There and Back Again

[Boromir88]

Thanks everyone for the compliments and responses. A lot of good stuff here and I didn't think about how their very different journeys/experiences impacted them in very different ways which made their return to home different. As others have said Bilbo goes off on almost a holiday (a dangerous holiday, but he's not setting out to "save the Shire."), Frodo is leaving Bag End because it will (he hopes) save 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 than 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.'~The Shadow of the Past

A couple things here...I haven't read LOTR in a while, but I just burst out laughing remembering Frodo admitting he's thought an earthquake or a dragon invasion would do the hobbits some good. Haven't we all felt that way about the places we live? In the end though, we don't seriously wish ill-will upon meddlesome relatives and neighbors. The last sentence is nifty foreshadowing. Frodo's decided to leave and finds "wandering more bearable", as long the Shire lays behind safely. But Frodo seems to know already this journey is going to change him, it's much different from Bilbo's and he is attempting to keep the Shire safe and comfortable, but not for himself: "even if my feet cannot stand there again."

'Of course, I have sometimes thought of going away, but I imagined that as kind of a holiday, a series of adventures like Bilbo or better, ending in peace. But this would mean exile, a flight from danger into danger, drawing it after me. And I suppose I must go alone, if I am to do that and save the Shire. But I feel very small, and very uprooted, and well - desperate. The Enemey is so strong and terrible.'~ibid

Frodo's imagined leaving as well, but more like Bilbo's journey. Yes, Bilbo face several dangers and came back changed, but it's quite different from fleeing from danger into even more peril. Bilbo's Took-side overruled his Baggins side of "what will the neighbors say and think?" He had a choice to leave. What choice does Frodo really have? I mean Gandalf comes in and pretty much details Frodo's only option is to flee with the Ring. No wonder he feels "uprooted."

Some other random musings on home and the estrangement from home. That's what sparked the idea to start this thread. I'm trying to find it, but one day I was reading commentary about sci-fi/fantasty stories establishing recognition and estrangement. Recognition being "home," or just having things from the readers' world that we recognize/relate to. The best fantasy stories are created when the author can establish recognition/home to the reader. Tolkien makes it quite easy to relate to Bilbo and Frodo, because even in his Middle-earth, there are simple moments he added to make us feel home, like Bilbo and Frodo. Bilbo chooses to run into this vast land of the strange and unknown, Frodo is essentially forced and thrust into it by the Ring. In both cases, the readers are going through the same exact experiences, we are following Bilbo and Frodo...out of home, into the strange "wide world." But as discussed, it doesn't end there. In fact, I would say it can't end there. We must return home, and either Frodo and Bilbo have changed, home has changed, or both.

Edit: I meant to say, for myself, recognition of home is immediate in The Hobbit. That famous first line pulls you in to "home" right away, and then the description of Bilbo's home. Even if a hobbit-hole isn't my home...there's that saying "Home is where the heart is..." or something along the lines of "Home is what you make of it." The Shire/Bag End isn't our home, but it can feel like, remind us of what home is to us, because of Tolkien's story-telling brilliance.

[Mithadan]

By Galadriel55 He felt it was his duty to keep the Shire safe and hobbitishly unconcerned about the greater troubles of the world. He came back to find that he failed on that count, and he failed to keep the Shire from "growing up" character-wise (becoming worldly-wise?) even when all the repairs were finished.

This is really perceptive. Frodo began by seeking to save the Shire and lure the Ringwraiths away from his home. He then volunteered and set out to save not just the Shire but all of Middle Earth. He does not turn back even when Sam glimpses evil happening in the Shire in Galadriel's mirror, they do not turn back. When they return to the Shire, they find that they failed to do what they set out to do.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

This is really perceptive. Frodo began by seeking to save the Shire and lure the Ringwraiths away from his home. He then volunteered and set out to save not just the Shire but all of Middle Earth. He does not turn back even when Sam glimpses evil happening in the Shire in Galadriel's mirror, they do not turn back. When they return to the Shire, they find that they failed to do what they set out to do.

I think, and quite a few scholars have commented as well, that the return to the Shire by Frodo and friends mirrored many of the veterans returning to Britain after WWI. They left to fight the Hun and for a way of life, but there was a great deal of disillusionment upon their return. It was as if not only they had changed but England, too, was no longer recognizable.

Of course, they left as boys and returned as men, but it was more than that. Some, like the brilliant poet Wilfred Owen, did not escape the abject horror of the war, but rather sought his inevitable doom and willfully died on the front lines rather than going home (there is a story that Owen's friend and fellow writer Siegfried Sassoon, also wounded in the war, threatened to stab Owen in the leg if he tried to return to the front line - Owen secretly returned in spite of the threat). Sassoon and German writer Erich Maria Remarque would eloquently recall the destruction of the body, mind and soul of surviving soldiers.

Tolkien, too, would reflect on this stranger in a strange land effect, and the premise that you can never really go home again. He lost many dear friends, and Britain itself had drastically changed, the agrarian society of his youth was making way for Orkish engines and great brick chimneys belching black smoke above Bywater, and Frodo himself, pale and full of melancholy, could best be described as a shell-shocked soldier unable to cope with the cottages mowed under, replaced by God-awful factories and ugly new houses.

[Mithadan]

Allegory? Or "applicability", then?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Allegory? Or "applicability", then?

Allegorical, but only on a "subsumed" basis, of course.

[Boromir88]

I would definitely call Frodo 'shell-shocked,' but I don't think it's allegorical. Tolkien admits every writer is effected by their experiences to a certain point, but Frodo's shell-shock isn't truly caused by experiences as a soldier in the horrors of war. I think the only battle of army against army he sees is when the Haradrim are ambush by Faramir's men. That was Sam's "first experience" at seeing war up-close and personal, I would guess it was Frodo's too.

Frodo's change is the One Ring removed every sense of home from him and then when the Ring was destroyed there was nothing. Those feeling of home didn't return. For me, it's probably the most chilling, unnerving part of LOTR:

'Do you remember that bit of rabbit, Mr. Frodo?' he said. 'And our place under the warm bank in Captain Faramir's country, the day I saw an oliphaunt?'

'No, I am afraid not, Sam,' said Frodo. 'At least, I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.'~Mount Doom

Sam's role in this journey is keeping Frodo grounded in home. We're surrounded by strange and shock, Sam is in the middle of it all stewing a rabbit. Talking of oliphaunts and people at home will never believe it! He talks of planting trees and seeing Rosie and other friends again. He succeeds marvelously in keeping Frodo reminded of home, until the very end when the Ring inevitably has taken over completely. There is nothing left, Frodo is naked in the dark and he even begins seeing nothing else with his "waking eyes" except "the wheel of fire." That part always gives me intense goose bumps.

The Ring is destroyed, what's left then? No memories return, no sense of home comes back and the only thing he can remember was destroyed. I'm just guessing here, but I think if the Shire was the same as always when Frodo returned, he could have had some sort of recovery post-destruction. Old memories that were lost, could have been replaced by returning new memories to a completely familiar home. But, the changed Frodo and physical change in home...I have no words to describe just how awful to experience it.

[Zigûr]

Frodo's fate is the obvious counterpoint to the argument that The Lord of the Rings lacks consequences because so few of the protagonists die. It could be argued that in some respects Frodo suffers a fate worse than death, or at least would have had he not been afforded the possibility (and only a possibility, I believe - success was not guaranteed) of healing in Aman.

I think we see a little of that in Bilbo as well; the outcome of his adventure was not universally positive for him, even if it mostly was.

On the one hand, in Letter 151, Professor Tolkien does say that "Frodo is not intended to be another Bilbo. Though his opening style is not wholly un-kin. But he is rather a study of a hobbit broken by a burden of fear and horror — broken down, and in the end made into something quite different."

On the other hand, however, in Letter 246, Professor Tolkien observes of Bilbo and the journey to Aman that "he also needed and deserved the favour on his own account. He bore still the mark of the Ring that needed to be finally erased : a trace of pride and personal possessiveness. Of course he was old and confused in mind, but it was still a revelation of the 'black mark' when he said in Rivendell (III 265) 'What's become of my ring, Frodo, that you took away?'; and when he was reminded of what had happened, his immediate reply was: 'What a pity! I should have liked to see it again'."

Of course that's arguably more to do with the Ring than with his experiences.

Similarly, I also don't think Frodo's experience was wholly negative, although it certainly was to a great extent. Frodo gained great wisdom through his experience, however: even Saruman noticed it. Frodo's insight about Saruman is very telling of the understanding he achieves: "He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against." I suppose this could be perceived as either a good or a bad thing.

It's interesting to note that while Bilbo's adventure ultimately left him unsatisfied with Hobbit society, he did settle down in Rivendell rather than pursuing his wanderlust indefinitely, which seems to favour the possibility that his experiences fostered the desire for a different society more than it made him that much less sedentary.