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Authors: J. R. R. Tolkien
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these belong to the period of the writing of Book V, and if my chronological deductions are correct (see pp. 12 - 13), he had had plenty of time to 'find out what really happened' before he came actually to describe the final moments of the Quest.
As I have said, the final form of 'Mount Doom' was quite largely achieved in the first draft (B), and I give the following brief passage (interesting also for another reason) as exemplification (cf. RK
p. 223):
'Master!' he cried. Then Frodo stirred, and spoke with a clear voice, indeed a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoils of the chasm of Mount Doom, echoing in the roof and walls.
'I have come,' he said. 'But I cannot do what I have come to do. I will not do it. The Ring is mine.' And suddenly he vanished from Sam's sight. Sam gasped, but at that moment many things happened. Something struck Sam violently in the back, his legs were knocked from under him and he was flung aside striking his head against the stony floor. He lay still.
And far away as Frodo put on the Ring the Power in Baraddur was shaken and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, the Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door in Orodruin, and all the plot [> devices] was laid bare to it. Its wrath blazed like a sudden flame and its fear was like a great black smoke, for it knew its deadly peril, the thread upon which hung its doom. From all its policies and webs its mind shook free, and through all its realm a tremor ran, its slaves quailed, and its armies halted and its captains suddenly steerless bereft of will wavered and despaired. But its thought was now bent with all its overwhelming force upon the Mountain; and at its summons wheeling with a ...ing cry in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the wind, the Nazgul, the Ringwraiths, with a storm of wings they hurtled towards Mount Doom.
Frodo's words 'But I cannot do what I have come to do' were changed subsequently on the B-text to 'But I do not choose now to do what I have come to do.' I do not think that the difference is very significant, since it was already a central element in the outlines that Frodo would choose to keep the Ring himself; the change in his words does no more than emphasize that he fully willed his act. (In the second text of the chapter, the fair copy manuscript 'C',(1) Sam cried out just before this not merely 'Master!' as in the first text and in RK
but 'Master! Do it quick!' - these words being bracketed probably at the time of setting them down.)
This passage is notable in showing the degree to which my father had come to identify the Eye of Barad-dur with the mind and will of Sauron, so that he could speak of 'its wrath, its fear, its thought'. In the second text C he shifted from 'its' to 'his' as he wrote out this passage anew.
Some other differences in the original text are worth recording. On the morning after they escaped from the orc-band marching to the Isenmouthe, following Frodo's words 'I can manage it. I must' (RK
p. 211) text B at first continued:
In the end they decided to crawl in such cover as they could towards the north-range [and then turn south >) until they were further from the vigilance on the ramparts, and then turn south.
As they went from hollow to hollow or along cracks in the stony ground, keeping always if they could some screen between them and the north, they saw that the most easterly of the three roads went also in the same direction. It was in fact the road to the Dark Tower, as Frodo guessed.
He looked at it. 'I shall wear myself out in a day of this crawling and stooping,' he said. 'If we are to go on we must risk it. We must take the road.'
Here my father stopped, struck this out, and replaced it by a passage very close to that in RK, where it is Sam who sees that they can go no further in this fashion and must
As I have said, the final form of 'Mount Doom' was quite largely achieved in the first draft (B), and I give the following brief passage (interesting also for another reason) as exemplification (cf. RK
p. 223):
'Master!' he cried. Then Frodo stirred, and spoke with a clear voice, indeed a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoils of the chasm of Mount Doom, echoing in the roof and walls.
'I have come,' he said. 'But I cannot do what I have come to do. I will not do it. The Ring is mine.' And suddenly he vanished from Sam's sight. Sam gasped, but at that moment many things happened. Something struck Sam violently in the back, his legs were knocked from under him and he was flung aside striking his head against the stony floor. He lay still.
And far away as Frodo put on the Ring the Power in Baraddur was shaken and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, the Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door in Orodruin, and all the plot [> devices] was laid bare to it. Its wrath blazed like a sudden flame and its fear was like a great black smoke, for it knew its deadly peril, the thread upon which hung its doom. From all its policies and webs its mind shook free, and through all its realm a tremor ran, its slaves quailed, and its armies halted and its captains suddenly steerless bereft of will wavered and despaired. But its thought was now bent with all its overwhelming force upon the Mountain; and at its summons wheeling with a ...ing cry in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the wind, the Nazgul, the Ringwraiths, with a storm of wings they hurtled towards Mount Doom.
Frodo's words 'But I cannot do what I have come to do' were changed subsequently on the B-text to 'But I do not choose now to do what I have come to do.' I do not think that the difference is very significant, since it was already a central element in the outlines that Frodo would choose to keep the Ring himself; the change in his words does no more than emphasize that he fully willed his act. (In the second text of the chapter, the fair copy manuscript 'C',(1) Sam cried out just before this not merely 'Master!' as in the first text and in RK
but 'Master! Do it quick!' - these words being bracketed probably at the time of setting them down.)
This passage is notable in showing the degree to which my father had come to identify the Eye of Barad-dur with the mind and will of Sauron, so that he could speak of 'its wrath, its fear, its thought'. In the second text C he shifted from 'its' to 'his' as he wrote out this passage anew.
Some other differences in the original text are worth recording. On the morning after they escaped from the orc-band marching to the Isenmouthe, following Frodo's words 'I can manage it. I must' (RK
p. 211) text B at first continued:
In the end they decided to crawl in such cover as they could towards the north-range [and then turn south >) until they were further from the vigilance on the ramparts, and then turn south.
As they went from hollow to hollow or along cracks in the stony ground, keeping always if they could some screen between them and the north, they saw that the most easterly of the three roads went also in the same direction. It was in fact the road to the Dark Tower, as Frodo guessed.
He looked at it. 'I shall wear myself out in a day of this crawling and stooping,' he said. 'If we are to go on we must risk it. We must take the road.'
Here my father stopped, struck this out, and replaced it by a passage very close to that in RK, where it is Sam who sees that they can go no further in this fashion and must
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