rabidsamfan | (no subject)

A few days ago I posted a drabble called Inevitable and near the end of the comments eykar asked a question I tried to answer, and recently the discussion went to e-mail. But since it was fun, we thought we should share. (She's posting it in her journal too, but feel free to answer in just one or the other.)

#1
Re: Inevitable

rabidsamfan:

Well, in some ways what Sam has to deal with in Frodo
that year is what anyone who is friend to a person
with chronic illness has to deal with, be it physical
or mental.

Eykar:

During my Barnes & Nobles LoTR class, there was much
discussion of whether Frodo was sick, guilty or
generally angsty post-quest. I wrote various drabbles
based on different versions of this, as a way of
testing the ideas, but finally concluded that there is
no such statement in LoTR.

RoTK (Grey Havens) states that Frodo is ill, although
not dramatically so, only on every March 13 and
October 6, and that he gradually withdraws from the
life of the Shire, spending his days writing; however
it also says that Sam, who knows Frodo better than
anyone, feels only a vague anxiety, and only about
Frodo’s social isolation. This anxiety may not even
be due entirely to Frodo’s behavior; part of it may be
due to Sam’s dissatisfaction that the Shire never
recognizes what Frodo did to save it. It may also be
due to a not-yet-verbalized suspicion that someone so
out of touch with the Shire has no real reason to
stay.

Even Tolkien’s famous letter #246, which refers to
Frodo’s ‘dark times coming upon him’ and bringing
‘unreasoning self-reproach’ supplies no reason to
think that these dark times are anything other than
the two anniversaries. (I think of the letters as
Tolkien's LoTR fanfic rather than as canon.)

The strongest support in the text for the angst or
sickness theory is that statement that Frodo would
often finger Arwen’s white jewel. However the meaning
of this gesture is rendered ambiguous by her words on
giving it to him. She refers to hurts grieving him,
the memory of his burden being heavy, and the memories
of fear and darkness troubling him ‘ three different
situations. Only the last is directly connected to
the jewel.

The illness (‘hurts grieving’) is notably limited to
two days a year; the rest of the time, he is writing.
I think one his biggest reasons for writing the Red
Book is to sort out how the quest changed him.
Writing it had to involve a lot of remembering and
emotional reactions, however that doesn’t constitute a
psychiatric disorder. When Frodo finally leaves
Middle Earth, he does not refer to wounds, grief, fear
or darkness; he says only that the Shire was saved but
not for him. His lack of a bond with the Shire is the
primary reason for his leaving Middle Earth,
sufficient with or without any illness.

An interpretation more convincing to me is that during
the quest Frodo became so used to giving up the Shire,
from leaving his home at the beginning to losing his
memories of home at the end, that he lost the ability
to create a new attachment to it. The Shire he returns
to has been ruined ‘ symbolized most strongly for him
by the death of Lotho - and when it rises renewed it
is changed. The same can be said of Frodo, who
considers himself dead (at the end of all things)
after the Ring is destroyed, and whose continued life
can be thought of as a rebirth. Why should Frodo and
the Shire have changed in compatible ways’ He might
wish they had, but he can’t very well force it to be
so.

I don’t find any evidence that this lack of attachment
constitutes a physical or mental illness. I think
that people read that in because they are not
comfortable with the text’s lack of explanation and
because illness is familiar and understandable.
However Tolkien’s story is more interesting than that:
Frodo has changed in ways that the text does not
detail but which make him more compatible with the
Elves and the Maia with whom he eventually sails than
with other hobbits.

Elves as they age become more spiritual, more
contemplative, more creative in non-sexual ways, until
their spirit alone maintains their
no-longer-strictly-material bodies. This is their
natural life-evolution. Maiar are pure spirit who can
take on material form but can as easily remove it like
a worn out garment. Based on this, Frodo, for all his
unpleasant memories, is not sick but rather made more
spiritual ‘ although he is one of a species that has
no concept or vocabulary of the spirit. (He and Sam
discuss spirituality by speaking of the stars, the
Sea, the Elves and, later in the quest, a
dimly-perceived Story-teller. All this is evidence of
lack of native religion.) This alone would make it
very difficult to form a new bond with the Shire, a
whole society to which his most life-defining
experiences are opaque.

Frodo has Been to the Mountain, confronted the Sacred
Fire of Creation (which is older and more powerful
than Sauron,) and been Borne on the Wings of Eagles.
Anyone raised in a biblically-based religion would
understand these referents ‘ but how can Frodo’ Even
more so, how can hobbits who have never left the
Shire’

Instead of engaging in the life of the Shire, Frodo
occupies himself with recording and understanding the
quest, partly so that he can understand why he is no
longer at home in what used to be home. On the
anniversaries of Weathertop and Shelob, he would
consider the worst possible interpretations, but that
leaves 363 days a year for him to write the more
balanced, deep and detailed account on which Tolkien
pretended to base his work.

Even the act of writing has to be isolating in the
Shire, where people don’t care to change at all, much
less figure out how one has changed, and
introspection is not part of their culture. (Even
among humans it can be isolating: I don’t know how
your family and friends have treated your writing, but
mine has been mistaken both for some kind of
anti-social obsession and for a willful waste of
talent that could be applied to making a living.) Sam
would logically regard writing as a continuation of
Bilbo’s work, which Frodo promised to carry out; and,
if (as is likely) he suspected it meant something more
to Frodo, it wouldn’t be like him to demand an
explanation, only to wait for one,

I think it likely that Tolkien incorporated some
experience of what was then called shell-shock into
Frodo, however the essential part retained is the
survivor’s inability to be at home in what once was
home. He kept the framework, the relationship between
survivor and society, but changed the content to
something less familiar and more interesting.

rabidsamfan:

Whether or not Frodo’s last year in the Shire is spent in guilt, pain, or some kind of spiritually new place, the most noticeable symptom is his withdrawal from the community. I don’t see how Sam could read that as anything but “bad”, given how very much the hobbits measure themselves and their lives by their places in that community. Each time Frodo said, “You go along, Sam. I’ll stay home this time,” Sam would have felt a measure of consternation. On “good days” Frodo puts on his Elven cloak and goes to the special occasion with Sam. On “bad days” he sends Sam alone, or avoids visitors and allows letters to pile up unanswered.

While I agree that Frodo has reached a different place than Sam, in spite of the fact that they travelled together, I think the text still can be read to see him as damaged goods after the quest. When Arwen gives him the gem and her place on the ship she does so saying “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.” The next bit of evidence lies in Frodo’s words to Gandalf at the Ford of Bruinen. “Where shall I find rest’” is an odd question to ask for someone who has just left the house of Elrond, which is such a perfect place to rest on the trip outwards. Certainly, the Shire as they found it was not a place where resting was possible – and in fact, Frodo was thrust into a leadership position for which he has little or no training when he gets dubbed Deputy Mayor. Saruman also sees the damage in Frodo and says as much.

But for me, of course, the strongest evidence comes from Sam, and it comes in his reaction to the discovery that Frodo is leaving with Bilbo. He doesn’t say “no, how could you,” or “don’t go where I can’t follow,” he says, “And I can’t come.” It is that perception and acceptance of Frodo’s decision that betrays Sam’s relief at no longer being responsible for a task he cannot do.

For the sake of the drabble, I was also looking at that final chapter with an eye to which hobbit wrote which paragraph. Rather than recognizing that Tolkien the author is telling us what happens, I started by playing the game that it is Tolkien the translator who is conveying to us the story as written by hobbits of the Shire with, perhaps, a little fancy pointing of his own. So who tells us that Sam is perfectly happy with only a minor worry – Sam, who knows his own experience’ Or Frodo, who wants it to be true’

If it’s Frodo writing that, then the drabble follows easily. For the sake of writing the Red Book, he has already stayed a year past when Elrond first intended to take Bilbo across the sea, and chances are the pressure of finishing by his birthday has been a bit of a strain. And as for Sam knowing what Frodo dreams about -- Frodo talks in his sleep, you know. (He certainly did at Rivendell, and probably in Ithilien. How else did that minstrel know what to sing about when he and Sam had only just wakened’) Of course, the entire drabble is dependent from the beginning on the hypothesis (proven or not) that Frodo is leaving the Shire because he needs to find healing in the West, rather than on the idea that he has morphed into a different sort of spiritual being, so it’s sort of a moot point to say that Sam wouldn’t notice the “cracks” of damage and try to pretend them away because Frodo wasn’t damaged. What the drabble attempts to reveal are the insights which lead Sam to being dismayed rather than despairing at the moment when he realizes that Frodo is going to leave.

Other, minor responses:

>While Sam doesn't have the healing skills of Elrond
or Aragorn available to him, he also doesn't have the
kind of fatalistic nature that Frodo does.

Another motive for not accepting Frodo’s lack of
attachment to the Shire: Sam’s happiness would be to
live in the Shire with Frodo, not to have the two
loves of his heart sundered by time and distance. He
isn’t going to easily accept that Frodo needs to
leave, be he sick or well.

Well, two problems with that, if not more. The first is that Frodo’s idea of Sam’s happiness and Sam’s idea of Sam’s happiness are not necessarily identical. Frodo believes that Sam needs to be whole, not “torn in two”, and Rosie and the baby are in a kind of competition with Frodo for Sam’s heart. That’s baloney, of course, but Frodo’s got a self-sacrificing martyr complex after spending all that time expecting to die to save the world, so of course he’s going to give way to Sam’s wife and child. Writing the Red Book would only remind him of that intention of sacrifice, by the way. And it’s not like Frodo hasn’t got a bit of “torn in two” himself. Bilbo’s going with Elrond, and Gandalf too, and Frodo loves both of them dearly. Perhaps if Arwen had not offered Frodo the opportunity to go as well, he would have accepted those losses, but having the choice it may seem to him that he solves both Sam’s and his own divided heart to go.

>It's not like him to give up, so all he can do is try
the best he knows how. He reads Frodo far more clearly
than Frodo reads him

Where do you perceive Frodo not reading Sam clearly’
Does that change with time’

Frodo tells us as much. “I’m learning a lot about Sam Gamgee…” he says, when Sam recites poetry, and having never even suspected that Sam was among the conspirators even after Merry has spilled the beans. He is startled by Sam’s reaction to meeting Elves, to the point of looking for a physical change. And he tries to leave Sam behind at Rauros – although whether that’s a matter of not reading Sam’s heart aright or not reading his own I’m not as certain… It does change when they’re in Mordor, but it changes again in the Shire, because Sam hurls himself back into the present and life of the Shire while Frodo turns back to the (necessary) task of recording the events of the Quest and the past.

>(for all that Sam usually wears his heart on his
sleeve) so at least a part of him has had to notice
that Frodo's not really getting better.

He notices a change and it makes him a little anxious.
The rest is interpretation but not Sam’s
interpretation.

No, it’s mine. *grin*

>There were probably good days and bad days,

There is a lot of fannish multiplication of the bad
days, however the text is pretty explicit, even
listing Frodo’s few bad days in the Tale of Years.

Again, see my definition of “bad” above. Frodo doesn’t have to be miserable for Sam to think of it as a bad day – he just has to be acting in a way that isolates him from other hobbits. And of course, we’re disagreeing about damage here. Although you’re right about fanfic emphasizing the bad times over the good, which also can be frustrating. I’m quite certain that Frodo didn’t go around looking forlorn and lost all the time or he’d have ended up being dosed with castor oil.

>He's the sort that gets up and faces the day, and
puts aside his worries when he can't do anything about
them but hope. The Gaffer taught him that much anyway.

I think that to a certain degree Sam’s attitude is
inborn, and nurtured by Bilbo’s tales of persistence
and unexpected triumph, as well as by the Gaffer.

Perhaps. But that “get up and haul the water” attitude is more practical than Bilbo strikes me.

>And I think that Frodo would be trying to hide his
pain from Sam, not wanting to shadow his happiness,

. . .based on the unproved assumption that Frodo is
often in pain. I find it more likely that he is
trying to explain himself to himself, after which he
can explain himself to Sam. However, knowing that he
may likely leave the Shire forever, Frodo does not
want that likelihood to distract Sam from Sam’s own
path and life longer than is necessary. Therefore
Frodo would not say anything in advance.

Back to hypothesis A… Frodo hides his intentions, and when he is in pain (in March) he does his best to hide that too so as not to distract Sam from his family.

>and Sam would be trying to oblige Frodo by being
happy.

I find it likely that the renewal of the Shire and the
founding of a family give Sam quite a bit to be happy
about. Even though no one in the Shire will ever
understand him, and Frodo (the individual he most
loves) is gone, the Shire is still the home he loves
and wants to stay in.

Sam has plenty to be happy about, certainly. That doesn’t stop him from having things he grieves for, no more than it does anyone else. Don’t do him the disservice of assuming that simple words mean simple feelings!

Well, this was fun. Would you mind terribly if I posted it into my journal with a note of explanation of how it came about’

rabidsamfan:

< Sam would have felt a measure of consternation.>

eykar:

I don’t think that “consternation” is quite the right word, since it implies shock and surprise. Sam, ever realistic (although his perception reality is far wider than that of most hobbits,) would probably get used to Frodo’s anti-social habits pretty quickly, although they would cause him a continuing unease due to a half-articulate suspicion that Frodo’s half-attached life can’t last.

Sam would understand Frodo’s separateness from the Shire because he shared it. Both knew that the people around them had neither the desire nor the ability to understand the quest; they would have only each other with whom to share the most significant memories of their lives (like old guys who live for their VFW meetings, whether war stories are traded there or not.) Sam’s concern would not be about Frodo’s well-understood isolation but about his not balancing it by forging a new bond with the Shire, as Sam did.

<While I agree that Frodo has reached a different place than Sam, in spite of the fact that they travelled together, I think the text still can be read to see him as damaged goods after the quest. When Arwen gives him the gem and her place on the ship she does so saying “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.” >

Arwen didn’t have the authority to grant Frodo, or anyone, the right to sail west; that grace is granted by a higher authority, either the Valar (the gods of ME) or most likely Illúvatar (God.) Arwen could offer only her abandoned place beside Elrond on a particular ship, along with a bit of light for protection until Frodo either died in ME or sailed (on that ship or a later one.)

Frodo’s actions immediately preceding his departure, like so many others, are never explained: He writes, he finishes writing, he concludes whatever he needs to from what he has written, and he leaves. He undoubtedly has multiple motives for so doing, of which the prospect of (regularly scheduled, twice annual) wounds and weariness is only one and (to my mind) not the most important.

Most of the recorded discussion leading up to Frodo’s departure concerns Bilbo, who isn’t going to last much longer in Middle Earth, and who would have no other of his kind in Aman if Frodo didn’t go with him. (JRR says it’s true of Frodo, but it’s true of Bilbo, too.)

I can find no reason not to accept as the truth Frodo’s telling Sam that “The Ringbearers should go together.”

It is the kind of question one would expect of him on that day, Oct. 6 (or on March 13.) It’s as if he had two religious fast days a year. (“And ye shall afflict your living selves,” the Bible orders.) The rest of the time he does not express such sentiments. The assumption that he feels but suppresses them is only that – an assumption.

< Certainly, the Shire as they found it was not a place where resting was possible – and in fact, Frodo was thrust into a leadership position for which he has little or no training when he gets dubbed Deputy Mayor. >

How much training did he have for any part of the quest’ Compared to all he has recently been forced to do and learn, the largely honorary office of Deputy Mayor is a walk in the park!

Twisting it in his usual negatively-exaggerated Saruman way. Besides, he lies outright. He says that if his blood is “stains” the Shire it will “wither and never again be healed.” His blood is spilled and it is healed within a year. (One could however argue that since Grima did the killing the Shire was not “stained.”) His next prediction, that Frodo will have “neither health nor long life” is similarly splenetic and inaccurate. Frodo sails alive to the Undying Lands, where mortals who are admitted die only at a time of their own choosing, in a state of estel (hope.) Assuming, as seems probable, that he is waiting when Sam eventually arrives, he lives at least another 62 years, which he could have lived in the Shire had he seen sufficient reason to do so. I find no reason to take Saruman’s claim about health as any more accurate than the rest of his venting.

< he says, “And I can’t come.” It is that perception and acceptance of Frodo’s decision that betrays Sam’s relief at no longer being responsible for a task he cannot do.>

An equally reasonable (and less convoluted) interpretation is that Sam wants to go with Frodo but realizes that he was not invited and now has other attachments to keep him in ME. Frodo’s response, that Sam’s “time may come” fits this meaning.

< So who tells us that Sam is perfectly happy with only a minor worry – Sam, who knows his own experience’ Or Frodo, who wants it to be true’>

Both, as Sam fills those last pages with his deeper understandings over the years, having only the book (and later Elanor) with whom to discuss any of these matters. (I think that the description of Frodo’s arrival in the Undying Lands was written by Frodo, with a glimmering of foreknowledge, to reassure Sam.)

<. And as for Sam knowing what Frodo dreams about -- Frodo talks in his sleep, you know. >

I’ve heard people talking in their sleep; reconstructing the whole dream from such muttered fragments is impossible without confirmation when the sleeper awakes.

<(He certainly did at Rivendell,>

Gandalf had Sam, Merry, Pippin and Aragorn to provide the factual framework to allow him to read Frodo’s “mind and memory.” Frodo’s sleep talking provided emotional content.

< and probably in Ithilien. How else did that minstrel know what to sing about when he and Sam had only just wakened’)>

Nowhere is it stated that the Gondorian song about Frodo of the Nine Fingers contains more than a summary of the quest reconstructed from the information available to waking people. It is clear to everyone that Frodo and Sam made it to Mount Doom and that the Ring was there destroyed, which is very likely as much detail as the song contained on the subject.

< What the drabble attempts to reveal are the insights which lead Sam to being dismayed rather than despairing at the moment when he realizes that Frodo is going to leave.>

I can accept it as meaningful within its own AU but not within LoTR as written – typical of fanfic writers, other than the few, including yourself, who consistently write at least short pieces that are true to the published text.

Other, minor responses:

<Frodo believes that Sam needs to be whole, not “torn in two”, and Rosie and the baby are in a kind of competition with Frodo for Sam’s heart. >

Not “Rosie and the baby” but the Shire, of which his family is part and expression, and which has never been and will never be large enough to contain Sam. Sam is, by his own account, torn between going where Frodo goes and staying in the only place he wants to be in.

The baby is not only Sam’s with Rose, but Sam’s with Frodo. Frodo names her, for a flower that Rose has never seen, and she grows up to inherit the Red Book, all that is left of him in ME. In the Epilogue, she is quite content to imagine accompanying Sam in sailing west to join Frodo, without a thought for her abandoned mother. (Kids can be that way, and I should hope that in the event she would be more considerate!)

<That’s baloney, of course, >

No, it’s intrinsic to Sam’s nature, and would have been true if Frodo had never been born. The quest gave Sam a chance to develop the greater-then-the-Shire possibilities that were always in him, that worried his Gaffer and made him aware of walking trees in the Northfarthing and Elves in the woods.

< Writing the Red Book would only remind him of that intention of sacrifice, by the way. >

It would also give a framework within which to contemplate what he had already sacrificed, and what he gained, and what to do with what he gained. Hobbits are, as Gandalf points out, remarkably resilient creatures.

Of course. That’s why he says “It will feel like that, I’m afraid. But you will be healed. You were meant to be solid and whole and you will be.”

This quote is further interesting because it gives a definition to “healed” that has nothing to do with the Nazgul or Shelob: It goes back to the original etymology, defining “healed” as “made whole.” The opposite of “healed” is not being wounded or sick, but being “torn in two” – as Frodo hopes Sam will not be but expects to be himself; he will always miss the life of the Shire that he hoped to but could not re-enter. In that sense I can find the term meaningful –very differently from the way it is usually used.

<Bilbo’s going with Elrond, and Gandalf too, and Frodo loves both of them dearly. Perhaps if Arwen had not offered Frodo the opportunity to go as well, >

See above; she did not have the power to make that offer. However the offer was made by those who could make it, and Frodo had a choice about leaving, as did Bilbo. Bilbo was ready for another adventure. I suspect that Frodo was too, to the extent that he was a kindred spirit, although his feelings were more mixed due to his having to give up a hoped-for future.

Defining “healing” as above, and taking all else into account, this makes a lot of sense.

<eykar:
Where do you perceive Frodo not reading Sam clearly’
Does that change with time’

Rabidsamfan:

These events are early in the quest, when Frodo is only beginning to notice Sam.

It’s a matter of trying to save Sam’s life. One of my other friends (I can’t find the quote right now) has written in some detail that Frodo didn’t accept Sam’s willingness to sacrifice his future until after being captured at Cirith Ungol. Only in discovering that the quest could not be fulfilled by Frodo’s sole sacrifice did he stop hoping to, at some point, abandon and thus save Sam. (Another of my friends grumbles that it wasn’t until this point that JRR appreciated Sam’s worth!)

It changes but not back to what it was. Having lived for so long as virtually one person in two bodies, they cannot return to not knowing each other. The Shire imposes its social roles and they try find a way to reinvent themselves; thus Frodo gives Sam and Rose a place to live and makes Sam his heir, creating a recognizable family configuration; at the same time, they (with Rose’s passive assent or active collusion) act as a couple naming their first child together, a hidden family configuration.

I have found it useful to compare Frodo’s and Sam’s post-quest life in the Shire to the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi, who constitute themselves as a family even though they have no legal claim on each other, because of a shared spiritual commitment. At the end, Ruth’s loyalty is rewarded with a virtuous but unsexy husband, who provides her with a child, which she immediately turns over to Naomi. Naomi acts as a mother figure to Ruth, but Ruth, in bearing a child for Naomi, acts as a wife-figure to her. This confusion, scrambling and stretching of family roles is repeatedly presented in the bible as necessary to bring redemption to the world. I doubt that the story of Ruth was among JRR’s intended models, but it was part of his background culture.

which needs him now, as Frodo did during the quest. However the Shire (especially in the person of the Gaffer) was always in his heart during the quest, and Frodo will always be in his heart in the Shire.

And to a certain degree of self-sufficiency: He is finally doing something that he can do without Sam, although not without asking about and recording Sam’s memories.

<. I’m quite certain that Frodo didn’t go around looking forlorn and lost all the time or he’d have ended up being dosed with castor oil. >
LOL

< But that “get up and haul the water” attitude is more practical than Bilbo strikes me.>

Right, the work ethic was from dad. The hope unquenchable was inborn and doubly nurtured.

< Frodo hides his intentions, and when he is in pain (in March) he does his best to hide that too so as not to distract Sam from his family.>

And he hides his intention of leaving for the same reason. However neither constitutes the kind of heroic effort that a lot of writers seem to imagine.

I never intend to do so and hope that I haven’t inadvertently given that impression. Sam is one of Tolkien’s greatest and most complex characters.

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