I loved the books, was so pleasantly surprised by the movies. But as much as I love the ROTK movie I have some problems with how Jackson ended it. He left out a lot of dialog I thought vital, didn’t explain fully why Frodo had to leave, or why it was so tragic. Anyway, my question - he leaves in the lines from Frodo saying about Sam “You will not always be torn in two”. How do you guys (the LOTR freaks like me) interpret this line?? Why was it important enough to keep in? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
PS - I’ll save my interp. for now. I also can’t promise it’s my last LOTR thread, but I’ll try.
Torn between his wife and family in Middle-Earth and Frodo away in the West. The quote is actually “…you cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years…” He has to live for his wife and children before he can sail the Sea and return to Frodo.
Well, there’s an enhanced DVD version coming out, so there’ll probably be more dialogue in there. Not to mention, I felt the rescue in the tower of Mordor was very rushed, to the point that I felt it was made deliberalately to make us watch the DVD’s.
Because Jackson, unlike Tolkien, knew that he had a very short amount of time after the destruction of the ring before folks started getting antsy.
In that time, he had to show the fates of Frodo and Sam, and Aragorn, at the very least. The line shows Sam’s conflict. The omitted dialogue saved time. I understood it.
I like to think that this line from the book reflects obliquely on Frodo’s true motivations for the initial quest as well as his final departure. Sam represents the best nature of the hobbits and the Shire and stands for everything that Frodo has been struggling to preserve from the beginning. But by the final part of the story, Frodo’s continued presence is defeating his intent. Sam knows that his duty now is to his family and his community, but he’s torn in two by seeing Frodo’s continuing suffering and being unable to help. By going West, Frodo seeks healing not only for himself but for Sam.
Maybe these ideas don’t come through in the films. It’s hard for me to be subjective, since my interpretation was already set before I saw them. I do know, however, that many book fans enjoy hearing some of their favorite lines, even if the context is somewhat different.
My interpretation, and obviously I’m not the only one, was that Sam is bisexual, and Frodo is gay. (Probably Bilbo too, strikes me as a ‘confirmed bachelor’. But the books never really addressed it.)
A lot of people laugh about Sam and Frodo’s intimate friendship, and perhaps that’s all it was, but there was a line, when Sam rescues Frodo from the orcs while crossing into Mordor. He finds Frodo naked, and “comfort[s] him with his body” or some such. I don’t think my interpretation of this phrase, as well as the general tone of their interaction, is much of a stretch. Most people probably disagree, but I think Sam and Frodo were lovers, and I think Tolkien meant exactly that. And I do think the folks directing the movie did a fairly nice job of capturing the ambiguity of their relationship, even if they did create a few too many touching “moments”.
Anyway, Frodo felt he had to leave, in part, because Sam had found the real love of his life, and Frodo knew that his presence was the cause of emotional difficulty for Sam.
I’ve never read the books, and I had no trouble understanding that bit. For the love of Pete, they spent three really long movies harping on how the Ring works on the mind and heart of everyone it comes into contact with, and we’ve already seen how it was working on Frodo by the end. Obviously, the implication is that Frodo is too psychologically damaged by his adventures to continue living in the Shire. Tragic, but perfectly understandable.
Sam–open-hearted, kind, slavishly devoted Sam–is torn between conflicting desires and responsibilities. On one hand, he wants to live his life with his wife and children, and he has responsibilities to them. On the other hand, he wants (and has sworn) to take care of Frodo. Frodo is his friend as well as his master, and Sam sees himself as still being responsible for Frodo’s wellbeing. This conflict, if left unresolved, would result in Sam being constantly gnawed by guilt and worry and lingering unhappiness. As such, I interpreted Frodo’s remark as a way of telling Sam (and us) that he’ll be able to let go of feeling responsible for Frodo and find peace in his life with Rosie and the kids.
As luck would have it I’m currently reading ROTK and am at just that scene. And there is absolutely no ambiguity about what happens. In amongst the dialogue Sam finds Frodo nude, hugs him (while Sam is fully clothed), kisses him on the forehead, gives the ring back, loans him his cloak, then goes off to find some orc clothing for Frodo to wear. Not only would it be really reaching to read sexual contact in there, who has time for a quick fuck while in a not quite deserted tower of orcs on the doorstep of Mordor?
And who’s in the mood for one after getting a big dose of Shelob venom not too long ago and several fucking good hidings from the Orcs since then? It might count as Klingon foreplay, but probably not quite what pushes Hobbit buttons. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Was I the only one who get the impression that the boat ride is a metaphor for death? My brother came t that conclusion too, he even spoke of that part of the movie as “you know in the end when Frodo dies?”.
Have you ever taken a college literary criticism class in college? The author himself could talk 'til he’s blue in the face about what his book was about, only to be brushed aside with “yes, but you really meant is…”
You may have got that impression, but in Tolkien’s cosmology, there was a real, physical place West of the Sea to which only Elves could sail (Bilbo and Frodo were given special dispensation, and Gandalf is a special case in his own right). Frodo and Bilbo would live there with the best care that could possibly be provided anywhere until they died naturally, which would happen in due course; the lands themselves did not confer immortality.
According to the Appendices to LotR, Sam was later seen (long after, when he was a widower) heading towards the Havens, and it was a tradition that he too was given an Elven ship in which to follow his master, as the last of the Ring-Bearers.
Sorry, you’re totally out of it. Tolkein was writing about a classic master-servant bond from minor landed English nobility or the rich-but-not-that-rich. Quite frankly, people were a lot less prudish in pre-industrial times as well. It was not uncommon (and is not in much of the world today) for people to take communal baths, whole families to sleep in one room, or to go swimming stark naked.
Yeah, some other people have said the same thing, but Tolkein disagrees with you and so do his scholars.
I think the movies and the beautiful hobbit actors lend weight to the Sam/Frodo relationship. When reading the books I never picked up on anything but a close friendship between all of them. All they had was each other and they were way in over their heads.
However, after seeing the movies and reading the VSD I do see them somewhat differently. Tolkein didn’t intend it to be that way, but readers have always come up with their own interpretations. Guilty pleasures
In a letter published posthumously in “Morgoth’s Ring”, Tolkien explained that souls of mortals go to a place called the Halls of Mandos for a “time of recollection”, and from there to an unknown destination.
“The sojourn of Frodo in Eressea - then on to Mandos? - was only an extended form of this. Frodo would eventually leave the world (desiring to do so). So that the sailing in ship was equivalent to death.” [Emphasis added.]
Frodo’s physical death lies ahead, but the departure from the Grey Havens is a “pre-death”, in which he must say goodbye forever to the world he knows. Eressea is not a heaven but a purgatory, in the sense that his spirit will be cleansed and prepared there (through healing, not punishment) for its final passage.
