn’t up to long rambles in the countryside.
The Elves who helped them prepare their packs for the trip from Rivendell would have had more than a decade’s experience with Bilbo, and I suspect that there was a good bit of food in the packs Bill carried. I can see them loading up a basket with food, looking at each other as if to ask “is that enough?” and then chorusing “hobbits” as they throw in enough extra to feed half a dozen Elves.
In Lorien the members of the Fellowship (except for Legolas) spent most of their time eating, drinking and resting. Now, I can put on ten pounds in a fortnight of vacation, and six meals a day is far beyond me, so, it’s fair to assume that the hobbits left Lorien with some padding for the journey. So, even if the Galadhrim knew that lembas used alone would eat into physical reserves, the hobbits probably looked up to it.
Woops, circular reasoning there. Let's try again...
Caraloup said Overall, I guess I doubt that the lembas' spiritual effects and meaning can be reduced to physiological processes that undermine the positive purpose of the thing. True, Gandalf, Galadriel, and others consciously accept that Frodo's sacrifices may include his own death (despite their sympathy for him), but they also offer what help and support they can provide. The gift of lembas is part of that, not another destructive agent (like the Ring!) that may subvert Frodo's integrity or cause physical harm.
Okay, let's consider the perfect travelling ration -- it tastes good, has some variety, weighs little or nothing, keeps pretty much forever unless you broach the packaging,
Perfection aside, when a modern traveler goes to select rations the first question has to do with whether or not the stuff provides the necessary nutrition and energy and the other considerations come further down the line. Still, the smaller and lighter and more imperishable you can get your travel food, the less of a trade off you have to make. The first thing to go, of course, is variety. It might get a little boring to have to eat the same thing for every meal after a while, and make you think of other foods you might like to have as a change, but so long as your energy and nutrition requirements are met you shouldn’t be hungry.
Well, not in the more important sense, at least. There are two kinds of hunger – there’s the kind of hunger that is wanting variety or a certain flavor of food – and then there’s the kind of hunger that is a signal of need upon the part of the body. The cravings of pregnant women are infamous, but not so long ago someone sat down and figured out that if you ate pickles with your ice cream it made it easier to absorb and use the calcium which is so necessary a building block in mammalian anatomy. I see the “desire” which lembas fails to satisfy as being hunger of the first sort – a mere wanting – in the case of Elves, Dwarves and Men.
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli subsist on lembas as they run from Rauros to the fringe of Fangorn forest. They report weariness – but identify it as primarily weariness imposed from a distance by Saruman – and cold, but not hunger – not even cravings for different sorts of food. As far as we know they didn’t get another sort of meal till Edoras, which they ate quickly, but without the kind of satisfaction or commentary we’d expect if they were particularly hungry. In fact, you almost get the impression that they only sat down and ate because Theoden needed to eat before the host set out for Helm’s Deep.
Unfortunately for our poor hobbits, I think lembas fails to satisfy their hunger in both senses of the word. Merry and Pippin, in contrast to the three hunters, think that “even lembas does none the worse for a change” and when they get a chance to eat normal foods proceed to eat two meals in short order. (And they’ve had more than lembas, but that’s considered below.)
Now none of the limitations of lembas which I suspect are because of a failure on Galadriel’s part, or any other Elf, but because of the considerations that might have gone into designing it.
You see, it’s when you know that you’ve only got to get by for a short while that you value low encumbrance in a ration more highly than proper nutrition. In emergencies, you know that your body has reserves which can be tapped and in emergencies we’re all willing to tap them. Bur for Elves, this is even moreso. Physical death is, for Tolkien’s Elves, an inconvenience rather than a permanent bar to future satisfactions. Why not burn up the physical body when the need is great enough? It isn’t the important part, after all, and the Elves are sure of rebirth.1
Do we have any magical substances we can consider alongside lembas? Actually, yes. The mirovur of Rivendell, the Entish water, and the orc-draughts and medicine which were forced on Merry and Pippin (and probably Frodo) are all parallels. Each operates in a way which would be considered “magic” in our terms, and each seems to operate on intangibles, like endurance and will, as well as gut and flesh.
Mirovur is used very sparingly – we assume that it is difficult to manufacture and limited in supply. Glorfindel carries something which might be mirovur and uses it on Frodo, although it’s not identified as such. And there’s some question, as the drink Glorfindel gives is “neither warm nor cool in the mouth” and when Gandalf gives them a sip it’s “warm and fragrant” – but most anything which had been kept in a deep warm pocket might seem warm on Caradhras. Glorfindel’s drink, in any case, makes other foods more satisfactory in accompaniment. The “stale bread and dried fruit...seemed to satisfy their hunger better than many a good breakfast in the Shire had done.” (This is also appears to be true of lembas, as we see when Sam and Frodo have a half wafer each to accompany the rabbit stew. “It seemed a feast.”)
The Ent-draughts which Treebeard gives to Merry and Pippin do satisfy need, and at first desire. They eat small pieces of lembas in the morning only because they think that breakfast should involve chewing something, but the drinks are the food of the Ents, and are generally used to sustain quite large beings on a daily basis. There’s a healing quality to them as well, which may be part of what stimulated the hobbits growth. 2 Nevertheless, Merry tells Aragorn and the others, “But Ents only drink, and drink is not enough for content. Treebeard’s draughts may be nourishing, but one feels the need of something solid. And even lembas is none the worse for a change.”
I’ve saved the Orc-stuff for last for a reason. Let’s look at the medicine first. Before it’s used on Merry he’s not just bleeding, he’s unconscious, and for a long time after Pippin has already recovered. A concussion, at the very least, I should think, but the moment that Ugluk uses the medicine on him he’s awake and alert and has no more trouble. When Pippin is forced to drink the Orc draft he feels a heat, and his pains disappear. Both substances are powerful indeed. The hobbits run on nothing but the Orc draught and fear for hours, and are able to refuse dried meat when they are offered it after a second dose is administered. (It doesn’t stop the hobbits from being hungry, I note, but it does give them endurance of a kind.) The Orcs themselves have great endurance, and although I’m not sure if they have any of the draught, their run suggests it.
Once they’ve escaped, Merry says “Lembas does put heart into you! A more wholesome sort of feeling too, than the heat of that orc-draught. I wonder what it was made of? Better not to know I expect. Let’s get a drink of water and wash away the thought of it!”
He’s asked a crucial question here, and one that we should ask too. The Orc stuff is both effective and powerful, but if it didn’t have a hidden cost then the “good guys” would have things just as powerful and immediate. So let’s go back to Galadriel’s comment about magic. The Orc stuff works differently. Now, what do we know about Sauron? That he doesn’t care what he pollutes, destroys, corrupts, or consumes as long as he gets the result he wants. And with the exception of the Ring, where he had to use his own power to achieve the desired results, he prefers to use up the strengths of other folks and hazard their lives before his own. The recipe for the Orc-draught probably starts out with ingredients like Elf-livers and baby brains. He still hasn’t licked the monotony problem, but he’s closer to the perfect ration as far as Orcs are concerned. Easy to carry and keeps them on their feet for hours longer than you’d expect. And it sharply reduces how much they require of other kinds of rations as well, or they’d eat more often.
It doesn’t work as well on hobbits though.
Nothing comes from nothing. If lembas has a “magic” effect than it has to be paid for. There’s a cost somewhere, and I think that the cost comes out of the physical body of the person eating the lembas. Self-sacrifice, however slowly enacted, is far better than climbing to your goal over the bodies of the innocent. But hobbits are small and hungry beings. Pound for pound, they need more food on a daily basis than the people for whom lembas was originally created. Chances are too that Frodo and Sam subsisted on lembas for longer than most people ever needed to. It would be truly helpful battle bread, but the armies that marched in an earlier Age would have had supplies of other sorts for most of their needs. Wanderers like Aragorn might have lembas for an emergency, but could, and would forage for most of their needs.
Are the spiritual effects of lembas dependent on the physical effect? Well, yes, I do think so, but that is not a flaw, or a danger; that is a price to be paid. The balance of spirit and corporeal self is not disrupted by that price, because the magic of lembas lies in its ability to more efficiently transform the energy of the physical form into the energy needed by the more important spiritual form. Without lembas, as the physical body wanes, the spirit wanes too. (Starving people are often depressed, and with good reason.) Lembas overrides that, by feeding the will directly, and the trade is well worth it.
***
Of course (my wandering brain says) I could argue that the balance is thrown off too. I’ve always wondered why Sam and Frodo sleep for so long after they’ve been rescued. Maybe I can blame it on the lembas!
;)
1. And there’s a lovely sidelight of wondering if the Orcs were Elves once, corrupted by the first Enemy are they Elves still, doomed to be reborn in Orcish bodies until some evil compulsion is destroyed and then to exist as Orcs until they are killed and can become Elves again? Or is each Orc possessed of some small part of a long –lost Elf who cannot be reborn until all the fleshly vessels clutching fragments of his parceled out soul are finally smashed to dust?
2. I can’t help wonder how the Entish draught got into the waters of the Entwash river for Merry and Pippin to drink it unawares. Was it a stale batch that Treebeard had poured out upstream? Is it the nature of the river, and Treebeard collects different waters from different springs in his jars to take back to his homes? Or do Ents pee in watersheds? Sorry, that was probably TMI…
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 02:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 02:56 am (UTC)WOW. :D
This is TOO fun for words. I've been on a debate touching on this (though not NEARLY at such a scholarly level!). . .you'll see it in something I'm working on. May I by any chance engage you as a consultant?
And. . .would it be out of place to post my thoughts on "comfort food"/"comfort eating" and hobbits here? Odd as that sounds, I do think it has some relevance. . .again, I only wish it even approached such an erudite level, but. . .might be of interest. . . .
In awe,
An Enchanted Febobe :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 02:59 am (UTC)And of course I am glad to be consulted. My claims of expertise can be
manufactureddusted off as soon as you like!(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 03:01 am (UTC);)
Glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 03:02 am (UTC)Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 09:57 am (UTC)Have you ever read Following the other Wizard and The Queen's Orc by jodancingtree? Jo plays with this thought masterfully. Her orcish hero "Canohando" is one of the most unusual and wonderful creatures I've ever encountered in Tolkien Fanfiction.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 10:35 am (UTC)Very interesting thoughts!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 01:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 03:59 pm (UTC)I was thinking of those stories too. Wonderful explorations of orcs and their origins (through the story of Canohando). The link is here for the second story (and the first story is also at Stories of Arda):
http://www.storiesofarda.com/chapterlistview.asp?SID=1741
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 04:04 pm (UTC)The use of "cakes" in Tolkien's description needn't suggest a softer, bready sponge. You've already reasoned your way through that anyways, but "cake" in England can mean thinner, crisper types of baked goods. And there is even "kendalmint cake" which isn't baked at all -- it is a kind of pressed minty sugar block, intended to supply energy for travellers or "fell-walkers".
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 04:39 pm (UTC)And I'm glad you enjoyed the ramblings. I'm off to see if I can't find more info on kendalmint cake...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-12 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-13 03:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-14 06:50 pm (UTC)Re: More lembas thoughts
Date: 2004-09-17 05:57 am (UTC)Miruvor = energy drinks (in my part of the world, "Red Bull", a very syrupy drink which construction workers use a substitute for lunch)
Ent-draught = growth hormone
Orc-draught = amphetamines and other "uppers" (originally developed for medical purposes, became more accessible as drugs of abuse only later, but still used in the lab and therapeutically, especially in the military)
Lembas - if only we had something like this! The closest analogy I can think of would be a compound that suppresses the appetite centres of the brain (in the hypothalamus) while modifying enzymatic and hormonally-mediated processes in the liver, adipose tissue and muscles to improve metabolic efficiency and stimulate use of energy reserves.
Thanks for the great insights - I enjoyed the "geekiness" immensely.
Joo Ching