A Short Cut to Mushrooms! I love this chapter. I love Frodo and Pippin's banter here, and the skillful juxtaposition of further exploration of Hobbit culture and our protagonists with the increasing dread of the Black Riders.
The Black Riders are blood curdlingly creepy in this chapter. I don't have the book with me in English at the moment (
Legate has my copy
) but the passage where the Hobbits hear the Nazgűl's cry ust be one of the scariest things Tolkien ever wrote.
EDIT: Well I just scrolled though this thread and found my own post from 2008 where I posted the quotes, so:
Quote:
Ho! Ho! Ho! they began again louder. They stopped short suddenly. Frodo sprang to his feet. A long-drawn wail came down the wind, like the cry of some evil and lonely creature. It rose and fell, and ended on a high piercing note. Even as they sat and stood, as if suddenly frozen, it was answered by another cry, fainter and further off, but no less chilling to the blood. There was then a silence, broken only by the sound of the wind in the leaves.
--
"It was not bird or beast," said Frodo. "It was a call, or a signal - there were words in that cry, though I could not catch them. But no hobbit has such a voice."
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Frodo is positively afraid of the Black Riders as he should be, yet with gentle humour, Tolkien introduces us with another figure Frodo dreads: the Farmer Maggot. Even with Black Riders hunting you, an angry farmer and his angry dogs can genuinely frighten you. Of course, Farmer Maggot turns out to be a firend, and later in the book we learn even more interesting things about him.
I quite love the ending of this chapter too - Tolkien is toying with us a bit more here. A reader might be tricked alongside with Frodo, Pippin and Sam to think Merry is a Black Rider. I recall very vividly when my dad read this part aloud to me and my sister and how the dread I felt when I thought the Black Riders had finally caught up with them - only to learn it was Merry. Well, I'm sure my dad enjoyed making the passage sound as menacing as possible... (And of course, we soon learn the Nazgűl are indeed not far behind.)
I guess I never thought of it that way, but the great thing about this chapter is the beautiful interplay between horror and humour - neither of which is usually brought up when dicussing Tolkien's merits or genres. Tolkien keeps us on the edge with constant reminders of the pursuit, bringing up creepier and creepier details about the Black Riders. Yet there are balancing moments of levity - Tolkien makes fun of his protagonists, of Hobbits in general, and ultimately of us readers.
Yeah, it's a wonderful chapter.