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Old 08-20-2004, 07:09 PM   #11
Fordim Hedgethistle
Gibbering Gibbet
 
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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Fordim Hedgethistle has been trapped in the Barrow!
I think Aiwendil makes an interesting point about the contrast of this chapter of ‘refuge’ to the others. But I don’t think that this consists of an alteration in the pattern, but a deepening of it. As so many here have already pointed out, this chapter is one of darkness and lurking danger, doubt and fear. It is also one in which no women appear! Unlike the Maggot farm and the House of Bombadil, there is no Mrs Butterbur, and I think that this might go a long way to explaining the oddly discordant feel of this chapter. Without the ‘balance’ wrought by the feminine, the Pony – no matter how cozy and welcoming a place – cannot really be a refuge. It’s for this reason that I don’t read this chapter as a ‘refuge’ one at all, but as the first stage of the hobbits’ next stage of their adventure, which will end at Rivendell under the protection of Elrond and Arwen.

The way this chapter begins is interesting in this light, insofar as we go back to the earlier discussions we had about the Shire as an enclosed society trying to shut out the wider world. Bree is the mirror image of that, but the barriers are here both much more visible (the gate, the wall etc) and – consequently – much more vulnerable (the walls can be climbed, the gate is open to refugees, the spies are in their midst already, etc). It’s as though having left their private fantasy of an enclosed and safe place in the Shire (and having been awoken to the fact that it was a fantasy) the hobbits are now able or ready to face the reality of the world, as it is reflected here in Bree. It’s not all Party Fields and second breakfasts on the lawn, with hot baths and beer in the evenings. There are pleasant things in the world yes (like hobbits, and beer, and a friendly Innkeeper) but there are dark things as well – and sometimes even the dark things aren’t what you think they are: Strider is neither the dangerous threat he first appears to be, nor is he ‘just’ the Ranger Strider. Given this, I think it makes perfect sense (from a thematic point of view) that it is Merry who goes out into the night: as the most grown-up and ‘aware’ of the hobbits, he is the one most able and capable of engaging with that real world beyond the Shire.

The last point I want to make about this chapter is the manner in which the Ring gets on Frodo’s finger. His actual disappearing act is described from the point of view of the inn’s patrons, so we have no real narrative of the moment itself, only Frodo’s memory of it. And this is far from revealing:

Quote:
How it came to be on his finger he could not [edit: or would not?] tell. He could only suppose that he had been handling it in his pocket while he sang, and that somehow it had slipped on when he stuck out his hand with a jerk to save his fall. For a moment he wondered if the Ring itself had not played him a trick; perhaps it had tried to reveal itself in response to some wish or command that was felt in the room.
The disturbing thing about this is how Frodo seems almost desperate to avoid accepting responsibility for what’s happened. He blames the Ring for ‘tricking’ him (“nasty tricksy Precious; trickses us it did!”), and then some other will in the room. The closest he comes to acknowledging that he might have had some part in it is his admission that he had been “handling it in his pocket.” This in itself is telling, though, since one of the first things we heard from Bilbo in his conversation with Gandalf in Chapter One was how he was always fingering the Ring and playing with it in his pocket. The Ring is already exerting quite a pull on Frodo, and he is here either unable or unwilling to admit just how much…
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