[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Welcome to the discussion thread for the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings. There is so much to discuss that I will not even attempt to be comprehensive in this initial post. Instead, I will merely point out three passages that I think open the door to themes and ideas that will become extremely important in the book as it proceeds.

They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to meet come blundering by; and this art they have developed until to Men it may seem magical. But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that hereditary and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races.

This passage clearly sets up a debate between “art” and “magic” that goes to the very heart of what differentiates good from evil in Middle-Earth. On the one hand there is the ‘natural’ (“close friendship with the earth" ) “art” of the Hobbits who can disappear through their “skill”; on the other there is the “magic” of the Enemy whose Ring confers invisibility. The effect of the magic and art is the same (invisibility) but the means are completely different. This passage is extremely dubious about magic insofar as it seems to be a kind of a ‘cheat’ (“may seem magical" ) – instead, this description of the Hobbits would seem to suggest that their abilities are derived from their own efforts. What I find most interesting about this passage is how it begins the book’s exploration of the relation between Hobbits and Sauron (the Ring) not in terms of good versus evil, but in terms of natural skill versus unnatural/deceitful magic.

At the same time, the passage hints rather darkly at a connection of some kind between Hobbits and the Ring, insofar as the magic (or ‘magic' ) of each is defined by the ability to confer invisibility.

The Mathom-house it was called: for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort.

I always like to think of the Ring as a mathom when I read this. It is the ultimate Object for which there is no “immediate use” and yet which anyone who possesses it is “unwilling to throw away.” Unlike true mathoms, however, the Ring is not something that is willingly “passed from hand to hand.” As in the passage I cited above, this one points to the profound and important differences between Hobbits and the Ring, while at the same time hinting at some kind of dark connection. On the one hand, the Hobbits seem to have found the ‘solution’ to the Ring: rather than letting it ‘clutter up’ one’s hole, it is better to “throw away” the Ring. Hobbits, with their desire to live a quiet and simple (elsewhere in the Prologue we hear it is a “well-ordered" ) life, really do have “no immediate use” for the Ring. At the same time, however, while they are willing to give up their mathoms, they are not willing to let them be destroyed or cast away: they end up in the “mathom house.” So even though they are apparently able to rid themselves of the things that threaten to overwhelm them, they are not willing to forsake these objects entirely.

For they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws; and usually they kept the laws of free will, because they were The Rules (as they said), both ancient and just.

This is one of those wonderfully simple sentences that Tolkien so often writes that open up into all kinds of complexities when you pay it a bit of closer attention. How, in the name of Eru, can Hobbits keep the “laws of free will” because they are “The Rules”? This would appear to be a contradiction in terms: “free will” would appear to mean freedom, and a lack of constraint – the ability to do as one chooses; but “The Rules” (capitalised no less) would appear to be the precise opposite – one follows rules and does what they say. (Again, there is a dark premonition of how the Hobbits are perhaps connected to the forces of evil at an intrinsic level: when the travellers come back they are upset by all the Rules that Sharkey has put into place. But I am getting ahead of myself by about 13 months!) I don’t think that this really is a contradiction, but it is a very complicated kind of statement, and one that goes to the very nature of the story that is about to be told.

The important point about all three of these passages is, I think, that they are about Hobbits and not about Frodo, Sam, Merry or Pippin. They are all extraordinary people – heroes, even – but their ability to do good in the war against evil is here, I think, being set up as being the result of their Hobbit-natures. The book thus begins with a celebration not of the individuals who will be combating evil, but of the ideals and qualities that can be successfully pitted against the forces of darkness. At the same time, the Prologue seems to acknowledge that connection that exists between the forces of good and the forces of evil – perhaps even acknowledges the co-dependence of light and dark.

One last point to make about the Prologue is, of course, how it works so hard to establish the fiction of the book as being a historical document retrieved and recovered by an editor from older primary works, rather than a fictional story told by an author. It is here that Tolkien makes his most apparent move, I think, into the idea that these events are ‘historical’ and therefore open to interpretation by a community of readers rather than subservient to any single interpretation, be that interpretation authorial or from a single readerly perspective.