Notes on RoTK: Mount Doom - incomplete
Sam hopes for help from the Elves - not new help, but help through gifts already received: 'he hoped that the cloth woven by their hands might have some virtue to keep them hidden beyond all hope in this wilderness of fear.'
They have no mortal food left, only water and lembas.
Sam has to both act and think: 'Sam tried to guess distances and to decide what way they ought to take.'
'The bitter truth came home to him at last...There could be no return. "So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started...to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him?"' Dying with Frodo is hardly a new thought, but at Cirith Ungol it meant abandoning the 'job'; only now does dying together mean fulfilling it.
'I would dearly like to see Bywater again' - not Hobbiton, the Row or the Hill; perhaps the best of the Hill is here with him, but also, for the first time, his thoughts of home shift from his father.
'and Rosie Cotton and her brothers' this is the first mention of Rose, one of only two times that Sam thinks of her before his return to the Shire. She doesn't stand out individually in his memory as the Gaffer always did, rather shows up in the context of Bywater, closely followed by her brothers. Nevertheless, Bywater-Rose-brothers as a group come before 'the Gaffer and Marigold and all'.
Rosie is quite likely the girl Sam would have married if he had stayed in the Shire and gotten married; however he foreclosed that possibility when he went with Frodo. Now that he expects to die, the possibility is ended forever. Thus his thinking now of Rose is as close as any hobbit comes to mourning for a lost future.
However it isn't very close; he doesn't wish to 'go home and marry Rosie' but to 'see Bywater again, and Rosie Cotton and her brothers.' Hobbits give no sign at all of mourning for plans abandoned or aborted - perhaps because their plans are not so individualized as ours, but rather part of a communal life that contains much the same plan for everybody of a given sex and class; thus is it not the plan but the way of life that they miss - the place and all its folk, each one individually and all collectively dear.
There is no reason to think that Sam, speaking only to himself, is regretting a lost future but not saying so, or that he can't find words for that regret. When Sam regrets something specific, he can say exactly what, however painful to think on: 'I can't think somehow that Gandalf would have sent Mr. Frodo on this errand, if there hadn't a' been any hope of his ever coming back at all. Things all went wrong when he went down in Moria. I wish he hadn't. He would have done something.'
'But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die,' - JRR's or Sam's later assessment that Sam's hope for a future only seemed dead - like Frodo at Cirith Ungol? Or that his hope for a future was not ultimately dependent on staying alive?
'it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.
With a new sense of responsibility he brought his eyes back to the ground near at hand, studying the next move...For the hungry and worn, who had far to go before life failed, it had an evil look.'
'Frodo was lying on his back, with eyes open, staring at the cloudy sky' and no hint as to his thoughts or feelings, only: 'I can manage it...I must.'
'the Dark Lord had almost completed the movement of his forces, and even in the fastness of his own realm he sought the secrecy of night, fearing the winds of the world that had turned against him, tearing aside his veils, and troubled with tidings of bold spies that had passed through his fences.' It cannot be that he expects any spy to make much difference compared to who has the Ring; more that he takes the permeability of his borders as a sign of the power of his enemies, which he ascribes to their having the Ring. Who could spies inside Mordor possibly report to? Or does he think that if they can get in, they can get out again; and that if they can spy, they can also steal - what? - or sabotage - again, what? It seems like a fear without real threat; it is only about the fact that the boundary has been breached.
'Frodo seemed nearly spent. Sam saw that he could not go much further in this fashion, crawling, stooping, now picking a doubtful way very slowly, now hurrying at a stumbling run.'
In going back to the road, Sam says 'Trust to luck again!' - not fate; fate is not his vocabulary, but it comes to the same thing, only with a sense of (seeming) chance rather than (seeming) inevitability - both real.
A very late Frodo point of view sentence, very summary: 'Frodo was too much occupied with his burden and with the struggle in his mind to debate, and almost too hopeless to care.' What is 'the struggle in his mind?' The on-going one of Ring's will against his? Or more?
This brief quote does not indicate the state of his will, whether he has re-established it, is struggling to do so, or has given up hope of so doing. 'Will' in this chapter is for the most part shared: 'their will'; when it is Frodo's will, it is presented through Sam's point of view. Separated from Sam, he will be unable to oppose the Ring; as Cara wrote, 'I do not choose' and 'I will not do' are the last protests of a stymied will.
I think that Frodo's will needs Sam's now: Sam's 'will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue. With a new sense of responsibility -' etc. - just after Frodo's 'wavered' for the first time since Amon Hen.
'the dreadful menace of the Power that waited, brooding in deep thought and sleepless malice behind the dark veil about its Throne. Nearer and nearer it drew, looming blacker, like the oncoming of a wall of night at the last end of the world.' As if it were the tower approaching them, and not the other way around; in the inevitability of fate, it doesn't matter who has to do the actual moving, but in the actuality of effort it does. Even now they could lie down and die together.
'Four days had passed since they had escaped from the orcs, but the time lay behind them like an ever-darkening dream.' c.f Frodo in The Flight to the Ford, after Weathertop, sitting on Glorfindel's horse 'in a dark dream.' Now the dark dream is shared; the entire previous paragraph was in a shared, undifferentiated point of view: 'as their strength lessened'; 'they cowered or drowsed uneasily'; 'nearer and nearer it drew' with the indirect object 'to them' implied.
Frodo's will present through Sam's knowledge of it: 'All this last day Frodo had not spoken, but had walked half-bowed, often stumbling, as if his eyes no longer saw the way before his feet. Sam guessed that among all their pains he bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master's left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn. Now as the blackness of night returned Frodo sat, his head between his knees, his arms hanging wearily to the ground where his hands lay feebly twitching' - The Ring now has direct access to Frodo's body all the time; and he is constantly aware of threats that Sam can only assume come from Sauron. If the Ring is seeking Sauron, is it finally near enough to feel his presence, and thus make Frodo aware of it? Or is Frodo aware without any 'help' from the Ring?
'The lembas...had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods.' This does not fit with Rabidsamfan's theory that it enhances the metabolism of stored nutrients, since mingling with other foods would not alter that property. 'It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind' but not necessarily of immortal kind (whose bodies are increasingly sustained by spirit as they grow older.)
Sauron like Shelob: 'out from the Dark Tower there crept the veils of Shadow that Sauron wove about himself.'
'he must set his master's will to work for another effort' - Either it is not working when Frodo is inert, or it is working only negatively, to hold the will of the Ring at bay, not to move forward. 'At length, stooping and caressing Frodo's brow, he spoke in his ear. "Wake up, Master!" he said. "Time for another start."
As if roused by a sudden bell, Frodo rose quickly, and stood up and looked away southwards; but when his eyes beheld the Mountain and the desert he quailed again.' It is not clear whether 'he quailed again' should be read as Frodo's point of view or as Sam's. So far the paragraph has been Sam's point of view, but 'when his eyes beheld the Mountain' can more easily be read as Frodo's. The merging of point of view between Frodo and Sam in this chapter probably counters and reflects the increasing success of the Ring's attempts to engulf him; Frodo alone is ceasing to exist; he is only part of 'Sam-and-Frodo' or a slave of the Ring.
"I can't manage it, Sam," he said. "It is such a weight to carry, such a weight." Again, Frodo only states the situation without either proposing a plan or asking for help.
'Sam knew before he spoke that it was in vain, and that such words might do more harm than good, but in his pity he could not keep silent.' Does this line bear any relationship to Sam's final vision of Frodo 'untouchable now by pity'?
'A wild light came into Frodo's eyes. "Stand away! Don't touch me!" he cried. "It is mine, I say"' - for the first time.
The last person to refer to the Ring in these terms was Gollum in The Black Gate is Closed: 'Indeed I was told to seek for the Precious; and I have searched and searched, of course I have. But not for the Black One. The Precious was ours, it was mine I tell you. I did escape.'
Frodo, in The Window on the West said instead 'it was appointed to me by Elrond of Imladris himself before the whole Council. On that errand I came into this country, but it is not mine to reveal to any outside the Company.'
Frodo's having 'a wild light in his eyes' and saying 'It is mine' must be what gave Peter Jackson the idea of Frodo turning into Gollum.
The first person to say 'It is mine' was Bilbo, in A Long-Expected Party, when Gandalf reminded him of his plan to pass it on to Frodo: "It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious."
Frodo never heard this, although he saw something related at Rivendell.
One effect of the Ring on these three dissimilar people is that each says 'It is mine' however Jackson ignored all the differences among them, and entirely ignored Bilbo when he attempted to merge the other two.
What does this effect mean? On Gollum it was instant; he killed his best friend to posess the Ring. It snuck up slowly on Bilbo, who never realized that the Ring was more than a toy and was strong enough to renounce it. Frodo never says it until his sense of self is almost completely eroded. The Ring's desire is pressing on him, and he has less and less emotion of his own with which to counter that, since he can no longer summon any sensual memory of anything he loves/d. He really only has the will to keep going, the will to reclaim his hands from the Ring, and Sam who alone of all he has ever loved he doesn't have to remember or imagine.
'It is mine' is a thought that comes from the Ring, and one that Frodo has so far kept out. There is something two-edged about it: In the Ring's attempt to obliterate difference, the statement asserts difference because there are a possessor and a possessed, two distinct entities. Yet to the one who identifies as possessor, they feel inseparable. This must have been its relationship with Sauron: distinct, because he had made it so, yet inseparable, because it is part of him. This is the relationship that the Ring tries to force onto each bearer.
The text continues:
"'Be off!" His hand strayed to his sword-hilt. But then quickly his voice changed. "No, no, Sam," he said sadly.'
This is where Frodo, not Bilbo or Gollum, reasserts himself - in relation to Sam, as at the Tower of Cirith Ungol (and as Bilbo did in relation to Frodo at Rivendell, although exactly who experienced what there is unclear to me.)
"But you must understand. It is my burden, and no one else can bear it. It is too late now, Sam dear. You can't help me in that way again. I am almost in its power now.' This is the opposite of 'It is mine'; this is 'I am (almost) its'. The illustration of its power is that it can move him to almost draw his sword on Sam. We do not know in this scene whether he sees a Gollum-like thing (as with Bilbo) or an orc (as at Cirith Ungol) or Sam himself or anything at all.
' I could not give it up, and if you tried to take it I should go mad." This may be a belief picked up from Gandalf in The Shadow of the Past. In fact, Frodo did not go mad when Sam took the Ring before, although since he was unconscious at the time that example may not be entirely applicable; and he will not go mad when it is destroyed, rather he will be restored instantly. I think that it is a belief rather than a truth; it is a belief that the Ring could use but I don't know if it does. Trying to separate Frodo from Sam is quite beyond its ability or even comprehension.
Madness is LoTR has two consistent meanings, one physical and one moral: Seeking one's own destruction and violating one's standards of right and wrong. Frodo and Sam are already willingly seeking their own destruction for the greater good; therefore Frodo is using the moral meaning. That he would forget or violate his moral standards is indicated by the fact that he was on the verge of drawing his sword on Sam.
However madness here acquires a more comprehensive meaning, because that would be not only a violation of right and wrong but a total forgetting of who he is: Frodo's love of Sam is (at least currently) the thing that most defines him as Frodo. This use of 'mad' is both moral and existential/experiental - a total loss of grounding/selfhood and descent into chaos/darkness/slavery.
Another consequence of being 'almost in its power' and unable to give it up is that Frodo's only hope of destroying the Ring is to leap into the Fire with it. He must know this.
The text continues:
'Sam nodded. "I understand," he said.' In earlier drafts, JRR considered whether it was Sam who leapt into the fire with the Ring. It is not clear to me whether Sam here means only that he understands, as he did before he spoke, that he cannot carry the Ring for Frodo, or also what Frodo must ultimately do.
' "But I've been thinking, Mr. Frodo, there's other things we might do without. Why not lighten the load a bit? We're going that way now, as straight as we can make it." He pointed to the Mountain. "It's no good taking anything we're not sure to need."
Frodo looked again towards the Mountain. "No," he said, "we shan't need much on that road. And at its end nothing." Picking up his orc-shield he flung it away and threw his helmet after it. Then pulling off the grey cloak he undid the heavy belt and let it fall to the ground, and the sheathed sword with it. The shreds of the black cloak he tore off and scattered. "There, I'll be an orc no more," he cried, "and I'll bear no weapon fair or foul. Let them take me, if they will!"''
'I'll bear no weapon fair or foul' is undoubtedly a response to the possibility of drawing his sword against Sam. 'Let them take me if they will' is something else again: Back in The Tower of Cirith Ungol, Frodo defined success and failure: '"They've taken everything, Sam," said Frodo. "Everything I had. Do you understand? Everything!" He cowered on the floor again with bowed head, as his own words brought home to him the fullness of the disaster, and despair overwhelmed him. "The quest has failed Sam."' If the Enemy has the Ring, the quest has failed; therefore as long as the Enemy does not have the Ring, it is succeeding.
When they are captured by the orcs in The Land of Shadow 'for Frodo it was a torment, and soon a nightmare. He set his teeth and tried to stop his mind from thinking...he bent all his will to draw his breath and to make his legs keep going; and yet to what evil end he toiled and endured he did not dare to think.' The reasons it is torment and nightmare are not only physical exhaustion but the end he is trying not to think on: not only the personal disaster of being captured again, but the fact that Sam too is captured, and - overarchingly - the fact that the Ring was on its way to the Enemy.
Now that they have escaped, 'Let them take me if they will' is either self-destructive madness, or Frodo's way of saying 'Let the quest fail and both of us die horribly rather than risk my attacking/betraying you.' This may also be madness - Frodo may have no choice except between ways to go mad. It is also a choice of evils, echoing Sam's in The Choices of Master Samwise, in which Frodo, like Sam, puts their love ahead of everything else, even the quest.
Another possibility: Frodo's ability to get the Ring this far is based partly on his awareness of his own weakness and his expectation of defeat; he is able to keep going because ALL he has to do is keep going. 'Let them take me if they will' is a strong expression of that hopeless persistence.
'Hardest of all was to part with his cooking-gear. Tears welled in his eyes at the thought of casting it away.' A stronger acceptance than any words could contain of the fact that they expect never to eat - except for their remaining bits of lembas - again. (This is also mourning for a lost future, but in a very specific way; it is not a life-plan abandoned but a particular, constant part of life's basis.)
The nature of the Ring's heaviness: 'I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark,' - as at Cirith Ungol -
' Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades." Not only does its alien desire press on Frodo's body, but its presence drives all else from his mind.
'Veil' generally refers to atmospheric conditions, deceits, failure to recognize reality (At last Aragorn stirred. "Gandalf!" he said. "Beyond all hope you return to us in our need! What veil was over my sight?'), the Enemy's means of hiding, or means of hiding from the Enemy, and- when Frodo sees Glorfindel - the thinness of the material form as against the way someone looks 'on the other side'. Here the most likely primary meaning is 'protection'. I think there may be a secondary meaning based Frodo's vision of Glorfindel: ordinary physical reality is fading for Frodo, in both memory/imagery and the present. Either (as after Weathertop) Frodo is more and more on 'the other side' where the Ring has an entirely different appearance; or the Ring is forcing its 'other side' self onto him and crowding out his 'this side' awareness of all else.
'"Then the sooner we're rid of it, the sooner to rest," he said haltingly' - knowing that he means death and 'finding no better words to say. "Talking won't mend nothing."'
They keep only the elven cloak and rope, lembas, water-bottle, Sting, the phial and the box of earth - aside from the water bottle, all and only gifts of the Elves - including 'the little box that [Galadriel] gave him for his own' regardless of whether he will ever have a chance to use the Lorien dust within. Hope doesn't (much) come into it here, rather the fact that it was her gift and a source of strength.
'bending their weariness and failing wills only to the task of going on'. This is the first reference to will failing - especially frightening because it now refers to the will of both. (At the end Frodo's will doesn't so much fail as stall in front of an immovable object but neither can foresee that now.) However two lines later they are 'small but indomitable' as JRR imagines a Nazgul would see them; thus the sensation of failing will doesn't change any visible act. This is possibly explained: 'That day it seemed to Sam that his master had found some new strength'. This may be due to his willingness to be captured again, or (conceivably) because the Ring is attracted to the Fire and is helping. It may be dependent on daylight ('all too soon the dim light began to fail, Frodo stooped again, and began to stagger') or he may have only worn out after a time ('as if the renewed effort had squandered his remaining strength'.)
Sam gives Frodo the next to last bit of water, and 'went without himself'. Thirst keeps him awake, and in remembering water he remembers Rosie for the second and last time, again in the context of the Pool at Bywater, now listed after her brothers. Whether he starts from the people end or the water end, Bywater-Rosie-Tom-Jolly seems to be a constellation for Sam, one that he misses as a unit.
As he is 'a cheerful hobbit' (from The Black Gate is Closed) he still has a sliver of hope for a future: 'The way back, if there is one, goes past the Mountain'. He doesn't wish for a way back but allows as how one might still exist. His missing the Shire, and expecting to return to the Shire, is never expressed as a wish - unlike his later wish to go back to Lorien. Perhaps this is because, as a hobbit of the Shire, he expects to return there like a river to the sea, with no wishing needed; Sam's wishes - especially his One Wish - are for things perilously doubtful, things connected with Frodo and the Quest.
'He could not sleep, and he held a debate with himself' which is because Frodo 'won't be able to do anything for himself' so it's all on Sam. Only now, having reached the Mountain, is it important that 'he had no clear idea at all' what to do, that is what Frodo would have planned to do, assuming that Frodo had any more specific plans than Sam. Does this argue against Sam's knowing that Frodo's only hope of destroying the Ring is to destroy himself along with it? Or is that not the level on which he is thinking? His immediate problem is 'The Cracks of Doom...if Master knows how to find them, I don't.'
'You could have lain down and gone to sleep together days ago, if you hadn't been so dogged.' This is still Sam's one wish - postponed for the sake of the 'job', his natural unwillingness to lie down and die, and unwillingness to see Frodo die if he can avoid it.
'I'll get there if I leave everything but my bones behind...and I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.' This makes it quite clear that Sam knows he is dying, and what he means by 'lain down and gone to sleep'.
The next day: 'their wills did not yield'. Either 'failing will' was a temporary state, or it is an in between state in which they can endure for a long time without actually failing.
At the end of the day, when Sam has time to notice, 'he felt tired but lighter, and his head seemed clear again. No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it.' I think that 'failing will' was resolved by his debate with himself. Frodo's will seems to be 'failing' or 'not yield' along with Sam's.
'He felt no longer either desire or need of sleep, but rather of watchfulness.' However when 'Sam began to wonder if a second darkness had begun and no day would ever reappear' he reaches for comfort: 'At last he groped for Frodo's hand. It was cold and trembling. His master was shivering... and lying down he tried to comfort Frodo with his arms and body. Then sleep took him'. It takes a long time to come into Sam's mind to turn to Frodo for comfort, but he finds it nonetheless - because he is as quick to give comfort as he is slow to seek it. (Shared will, shared comfort.)
'the dim light of the last day of their quest found them side by side' - It is as much Sam's quest as Frodo's.
'Frodo groaned; but with a great effort of will he staggered up; and then he fell upon his knees again. He raised his eyes with difficulty to the dark slopes of Mount Doom towering above him, and then pitifully he began to crawl forward on his hands.' The feeling of pity is Sam's: 'Sam looked at him and wept in his heart...I said I'd carry him if it broke my back...and I will!'
to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone, and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring.' This bears out Frodo's 'I must carry the burden to the end ... You can't come between me and this doom' from The Tower of Cirith Ungol. The quest is shared, the fate is shared, the will is shared - but the burden of the Ring is Frodo's only.
'Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering' - This is a long and mixed list, leaving open the possibilities that Frodo is light both because he is starving and because he has changed in some essential way to be less material or less present in the material world.
'or because some gift of final strength was given to him, ' - another gift of the Elves, or of the Unnamed Actor
'When [Sam's] will could drive him no further, and his limbs gave way' - His limbs collapse before his will.
'"Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper.' - The one and only use of this much-abused phrase in the entire trilogy.
'"How far is there to go?" - Frodo looks to Sam for guidance in a matter where Sam could not possibly give it; so much has he come to count on him.
"I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going."' - This has always been true, and part of Sam's strength; he doesn't need to think he knows in order to keep going.
Now they have to trust completely to fate: 'As he looked up he would have given a shout. if his parched throat had allowed him; for amid the rugged humps and shoulders above him he saw plainly a path or road.'
And to Guidance: 'Suddenly a sense of urgency which he did not understand came to Sam. It was almost as if he had been called: "Now, now, or it will be too late!" He braced himself and got up. Frodo also seemed to have felt the call. He struggled to his knees.' The impulse cannot come from the Ring because it has no effect on Sam; it comes from a/the Unnamed Actor.
'"I'll crawl, Sam," he gasped.' About as many words as Frodo can still string togther, and 'Sam' is one of them.
'Frodo clambered on to it, and then moved as if by some compulsion he turned slowly to face the East.' Frodo but not Sam; this must come from the Ring, its reaction to being on the path to the Tower, or between the Tower and the Fire. It precedes Frodo's glimpse of the Eye, which 'was not turned to them' and so could not have any direct effect on the Ring. However the glimpse of it gives the Ring power over Frodo's hand: 'His hand sought the chain about his neck. Sam knelt by him. Faint, almost inaudibly, he heard Frodo whispering: "Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can't stop it."' (Frodo-and-Sam vs Frodo-and-Ring on the most basic level; two very different 'and's.)
'Sam took his master's hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then he held them gently between his own. The thought came suddenly to him: "He's spotted us! It's all up, or it soon will be. Now, Sam Gamgee, this is the end of ends."' This thought is quite wrongif he means Sauron, but right if he means Gollum. 'The thought came suddenly' might mean sudden awareness, due to a sensory cue too fast to consciously notice, or it might mean another gift or guidance.
'Again he lifted Frodo and drew his hands down to his own breast. letting his master's legs dangle.' This is harder and more awkward than the previous time ('Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms'), but it keeps Frodo's hands from the Ring. Frodo has to hold on as best he can. Sam must be very bent over: "Then he bowed his head and struggled off along the climbing road.'
'This was probably the only thing that could have roused the dying embers of Frodo's heart and will: an attack, an attempt to wrest his treasure from him by force.' 'Treasure' here is curious.
Gandalf first refers to the Ring as a treasure, in The Shadow of the Past, before Frodo knows much of anything about it: 'But odd things may happen to people that have such treasures.' Frodo adopts the term quickly: 'Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again; but I go to lose one, and not return, as far as I can see.'
In A Conspiracy Unmasked, Frodo specifically differentiates: 'This is no treasure-hunt, no there-and-back journey.'
'Treasure' is used generally for the things that made Bilbo rich - ' So far we have been given nothing more to go on than Farmer Maggot's guess that it has something to do with old Bilbo's treasure' (same chapter) - and for gold and jewels in general, cursed or uncursed -'About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely'. 'When he came out he was bearing in his arms a great load of treasure: things of gold, silver, copper, and bronze; many beads and chains and jewelled ornaments' (Fog on the Barrow Downs).
In The Flight to the Ford, in answer to a question about the trolls' gold, long spent,' Frodo ... wished that Bilbo had brought home no treasure more perilous, nor less easy to part with.'
In the Council of Elrond, Elrond says of Isildur: '"This I will have as weregild for my father, and my brother," he said; and therefore whether we would or no, he took it to treasure it.' Here treasure is used as a verb, and is immediately followed by the information that 'soon he was betrayed by it to his death'. The Sword that Was Broken has likewise been 'treasured by his heirs' to better effect. In the same chapter, Bilbo says of the Ring 'I only wished to claim the treasure as my very own in those days, and to be rid of the name of thief that was put on me.' Also Gandalf says that Gollum had 'come forth from his darkness to seek for his treasure' but ultimately identifies it correctly as 'the treasure of the Enemy, fraught with all his malice'.
Sam's 'chief treasure' in The Ring Goes South is - quite oppositely - 'his cooking gear'. He has seen gold and jewels but is quite immune to their enchantments, as to Old Man Willow's. Aragorn likewise refers to Arwen as 'the only treasure that I seek'.
Thus far, 'treasure' has a conventional meaning of anything made of gold, jewels, etc., and a personal meaning of things tresured by an individual.
In Farewell to Lorien, Gimli says of the gift he requests that he will 'Treasure it, Lady'. In The Two Towers, 'treasure' is used in the same two senses, but more often as something of individual meaning: Gandalf instructs the people fleeing to Helm's Deep not to 'burden themselves with treasures, great or small'; Wormtongue, using the conventional meaning, tells Theoden to leave men to guard his hall and his treasures, and Gandalf uses it in the same sense when he rebukes Wormtongue. Pippin says 'I keep a treasure or two near my skin, as precious as Rings to me. Here's one: my old wooden pipe'. When Aragorn returns Pippin's and Merry's swords he calls them 'treasures you let fall' and adds, of Pippin's brooch 'One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters'.
Sam's salt is 'a dwindling treasure'; the phial of Galadriel is 'so long treasured'.
In RoTK, the two meanings are often used simultaneously: Gandalf says that Sauron 'studies the signs: the Sword that robbed him of his treasure re-made'; Shagrat, fleeing with the mithril shirt, 'could not both fight and keep hold of his treasure'.
In the Tower of Cirith Ungol, Frodo thinks of the Ring, for the first time since The Flight to the Ford, as a treasure: 'Sam had changed before his very eyes into an orc again, leering and pawing at his treasure, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth.' Cara points out that he treasures it as his means to save the Shire, however much evil it does him: 'He must consciously want to keep and carry the Ring, too, but he can't let that side take over. Yet it's present in his awareness, and then it manifests in his voice when he consciously speaks as the one with a claim to the Ring.' Thus when his claim is threatened, it becomes a treasure - a thing treasured. Further, during the last days of the Quest, as it gets stronger, his claim is contested not only by the orcs of Cirith Ungol, not only by Gollum, but by the Ring itself, which seeks to claim him instead.
Later, 'treasure' will be used of the phial and the box, Galadriel's gifts, and of Arwen and Galadriel, loved people; and in the Epilogue of Frodo.
Here, where Frodo's claim to the Ring is most fiercely and physically contested, it becomes a treasure. Having fought off Gollum, '"Down, down!" he gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring' - his old controlling gesture from the early chapters of FoTR.
I think that in this vision Frodo's and the Ring's voices alternate so quickly they seem to merge, as will happen as well at the Cracks of Doom, but here there is no thought that comes from the Ring rather than from Frodo: 'Down! Down!' is quite likely all Frodo can manage to gasp, but 'Down you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot betray me or slay me now' has the over-dramatic quality in which I find the Ring's influence.
'Sam saw these two rivals with other vision' - the term 'rivals' is so equalizing as to be shocking, although they are perhaps equal in the sense that only one can be in posession of the Ring (although one is completely and the other nearly posessed by it).
The rest of the vision is quite contrary to the implied equalizing:
Gollum is wholly within the Ring's power: 'A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; ...The crouching shape backed away, terror in its blinking eyes, and yet at the same time insatiable desire.'
Frodo seems still in control of the Ring: 'stern, untouchable now by pity,' even by Sam's pity? isolated from Sam? (or is Sam's witnessing necessary for Frodo to appear so, to be so?)
'a figure robed in white,' - like Glorfindel, the 'white figure that shone and did not grow dim'? like Gandalf the White? The white light which, if broken, is no longer white (as Gandalf told Saruman in The Council of Elrond?) The White Tree? The White City? Earendil ('They clothed him then in elven-white' from Bilbo's song). The white robe must signal wholeness, protection, endurance, a power other than that of the Ring - a power other than Frodo himself? There is so little of Frodo left, neither the power to remember nor power over his own body - but the struggle to keep control over the Ring has roused his will. Is the white robe a sign of hidden wholeness, or of restored will - or of fate (the Unnamed Actor) manifest, a rival with the Ring for control of Frodo's last strength?
White can also denote a mission, either essential (Gandalf, Saruman), or acquired (Minas Tirith); either betrayed (Saruman) or fulfilled (Gandalf).
It is Sam who sees whatever he sees in this vision; would someone else (Gandalf, Elrond) see Frodo differently?
'but at its breast it held a wheel of fire.' The wheel of fire is not part of Frodo, nor is it there by its own power: he holds it. But does he control it?
'Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice. "Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom."' Again the words have that overstated Ringish quality; the final warning is of the fulfillment of Gollum's oath to the Ring. (I think that the invocation of the oath may give the Ring a little extra strength, but not that it has any way to understand the content or nature of the oath.)
'You shall be cast yourself' is curious - it echoes the original, impossible idea that the Ring could be simply cast into a fire - any fire. It means that Gollum will become the object, cast by some stronger force (fate, the oath, the Unnamed Actor). Yet the omission of 'be' would leave 'you shall cast yourself' which echoes Frodo's apparent intention of throwing himself into the Fire. If Gollum betrays Frodo again he will share the fate of the Ring (to be cast) and of the Ringbearer (to cast himself).
I find Frodo's voice in the 'If you touch me ever again', the (unnecessary) giving of yet another chance. The Ring certainly wouldn't be capable of such a thought, or even of recognizing Gollum's existence.
I think I prefer to think that the need to wrest control of the Ring from Gollum has strengthened Frodo and revealed his hidden wholeness. At the same time, his strength is spent, and the fight with Gollum must surely have used up such as it summoned. Where does he find the strength to now stand and, next, to walk? It must be the spirit sustaining the body - Frodo's spirit? Or an Unnamed Actor's? Or (if the Ring seeks the Fire) will the Ring itself push him up the path?
They have no mortal food left, only water and lembas.
Sam has to both act and think: 'Sam tried to guess distances and to decide what way they ought to take.'
'The bitter truth came home to him at last...There could be no return. "So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started...to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him?"' Dying with Frodo is hardly a new thought, but at Cirith Ungol it meant abandoning the 'job'; only now does dying together mean fulfilling it.
'I would dearly like to see Bywater again' - not Hobbiton, the Row or the Hill; perhaps the best of the Hill is here with him, but also, for the first time, his thoughts of home shift from his father.
'and Rosie Cotton and her brothers' this is the first mention of Rose, one of only two times that Sam thinks of her before his return to the Shire. She doesn't stand out individually in his memory as the Gaffer always did, rather shows up in the context of Bywater, closely followed by her brothers. Nevertheless, Bywater-Rose-brothers as a group come before 'the Gaffer and Marigold and all'.
Rosie is quite likely the girl Sam would have married if he had stayed in the Shire and gotten married; however he foreclosed that possibility when he went with Frodo. Now that he expects to die, the possibility is ended forever. Thus his thinking now of Rose is as close as any hobbit comes to mourning for a lost future.
However it isn't very close; he doesn't wish to 'go home and marry Rosie' but to 'see Bywater again, and Rosie Cotton and her brothers.' Hobbits give no sign at all of mourning for plans abandoned or aborted - perhaps because their plans are not so individualized as ours, but rather part of a communal life that contains much the same plan for everybody of a given sex and class; thus is it not the plan but the way of life that they miss - the place and all its folk, each one individually and all collectively dear.
There is no reason to think that Sam, speaking only to himself, is regretting a lost future but not saying so, or that he can't find words for that regret. When Sam regrets something specific, he can say exactly what, however painful to think on: 'I can't think somehow that Gandalf would have sent Mr. Frodo on this errand, if there hadn't a' been any hope of his ever coming back at all. Things all went wrong when he went down in Moria. I wish he hadn't. He would have done something.'
'But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die,' - JRR's or Sam's later assessment that Sam's hope for a future only seemed dead - like Frodo at Cirith Ungol? Or that his hope for a future was not ultimately dependent on staying alive?
'it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.
With a new sense of responsibility he brought his eyes back to the ground near at hand, studying the next move...For the hungry and worn, who had far to go before life failed, it had an evil look.'
'Frodo was lying on his back, with eyes open, staring at the cloudy sky' and no hint as to his thoughts or feelings, only: 'I can manage it...I must.'
'the Dark Lord had almost completed the movement of his forces, and even in the fastness of his own realm he sought the secrecy of night, fearing the winds of the world that had turned against him, tearing aside his veils, and troubled with tidings of bold spies that had passed through his fences.' It cannot be that he expects any spy to make much difference compared to who has the Ring; more that he takes the permeability of his borders as a sign of the power of his enemies, which he ascribes to their having the Ring. Who could spies inside Mordor possibly report to? Or does he think that if they can get in, they can get out again; and that if they can spy, they can also steal - what? - or sabotage - again, what? It seems like a fear without real threat; it is only about the fact that the boundary has been breached.
'Frodo seemed nearly spent. Sam saw that he could not go much further in this fashion, crawling, stooping, now picking a doubtful way very slowly, now hurrying at a stumbling run.'
In going back to the road, Sam says 'Trust to luck again!' - not fate; fate is not his vocabulary, but it comes to the same thing, only with a sense of (seeming) chance rather than (seeming) inevitability - both real.
A very late Frodo point of view sentence, very summary: 'Frodo was too much occupied with his burden and with the struggle in his mind to debate, and almost too hopeless to care.' What is 'the struggle in his mind?' The on-going one of Ring's will against his? Or more?
This brief quote does not indicate the state of his will, whether he has re-established it, is struggling to do so, or has given up hope of so doing. 'Will' in this chapter is for the most part shared: 'their will'; when it is Frodo's will, it is presented through Sam's point of view. Separated from Sam, he will be unable to oppose the Ring; as Cara wrote, 'I do not choose' and 'I will not do' are the last protests of a stymied will.
I think that Frodo's will needs Sam's now: Sam's 'will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue. With a new sense of responsibility -' etc. - just after Frodo's 'wavered' for the first time since Amon Hen.
'the dreadful menace of the Power that waited, brooding in deep thought and sleepless malice behind the dark veil about its Throne. Nearer and nearer it drew, looming blacker, like the oncoming of a wall of night at the last end of the world.' As if it were the tower approaching them, and not the other way around; in the inevitability of fate, it doesn't matter who has to do the actual moving, but in the actuality of effort it does. Even now they could lie down and die together.
'Four days had passed since they had escaped from the orcs, but the time lay behind them like an ever-darkening dream.' c.f Frodo in The Flight to the Ford, after Weathertop, sitting on Glorfindel's horse 'in a dark dream.' Now the dark dream is shared; the entire previous paragraph was in a shared, undifferentiated point of view: 'as their strength lessened'; 'they cowered or drowsed uneasily'; 'nearer and nearer it drew' with the indirect object 'to them' implied.
Frodo's will present through Sam's knowledge of it: 'All this last day Frodo had not spoken, but had walked half-bowed, often stumbling, as if his eyes no longer saw the way before his feet. Sam guessed that among all their pains he bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master's left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn. Now as the blackness of night returned Frodo sat, his head between his knees, his arms hanging wearily to the ground where his hands lay feebly twitching' - The Ring now has direct access to Frodo's body all the time; and he is constantly aware of threats that Sam can only assume come from Sauron. If the Ring is seeking Sauron, is it finally near enough to feel his presence, and thus make Frodo aware of it? Or is Frodo aware without any 'help' from the Ring?
'The lembas...had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods.' This does not fit with Rabidsamfan's theory that it enhances the metabolism of stored nutrients, since mingling with other foods would not alter that property. 'It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind' but not necessarily of immortal kind (whose bodies are increasingly sustained by spirit as they grow older.)
Sauron like Shelob: 'out from the Dark Tower there crept the veils of Shadow that Sauron wove about himself.'
'he must set his master's will to work for another effort' - Either it is not working when Frodo is inert, or it is working only negatively, to hold the will of the Ring at bay, not to move forward. 'At length, stooping and caressing Frodo's brow, he spoke in his ear. "Wake up, Master!" he said. "Time for another start."
As if roused by a sudden bell, Frodo rose quickly, and stood up and looked away southwards; but when his eyes beheld the Mountain and the desert he quailed again.' It is not clear whether 'he quailed again' should be read as Frodo's point of view or as Sam's. So far the paragraph has been Sam's point of view, but 'when his eyes beheld the Mountain' can more easily be read as Frodo's. The merging of point of view between Frodo and Sam in this chapter probably counters and reflects the increasing success of the Ring's attempts to engulf him; Frodo alone is ceasing to exist; he is only part of 'Sam-and-Frodo' or a slave of the Ring.
"I can't manage it, Sam," he said. "It is such a weight to carry, such a weight." Again, Frodo only states the situation without either proposing a plan or asking for help.
'Sam knew before he spoke that it was in vain, and that such words might do more harm than good, but in his pity he could not keep silent.' Does this line bear any relationship to Sam's final vision of Frodo 'untouchable now by pity'?
'A wild light came into Frodo's eyes. "Stand away! Don't touch me!" he cried. "It is mine, I say"' - for the first time.
The last person to refer to the Ring in these terms was Gollum in The Black Gate is Closed: 'Indeed I was told to seek for the Precious; and I have searched and searched, of course I have. But not for the Black One. The Precious was ours, it was mine I tell you. I did escape.'
Frodo, in The Window on the West said instead 'it was appointed to me by Elrond of Imladris himself before the whole Council. On that errand I came into this country, but it is not mine to reveal to any outside the Company.'
Frodo's having 'a wild light in his eyes' and saying 'It is mine' must be what gave Peter Jackson the idea of Frodo turning into Gollum.
The first person to say 'It is mine' was Bilbo, in A Long-Expected Party, when Gandalf reminded him of his plan to pass it on to Frodo: "It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious."
Frodo never heard this, although he saw something related at Rivendell.
One effect of the Ring on these three dissimilar people is that each says 'It is mine' however Jackson ignored all the differences among them, and entirely ignored Bilbo when he attempted to merge the other two.
What does this effect mean? On Gollum it was instant; he killed his best friend to posess the Ring. It snuck up slowly on Bilbo, who never realized that the Ring was more than a toy and was strong enough to renounce it. Frodo never says it until his sense of self is almost completely eroded. The Ring's desire is pressing on him, and he has less and less emotion of his own with which to counter that, since he can no longer summon any sensual memory of anything he loves/d. He really only has the will to keep going, the will to reclaim his hands from the Ring, and Sam who alone of all he has ever loved he doesn't have to remember or imagine.
'It is mine' is a thought that comes from the Ring, and one that Frodo has so far kept out. There is something two-edged about it: In the Ring's attempt to obliterate difference, the statement asserts difference because there are a possessor and a possessed, two distinct entities. Yet to the one who identifies as possessor, they feel inseparable. This must have been its relationship with Sauron: distinct, because he had made it so, yet inseparable, because it is part of him. This is the relationship that the Ring tries to force onto each bearer.
The text continues:
"'Be off!" His hand strayed to his sword-hilt. But then quickly his voice changed. "No, no, Sam," he said sadly.'
This is where Frodo, not Bilbo or Gollum, reasserts himself - in relation to Sam, as at the Tower of Cirith Ungol (and as Bilbo did in relation to Frodo at Rivendell, although exactly who experienced what there is unclear to me.)
"But you must understand. It is my burden, and no one else can bear it. It is too late now, Sam dear. You can't help me in that way again. I am almost in its power now.' This is the opposite of 'It is mine'; this is 'I am (almost) its'. The illustration of its power is that it can move him to almost draw his sword on Sam. We do not know in this scene whether he sees a Gollum-like thing (as with Bilbo) or an orc (as at Cirith Ungol) or Sam himself or anything at all.
' I could not give it up, and if you tried to take it I should go mad." This may be a belief picked up from Gandalf in The Shadow of the Past. In fact, Frodo did not go mad when Sam took the Ring before, although since he was unconscious at the time that example may not be entirely applicable; and he will not go mad when it is destroyed, rather he will be restored instantly. I think that it is a belief rather than a truth; it is a belief that the Ring could use but I don't know if it does. Trying to separate Frodo from Sam is quite beyond its ability or even comprehension.
Madness is LoTR has two consistent meanings, one physical and one moral: Seeking one's own destruction and violating one's standards of right and wrong. Frodo and Sam are already willingly seeking their own destruction for the greater good; therefore Frodo is using the moral meaning. That he would forget or violate his moral standards is indicated by the fact that he was on the verge of drawing his sword on Sam.
However madness here acquires a more comprehensive meaning, because that would be not only a violation of right and wrong but a total forgetting of who he is: Frodo's love of Sam is (at least currently) the thing that most defines him as Frodo. This use of 'mad' is both moral and existential/experiental - a total loss of grounding/selfhood and descent into chaos/darkness/slavery.
Another consequence of being 'almost in its power' and unable to give it up is that Frodo's only hope of destroying the Ring is to leap into the Fire with it. He must know this.
The text continues:
'Sam nodded. "I understand," he said.' In earlier drafts, JRR considered whether it was Sam who leapt into the fire with the Ring. It is not clear to me whether Sam here means only that he understands, as he did before he spoke, that he cannot carry the Ring for Frodo, or also what Frodo must ultimately do.
' "But I've been thinking, Mr. Frodo, there's other things we might do without. Why not lighten the load a bit? We're going that way now, as straight as we can make it." He pointed to the Mountain. "It's no good taking anything we're not sure to need."
Frodo looked again towards the Mountain. "No," he said, "we shan't need much on that road. And at its end nothing." Picking up his orc-shield he flung it away and threw his helmet after it. Then pulling off the grey cloak he undid the heavy belt and let it fall to the ground, and the sheathed sword with it. The shreds of the black cloak he tore off and scattered. "There, I'll be an orc no more," he cried, "and I'll bear no weapon fair or foul. Let them take me, if they will!"''
'I'll bear no weapon fair or foul' is undoubtedly a response to the possibility of drawing his sword against Sam. 'Let them take me if they will' is something else again: Back in The Tower of Cirith Ungol, Frodo defined success and failure: '"They've taken everything, Sam," said Frodo. "Everything I had. Do you understand? Everything!" He cowered on the floor again with bowed head, as his own words brought home to him the fullness of the disaster, and despair overwhelmed him. "The quest has failed Sam."' If the Enemy has the Ring, the quest has failed; therefore as long as the Enemy does not have the Ring, it is succeeding.
When they are captured by the orcs in The Land of Shadow 'for Frodo it was a torment, and soon a nightmare. He set his teeth and tried to stop his mind from thinking...he bent all his will to draw his breath and to make his legs keep going; and yet to what evil end he toiled and endured he did not dare to think.' The reasons it is torment and nightmare are not only physical exhaustion but the end he is trying not to think on: not only the personal disaster of being captured again, but the fact that Sam too is captured, and - overarchingly - the fact that the Ring was on its way to the Enemy.
Now that they have escaped, 'Let them take me if they will' is either self-destructive madness, or Frodo's way of saying 'Let the quest fail and both of us die horribly rather than risk my attacking/betraying you.' This may also be madness - Frodo may have no choice except between ways to go mad. It is also a choice of evils, echoing Sam's in The Choices of Master Samwise, in which Frodo, like Sam, puts their love ahead of everything else, even the quest.
Another possibility: Frodo's ability to get the Ring this far is based partly on his awareness of his own weakness and his expectation of defeat; he is able to keep going because ALL he has to do is keep going. 'Let them take me if they will' is a strong expression of that hopeless persistence.
'Hardest of all was to part with his cooking-gear. Tears welled in his eyes at the thought of casting it away.' A stronger acceptance than any words could contain of the fact that they expect never to eat - except for their remaining bits of lembas - again. (This is also mourning for a lost future, but in a very specific way; it is not a life-plan abandoned but a particular, constant part of life's basis.)
The nature of the Ring's heaviness: 'I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark,' - as at Cirith Ungol -
' Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades." Not only does its alien desire press on Frodo's body, but its presence drives all else from his mind.
'Veil' generally refers to atmospheric conditions, deceits, failure to recognize reality (At last Aragorn stirred. "Gandalf!" he said. "Beyond all hope you return to us in our need! What veil was over my sight?'), the Enemy's means of hiding, or means of hiding from the Enemy, and- when Frodo sees Glorfindel - the thinness of the material form as against the way someone looks 'on the other side'. Here the most likely primary meaning is 'protection'. I think there may be a secondary meaning based Frodo's vision of Glorfindel: ordinary physical reality is fading for Frodo, in both memory/imagery and the present. Either (as after Weathertop) Frodo is more and more on 'the other side' where the Ring has an entirely different appearance; or the Ring is forcing its 'other side' self onto him and crowding out his 'this side' awareness of all else.
'"Then the sooner we're rid of it, the sooner to rest," he said haltingly' - knowing that he means death and 'finding no better words to say. "Talking won't mend nothing."'
They keep only the elven cloak and rope, lembas, water-bottle, Sting, the phial and the box of earth - aside from the water bottle, all and only gifts of the Elves - including 'the little box that [Galadriel] gave him for his own' regardless of whether he will ever have a chance to use the Lorien dust within. Hope doesn't (much) come into it here, rather the fact that it was her gift and a source of strength.
'bending their weariness and failing wills only to the task of going on'. This is the first reference to will failing - especially frightening because it now refers to the will of both. (At the end Frodo's will doesn't so much fail as stall in front of an immovable object but neither can foresee that now.) However two lines later they are 'small but indomitable' as JRR imagines a Nazgul would see them; thus the sensation of failing will doesn't change any visible act. This is possibly explained: 'That day it seemed to Sam that his master had found some new strength'. This may be due to his willingness to be captured again, or (conceivably) because the Ring is attracted to the Fire and is helping. It may be dependent on daylight ('all too soon the dim light began to fail, Frodo stooped again, and began to stagger') or he may have only worn out after a time ('as if the renewed effort had squandered his remaining strength'.)
Sam gives Frodo the next to last bit of water, and 'went without himself'. Thirst keeps him awake, and in remembering water he remembers Rosie for the second and last time, again in the context of the Pool at Bywater, now listed after her brothers. Whether he starts from the people end or the water end, Bywater-Rosie-Tom-Jolly seems to be a constellation for Sam, one that he misses as a unit.
As he is 'a cheerful hobbit' (from The Black Gate is Closed) he still has a sliver of hope for a future: 'The way back, if there is one, goes past the Mountain'. He doesn't wish for a way back but allows as how one might still exist. His missing the Shire, and expecting to return to the Shire, is never expressed as a wish - unlike his later wish to go back to Lorien. Perhaps this is because, as a hobbit of the Shire, he expects to return there like a river to the sea, with no wishing needed; Sam's wishes - especially his One Wish - are for things perilously doubtful, things connected with Frodo and the Quest.
'He could not sleep, and he held a debate with himself' which is because Frodo 'won't be able to do anything for himself' so it's all on Sam. Only now, having reached the Mountain, is it important that 'he had no clear idea at all' what to do, that is what Frodo would have planned to do, assuming that Frodo had any more specific plans than Sam. Does this argue against Sam's knowing that Frodo's only hope of destroying the Ring is to destroy himself along with it? Or is that not the level on which he is thinking? His immediate problem is 'The Cracks of Doom...if Master knows how to find them, I don't.'
'You could have lain down and gone to sleep together days ago, if you hadn't been so dogged.' This is still Sam's one wish - postponed for the sake of the 'job', his natural unwillingness to lie down and die, and unwillingness to see Frodo die if he can avoid it.
'I'll get there if I leave everything but my bones behind...and I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.' This makes it quite clear that Sam knows he is dying, and what he means by 'lain down and gone to sleep'.
The next day: 'their wills did not yield'. Either 'failing will' was a temporary state, or it is an in between state in which they can endure for a long time without actually failing.
At the end of the day, when Sam has time to notice, 'he felt tired but lighter, and his head seemed clear again. No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it.' I think that 'failing will' was resolved by his debate with himself. Frodo's will seems to be 'failing' or 'not yield' along with Sam's.
'He felt no longer either desire or need of sleep, but rather of watchfulness.' However when 'Sam began to wonder if a second darkness had begun and no day would ever reappear' he reaches for comfort: 'At last he groped for Frodo's hand. It was cold and trembling. His master was shivering... and lying down he tried to comfort Frodo with his arms and body. Then sleep took him'. It takes a long time to come into Sam's mind to turn to Frodo for comfort, but he finds it nonetheless - because he is as quick to give comfort as he is slow to seek it. (Shared will, shared comfort.)
'the dim light of the last day of their quest found them side by side' - It is as much Sam's quest as Frodo's.
'Frodo groaned; but with a great effort of will he staggered up; and then he fell upon his knees again. He raised his eyes with difficulty to the dark slopes of Mount Doom towering above him, and then pitifully he began to crawl forward on his hands.' The feeling of pity is Sam's: 'Sam looked at him and wept in his heart...I said I'd carry him if it broke my back...and I will!'
to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone, and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring.' This bears out Frodo's 'I must carry the burden to the end ... You can't come between me and this doom' from The Tower of Cirith Ungol. The quest is shared, the fate is shared, the will is shared - but the burden of the Ring is Frodo's only.
'Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering' - This is a long and mixed list, leaving open the possibilities that Frodo is light both because he is starving and because he has changed in some essential way to be less material or less present in the material world.
'or because some gift of final strength was given to him, ' - another gift of the Elves, or of the Unnamed Actor
'When [Sam's] will could drive him no further, and his limbs gave way' - His limbs collapse before his will.
'"Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper.' - The one and only use of this much-abused phrase in the entire trilogy.
'"How far is there to go?" - Frodo looks to Sam for guidance in a matter where Sam could not possibly give it; so much has he come to count on him.
"I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going."' - This has always been true, and part of Sam's strength; he doesn't need to think he knows in order to keep going.
Now they have to trust completely to fate: 'As he looked up he would have given a shout. if his parched throat had allowed him; for amid the rugged humps and shoulders above him he saw plainly a path or road.'
And to Guidance: 'Suddenly a sense of urgency which he did not understand came to Sam. It was almost as if he had been called: "Now, now, or it will be too late!" He braced himself and got up. Frodo also seemed to have felt the call. He struggled to his knees.' The impulse cannot come from the Ring because it has no effect on Sam; it comes from a/the Unnamed Actor.
'"I'll crawl, Sam," he gasped.' About as many words as Frodo can still string togther, and 'Sam' is one of them.
'Frodo clambered on to it, and then moved as if by some compulsion he turned slowly to face the East.' Frodo but not Sam; this must come from the Ring, its reaction to being on the path to the Tower, or between the Tower and the Fire. It precedes Frodo's glimpse of the Eye, which 'was not turned to them' and so could not have any direct effect on the Ring. However the glimpse of it gives the Ring power over Frodo's hand: 'His hand sought the chain about his neck. Sam knelt by him. Faint, almost inaudibly, he heard Frodo whispering: "Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can't stop it."' (Frodo-and-Sam vs Frodo-and-Ring on the most basic level; two very different 'and's.)
'Sam took his master's hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then he held them gently between his own. The thought came suddenly to him: "He's spotted us! It's all up, or it soon will be. Now, Sam Gamgee, this is the end of ends."' This thought is quite wrongif he means Sauron, but right if he means Gollum. 'The thought came suddenly' might mean sudden awareness, due to a sensory cue too fast to consciously notice, or it might mean another gift or guidance.
'Again he lifted Frodo and drew his hands down to his own breast. letting his master's legs dangle.' This is harder and more awkward than the previous time ('Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms'), but it keeps Frodo's hands from the Ring. Frodo has to hold on as best he can. Sam must be very bent over: "Then he bowed his head and struggled off along the climbing road.'
'This was probably the only thing that could have roused the dying embers of Frodo's heart and will: an attack, an attempt to wrest his treasure from him by force.' 'Treasure' here is curious.
Gandalf first refers to the Ring as a treasure, in The Shadow of the Past, before Frodo knows much of anything about it: 'But odd things may happen to people that have such treasures.' Frodo adopts the term quickly: 'Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again; but I go to lose one, and not return, as far as I can see.'
In A Conspiracy Unmasked, Frodo specifically differentiates: 'This is no treasure-hunt, no there-and-back journey.'
'Treasure' is used generally for the things that made Bilbo rich - ' So far we have been given nothing more to go on than Farmer Maggot's guess that it has something to do with old Bilbo's treasure' (same chapter) - and for gold and jewels in general, cursed or uncursed -'About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely'. 'When he came out he was bearing in his arms a great load of treasure: things of gold, silver, copper, and bronze; many beads and chains and jewelled ornaments' (Fog on the Barrow Downs).
In The Flight to the Ford, in answer to a question about the trolls' gold, long spent,' Frodo ... wished that Bilbo had brought home no treasure more perilous, nor less easy to part with.'
In the Council of Elrond, Elrond says of Isildur: '"This I will have as weregild for my father, and my brother," he said; and therefore whether we would or no, he took it to treasure it.' Here treasure is used as a verb, and is immediately followed by the information that 'soon he was betrayed by it to his death'. The Sword that Was Broken has likewise been 'treasured by his heirs' to better effect. In the same chapter, Bilbo says of the Ring 'I only wished to claim the treasure as my very own in those days, and to be rid of the name of thief that was put on me.' Also Gandalf says that Gollum had 'come forth from his darkness to seek for his treasure' but ultimately identifies it correctly as 'the treasure of the Enemy, fraught with all his malice'.
Sam's 'chief treasure' in The Ring Goes South is - quite oppositely - 'his cooking gear'. He has seen gold and jewels but is quite immune to their enchantments, as to Old Man Willow's. Aragorn likewise refers to Arwen as 'the only treasure that I seek'.
Thus far, 'treasure' has a conventional meaning of anything made of gold, jewels, etc., and a personal meaning of things tresured by an individual.
In Farewell to Lorien, Gimli says of the gift he requests that he will 'Treasure it, Lady'. In The Two Towers, 'treasure' is used in the same two senses, but more often as something of individual meaning: Gandalf instructs the people fleeing to Helm's Deep not to 'burden themselves with treasures, great or small'; Wormtongue, using the conventional meaning, tells Theoden to leave men to guard his hall and his treasures, and Gandalf uses it in the same sense when he rebukes Wormtongue. Pippin says 'I keep a treasure or two near my skin, as precious as Rings to me. Here's one: my old wooden pipe'. When Aragorn returns Pippin's and Merry's swords he calls them 'treasures you let fall' and adds, of Pippin's brooch 'One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters'.
Sam's salt is 'a dwindling treasure'; the phial of Galadriel is 'so long treasured'.
In RoTK, the two meanings are often used simultaneously: Gandalf says that Sauron 'studies the signs: the Sword that robbed him of his treasure re-made'; Shagrat, fleeing with the mithril shirt, 'could not both fight and keep hold of his treasure'.
In the Tower of Cirith Ungol, Frodo thinks of the Ring, for the first time since The Flight to the Ford, as a treasure: 'Sam had changed before his very eyes into an orc again, leering and pawing at his treasure, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth.' Cara points out that he treasures it as his means to save the Shire, however much evil it does him: 'He must consciously want to keep and carry the Ring, too, but he can't let that side take over. Yet it's present in his awareness, and then it manifests in his voice when he consciously speaks as the one with a claim to the Ring.' Thus when his claim is threatened, it becomes a treasure - a thing treasured. Further, during the last days of the Quest, as it gets stronger, his claim is contested not only by the orcs of Cirith Ungol, not only by Gollum, but by the Ring itself, which seeks to claim him instead.
Later, 'treasure' will be used of the phial and the box, Galadriel's gifts, and of Arwen and Galadriel, loved people; and in the Epilogue of Frodo.
Here, where Frodo's claim to the Ring is most fiercely and physically contested, it becomes a treasure. Having fought off Gollum, '"Down, down!" he gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring' - his old controlling gesture from the early chapters of FoTR.
I think that in this vision Frodo's and the Ring's voices alternate so quickly they seem to merge, as will happen as well at the Cracks of Doom, but here there is no thought that comes from the Ring rather than from Frodo: 'Down! Down!' is quite likely all Frodo can manage to gasp, but 'Down you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot betray me or slay me now' has the over-dramatic quality in which I find the Ring's influence.
'Sam saw these two rivals with other vision' - the term 'rivals' is so equalizing as to be shocking, although they are perhaps equal in the sense that only one can be in posession of the Ring (although one is completely and the other nearly posessed by it).
The rest of the vision is quite contrary to the implied equalizing:
Gollum is wholly within the Ring's power: 'A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; ...The crouching shape backed away, terror in its blinking eyes, and yet at the same time insatiable desire.'
Frodo seems still in control of the Ring: 'stern, untouchable now by pity,' even by Sam's pity? isolated from Sam? (or is Sam's witnessing necessary for Frodo to appear so, to be so?)
'a figure robed in white,' - like Glorfindel, the 'white figure that shone and did not grow dim'? like Gandalf the White? The white light which, if broken, is no longer white (as Gandalf told Saruman in The Council of Elrond?) The White Tree? The White City? Earendil ('They clothed him then in elven-white' from Bilbo's song). The white robe must signal wholeness, protection, endurance, a power other than that of the Ring - a power other than Frodo himself? There is so little of Frodo left, neither the power to remember nor power over his own body - but the struggle to keep control over the Ring has roused his will. Is the white robe a sign of hidden wholeness, or of restored will - or of fate (the Unnamed Actor) manifest, a rival with the Ring for control of Frodo's last strength?
White can also denote a mission, either essential (Gandalf, Saruman), or acquired (Minas Tirith); either betrayed (Saruman) or fulfilled (Gandalf).
It is Sam who sees whatever he sees in this vision; would someone else (Gandalf, Elrond) see Frodo differently?
'but at its breast it held a wheel of fire.' The wheel of fire is not part of Frodo, nor is it there by its own power: he holds it. But does he control it?
'Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice. "Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom."' Again the words have that overstated Ringish quality; the final warning is of the fulfillment of Gollum's oath to the Ring. (I think that the invocation of the oath may give the Ring a little extra strength, but not that it has any way to understand the content or nature of the oath.)
'You shall be cast yourself' is curious - it echoes the original, impossible idea that the Ring could be simply cast into a fire - any fire. It means that Gollum will become the object, cast by some stronger force (fate, the oath, the Unnamed Actor). Yet the omission of 'be' would leave 'you shall cast yourself' which echoes Frodo's apparent intention of throwing himself into the Fire. If Gollum betrays Frodo again he will share the fate of the Ring (to be cast) and of the Ringbearer (to cast himself).
I find Frodo's voice in the 'If you touch me ever again', the (unnecessary) giving of yet another chance. The Ring certainly wouldn't be capable of such a thought, or even of recognizing Gollum's existence.
I think I prefer to think that the need to wrest control of the Ring from Gollum has strengthened Frodo and revealed his hidden wholeness. At the same time, his strength is spent, and the fight with Gollum must surely have used up such as it summoned. Where does he find the strength to now stand and, next, to walk? It must be the spirit sustaining the body - Frodo's spirit? Or an Unnamed Actor's? Or (if the Ring seeks the Fire) will the Ring itself push him up the path?