The Tale
‘And so Gollum found them
hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the
gloom ahead.’ Frodo is propped up on Sam’s lap, ‘upon his white forehead lay
one of Sam’s brown hands’, the other hand on Frodo’s chest. Both are fast
asleep. Gollum looks at them, and something about their loving, vulnerable
position seems to touch his heart.
‘The gleam faded from his
eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired.’ A spasm passes over him, and
he looks back up the path, then back at the hobbits and shaking his head; some
interior debate is wracking his soul. He reaches out and softly touches Frodo’s
knee, a trembling, almost caressing touch.
‘For a fleeting moment,
could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they
beheld a weary old hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far
beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth,
an old starved pitiable thing.’
But at Gollum’s touch Frodo
stirs and gives a little cry in his sleep. Sam is instantly awake and sees
Gollum as it were ‘pawing at the Master.’ He is immediately suspicious and
roughly asks Gollum what he’s up to. Gollum’s answer is soft. ‘Nothing, nothing
… Nice Master!’ But Sam is having none of it. He asks Gollum where he’s been,
sneaking off and sneaking back, and calls him ‘an old villain.’
This insulting affront
snuffs out whatever spark of repentance Gollum might have been having. The
green light flickers under his hooded eyes, and he draws back, ‘looking almost
spider-like’ now. ‘The fleeting moment had passed, beyond recall.’ His inner
tirade of hate, resentment, and self-pity pours forth.
Sneaking? The hobbits are
always so polite with their language! Here he has worn himself out finding them
a pass through the mountains, he’s tired and hungry and thirsty, and they call
him a sneak! Very nice!
Sam feels a little
remorseful, but not more trusting. He says he’s sorry but goes on to try to
justify his snappishness. Gollum startled him out of his sleep, and he shouldn’t
have been sleeping, and that made him extra ‘sharp.’ ‘Sorry. But where you have
been to?’
Gollum’s eyes glint green. ‘Sneaking.’
Sam tries to drop the
matter, and asks if it’s today or tomorrow? They should probably all be
sneaking along together. Gollum says it’s tomorrow or would have been when the
hobbits foolishly fell asleep. They are lucky to have Gollum sneaking around to
watch.
‘I think we shall get tired
of that word soon,’ said Sam.’ Very gently he wakes Frodo up, who smiles and
comments it’s a little early to get up: it’s still dark. Sam replies that it’s
always dark in this land, but Gollum has returned. They must move along on ‘the
last lap.’
Frodo looks over and kindly
asks if Smeagol has found any food or had any rest. Gollum replies there’s
nothing for him; he’s a sneak. Frodo chides him for taking a bad name for
himself, but Gollum says he has to take what he is given, and that was provided
by ‘kind Master Samwise, the hobbit that knows so much.’ Frodo looks at Sam.
Sam confesses he did use the
word, waking up all of a sudden and finding Gollum nearby. He’s already said he
was sorry, but he soon won’t be if Gollum keeps it up.
Frodo says to let it pass.
Then he turns to Gollum. He’s brought them to in sight of the pass, guided them
to Mordor. If he thinks they can find their way from here, then their agreement
could be said to be over. Can they find their way, and will Gollum go his own
way, as he is free to do (as long as he doesn’t go to the Enemy or his minions)?
‘And one day I may reward you, I or those that remember me.’
‘No, no, not yet,’ Gollum whined. ‘O, no! They can’t find the way themselves, can they? O no indeed. There’s the tunnel coming. Smeagol must go on. No rest. No food. Not yet.’
Bits and Bobs
And so we have come to the
last two pages of “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol,” a passage that Tolkien himself
calls “perhaps the most tragic moment in the Tale … when Sam fails to note the
complete change in Gollum’s tone and aspect … [Gollum’s] repentance is blighted
and all Frodo’s pity is (in a sense) wasted … Sam could hardly have acted
differently.’ – from a draft letter to Eileen Elgar, 1963. Gollum wins the
inner debate over Smeagol, and his path is laid. ‘Smeagol must go on.’
Thinking of Gollum as ‘a
weary old hobbit’ has always sparked a line of ‘might-have-beens’ about his
ultimate fate. He has already come so far from being just a dark slimy thing,
as he was in the first edition of The Hobbit. If he would have
faithfully stuck with Frodo to the very Cracks of Doom, if he could have
survived his Precious going into the Fire, what might have happened to him? It
has been pointed out that (at least in the Jackson films) Gandalf brings along
enough Eagles to rescue Gollum, if he had somehow made it.
My brothers and I have imagined
a cleaned up, decently clothed Smeagol, with perhaps a skilled barber and a bit
of dentistry, going back to live with Frodo at Bag-End in the Shire, a timid sort
of reclusive invalid, maybe passed off as a long-lost relative. Then he would
have surely later passed oversea with Frodo and Bilbo, in search of the
ultimate healing that was offered to the Ringbearers. It is a nice little
dream.
I know, of course, that it
is Tolkien writing this passage, but it is feigned that is from the ‘memoirs of
Frodo and his friends.’ How much of it was Sam and Frodo deducing what had
happened while they were sleeping; particularly, how much of it was Sam later
guessing and regretting his actions? Poor Sam. This part always reminds me of The
Fool’s Prayer, by Edward Rowland Sill:
“These clumsy feet, still in
the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.”
Oh Lord, be merciful to me,
a fool.
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