Typology and the Barrow-Wights
Apr. 1st, 2009 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafOver at Tor.com, Kate Nepveu is doing a re-read of LotR. It's interesting stuff - I've only just found it, and with the paper-thin excuse of feeling under the weather, I've been reading it this afternoon. I just reached the discussion of "Fog on the Barrow Downs" (which to my mind is one of the creepiest things in the book, especially the Barrow Wight's invocation of a Dark Lord who sounds more like Morgoth than Sauron, and its longing for the death of everything).
Nepveu finished her comments by asking Okay, I had a serious “these people are weird” moment when the hobbits run naked on the grass, and pretty much always have. Tell me I’m not the only one?
Actually, this has never struck me as peculiar, even if I'm not as keen on skinny-dipping as previous generations of Oxford academics were *g*, for reasons I gave below:
Rather late to the party, but one reason for the Unexpected Naked Hobbits is the fact that the enchantment of the barrow wight removed their clothes and replaced them with white clothes - symbolic shrouds, I suppose (or maybe it was the barrow wight who was the pervy hobbit fancier?). Quite apart from the rebirth symbolism, though that's important too, I can quite see why the hobbits couldn't stand to keep them on (they were probably mouldy and clammy to boot), even if it meant having to run around naked until the ponies returned with their baggage and fresh clothes... and given that it was sunny, it probably warmed them up faster.
But after consideration of other people's comments about symbolism, I'm wondering if there isn't something more going on. Specifically, I think it's (unconscious?) reference to specifically Christian patterns of death and resurrection (and possibly even to the Harrowing of Hell).
I actually started thinking about baptism, because that's a symbol of passing down into death and out into a new life, which is traditionally associated with the wearing of white garments and in fact is read typologically†, not just as a symbolic drowning, but a passing into the grave with Christ and rising with him (this is implicit in many baptismal liturgies, and also in the association between baptism and Easter - in the early centuries of the church, new believers would be baptised on Easter Eve, and many Easter liturgies involve a renewal of the baptismal vows). So even though there's no water involved, there could still be a link with the scene in the Barrow, where Frodo has to make a determined effort to renounce what, if isn't actually the devil, is as near to it as makes very little difference.
Tom also tells the hobbits "You won't find your clothes again... You've found yourself again, out of deep water. Clothes are but little loss, if you escape from drowing." The lost clothes, perhaps, are the hobbits' old existence in the shire, and 'finding yourself again, out of deep water,' is a pretty good description of baptism.
All the same, that didn't entirely satisfy me; the hobbits might have been utterly destroyed by something clearly evil (and unsacramental!), and despite Frodo's bravery, they have to be rescued by an outsider. The garments, too, are "thin white rags... cold rags" (Fellowship, ch8, 196-6 in 1993 Harper-Collins three volume paperback ed). They are clearly grave clothes, not the white garment of baptism which symbolises innocence regained.
At which point, typologically, I thought of the death and resurrection of Lazarus, which is described in John 11, and is of course also a type of the Resurrection of Christ. (I've linked to the Douay-Rheims translation, because though it's a bit awful, it's what Tolkien, as a Roman Catholic, would have grown up with. The key passage is this:
43When he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth.
44And presently he that had been dead came forth, bound feet and hands with winding bands; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said to them: Loose him, and let him go.
Similarly, Tom calls - in fact, he sings - before bursting into the tomb, and after he and Frodo have carried out the younger hobbits, he calls to them, and then tells them to 'cast off those cold rags' In both cases the clothes have to go for pragmatic reasons - poor Lazarus can hardly do more than shuffle,* and as Martha, a woman of limited spiritual insight but tremendous common sense points out earlier in the chapter, they stink - but also because they belong to the world of death, not of life, and nakedness is preferable (I do hope someone in the crowd lent Lazarus a coat).
You will, however, have noticed that the two narratives don't map on to each other exactly. There's no motif of conflict in the Lazarus account, and Christ doesn't enter the tomb, as Tom does (in fact, the Christ role is shared between Tom and Frodo, and Frodo is in there already). The scene is a composite, not so much with the Biblical accounts of the Resurrection, but the traditional catholic teaching on what happened in the Triduum, the three days of Christ's death. The line in the creed, "He descended into Hell" was interpreted by the medieval church as 'the Harrowing of Hell', in which Christ broke open the gates of hell, defeated the devil, and freed the souls of the righteous, who till then had been prisoners of death and hell, and freed them so that they could go to heaven and be with God, from whom Satan had separated them.± Then, on rising from the tomb, Christ leaves behind his graveclothes, undisturbed, as if the body had simply vanished from them. Again, there is a pragmatic reason for this: it demonstrates that the body hasn't just been nicked, but also symbolically, because the clothes belong to death and Christ is life.
Frodo is under the power of death, if not actually dead, and helps deliver his fellows; Tom breaks into the kingdom of death and saves the hobbits. The hobbits are more like Lazarus, because they need help from outside, and, like Lazarus, they come out of the tomb still clothed in death, and have to be re-clothed; Frodo, though, has a hint of a Christ-role in his combat withThing the disembodied arm and his confrontation with the Wight, in which he resists the temptation to despair and believe its prophecy of death. Tom Bombadil isn't God, even if "he is", but he does get to be a type of Christ.
† Typological interpretation interprets events from the Old Testament, or history in general, as prophecies of Christ, the Incarnation and his work of redemption; and liturgies were devised by people who also thought this way. Baptism is, among other things, a 'type' of Christ's death and resurrection (it's also a participation in it, but that's another story). It is important to remember that the 'type' need not correspond in all particulars to its anti-type - in fact, it's necessary that it doesn't. David is a type of Christ in some ways (a shepherd, his slaying of Goliath, his kingship), but not in others (his private life, and especially the disgraceful business with Uriah the Hittite). Tolkien does something similar: Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf are all in different ways types of Christ, but they are not allegories of him (Frodo suffers in order to deliver Middle Earth from evil; Aragorn is a priest, healer and king, and a king whose lordship is revealed unexpectedly; Gandalf is an incarnate spirit who has emptied himself of much of his knowledge and power, and he dies and is 'sent back', slightly changed).
* All I can say is, it's a good thing they didn't have zombie or mummy films in first century Palestine, or this would have been even more scary for the bystanders than it was already, and frankly, I think the whole thing must have been pretty terrifying, and it's a great tribute to Christ's charisma and authority that anyone went along with it.
± Considered symbolically and shorn of of the 'forty thousand winters' stuff (wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey), I find this a much better picture of the saving action of Christ than penal substitution, but that's totally off-topic)
Nepveu finished her comments by asking Okay, I had a serious “these people are weird” moment when the hobbits run naked on the grass, and pretty much always have. Tell me I’m not the only one?
Actually, this has never struck me as peculiar, even if I'm not as keen on skinny-dipping as previous generations of Oxford academics were *g*, for reasons I gave below:
Rather late to the party, but one reason for the Unexpected Naked Hobbits is the fact that the enchantment of the barrow wight removed their clothes and replaced them with white clothes - symbolic shrouds, I suppose (or maybe it was the barrow wight who was the pervy hobbit fancier?). Quite apart from the rebirth symbolism, though that's important too, I can quite see why the hobbits couldn't stand to keep them on (they were probably mouldy and clammy to boot), even if it meant having to run around naked until the ponies returned with their baggage and fresh clothes... and given that it was sunny, it probably warmed them up faster.
But after consideration of other people's comments about symbolism, I'm wondering if there isn't something more going on. Specifically, I think it's (unconscious?) reference to specifically Christian patterns of death and resurrection (and possibly even to the Harrowing of Hell).
I actually started thinking about baptism, because that's a symbol of passing down into death and out into a new life, which is traditionally associated with the wearing of white garments and in fact is read typologically†, not just as a symbolic drowning, but a passing into the grave with Christ and rising with him (this is implicit in many baptismal liturgies, and also in the association between baptism and Easter - in the early centuries of the church, new believers would be baptised on Easter Eve, and many Easter liturgies involve a renewal of the baptismal vows). So even though there's no water involved, there could still be a link with the scene in the Barrow, where Frodo has to make a determined effort to renounce what, if isn't actually the devil, is as near to it as makes very little difference.
Tom also tells the hobbits "You won't find your clothes again... You've found yourself again, out of deep water. Clothes are but little loss, if you escape from drowing." The lost clothes, perhaps, are the hobbits' old existence in the shire, and 'finding yourself again, out of deep water,' is a pretty good description of baptism.
All the same, that didn't entirely satisfy me; the hobbits might have been utterly destroyed by something clearly evil (and unsacramental!), and despite Frodo's bravery, they have to be rescued by an outsider. The garments, too, are "thin white rags... cold rags" (Fellowship, ch8, 196-6 in 1993 Harper-Collins three volume paperback ed). They are clearly grave clothes, not the white garment of baptism which symbolises innocence regained.
At which point, typologically, I thought of the death and resurrection of Lazarus, which is described in John 11, and is of course also a type of the Resurrection of Christ. (I've linked to the Douay-Rheims translation, because though it's a bit awful, it's what Tolkien, as a Roman Catholic, would have grown up with. The key passage is this:
43When he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth.
44And presently he that had been dead came forth, bound feet and hands with winding bands; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said to them: Loose him, and let him go.
Similarly, Tom calls - in fact, he sings - before bursting into the tomb, and after he and Frodo have carried out the younger hobbits, he calls to them, and then tells them to 'cast off those cold rags' In both cases the clothes have to go for pragmatic reasons - poor Lazarus can hardly do more than shuffle,* and as Martha, a woman of limited spiritual insight but tremendous common sense points out earlier in the chapter, they stink - but also because they belong to the world of death, not of life, and nakedness is preferable (I do hope someone in the crowd lent Lazarus a coat).
You will, however, have noticed that the two narratives don't map on to each other exactly. There's no motif of conflict in the Lazarus account, and Christ doesn't enter the tomb, as Tom does (in fact, the Christ role is shared between Tom and Frodo, and Frodo is in there already). The scene is a composite, not so much with the Biblical accounts of the Resurrection, but the traditional catholic teaching on what happened in the Triduum, the three days of Christ's death. The line in the creed, "He descended into Hell" was interpreted by the medieval church as 'the Harrowing of Hell', in which Christ broke open the gates of hell, defeated the devil, and freed the souls of the righteous, who till then had been prisoners of death and hell, and freed them so that they could go to heaven and be with God, from whom Satan had separated them.± Then, on rising from the tomb, Christ leaves behind his graveclothes, undisturbed, as if the body had simply vanished from them. Again, there is a pragmatic reason for this: it demonstrates that the body hasn't just been nicked, but also symbolically, because the clothes belong to death and Christ is life.
Frodo is under the power of death, if not actually dead, and helps deliver his fellows; Tom breaks into the kingdom of death and saves the hobbits. The hobbits are more like Lazarus, because they need help from outside, and, like Lazarus, they come out of the tomb still clothed in death, and have to be re-clothed; Frodo, though, has a hint of a Christ-role in his combat with
† Typological interpretation interprets events from the Old Testament, or history in general, as prophecies of Christ, the Incarnation and his work of redemption; and liturgies were devised by people who also thought this way. Baptism is, among other things, a 'type' of Christ's death and resurrection (it's also a participation in it, but that's another story). It is important to remember that the 'type' need not correspond in all particulars to its anti-type - in fact, it's necessary that it doesn't. David is a type of Christ in some ways (a shepherd, his slaying of Goliath, his kingship), but not in others (his private life, and especially the disgraceful business with Uriah the Hittite). Tolkien does something similar: Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf are all in different ways types of Christ, but they are not allegories of him (Frodo suffers in order to deliver Middle Earth from evil; Aragorn is a priest, healer and king, and a king whose lordship is revealed unexpectedly; Gandalf is an incarnate spirit who has emptied himself of much of his knowledge and power, and he dies and is 'sent back', slightly changed).
* All I can say is, it's a good thing they didn't have zombie or mummy films in first century Palestine, or this would have been even more scary for the bystanders than it was already, and frankly, I think the whole thing must have been pretty terrifying, and it's a great tribute to Christ's charisma and authority that anyone went along with it.
± Considered symbolically and shorn of of the 'forty thousand winters' stuff (wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey), I find this a much better picture of the saving action of Christ than penal substitution, but that's totally off-topic)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-01 06:51 pm (UTC)I want to think of something more useful to say, but there's a cold on me and I am in the library as it's not quite bad enough to justify not coming in for uni and I should really ought to get back to doing something researcher-like and useful. But I had to say that I thought this was fascinating.
I'm a bit puzzled about Kate Nepveu's response as well. I mean... I'm not much for skinny-dipping, either--I don't even wear shorts or go shirtless in public--but it seemed natural enough for the Hobbits then and there, for the practical reasons you gave alone.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-01 09:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-01 10:39 pm (UTC)I didn't manage to get much of use done, other than meeting with a librarian to talk about something I'm working on, which did lead me to some handy sources I'd not found before and one very useful-looking database.
I'm hoping this will be over quickly and I'll be able to come in Friday--there's a concert on that I'd not like to miss (a semi-retired priest from Clare who plays concertina and his nephew on guitar)--and be more productive than I feel capable of being the now.
You shold enjoy this
Date: 2009-04-01 10:54 pm (UTC)(sorry for lame lack of proper html)
Re: You shold enjoy this
Date: 2009-04-01 10:55 pm (UTC)it html'd by itself!
cool beans
Re: You shold enjoy this
Date: 2009-04-01 11:22 pm (UTC)Re: You shold enjoy this
Date: 2009-04-02 12:32 am (UTC)Re: You shold enjoy this
Date: 2009-04-02 11:35 am (UTC)Some of what source criticism has to say is insightful, particularly the stuff about the various traditions you can see in Genesis, but the NT stuff in particular seems to contain an implausible amount of bullshit per square inch> The trouble is, you exhaust what can be done with the proper tools of philology extremely quickly, and people seem most reluctant to admit that YOU CAN'T RECOVER THE DAMN ARCHETYPE, AND YOU CAN'T TELL MUCH ABOUT WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE, EITHER, BECAUSE REDACTORS ARE HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT PREDICTABLE COMPUTERS.
Um, sorry. Forgive the shouting. But my inner philologist (new or otherwise) is vexed at the refusal of NT critics to get out of the 1860s...
Re: You shold enjoy this
Date: 2009-04-02 10:26 pm (UTC)"This word *bjl shows late authorship because it's obviously a loan-word from neo-Babylonian *shm" or something equally dissimilar.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-02 09:40 am (UTC)I'll have to have a look at the read-through. On first glance, it looks fascinating.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-02 11:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-03 09:54 am (UTC)