When Smith was 57
N.E. Brigand figures that this section starts when Smith is 57, nearly 48 years
since that feast and 47 years since he could visit Faery. Smith is
walking in the woods of Outer Faery, so lost in thought that he fails to notice
the sound of approaching footsteps. We learn that earlier that day, he
appeared before the Queen of Faery, discovering she was the one he had danced
with in the meadow. N.E. Brigand suggests that the queen may have
appeared as a dancing maid as a transition between the doll on the cake and her
true self.
The Queen gives Smith a message for the King: "The time has come. Let him
choose." N.E. Brigand believes the message means, “The time has come for
Smith to relinquish the star and choose his successor.” Kimi suggests it
is a special honor for a Star-bearer to choose his successor. NZ Strider
observes that the King and Queen are in communication with each other since she
knows the King hasn’t yet revealed himself to Smith.
Alf is the source of the footsteps, and he accompanies Smith back to Wootton
Major. We soon learn that Alf has been busy restoring the Hall to its
former glory. Under Alf’s guidance, Smith gives up the star and names
Nokes’ grandson, Tim of Townsend, as his successor. Then, Smith
understands that Alf is the King of Faery. N.E. Brigand wonders if the
king’s disguise perhaps plays “on people's desire for normalcy, so that they
will let him go about his work restoring the hall and its true traditions.”
What it means
Curious compares this story to a sketch, “beautiful but tantalizingly
incomplete.” He also thinks Kocher is wise to call "Smith of Wootton Major" a
meditation rather than a story, closely related to "On Fairy-stories."
NZ Strider suggests that the Queen’s comments about the doll “might imply that
the ‘fainthearted’ who only appreciates the ‘charm’ of the little doll with a
wand … is still gaining a bit of appreciation for Faërie [and] may, in the end,
eventually … arrive at the true form it reflected.”
He explains Smith has mixed feelings as he walks through the woods since he is
“not only in both the real world and Faërie, but also outside of them and
looking at them… and … he feels at peace because … there is no conflict between
the two as regards him.”
There were a variety of answers to Why did Smith’s time in Faerie have to
end?
- “…Smith… has in a sense "outgrown" Faery. If we
take Faery to represent the imagination, it could suggest that he now cannot
escape into imagination--with all its alluring promises and dangers--but must
now live in the everyday world and pass the gift on to another.” --
drogo_drogo
- “…for the same reason that all stories must end: or, rather, that all
persons' time in a story must end, for the story goes on without them.”
-- NZ Strider
- “Tolkien may be saying that you must find heirs and not let your gift die
with you.” -- N.E. Brigand
Curious quoted Tolkien admitting that the Master Cook and the Great Hall “are a
(somewhat satirical) allegory of the village church, and village parson.”
Curious observes “…that Alf restores the Parish Hall … to its former dignity,
even though most of the adults in the village do not understand what he has
done. Smith, though, understands, and … His travels in Fairy have
restored his child-like sense of wonder.”
Penthe wrote:
The Hall is remade to be beautiful to Smith (and to
his successor, presumably) so that he can see that beauty is possible in his
world, as a thing itself as well as a reflection of Faery. The next thing Smith
sees that is beautiful are the stars in the sky - something greater or removed
from both Smith's 'real world' and the Faery world in the book. If he had not
been blinded by tears, the next thing beautiful he saw would have been the Fay
Star. I think that Alf has arranged this all beautifully so that Smith can see
the possibility of beauty and joy both in and beyond his world.
…Smith needing help to hand over the star is a similar reminder that it is
actually not his to give up, I think.
There were various other
theories as to why Smith was blinded by tears:
- “Perhaps because he can no longer escape to Fairy… Smith is now once
again trapped in this vale of tears we call life.” -- Curious
- “Perhaps it was just the pungent spices which brought tears to his
eyes? … Still, returning the star is for Smith a
moment of great sadness; and since the star has been a light to him for many
years, that he should not be able to see without it does not surprise.” -- NZ
Strider
“not an obvious choice”
Kimi suggests that Smith “wasn't a great singer till he got the star, just as
Tim wasn't a dancer. They weren't yet graceful, but they had the capacity for
grace.” N.E. Brigand observed that “like Smith living at the edge of his
village, his successor Tim is from ‘Townsend,’ that is ‘town's end.’"
Penthe speculated “perhaps this makes it easier for them to make the even
greater crossing from the day-to-day world into Faery.” Curious suggests,
“his ability to give up the Star, his generosity, may be another reason the
Star came to Smith in the first place … The desire to possess and
dominate seems like the chief sin in Tolkien's stories, and generosity and
humility the chief virtue.”
"All the way from Daybreak to Evening"
- “Perhaps he's
referring to his travels in Faery, which have lasted from his youth to his late
middle-age.” -- Kimi
- “…perhaps Fairy is the land of Daybreak, and the mundane world is the land
of Evening.” -- Curious
- “I agree that this is a metaphor for life. However, remember that
Smith first realized his gift with daybreak and the birds singing on his tenth
birthday … And now it is literally evening.” -- N.E. Brigand
In relation to Tolkien’s other works
N.E. Brigand said “There are many parallels to Galadriel and the Fellowship's
visit to Lothlorien, so many I think Tolkien found something especially
important in what he wrote there… The parallels are unmistakable; the
meaning I still search for.” Penthe suggests, “Tolkien likes re-using a
good motif. The blindfolding by friendly hands is a wonderful way of revealing
the transcendent surprise…”
Curious is reminded “of Bilbo giving up the Ring, except of course the Star is
good and the Ring bad -- which reminds me of the Silmarils or Arkenstone.
Both good and bad objects can be tempting.” N.E. Brigand was reminded not
only of Bilbo and Gandalf, but “Frodo's conversations with Gandalf and with
Galadriel, in that Smith offers the star to Alf (and Alf declines to take it
for himself). The key difference is that the star, although perilous, is
not evil.”
NZ Strider compares Rider to Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam who also enter the enchanted
realm and never return.
Kimi thinks that by describing Nell’s sister as "a wise mother" without
mentioning the father, Alf hints that Tim was a better man than his
father. If so, her marriage is similar to those of Belladonna Took and
Nerdanel.
Curious compares the white road to the “white lilies, white robes, white stags,
white ships” in Tolkien’s other works. N.E. Brigand notes that the road
to Faery went west.
“from Daybreak to Evening” reminds him of Gimli's description of Arwen and
Galadriel as Evening and Morning. N.E. Brigand is reminded of two other
Fairy-dawn references in Tolkien's work: “in Smith, the innermost part of Fairy
is the ‘Valley of Evermorn’; and in the LotR there is Valinor, ‘A far green
country under a swift sunrise.’”
In relation to Tolkien’s life
N.E. Brigand notes that Smith’s age when he gave up the star was “very near
Tolkien's age when he completed the LotR.”
Smith’s awakened desire to see faery reminded Penthe “of Tolkien's own
development from the cutesy-pie poem he wrote for his wife in their courting
days.”
drogo_drogo reminds us that Edith Tolkien was the model for the Faery
Queen/Luthien figure dancing in the woods.
Curious said that “Tolkien thought highly of his own maternal grandfather John
Suffield, on whom he probably modeled both Bilbo's maternal grandfather the Old
Took and Smith's maternal grandfather Rider.”
NZ Strider suggested that Tolkien, “who regretted the changes instituted by
Second Vatican, may have longed for a change back to the old ways.” Kimi
(and N.E. Brigand) thinks a better match is “a ‘reform’ of the Established
(i.e. Church of England) Church that would see it return to the Catholic
Church.”
N.E. Brigand speculates that “If Smith is Tolkien, I expect he hopes he’s
repaid his gift of fantasy through spreading the good word in his books.”
Karmul compares Tolkien to a smith who “wrought ME from the age old legends and
myths that he may have grown up with, or learned during his years at
University.” Curious also notes that Tolkien was like Smith in that he
was an observer of Faery, not a participant. He wonders if Tolkien had
“given up on The Silmarillion, or perhaps he simply looked ahead towards his
own death.” NZ Strider asserts,
Yes, Smith represents Tolkien;
and for Tolkien too there came a time when he knew that he had to lay down his
pen and to admit that he simply would never finish the Silmarillion or
any of his other projects. Smith was the last story he wrote; the story
with which he passed on the star to whoever would take it
up.
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