The process of reversal—of escape—is not simple or direct. Frodo goes through several steps or stages in undoing the evil spell.Lying paralyzed in a tomb on cold stone in darkness, he remembers the Shire, Bilbo, his life. Memory is the first key. He thinks he has come to a terrible end, but refuses to accept it. He lies “thinking and getting a hold on himself,” and as he does so, light begins to shine.But what it shows him is horrible: his friends lying as if dead, and “across their three necks lay one long naked sword.”A song begins—a kind of limping, sick reversal of Tom Bombadil’s jolly caroling—and he sees, unforgettably, “a long arm groping, walking on its fingers towards Sam . . . and towards the hilt of the sword that lay upon him.”He stops thinking, loses his hold on himself, forgets. In panic terror, he considers putting on the Ring, which has lain so far, all through the chapter, unmentioned in his pocket. The Ring, of course, is the central image of the whole book.
What do You think about Meditations On Middle-Earth?
