“The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien (post 15): Author blames novel’s premise-violating climax on “the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself)”

“Gollum on the edge of the abyss was fighting like a mad thing with an unseen foe. — It is not explained how Gollum was able to find his foe while Frodo was invisible. Readers have suggested, among other solutions, that he did so by means of a keen sense of hearing or smell, or by sensing the presence of the Ring, having become attuned to it through long years of possession; or that Frodo cast a shadow, as Bilbo did while wearing the Ring in The Hobbit, Chapter 5; or that Gollum found Frodo by sheer chance. Chance, however, would seem to be ruled out by Tolkien’s comment to Amy Ronald on 27 July 1956, that at the point when Frodo’s will failed and he claimed the Ring, ‘the Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself)’, i.e. God (Letters, p. 253)” (1, pp. 619-620).

By “the Other Power,” did Tolkien mean God? That is what people usually mean when they capitalize “Other Power.” However, it seems unfair to Tolkien to think he was so presumptuous and sacrilegious as to claim God as his cowriter and blame God for his novel’s glaring mistake.

Then, if it was not God (and, presumably, not the Devil, either), who, other than an alternate personality, could Tolkien have meant by “the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself”?

Why would an alternate personality, writing the story, make such a glaring mistake? Perhaps, since Tolkien was taking credit for the novel, it was the only way for the alternate personality to call attention to itself.

1. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.