Flieger has demonstrated that, for Tolkien, places like “the Barrow-downs are more than mere scenery or topography, more than human-made relics become monuments of history. They are at once repositories of the past and gateways to it, portals through which old memory can touch the present, and the present can connect back to the past” (Flieger 2007: 110), i.e. the same can be applied to Elostirion, the Palantir-bearing white tower on the Tower Hills, west of the Shire. Flieger draws the above conclusion within her larger argument for Tolkien's belief in reincarnation, basing this broader hypothesis on the link to dream theories in the early 20th century, e.g. Jung and Cline, and on inherited / transmitted or extra-personal memory in the cases of Alboin and Audoin (The Lost Road), of Lowdham and Jeremy (The Notion Club Papers) and of Merry Brandybuck (Fog on the Barrow-Downs).

[In the case of Merry, who is influenced by the memory of the last prince of Cardolan being killed by the men of Carn Dûm through a spear thrust into his heart, Tolkien seems to be dwelling on that theme a bit longer, contrasting the negative influence of the Barrow-Down experience with the positive effects of Tom Bombadil on the hobbits. The semantic cohesion of the paragraphs immediately following the one recording the Merry incident is evident from the repetition of the words “merry” and “heart”, cf. “... the horror faded out of their hearts as they looked at him, and saw the merry glint in his eyes” and Tom's words, “Be glad, my merry friends, and let the warm sunlight heat now heart and limb!” While acknowledging the possibility of past events and their memories being linked to places and thus influencing people otherwise unconnected to that past, Tolkien also presents an antidote to such influences and warns of dwelling on such horrors, cf. also Gandalf's criticism of the rulers of Gondor for caring more about the past than about their own children.]

Flieger's connection to Jung's dream psychology is further elaborated by Honegger (2011). [Is there an archetypical significance of the White Tower? cf. also the White Tower in Minas Tirith]

Finally, Cook (2015) links Frodo's dream of a white tower overlooking the Sea to Tolkien's metaphor of a tower in his interpretation of Beowulf as well as to other dreams involving the desire to see the Sea.

[Frodo's dream in Crickhollow is actually interrupted, “... but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.” Tolkien gives a rather prosaic explanation for this interruption, including the light and the thunder, at the beginning of the next chapter. “Merry was standing there with a candle in one hand, and banging on the door with the other.” cf. Tolkien's frequent warnings against taking things too seriously?]

References

Flieger, V. 2007. The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-earth. Tolkien Studies 4: 99-112.

Honegger, T. 2011. More Light than Shadow? Jungian Approaches to Tolkien and the Archetypeal Image of the Shadow.

Cook, S. 2015. On the shores of the shoreless sea.