CHAPTER 14

THE THREAD OF LIFE

Now we enter the gloomiest part of the story, the trek across the wicked wastes of Mordor, the veritable Valley of Death, to Mount Doom, as ghastly as Golgotha and darker than death itself. As the shadow descends, stifling hobbit and reader alike, the darkness is lightened and the burden of foreboding is lifted by an unexpected miracle. At the foot of the dreaded mountain and bereft of all strength under the crushing weight of the Ring, Frodo crawls forward on his hands, unable to rise to his feet. Weeping in his heart, Sam resolves to carry his master, fully expecting to be crushed himself under the combined weight of Frodo and the Ring: “Sam staggered to his feet; and then to his amazement he felt the burden light. . . . Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering, or because some gift of final strength was given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty than if he were carrying a hobbit-child pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns or hayfields of the Shire.”1

One scarcely knows where to start in order to unpack the multifarious moral and biblical allusions with which this one brief episode is awash. We have seen how the Ring is synonymous with sin and how wearing the Ring is equivalent to the act of sinning, the long-term addictive effect of which leads us to gollumize ourselves as we enslave ourselves to the addiction. Yet if the wearing of the Ring is the act of sinning, the carrying of it is equivalent to the carrying of the Cross or to the carrying of our own individual crosses. On one level, therefore, we can see Frodo as a Christ figure, the Cross-bearer, who saves the world from sin through his act of self-sacrifice; on another level, he is an Everyman figure, taking up his own particular cross as Christ commanded. All the while, of course, on the purely literal level, he remains merely a simple hobbit from the Shire.

But what of Sam in this analogous setting? As one who willingly bears the burden of another, struggling under the weight of evil, he can also be seen simultaneously as a Christ figure and an Everyman figure. He is doing what we are all called to do. He is taking up his own particular cross, the one that is given to him—in this case, the burden of an afflicted friend—and bears it willingly even unto death. Having done so, to his utter amazement, he finds his burden light. Notwithstanding the unconvincing “rational” reasons for this phenomenon (Frodo’s pains, sorrow, and fears), we know, as Sam no doubt knows, that “some gift of final strength” has been given to him. It is, of course, a supernatural gift, a gift of grace, a miracle. It is, furthermore, a gift Christ Himself promised to those who take up their cross to follow Him: “Come to me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.”2

Having had our burdens lifted by this unexpected lightening of the load, this miraculous spark of divine light and life, this lightning in the darkness, we are carried with Frodo to “the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom.”3 At last, after almost a thousand pages of relentless and unrelenting slog, following Frodo every inch of the way from Bag End to Mount Doom, we have finally reached the moment of victory. Now comes the easy part. All Frodo needs to do is toss the Ring into the flames below, into the maws of hell in which it was forged and to which it belongs.

If we are reading the story for the first time and have not had it spoiled for us by watching the film first or having older siblings or others tell us what happens, we are shocked, horrified, and disgusted by what happens next.

“I have come,” says Frodo. “But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!”4 Then, instead of casting the Ring into the flames, he places it on his finger.

At this point, our anger and frustration boil over: Frodo is a miserable loser! A failure! How dare he lead us through so many dangers, fraught with tension, only to let us down at the very last moment, at the absolutely crucial moment that had been the focus of all our hopes? How dare he!

Then we give the matter a little thought, and we realize it’s not Frodo’s fault at all. Poor Frodo had no choice in the matter. It’s Tolkien’s fault—he’s the one with the pen. He’s the one doing the writing. He’s the one making the creative decisions. How dare Tolkien lead us through so many dangers, fraught with tension, only to let us down at the very last moment? How dare he!

Then we give the matter a little more thought, and it dawns on us that this twist in the plot is Tolkien’s masterstroke. It is the veritable coup de grâce—in the literal sense of the word grace—on which the whole theological meaning of the magnum opus turns.

Frodo’s failure at this crucial moment is a timely reminder that the power of evil cannot be defeated by the triumph of the will unaided by grace. From the early heresy of Pelagianism to modern day secular heresies, such as Nietzscheanism, it has been a recurring error to believe that the human will acting alone and without divine assistance (grace) can overcome the power of evil. Tolkien is no Pelagian. Still less is he a Nietzschean. Frodo is not Nietzsche’s Superman, or Übermensch, who triumphs because of his will to power. On the contrary, he is living proof, albeit a proof brought to life in fiction, that Nietzsche’s Superman, or Overman, is not only a lie but also a liar. Frodo’s failure is caused by the self-delusional belief that he can become an Übermensch by claiming the Ring for himself. The irony that turns the joke on Nietzsche is that Frodo is fooled by the power of evil to believe that he has power over evil. It is the diabolical paradox at the darkened heart of pride of which Nietzscheanism is but one of the hydra-headed manifestations.

If there’s one lesson Tolkien seeks to teach us, it is that the malicious power of the Ring possesses those who seek to possess it through the self-delusional will to power it engenders in them. It is the foolishness of selfishness.

Selfishness is to lose ourselves in the nothingness that we are without God. Selfishness is self-addiction. Selfishness gollumizes. This being so, to abandon our selfishness and give away all that belongs to our false self is to give away an illusion, the delusion of self-deception. For this reason, each of us must cast away the Ring he or she is tempted to wear. And yet we cannot cast it away without the supernatural help Christians call grace.

In the climactic moments on Mount Doom, with delicious and delightful irony, Frodo is saved from his selfishness and the Ring it serves by the most unlikely agent of grace imaginable. Just as he is about to turn away from the chasm in triumph—and therefore defeat—Gollum pounces upon him, bites the Ring from his finger, and falls triumphantly to his doom in the fires below, carrying the Ring with him.

This further twist in the tale beggars belief. How can we seriously believe that Gollum, a miserable sinner ruined by his addiction to the Ring, is an agent of God’s grace, saving Frodo, albeit unwittingly, from sharing his own gollumized fate? The answer is found in the thread of grace woven with the hand of Providence that weaves its way throughout the story, beginning way back in the Shire and leading all the way to Mount Doom itself.

This thread of grace, which will ultimately defeat the power of the Ring and save Frodo from destruction, stretches back beyond the beginning of the story of The Lord of the Rings to the earlier story of The Hobbit. Bilbo, having discovered the Ring in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Misty Mountains, is anxious to escape but finds his path blocked by Gollum. Concluding that he must kill the creature in order to make good his escape, Bilbo justifies his decision based on his desperate situation and the fact that Gollum had earlier intended to kill him. And yet his conscience troubles him. It would not be a fair fight. He is wearing the Ring and cannot be seen by his foe. He is also armed with a sword, whereas Gollum is unarmed. Apart from these questions of fairness or justice, there is also the question of pity or mercy toward Gollum, who is “miserable, alone, lost.”

A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second.5

The moral and practical importance of this act of pity and mercy is made clear by Gandalf, ever the voice of wisdom, in response to Frodo’s exclamation many years later that it was “a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had the chance.” “Pity?” Gandalf replies. “It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”6 In these few words, we see how the pervasive role of Providence is connected to the cooperation of the individual will. It is only because Bilbo behaved virtuously that he is ultimately able to escape. Although Gandalf appears to be referring to the long-term consequences of Bilbo’s action, it is nonetheless implicit that if he had failed to act with pity and mercy, he might have perished in the struggle with Gollum or been captured and killed by the goblins that he is soon to encounter. In choosing not to take Gollum’s life, Bilbo is unwittingly saving his own life and the lives of countless others in the long run.

Returning to the long-term consequences of Bilbo’s act of pity and mercy, Gandalf explains to Frodo that the fate of the whole quest to destroy the Ring depended on Bilbo’s passing of this primary test of virtue: “My heart tells me that [Gollum] has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end: and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not least.”7 As the unfolding of subsequent events proves, Gandalf’s words are those of a prophet. They are also words that Tolkien wants to ensure the reader, as well as Frodo, remembers because they are repeated almost verbatim when Frodo and Sam are debating what to do with Gollum after they capture him. As Frodo ponders whether they should kill him, justifying such a course of action on the basis that Gollum plans to kill them if he has the opportunity, he hears, “quite plainly but far off, voices out of the past.”

What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!

Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.8

“Very well,” Frodo answers out loud, lowering his sword at the prompting of the voices reverberating in his memory. “But still I am afraid. And yet, as you see, I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him.”9

It is intriguing that Frodo’s words, even if he is merely thinking out loud, are addressed to Gandalf, whom he believes is dead and whose death he witnessed. In any event, regardless of whether we wish to view Frodo’s words to the wizard as a prayer to the dead or whether we choose to dismiss them as merely piously phrased thoughts addressed to the insubstantial ghosts of his past, the words are potent with importance because they are portentous of Gandalf’s prophecy that Gollum has some part to play yet before the end and that the fate of many will depend on the pity shown to him.

In the same manner that Bilbo passes the hardest of tests, that of loving his enemy, Frodo likewise acts virtuously, showing pity and mercy in the face of formidable temptation, thereby leaving the life-giving thread unbroken.

Sometime later, at the Forbidden Pool, Anborn, one of the men in Faramir’s company, has Gollum at arrow point, poised to shoot.

“Shall we shoot?” Faramir asks.

“No!” Frodo exclaims. “No! I beg you not to.”

Faramir asks why the creature should be spared and Frodo responds that Gollum is “wretched and hungry, and unaware of his danger.” Apart from such pity being enough to stay the archer’s hand, Frodo calls on the ghost of Gandalf to plead on Gollum’s behalf, reminding us of the prophecy: “And Gandalf, your Mithrandir, he would have bidden you not to slay him for that reason, and for others. He forbade the Elves to do so. I do not know clearly why, and of what I guess I cannot speak openly out here. But this creature is in some way bound up with my errand.”10 Persuaded by Frodo’s words and by Gandalf’s plea by proxy, Faramir spares Gollum and leaves the crucial thread unbroken.

Bilbo and Frodo having now passed the test of loving their enemy, the final test falls on the shoulders of Sam, who had earlier echoed Frodo’s complaint that it was a pity Gollum had not been killed. On the slopes of Mount Doom, he finds the creature at his mercy. “Now!” he cries. “At last I can deal with you!” As he advances on Gollum with a drawn sword, the creature begs for his life. Sam’s hand wavers. Hot with anger and knowing that Gollum had been treacherous and had planned to murder him and his master, he feels that the shriveled, shrunken heap at his feet deserves to die and that his death would remove the threat he posed to Frodo’s life. “But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly guessed the agony of Gollum’s shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again.”11 Like his master and Bilbo before him, Sam stays his hand and shows Gollum pity and mercy. Thus, at the last, as the whole future of Middle-earth hung quite literally on an invisible thread of life, Sam’s virtuous choice to love his enemy ruled the fate of many.

Two pages later, Gollum plunges into the maws of Mount Doom, clutching the Ring triumphantly as they plummet to their destruction. “Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.”12

What are we to make of Gollum’s final moments, which seem, from his perspective, to constitute a happy ending? He has what he wants—indeed, he has the only thing that he wants, or at least the only thing that he thinks he wants. His personal quest to once more possess the Ring and be possessed by it has been achieved. Should we be as saddened by Gollum’s success as we are angered by Frodo’s failure, or should we rejoice that he finally got what he wanted, even if what he wanted was Hell itself?

The first thing we need to understand is that Tolkien’s theological perspective, and the deep psychology that springs from it, is profoundly orthodox. In the same manner in which Frodo’s subjective failure is an objective success, in the sense that the error that springs from his final weakness is rectified by the providential thread of life that rewards his earlier acts of virtue, so Gollum’s subjective success is an objective failure: in getting what he thinks he wants, he loses what he really wants—whether he thinks he wants it or not—which is the peace that comes from being free of his addiction to evil.

The other thing we need to know is that Tolkien’s theological understanding of the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell—is also profoundly orthodox. God doesn’t send people to Heaven or Hell. Those in Heaven are there because they want to be; those in Hell are there because they want to be. God merely respects the freedom of the human will to choose where it wishes to spend eternity. Do we choose to lose the nothingness that we are without God by choosing to become the something that we are meant to be with him, a process of selfless sanctification that is the ultimate purpose and meaning of life, or do we choose ourselves above all else and the addiction to ourselves that it entails? Gollum chose the latter and gets the desire of his addicted heart, which chooses to be enslaved eternally to itself. (Admirers of C. S. Lewis will no doubt see similarities between Gollum’s choice and that of the infernal souls in Lewis’s eschatological parable, The Great Divorce.)

Returning to our earlier question regarding how we should feel about Gollum’s final resting place, the answer is given to us by Frodo. Responding to Sam’s statement that Gollum had “gone now beyond recall, gone forever,” Frodo suspends final judgment with words of forgiveness that also serve as a reminder of the providential thread of life that bound all three of them together: “Yes,” he says. “But do you remember Gandalf’s words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over.”13

If Gollum’s tragic end serves the greater end of destroying the power of evil, can we perhaps gain at least a modicum of consolation and even a degree of satisfaction that justice is done? Perhaps indeed we can. But what about pity and mercy, not to judge too hastily or without need? Should we not be haunted by Gandalf’s rebuke to Frodo at the beginning of the quest?

“I can’t understand you,” Frodo had said. “Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.”

“Deserves it!” Gandalf had exclaimed. “I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Isn’t the Frodo who forgives Gollum at the end of the quest a little closer to heaven than the one who had condemned him at its beginning?

After all is said and done, after the proud have been humiliated and the humble have been exalted, the quest resolves itself into a question that the quest has answered: Isn’t it sufficient to know that Frodo’s failure and Gollum’s success are bound together in a golden thread of grace, which is more powerful than the Ring and all its servants?

It is indeed sufficient, and we have the quest to thank for answering the question.