So now Frodo takes center stage. There’s a 17 year gap between Bilbo’s departure and Gandalf returning to reveal the identity of the Ring - something the movie leaves out, which I understand. Having “and then 17 years passed and not much happened” is a bit of a tricky sell in a book, let alone a movie. But I actually think it’s important for Frodo as a character, and movie-Frodo suffered for it. This isn’t a Farm Boy with a Destiny here: Frodo is a mature individual.
And we start getting real indications of troubles in the world, though from a very Hobbitish perspective. Their chief concern is with the increasing number of strangers passing through the Shire, and they bring with them vague rumors of trouble to the east and south. The scene with Sam and Ted Sandyman and others discussing these rumors in the Green Dragon is one of my favorite scenes in the book, as it happens.
And then Gandalf shows back up. And with no real lead-up or mystery, no drawing things out to string the reader along and keep them interested, Tolkien lays it all out. The stakes, the dangers. What the Ring is, and how difficult it will be to hide or destroy. How desperate Sauron is to find it. The history of the Rings, of the War of the Last Alliance and the overthrow of Sauron, how Isildur kept the Ring, how it came to Gollum, and on and on. Like opening with an unmitigated infodump on Hobbits, this is something that most people would say is bad writing if described to them generically. It’s certainly not a common approach - I can think of very few works of what I will call (with apologies to Terry Brooks) “serious” fantasy that have the Wise Old Wizard figure lay it all out like this at the beginning. The Wheel of Time is the only one I can think of, and even then Robert Jordan was both aping and subverting Tolkien with careful deliberation. This is one of many examples where, despite being in many ways the archetype of the fantasy book, Lord of the Rings is actually pretty atypical.
In the end, just like how there are no tired tropes, only boring authors, any approach to telling a story can work if the author has the skill and talent to make it so. Which Tolkien does.
We also see Tolkien laying the groundwork form some of the big themes of the story. For example, Gollum and the part he has to play:
And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.
And the notion that Eru Ilúvatar (a.k.a God) has a role to play in things:
‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.’
And we get the first hints that the Shire is not as sacrosanct as might be hoped for, which will pay off in a huge way in one of the most important chapters in the entire book when we get to “The Scouring of the Shire”:
‘I should like to save the Shire, if I could – though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.
And then in another favorite moment, poor Sam gets literally hauled in through a window (grass clippings and all) and packed off to Mordor along with Frodo.
To bring in a tidbit from outside material, I want to draw your attention to this moment when Frodo offers Gandalf the Ring:
‘No!’ cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. ‘With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.’ His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. ‘Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me!
Here is what Tolkien had to say about this in letter #246 from The Letters of JRR Tolkien:
Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great).
[The draft ends here. In the margin Tolkien wrote: 'Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left "good" clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil.']
In other words, Gandalf would immediately set out to use the Ring for good. Which would steadily shift to using the Ring for the “greater good.” Which would lead to - well, you know how that story goes.
One last point. There’s an exchange between Sam and Ted Sandyman that is often-cited as evidence that maybe the Ent-wives ended up in the Shire:
‘All right,’ said Sam, laughing with the rest. ‘But what about these Tree-men, these giants, as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen up away beyond the North Moors not long back.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘My cousin Hal for one. He works for Mr. Boffin at Overhill and goes up to the Northfarthing for the hunting. He saw one.’
‘Says he did, perhaps. Your Hal’s always saying he’s seen things; and maybe he sees things that ain’t there.’
‘But this one was as big as an elm tree, and walking – walking seven yards to a stride, if it was an inch.’
‘Then I bet it wasn’t an inch. What he saw was an elm tree, as like as not.’
‘But this one was walking, I tell you; and there ain’t no elm tree on the North Moors.’
‘Then Hal can’t have seen one,’ said Ted. There was some laughing and clapping: the audience seemed to think that Ted had scored a point.
I’ll go into the Ents in more detail later, but this isn’t anything to be excited about. Thanks to Christopher publishing the Histories, we can know that this was something written in very early drafts of LotR - long before Treebeard and the Ents were even conceived of, and when LotR still had much more of the children’s-story tone of The Hobbit. This passage made it through the long years while the tale grew in the telling remarkably unchanged.
Next week: “Three is Company.” Wacky hijinks ensue when Frodo needs to convince Mr. Roper not to evict him from Bag-End after being caught in a seemingly-very-risque-but-actually-completely-innocent situation.