Post by Taika of Narfell on Jan 11, 2007 19:35:11 GMT 1
I apologise for formatting issues that may have escaped my notice when I copy/pasted the essay from a Word-document. This is the essay I handed in on January 9th. I will let you all know what mark I got for it when I'm told.
Extra paragraphing have been added to the essay to ensure easier reading in forum format.
Additionally I will have to post it in two pieces due to limits on post length
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The Important Insignificance of Hobbits
“I think we are fond of him [Bilbo] because he is a hobbit to whom things happen. But Frodo Baggins makes things happen, and is certainly heroic, and I, at least, don’t always understand how I am to judge his heroism, even when I am instructed by Roger Sale.”
The above words, found in Harold Bloom’s introduction to the Chelsea House edition of critical essays on Tolkien, puts into perspective just what the difference between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins consists of. However, the essayist Bloom refers to does not quite agree with that assessment. There can be no doubt that Bilbo is indeed someone to whom things happen, but whereas Bilbo’s preferences and motivations are clear, Frodo’s are less so. In reading Sale’s essay on Frodo I found that his instruction (to use Bloom’s term for it) on how to view and understand Frodo Baggins does not support Bloom’s statement about Frodo being an active participant rather than an onlooker like Bilbo. In this essay I will attempt to list arguments supporting both sides to see which view is the best supported; is Frodo as comfort loving as Bilbo or is he as adventurous and crafty as Bloom sees him? I believe there is a third option that supports both their takes on Frodo’s character; one that explains why Bloom sees him as a person who makes things happen while Sale still consider him helpless to partake in the events unfolding. I will also (in Bloomian style) avoid referencing my quotes beyond a remark on where I found them. It should not be hard to follow as I will not be quoting a large amount of works – mainly just Sale’s critical essay, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I will not, however, make a habit of quoting from memory, as I do not trust mine as Bloom does his.
Where Bilbo stands on the question of adventure is made perfectly clear from the beginning of The Hobbit. “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,” he says when Gandalf confides he is looking for someone to partake in an adventure. Bilbo does get the occasional urge to see mountains, but they go as quickly as they come and he much prefers a proper meal several times a day and a comfortable bed every night. Nonetheless he ends up being press-ganged into going with Thorin Oakenshield and his company of dwarves.
Frodo on the other hand has more persistent longings for the wider world. The first we are told of that is by Bilbo when he is packing the necessities for leaving the Shire. Ironically Bilbo is leaving partly because he wants to see mountains again; apparently his past adventure did not leave him quite as partial to comfort and good food as he used to be – he is intending to walk around Middle-earth to see again the places he once visited. That he shall never get further than to Rivendell is another story altogether. During his packing Bilbo informs Gandalf about Frodo’s urge to travel:
“He would come with me, of course, if I asked him. In fact he offered to once, just before the party. But he does not really want to, yet. I want to see the wild country again before I die, and the Mountains; but he is still in love with the Shire, with woods and fields and little rivers. He ought to be comfortable here.”
A remarkably accurate prophecy this is. Frodo is indeed still comfortable in the Shire, but while that is something he “ought to be” it is not something Bilbo expects to last. The small word ‘yet’ in the second line of the quote tells us everything. Bilbo expects that Frodo will at some point feel like he himself does and will wish more earnestly to leave the Shire. In fact no more than a day after Bilbo left Frodo all his property, the young hobbit exclaims to Gandalf:
“How abominable! I would give them Bag End and everything else, if I could get Bilbo back and go off tramping in the country with him. I love the Shire. But I begin to wish, somehow, that I had gone too.”
A day and already Frodo’s relatives (and the extended family that is most of Hobbitton) have caused him so much stress that he would rather be elsewhere. Hobbits may be relaxed and intrinsically comfort-driven creatures, but they sure know how to annoy each other as well; in the way most communities in which nothing ever happens do: gossip and intrigue. While they are all comfortable in their living rooms without any real problems to deal with, they make some problems up for themselves – these hobbits are in fact rather human in nature.
Bloom argues that “Bilbo Baggins’s preferences for comfort and a sleepy existence persuade because of their universality.” And he is right; who among us cannot identify ourselves with the wish for comfort and relaxation? He adds:
“If trolls and goblins are about, we want Bilbo to be safe in his wonderfully comfortable hobbit-hole, and I am rather grateful to Tolkien that sometimes I want to be there with Bilbo, even though I know only a few trolls and no goblins whatsoever.”
Indeed, who would not want to spend an evening or two in such comfort as Bilbo’s much lauded home in Bag End might offer? I know I would not decline an invitation, it does sound positively delightful, and I certainly would not need an excuse such as trolls or goblins to enjoy a bit of comfort – just like any other hobbit. And yet, Bilbo leaves it. Twice even. First with the dwarves on the adventure Gandalf set him up for, and again when his longing for the things he once saw has grown too strong. We can also read that in the years between his adventure and his departure for Rivendell he spent much time wandering the Shire and the lands around it. Clearly Bilbo came back a changed hobbit – indeed the other hobbits in the Shire found him rather odd, but they tolerated him because he was so generous with gifts and aid where it was needed; another very human trait in these hobbits – the tendency to distrust and suspect everything unfamiliar and different, but to also be persuaded with gifts, especially of the monetary kind that others might call bribes.
Roger Sale’s argument concerning Frodo circles around the young hobbit being the only thing Tolkien can fully relate to in The Lord of the Rings. The elves are mythical creatures, mysterious and aloof, and it is difficult to get to know them. They seem to be as far removed from Tolkien as they are from the hobbits. This is not particularly note-worthy since they are, after all, imaginary creatures, but as Sale points out: the lack of skill in portraying them also extends to the men of Middle-earth – is even worse in the portrayal of men.
“In some sense withdrawing is integral to the life of a philologist, and it is doubtful if very many have ever become philologists without a need to withdraw or flee.”
Burying oneself in old texts and older cultures can well be a kind of escapism and it does support Sale’s argument that Tolkien was a bit of a recluse. He was known as a brilliant professor among staff and alumni, but very few knew the man himself, as he had withdrawn from the world of men. As Sale states after having quoted one of the most helpless passages of dialogue between men in The Return of the King:
“This Old World of Men is very important to Tolkien in one sense, and he works very hard to have it seem important and impressive. But he simply knows nothing about men, or knows them only through books, and so all he can do is copy down their manners as he has read of them. The fact that he does better with elves and dwarves, and that he does best of all with his own inventions, the hobbits and ents, shows how far he had withdrawn – it is not difficult to see that he intended no irony when he said that a centaur is more ‘real’ than an automobile.”
This, I think, needs no further elaboration. However, it is interesting to note that whatever Tolkien thought men to be or have been and thus what he made them into in The Lord of the Rings, the characters and personalities that we recognize and can identify with are those of the hobbits. From the beginning Frodo has been defined by the Shire population as something of a deviant, but in order to understand Frodo’s nature and the nature of his further deviation, we must first understand the nature of hobbits. As I mentioned earlier: the hobbits are the most human of them all. A passage from The Two Towers nicely depicts the humanity of the hobbits, though exaggerated and with a healthy dose of humour. This time it is Merry and Pippin, Frodo’s two young friends and companions who have had their own private little adventure with the ents of Fangorn. Isengard has fallen and King Théoden and his Riders of Rohan ride into the ruins:
“The king and all his company sat silent on their horses, marvelling, perceiving that the power of Saruman was overthrown; but how they could not guess. And now they turned their eyes towards the archway and the ruined gates. There they saw close beside them a great rubble-heap; and suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying on it at their ease, grey-clad, hardly to be seen among the stones. There were bottles and bowls and platters laid beside them, as if they had just eaten well, and now rested from their labour. One seemed asleep; the other, with crossed legs and arms behind his head, leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke.”
While Frodo is an unusual hobbit and grows ever more strange during his journey towards Mordor, these two younger hobbits, Merry and Pippin, are the epitome of ‘hobbitness’. There is always time for a hearty meal and a pipe of tobacco, and therefore never a time when such things are not suitable. It is never made quite clear whether Merry and Pippin’s penchant for silliness and fun in the midst of all the seriousness is for reasons of naivety or of a form of denial and self-deception – the survival instinct of the psyche. These two younger and somewhat more naïve hobbits become the butt of many jokes along the way; they play the clowns quite often, and in this function they serve to keep us, the readers, bound to the idea of hobbits as the peace-loving, easy-going, comfort-addicted creatures that Tolkien has made them. They are the counterpoint to the enormity of the dangerous events taking place in Middle-earth. They are the ones that keep us grounded in life as we can relate to it, and most importantly they are the ones to remind us why all the others keep fighting the seemingly hopeless fight – to save all those who are just normal people rather than heroes of great renown. In the despair of the battlefields it is easy – also for the reader – the stop and ponder: “Why are we/they doing this, again? It is no use anyway…”
And every time such doubts and hopelessness threaten to overcome the fighters, there is a Merry to spout some homemade philosophy based on Shire life or maybe a tale of his great uncle thrice removed; there is a Pippin to do something stupid that elicits a laugh, a shake of the head or at least lightens the mood. Even in the foreboding scene in which Gandalf and Pippin stand before Denethor, Steward of Gondor, Pippin’s bold offer of fealty to the lord seems somehow comical in the context of momentous events taking place everywhere around them.
“Little service, no doubt, will so great a lord of Men think to find in a hobbit, a halfling from the northern Shire; yet such as it is, I will offer it, in payment of my debt.”
Even Pippin himself sees and expresses how ridiculously little value his service might be of to Lord Denethor, and though he is no fighter and really has no power to speak of, he offers his services in an act of silly bravery that once again serves to remind us how out of place the hobbits truly are in this epic tale. Here is a hobbit offering to take part and become an active player in the game, but the reader can see well enough that his oath of fealty – however noble – will make no difference in the end.
And yet, the hobbits do make a difference. In each their own way, they all manage one thing that is decisive for the end result – but only one thing each. To Pippin it falls to save Faramir from the pyre prepared for him by his grief-maddened father; to Merry it falls to wound the leader of the Ringwraiths during the Battle of Pelennor Fields so Eowyn can kill the creature and fulfil the prophecy; to Frodo and Sam fall much more diffuse tasks; Frodo’s is to resist the Ring’s temptation; Sam’s task is to get Frodo where he is going.
Now Frodo, according to Bloom, is a hobbit who makes things happen. Let us take a look at whether this holds true. The Ring is passed down to Frodo and for some years it merely lies safely in his care, and when Gandalf returns to tell him of the horrors connected with this Ring, Frodo is a far cry from the hero who would venture out to destroy the Ring. His remark is:
“But I hope that you may find some other better keeper soon. But in the meanwhile it seems that I am a danger, a danger to all that live near me. I cannot keep the Ring and stay here. I ought to leave Bag End, leave the Shire, leave everything and go away.”
Frodo’s thoughts are for not bringing harm to his kin, not for heroics, but simply for compassion. He does indeed take action of sorts, but his action is not so much a resistance against the evil clouding the land as much as it is an avoidance of any and all confrontations that might pop up. But this is merely Frodo’s idea of what should be done. In the following chapter things suddenly sound a little less patriotic and active:
“Two or three weeks had passed, and still Frodo made no sign of getting ready to go.
‘I know. But it is difficult to do both,’ he objected. ‘If I just vanish like Bilbo, the tale will be all over the Shire in no time.’
(…)
To tell the truth, he was very reluctant to start, now that it had come to the point. Bag End seemed a more desirable residence than it had for years, and he wanted to savour as much as he could of his last summer in the Shire.”
It would seem Bilbo’s assessment is quite correct; Frodo is still in love with the Shire; something that becomes all the more obvious when he has moved to Crickhollow and is talking with his friends Merry, Sam, Pippin, and Fatty Bolger. The clever and sharp-witted young hobbits have seen through his plans to leave the Shire, thus they have been spying on him in order to be able to help out their good friend (which is, by the way, a good example of how the amiable hobbits turn something as nasty as espionage into something friendly and safe). As it turns out even here in the Shire the other hobbits have been more prone to action than Frodo has, and Merry’s statement only promises that it will be Frodo’s companions who take more decisive action:
“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word.”
Merry is without a doubt the more crafty of these hobbits, indeed as it turns out, Frodo had never really thought of how to continue onwards from Crickhollow, whereas Merry has ponies and provisions ready for all of them.
The next situation in which action is needed is the incident on the barrow-downs. All the hobbits are held captive by a Barrow-wight, and while Frodo is the only one awake he has no strength to do anything, all he can do is sing for Tom Bombadil’s help as instructed in an earlier chapter. He begins the song, and the magic of Tom Bombadil reaches the person singing to him, calling for his help and strengthens Frodo in his singing. Tom Bombadil shows up not long after to save the hobbits from the wights and the foggy darkness of the downs. It is he who brings them their ponies and their packs, and it is he who picks out old knives for them to use as swords.
The next incident of Frodo in action is seen at The Prancing Pony in Bree. Here he, in an attempt at preventing his companions from saying too much, manages to make a spectacle of himself towards the end of a song and unwittingly slips the Ring on his finger and disappears from view, much to the wonder of the audience. His attempt at taking action and doing something useful has ended nigh disastrously in a mess someone else will have to sort out for him – in this instance it is Strider who comes to the aid of the unfortunate hobbit, and later on Merry once again shows himself to be a crafty fellow with his head planted firmly on his shoulders and his legs ditto on the ground. This is also an important event since it is the first time we are given a view of the persuasive power of the Ring and Frodo’s helplessness against it in hard-pressed situations, during which his focus is on other things than resisting the Ring’s call.
The next such situation happens on Weathertop where Strider and the hobbits are assailed by five of the Ringwraiths. Against better judgment Frodo feels compelled to put the Ring on his finger and thereby reveal himself and the Ring’s location, and there is nothing he can do to resist it. He obeys the Ring and gets a nasty wound courtesy of The Pale King, as he names the creature, which we shall later learn is the Witch King of Angmar. A good ten days after leaving Weathertop they meet Glorfindel, an elf sent out by Elrond to look for them. As Frodo is ailing due to the magical nature of the wound he received at Weathertop, he is set on Glorfindel’s horse to be carried to Rivendell in all haste. Frodo is weak and can feel the wraiths’ silent commands for him to stop. He crosses the ford and turns to look at the nine black-clad riders pursuing him. “He felt that he was commanded urgently to halt. Hatred again stirred in him, but he had no longer the strength to refuse.” Thankfully, the ford is that of the river which runs through Rivendell and thus, though Frodo puts on a fine show of bravado, he is once again saved by others – quite spectacularly so:
“At that moment there came a roaring and a rushing: a noise of loud waters rolling many stones. Dimly Frodo saw the river below him rise, and down along its course there came a plumed cavalry of waves. White flames seemed to Frodo to flicker in their crests and he half fancied that he saw amid the water white riders upon white horses with frothing manes.”
Elven magic put to good use by Elrond saved Frodo, while Glorfindel, Strider and the three hobbits wielding torches drove the Ringwraiths that were not caught in the initial wave into the water to be washed away. The scene is dramatic and is the closing scene of the first part of six. The tendency has been clear throughout this first part of the tale: Frodo tries, he tries hard, even, to be the hero Gandalf and his fellow hobbits hope he might be. But in great anti-climactic fashion the last thing that happens in this part is that our hero faints from exhaustion, sickness and pain – an altogether not very heroic exit.
The second half of The Fellowship of the Ring follows. The few times a decision or response is asked of Frodo he says to postpone till the morning or otherwise avoids taking a stand. The decision to go through the mines of Moria is something he suggest they all sleep on, but that only results in the decision being made for them by the howling wolves all around. In fact in this second half, Frodo does not do anything at all by himself until towards the very end when Boromir, corrupted by the Ring’s call, confronts him. And once again in a situation bringing danger to him, he slips the Ring on his finger to get away. He has a bit of a revelation at the top of Amon Hen, which leads to the first decision he makes freely and on his own. He has just wrested his thoughts free of the Ring and decides:
“I will do now what I must. This at least is plain: the evil of the Ring is already at work even in the Company, and the Ring must leave them before it does more harm. I will go alone. Some I cannot trust, and those I can trust are too dear to me: poor old Sam, and Merry and Pippin. Strider, too: his heart yearns for Minas Tirith, and he will be needed there, now Boromir has fallen into evil. I will go alone. At once.”
And so, while the Company searches for him, Frodo attempts to slip away across the river and continue alone. But Sam manages to catch up with him and this more sensible hobbit with less of a burden weighing on his mind thinks to bring equipment and packs of provisions. This second part ends on a much stronger note with regards to Frodo. He actually manages to make a decision and follow it, and yet, his decision to go alone is overruled by Sam’s decision to go with him, and in part also in Aragorn’s decision to send Sam to look for him by the boats. The extent of Frodo’s passivity has now shown itself with a section in which he is more of a bystander than he has been before. He is the Ring-bearer assigned by the Council of Elrond, but carrying the Ring is all he does, it is the others that carry him. Even speaking of the Ring is becoming obscured and is avoided by the Company in the latter part. The Ring-bearer’s plight has now been reduced to ‘the Burden’; capitalised, but in avoidance of saying ‘the Ring’ nonetheless. Their fear of the Ring’s power is real enough and it is well understandable that they would rather avoid thinking of the danger they are walking into – another quite human trait. But it is all the same a result that takes away from the Ring-bearer’s worth, when the very thing that gave him his title cannot be mentioned by what it is, it declines even further in The Return of the King, when ‘burden’ is no longer even capitalised.
With the Fellowship broken The Two Towers offers a split narrative, the first half following Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli on their quest to save Merry and Pippin from the orcs that took them. This mission, while important in terms of the allies it brings them, is not significant for Frodo and his Burden.
Frodo’s journey is a strange one leading in two directions at once. While he has broken free of the petty traditions and intrigues of the Shire, and is now wandering the land as he had so longed to do, he is far from free. Ironically, the further he moves away from the Shire and into the wide world that should have been his freedom, the more deeply the Ring draws him in and binds him to itself. Frodo is discovering a new world, and while his horizon broadens, his freedom is limited more and more. In fact, his earlier reaction to Gandalf’s tales of the Ring and the Dark Lord: “I have heard of such, but not in my world” becomes all the more poignant when it becomes evident that Frodo’s physical world may be expanding its horizons, but his personal world is shrinking evermore; during much of the two remaining volumes it only includes Sam, Gollum, the Ring and himself, and eventually has contracted so much so that his world contains only himself and the Ring.
Extra paragraphing have been added to the essay to ensure easier reading in forum format.
Additionally I will have to post it in two pieces due to limits on post length
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The Important Insignificance of Hobbits
“I think we are fond of him [Bilbo] because he is a hobbit to whom things happen. But Frodo Baggins makes things happen, and is certainly heroic, and I, at least, don’t always understand how I am to judge his heroism, even when I am instructed by Roger Sale.”
The above words, found in Harold Bloom’s introduction to the Chelsea House edition of critical essays on Tolkien, puts into perspective just what the difference between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins consists of. However, the essayist Bloom refers to does not quite agree with that assessment. There can be no doubt that Bilbo is indeed someone to whom things happen, but whereas Bilbo’s preferences and motivations are clear, Frodo’s are less so. In reading Sale’s essay on Frodo I found that his instruction (to use Bloom’s term for it) on how to view and understand Frodo Baggins does not support Bloom’s statement about Frodo being an active participant rather than an onlooker like Bilbo. In this essay I will attempt to list arguments supporting both sides to see which view is the best supported; is Frodo as comfort loving as Bilbo or is he as adventurous and crafty as Bloom sees him? I believe there is a third option that supports both their takes on Frodo’s character; one that explains why Bloom sees him as a person who makes things happen while Sale still consider him helpless to partake in the events unfolding. I will also (in Bloomian style) avoid referencing my quotes beyond a remark on where I found them. It should not be hard to follow as I will not be quoting a large amount of works – mainly just Sale’s critical essay, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I will not, however, make a habit of quoting from memory, as I do not trust mine as Bloom does his.
Where Bilbo stands on the question of adventure is made perfectly clear from the beginning of The Hobbit. “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,” he says when Gandalf confides he is looking for someone to partake in an adventure. Bilbo does get the occasional urge to see mountains, but they go as quickly as they come and he much prefers a proper meal several times a day and a comfortable bed every night. Nonetheless he ends up being press-ganged into going with Thorin Oakenshield and his company of dwarves.
Frodo on the other hand has more persistent longings for the wider world. The first we are told of that is by Bilbo when he is packing the necessities for leaving the Shire. Ironically Bilbo is leaving partly because he wants to see mountains again; apparently his past adventure did not leave him quite as partial to comfort and good food as he used to be – he is intending to walk around Middle-earth to see again the places he once visited. That he shall never get further than to Rivendell is another story altogether. During his packing Bilbo informs Gandalf about Frodo’s urge to travel:
“He would come with me, of course, if I asked him. In fact he offered to once, just before the party. But he does not really want to, yet. I want to see the wild country again before I die, and the Mountains; but he is still in love with the Shire, with woods and fields and little rivers. He ought to be comfortable here.”
A remarkably accurate prophecy this is. Frodo is indeed still comfortable in the Shire, but while that is something he “ought to be” it is not something Bilbo expects to last. The small word ‘yet’ in the second line of the quote tells us everything. Bilbo expects that Frodo will at some point feel like he himself does and will wish more earnestly to leave the Shire. In fact no more than a day after Bilbo left Frodo all his property, the young hobbit exclaims to Gandalf:
“How abominable! I would give them Bag End and everything else, if I could get Bilbo back and go off tramping in the country with him. I love the Shire. But I begin to wish, somehow, that I had gone too.”
A day and already Frodo’s relatives (and the extended family that is most of Hobbitton) have caused him so much stress that he would rather be elsewhere. Hobbits may be relaxed and intrinsically comfort-driven creatures, but they sure know how to annoy each other as well; in the way most communities in which nothing ever happens do: gossip and intrigue. While they are all comfortable in their living rooms without any real problems to deal with, they make some problems up for themselves – these hobbits are in fact rather human in nature.
Bloom argues that “Bilbo Baggins’s preferences for comfort and a sleepy existence persuade because of their universality.” And he is right; who among us cannot identify ourselves with the wish for comfort and relaxation? He adds:
“If trolls and goblins are about, we want Bilbo to be safe in his wonderfully comfortable hobbit-hole, and I am rather grateful to Tolkien that sometimes I want to be there with Bilbo, even though I know only a few trolls and no goblins whatsoever.”
Indeed, who would not want to spend an evening or two in such comfort as Bilbo’s much lauded home in Bag End might offer? I know I would not decline an invitation, it does sound positively delightful, and I certainly would not need an excuse such as trolls or goblins to enjoy a bit of comfort – just like any other hobbit. And yet, Bilbo leaves it. Twice even. First with the dwarves on the adventure Gandalf set him up for, and again when his longing for the things he once saw has grown too strong. We can also read that in the years between his adventure and his departure for Rivendell he spent much time wandering the Shire and the lands around it. Clearly Bilbo came back a changed hobbit – indeed the other hobbits in the Shire found him rather odd, but they tolerated him because he was so generous with gifts and aid where it was needed; another very human trait in these hobbits – the tendency to distrust and suspect everything unfamiliar and different, but to also be persuaded with gifts, especially of the monetary kind that others might call bribes.
Roger Sale’s argument concerning Frodo circles around the young hobbit being the only thing Tolkien can fully relate to in The Lord of the Rings. The elves are mythical creatures, mysterious and aloof, and it is difficult to get to know them. They seem to be as far removed from Tolkien as they are from the hobbits. This is not particularly note-worthy since they are, after all, imaginary creatures, but as Sale points out: the lack of skill in portraying them also extends to the men of Middle-earth – is even worse in the portrayal of men.
“In some sense withdrawing is integral to the life of a philologist, and it is doubtful if very many have ever become philologists without a need to withdraw or flee.”
Burying oneself in old texts and older cultures can well be a kind of escapism and it does support Sale’s argument that Tolkien was a bit of a recluse. He was known as a brilliant professor among staff and alumni, but very few knew the man himself, as he had withdrawn from the world of men. As Sale states after having quoted one of the most helpless passages of dialogue between men in The Return of the King:
“This Old World of Men is very important to Tolkien in one sense, and he works very hard to have it seem important and impressive. But he simply knows nothing about men, or knows them only through books, and so all he can do is copy down their manners as he has read of them. The fact that he does better with elves and dwarves, and that he does best of all with his own inventions, the hobbits and ents, shows how far he had withdrawn – it is not difficult to see that he intended no irony when he said that a centaur is more ‘real’ than an automobile.”
This, I think, needs no further elaboration. However, it is interesting to note that whatever Tolkien thought men to be or have been and thus what he made them into in The Lord of the Rings, the characters and personalities that we recognize and can identify with are those of the hobbits. From the beginning Frodo has been defined by the Shire population as something of a deviant, but in order to understand Frodo’s nature and the nature of his further deviation, we must first understand the nature of hobbits. As I mentioned earlier: the hobbits are the most human of them all. A passage from The Two Towers nicely depicts the humanity of the hobbits, though exaggerated and with a healthy dose of humour. This time it is Merry and Pippin, Frodo’s two young friends and companions who have had their own private little adventure with the ents of Fangorn. Isengard has fallen and King Théoden and his Riders of Rohan ride into the ruins:
“The king and all his company sat silent on their horses, marvelling, perceiving that the power of Saruman was overthrown; but how they could not guess. And now they turned their eyes towards the archway and the ruined gates. There they saw close beside them a great rubble-heap; and suddenly they were aware of two small figures lying on it at their ease, grey-clad, hardly to be seen among the stones. There were bottles and bowls and platters laid beside them, as if they had just eaten well, and now rested from their labour. One seemed asleep; the other, with crossed legs and arms behind his head, leaned back against a broken rock and sent from his mouth long wisps and little rings of thin blue smoke.”
While Frodo is an unusual hobbit and grows ever more strange during his journey towards Mordor, these two younger hobbits, Merry and Pippin, are the epitome of ‘hobbitness’. There is always time for a hearty meal and a pipe of tobacco, and therefore never a time when such things are not suitable. It is never made quite clear whether Merry and Pippin’s penchant for silliness and fun in the midst of all the seriousness is for reasons of naivety or of a form of denial and self-deception – the survival instinct of the psyche. These two younger and somewhat more naïve hobbits become the butt of many jokes along the way; they play the clowns quite often, and in this function they serve to keep us, the readers, bound to the idea of hobbits as the peace-loving, easy-going, comfort-addicted creatures that Tolkien has made them. They are the counterpoint to the enormity of the dangerous events taking place in Middle-earth. They are the ones that keep us grounded in life as we can relate to it, and most importantly they are the ones to remind us why all the others keep fighting the seemingly hopeless fight – to save all those who are just normal people rather than heroes of great renown. In the despair of the battlefields it is easy – also for the reader – the stop and ponder: “Why are we/they doing this, again? It is no use anyway…”
And every time such doubts and hopelessness threaten to overcome the fighters, there is a Merry to spout some homemade philosophy based on Shire life or maybe a tale of his great uncle thrice removed; there is a Pippin to do something stupid that elicits a laugh, a shake of the head or at least lightens the mood. Even in the foreboding scene in which Gandalf and Pippin stand before Denethor, Steward of Gondor, Pippin’s bold offer of fealty to the lord seems somehow comical in the context of momentous events taking place everywhere around them.
“Little service, no doubt, will so great a lord of Men think to find in a hobbit, a halfling from the northern Shire; yet such as it is, I will offer it, in payment of my debt.”
Even Pippin himself sees and expresses how ridiculously little value his service might be of to Lord Denethor, and though he is no fighter and really has no power to speak of, he offers his services in an act of silly bravery that once again serves to remind us how out of place the hobbits truly are in this epic tale. Here is a hobbit offering to take part and become an active player in the game, but the reader can see well enough that his oath of fealty – however noble – will make no difference in the end.
And yet, the hobbits do make a difference. In each their own way, they all manage one thing that is decisive for the end result – but only one thing each. To Pippin it falls to save Faramir from the pyre prepared for him by his grief-maddened father; to Merry it falls to wound the leader of the Ringwraiths during the Battle of Pelennor Fields so Eowyn can kill the creature and fulfil the prophecy; to Frodo and Sam fall much more diffuse tasks; Frodo’s is to resist the Ring’s temptation; Sam’s task is to get Frodo where he is going.
Now Frodo, according to Bloom, is a hobbit who makes things happen. Let us take a look at whether this holds true. The Ring is passed down to Frodo and for some years it merely lies safely in his care, and when Gandalf returns to tell him of the horrors connected with this Ring, Frodo is a far cry from the hero who would venture out to destroy the Ring. His remark is:
“But I hope that you may find some other better keeper soon. But in the meanwhile it seems that I am a danger, a danger to all that live near me. I cannot keep the Ring and stay here. I ought to leave Bag End, leave the Shire, leave everything and go away.”
Frodo’s thoughts are for not bringing harm to his kin, not for heroics, but simply for compassion. He does indeed take action of sorts, but his action is not so much a resistance against the evil clouding the land as much as it is an avoidance of any and all confrontations that might pop up. But this is merely Frodo’s idea of what should be done. In the following chapter things suddenly sound a little less patriotic and active:
“Two or three weeks had passed, and still Frodo made no sign of getting ready to go.
‘I know. But it is difficult to do both,’ he objected. ‘If I just vanish like Bilbo, the tale will be all over the Shire in no time.’
(…)
To tell the truth, he was very reluctant to start, now that it had come to the point. Bag End seemed a more desirable residence than it had for years, and he wanted to savour as much as he could of his last summer in the Shire.”
It would seem Bilbo’s assessment is quite correct; Frodo is still in love with the Shire; something that becomes all the more obvious when he has moved to Crickhollow and is talking with his friends Merry, Sam, Pippin, and Fatty Bolger. The clever and sharp-witted young hobbits have seen through his plans to leave the Shire, thus they have been spying on him in order to be able to help out their good friend (which is, by the way, a good example of how the amiable hobbits turn something as nasty as espionage into something friendly and safe). As it turns out even here in the Shire the other hobbits have been more prone to action than Frodo has, and Merry’s statement only promises that it will be Frodo’s companions who take more decisive action:
“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word.”
Merry is without a doubt the more crafty of these hobbits, indeed as it turns out, Frodo had never really thought of how to continue onwards from Crickhollow, whereas Merry has ponies and provisions ready for all of them.
The next situation in which action is needed is the incident on the barrow-downs. All the hobbits are held captive by a Barrow-wight, and while Frodo is the only one awake he has no strength to do anything, all he can do is sing for Tom Bombadil’s help as instructed in an earlier chapter. He begins the song, and the magic of Tom Bombadil reaches the person singing to him, calling for his help and strengthens Frodo in his singing. Tom Bombadil shows up not long after to save the hobbits from the wights and the foggy darkness of the downs. It is he who brings them their ponies and their packs, and it is he who picks out old knives for them to use as swords.
The next incident of Frodo in action is seen at The Prancing Pony in Bree. Here he, in an attempt at preventing his companions from saying too much, manages to make a spectacle of himself towards the end of a song and unwittingly slips the Ring on his finger and disappears from view, much to the wonder of the audience. His attempt at taking action and doing something useful has ended nigh disastrously in a mess someone else will have to sort out for him – in this instance it is Strider who comes to the aid of the unfortunate hobbit, and later on Merry once again shows himself to be a crafty fellow with his head planted firmly on his shoulders and his legs ditto on the ground. This is also an important event since it is the first time we are given a view of the persuasive power of the Ring and Frodo’s helplessness against it in hard-pressed situations, during which his focus is on other things than resisting the Ring’s call.
The next such situation happens on Weathertop where Strider and the hobbits are assailed by five of the Ringwraiths. Against better judgment Frodo feels compelled to put the Ring on his finger and thereby reveal himself and the Ring’s location, and there is nothing he can do to resist it. He obeys the Ring and gets a nasty wound courtesy of The Pale King, as he names the creature, which we shall later learn is the Witch King of Angmar. A good ten days after leaving Weathertop they meet Glorfindel, an elf sent out by Elrond to look for them. As Frodo is ailing due to the magical nature of the wound he received at Weathertop, he is set on Glorfindel’s horse to be carried to Rivendell in all haste. Frodo is weak and can feel the wraiths’ silent commands for him to stop. He crosses the ford and turns to look at the nine black-clad riders pursuing him. “He felt that he was commanded urgently to halt. Hatred again stirred in him, but he had no longer the strength to refuse.” Thankfully, the ford is that of the river which runs through Rivendell and thus, though Frodo puts on a fine show of bravado, he is once again saved by others – quite spectacularly so:
“At that moment there came a roaring and a rushing: a noise of loud waters rolling many stones. Dimly Frodo saw the river below him rise, and down along its course there came a plumed cavalry of waves. White flames seemed to Frodo to flicker in their crests and he half fancied that he saw amid the water white riders upon white horses with frothing manes.”
Elven magic put to good use by Elrond saved Frodo, while Glorfindel, Strider and the three hobbits wielding torches drove the Ringwraiths that were not caught in the initial wave into the water to be washed away. The scene is dramatic and is the closing scene of the first part of six. The tendency has been clear throughout this first part of the tale: Frodo tries, he tries hard, even, to be the hero Gandalf and his fellow hobbits hope he might be. But in great anti-climactic fashion the last thing that happens in this part is that our hero faints from exhaustion, sickness and pain – an altogether not very heroic exit.
The second half of The Fellowship of the Ring follows. The few times a decision or response is asked of Frodo he says to postpone till the morning or otherwise avoids taking a stand. The decision to go through the mines of Moria is something he suggest they all sleep on, but that only results in the decision being made for them by the howling wolves all around. In fact in this second half, Frodo does not do anything at all by himself until towards the very end when Boromir, corrupted by the Ring’s call, confronts him. And once again in a situation bringing danger to him, he slips the Ring on his finger to get away. He has a bit of a revelation at the top of Amon Hen, which leads to the first decision he makes freely and on his own. He has just wrested his thoughts free of the Ring and decides:
“I will do now what I must. This at least is plain: the evil of the Ring is already at work even in the Company, and the Ring must leave them before it does more harm. I will go alone. Some I cannot trust, and those I can trust are too dear to me: poor old Sam, and Merry and Pippin. Strider, too: his heart yearns for Minas Tirith, and he will be needed there, now Boromir has fallen into evil. I will go alone. At once.”
And so, while the Company searches for him, Frodo attempts to slip away across the river and continue alone. But Sam manages to catch up with him and this more sensible hobbit with less of a burden weighing on his mind thinks to bring equipment and packs of provisions. This second part ends on a much stronger note with regards to Frodo. He actually manages to make a decision and follow it, and yet, his decision to go alone is overruled by Sam’s decision to go with him, and in part also in Aragorn’s decision to send Sam to look for him by the boats. The extent of Frodo’s passivity has now shown itself with a section in which he is more of a bystander than he has been before. He is the Ring-bearer assigned by the Council of Elrond, but carrying the Ring is all he does, it is the others that carry him. Even speaking of the Ring is becoming obscured and is avoided by the Company in the latter part. The Ring-bearer’s plight has now been reduced to ‘the Burden’; capitalised, but in avoidance of saying ‘the Ring’ nonetheless. Their fear of the Ring’s power is real enough and it is well understandable that they would rather avoid thinking of the danger they are walking into – another quite human trait. But it is all the same a result that takes away from the Ring-bearer’s worth, when the very thing that gave him his title cannot be mentioned by what it is, it declines even further in The Return of the King, when ‘burden’ is no longer even capitalised.
With the Fellowship broken The Two Towers offers a split narrative, the first half following Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli on their quest to save Merry and Pippin from the orcs that took them. This mission, while important in terms of the allies it brings them, is not significant for Frodo and his Burden.
Frodo’s journey is a strange one leading in two directions at once. While he has broken free of the petty traditions and intrigues of the Shire, and is now wandering the land as he had so longed to do, he is far from free. Ironically, the further he moves away from the Shire and into the wide world that should have been his freedom, the more deeply the Ring draws him in and binds him to itself. Frodo is discovering a new world, and while his horizon broadens, his freedom is limited more and more. In fact, his earlier reaction to Gandalf’s tales of the Ring and the Dark Lord: “I have heard of such, but not in my world” becomes all the more poignant when it becomes evident that Frodo’s physical world may be expanding its horizons, but his personal world is shrinking evermore; during much of the two remaining volumes it only includes Sam, Gollum, the Ring and himself, and eventually has contracted so much so that his world contains only himself and the Ring.