Linards Ticmanis said:
> ...no, don't take the subject line as an excuse for inane humor please. 
Must... resist... urge...
> What I want to ask is, does anyone know off-hand, when is the last time
> before the destruction of the Ring that Tolkien tells us what Frodo
> thinks and/or feels. A lot of the later stuff is written exclusively
> from Sam's POV as you all know.
I think the exact moment of this is when Frodo is attacked by Shelob.
'Come!' cried Frodo. 'On! On!' Wild joy at their escape from the very
mouth of despair suddenly filled all his mind. His head whirled as with a
draught of potent wine. He sprang out, shouting as he came.
It seemed light in that dark land to his eyes that had passed through the
den of night. The great smokes had risen and grown thinner, and the last
hours of a sombre day were passing; the red glare of Mordor had died away in
sullen gloom. Yet it seemed to Frodo that he looked upon a morning of sudden
hope. Almost he had reached the summit of the wall. Only a little higher
now. The Cleft, Cirith Ungol, was before him, a dim notch in the black
ridge, and the horns of rock darkling in the sky on either side. A short
race, a sprinter's course, and he would be through!
'The pass, Sam!' he cried, not heeding the shrillness of his voice, that
released from the choking airs of the tunnel rang out now high and wild.
'The pass! Run, run, and we'll be through -- through before any one can stop
us!'
Sam came up behind as fast as he could urge his legs; but glad as he was
to be free, he was uneasy, and as he ran, he kept glancing back at the dark
arch of the tunnel, fearing to see eyes, or some shape beyond his imagining,
spring out in pursuit. Too little did he or his master know of the craft of
Shelob. She had many exits from her lair.
And AFAIR, we never see Frodo's POV again.
> There's actually more to this question; the only non-hobit whose POV we
> get to see is Gimli IIRC, and that only sparingly, in those chapters
> where no hobbit is present. I think one could write a bit about why we
> get a certain character's POV at certain times, but not at others, and
> what are the reasons for going from omniscient narrator's POV to
> character's POV and back in certain places. The question of the mental
> camera angle, so to speak.
Actually, there are at least several other places where we see other
people's POV and some of them would be impossible for the hypothetical
Hobbit narrator to ever know for sure. Immediately after the quote I gave
above, we hear about what Gollum would do with/for and say about Shelob even
though there's no way we should really know that for sure. And immediately
after *that*, we get *Sauron*'s POV about Shelob.
Also, immediately after Frodo claims the Ring but before it is destroyed, we
read what Sauron's thoughts are on the matter:
And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in
Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken,
and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown.
The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all the
shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the
magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all
the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in
consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For
he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.
From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his
stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor
ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly
steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten.
The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with
overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a
rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the
Nasgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards
to Mount Doom.
In "The Voice of Saruman", we read a few times of what "the troops" are
thinking, how they are swayed by Saruman's Voice. We even get an exact
"thought line" from Theoden's mind: "Even in the mind of Théoden the thought
took shape, like a shadow of doubt: 'He will betray us; he will go - we
shall be lost.'"
Of course, a good part of Book 3 is not from any Hobbit's POV because no
Hobbit was present. Most of the time, though, we don't get to see anyone's
thought processes. But at the very begining, in "The Departure of Boromir",
we get to see quite a bit of what Aragorn's thinking.
"The Steward and the King" is a mismash of POVs. The "Eowyn and Faramir in
the Houses of Healing" part is Faramir's POV. The "return of the Hosts of
the West and the Crowning of Aragorn" is Ioreth's POV. We get some purely
descriptive dialog and narration (could be from almost anyone's POV). The
"finding of the White Tree" is Aragorn's POV. And the very end of the
chapter, the "coming of the Elves", is... [drumroll, please]... Frodo's POV!
Weird.
Anyway, that's just what I could think of offhand and what I found while
looking up what I thought of offhand. There is likely many more instances.
||// // "The narrative ends here. || //
|// // There is no reason to think ||//
(/ // that any more was ever written. |//
||// The manuscript, which becomes //
|// increasingly rapid towards the end, //|
(/ peters out in a scrawl." //||
|| -Christopher Tolkien, _The Lost Road_ // ||
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