Roots and Beginnings: "The Sea-Bell, or Frodo's Dreme" by J.R.R. Tolkien
If The Lord of the Rings espouses one value over all others it’s the value of friendship. Frodo succeeds and survives and Sauron is destroyed only through the concerted effort, concern, and care of his friends, his Fellowship. And yes, I say Frodo succeeds, though in the end he succumbs to the lure of the Ring; he chose to befriend Gollum, and even though Gollum did not or could not live up to that trust, it was through that trust that the quest was fulfilled. Friendship was the answer. By the time Frodo returns home from his adventures, the bond between the surviving members of the Fellowship, particularly the four Hobbits, is unbreakable.
So what an absolute punch to the gut it is that this wonderful person, this world-changing hero, has nightmares in which he’s doomed to be alone for eternity. That’s the idea behind “The Sea-Bell, or Frodo’s Dreme,” a poem that appeared in the collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil that purports to represent Frodo’s state of mind during the two years he spent in the Shire after the end of the War of the Ring before departing Middle-earth for the West. Surrounded by friends who love him and care for him, the gratitude of men and elves and dwarves and kings and wizards laid at his feet, he still feels unreachable.
The poem is laden with uncomfortable reflections of Frodo’s real experiences, revealing his lingering guilt and fear. When the protagonist travels to the far green country where he expects to find great joy, everyone and everything he encounters flees at his coming. The ocean, which for all Frodo’s life has been a subject of awe and longing, becomes an eerie, empty void, bearing him here and there with no more meaning in the destination than flotsam would find. Frodo, of course, will sail from Middle-earth to the Undying Lands in the West just a few months after writing this; in effect he is dreading his own forthcoming trip to Heaven. How awful, even though we know it works out alright for him in the end.
The dreme-Frodo additionally attempts to make contact with others by crowning himself a makeshift king, demanding with tongue in cheek that his subjects come forth. For this he is laid low by shadow for a year, emerging grey and broken. The guilt of his self-betrayal in Mount Doom, the moment where the Ring finally corrupted him and he proclaimed it his, weighs heavily on him. And when his dreme-self finally returns to his native land, he wanders about like a wraith, invisible and inaudible to the people he sees. His stabbing with the morgul-blade on Weathertop, his use of the Ring – they are still with him, and the nightmare state of undeath they showed him is all his unconscious mind can see for itself in its future.
I was just a kid when I first read this, of course, but even then I knew something more was going on with The Lord of the Rings than it was given credit for. Black and white bad guys and good guys notwithstanding, Frodo was broken by victory. His adventure left him permanently scarred, physically and emotionally. His happy ending required him to leave his friends and his home and, essentially, die, to be reborn in a happier world. Until that point, all he could do was write down dreams in which his only hope was to be acknowledged, to be seen. After all he’s done, after all he’s accomplished – because of all he’s done and accomplished – he wants nothing more than for someone to reach for him, and to feel he’s been reached.
I walked by the sea, and there came to me, as a star-beam on the wet sand, a white shell like a sea-bell; trembling it lay in my wet hand. In my fingers shaken I heard waken a ding within, by a harbour bar a buoy swinging, a call ringing over endless seas, faint now and far. Then I saw a boat silently float On the night-tide, empty and grey. ‘It is later than late! Why do we wait?‘ I lept in and cried: ‘Bear me away!' It bore me away, wetted with spray, wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep, to a forgotten strand in a strange land. In the twilight beyond the deep I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell, dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef; and at last I came to a long shore. White it glimmered, and the sea simmered with star-mirrors in a silver net; cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone in the moon-foam were gleaming wet. Glittering sand slid through my hand, Dust of pearl and jewel-grist, Trumpets of opal, roses of coral, Flutes of green and amethyst. But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves, weed-curtained, dark and grey; a cold air stirred in my hair, and the light waned, as I hurried away. Down from a hill ran a green rill; its water I drank to my heart’s ease. Up its fountain-stair to a country fair of ever-eve I came, far from the seas, climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows; flowers lay there like fallen stars, and on a blue pool, glassy and cool, like floating moons the nenuphars. Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping by a slow river of rippling weeds; gladdon-swords guarded the fords, and green spears, and arrow-reeds. There was echo of song all the evening long down in the valley, many a thing running to and fro: hares white as snow, voles out of holes; moths on the wing with lantern-eyes; in quiet surpise brocks were staring out of dark doors. I heard dancing there, music in the air, feet going quick on the green floors. But wherever I came it was ever the same: the feet fled, and all was still; never a greeting, only the fleeting pipes, voices, horns on the hill. Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves I made me a mantle of jewel-green, a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold; my eyes shone like the star-sheen. With flowers crowned I stood on a mound, and shrill as a call at cock-crow Proudly I cried, 'Why do you hide? Why do none speak, wherever I go? Here now I stand, king of this land, with gladdon-sword and reed-mace. Answer my call! Come forth all! Speak to me words! Show me a face!' Black came a cloud as a night-shroud. Like a dark mole groping I went, to the ground falling, on my hands crawling with eyes blind and my back bent. I crept to a wood: silent it stood in its dead leaves; bare were its boughs. There must I sit, wandering in wit, while owls snored in their hollow house. For a year and day there must I stay: beetles were tapping in the rotten trees, spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving puffballs loomed about my knees. At last there came light in my long night, and I saw my hair hanging grey. ‘Bent though I be, I must find the sea! I have lost myself, ,and I know not the way, but let me be gone!’ Then I stumbled on; like a hunting bat shadow was over me; in my ears dinned a withering wind, and with ragged briars I tried to cover me. My hands were torn and my knees worn, and years were heavy upon my back, when the rain in my face took a salt taste, and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack. Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing; I heard voices in cold caves, seals barking, and rocks snarling, and in spout-holes the gulping of waves. Winter came fast; into a mist I passed, to land’s end my years I bore; Snow was in the air, ice in my hair, darkness was lying on the last shore. There still afloat waited the boat, in the tide lifting, its prow tossing. Wearily I lay, as it bore me away, the waves climbing, the seas crossing, passing old hulls clustered with gulls and great ships laden with light, coming to haven, dark as a raven, silent as snow, deep in the night. Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered, roads were empty. I sat by a door, and where drizzling rain poured down a drain I cast away all that I bore: in my clutching hand some grains of sand, And a sea-shell silent and dead. Never will my ear that bell hear, never my feet that shore tread, never again, as in sad lane, in blind alley and in long street ragged I walk. To myself I talk; For still they speak not, men that I meet.
