LotR -- Book 2 - Chapter 03 - The Ring goes South

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I too have always very much liked the animus shown the Fellowship by the mountain. The ‘living land’ that is so much a part of LotR is shown here to be no beneficent force for good – no sheltering ‘mother nature’ but an utterly alien and unforgiving presence in the world that you take lightly only at your peril. The ambiguity of the mountain’s allegiance nicely dovetails with Treebeard’s claim not to be on “anyone’s side”. I mean, it makes sense for the mountain not to care who wins the contest between good and evil, since both sides treat the mountain the same way (as a source of mithril or something to be got over when you are heading out for your journey into history).

As to the nine: according to some Anglo-Saxon texts that deal with the symbolic function of numbers, nine is the number of incompletion and forward-looking action (it’s not 10, but it can be with just one more number added on). It’s interesting that Frodo will be left with nine fingers at the end of his journey, is it not…? Also, the number 20 is the number of fulfillment and completion; of totality and completed labour. All told there are, of course, 20 rings (9 for Men + 7 for Dwarves + 3 for Elves + the 1 = 20).

Thank you davem for the quote about batmen – it was tremendously illuminating! Although I must admit that I found that rather condescending tone of the officer toward his batman to be somewhat disturbing, particularly when put beside some of the earlier moments in LotR in which we can almost see Frodo responding to Sam in the same way. The bit about the batman following the officer out of the trench and being beside him when he falls…it just seems to have the odour of a man who is taking his ‘subordinate’ a bit for granted. I mean, can you imagine that writer cutting a batman who actually ran for cover some slack?

There’s one other aspect of this chapter that I would like to raise, and that is the question of story-telling and, more importantly, story-ending. This is one of the most wildly important ideas in the book, and it doesn’t really start until this chapter. One of my favourite all-time moments in LotR begins when Bilbo asks:

‘What about helping me with my book, and making a start on the next? Have you thought of an ending?’

‘Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant,’ said Frodo.

‘Oh, that won’t do!’ said Bilbo. ‘Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?’

‘It will do well, if it ever comes to that,’ said Frodo.

‘Ah!’ said Sam. ‘And where will they live? That’s what I often wonder.’

In this one exchange we have one of the book’s clearest moments of character depiction, and it’s accomplished through the hobbits’ attitude toward stories. Bilbo believes quite naively that stories “ought to have happy endings” and actually looks ahead to a time when Frodo might be able to live “happily ever after”. Of course, Frodo has already (thanks to his experience with the Morgul Blade and at the fords) begun to realise that this is not possible. In fact, he’s begun to give into despair: “all are dark and unpleasant.”

It’s up to Sam to bring things back down to earth and point out that at the end of this story the characters will have to face what everyone faces at the supposed ‘end’ of their stories (which are really just stages in an ongoing process of living). In a sense these three hobbits in this one little exchange are enacting the entire nature and history of Middle-Earth. On the one hand is the desire for a happy ending that may once have been possible, before the music of creation was marred by evil and things began to fall apart; more significantly, before Feanor et al swore that blasted oath. On the other hand is the despair that threatens to overcome, and does overcome, too many people who begin to believe that the happy ending is impossible (as opposed to unlikely) and thus pave the way for evil. It’s up to the people like Sam to realise that the true hope lies in working toward a proper ‘home’ for oneself at the end of the journey – neither getting lost and blinded in a continual backward look to the ‘good old days’ when everything was bright and happy endings seemed the norm (like the Elves, constantly yearning for the Sunless Years and trying to preserve the past despite the fact that the world is becoming the site for new stories and new tales by new tellers), nor giving in to the despairing conviction that there is only one bad end possible (which is both Sauron’s line and being).

It’s up to Elrond to point out the one very important thing about stories – it is something that Sam will later realise on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol – that the people in the stories do not know how they will end:

‘yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road.’

This is why that motif of being in a story is so useful to understanding the book, for it turns on the whole free will/providence bugbear that will become more and more pressing as the story unfolds. Are Frodo and the Fellowship in a story that they are writing, an that is why the end is not known, or are they being written into a story by some force that is keeping the end from them? In the final analysis, I think that it might be irrelevant which it is since in either case there is always room for hope – hope that you can make a difference, or hope that something beneficent is in charge. What there is no room for are certainties: either that it will all turn out “happily ever after” or wholly “dark and unpleasant”.