Lord of the Rings: Time, Action and Choices

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, among the many fascinating areas for further thoughts and exploration is that of time, and the details of the action and the overall timeline. As noted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, this was something that Tolkien, ever the perfectionist, spent some amount of time on: going back and re-checking the dates and making corrections as needed, to correctly synchronize the action, especially in The Two Towers and Return of the King, with the multiple different storylines covered in alternating chapters as well as alternating books between Frodo and Sam and everyone else.

The official timeline of the action is found in the last part of Appendix B of Return of the King .  This website has a “Lord of the Rings Timeline,” similar to the Appendix B data but with a few date errors.  This page in a Reddit forum gives a suggested “chronological reading” of the chapters in The Two Towers and Return of the King, though it differs somewhat from the actual sequence in Appendix B.

One thing is very obvious, though, regarding the overall pace and action. So much is happening, and happening very quickly, in book 3 of The Two Towers. Yet, the first two chapters of book 4, with Frodo and Sam following Gollum through the marshes to the arrival of the Black Gate (the beginning of chapter 3) span the same amount of time as all 11 chapters of book 3. The entry for March 5, 3019 gives a crucial sync point:

Gandalf sets out with Peregrin for Minas Tirith. Frodo hides in sight of the Morannon, and leaves at dusk.

The winged Nazgul that Frodo, Sam and Gollum see and feel, heading to the west at the end of chapter 2 (The Passage of the Marshes), is heading west in response to Pippin looking into the Palantir.  Gandalf and Pippin are riding off at high speed on Shadowfax in the early morning hours just as the travelers are slowly approaching the Morannon.   The rest of the events in book 4 occur during the interim travel time of Gandalf and Pippin and then into the early chapters of Return of the King book 5.

Tolkien has given us illustrations of both kinds of life experience and how we perceive the time we live through: the fast-paced days when a lot is happening, and events of only a few days ago seem long past; and the slower days of plodding along, getting tasks done each day, and time for thought about what is happening, as Sam considers various facts regarding Gollum, his master, and their difficult physical circumstances. Life often happens thus, with these alternating patterns of busy activity and slowness. The Israelites had a few momentous, dramatic days in their flight from Egypt and crossing the Red Sea — followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert, punctuated by a few dramatic events but otherwise a lot of travel from place to place. The apostle Paul, in Acts 24:11, relates that “You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship,” regarding a series of events that started three chapters earlier.

Yet regardless of how we perceive the time, each day is given as it comes, and it is for us to be good stewards of our time. “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation,” (2 Cor. 6:2). We are to redeem the time, to make the most of the time, for the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:16)

Tolkien gives us such a picture of these important truths, in the choices and fate of Gollum. Gollum has lived hundreds of years, long beyond the normal lifespan of his kindred, and lived most of those years doing and thinking evil, and in possession of the One Ring and its destructiveness; most of that time literally cut off in the dark caves, shunning sunlight and air, all the while continuing with acts of murder to serve his immediate needs. Since the time of The Hobbit, almost 80 more years have elapsed. Yet Gollum actually shows up in the Lord of the Rings story for a mere matter of days.

The actual time that Gollum is with Frodo and under his charge, until the time that Gollum betrays Frodo in the tunnel of Shelob’s Lair, is a mere 14 days (Feb. 29-30 and March 1- 12) — days in which Gollum was sometimes separated from Frodo for many hours at a time, but still with Frodo at least some of each day. From that point, Gollum’s destruction is just 13 days away — March 25 at the fires of Mount Doom. On the one hand, given such a short time, it seems incredible that anything could happen in the life of Gollum during these two weeks. That one so hardened, and for so long, could actually begin to respond to Frodo’s kindness, is a marvel of its own; no doubt, it could be said, due to the unusual characteristics of hobbits, who again and again show their resistance to things that affect the big people more easily. Yet these 14 days were Gollum’s limited opportunity for salvation, the time of the treatment of “his cure” as Gandalf had referred to it: a time when kindness and mercy was shown to him in a way he had never experienced before. And during that short time, Frodo actually achieved a level of trust with Gollum, demonstrated when Gollum obediently came to Frodo at the forbidden pool. Yet the end result should not be considered all that surprising: 14 days of kindness and mercy, after several hundred years of meanness and cruelty, was not enough to really get through to Gollum. Throughout the 14 days, Gollum never really comes to the point of recognizing or appreciating the mercy shown to him, of acknowledging his own sins; everything is still cast in terms of himself and how people treat him; Gollum is incapable of any gratitude for the mercy shown to him by Faramir and his men for not killing him at the Forbidden Pool.

In the end, though, we are all accountable for the time and the opportunities given to us: opportunities to perceive God’s kindness, opportunities to repent (Romans 2:4) — or not to repent. “Whether short time or long,” the apostle Paul urged King Agrippa regarding salvation in Acts 26:29. So that everyone will be held accountable to God, and that man is without excuse before God. And God is pleased in many instances to grant salvation to people in their old age, after years of hardening. But many, like Gollum, have become too hardened, and waste the opportunities given them.

Yet there is hope, while life lasts, as we do not know the outcome for each person.  C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia provides us a positive example, an opposite of Gollum:  Eustace, for all the brattiness and meanness acquired in his short life (and in that respect a great advantage over the aged, wicked sinner Gollum), finally reached the place where he  recognized and appreciated the kindness that the others had shown him, and wanted to be restored to humanity.  His brokenness led to godly repentance, and Aslan finally came and un-dragoned Eustace.

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The (Failed) Repentance of Gollum

One of Tolkien’s many themes in Lord of the Rings is that of repentance.  As Matthew Dickerson noted in Following Gandalf, Tolkien was not that direct in the use of “religious” terminology – so instead he used the word “cure.”  Tolkien actually used the word “cure” in many different contexts, to also refer to Frodo being cured of the wound received at Weathertop, and even in Gandalf’s impatience with Pippin’s inquisitiveness:  ‘If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend the rest of my days in answering you.’  Yet throughout, Gandalf specifically mentions a “cure” that is desired for Gollum, which we understand as a moral cure, to heal his soul of the malice and evil “that eats it like a canker” as Faramir described it, to bring Gollum back to the real world of interaction with the good characters of Middle Earth.  This cure is sought by many, including the elves and later Frodo, with reference back to Gandalf’s wish.  Consider:

Gandalf’s speech to Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring:

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.  I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.  …

Then from Legolas’ words at the Council of Elrond:

But Gandalf bade us hope still for his cure, and we had not the heart to keep him in dungeons under the earth, where he would fall back into his old black thoughts.

Frodo later referenced Gandalf’s wishes regarding Gollum, to Faramir:

‘The creatue is wretched and hungry,’ said Frodo, ‘and unaware of his danger.  And Gandalf, your Mithrandir, he would have bidden you not to slay him for that reason, and for others.  He forbade the Elves to do so.’

Throughout, we see that the means to this ‘cure’ is kindness and mercy, and in Gollum we see such a vivid picture of what it really means to ‘turn the other cheek’ and show mercy to an enemy, to show God’s loving-kindness to a wretched sinner, in remembrance of our own wretchedness and our own undeservedness.

Particularly interesting in the case of Gollum, is that the ‘treatment’ does start to work, with temporary results.  Consider that Gollum had possession of the Ring for many hundreds of years, and yet even he starts to respond to the kindness of Frodo, sometimes acting like a dog wanting to please his master.  This trait is especially striking in contrast to Saruman and Denethor, neither of whom actually possessed the Ring but desired to have it (for their own uses), and yet were thoroughly hardened, with consciences seared; both of them were similarly given opportunities to repent, but rejected it as not even a possibility.  Within the story, the difference we see with Gollum would at least partly be attributed to the particular hardiness, that quality of hobbits as superior to other types of beings.  In the Gollum story, we see – as noted, for instance, near the end of episode #3 of the Amon Sûl podcast (Exploring the Tolkien Legendarium with the Christian Faith) — that God’s mercy can be shown to the worst of sinners, in hopes of their repentance.

The precept for Gollum’s treatment is given us in Romans 2:4: Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?  

I also think of the Old Testament story of wicked King Ahab – as bad as he was (and we are often told of his great wickedness), yet we finally see a type of repentance, albeit a temporary one, in 1 Kings 21:27-29 – a conscience so severely hardened yet capable of enough of a response to the pronounced judgment, that God deferred the judgment, not on Ahab himself but to occur in his son’s days.  Like Gollum’s, this was not a saving repentance unto eternal life, but temporal only.

Then we have, in the New Testament, the well-known account of Judas Iscariot.  Our Lord Himself – of whom Frodo is recognized as a type, an illustration – extended kindness to Judas as one of the 12, kindness that continued to the very end.  Though Christ knew all along the true nature of Judas – “one of you is a devil!” – yet Judas received the same gifts as the other disciples when they went on their missionary trips, and Judas received the same common blessings in the company of the other eleven.  Even at the end, Jesus handed the sop to Judas – an appeal of friendship.

Tolkien himself, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, described the key scene that brought about the failure of Gollum’s cure:  that poignant moment when Gollum returned to the hobbits upon the stairs of Cirith Ungol, when he reached out a hand as a caress, to touch Frodo.  But then Sam woke up, and Sam as “the mean hobbit” who had not participated in the “kindness treatment,” in his insensitivity accused Gollum of pawing at his master – and the moment was lost, beyond recall.  Here, too, in Sam’s failure, we see such realism.  Isn’t that how it often is in our lives?  Sam is such a hero, and has such great moments, yet – like the saints of God throughout the ages, in the Bible as well as throughout church history – has his character flaws as well.

The character of Gollum and events surrounding him are fascinating, with such complexity that could be discussed in multiple podcast episodes (again, as noted by the hosts at the Amon Sûl podcast on Tolkien’s Middle Earth) as well as numerous blog posts.  But these are some thoughts on this topic, for further discussion and considerations.

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