He's Much More Dangerous than He Looks - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 1

0:04 Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. Now I am continuing a series where we read our way through the Lord of the Rings chapter by chapter. And today it's an exciting new start because we are halfway through the two hours. We've reached book four and this is where the story flips back to see what Frodo and Sam have been up to whilst the other members of the Fellowship have been in mostly in Rohan. And we are at chapter one, The Taming of Smeagol.

0:47 And when we're doing this, we're looking at what the author is doing. So we're looking at the choices made by Tolkien from a sort of literary point of view as he's writing this long epic work. So this chapter has three main sections. It starts with catching up with Frodo and Sam who are lost on the Emyn Muil. And then there's an episode where they're on the edge of a cliff and they're climbing down. This is where the elven rope comes in useful. And then finally, it's when we meet one of the most fascinating characters in all of fantasy. So, you know, hold on to your hats for that.

1:29 That is, of course, Gollum. Though because the chapter is called The Taming of Smeagol, perhaps we should call him Smeagol. So let's have a look at what's going on. This is one of the chapters that starts with dialogue and it throws you straight in. So it starts with Sam saying, well, master, we're in a fixer, no mistake. So we're immediately right in the middle of the problem that they're facing, which is they can't get to where they need to go. They can see it, but they can't get there. One of the things that strikes me about this chapter, after the colourful scenes in Rohan, the battles, the Ents, the Palantir, the dramatic showdown with Saruman, this chapter is all about frustration and confusion.

2:24 It's unlikely, I think, to be many people's favourite chapter, unless they like it because of the introduction of Smeagol slash Gollum, because it is frustrating and a bit confusing to read because, well, they are in a huge rocky landscape and they are lost. And in a way, with the repetition of the words for the small scale stone formations, the gullies, the cracks, the fissures, it is quite difficult to get a grasp of what they're surrounded by. Unlike other places, which Tolkien describes in full, the description here seems to just pile on the confusion.

3:09 And that, I think, is intentional. But we do get the overwhelming mood of this whole chapter. There's a couple of areas of fun and hilarity and lightness, but mainly it's this sense of ominous, foreboding. That's what's going on here. And this particular sentence near the beginning sort of sums it up for me. Night was gathering over the shapeless lands before them. Note they're shapeless, you can't grasp them. The sickly green of them was fading to a sullen brown. So the palette of this is greys, greens, browns, and at night, obviously, black.

3:54 So it's unpleasant, it's cold, it's damp, it's miserable. And in a sense, as so often with Tolkien, the landscape is a reflection of the state of that part of their quest. The landscape is this, what they call the pathetic fallacy, where something external seems to reflect something internal. Though, of course, in this case, the landscape is also producing that feeling of confusion and being lost. Looking at what they're talking about, we get the repetition of the word fix, that you're in a fix. That's quite a colloquial word for a dilemma or a puzzle.

4:39 But Sammy's very good at summing it up in good commoner garden phrasing. So he's saying, we're in a fix, we can't get to Mordor. That's the one place in all the lands we've ever heard of that we don't want to see any closer. And that's the one place we're trying to get to. So the dialogue here is doing a useful task of just reminding us of what's at stake for these two, what their motivation is. And I think it's interesting because we're now in a scenario which we haven't had since, well, some very early conversations with Frodo and Sam.

5:19 They've always had other people around them on the whole. It's been a few moments when they're on their own, particularly at the end of Fellowship. But here, they're going to be a long stretch when it's the two of them relying on each other. And we get this balance between the two. We've got Sam sort of stepping forward and becoming more voluble, more of a character in some sense. He holds more of the page. But we've also got an element of quietness, firmness and withholding to Frodo, which begins at this point. In a way, he begins to slip away from us. And as we get further and further into the story, as the ring gets a bigger hold on him, there is a sort of erosion of Frodo.

6:05 And this is some of the places where it just begins to creep in. It's a very slow, it's a dimmer switch effect. It's not a sudden break. And also, I thought it was quite funny that we get Sam channeling Macbeth. Because in answer to Frodo's sort of half upbeat thing saying, well, perhaps another day will show us a path. We got Sam saying, or another, and another, and another. And that is the most famous three-part thing of that kind, is a similar thought.

6:46 It's Macbeth's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I think it's, well, maybe it's, I think it's slightly accidental, but it made me laugh to think that there's an echo of Macbeth in Sam. And we do know, Macbeth was in Tolkien's thoughts, particularly in the chapters on the Ents going to Isengard. So it's not a totally wild association. But compared to Sam, who is in a way still fretting and struggling against his fate, Frodo is notably quieter and accepting. Because his answer is, it's my doom, I think, to go to that shadow yonder, so that a way will be found.

7:34 But will good or evil show it to me? It is in a way, I think, that in itself is almost like a summary of Frodo's dilemma all during this book. And we've got doom here meant as your fate, not as something which is inevitably a bad thing, not a doom in that sense. But it's the idea of fate. And that idea is, will good or evil show it to me, is echoed throughout the story. We're going to hear it again. But it's the idea that even the wise cannot see what part might be played by characters who seem evil.

8:16 Sometimes they are part of the solution that actually produces the good. Other echoes, this is actually a very echoey chapter. Because there is an echo here of Aragorn in what Frodo says. This is happening contemporaneously to Aragorn regretting his choices when the Fellowship is broken, because we've gone back to more or less that point three days in after that moment. And Frodo says, all my choices have proved ill, which is very much what Aragorn was saying when they find Boromir dead and both of the hobbits taken, Merry and Pippin taken.

9:05 But there's also this irony at play here, because we've seen that Aragorn's choices have in fact ended up with the overthrow of Saruman in a roundabout way. I think Gandalf describes the hobbits like pebbles starting an avalanche. So we may be thinking as readers, hoping for a happy ending of some sort, that it is the choices that seem ill might actually produce the good. And of course, what this chapter is really about, and in some ways, it is as important as the chapter when Frodo chooses to take the ring coming out of the Council of Elrond.

9:51 It's his decision he takes about Gollum's fate that actually decides the fate of the nation, the fate of the world. So what is the conversation doing here? The interesting thing about these Frodo and Sam chapters like this is that there is less description on the whole, and more conversation taking the role of a sort of narratorial intervention. Because the conversation reiterates the stakes, recaps the situation, we catch up on the state of mind of the characters. We also are reminded of the contrast in this world, referring to the sort of homeliness of the way they behave with each other.

10:37 Sam is comparing Lembas. He'd like some beer. He wants to go down the pub rather than be stuck in this place. I imagine that's a conversation that would have been had in the trenches. No matter what came in the rations, they all prefer to be back home. And there's a clear sense they are two little hobbits carrying the Shire into the opposite of the Shire landscape. So all of that is done in the dialogue. Moving on, there is a remarkable number of words in this chapter to do with this broken stony landscape. We've got gullies, we've got stones, we've got cliffs, we've got fissures, we've got rocks, we've got stunted trees.

11:24 It's all there. And it is a landscape which is the most hostile that you can imagine to a sort of barefoot hobbit. They are stuck and they come to the conclusion that the only way forward is to risk climbing down a cliff. And here it gives a chance for the hobbits contrasting characters to be shown. And that's one of the roles of action, these smaller pieces of action, which aren't the set piece battles. What someone does when facing an obstacle reveals who they are really. And you've got Sam's foolish bravery set against Frodo.

12:07 He's also courageous, but he is more deliberate. He has the skills. He's very competent. He's shown as competent in this chapter. And also, he wants to actually take some time to think about things, whereas Sam will say, I'll go first. And this discussion about how they're going to go about it with Frodo making free climbing his way down this cliff is suddenly cut short. And that's the word that's given, cut short. And then there's a dramatic line break. We've looked at the role of line breaks earlier in Two Towers. And this is one of the ones which really does punctuate it because we've got the drama of the line break as a sudden onset of both a sort of lightning storm and an overflight high up of a black rider on a Nazgul.

13:00 And this causes Frodo to lose his grip and to fall a short distance. If you look at how this is written, Tolkien goes on to write the next bit where they are recovering from that fight as quickly tossing between the points of view of both Sam and Frodo. Now, one of the early pieces of editorial feedback I got right at the beginning of my career from an American editor is don't jump heads. Tolkien does jump heads. It's possibly where I picked it up from. But here he's not doing it without thinking about it. He is doing it because he's showing how this appears to Frodo and how this appears to Sam.

13:45 And it's very important that juxtaposition because one is stuck on a ledge, the other is above. So it's this dizzying sort of journey that reader is taken between the two. And of course, Frodo has gone blind temporarily. And it's into this that Sam, who is sometimes a bit slow on the uptake, remembers his carrying rope. And there is nobody harsher than Sam on himself. He calls himself a numbskull, a ninnyhammer, colloquial words for being dumb. And it's hard to remember what it was like to first read this.

14:27 But because the archetypal things that they take with them, the star glass, the cloaks, the lembas and so on, there is not that many items for a reader to remember. And the lack of rope and Sam picking up some rope as they left Lothlorien was highlighted, that many a reader would have been shouting at the book already, Sam, you idiot, it's in your pack. So anyway, Arty brings this wonderful artifact, which is the first, in fact, in this part of the two towers, because there are these key things that they're holding, be it the cloak, be it the bread, be it the star glass, be it sting and so on, that sort of have their moment.

15:16 And this rope is the first of these given an extended role in this chapter. And it becomes almost like a little character. And it comes down with a faint silver sheen, so that it lightens. The first things it does is it lightens Frodo's vision, which had gone temporarily blind. I think it's an interesting way to, when you've got a world that has a sort of sense of a magical charge, and this rope has an element of magic about it. If you imbue it with a sense of its own identity and personality, people often do this with swords, of course, or weapons, it gives it more charge.

15:57 And it connects to the character, of course, who gave it to the hobbits in the first place, possibly Haldir, but certainly the elves. Another connection here is the one about the storm, because the it's described, the storm goes out beyond having passed over them, it goes out to Gondor and Rohan, sweeps around like that. And it's connecting the other parts of the story through the weather. Those names are checked, we know that the destination of the rest of the fellowship is Gondor, and currently in Rohan, so it connects the stories in that way, just subtly ringing that particular bell.

16:44 And as it moves on, hope returns. We've got a nice sort of description of the sky that underlines that. The deep blue sky of evening opened once more, and a few pallid stars appeared, like small white holes in the canopy above the crescent moon. This ever-presence of the stars is another very important theme which keeps being reiterated. Of course, we're moving towards the most important of these, which comes later in The Return of the King. But let's note it here as being a sign of, yes, like the faint silvery light, there is a sense of beauty which the elven world represents in Middle-earth.

17:29 If you're wondering about Elves, it's about 45 inches. It was based on 45 inches is sort of like if you could pay out a rope, like stretch it out, fold it over, stretch it out, that was 45 inches was like a man's sort of natural width. It might even be sort of from the top of the hand to the elbow. I was told that once, if you wrap it around that, that's a sort of 45 inches, in the same way as a man's foot was often 12 inches, like the measurement of the foot.

18:10 I haven't worked out what it is in centimetres, but we don't want to put centimetres into Middle-earth, do we? It's not the right measurement. And we follow on with much more conversation between the two of them, and with Sam's colloquialisms coming through. And do note here, he's very assertive, he's not at all obsequious. And I think there's very often a misunderstanding of modern readers of what a master-servant relationship was like. Certainly for Tolkien's generation, it wasn't regarded as being a lesser role to be someone's servant.

18:50 And of course, in a Christian context, which is Tolkien's background, being a servant is to be like Jesus, so clearly dignified. But if you think of other literary examples of master and servant, the Jeeves and the Worcester in the comic vein, being someone's servant doesn't mean that you're obsequious. In fact, obsequious servants are usually given very poor press in literature at the time. You think of Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, for example. And I'm sure this is what Tolkien felt about his relationship with the people who were his batman or his valet in the trenches.

19:33 It was a partnership coming from different social strata. But we will see, of course, that Sam rises up the society of Middle-earth in terms of his social standing through his role here. And the other thing that the conversation does here is it does the scene setting very much like dialogue in a play. They say what you need to know about the state of the moon and so on. They're telling you this. And we also get here, I mentioned there's a few moments of comedy. The rope provides one of the main ones, which is once they're both safely down this cliff that they've got down, that they've descended, Sam regretfully gives a tug on the rope and it comes away.

20:26 Sam fell over and the long grey coil slithered silently down on top of him. It's very visual. You can see it sort of just spiraling down. It has a personality, this rope. And this encourages Sam to make a connection between where they are now and his thoughts of home. Sam very often refers back to the shire. It's the touchstone for him, of course, as it is for Frodo. But Sam's references come from there mainly. And he talks about his Uncle Andy, who had a rope walk at Tyfield. Now, rope walk isn't something for acrobats, not that kind of rope walk.

21:08 A rope walk was the name for a rope making factory because in order to make ropes for the Navy and others, you would have these long lengths being twisted between various points and you'd walk along them. Of course, it's a long, long, you need long ropes. Tyfield, obviously, Ty as a Tolkien's having fun with the idea of tying things in this field. So, there he is, threading it into his narrative in the names. And I'm with Sam because Frodo's not worried too much about why the rope comes down. But Sam really doesn't want either his rope skills, i.e. his not tying, or the elves, or the rope to be offended.

21:57 He says, I think the rope came off itself when I called. So, that finishes that idea of the rope being like a little character. You would think that this would be the moment when they would have got through this obstacle. And right, they're on their way. They're going to reach the marshes. But no, I'd forgotten this until I was reading it carefully. Because this isn't a chapter I often go back to because of the confusion at the beginning. They're immediately turned back by arriving at another fissure, another gully. And this is a frustration of the chapter.

22:39 It doesn't proceed forwards, or at least not yet. And they have to more or less go back to the point where they climbed down. But this is one of those backward movements that proves an advance because it's there that they see Gollum approaching. There's a strange little exclamation from Sam here when he's reacting to the sort of, you know, having to go back. And that's snakes and adders. When I look, I think I've probably often read that in my skimming past as snakes and ladders, because that fits the idea that, you know, you might climb up a ladder, but you would come slipping back down on a snake.

23:24 It would fit with their scenario. But perhaps Tolkien felt that mentioning that game was too present day. So snakes and adders, adders of course being a kind of snake, it kind of produces a connection to the game without being, taking us out of the frame of this archaic world he's describing. Okay, so now we're on to the last section, which is the arrival of Gollum. And this is where we get the first full glimpse of Gollum. We've seen him in the dark, we've seen him in the river, but we haven't seen him close to in detail. The companion to Lord of the Rings, which I've been to help me as I've been doing this read through, the one by Hammond and Scull, has a fascinating little section on this about how Tolkien was upset by the illustrations that kept coming back for the foreign language editions of Lord of the Rings, in part because people were taking his comparison of Gollum to insects like spiders or frogs, very literally.

24:35 When he's clear that they're like this, they aren't a frog or a spider. And the description obviously is more of an emaciated, ravaged, twisted, hobbit-like creature, because he seems to be roughly the same height as the hobbits themselves. Anyway, Frodo is the one who really gets Gollum, because he says right from the start, he's much more dangerous than he looks. So indeed, that is Gollum, isn't it? Now, I think that looking at it from a writer's point of view, the most remarkable thing Tolkien has done with this character, and it's quite innovative.

25:21 There were some characters who were sort of divided against themselves in fantasy. I'm thinking back to some early 19th century novels. You've got James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which I think is from 1824. And of course, later, something that Tolkien definitely would have known is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. But what Tolkien does here, which is fascinating, is that he combines those in two. Both of those characters of the split inside the personality of Gollum's Sméagol are present at the same time talking to each other.

26:07 And he does this primarily or almost entirely through dialogue. It's technically a monologue, isn't it? But basically, it's a dialogue. Anyone who's seen the films of the Andy Serkis performance will know exactly what I'm talking about. He flicks on a dime, but yet it's all in the Tolkien. It's not a clever actor interpreting the text, though it's that too. It's actually led by the author in this case. And it's a real masterclass in how to characterize somebody in the way that they speak. We are also given some physical clues as well. We're told that his voice is a creaking and whistling voice.

26:49 There's lots of sibilant sounds. And we'll look at in a moment at this sentence structure as well. So it's all there. It's very well crafted. And it reads out very well. If you are listening to audio versions of this on your dog walks or whatever, one of the things that's the delight of the Andy Serkis read version of this is that you hear him do the extended dialogue. All the Gollum bits in his Gollum voice. So this is a great chapter to listen to in that version. One of the things to note from a writing point of view is that Gollum knows exactly what he's doing.

27:36 When he talks about himself, self-referential, we, and says precious with a lowercase p, he's talking about himself, loving himself, the precious that is himself. When the speech has a capital P, my precious, then he's talking about the ring. So next time you read it, do look out for that because it helps. Well, it makes it clearer. In fact, what he's actually saying once you notice the difference, but also it shows that Gollum has a very clear delineation. The precious is, I would say that he is an extension of the precious.

28:19 I was about to say the precious is an extension of him, but it's actually the other way around, that that's the capital P precious and he is a sort of servant of it. Also note that his thoughts are stuck in obsessive circles. He repeats himself a lot, thieves, thieves, and so on. And he often refers to the same grievances. He just goes round and round and round. He's exhausted. He's a tired, broken record in terms of his inner monologue. And his entry into the story is very vivid.

29:03 And I think perhaps this is one of the best visualizations in this chapter. He's coming down the same rock face that the Hobbits climbed down and he's coming down head first because he seems to be smelling the track. As he did so, he falls because he reaches an undercut place where he can't cling on. As he did so, he curled his legs and arms up round him like a spider whose descending thread is snapped. I can totally see that in my head. It's also, you know, there is, is it foreshadowing maybe? But the idea, of course, he is also the spider's servant, which we will only find out in a few chapters.

29:49 This takes us on to the key moment of this book, really, as in the two towers. It is the key moment when they decide what to do with Gollum. And after the tussle, when they restrain Gollum, we have some flashbacks. There's actually two of them. I hadn't noticed this until I read it this time. We've got Frodo remembering an entire conversation with Gandalf that happened on that morning in the Shire long, long ago. And it's replayed. I don't think it's exactly word for word, but it's the gist or almost the entirety of that conversation slightly, slightly changed as it would be if you were remembering a conversation.

30:41 And, of course, he is recalling that Gandalf saying, when Bilbo met Gollum, it was pity that stayed his hand. And that's an absolutely key sentence in the whole book. And note here that pity is given a capital P. When Gandalf speaks of pity, it's like a powerful, almost religious concept. And you've got the capital P, precious, which is evil and obsession and everything that's bad consuming you, contrasted with the capital P, pity, which is the characteristic of those who are good in this story.

31:35 And we also get the very telling phrase that Frodo remembers, even the wise cannot see all ends. That goes back to what Frodo was saying about, is it good or ill? It's going to show me the way. And Frodo is standing there talking to the Gandalf, who at this stage he thinks is dead. And he's finally replying to the question that Gandalf raised at that time. And he says, for now that I see him, I do pity him. And that quality in Frodo is what's going to save the world in terms of the Middle Earth world.

32:23 I think what follows here is one of the best dialogues in the story. In fact, one of the best dialogues in fantasy. And you've got Sam watching this balance, this struggle between Frodo and Gollum, the sort of questioning of why Gollum is there and so on. And you see that Frodo is no pushover. He is the officer in charge of this little scouting party that's out in the no man's land. And you get lots of little phrases that sum up Gollum's character, because when he's trying to answer a question, he goes, yes, yes, no.

33:04 That's him. He's torn. He can't give a straight answer. He wants to lie, but he can't quite. He's just fractured, broken. And after having seen Frodo refer to his past, we then get a little moment where Gollum is lost in his past, where he is reliving what seems to have been his torture. And Frodo understands this. And his response to seeing Gollum sort of have this flashback to these traumatic events is, but if you really wish to be free of him, that's Sauron. If you really wish to be free of him again, then you must help me.

33:47 Gollum doesn't know what that means at this point. And Gollum's reaction is a sort of sullen, truculent, almost childlike refusal. And how we tell this is he breaks into little sentences. He's being rude in a way. Sneary. Always there. Orcs will take you all the way. Easy to find orcs east of the river. Don't ask Smeagol. Poor, poor Smeagol. He went away long ago. They took his precious and his loss now. That poor, poor Smeagol, he went away long ago is truer than Gollum Smeagol knows, of course.

34:33 He's lost himself when he found the ring. And Frodo's strength-ish is actually most evident at this point because he cuts through Gollum's rubbish. And he says, get up. Right, come on. It's the sort of cool to let's stop this. You're not going to pull the wool over my eyes. And this is where they put the rope on Gollum and you get the history of Gollum wailing and whining. And one of the telling little details here is Frodo becomes convinced that Sam has been cruel and tied it too tight.

35:14 And then he notices or he checks, he finds that Sam had been gentler than his words. So Sam betrays himself in his actions, even though his words may on occasion be a bit, well, not exactly cruel, but certainly short tempered. And now they go on to talking about the rope. There's a lovely, the objection from Gollum is that elves twisted it. And that word twisted, of course, when we're reading that, we're thinking, well, yeah, you've been twisted. You've been twisted by Sauron. So you've got the twisted rope of the elves versus the twisted character, the body of poor old Gollum.

35:57 And carrying on with this idea of Frodo actually being much stronger than perhaps the rather gentler, sweet, young Elijah Wood version of this is that when Gollum says he will swear on the ring, you've got Frodo saying, how dare you? How dare you say that? And we know that's a worrying sign because Frodo is getting under the power of the ring too, but he's not yet succumbed. He still knows himself and he's doing this with stern pity. So pity isn't soft and soggy, it's stern. And this is where Sam as the external point of view is useful because in this standoff between the two, Gollum and Frodo, Sam is thinking that Frodo looks like a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud and at his feet a little whining dog.

36:52 Yet, and that is perhaps the interesting qualification here, yet the two were in some way akin and not alien. They could reach one another's minds. Sam knows he's outside of this. Note that it's not till Sam has actually had the experience of wearing the ring right towards the end when he has his moment of pity with Gollum that he can fully sympathise. And Gollum makes his vow. And of course, if we're reading carefully, we will see that it's a dangerous one. I, so it's a unitary self, that's more often Smeagol who says that, I will serve the master of the precious.

37:40 Obviously, that's the wiggle room he's left himself. And he flips into being friendly, and this is what Sam is thinking now, friendly and pitifully anxious to please. But that just sets Sam's teeth on edge even more. He distrusts him even more when he's trying to please, which I think is quite apparent. Of course, we will be getting that moment of almost salvation for Gollum coming up not too long after. So it's a fascinating chapter, perhaps not the easiest one to read because of the confusion of the landscape and the frustrations and the feeling that we're not going forwards but circling.

38:23 But actually, we've made a huge step forward in terms of the real quest that's going on, the inner quest. And it ends as it started on an anonymous note. Over all the leagues of waste before the gates of Mordor, there was a black silence. And the next chapter will take us onto the dead marshes. So we'll see what happens to them then. Thank you very much for listening. And as I said, may seem a difficult chapter to read, but we are meeting one of those great characters in fantasy literature. So it's worth battling our way through. Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast, brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy.

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