LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 03 - Three Is Company

[davem]

My overall impression of this chapter is that its a transition from one world to another. We begin in the mundane world of the Shire, with packing up for a move, meals, washing up left for the next tenant. We end up in the world of the High Elves, ‘Ancient History’ come alive. Its a transition from the mundane to the mythic. While still in the Shire Frodo learns that the world is really ;larger, more magical & more dangerous than he could have imagined, or rather that the things he had imagined, the stories he had been told, are real. Its also, in a way, a microcosm of the whole story - setting out from home, the ordinary world, then a confrontation with the forces of evil, & finally ending at peace with the Elves.

We also discover more about Frodo & his role. One thing I wanted to pick up on from the early drafts is part of the conversation with Gildor which didn’t make it into the final version:

The beginning of Bingo’s conversation with Gildor is extant in three forms. All three begin as in FR. p92 (‘They spoke of many things, old & new’), but in the first Gildor goes on from ‘The secret will not reach the Enemy from us’ with ‘But why did you not go before?’ - the first thing that he says to Bingo in the original version. (‘Why did you choose this moment to set out?’, P62). Bingo replies with a very brief reference to his divided mind about leaving the Shire, & then Gildor explains him to himself:

‘That I can understand,’ said Gildor. ‘Half your heart wished to go, but the other half held you back; for its home was in the Shiire, & its delight in bed & board & th evoices of friends, & in the changing of the gentle seasons among the fields & trees. But since you are a hobbit that half is the stronger, as it was even in Bilbo. What has made it surrender?’

‘Yes, I am an ordinary hobbit, & so I shall always be, I imagine,’ said Bingo. ‘But a most un-hobbitlike fate has been laid upon me.’

‘Then you are not an ordinary hobbit,’ said Gildor, ‘for otherwise that could not be so. But the half that is plain hobbit will suffer much I fear from being forced to follow the other half which is worthy of the strange fate, untill it too becomes worthy (& yet remains hobbit). For that must be the purpose of your fate, or the purpose of that part of your fate which concerns you yourself. The hobbit half that loves the Shire is not to be despised but it has to be trained, & to rediscover the changing seasons & voices of friends when they have been lost.’

I find this fascinating. Bingo (=Frodo), like Sam, is ‘torn in two’. Half of him wants to remain an ordinary hobbit, the other half wishes to leave & enter a different world - yet, the half of him that wishes to leave is ‘fated’ to go. He is called, against his will (or the will of his hobbit half) to a higher destiny. The hobbit half will have to surrender to that desire. And that hobbit half will be changed so much that by the end it will have to ‘ rediscover the changing seasons & voices of friends when they have been lost.’ The hobbit half will have to be ‘submerged’, put on hold, till the destiny of his other half has been fulfilled, &yet that hobbit half will be changed by the experience - so changed that it will have to learn how to be a hobbit all over again.

The other interesting thing Gildor says is: ‘For that must be the purpose of your fate, or the purpose of that part of your fate which concerns you yourself.’ Which means? Only part of Bingo’s fate concerns himself. So he has a ‘fate’ which only partly concerns himself. Yet how can Bingo’s fate not concern himself (not concern himself at all if we take Gildor’s words literally).

Perhaps Gildor is stating that there is a kind of ‘universal fate’, which involves each of us, of which our individual fate is a small part? Or perhaps he is implying that the fate of ‘Bingo son of Drogo’ is only a small part of the fate of a ‘greater’ being, whose life in Middle Earth is not the be all & end all.

I suspect that Tolkien felt he had strayed too far into metaphysics in this conversation & decided to cut the whole thing. But its fascinating to speculate where he was going. My own feeling is that, like the religious element, this idea was taken up into the story itself. I think its present in Frodo’s story, but Tolkien has decided he doesn’t want to have any character spell it out so blatantly.

Finally, the desription of the stars & constellations of Middle Earth. I don’t know if anyone has gone deeply into the astronomy (astrology? Men apparently watched the stars from the pinacle of Orthanc) of Middle Earth. I did find this site:
.http://users.cybercity.dk/%7Ebkb1782/tolkien/

which contains a star map of Middle Earth (it also has a nice interactive map of Beleriand).