The Conspiracy All Along

While it is only in the chapter bearing the title that the “conspiracy” of Merry, Pippin, and Sam is at last “unmasked,” Tolkien gives his readers a number of clues as to the conspiracy’s existence along the way.

Frodo went tramping over the Shire with them; but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the the starlight. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times, as Bilbo had done. (“The Shadow of the Past,” p. 51-2)

While at the time this may only have seemed an innocent conjecture on Merry and Pippin’s part as to whom Frodo has been visiting with in his “trampings” over the Shire, in light of the fear they later express that Frodo might “give them the slip,” we realize in hindsight that this speculation over Frodo’s encounters must have eventually had a deeper significance.

Another passage:

He [Frodo] looked at maps, and wondered what lay beyond their edges: maps made in the Shire showed mostly white spaces beyond its borders. He took to wandering further afield and more often by himself; and Merry and his other friends watched him anxiously. Often he was seen waking and talking with the strange wayfarers that began at this time to appear in the Shire. (“The Shadow of the Past,” 52)

Here we see Merry is more than merely curious as to whom Frodo is visiting with, but is actually “anxious” over what Frodo might be up to in his travels.

Later, at the Prancing Pony, we see an unusually and cryptically pensive Sam:

Sam sat silent and said no more. He had a good deal to think about. For one thing, there was a lot to do up in the Bag End garden, and he would have a busy day tomorrow, if the weather cleared. The grass was growing fast. But Sam had more on his mind than gardening. After a while he sighed, and got up and went out. (“The Shadow of the Past,” p. 54)

And when he goes out, we’re told:

He walked home under the early stars through Hobbiton and up the Hill, whistling softly and thoughtfully. (“The Shadow of the Past,” p. 55)

 

The next day, we’re given a hint at what he might have been thinking about when he is caught “eavesdropping” on Gandalf’s and Frodo’s conversation:

‘I don’t,’ said Gandalf grimly. It is some time since I last heard the sound of your shears. How long have you been eavesdropping?’

‘Eavesdropping, sir? I don’t follow you, begging your pardon. There ain’t no eaves at Bag End, and that’s a fact.’

‘Don’t be a fool! What have you heard, and why did you listen?’ Gandalf’s eyes flashed and his brows stuck out like bristles. (“The Shadow of the Past,” 72-3)

When Frodo, Pippin, and Sam at last set out from Hobbiton and stay with the Elves at Woodhall, we read:

After a while Pippin fell fast asleep, and was lifted up and borne away to a bower under the trees; there he was laid upon a soft bed and slept the rest of the night away. Sam refused to leave his master. When Pippin had gone, he came and sat curled up at Frodo’s feet, where at last he nodded and closed his eyes. Frodo remained long awake, talking with Gildor. (“Three is Company,” 92)

We’re told that Pippin fell asleep, but only that Sam “nodded and closed his eyes.” Why? Turns out, of course, that Sam was not asleep. But he gets more deceptive still:

‘It is,’ said Frodo; ‘but I thought my going was a secret known only to Gandalf and my faithful Sam.’ He looked down at Sam, who was snoring gently. (“Three is Company,” 92)

Again, we’re told that Sam is snoring, but we’re not told that he is actually sleeping.

In the next chapter, we get the following internal monologue by Frodo, with a Sam who seems to be reading his mind:

‘No! I could not!’ he [Frodo] said to himself. ‘It is one thing to take my young friends walking over the Shire with me, until we are hungry and weary, and food and bed are sweet. To take them into exile, where hunger and weariness may have no cure, is quite another – even if they are willing to come. The inheritance is mine alone. I don’t think I ought even to take Sam.’ He looked at Sam Gamgee, and discovered that Sam was watching him. (“A Short Cut to Mushrooms,” p. 95)

When Frodo asks him what he thinks of the Elves now that he has seen them, Sam reveals a far greater understanding of the significance of their journey than Frodo allows himself to let on.

‘Yes, sir. I don’t know how to say it, but after last night I feel different. I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back. It isn’t to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want – I don’t rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.’

Frodo’s response would seem to be deliberately evasive in its pretended ignorance:

‘I don’t altogether. But I understand that Gandalf chose me a good companion. I am content. We will go together.’ (“A Short Cut to Mushrooms,” p. 96-7)

Finally, at Crickhollow, when Frodo at last decides to reveal his plans to his friends, but before he has a chance to do so, we get a rather curious and unusual exchange between two characters in which Tolkien not only indicates what they have known all along, but in doing so, indicates a conspiracy that he has been faintly hinting at to us all along:

“It’s coming out in a minute,” whispered Pippin to Merry. Merry nodded. (“A Conspiracy Unmasked,” p. 113)

Recovery at Crickhollow

In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien identifies the second of the four primary functions of the fairy story genre as that of “Recovery.” He writes:

we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. Of all faces those of our familiares are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. This triteness is really the penalty of “appropriation”: the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them.

Immediately following this, Tolkien gives the example of Chestertonian Fantasy in particular, or “Mooreeffoc.” Mooreeffoc itself, he says, is a “fantastic word,” for it is one that

could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle.

One of the ways, accordingly that this act of Recovery is principally achieved is through what Tolkien identifies as the first function of fairy stories, namely “Fantasy,” or “that quality of strangeness and wonder” by which the reader is able to be surprised and even startled by old things cast in new and unfamiliar lights.

To come now to Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, in the scene of his arrival at his home in Crickhollow for the first time, Frodo is treated to his own moment of “Recovery” when he is allowed to see his possessions in an entirely new environment.

‘Well, what do you think of it?’ asked Merry coming up the passage. ‘We have done our best in a short time to make it look like home. After all Fatty and I only got here with the last cart-load yesterday.’

Frodo looked round. It did look like home. Many of his own favourite things – or Bilbo’s things (they reminded him sharply of him in their new selling) – were arranged as nearly as possible as they had been at Bag End. It was a pleasant, comfortable, welcoming place; and he found himself wishing that he was really coming here to settle down in quiet retirement. It seemed unfair to have put his friends to all this trouble; and he wondered again how he was going to break the news to them that he must leave them so soon, indeed at once. Yet that would have to be done that very night, before they all went to bed.

‘It’s delightful!’ he said with an effort. ‘I hardly feel that I have moved at all.’

 

Frodo’s Dream Tower

I’ve written before on the theological significance of the sea in Tolkien’s writings, and hence of the tower of Frodo’s dream at Crickhollow which he wanted to climb so that he might look out upon the sea (an image that also occurs in Tolkien’s allegory about the Beowulf poem from his essay). I always assumed that the tower of Frodo’s dream, if it were real, would have been located at or near the Grey Havens. I’ve only just noticed, however, that the tower was in fact real, and that Tolkien references (or presumably does so) in his Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring.

the Elves of the High Kindred had not yet forsaken Middle-earth, and they dwelt still at that time at the Grey Havens away to the west, and in other places within reach of the Shire. Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills beyond the western marches. They shone far off in the moonlight. The tallest was furthest away, standing alone upon a green mound. The Hobbits of the Westfarthing said that one could see the Sea from the top of that tower; but no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it. Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had ever returned to report it. Most Hobbits regarded even rivers and small boats with deep misgivings, and not many of them could swim. And as the days of the Shire lengthened they spoke less and less with the Elves, and grew afraid of them, and distrustful of those that had dealings with them; and the Sea became a word of fear among them, and a token of death, and they turned their faces away from the hills in the west. (Fellowship 16)

We’re not told exactly that this is the same tower as in Frodo’s dream–Frodo’s tower is white, but no mention is made of its color here, and while the Grey Havens tower is “alone on a green mound,” Frodo’s tower is “standing alone on a high ridge.” The fact, however, that it is singled out by Tolkien as the one from which the Hobbits believed they could see the sea, and yet “no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it,” would seem to be pretty conclusive that this is one and the same tower.

Frodo dreams of the tower even though he’s never seen it, but he’s surely heard about it. Elsewhere in Tolkien’s stories, however, when someone dreams of a place or an experience they have not personally encountered, it’s because they’ve inherited the experience from either an ancestor or possibly from the immediate environment itself–see, for example, Faramir’s dream of the tidal wave destroying Numenor and Merry’s inherited memory at the Barrow-Downs. (For more on inherited memory, see this resource and this.) Is it possible Frodo is having his own, inherited-memory experience in his dream of the tower and desire to see the sea?

 

Atheism in Middle-earth: “The Sea has no shore. There is no Light in the West.”

“The Sea has no shore. There is no Light in the West.” These are the words spoken by one of Melkor’s spies, disguised as Amlach, son of Imlach, at the council of Men convened in the First Age to decide what to do about the perils facing them in Middle-earth (Silmarillion, “Of the Coming of Men into the West,” 145). The literal significance of these words, of course, is their denial of Valinor, of the Valar, of their light, by implication, a denial of Ilúvatar himself, and therefore also a denial of Men’s own dignified status as the Children of Ilúvatar.

More symbolically, pseudo-Amlach’s words are an expression of philosophical atheism: they constitute a rejection of transcendence, of a future hope and resurrection, of a reconciliation of the world to God and the restoration of all things, of a final judgment upon evil and the righting of all wrongs. In exchange for these things, pseudo-Amlach’s words offer (again, symbolically) a worldview that is reductionistic, wholly immanentized, materialistic, anti-supernatural, and hence anti-humane and therefore anti-humanistic. It is the counsel of despair under the guise of an urbane but (in reality) enervating cynicism.

Against such philosophical reductionism, accordingly, Tolkien’s entire legendarium sounds a clarion reminder that the seemingly endless Sea does have a shore, and that however dark things may seem, there is indeed a “Light in the West.” (This is The Lord of the Rings as counter-atheism.) A couple of familiar passages reinforce the point. The first is from Frodo’s peculiar dream while at Crick-Hollow:

Then he heard a noise in the distance. At first he thought it was a great wind coming over the leaves of the forest. Then he knew that it was not leaves, but the sound of the Sea far-off; a sound he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams. Suddenly he found he was out in the open. There were no trees after all. He was on a dark heath, and there was a strange salt smell in the air. Looking up he saw before him a tall white tower, standing alone on a high ridge. A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.

As Verlyn Flieger comments in her fine analysis of this passage in Splintered Light, 

The episode invites comparison with the final line of the allegory in the Beowulf essay. In both instances, the effect comes less from the images of tower and sea than from the stated or implied desire to climb up and look outward to the immense unknown. Tolkien’s use of this idea in both the [Beowulf] essay and The Lord of the Rings suggests that for him it transcended allegory to express an indefinable but very real attribute of the human psyche: the desire to seek something without knowing what it is.” (Flieger, Splintered Light, 16)

As St. Thomas would put it, man seeks God as an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason. The second passage is one I cited recently (Tolkien’s last voyage), when Frodo himself finally comes to the shore and Light beyond the Sea:

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

This scene answers to and is the fulfillment of Frodo’s earlier dream: no longer in a state of mere anticipation of that which he has most deeply longed for, he has come to that place where his desire can at last be satiated and his joy made full. For this reason the passage really stands as the climactic and consummating eucatastrophe of the entire Lord of the Rings, when the work is at its most theological–reminding us, as Augustine so memorably put it, that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee”–as Frodo is ushered into a vision of divine light, not as an oblique “ray of light through the very chinks of the universe” (as Tolkien describes eucatastrophe in one place), but now (as St. Paul put it) “face to face.”