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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Further Up and Further In: Narnia, C.S. Lewis, and the V-Shaped Christian Conversion Experience

I’ve seen Hillsdale College advertisements on Facebook over the years (along with mention of it by a few online friends), but since it seemed that mostly their offerings were about American history and political related issues of American government, I had not tried it out.  A new offering from them, though, caught my eye: C.S. Lewis on Christianity.  The format is simple and straightforward — listen to several video lectures (this course has seven), and answer some multiple choice questions after each lecture.  Since I’m already familiar with C.S. Lewis, though it’s been many years since I last read his non-fiction, the lectures are a good overview of the major ideas in his non-fiction, such as Lewis’ Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity, and include some things that I had either forgotten or not come across before.

The third lecture talks about C.S. Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, and Lewis’ view of conversion as V-shaped: we must first go down, then further down, hit bottom and experience initial conversion, then gradually come back up, in the new life.  We can observe this pattern in much of Lewis’ fiction writing.  The lecturer mentions the number of steps into and out of the wardrobe, though I’m not sure if that is a really clear example; nothing in the text says that Lucy or the others stepped down and then stepped up, just that there were a certain number of steps.

However, other examples certainly do make the point.  The Silver Chair‘s overall structure is certainly that of a V: starting at the school Eustace and Jill attended, then to a very high cliff place above Narnia, then down to Narnia itself.  Then falling down into the giant-made letters of “Under Me” then down to Underland.  Puddleglum, Eustace and Jill finally accomplish the mission from Aslan while in Underland.  Then the return trip, back to Narnia, then back to Aslan, and then returning to the where it all started, at Jill and Eustace’s school.  The other Narnia travels from our world — The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and following — certainly have the beginning and end same, since that was in the nature of the travel itself — a point really noted in the first two stories, not so much in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Yet The Silver Chair especially makes the V-shaped story in a very literal, geographical way.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader especially gives a picture of Christian conversion.  Eustace started out a real twit, then quickly worsened as he was put into difficult situations that revealed his bad character.  The downhill slide continued, until he ended up down in a valley, then became a dragon.  Upon finally becoming a dragon, the rock-bottom point of the V, in a great narrative account Eustace finally came to his senses:

his first feeling was one of relief.  There was nothing to be afraid of any more.  He was a terror himself now and nothing in the world but a knight (and not all of those) would dare to attack him. …

But the moment he thought this he realised that he didn’t want to.  He wanted to be friends.  He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things.  He realised that he was a monster cut off from the human race.  An appalling loneliness came over him.  He began to see the others had not really been fiends at all.  He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed.  He longed for their voices.  He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.

But then it was still a long way back up the “V”: he first became nicer and more helpful as a dragon.  After some time, then he met Aslan, and even then he first tried removing his own dragon skin, which still revealed more dragon skin under; then Aslan removed all the dragon and restored him back to a human boy.  Afterwards, as Lewis notes, Eustace began to be a different boy.  He had relapses.  There were still many days when he could be very tiresome.  But most of those I shall not notice.  The cure had begun.  The upward climb of that V had begun and would continue for the rest of his life — the “further up and further in.”  What a great picture of salvation is provided here: not merely a one-time event back in the past.  That was the cure that began.  Salvation then continues in the present life, and to the future glorification and perfection.

Then of course comes the glorious ending to the Chronicles of Narnia, with the idea of “further up and further in” in its fullness with the ushering in of the New Narnia, leading to the real, new England and New Earth.

The Hillsdale College lecture mentions a few other examples of a V-shaped experience, such as in  Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces:  the heroine goes down into a green valley, a picture of the conversion experience — descent and loss, but such descent into greenness and fertility — which signifies gain and new life.  The bottom of the V is the “turn” — the “cure begun” in Eustace, also what J.R.R. Tolkien referred to as the eucatastrophe (see previous post link:   ).  Other examples of this bitter-sweet conversion, where the turn occurs, can be found in The Great Divorce (a character with a lizard on the shoulder), and also in the third volume of the Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, with the conversion of Jane:  It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing made at this very moment… And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both.

I’ll continue through this set of C.S. Lewis lectures, and then on to more lecture series from Hillsdale, for further insights into particulars of Lewis’ writing and then other topics such as classic literature.  Hillsdale also offers an introductory course on C.S. Lewis with another nine lectures.

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