3. Mount Doom II
Nothing now stands between Frodo and the fire – except his own shadow. In previous commentaries we have discussed how the ring seduces the ego through the shadow (or the one-sidedness that comes with being unaware of one's own shadow). The ring itself causes an abaissement du niveau mental, a lowering of the level of consciousness. We discussed this in connection with Frodo's reaction to Old Man Willow and quoted Jung: "[The phenomenon] can arise as a result of physical and mental exhaustion … violent emotional upheaval or shock." Frodo is by this point completely exhausted – the weight of the ring, the terror of the Eye, the tremendous ordeals, and now Mount Doom and on top of this the vision of the Dark Tower. He has, as he himself said, "no protection". The shadow streams in anew, the shadow that should be behind him. Beyond the fact that the shadow constantly shapes itself – it is not a static "thing" – it has a new quality on Mount Doom. While Gollum on the other side of the mountain range represented Frodo's personal shadow in the classic sense, and around Cirith Ungol the collective shadow, what we see on Mount Doom is rather suppressed instinct; a deep-seated impulse that suddenly reacts against the violation of the Mother that Frodo is about to commit. One can speculate that Gollum is the dark side of what Sam represents. We have not only observed that Sam and Gollum have always felt aversion toward each other, but moreover both are "instincts", that is, deep-seated psychological dynamics that come, so to speak, from the earth. Throughout the tale Sam is down-to-earth and possesses the simplicity, wisdom and indeed the eros that characterizes "the natural". Gollum also belongs to the earth, or more precisely the underworld, but lacks all the qualities that characterize Sam. In other words, it makes sense that Gollum jumps on the hobbits when Sam is carrying Frodo – that is, when Sam is the active one, when he represents the driving force.
For that is what happens: Suddenly Gollum attacks from behind. Sam wriggles free and draws Sting. But he cannot attack Gollum because he and Frodo are tightly entwined as they struggle over the ring. Frodo defends himself with unexpected strength and aggression. He throws Gollum to the ground and tells him to go away. "Your time is over", he proclaims.
Then something unexpected happens. The author writes: "Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of the Emyn Muil, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision." As the reader will remember, it was at the foot of Emyn Muil that Frodo and Gollum met, and the reconciliation began – we have yet another circle closing in this scene. Then it says: "A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage." Gollum is precisely a human's shadow and this is further reinforced by his being filled with emotions, which connects back to the instincts we just discussed. But the unexpected thing is Sam's "vision" of Frodo: "Before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice."
In Sam's vision neither Gollum nor Frodo is mentioned by name. Both are an "it", as if stripped of their respective individual humanity and merely representing collective archetypes. Gollum is a crouching shadow and Frodo is a stern "figure" in white robes. While Gollum is base emotions, Frodo stands elevated above everything animal. When a minute later he is about to leave Sam and Gollum behind, he looks at his friend as if he were "far away". Frodo no longer belongs to the same world because he is a different kind of human than Sam now. In this exaltation he no longer feels pity for Gollum. 'Pity' is a central word in the tale. One of the most famous dialogues in the book is the one between Frodo and Gandalf when the wise old man recounts how the ring ended up in Bag End. Frodo becomes upset when the wizard tells him about Gollum. "What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!" But Gandalf says: "Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand." We have previously discussed how the mere thought of Gollum upset Frodo before he set out on his adventure, but how he matured through the journey and showed compassion for Gollum when he finally met him – and how this illustrates the individuation process and the integration of the shadow. We understand (if nothing else) from this tale that compassion, that is eros, is a virtue. But now Frodo and Gollum meet again, in a different situation, and then Frodo stands above even this – "untouchable now by pity". What has happened?
Frodo holds the burning wheel at his breast and out of the fire comes a commanding voice. One could express it as Frodo having integrated the burning wheel as a symbol, achieving what we have seen the symbol striving for. But if by "integration" one means "establishing a conscious relationship with", that is not at all what has occurred. Rather, the archetypal energy has finally flowed into consciousness and – as archetypes tend to do – taken possession of it. Frodo is in fact possessed by an archetype; he is psychologically speaking the burning wheel, for he speaks from the fire. In Jungian terms he has been struck by inflation as a result of identification with the archetypal content. In this inflated state he cannot feel compassion because he himself is unconscious, that is, not human – his ego is no longer master of the house. We have seen how the archetypal energy that represents wholeness has assailed Frodo for a long time, but we have also noted that it has tormented him and that he has tried to fend it off. But when he is finally carried by Sam and suffers a considerable lowering of the level of consciousness, as we discussed, the shadow casts itself over him, which is followed by emotional outburst and subsequent influx of unconscious content. Now Frodo towers over the shadow completely without empathy, filled with the burning wheel, and looks at Sam as if he belonged to a different world than The Great Frodo. Then he walks slowly on with straight back with the lower beings (the instincts) behind him.
We need to note two further details in this unexpected and strange scene. First the fire that we have already touched upon. It is extremely significant that Frodo "speaks from the fire". We recall the equally surprising and peculiar scene in the tower of Cirith Ungol, where Frodo walks naked with flames over his body (there too from Sam's perspective). We suggested then that the fire represented Frodo's true self emerging after the initiation, with a reminder that the last and only time he was previously naked in the tale was in connection with the rite of passage in the Barrow-downs. But the fire also connects him with other fire symbols in Mordor – Sauron's flaming eye and the inner fire of Mount Doom. Sauron "is" fire just as the mountain is described as burning, and Frodo too is fire. Frodo, Sauron and Mount Doom are united in this symbol (together with Gandalf, but he is of course never in Mordor – he becomes "the fourth" in the situation, arriving with the eagles when the war is over). Fire is the primal energy, the libido itself that comes from below and flows out into different more or less unifying symbols. With the burning wheel, Mordor can in fact be regarded as the Self, however uncomfortable the thought may be. It is the Self that so to speak directs the fire, in contrast to the ego. But since Frodo comes from the land of the innocent and is simply good, the unconscious takes on a compensating character and is experienced as evil. As we have discussed, there is an inner pressure that wants to achieve wholeness (roughly as an acorn "wants" to become a tree), but the ego experiences this change as a threat because it to some extent means its death (the acorn no longer exists when the oak is realized).
The fire symbols illustrate, besides energy, the emotions and transformative power of the inner. If we recall the "furnace", the blacksmith uses his fire (like the alchemists) to burn away what is worthless, so that he can shape what is valuable. For humans, the most prominent symbol of this in our culture is purgatory, whose purpose is to burn away sins before one enters heaven. While it would be natural to do everything in one's power to avoid the fire, there is a greater idea behind it all that perhaps does not convince the ego when the flames begin to lick its skin. Frodo's flight impulse before the burning wheel is of course natural. But as mentioned, when his level of consciousness – his ability to hold it all together through effort of will – drops, an opening occurs that causes the archetype to overflow the ego and we see Frodo speak from the fire as if he were one with it.
This purification that fire symbolically almost always signifies, in one way or another, leads us to the last detail in this brief but rich scene, namely the white robe. Again we want to ask ourselves when the symbol has appeared in the tale before and recall that the hobbits were dressed in white robes when they lay in the barrow, that is, underwent a symbolic death and resurrection. In a reversed but still corresponding way, Gandalf was clothed in white by Galadriel after his death and resurrection. The white robe that has characterized Christians before baptism, for example, suggests that we have a new initiation awaiting Frodo – but he shall be baptized in fire,[22] as we mentioned earlier, by burning away the "bad".
We shall conclude this scene with a final comment, for the sake of completeness. To be possessed by an archetype means that one loses oneself; one acquires an inhuman psychological quality, one might say. Development ceases – neither the ego nor the archetype can develop in this state (it is not the union of opposites on a "higher" level). But it is not only for ill. Before Frodo was overcome by the shadow, became enraged (burning) and then identified with the archetype, he was completely powerless and incapable. But with this inner energy that took over his consciousness, he not only overcame the threat from the shadow but also gained access to energy he had not previously had access to, which enabled him, albeit slowly but resolutely and with straight back, to walk toward the mountain's interior. Moreover, Jung argues, one can never realize an archetype without first identifying with it.[23]
In other words, Frodo first becomes aware of the archetype and experiences it as dangerous and terrible, then he identifies with it (unconsciously of course) and overcomes his obstacles, and must finally distance himself from the archetype through conscious relationship with it.[24] This might be thought to occur when he breaks the bond to the ring in the interior of Mount Doom, since the ring and the burning wheel are practically synonymous symbols in this context. So Frodo walks on at Sam's urging, alone in (figuratively speaking) his white robe and burning wheel, and leaves the two behind. The situation is to some extent disturbing because it means he no longer walks with his instincts, but with his inflation.
Behind him Sam wants to kill the little monster – his own shadow? But Gollum, who is in poor condition, whimpers and begs for mercy. "When the Precious goes we die", he says, "yes we die and become ash." With these words Gollum underscores that he is the ring, he symbolizes the bond to the Great Mother in her most negative form. Just as the elves are identified with the Good Mother, Gollum is identified with her dark side and incessantly desires to be part of her, to lose himself in her. This is as mentioned a counterpart to Frodo in the Shire, to his initial symbiosis with the Mother where a spark awakened a calling. Just as Frodo strives to thereafter free himself from this bond, Gollum represents the opposite inner drives within Frodo, namely to merge with her; to give up, fall asleep, sink down into the Mother's collective unconscious. The mother archetype is by its nature conservative, a regressive factor within us, which opposes change and progress. (In the tale this is represented above all by the elves, as we have discussed earlier.[25]) This is of course a theme in the tale that Frodo's personal adventure repeatedly illustrates, a constant conflict between giving up and continuing forward. But we know that archetypes are paradoxical, so the conserving Mother is simultaneously the great Transformer. In our tale all transformations, in accordance with humanity's traditions, are connected to the mother image – graves, caves, mountains. Joseph Campbell writes:
She is the transforming medium that transforms semen into life. She receives the seed of the past and, through the miracle of her body, transmutes it into the life of the future. She is woman as the transformer, while the male is that which is transformed.[26]
That is also the difference between Frodo and Gollum. While the shadow as a complex is fundamentally conservative and in every respect historical, that is to say incessantly regressive, Frodo represents the masculine consciousness that struggles toward transformation, contra naturam or if you will "against the Mother". But just as the Old Father wants to preserve existing structures while the Old Wise Man is the one who awakens the calling, the Mother is both regression and transformation – both Gollum's and Frodo's opposite experiences. Left behind Frodo when he figuratively speaking walks in his white robe toward the mountain's interior stand Sam and Gollum, his conflicting instincts. Sam cannot kill the hateful wretch, he is unlike Frodo still himself and shows human mercy. He tells Gollum to go away, as naive as Frodo when he on the mountainside of Cirith Ungol informed Gollum that he is "free" to go his own way. Gollum has no other path than Frodo's, or the ring's, so when Sam goes after his master toward the door to the "fire chamber" Gollum of course creeps after.
On the other side of the door, in the mountain's interior, Sam sees almost nothing. Not even Galadriel's phial helps, for this is "the heart of Sauron's realm", where "all other powers are subdued". One can again see the place as an expression of uroboros, the massa confusa where everything is stifled and nothing is clear. A red glow shoots up and Sam sees that they are in a long narrow cavern. The light comes from a chasm further ahead. He hears rumbling and roaring as if great machines were pounding and striking. It is not easy to understand what this would be in a literal sense. In the center of the world (which mountains often symbolize) a machine apparently pounds without anyone's supervision. This suggests that some form of autonomous machinery constantly works at the heart. One can see it as an expression of the Self,[27] which corresponds with previous assumptions about the symbolism of the place.
The Self can be expressed in different ways and here it is apparently a machinery (alongside center, mountain, fire, etc.). A machine belongs to the yang-world – it is created, which implies consciousness, it is rational and serves a certain purpose. One might imagine that it pounds in the mountain's interior to compensate for the otherwise explicitly feminine place. Neumann points out that "the dragon" is not only the Mother, but it is precisely uroboros.[28] In Mordor the foremost landmarks constitute the Mother's mountain and the Father's tower, just as masculine machines pound in the feminine center. "The hero's task in fighting the dragon is not merely to overcome the mother, but the father also," says Neumann.[29] We also know that when the round ring is destroyed the Dark Tower collapses and with it Sauron, because he is part of the whole.
They have now finally reached their goal, the center of everything from which everything has proceeded, in the sense that the ring was created here and its circle is "everything", uroboros. It is back where it was created, as if biting its own tail, and Frodo has finally come "back to Mordor". Only the fire that birthed the ring can also destroy it. Other "rings of power" could be destroyed by ancient dragons, Gandalf tells Frodo in Bag End, which is an interesting remark considering that the dragon is the symbol par excellence of the Terrible Mother. In light of these images we want to quote Jung:
The dragon is probably the oldest pictorial symbol in alchemy ... together with the legend of ... the One, the All. The alchemists repeat again and again that the opus proceeds from one thing and leads back to the One, thus to a certain extent constitutes a circular movement, like a dragon biting its own tail.[30]
We see again how relevant the alchemical imagery is in relation to our tale. The reason is not a borrowing of random images, but that the same archetypal material that emerged in the adept's work also reaches the consciousness of the artist, which produces similar symbolic language – which we for that matter recognize from our own dreams and of course in other literary works and other visual art besides Tolkien's. In the foreword to Mysterium Coniunctionis Jung recounts that archetypal motifs that are common in alchemy also appear in contemporary dreams of people who have not made any acquaintance with the obscure alchemical literature.
Not only does [analytical psychology] give us the key to the secrets of alchemy, but, conversely, alchemy provides the psychology of the unconscious with a meaningful historical basis.[31]
We mention this to illustrate how the tale contains an overwhelming amount of archetypal images and themes that are by their nature universal and thus recognizable. Nothing in a work like this is random, but all the central scenes are like dreams meaningful and comprehensible, given certain knowledge of the psychology of the collective unconscious and its projection surfaces, such as mythological conceptions and folktales.
In the red firelight Sam sees Frodo at the chasm, standing upright but motionless. "Master!" he cries. "The Ring is mine", says Frodo and puts it on his finger. He becomes invisible – disappears, is swallowed up. At the same time Gollum comes rushing, strikes down Sam and continues toward Frodo. In the same moment the Eye turns toward the door and a tremor shakes Mordor. Outside the Black Gate everything stops, except for the nazgûl who turn back toward the mountain. It is the center of everything.
Frodo cannot get rid of the ring by simply throwing it into the fire. His shadow is bound to the ring, as we have seen on several occasions (for example Frodo's affected reaction when Sam offers to carry it). This means that Frodo himself is bound to the ring and to throw it into the red chasm would be like throwing himself down. We saw outside the cave that Frodo so to speak is the wheel/the ring. Just as his lowered level of consciousness gave an opening for the shadow's ambush, now the final surrender to the archetypal energy (which the wheel identification entails) causes the shadow to attack anew: Gollum immediately flies at him and the two struggle over the ring. This affected, unbearable conflict is illustrated by the fires below awakening in wrath. Gollum utters no words, he struggles desperately, writhes and moves back and forth, like a serpent "hissing" and finally he brings Frodo's finger to his "fangs" and bites it off. Frodo lets out a scream and falls to his knees at the edge of the chasm while Gollum dances like a madman with the ring still on Frodo's finger in his hand. "Now the ring glowed as if it were truly forged of living fire", it says, as if to again make a connection between the ring and the burning wheel. (With Gollum the symbols are not separated.) But he dances too close to the edge, loses his footing and falls into the fire, together with the ring still on Frodo's finger.
There is quite a lot to say about this scene. First and foremost, the circle closes in this too; not only is the ring destroyed in the same fire in which it was created, but the adventure ends with the same image with which it essentially began – namely the severing of the Bearer's finger. The tale of the ring begins (at least that is one way to look at it) with Isildur cutting off Sauron's finger and taking the ring, and ends with Gollum severing Frodo's finger and taking the ring. But while Isildur's deed is a curse in that he was unable to destroy the ring in the fire, Frodo-Gollum's is a blessing.
One cannot help but note how the castration theme that we touched upon earlier returns in this most critical scene of the tale. Here the castration is a sacrifice, like Beren (about whom Aragorn sings a song on Weathertop) who with symbolic sight "sacrificed" his hand in order to marry Lúthien. It can be mentioned that Beren is saved by the eagles after this mutilation, just as Frodo is lifted up by the eagles after his sacrifice; that is, the sacrifice leads to a transformation, which in turn leads to the union of opposites. (In Frodo's case represented by Sam and Rosie.) We have already discussed the symbolism of the hand ("The Road to Isengard") and could establish that the hand represents the ego's will and ability to affect its surroundings; one might say the attitude of consciousness is precisely that which stands in the way of transformation. For Frodo to be able to relinquish the ring and become who he was meant to be, he must give up his consciousness's attitude and – as we discussed in connection with Denethor, not least – tyranny over other, inner qualities. The finger represents the hand in the sense that the detail represents the whole (a bear's claw gives the whole bear's strength, and so on). It falls into the fire together with the ring as a union of opposites – the active and the passive, the conscious and the unconscious, the masculine and the feminine, yang and yin.
This union of opposites is also illustrated by Frodo and Gollum's wrestling match. We noted that the author ascribed serpent-like attributes to the latter. One might say that Frodo at the center of the world wrestles with the Serpent, to which he has been connected throughout the tale (through the ring, the bond to and initially the symbiosis with the Great Mother). As we previously remarked, the serpent symbol appears frequently in the tale, but somewhat disguised – in the form of something coiling, strangling, crawling; on Weathertop the Black Riders are described as hissing, venomous and cold, and so on. The serpent represents that world of displaced instincts[32] which has no place in the Good Mother's bosom, in the Shire. The crawling animal that suddenly appears on the ground and then disappears belongs to the earth and the underworld.
When Frodo wrestles with the serpent he manifests an ancient archetypal idea or experience, which we recognize from the hero's battle with the dragon. At the same time the serpent symbolizes precisely initiation[33] and renewal and illustrates here the psychological truth that what we fear and perhaps abhor conceals "the treasure hard to attain". As we mentioned earlier, this is something Frodo must go through, and we have also discussed how Bilbo avoided his serpent and thus let Frodo inherit the burden.
But this is a different story from the cliché about the knight, the dragon and the princess. Frodo namely fails to himself cast the ring into the fire as a conscious act. Or is it a failure? With symbolic sight one can see Frodo struggling with the serpent at the center of the earth, yet rather than defeating it, he sacrifices his masculinity, goes down on his knees and allows what must happen to happen – without his own conscious action. He does not represent the ego's victory over the monster of the unconscious, but its ability to sacrifice its one-sidedness for a higher value; to return to terms we have used earlier in the tale, he lets yang step back to allow yin to flow in. He does not do it without resistance and horror in the encounter with the Serpent – and a prerequisite for the situation is his long, masculine struggle to reach the center of the world (he never gave up until he reached the goal) – but he actually stops fighting the serpent when he realizes that continued struggle is futile. He so to speak admits the ego's impotence in relation to the Self in connection with "sacrificing" his finger and sinking down on his knees. In this way he is freed from the tyranny of the ego. The sacrifice in the form of mutilation thus becomes his initiation to a higher level of consciousness, which follows certain shamanistic traditions.[34] From a Jungian perspective, mutilation is often about distinction, the ability to separate one thing from another. The Jungian analyst Erel Shalit writes:
Dismemberment – cutting into pieces, differentiating and discarding – is the complex process by which we separate from the archetypes, establish a differentiated ego.[35]
That is, by sacrificing the finger on which the ring sits, Frodo finally separates his ego from the mother archetype, and through this separation he establishes a conscious relationship with it; he is no longer in the hands of the archetype, but is able to distinguish between himself and the other. This means, according to Shalit, a liberation from a possession.[36] One can with symbolic sight see it as Frodo being unable to put on the ring without his finger – or put differently, "she" cannot take him over when there is no longer a "hook" to attach herself to. Frodo sacrifices his ability to seek the Mother's protection and conversely Her ability to control him. He has become conscious of the archetype, "individuated" through the encounter with the unconscious.
Frodo leaves the place with his finger remaining in Mount Doom, a form of mutilation that was necessary. He cannot of course defeat or outwit the Great Mother, but given a certain level of consciousness he can negotiate with her – "if you release me I will give you this". What she demands is of course some form of castration. One cannot so to speak enter Mount Doom and come out from there without leaving something behind. Jung touches on this theme in a seminar, where he also anticipates a subject we will return to:
You do not return; it is an illusion that you return – you have left something of yourself in the unconscious. Nobody touches the unconscious without leaving something of himself there. If you have really experienced it, you cannot lose that experience. [You] left something, something has stayed there.
Question: Is it like Wotan, who loses one eye?
Dr. Jung: Exactly.[37]
Frodo's transformation does not mean that he becomes a great man, a leader among hobbits, admired by all, rich and happy, and so on. On the contrary, he lives hereafter a lonely and in some respects tormented life. His initiation in Mount Doom leads to the eagles lifting him up toward the sky, that is true, but then he lands again and makes his way home to the Shire. Nothing is the same for him, for he cannot after the experience of Mount Doom return to the Good Mother's bosom. Everything is as it always was, but for Frodo everything has changed after this experience.
When the ring is reunited with "the serpent" at the place where it was forged, the natural course is for it to return to the fire. Gollum's dancing – that is, the manifestation of spontaneous, physical movement – illustrates the "natural" energy that leads to the reunion. This could only happen with Frodo's sacrifice and surrender.
Frodo and Sam exit the cave and behold what appears to be the end of the world – earthquake shakes the ground, thunder roars, lightning strikes down, black rain falls, fires are cast far and wide, and Barad-dûr collapses. From a symbolic perspective it is Frodo's old ego and its underlying, previously unconscious dynamics that are perishing. Destruction almost always suggests renewal, from the Book of Revelation to Ragnarök, and in our dreams the great catastrophe often has this meaning for the individual – something new is revealed through the destruction of the old.[38]
"Well, this is the end, Sam Gamgee", says Frodo. The author writes: "He was himself again, he was free." It is natural to understand this as Frodo being himself again because he is free from the ring, but in our context it probably has a broader meaning. In brief, the child is "itself" until it notices that it cannot be, for a long series of reasons, and begins its adaptation to its surroundings – parents, siblings, peers, school, work – while entangling itself in its unconscious complexes that often to a frightening extent shape our lives. Eventually the question becomes: "Who am I, really?" With this a journey can begin with the goal of finding one's way back to oneself anew, of letting what we previously called "the true self" emerge through active participation in the individuation process. "He was himself again", that is, the complexes and structures that the ring symbolizes have been overcome – he becomes free from all this rubbish, it falls away.
But he would not have managed it without Gollum. The shadow proved to be the valuable thing; that is, the "rubbish" we spoke disparagingly of is the very gold – that which is decisive. As we discussed earlier, the shit, if the word is permitted, that torments us through life is precisely what we need. In stercore invenitur aurum, "in the excrement the gold is found", as the alchemists said.[39] Frodo dismisses Gollum outside the fire chamber and Sam would prefer to kill him. If their disparagement of the shadow had led to the ego's desired result, Frodo would merely have repeated Isildur's curse, and a new ring would have been added to the endless spiral. But as if a higher power had a hand in the game, which it is not inconceivable that it has in the matter of humanity's mystery, the shadow severed the finger with the ring and danced down into the annihilating fire.
"Do you remember what Gandalf said: 'Even Gollum may have something yet to do?'" the hobbits says. "We must forgive him!" Here, in closing, Christianity sneaks into the tale anew, with the forgiveness and blessing of the lowest within us; the outcast, like the thief on the cross to the right of the Lord or the prostitute who washes His feet on the Sabbath, receives forgiveness and blessing, and is embraced at last. The shadow is unfortunately part of the whole; it must be accepted and invited into life, like Gollum in our tale, because the value it holds.