LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 12 - Flight to the Ford

[Child of the 7th Age]

Davem

As I look at the chapter again, I see more of what you're referring to. I do still think we have to perform a balancing act in terms of Frodo.

But I want to suggest one more angle that we can perhaps use for a slightly different perspective.... I'll warn you in advance that this is going to be long. I didn't know how else to get all this down.

Question: What if Frodo’s self blame is not an isolated response of one individual but part of a larger pattern, with a number of characters displaying uncharacteristically ‘negative’ feelings?

First, there’s Sam. No one mentioned the unusual scene at the beginning of the chapter. After Frodo was wounded and Strider briefly disappeared, Tolkien say this:

Sam plainly was beginning to have doubts again about Strider; but while they were talking he returned, appearing suddenly out of the shadows. They started, and Sam drew his sword and stood over Frodo; but Strider knelt down swiftly at his side.

“I am not a Black Rider, Sam, he said gently, “nor in league with them. I have been trying to discover something of their movements; but I have found nothing…..

The italics are mine. This whole sequence suggests more than a simple case of Sam not being able to see in the dark. It’s a reflection of something happening inside Sam: potentially destructive feelings and behavior have returned, perhaps not as markedly as in Frodo but still fairly evident.

By the time Strider kneels down, Sam could not have mistaken him for a wraith, yet the Ranger feels compelled to provide an extended explanation of who he is and his loyalties. Strider reassures Sam that he is not “in league with them”. This goes beyond seeing people in the dark.

Just two paragraphs later, we get another description of Sam's behavior: “Sam choked with tears.” The Hobbit fears his friend can't resist the wraiths. Yet, in sticky situations even in Mordor, Sam doesn’t normally cry. Nor are these the “good” tears Gandalf later mentions. Given their distressing situation, the tears can only be destructive and futile. Aragorn sees the real reason for the tears and implores Sam: “Don’t despair.” Despair is the last characteristic I normally associate with Sam. Yet here, Sam can not control his negativity.

We get another uncharacteristic instance of self-doubt by Merry when he announces to Strider:

We can not go any further…..What are we to do? Do you think they will be able to cure him in Rivendell, if we ever get ther?”

This is a Hobbit who wasn't afraid to sass back an Orc after he is kidnapped and injured! Yet, here he seems half defeated.

The companions as a whole “dreaded the dark hours” and imagined that the wraiths were “waiting to make some ambush in a narrow place.” Even Strider, though generally resourceful, “seemed tired and heavy-hearted”.

Thus, Frodo’s is not an isolated response, but part of a pattern. One obvious cause for all this is the fear instilled by the wraiths: it hangs over everything in the chapter. Yet there is a second force at work: the land itself. Here it is not a beneficent force, but presents obstacles and reinforce fears. At every step, Tolkien uses phrases like “withered leaves and grass”, “sullen hills”, “somber country of dark trees”, and “the hills began to shut them in.”

Later in the book we will encounter two “wastelands” created by the active hands of living beings – Mordor and Isengaard ( potentially the Shire as well, only the bad guys didn’t get that far.) These are wastelands like those in the modern world: fertile lands where technology and war actively mar and destroy the land.

In this chapter, the fellowship is passing through a different kind of wasteland. It is the one we see in medieval literature: the empty place where no people live. The medieval wasteland usually has the ability to corrupt spirit and defeat the body. Thus, Strider uses the actual term “wilderness” to describe the land they are going through. He clearly sees the shadow that lies over the land, the shadow that is influencing Frodo and Sam to respond in negative ways:

“Who lives in this land? he [i.e. Frodo] asked. “And who built these towers? Is this troll country?”

“No!” said Strider. “Trolls do not build. No one lives in this land. Men once dwelt here , ages ago; but none remain now. They became an evil people, as legends tell…. But that is so long ago that the hills have forgotten them, though a shadow still lies on the land.

The point where we just begin to break the hold of the land over the fellowship is right here in the chapter:

In the morning he work to find that the rain had stopped. The clouds were still thick, but they were breaking, and pale strips of blue appeared between them. The wind was shifting again. …..Strider went off alone, telling the others to remain under the shelter of the cliff, until he came back. He was going to climb up, if he could, and get a lie of the land.

Thus, Aragorn had to get away from the land by going up in order to cast aside its bad influence. Immediately, he is able to see the truth: they have strayed from their path and must now go in a different direction. This is what he tells his companions.

Of course, it’s possible to read all this literally – having to do with geography and such – and to understand everyone’s fears as simply a reaction to bad conditions. But it seems like there is another level of meaning here as well: the land has influenced how they react and feel and they must get back to their true selves if they are ever to break through to Rivendell.

The final moment of joy, when the sun comes flooding in, literally and figuratively, is when they see those old stone trolls. For the first time in the whole chapter, they are able to laugh:

Frodo felt his spirits reviving: the reminder of Bilbo’s first successful adventure was heartening. the sun, too, was warm and comforting.

A few lines later Frodo blithely asserts;

Don’t worry about me….I feel much better.

At least for the moment, Frodo like the others is back to being his true self. He must still fight the wound and the wraiths, but the shadow of the land is receding.

In this chapter, Tolkien continues to play with concepts like “history”, the “past” and ‘remembrance” It is Frodo’s memory of his own past—Bilbo’s deeds—that helps defeat the wasteland in his own head and enables him to laugh. Even more striking is how Tolkien describes the wasteland as “empty and forgetful”: Strider says that even the hills have forgotten what happened here. But Strider then reassures the Hobbits with a statement that shows his own strength as a Dunedain:

“the heirs of Elendil do not forget all things past… and many more things than I can tell are remembered in Rivendell.

So here the remembrance of the past is positive. Without it, I doubt the group would have made it through. How Tolkien loved to play with ideas and turn them round about in each chapter!