Episode 40 Summary

Tony Meade

Active Member
SESSION 40

A spiritual battle commences:
  • We aren’t told what the tales are that Frodo has heard about the Barrow-wights.
  • Note: The Barrow-wights are often associated with undead beings like zombies and vampires but they’re not like either of those things.
  • The main threat that Frodo is aware of in the Barrow-wights is their spells, not a physical threat.
  • We must assume that the spells he fears are from the wights themselves.
  • What Frodo must be afraid of is a fate worse than death, such as domination or possession.
  • It’s important that the tales are whispered, showing the dread that the wights are held in.
  • Frodo has not been harmed by the wight, but he has been laid out as though already dead.
  • It’s more important that barrows are a burial place than that it is possibly a realm of the undead.
A seed of Hobbit courage:
  • The fact that he stops feeling helpless implies that he did feel like that at first when he woke up.
  • The fear Frodo feels is probably not just his; it’s probably part of the power of the Barrow-wight.
  • Frodo’s memories of Bilbo and the Shire is the first way that he fights back.
  • How is the “best hobbit in the Shire” measured? Probably through a lack of timidity.
  • Frodo has no hope about getting out alive, but this hardens him rather than breaks him.
  • This is parallel to Sam’s hardening later in Mordor when he realizes they cannot survive.
  • There is also a parallel to Bilbo’s leap in the dark over Gollum, though the roles are reversed.
  • This hardening and readiness for action is a direct counter to the spell of the Barrow-wight.
  • Why does Frodo think about Bilbo here? There is the Road song, which is now partially fulfilled.
  • There doesn’t seem to be much hope generated here, remembering Bilbo’s adventure; rather the determination seems to be to fight on until the end, even if he cannot survive.
  • Do we know anything about hobbit funerary practices? Yes, because we are told that the casualties of the Battle of Bywater are buried, and their graves marked with a stone.
A Barrow-wight ritual:
  • Why is Frodo laid out separately from the others? It’s possible that the other three were taken together, and Frodo brought last. However, it may have something to do with the Ring.
  • There is a twisted kind of hospitality being shown to the other three hobbits, in that they are finely dressed and given rings, which is an Anglo-Saxon rite of honor.
  • Frodo has also been clothed in white, but he has not been given any other treasures.
  • It seems significant that the sword is not across Frodo’s throat, as it is with the others.
  • There doesn’t seem to be any sign that the wights have taken any notice of the Ring.
  • The layout seems to be for Frodo’s benefit. He’s intended to see this; the light is for him and from him in order to see his friends laid out for a funeral.
  • They are being laid out like warriors and great lords, with their weapons and shields and jewelry.
  • The point seems to be to get Frodo to give up and submit to the will of the Barrow-wight.
  • The hobbits being laid out like great warriors seems like a form of mockery.
  • The complexity of the dressing and decoration of the hobbits shows that the wight has had access to their unconscious bodies for some time and has been very physically intimate.
  • This is creepy, but this also shows that the wights have had ample opportunity to kill them, but they have chosen not to.
  • This seems to be some kind of ritual, though the meaning a ritual requires is unclear here.
  • This may be a form of execution ritual, and the wights have been waiting for Frodo to wake up and resist them before carrying it out with him as witness.
  • There is also a sense in which this is a preparation for an act of magic, though what is unclear.
  • If this reminds us of anything, it is the preparation for an act of human sacrifice.
  • We are reminded of Boromir’s funeral, where even though Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas were urgently needed elsewhere, they took time to arrange Boromir properly, as it was important.
(continued below)
 

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(continued)

Evil spells, dark and pitiable:
  • The mixture of adjectives is significant. The first group match up in tone, but the pairs that follow are opposites in tone. One evokes disgust and fear; the other evokes pity and sadness.
  • All the great villains in Tolkien are portrayed as both horrible and sad at once.
  • There is a parallel to the description of Gollum in his cave as both wretched and wicked.
  • It is this pity that causes Bilbo to spare Gollum, and this is spurred by empathy for his life.
  • Lúthien also shows this kind of pity for Carcharoth in Angband and puts him to sleep as a relief.
  • It is not only the moaning that shows the misery, but also the snatches of words that come.
  • The juxtaposition between the dark and the light, and cold and warmth, in hate and grief and desire, create a tension that underscores the spirits’ misery and imprisonment.
  • As evil is merely the absence of that which is good, it makes sense that it would desire and hate the positive thing that it is missing. This is both heartless and miserable.
  • There is an echo of both Ungoliant and Melkor’s desire and hatred for the light, specifically the light of the Simarils.
  • Both the night and the cold desire something that would cause them to cease to exist. They would be relieved by their presence, and yet annihilated, so they are forced to hate and envy.
  • They hate and love the things they’re missing, as Gollum hates and loves himself and the Ring.
  • Frodo seems to be winning, or at least holding his own in this battle so far.
The song of the Barrow-wight:
  • The first sentence is written in either the imperative or subjunctive mood, so the wight is either commanding or allowing something to be. This is an attempt to rewrite reality.
  • If it was purely imperative, the wight would be addressing Frodo directly to act.
  • This seems to be addressed to some other actor about the bodies of the hobbits.
  • The wight is stating what it wishes to be, but not commanding to Frodo to make it happen.
  • This is like a perverted form of “Eä”, or “let these things be”.
  • The poem is separated into two sentences, each with its own quatrain.
  • The second line switches to a future indicative mood, stating what shall be.
  • Who is the subject of the incantation? Frodo? The other hobbits?
  • The hobbits are not named, only elements of their bodies, but it is not death he invokes.
  • What the wight is wishing upon the hobbits is a curse to be just like himself.
  • By not naming Frodo or the others, it is as if the wight is writing them out of their own story.
  • In the second quatrain there is an internal switch to indicative, and then back to subjunctive.
  • The wight’s curse seems to be until after the end of the world.
  • The dark lord in the poem is unclear: Morgoth, Sauron, or the Witch-king?
  • Probably Morgoth, as he will be the Enemy at the battle at the end of days.
  • It is interesting that we aren’t told, and that there aren’t any clues given. It seems as though this is a general desire for the final conquest of evil.
  • The voice seems to be prophesying the end of the world and ties this spell to that prophecy.
  • Note: There is a reference to the hardening at the Battle of Maldon, in Frodo and Sam’s.
  • Frodo has been thinking that he has come to the end of his road, and the wight here is talking about the final end, the end of all things.
  • This poem is very clear about what the victory of evil is going to look like, and it is bad for everyone, even the victorious wicked ones.
  • The wights seem to know that their victory is fruitless, and this fuels their misery, but they are resolved to that end out of hate, spite, and envy.
  • There is a sense in which the metaphorical cold and dark no longer are open to warmth and light; they merely want to take away the warmth and light from everyone.
  • Note: This serves as a kind of rebuttal to Satan in Paradise Lost who thinks it will be better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. In actuality, it won’t be. Milton also does not seem to support this assertion of Lucifer’s; he makes him compelling, but inevitably wrong.
  • Note: There is also a sense in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy where lust or greed for power is not a total loss, as there are still pleasures to be found in it. When one seeks to only destroy that which they lack, they are truly lost.
  • There is a feeling of iambic tetrameter in the poem overall, which is in a way the opposite of Tom’s trochaic meter.
  • There is a parallel here between the trochaic lines of the elves in the Ring Poem and the iambic lines of Sauron’s incantation.
  • Though most evil poetry is in iambic meter, hobbit poetry is also iambic.
  • Note: It’s important to notice the variations in poetic meter as not variations in the meter, but making those parts stand out against it.
  • Even the first word in the poem (“cold”) is made to stand out against the rest of the meter.
  • This draws our attention to that word and shows it’s important to the rest of the lines.
  • The next irregular word is “under” which forces us to skip a syllable and highlight that word.
  • Note: Sometimes, these kinds of variations are caused by poets unskilled in rhythm, but Tolkien was excellent at rhythm, even in prose.
  • The fourth line has eleven syllables in an eight-syllable line. Two extra syllables come from the word “never”, which calls out the word in service of the incantation.
  • In line one of the second quatrain, only the words “black wind” stand out from the meter.
  • Unlike the forced pause before “under stone”, this line stresses both syllables of “black wind”.
  • The thematic point of this line is of the victory of evil, which isn’t natural or inevitable.
  • In the last two lines, “dark lord” and “dead sea” both stand out as spondaic.
  • The word “withered”, on its own, is trochaic, and it stands out as multisyllabic. The words in all of the earlier lines are mostly monosyllabic. There are only five two-syllable words in the poem.
END OF SESSION
 

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