Episode 42 Summary

[Tony Meade]

SESSION 42

Comment on the focus on hands in the barrow:

• The list of things the wight is cursing in its song being is with “hand”, and much emphasis on hands throughout.
• Hearts signify the seat of the soul, and it seems as though the hearts of the other three hobbits are already overcome.
• Bones are already cold, and this seems to point to making them like the wight.
• The focus on hands may be a link to craftsmanship and creation/sub-creation.
• It seems important that references to hands both begin and end the poem.
• The association with “hand” seems to be a wider sense of power over the world. The hand is the vehicle of the will and its ability to assert power.
• The connection of “bone” is with the body and dooming the hobbits to be physically like the wights. There are references to rattling bonerings, which makes them seem skeletal.
• The overall curse seems to be binding them to not feel, move, or choose anymore.

Comment on the relationship between the Barrow-wight and the Ring:

• There seems to be no awareness of the Ring in the Barrow-wight, or of the wight in the Ring.
• Frodo only starts to feel the temptation of the Ring after he has shown courage and resisted the spell of the wight.
• The Ring does not tempt Frodo until he feels trapped and the desire to escape the wight.
• Frodo’s separation from the others makes sense in that he is a Ringbearer, being named an Elf-friend, and his overall difference from the other hobbits. His stature has grown.
• The struggle between Frodo and the wight is a fight between life and death, and warmth and cold, and does not involve the Ring. The Ring only acts after their struggle.
• There is a difference between the wights and the Ringwraiths, as they are connected to the Ring and able to invoke it.
• There doesn’t seem to be any evidence showing any long-term planning by the Ring, as the wights are subsidiary to their master, the Witch-king.
• If the Ring had great understanding, it would reveal itself to the Barrow-wight to be delivered to the Witch-king. That it doesn’t do this is counterevidence to its sentience.
• That the impulse of the Ring is to move Frodo to escape proves against this as well.
• The Ring has many opportunities to reveal itself to the wight and it doesn’t choose to do this.
• Note: It is important to keep in mind who the Ring is aware of and what it is aware of in them. It seems as though whatever it senses, it does so through the ringbearer. The mind and senses and desires of the bearer seems to be the source of the Ring’s responses.

Frodo finally remembers to call Tom:

• The fact that Frodo only remembers Tom now points to a power of forgetfulness or confounding in the fog that they encountered earlier, and this is why they did not call him earlier.
• This also makes it clear that the spell of the Barrow-wights had started to influence them even before they are enveloped in the fog, with the sleepiness, for instance.
• It seems important that it is when Frodo touches Merry that he remembers Tom Bombadil.
• Is it the hewing of the hand that causes the breaking of the spell, and it is then he remembers? Possibly, as it is his attack on the hand that occasions him falling on top of Merry.
• This time, Tom Bombadil’s name is shown to have power, in how it strengthens Frodo.
• Twice Frodo has asked who Tom is beyond his name, but we are shown here that his name is actually enough to know, as the name alone has the ability to effect events.
• Note: In the 1979 Mind’s Eye radio adaptation, Frodo speaks this in a meek, frightened tone, which is incorrect to the text. It is very important that Frodo is speaking with a “full and lively sound” within the deathly surroundings, and that it echoes throughout.
• When Frodo speaks the last line of the poem, it seems like the invocation of a prophecy or the fulfillment of a promise.
• This is a summoning, and it shows why Tom was modeling this behavior of using his name.
• When Frodo invokes Tom, he is filled with Tom’s own liveliness for his own use.

Tom brings stronger songs:

• Tom’s song is much less monosyllabic than the poems of the wight.
• The alliteration of “stronger songs”, followed by a pause, emphasizes this phrase.
• Apparently, Tom has arrived in mere seconds, which goes to show that “his feet are faster”.
• This appearance is different from his arrival at Old Man Willow, in that he is coming in response to Frodo’s call, whereas in the first instance, Tom insists it was mere chance.
• Tom repeats and paraphrases Goldberry’s explanation of who he is in this song, in “he is the master”. This further illustrates that this is a culmination of the songs that have come before.
• Tom’s merriment has always been remarkable, but in this context, it really stands out.

A new day dawns on the barrow:

• Is it possible that the coming of the sunrise had something to do with the diminishing of the Barrow-wight’s power? It doesn’t seem so, as there is no clear connection made.
• The hewing of the hand seems the more immediate stimulus to break that spell.
• Also, the wights were able to influence the hobbits to sleep at high noon, so the sun does not seem to affect their power.
• The importance of the sunrise is connected with the arrival of Tom Bombadil.
• Tom is standing at the door of the barrow, which means that he is on the east side. Tom is doing what he told the hobbits not to do, but it shows that he is unaffected and defiant of the wights.
• This also lets the sunlight in, which has an effect on the scene and driving off the wight.
• Note: There is a connection between the dawn and Christian symbolism of the Easter resurrection, along with the Second Coming, and is the reason that all Catholic (and Anglican) altars face east; this is not as important in other Protestant denominations. Even if this is not a direct invocation of the Resurrection of Christ, there is a parallel in the imagery of the stone rolling away at dawn and the hobbits being rescued and revived inside the tomb. When Jesus revives the young girl from death, He says that she is only sleeping, for which he was scorned. This image of the sleeping of the hobbits is reminiscent of this passage.

Tom does an exorcism of the barrow:

• Tom is invoking the power of the sunlight he has just let in to banish the wight.
• This is possibly the only occasion where Tom uses an internal rhyme within the half-lines.
• The second and third lines are all one sentence, which describes where the wight is being sent.
• Which barren lands are where the wight is being sent? It’s possible that Tom is talking about Angmar, which makes geographical sense, but this may be simply metaphorical.
• The phrase “darker than the darkness” seems to be a form of direct address to the wight, rather than referring to the Void or some other place.
• The darkness in the Void is the manifest destiny of all who have taken that dark path, so Tom doesn’t have to send him there. Tom is just fulfilling what the wight has already chosen.
• The gates seem to be the Gates of Night, beyond which Melkor is imprisoned outside the world.
• The phrase “Where gates stand for ever shut” modifies the darkness, which identifies which darkness Tom is referencing. It may also modify “Lost and forgotten be”.
• There is a parallel with Ungoliant’s Unlight, which is darker than merely the absence of light, and a thing unto itself.
• What is the relationship with the darkness that the Sons of Fëanor call upon, and the Void?
• The Void itself is not evil, merely empty. Only Melkor thought it was a bad thing, and we know that his casting out into the Void was not a permanent punishment.
• The Void is different from the lake of fire present in the Book of Revelation, as this is not the end of Melkor’s story nor the end of his influence on Arda, but we know he will return. The Void is more like solitary confinement until the end of the world.
• Note: Though it may seem inappropriate to use Christian parallels to discuss Silmarillion concepts, the connections between heaven and hell and the locations in The Book of Lost Tales are explicit. There is a heavy Norse influence as well, but other aspects, like the Halls of Mandos’ parallel to Purgatory was intentional and present from the beginning.
• Tom could not condemn the wight to go through the gates that are forever shut, therefore he is not sending the wight off into the Void. Primarily he is banishing it from this location.
• The phrase “till the world is mended” is the end of the sentence that Tom is imposing.
• Tom may be showing some mercy on the wight by not sending it to its ultimate doom yet.
• Note: There may be another biblical parallel to the scene in which the legion of demons cast out by Jesus are allowed to enter the pigs, after begging not to be sent to their uttermost deep.
• The pitiable state of the wights is just as important as their evil, and Tom is not immune to pity.
• It’s important that Tom is sending the wight into barren lands and taking away his power to influence the world. He has rendered the wight impotent to bother anyone else.
• The Barrow-wight may be joined later, after the War of the Ring, by other impotent spirits, like those of Saruman and Sauron himself.
• There is a negation of the end of the wight’s poem, where it hopes for a final destruction of the world, while Tom speaks of the final mending of the world.

END OF SESSION