A companion piece to Episode 145B: The End of All Things
Written by Laurel Hostak
This past week, Derek and I completed a six-part podcast series on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and I’ll treasure the experience for a long time. It was thrilling and comforting to revisit a book series that was so formative for me in my youth and bring an adult perspective to the story universe Tolkien created. But even after hours of reading and discussion on the Midnight Myth, there is naturally a wealth of theme and content we left unexplored, and in this blog, I’d like to address just one piece of the puzzle that we didn’t have time to flesh out.
The Lord of the Rings, the single most influential contribution to fantasy literature, exists in a thriving continuum of reference, homage, and universal theme. Tolkien’s position as an Oxford professor of English and special interest in philology (the study of the historical and cultural development of language) helped to produce a dense and familiar story landscape populated with character archetypes and motifs from mythology and, most especially, medieval literature. One of the richest moments to investigate from such a perspective is the departure of Frodo for the Undying Lands, which occurs at the conclusion of the trilogy. Frodo’s decision to leave contains echoes of heroic characters from the Arthurian Legend—namely Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain, and Arthur himself—and drives home one of Tolkien’s chief dualities in the exploration of virtue: worldliness and sublimity.
“ I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
Frodo as Sir Gawain
If you’re looking for an entertaining audiobook to take your mind off of the daily stresses of social distancing, you could do a lot worse than Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It’s contained in the same volume as his adaptations of Pearl and Sir Orfeo, all of which are read by the late, great Sir Terry Jones, who gives Tolkien’s alliterative verse equal amounts of humor, horror, and tenderness. It was the experience of listening to the Tolkien adaptation of this classic chivalric poem that I noticed an unexpected parallel between Sir Gawain and Frodo Baggins—a parallel having to do with failure.
The quest to destroy the One Ring, while frequently referred to as impossible or near-impossible, is ultimately successful. The Ring is cast into the fiery chasm from whence it came, Sauron’s armies are destroyed, and the King returns to Gondor. But there’s one significant detail that throws a wrench in the victory—the Ring is not destroyed, as was expected, by the Ring-Bearer, but by the very person who attempted to thwart the quest at every opportunity: Gollum. This action drives home some of the themes Tolkien plays with throughout the series, namely the concept that even a wretched creature like Gollum may have “some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over.” (Fellowship of the Ring)
Frodo’s inability to destroy the Ring, even as he stands on the edge of the volcano, constitutes a personal failure of tragic proportions. Even though the quest is completed, it’s done so by accident, and by the hands of a creature who’s worked against the heroes. Thus Frodo, who never expected to survive the journey, must return to the world in the full knowledge of his shortcomings. He’s celebrated, praised, and even granted the enormous symbolic responsibility of taking part in Aragorn’s coronation. All this for a hobbit who was unable to fulfill his duty. I don’t say this to shame Frodo—I personally view him as tremendously heroic—but to attempt to get inside the complex emotional conflict he must be experiencing as the book series comes to a close. Frodo agrees to participate in the pomp and circumstance that surrounds him and his fellowship, but mostly under duress. Gandalf urges him to wear their stolen Orc’s clothes and bear ceremonial swords; Samwise agrees jovially, but Frodo expresses discomfort with such ceremony on multiple occasions. While he’s always been a humble hobbit, I would argue that at least some of this distress comes from Frodo’s shame at his recent failure.
This is where Sir Gawain comes in. While at first glance, he’s not an obvious analog for Frodo Baggins—Gawain is King Arthur’s nephew, a fierce warrior, proud, and often depicted as a bit of a womanizer—they face a similar reckoning when it comes to their personal quests.
The 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is widely celebrated for its dazzling language and structure, its humor, and its many layers of theme and character. Like much of the creative output surrounding the Arthurian Legend, it’s as interested in deconstructing the ideals of chivalry as it is romanticizing them. The poem begins with the arrival of a great Green Knight (head-to-toe ink green!) at Arthur’s court; the Green Knight challenges Arthur and his men to put forth a champion who will take part in a Christmas game. Gawain, ever eager to prove himself, volunteers and is challenged to cut off the Green Knight’s head, under the condition that in a year’s time, Gawain will travel to the Green Knight’s home and let him return the blow. Gawain lops off the Green Knight’s head, and, to the surprise and dismay of everyone at court, the Green Knight picks his head right up off the floor and rides out.
So Gawain prepares to set out on an impossible quest, one from which he has no hope or intent to return. The poem follows his journey to the Green Knight’s chapel, describes in great detail the changing natural world as Gawain approaches the season of his death, and relates his wildly entertaining stay at the castle of the Lord and Lady Bertilak. During this stay, Gawain enters into an “exchange of winnings” compact with Lord Bertilak, and Lady Bertilak repeatedly enters Gawain’s chambers, attempting to seduce him. Eventually she gives the knight her green girdle, which will protect the wearer from death—the very thing he needs to escape his looming fate. Gawain keeps Lord Bertilak in the dark about this gift he’s received, despite their compact, and wears it to his final meeting with Green Knight.
Gawain has every opportunity to escape his quest, but honor keeps him on track. He shows up to his appointment with the Green Knight, ready for the blow of his axe, but the Green Knight only nicks him on the neck. In the following dialogue, the Green Knight reveals himself to be Lord Bertilak in disguise, announces that he sent his wife into Gawain’s chambers every day, and that he knows about the green girdle. Gawain feels ashamed at having kept the girdle a secret, breaking his troth, but Bertilak essentially laughs it off and invites him back to the castle to celebrate his continued life. Gawain, in a daze, returns home to the court of King Arthur, bearing the green girdle as a mark of his shame and failure.
Upon Gawain’s arrival home—returning from a quest on which he expected and intended to die—Arthur and his men are overjoyed. They even adopt the green girdle as the latest fashion, and deem it a mark of heroism and bravery. But the thing is… it’s not that. It’s a symbol of Gawain’s failure to uphold the virtues of knighthood: chivalry, courtesy, generosity, chastity, and piety. Gawain set out on a one-way quest, and in escaping with his life, failed that quest. It’s only insult to injury that his companions only praise him the more for it.
I see a lot of Frodo in this ironic ending. In Sir Gawain, it’s framed, like much of the poem, in satire (you can almost hear the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme kick in at the end), and in The Lord of the Rings, we’re offered a window into Frodo’s deep trauma and tragedy, but both narratives investigate complex realities of “coming home.” The Shire and Camelot, respectively, are relatively unchanged by the end of each story (though in The Lord of the Rings, an entire additional battle must be fought to restore the Shire to normal), whereas the lead questing character is altered on a profound level. Neither Frodo nor Gawain imagined they would ever return home, despite their longing to do so; now that they are home, they must confront the fact that they can never go back to the person they were before. Both wrestle with shame about failed quests, and both bear physical scars as reminders of that shame (Frodo’s shoulder, Gawain’s neck).
To Tolkien’s credit, he doesn’t leave us here to stew in the uncomfortable irony. He gives us a blueprint for Frodo’s next steps, an opportunity to heal from the physical and psychological wounds he’s sustained, and a chance to transcend any shame.
Frodo as Sir Galahad
Sir Galahad, the Quest for the Holy Grail by Arthur Hughes
The journey from the Shire to Mordor and the slopes of Mount Doom is a perilous one from the outset. Tolkien balances the weight of an epic quest with the casual ironies of a hobbit undertaking one. Yes, terrifying wraiths tail the heroes across the countryside, but there’s time for songs and feasting at the house of Tom Bombadil. Once Frodo Baggins and his trusted Samwise Gamgee separate from the Fellowship and make for Mordor on their own, the physical landscape they encounter transforms to reflect their growing sense of despair. Where once we moved through farms and forests, or floated down a majestic river, now there is only wasteland, dead marshes, and barren rock.
The ‘wasteland’ is evocative of Celtic mythology and the literary origins of the Grail quest. Chrétien de Troyes’ 12th century Perceval, The Story of the Grail is the first to introduce a grail to the Arthurian Legend, and while by no means is it a cup connected with Jesus Christ, it’s the precursor to the explosion of Holy Grail literature that would come after. Chrétien establishes many of the conventions that would become synonymous with Grail literature and Arthuriana writ large, including the grail’s home in the castle of the Fisher King, surrounded by a wasteland. The realm is barren because of the Fisher King’s thigh (or groin) wound; the symbolic and literal impotence of the leader manifests as a lack of fertility in the kingdom. Similarly, the rocky wastes through which Frodo and Sam travel are indicative of overconsumption, over-cultivation, and the dark lord Sauron’s will to dominate life. The hobbits carry a mysterious and magical object that, like the Grail, sustains life and produces feelings of intense devotion.
But Chrétien left Perceval unfinished, his hero never achieving the mysterious grail—and later writers who would take up the saga and embellish this particular quest rarely place it in the hands of Perceval. That honor canonically goes to the wunderkind Sir Galahad, a later arrival at King Arthur’s court and the son of Sir Lancelot. Galahad shows the same knightly promise as his father, who’s known as the greatest knight of the world, with one key difference. Lancelot’s one moral blemish is his illicit love for Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife. Though their affair is at times portrayed in a positive light—a courtly relationship that inspires Lancelot to great knightly deeds—by the time Galahad shows up, the affair has begun to splinter the chivalric ideal for which Arthur and his companions fight. Galahad, on the other hand, is a virgin intent on preserving his chastity. He is never tempted, consummately devoted to God, and always makes the right decision in the face of adversity. His father, the worldly knight, pales in comparison to his sublime, perfect son.
So it’s Galahad who will achieve the Holy Grail, a tradition with origins in the 13th century French Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle). This collection of prose romances sends Galahad, along with Perceval and Bors, on the ultimate quest. Upon arriving at the castle of the Fisher King Pelles, only Galahad is permitted to look upon the wonders within the holy vessel. Bors, who has known the love of women, is not even allowed in the room, while Perceval, a virgin who has yet been tempted by women, is able to stand at Galahad’s side without perceiving the wonders within. The Vulgate text rewards absolute purity, and the worldly knights are shut out. After Galahad sees inside the Grail, the company begins their journey back to court, witnessing a miraculous vision of Joseph of Arimathea along the way. At this, Galahad feels so complete, he asks to meet his death. He’s met by angels, and Perceval and Bors bear witness as Galahad is taken up to heaven.
It’s a bittersweet farewell, but a fitting end to Galahad’s perfect existence. His companions will grieve, but will do so in the full knowledge that Galahad has been rewarded. Likewise in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo must say goodbye to his companion Sam, who feels great loss at his departure, but who comes to understand why he needs to leave the Shire. As a long-time Ring-bearer, Frodo has held great power and temptation in his hands. He has shown extraordinary resistance to the Ring’s temptation. By the time he returns to the Shire, Frodo has even gained an otherworldly sense of forgiveness, offering to pardon the hobbits who sided with the ruffians in the Battle of Bywater. Like Galahad, at the conclusion of his quest, Frodo no longer feels the same attachment to the earthly plane; he has become almost a divine creature. Both the virtuous hobbit and the monkish knight choose their moment of departure, their reward, and move toward some greener country. While Tolkien later confirmed in letters that Frodo does not, in fact, become immortal once he reaches the Undying Lands, we can read longevity and healing in the author’s intent to send him there. It smacks, too, of the ultimate ending to the Arthurian golden age: Arthur’s fall at the hands of Mordred and the removal of his body to the Isle of Avalon where, legend has it, his wounds will be healed and he’ll await the hour of his second coming.
Samwise, the worldly companion, thus, takes the role of Perceval (or even of Lancelot). Great and heroic in his own right—but with a heroism tied more to the earthly than the divine—he can do nothing but bear witness to Frodo’s leaving. However, we know also from Tolkien’s private letters that after the death of Sam’s wife Rosie, he too sails from the harbor to be reunited with Frodo. Perceval and Lancelot both meet their deaths in the Vulgate Cycle (and later in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur) with great ceremony; Lancelot, who has become a man of the cloth in old age even dies a saint’s death, his body emitting a sweet smell as his soul leaves. Here, and in the short-term Ring-bearer Sam, the worldly character is rewarded alongside the divine one.
The End of All Things
In his massive story universe, Tolkien extrudes and reassembles history, language, and legend into new wholes. His work invites comparisons to earlier literature and encourages application to the reader’s life. The richness and depth of The Lord of the Rings continues to yield interesting and fulfilling rewards, but what I’ve walked away with on this reread is quite simple: the equity of the worldly and the sublime. In all of Tolkien’s heroes, but most clearly in Frodo and Samwise, we see the tension between these two poles. On the one hand, there’s every day work and toil, the challenges of participating in a community, raising a family or caring for a friend, growing or preparing food. On the other, there’s the urge to eschew all those things for higher ideals, the leaving behind of desire and material things. While so many stories might choose to elevate the latter, Tolkien gives them equal weight. True heroes can be found in the purely virtuous who yearn to transcend human (or hobbit) desires, but they can also be found at the hearth or in the field, indulging in the earthly things that make us human. Let’s celebrate them in both aspects.
