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Old 07-05-2004, 09:32 AM   #5
Fordim Hedgethistle
Gibbering Gibbet
 
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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Fordim Hedgethistle has been trapped in the Barrow!
That pesky Fox

The journey begins! But just what kind of a journey is this…?

Thanks to the discussions about the ‘split-Frodo’ in Chapters One and Two, I have been alerted to something here in Chapter Three that I’d never really noticed before – how Frodo’s quest is being compared to Bilbo’s throughout its opening stages. His journey is both like and unlike the earlier one.

As usual, it is a hobbit’s clear thinking that leads Frodo to figure out the important relation between his journey and his uncle’s and to explain it to Gandalf:

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’For where am I to go? And by what shall I steer? What is to be my quest? Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again; but I go to lose one, and not return, as far as I can see.’
So far, we’ve been concentrating on Frodo as a flawed being (which he is) and I think he’s come off a bit worse in this respect than Bilbo. But here we see how the reverse is perhaps true. Bilbo’s quest was an acquisitive one: he went out and got the Ring and brought it back and kept it. Sure, he did not know what he was doing ‘wrong’ (he only knew the Ring as a ring), but the fact remains that he undertook a fairly standard quest: follow the map to the treasure, kill the dragon, keep the treasure for yourself. A clear goal and a precious object: what one normally has on quests. But Frodo is here quite astutely realizing that his quest must be undertaken in an entirely different spirit, for he must “lose” the precious object – he must seek not to enrich himself by destroying another (even if that other is an evil dragon) but make himself the poorer and give up the “precious” thing that he has been given.

So in this respect his journey is entirely different from Bilbo’s, but then we get a couple of interesting hints of how it is the same. First, when he leaves on his journey he does so:

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(following Bilbo, if he had known it)
Tolkien is so good at inserting these laden-with-meaning parenthetical comments! Frodo’s trip begins in a kind of enigma: he is following in Bilbo’s footsteps, even though he doesn’t know it! So he’s on the same journey as his uncle, even though it’s not the same, but he’s unaware or unconscious of his journey’s nature in ways that his uncle was or is not?

And this, I think, might actually help to explain that pesky fox that has bedeviled readers of the book for so long. You all know the one I mean – it’s the one that seems to step off the pages of The Hobbit by ‘speaking’:

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’Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.
This moment, which seems so out of keeping with the rest of the book, is perhaps a reminder that Frodo’s journey really is the continuation of Bilbo’s; that even despite the differences, there is still very much the same between their adventures. Once more, I think that Frodo has this kind of understanding when he remembers Bilbo telling him:

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‘“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door…Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?”’
So Frodo and Bilbo are on the same Road, bound for different destinations, with different purposes. It this way, I think this chapter concludes the opening ‘movement’ of the book in that it rounds out the comparison of Frodo and Bilbo by mirroring them. Frankly, given what we see here, I think that Frodo comes off much better than Bilbo. Frodo is on a more obscure and dangerous form of the same Road, in which he is both dedicated to giving something up (rather than claiming something) and he is also far more ‘aware’ of that which was hidden to Bilbo (he never ‘saw’ Gildor or Black Riders in the Shire!).

Kuruharan you wrote that:

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Also, just to note, there is a certain similarity between the indifference of hobbits to external concerns and the indifference of the elves to the doings of other beings.
I think that this is an excellent point, and I hope that others will address it at some length (I haven’t the time at this precise moment)

EDIT Cross posting with Aiwendil who wrote:

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The poems. This chapter has three, which is more than usual. Previously we have had only Bilbo's Road song and the Ring verse. Now we get a bit more of Bilbo's Road-related stuff, another, independent adventure-song of Bilbo's (both of these through Frodo), and a taste of Elvish song. A subtle distinction is implied here between Bilbo's character and Frodo's: Bilbo writes songs; Frodo learns them.
More Frodo-Bilbo comparisons, and a really interesting one at that!

Last edited by Fordim Hedgethistle; 07-05-2004 at 09:37 AM.
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