Book IV, Chapter 4: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
This is a brief chapter, and it is late on a Friday -- well, early on a Saturday -- of a long week. I don’t want to lose momentum, so I’ll write up some thoughts, and then see if I can keep this quixotic journey moving tomorrow. Chapter 4 is a funny one -- partly about Smeagol, depicted here by Alan Lee http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/3/3a/Alan_Lee_-_Gollum.jpg Partly about food, though, and partly about Faramir and the men of Gondor. What merits our attention?
This chapter is probably Sam at his least appealing -- certainly I find him so. I understand his anxieties about Smeagol/Gollum, especially given what he’s overheard, but his constant stream of sarcasm and abuse at Smeagol throughout this chapter is laying it on a bit thick. After all, Smeagol agrees to do just about everything Sam asks him to, and what he gets for it is a lot of condescending and sometimes just openly hostile commentary from Samwise Gamgee at every step. I’m not sure if Tolkien sympathized with Sam for having to journey with so wretched a character as Smeagol, or if he means for the chapter to present a sort of critique of Sam? I certainly prefer to read it as a critique, myself -- after all, Smeagol tells Sam not to make a fire since it will give away their location, Sam brusquely sets this advice aside, assuring Smeagol he’s got it under control….and then he doesn’t have it under control, and his fire produces smoke that exposes them to the men of Gondor, nearly to the ruin of the quest.
Tolkien’s struggles with race come to the forefront here -- it’s not possible to miss that Frodo assesses the soldiers of Gondor they encounter as “goodly men, pale-skinned,” etc., or that a couple pages later the narrator points out the swarthy, brown-skinned appearance of the “Southron” army. It really is a needless fumble here to reproduce European racial dynamics, even if it was unconscious (as I expect that it was, at least on some level) -- Tolkien could have done better, and should have. I am grateful, though, for the moment of humanity that Sam flashes -- he sees the death of a Southron soldier, and wonders “what the man’s name was and where he came from, and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home, and whether he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.” This is a level of humanity never afforded other enemies in the novel, particularly the orcs -- and I do understand why, given Tolkien’s cosmology, but this is still important, I think. Sam’s demonstrating a great deal of empathy -- and looking at his own life, I suppose, wondering how far he’ll go from his home and wishing a little he had stayed there in peace.
This is also a chapter that sets up some reversals of fortune and some interesting inversions of the expected. We know nothing about Faramir right now other than that he’s Boromir’ brother, and if we encounter this chapter as readers who know nothing about this family yet, that should make us wary -- we remember Frodo’s last encounter with a son of Denethor. It may not be all that lucky to have crossed paths with him. He is, of course, technically speaking a good guy, and Smeagol/Gollum is technically speaking a bad guy -- but Smeagol has been leading them towards Mordor and their goal, and Faramir is about to lead them away from it, maybe far away, is the implication. We know Smeagol’s doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, and it’s not much of a stretch, then, to wonder if Faramir will do the wrong thing for the right reasons. I do like the complexity in these relationships.
Like I said, it’s a short chapter, and it sure is late, so I’ll let it be there -- there’s plenty yet to ponder for Frodo and Sam as they gaze through The Window on the West, and down at The Forbidden Pool, in Book IV, Chapters 5 & 6. So I’ll try to get there tomorrow, and see what there is to find.