Wounds That Cannot Be Wholly Cured

But by a new road or a secret gate

This was originally an essay exclusively for paid subscribers, but I’ve decided to remove the paywall because it’s both one of my favorite things that I’ve written for my newsletter but also one of the most difficult. On the chance that what I’ve been learning about grief and loss and what I’ve found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings help or comfort others, I’ve removed the paywall and will be leaving it down. If you appreciate this essay, please consider supporting my work here, either by becoming a paid subscriber or sharing this post with someone you know would appreciate it. Both help to allow me to continue writing and sharing. Thank you!
-J

‘Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,’ said Gandalf.

‘I fear it may be so with mine,’ said Frodo. ‘There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’

Gandalf did not answer.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 989.

There is no real going back

I’ve never known grief as strong or wounds as deep as I have been through this year. In January, my youngest brother died unexpectedly. It has been a season of loss and heartache that far surpasses anything that I have yet experienced.

One thing that has helped me process the trauma and sorrow of this loss has been writing. I’ve written more in the last month than I have in years. I’ve written poetry, a eulogy, journal entries, and essays. And all of them have helped me to examine my feelings and process my experience in their own ways. And so when it came time to write a longer essay again for the newsletter this month, my thoughts turned to what Tolkien had to say through narrative about the topic of wounding, loss, and grief.

¹

I was helped along in this direction by the following observation about The Lord of the Rings I came across on twitter this past week by Rev. Tom Emanuel:

LOTR has been called an anti-quest, not to obtain a magical artifact but rather to get rid of one. I might think of it as an anti-pilgrimage too: rather than seeking a sacred site in hopes of transformation, Frodo trudges into hell and comes home wounded, not healed.

The assumption by both the characters like Sam within the story and by many readers as well is that once the Ring is destroyed, the Dark Lord is defeated, and the Shire has been retaken that our hobbit protagonists will be able to go back to their old homes, recover from the wounds they took and losses they incurred during their travels, and return to the life they had before all this adventure.

And though the Scouring of the Shire throws a major wrench in those plans initially, once Saruman is ousted from the Shire a return to normalcy is indeed what happens for Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Not only do they return to their former lives: they live out an idealized version of their former lives that their adventure made possible. Sam marries Rosie and they move into Bag End with Frodo. Continuing to dress in their mail and finery, Merry and Pippin hold the rest of the Shire spellbound with their songs and tales of their journeys.

But the same does not occur for Frodo, who after acting as Deputy Mayor for a time slowly begins to fade from public life in the Shire. In his struggle with wounding, his eventual fate, and Sam’s sudden experience of the grief of Frodo’s departure, I believe we can find some truths about loss and healing to take with us for help and encouragement.

wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden

Beginning even on the return journey to the Shire, Frodo’s wounds continue to bother him. On the sixth of October, a year from his wound by the Morgul-knife, his pain troubles him enough as they cross the Ford of Buinen that Gandalf inquires about it. When he shares that his wound aches, Gandalf replies that “there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured.” This is what Frodo fears: that his journey means he cannot ever really return to a life “before” all that happened:

‘I fear it may be so with mine,’ said Frodo. ‘There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’

Gandalf did not answer.

—The Lord of the Rings, (989)

²

In March 1420, a year following his wound by Shelob’s sting, he again falls ill. Though he clutches the Evenstar—given to him by Arwen to aid him “when the memory of the fear and the darkness troubles you” (LOTR, 975)—in the midst of his pain and illness, his mood is bleak and sour. For not only is he dealing with the physical effects of his journey: he is also fighting a mental and spiritual battle against the lasting impacts of the temptation and corruption of the Ring.

³

Though he recovers from this fit, in Autumn on the second anniversary of his wounding by the Witch-king at Weathertop he again falls ill. “I am wounded,” he laments to Sam, “wounded; it will never really heal” (1025).

Grief feels like a wound that will never really heal. It is a wound that remains and that can be especially sharp on the anniversaries of the loss because it reminds you that, at least in one way, you may heal but you will never be whole again. I am only at the beginning of my journey with grief, and yet I still recognize depicted in Frodo’s struggle the same struggle that I and many others grapple with of how to move on and return to life like it was before when the pain lingers and the memories of the earlier struggles, failures, and hardships return unbidden.

The cycle continues on, for Frodo is again ill in March (1026). Finally, after a few more months pass he decides to take Arwen up on the offer that she made to him in Minas Tirith before he returned to the Shire:

In my stead you shall go, Ring-bearer, when the time comes, and if you then desire it. If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed. (975)

Though he tried to go home to the Shire and return to something akin to the life he lead before the anti-quest to destroy the Ring, Frodo found his fears that there was no real going back to be true. There was no rest in the Shire for him. Even the Evenstar is not enough to heal his wounds and weariness. There is seemingly only one solution. So he asks Sam to accompany him on one last journey.

Where shall I find rest?

On their way to the Grey Havens, Frodo sings the following version of a verse from “The Road Goes Ever On,” with lyrics that reflect his last journey:

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

“A new road or a secret gate…the hidden paths that run / West of the Moon, East of the Sun.” These words seem more akin to descriptions of the paths to Neverland (“second star to the right and straight on ‘till morning”) or Narnia (“through the wardrobe” and “further up and further in”) than any place in Middle-earth.

And that is because Frodo’s journey will take him beyond the realm of Middle-earth to the shores of Valinor, the Undying Lands where at last his wounds and his weariness will be healed.

When Sam explains through tears that he thought that Frodo was going to enjoy the Shire “for years and years” (1029), Frodo replies:

‘So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.

“Where shall I find rest?” he asked even before returning to the Shire. “He knew the answer, and Gandalf did not reply,” explains Tolkien in Letter 246.

⁴

They both knew, as Arwen also did, that only passing over the Sea could heal him.

⁵

There are some wounds that will not fully heal this side of eternity. And so we wait, hoping for the strength to carry on before we take that last journey and all our wounds and weariness are healed.

When they reach the Grey Havens, Sam, like many who are left behind when those they love go ahead of them into eternity, “was now sorrowful at heart, and it seemed to him that if the parting would be bitter, more grievous still would be the long home alone” (1030).

Just then Merry and Pippin show up in a callback to their joining Sam and Frodo’s journey back in Fellowship. This is credited to Gandalf’s foresight: “for it will be better to ride back three together than one alone” (Ibid.)

For Frodo, the one going on the journey, the experience is an otherworldly one.

the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. (Ibid.)

But for Sam, who has not gone on yet, “the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven.” He hears no singing, sees no white shores, beholds no sunrise. He is left with the sound of “the sigh and murmur of the waves” (1031), sees only the shores of Middle-earth, and stands in an evening that deepens to darkness.

What comfort is there for Sam in this time of grief and mourning? The knowledge that Frodo will suffer no longer now that he has gone on to Valinor. The promise of perhaps sailing himself to Valinor as a Ringbearer and seeing him again one day. And the companionship of Merry and Pippin, who do not attempt to console him with any words but who stand with him in silence as he stands at the Haven and who ride all the way home with Sam in silence: “they spoke no word to one another until they came back to the Shire, but each had great comfort in his friends on the long grey road” (Ibid.).

What comfort are we left with when we stand on the shores of this world in an evening deepened to darkness, with only the sight and murmur of the waves of grief, and no visions of the world to come for us, as we look after those who go before us into the West, their task done and their bodies or minds “too deeply hurt” to be healed anywhere in this world?

An end to suffering. A reunion on far distant shores. And the company of the remaining members of the Fellowship.

Similarly to Sam, I can take solace in the fact that my brother is no longer suffering. I am comforted by the teaching of my faith that I will see him again one day on far distant shores. And I have been blessed with friends and family who have simply sat with me in my grief, silent but present, giving great comfort on the long grey road simply by their presence.

These portraits of wounding, loss, and grief from The Lord of the Rings are poignant reminders. Reminders that in this world there are comforts like the promises and hope of faith and the companionship of friends. And reminders that the wounds and weariness that never fully heal here will be cured when we pass into the realm of the One who, when things were in danger, gave up and lost his own life so that others may keep theirs.

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1. There is, of course, much in Tolkien’s own life and biography to be studied where these topics (wounding, loss, and grief) are concerned. He lost his parents at an early age, lived through two World Wars (one of which he fought in), and faced a myriad of other life circumstances which informed his thoughts and beliefs about this. Perhaps that examination can come at some future point, but for now I’m limiting myself to the final chapters of The Return of the King.

2. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020.

3. In Letter 246, Tolkien explains that Frodo was afflicted by “unreasoning self-reproach: he saw himself and all that he done as a broken failure” and faced a twofold temptation. The first was a “desire to have returned as a ‘hero’, not content with being a mere instrument of good.” Second, “however that may be explained, he had not in fact cast away the Ring by a voluntary act: he was tempted to regret its destruction, and still to desire it. 'It is gone for ever, and now all is dark and empty', he said as he wakened from his sickness in 1420.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 328.

4. Letters, 329.

5. “He [Frodo] went both to a purgatory and to a reward, for a while: a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a truer understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness, spent still in Time amid the natural beauty of ‘Arda Unmarred’, the Earth unspoiled by evil.” Letters, 328.