The Lord of the Rings: The Black Gate is Closed (Part Two)

The Tale

Sam is very dubious about Gollum’s sudden suggestion. He remembers the wretch’s inner debate, and ‘Smeagol’ did not have the last word of that dialog. Both the Smeagol and Gollum parts (whom Sam thinks of as Slinker and Stinker) seem to want to keep Frodo from being captured and the Ring away from Sauron, but Sam thinks that’s only to have a chance to get his Precious for himself. Sam doubts if there is any secret way into Mordor. And if Gollum really knew Frodo’s intention of destroying the Ring, ‘there’d be trouble pretty quick.’

Suddenly, in the growing morning light, they see vast armies marching across the plain toward the Gate, and trumpets ring out. For a moment Frodo’s heart leaps up, thinking it is an attack upon Mordor, but ‘The trumpets had not rung in challenge but in greeting.’ These are vast armies out of the East come to swell Sauron’s forces. Frodo shrinks back, aware in the growing light of their precarious position. He turns to Gollum.

Frodo will trust him once more. It seems he is fated to get help from Gollum, where he never looked for it, and for Gollum to help him, whom he long hunted. Gollum has been faithful so far: twice the hobbits have been completely in his power, and Gollum has never tried to take the Ring. ‘May the third time prove the best!’ But Gollum himself is in dreadful danger.

Gollum agrees. Terrible danger, his ‘bones shake to think of it,’ but he must risk it to help master. Frodo replies he does not mean the danger they all share of capture, torture, and death. Gollum has sworn a promise on the Precious. ‘It will hold you to it; but it will seek a way to twist it to your own undoing.’ The twisting is already revealed in his asking just now to have the Ring back, but that could never be. He might as well put the thought out of his mind. In the last need, Frodo would put the Precious on and command Gollum to leap off a cliff or into the fire, and he would have to do it. ‘And such would be my command. So have a care, Smeagol!’

‘Sam looked at his master with approval, but also with surprise.’ Sam has always thought of Frodo as one of the wisest people he knows (along with Old Mr. Bilbo and Gandalf) but with a measure of kindness that almost amounted to blindness. Gollum may have made this mistake too (but then he’s only known Frodo a short while) and this sudden streak of steel surprises and terrifies him so that for a while he is reduced to groveling and incoherent protestations.

Frodo waits a while, then speaks ‘less sternly’. ‘Come now, Gollum or Smeagol if you wish, tell me of this other way, and show me, if you can, what hope there is in it, enough to justify me in turning aside from my plain path. I am in haste.’

Bits and Bobs

One may notice that these Frodo and Sam chapters do not have all the dash and adventure of the Fellowship chapters, but they go very deep into psychological and moral territory, and that creates a tension and interest all its own. Frodo, Sam, and Gollum have been compared to the Super-Ego, Ego, and Id wandering the wasteland, seeking some reconciling end.  

The armies of ‘wicked men’ approaching the Gate puts an extra cherry on top, emphasizing the futility of that approach, and helps Frodo to decide to consider Gollum’s unlikely offer. He does not grasp it as an immediate solution to the problem but asks Gollum for details before he decides. And before they go forward, he lays out for Gollum plainly what the creature’s situation is.

I think that this is what separates ‘Book Frodo’ from ‘Movie Frodo’. Movie Frodo is buffeted around by emotions and insecurity; Book Frodo, though he may have moments of doubt about his quest decisions, has this inner core of steel and determination. I think perhaps the movie writers might also have mistaken kindness for blindness, and suffering for wimpiness.