Monday, May 20, 2024

The Lord of the Rings: The Stairs of Cirith Ungol (Part Five)


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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