The Road to Mount Doom

Meditations on hope, even in hell

Sam and Frodo’s journey through Mordor is rough reading: a lot of labored walking, overlaid with descriptions of desolation, fatigue, hunger, thirst, and dread. They are marching deeper and deeper into hell, only without the spectacle that Dante saw, just bleakness. It’s no small achievement that Tolkien manages to make these parts still readable, even …