#spectacles as a metaphor for frodo’s mental state

[frodo-with-glasses]

Frodo with Glasses timeline

(A revised version of this post, now made to be more book-accurate)

For as long as anyone can remember, there’s always been a tendency for poor eyesight in the Baggins line.

By the time he adopts Frodo, Bilbo has been wearing eyeglasses for years, and it doesn't look like he'll stop needing them anytime soon. The family curse—or rather hereditary inconvenience—actually skips a generation with Drogo, and Frodo is lucky enough to inherit his father's improved eyesight.

Unfortunately, he doesn't protect the gift very well. Though he doesn't need glasses at his coming-of-age birthday at 33, a decade or so of studying and reading by candlelight turns him soundly nearsighted. He denies it until he can't deny it anymore, and then ignores it until he can't ignore it anymore, and after much teasing and cajoling from his friends (especially Merry Brandybuck) he finally capitulates and purchases his first pair of eyeglasses at age 45.

It's at age 50 that his world is turned upside down.

The cross-country trek to Crickhollow is haunted by Black Riders—and, one hot and humid morning, by rain. Rainwater turns Frodo’s glasses all wet and fogged and streaky, and he valiantly tries to keep them clean with his handkerchief, but with a stumble over a hidden root and a slip of the hand he drops his handkerchief in the wet leaves and ruins it. It's not even midday. Frodo, being a BabyTM, thinks to himself, “This is terrible. I can’t see. I’m walking blind in the rain and the forest, I’m hot, I'm wet, I’m tired, it can’t possibly get any worse than this.”

It does.

Frodo falls face-down, with his sword underneath him, at Weathertop, and his glasses receive a hairline fracture. Sam becomes their keeper, tucking them safely into his pocket, as Glorfindel hoists Frodo onto a horse and rushes him to Rivendell. When Frodo makes his stand at the Ford, his vision is blurred; not only by the nearsightedness, but by the Wraith-Sight turning the living world to shades of shadow. He collapses on the bank.

An hour or so later finds him in bed, pale and deathly still, tended under the careful watch of Elrond. Sam slips his glasses onto the bedside table.

By the day of the Council, the elves have replaced the broken lens. They have no need of corrective eyewear themselves, but they are master craftsmen at any trade when they put their minds to it; and the construction and maintenance of eyeglasses is actually a necessity now that Bilbo lives in Rivendell.

But on October 24th, when Frodo first wakes up, his glasses haven't yet been repaired. His health came first, of course; and there was little sense in fixing the little trinket when their owner might not survive to use them.

But he is awake, and he is alive. Frodo steps out of bed and looks at himself in the mirror, surprised to see how much weight he's lost and how much thinner and wiser he looks in the elves' green clothes. And then he turns, catching sight of his spectacles on the nightstand…and seeing that small crack, split right through the lens, makes his shoulder feel ice-cold and crackle with pain, and he shudders.

His glasses are broken far more severely in the fight in Moria. Knocked off his face and trampled underfoot, probably, or got under him somehow when the "hammer and anvil" skewered him. Either way, after Gandalf falls, Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship barely escape with their lives.

Just out of bowshot of the Gate, standing in the midst of the Dimril Dale, they stop to recover and to mourn. Frodo stands upon a ledge with the wind in his face, clutching to his chest his broken spectacles: one lens is crushed, and the nose-bridge is snapped in half.

Gimli repairs them for him during their stay in Lothlorien. Dwarves are known for their skill in masonry, of course, but someone as learned as Gimli is also skilled in glass-blowing, and after a little trial and error, he replicates the prescription right down to the smallest margin of error. It’s not quite the same—maybe it never will be—but it works well enough to keep going.

Still, Frodo wonders if he hadn’t lost half of himself, too, like the shards of glass lying somewhere in the dark of Moria.

In the shadow of Amon Hen, the Fellowship breaks. Sam is his only companion now. Somewhere in the maze of the Emyn Muil, one of the hinge screws begins to get loose. They’re stopped for their midday meal—and Sam is busy cobbling together their little lunch of lembas and a few wrinkled berries that he foraged from the banks of the River—when Frodo attempts to twist the screw back in with his fingernails and teeth. He fumbles it, and the screw drops right out and disappears into the gravel and the thin grass. He sighs, lamenting that he forgot to bring his repair kit from home in Bag End.

“Repair kit?” says Sam. “Well, bless me, Mr. Frodo, I’d almost forgotten!” He throws open his pack and buries his entire arm into it, all the way up to his shoulder and almost to his neck, rummaging around until he cries “ah-ha!” and drags himself to the surface.

In his hand, held high over his head, is a little brown case. It was one of the various small belongings of his master's that he'd packed in Rivendell, to bring them out in triumph when they were called for, in a moment just like this.

Frodo—overwhelmed with equal parts delight, relief, and annoyance—cries, “My dear Sam! You might have mentioned that earlier!”

“Slipped my mind, sir, begging your pardon,” Sam answers as Frodo takes it from him. “But we also had the help of elves and dwarves and other such folk who’d repair ‘em better than the both of us.” He has the good grace to look a little embarrassed, but still peacocking with pride on his foresight saving the day.

Frodo has opened the case on his knee and pulled out one of the little screwdrivers, but he looks up, and seeing the look on Sam’s face—desperately hoping for praise, but too polite to ask for it—he smiles.

“What would I ever do without you, Sam?”

Sam puffs up like a pleased rooster, and his smile widens until it nearly overtakes his face. Frodo can hardly hold himself back from laughing.

“Help me find that missing screw, won’t you? It fell into the grass somewhere around here.”

That instance ends happily, but their good luck doesn’t last forever. Frodo loses his handkerchief in the putrid bog of the Dead Marshes, and cannot wash the fingerprints of mud and filth off his lenses. Mordor grows—a distant, shapeless, black-grey blob on the edge of his vision, lit by fire.

It’s in Cirith Ungol that he loses his glasses for good. Somehow, they manage to stay on him in Shelob’s lair, though the hobbits scramble through the bones and filth and web-laced crevasses in the rock; but Sam is held up by Gollum, and Shelob poisons Frodo, and when the orcs find and strip him they take the glasses as a prize.

Far away, at the Black Gate, though he doesn’t know it until later, the Mouth of Sauron will present his trophies: a cloak, a staff, a mithril shirt, and a broken pair of glasses.

When Sam arrives to rescue Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol, he doesn’t have his spectacles.

Only the Ring.

Frodo shambles through Mordor, basically blind, tripping over loose rocks and shale. The visions that swim before his eyes, taunting and just out of reach, are perhaps the effect of this cursed land, perhaps the illusion of his own failing vision…perhaps the trick of the Enemy in his mind.

All is a blur of exhaustion and starvation and acrid, furnace-dry, throat-burn air, until the bitter end.

The Ring is destroyed.

Frodo wakes up in Ithilien, his hand heavily bandaged. Within time, from the artisans of Gondor, he receives a new pair of glasses.

Those are the same he carries with him until the end of his life, when he boards the ship in the Grey Havens.

[frodo-with-glasses]

Frodo with Glasses timeline

Googling “Frodo with glasses” will mostly get you a bunch of joke images of Elijah Wood and Harry Potter photoshopped together but listen, guys—GUYS—you’re sleeping on a huge opportunity for ANGST.

So here’s the timeline, as I envision it. There’s a tendency for poor eyesight in the Baggins line. Bilbo wore eyeglasses constantly by the time he adopted Frodo. Though he didn’t necessarily need them yet when Bilbo made his dramatic disappearance, a few more decades of studying and reading by candlelight turned Frodo soundly nearsighted by the time he had to leave the Shire.

It's raining on the nighttime road to Bree. Rainwater turns Frodo's glasses all wet and fogged and streaky, and he valiantly tries to keep them clean with his handkerchief, but either when he's startled by the Black Rider or just in a slip of hand he drops his handkerchief in the mud and ruins it and that's the end of that. Frodo, being a BabyTM, thinks to himself, “This is terrible. I can’t see. I’m walking blind in the rain, I’m cold, I’m tired, it can’t possibly get any worse than this.”

It does.

Those glasses receive a hairline fracture in one lens at Weathertop. Sam becomes their keeper, tucking them safely into his pocket, as Glorfindel bundles the half-conscious Frodo onto a horse and rushes him to Rivendell. When Aragorn and the other hobbits arrive, Frodo is in bed, pale and deathly still, tended under the careful watch of Elrond. Sam slips his glasses onto the bedside table.

By the time Frodo has fully recovered, the elves have replaced the broken lens; though they have no need of corrective eyewear themselves, Bilbo lives in Rivendell and still needs his glasses—and come on, they’re elves. They can figure it out.

But every now and then, while Frodo is still convalescing, he’ll look over at his spectacles on the nightstand…and seeing that small crack, split right through the lens, makes his shoulder feel ice-cold and crackle with pain, and he’ll shudder.

They’re broken far more severely in the fight in Moria. Knocked off his face and trampled underfoot, probably, or got under him somehow when the cave troll skewered him. Either way, after Gandalf falls, Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship barely escape with their lives, and as they stop outside the cave mouth to recover, he stands on the mountainside, clutching his spectacles with one crushed lens and the nose-bridge snapped in half.

Gimli repairs them for him during their stay in Lothlorien. Dwarves are known for their skill in masonry, of course, but someone as learned as Gimli is also skilled in glass-blowing, and after a little trial and error, he replicates the prescription right down to the smallest margin of error. It’s not quite the same—maybe it never will be—but it works well enough to keep going.

Still, Frodo wonders if he hadn’t lost half of himself, too, like the shards of glass lying somewhere in the dark of Moria.

The Fellowship breaks. Sam is his only companion now. Somewhere on the road before Gondor, one of the hinge screws begins to get loose. They’re stopped for their midday meal in a field one day, and Sam is busy cooking, when Frodo attempts to twist the screw back in with his fingernails and teeth. He fumbles it, and the screw drops right out and disappears into the grass. He sighs, lamenting that he forgot to bring his repair kit from home in Bag End.

"Repair kit?" says Sam. “Well, bless me, Mr. Frodo, I’d almost forgotten!” He throws open his pack and buries his entire arm into it, all the way up to his shoulder and almost to his neck, rummaging around until he cries "ah-ha!" and drags himself to the surface.

In his hand, held high over his head, is a little brown case.

Frodo—overwhelmed with equal parts delight, relief, and annoyance—cries, "My dear Sam! You might have mentioned that earlier!"

"Slipped my mind, sir, begging your pardon," Sam answers as Frodo takes it from him. "But we also had the help of elves and dwarves and other such folk who'd repair 'em better than the both of us." He has the good grace to look a little embarrassed, but still peacocking with pride on his foresight saving the day.

Frodo has opened the case on his knee and pulled out one of the little screwdrivers, but he looks up, and seeing the look on Sam's face—desperately hoping for praise, but too polite to ask for it—he smiles.

"What would I ever do without you, Sam?"

Sam puffs up like a pleased rooster, and his smile widens until it nearly overtakes his face. Frodo can hardly hold himself back from laughing.

"Help me find that missing screw, won't you? It fell into the grass somewhere around here."

That instance ends happily, but their good luck doesn't last forever. At some point, one of the temples snaps at the hinge, and none of Frodo's tools can help him restore it. He keeps his spectacles in his pocket from then on, only taking them out when they’re necessary.

Mordor grows—a distant, shapeless, black-grey blob on the edge of his vision, lit by fire.

It’s in Cirith Ungol that he loses them for good. Somehow, they manage to stay on him in Shelob’s lair, scrambling though he does through the putrid bones and filth and web-laced crevasses in the rock; but when she poisons him, and the orcs find and strip him, they take the glasses as a prize.

Far away, at the Black Gate, though he doesn't know it until later, the Mouth of Sauron will present his trophies: a cloak, a staff, a mithril shirt, and a broken pair of glasses.

When Sam arrives to rescue Frodo from the orc prison, he doesn’t have his spectacles.

Only the Ring.

Frodo shambles through Mordor, basically blind, tripping over loose rocks and shale. The visions that swim before his eyes, taunting and just out of reach, are perhaps the effect of this cursed land, perhaps the illusion of his own failing vision…perhaps the trick of the Enemy in his mind.

All is a blur of exhaustion and starvation and acrid, furnace-dry, throat-burn air, until the bitter end.

The Ring is destroyed.

Frodo wakes up in Ithilien, his hand heavily bandaged. Within time, from the artisans of Gondor, he receives a new pair of glasses.

Those are the same he carries with him until the end of his life, when he boards the ship in the Grey Havens.