Re-reading the Lord of the Rings, Chapter 35
Emptiness and unrest, one may summarise this chapter, or breaking apart and emptiness.
Life fades away gradually, though already in the Dead Marshes there is a metaphor for what's to come, the rotting bodies that are not there, the images that were lost, when the soldiers became a unit of the war-machine and were broken down into their military strengths. And after them the land itself, exploited for chemicals for Mordor's use.
Once seperated into its constituents, life is dead, it is but the magic spell that works between its parts, able to adopt, but only from a living base. What remains is emptiness, an emptiness of extremes, which are mere ideas of what could be, isolated qualities. But the mind, which enters into this realm, is alert. It has entered a workshop, a place of extraction, and cut from all natural relations it is filled with questions of purpose.
Mordor presents itself here very clearly as the land of unnatural uses, willing to exploit all nature for its own creations.
And this influence awakens Gollum's resolve again. After having agreed to guide Frodo, he had the best chance to get The Ring and make off with it that he possibly could have. But he was moved by Frodo's magnanimity and put the harder decisions off for later, which shows that he desired a bit of gentle treatment and Frodo's assessment, that he had become Gollum's master, was correct.
Actually, Gollum's monologue suggests that The Ring might even have helped Frodo becoming that, for he fancies that The Ring might make him great as well.
But there, at Mordor's border, gentle treatment seems a vain thing, too pressing are the great questions. If Sam would have charged Gollum, he would have had to fight him too.
Life fades away gradually, though already in the Dead Marshes there is a metaphor for what's to come, the rotting bodies that are not there, the images that were lost, when the soldiers became a unit of the war-machine and were broken down into their military strengths. And after them the land itself, exploited for chemicals for Mordor's use.
Once seperated into its constituents, life is dead, it is but the magic spell that works between its parts, able to adopt, but only from a living base. What remains is emptiness, an emptiness of extremes, which are mere ideas of what could be, isolated qualities. But the mind, which enters into this realm, is alert. It has entered a workshop, a place of extraction, and cut from all natural relations it is filled with questions of purpose.
Mordor presents itself here very clearly as the land of unnatural uses, willing to exploit all nature for its own creations.
And this influence awakens Gollum's resolve again. After having agreed to guide Frodo, he had the best chance to get The Ring and make off with it that he possibly could have. But he was moved by Frodo's magnanimity and put the harder decisions off for later, which shows that he desired a bit of gentle treatment and Frodo's assessment, that he had become Gollum's master, was correct.
Actually, Gollum's monologue suggests that The Ring might even have helped Frodo becoming that, for he fancies that The Ring might make him great as well.
But there, at Mordor's border, gentle treatment seems a vain thing, too pressing are the great questions. If Sam would have charged Gollum, he would have had to fight him too.
Eingetragen Am/um
11:13
