Shelob and Galadriel

Isn’t there something interesting about how the first two volumes of an epic famously poor in female characters both feature strong, even primordial female presences at the height of the action?

The visit to Lothlorien and the encounter with Galadriel isn’t quite the climax of Fellowship, not the way the battle with Shelob is the climax of The Two Towers, but it’s close enough, I think, to invite us to compare the two characters.

Here we go:

Galadriel and Shelob are both female. Undeniably: Shelob’s feminine nature is adumbrated even in her name. She-lob, she-spider (even if this etymology is spurious according to Tolkien’s scheme, I have no doubt it’s what he had in mind).

They both come from outside Middle-Earth: Galadriel came with the rest of the elves, while Shelob came from “the Land of the Elves in the West” (p. 707). Both are beings of great power, essentially immortal; we’re not even sure if Sam’s attack kills Shelob.

Both now rule over their own pocket of Middle-Earth (Lothlorien; Cirith Ungol), which responds sympathetically to their psychic power – Galadriel’s calm, Shelob’s malice. Galadriel’s light, Shelob’s dark.

And of course each represents a pole of morality: Galadriel is one of many exemplars in the novel of pure, or as nearly pure as can be imagined good; one of many but probably the most memorable, because least challenged and most fleetingly glimpsed. Shelob is presented as pure evil, worse in her own way than even Sauron, if not as powerful.

What does this mean, this locating of two poles of mysticized femininity at the ends of the first two installments of the novel? I don’t know. But at the very least it’s a powerful parallel, an effective unifying feature.

Part of why I don't know what it means is because there's no obvious follow-up in the third volume. Several female characters make an appearance in Return of the King, ranging from the majestic Eowyn to the homey Rosie Cotton. But none of them have nearly the presence, much less the elemental overtones, of Galadriel and Shelob.

This could be intentional, as the extended ending, at least, of the third book is all about the reestablishing of normalcy, or rather the establishing of a new, post-Elven standard of normalcy, and it could be that Tolkien wants us to see in Rosie an earthy femininity that stands as a pole, in its own way, to the two kinds of mystical femininity that overshadow the ends of the first two books.

Buried at the very end of the appendices, we find Tolkien noting (p. 1109) that he has anglicized the hobbit names that appear in the book, because "in hobbit-names a was a masculine ending, and o and e were feminine." This means, I suppose, but Frodo's real name was Froda.

Does it also mean something more, more than Tolkien's inscrutable linguistic groundwork? Tolkien's right: to the English speaker's ear, Froda sounds like a female. Are we here, at the end of all things, meant to have a moment of confusion, in which we see, ever so faintly, all the male hobbits whose adventures we have followed for a thousand pages, not as males, but as females? After all, hobbits are full of traditionally-conceived female virtues such as love of hearth and home, cooking and gardening - as opposed to forestry - they're not Ents, but Entwives. Certainly the hobbits aren't the lost Entwives per se, but maybe, just maybe, they're Tolkien's representatives of an unmystical, earthly, healthy femininity.

John Dawson, R.I.P.

I'm a longtime Deadhead, but I've only recently started to get into the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Kind of a country-rock Dead alter-ego during a period when, on the one hand, the Dead were already pretty drunk on country-rock and, on the other hand, most of the SF bands were dissolving into loose agglomerations of fluid membership (otherwise known as creative communes), the NRPS quickly took on an identity of their own, although they'd always be pretty indelibly linked with the Dead.

Anyway, John Dawson, founding member of the NRPS, died the other day. The Dead's own website eulogizes him better than I could.

Here's my current favorite song by NRPS, with Dawon singing. It's an obvious choice, but an irresistible one. One of the better drug-smuggling hippie songs I can think of (along with this one).

The Choices of Master Samwise

As I noted, each of the two sections of The Two Towers begins with the leader of that section (Aragorn in the first section and Frodo in the second) lamenting the fact that all of his choices have been wrong. “All that I do goes amiss,” says Aragorn, as the weight of his responsibility for the Company in Gandalf’s absence, and then the Ring-bearer’s, sinks upon him; “All my choices have proved ill,” laments Frodo, as the weight of his responsibility for the Ring, now that Gandalf is gone and Frodo himself has left Aragorn and the rest behind, sinks upon him.

Note, then, how The Two Towers ends: with a chapter called “The Choices of Master Samwise.” In which Frodo for the time being has failed in his stewardship of the Ring – outrunning Sam’s protection of him, Frodo has been stung by the giant primordial spider Shelob. Sam finds him and thinks he’s dead; we’ll later learn he’s not, but Sam doesn’t know this.

Sam has to choose: stay by his master’s side and defend/avenge his corpse, or take up the Ring and try to complete the quest on his own.

Sam, it’s important to remember, has never really been a free agent, not in the same way Frodo is. Sam is a servant, not quite indentured but still bound by tradition and social station to serve his master. He seldom acts for himself, and now he has to.

The chapter title refers to “Choices” in the plural, and of course he makes many decisions along the way, but I think it also refers to the fact that he makes the same decision several times, because he doesn’t have the strength to stick with what he’s decided. He knows right away what he has to do: “I’ve got to go on” (p. 714). But after he’s prepared Frodo’s body to be left alone, Sam revisits his decision: “in his heart keeping a debate” (p. 714). He finally arrives – again – at the conclusion that he has to take the Ring and try to finish the Quest himself, and duly takes the Ring.

But almost immediately he has second – third? – thoughts. “‘Have I got it wrong?’ he muttered. ‘What ought I to have done?’” (p. 716). As the narration points out, to strike out on his own, to assume his master’s responsibilities (and possessions) is “altogether against the grain of his nature” (p. 716).

But still he goes on. Three times now he’s made the same decision: to try to finish the quest himself. But then – then he puts on the Ring, overhears orcs finding Frodo’s body, and “he flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them” (p. 718). He goes back to Frodo’s body to defend it against the orcs.

His conclusion at this point is interesting: he knows this is the wrong thing to do, but he also believes it’s the only thing he can do. “‘I can’t help it. My place is by Mr. Frodo. They must understand that – Elrond and the Council, and the great Lord and Ladies with all their wisdom. Their plans have gone wrong’” (p. 718).

Again the emphasis on plans, choices, deeds going amiss. Here, though, the speaker isn’t talking about his own intentions going wrong, but those of others; which go wrong because he can’t carry them out. He believes he’s failing others, but only because he belatedly decides that to serve them he’d have to fail in his duty to his master, which he can’t do.

What’s going on here? First of all, I think that the earlier emphases on choices going wrong pays off here. Aragorn’s comments remind us that he’s in charge, and has been since Gandalf's fall; Frodo’s comment, echoing Aragorn’s, helps us realize that for the first time since the Quest began, really, Frodo is in a position of leadership too, forced to make decisions and experience their consequences. Now, at the end of the book, the emphasis on Sam’s choices, and the way his dilemma echoes Aragorn’s and Frodo’s (which way to go?), indicates that the role of leader has devolved upon Sam.

And what of his choices? In fact he does choose correctly, even if he comes to a fork in the road and takes both paths. By first (and second and third) choosing to take the Ring upon himself, he removes it from the path of the orcs who would surely have overpowered him and captured it had he simply stayed to defend Frodo’s corpse. His decision to continue the Quest at this crucial moment saves the day.

But he never could have finished it alone: he’s right to perceive that his role is to support Frodo, and that without Frodo he’s not much good. So he goes back, and it’s good that he does: he eventually rescues Frodo and together, they finish the Quest. He was right to choose to complete the Quest on his own, and he was right to rethink that choice and go back for Frodo. And, in his humility, he doesn’t quite realize that this tricky alternation of decisiveness and doubt has led him in just the right direction.

This is Tolkien’s irony. Heroism seldom looks like it. But even just attempting to do good may do some good. Despite appearances, it's a rather hopeful book.