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Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
Ah, to set out on a journey! I know well that feeling of excitement mixed with fear. I had something like it when I was a child, more positive than not. I called it “Florida sickness,” for it was the feeling I would get the night before taking off on a trip to Florida. Why did Florida excite me so? Initially because it was the land of Disneyworld, and later because it was the place from which cruise ships embarked. It was the best place I ever visited in my youth, and thus it provoked a great sensation.
As I grew older, my horizons expanded. I set out not only to travel briefly, but to live in a place that was not my home. Indeed, the very definition of “home” was to change for me, at least in part. While Michigan would always be the home of my past, other regions staked a claim to my present. Indiana was first, but it was not so different from Michigan. The real change came when I was 21 years old.
After I failed to gain admittance to my chosen graduate programs in the Washington, D.C. area, I was granted a place at practically the last minute in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. What a prospect that was! To leave my family and friends and live not simply a few hours’ drive away, but with an entire ocean between us!
I was filled with fear of that journey. Would my room be comfortable? Would I be able to do well at my studies? Would I make any friends? Would London ever feel like home?
I had been to England once before, earlier the very same year. I had spent less than a month there, but I fell in love with the place. I experienced a sense of wonderment as I cast my gaze upon the English countryside, enjoyed a cup of tea in Oxford (which I had dubbed “academic Disneyworld” upon my first full day there), and walked the streets of the glorious city of London. It was love that drew me: love and the chance for a legitimate adventure. However, this did nothing to silence my fears. I worried that my dream might become a nightmare.
We learn in the third chapter of The Lord of the Rings that Bilbo Baggins used to tell his young cousin, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door…You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”[1] How very like life that is! There are times when we sense that our choice to step out is momentous, but we cannot see the end of the journey. We do not know where the road may lead.
At the beginning of this chapter, Frodo is torn. He sees the need to carry the Ring elsewhere—to remove the immediate danger from the Shire. He also desires to see Bilbo again. However, there are two things that seem to hold him in place: his love of home, and his fear of what may befall him if he leaves it.
The previous chapter ended with great urgency. I dare say most readers would have expected Gandalf to escort Frodo out of the Shire that very evening. However, we read at the beginning of this chapter, “Two or three weeks had passed, and still Frodo made no sign of getting ready to go.”[2] We read a bit later on, “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.”[3]
It is often the case that when we are on the brink of losing something, we love it more than ever, and this is certainly true of Frodo Baggins. Even as the dying person may feel powerfully alive and cling more desperately to this temporal existence than they ever did in their youth, Frodo is hesitant to leave the only home he has ever known, despite being a rather adventuresome hobbit.
It may seem pointless for Tolkien to spend these few pages discussing Frodo’s leave taking when there is a journey to start, but there is something about it that rings true. Bilbo may have burst out his door to join an adventure after only a few hours’ consideration, but Frodo takes his time to count the cost: to prepare himself mentally and emotionally for what is about to take place. Yet even as he does so, he seems to sense that there is nothing that can truly prepare him, for he does not know where the road will lead.
Bag End is sold to the Sackville-Bagginses under the pretense that Frodo is returning to his childhood home of Buckland. But Frodo is not going home—he is leaving it, possibly for good. Nothing can be known at this early date.
In the dark of evening, Frodo Baggins sets out on foot along with Sam Gamgee and Peregrin (Pippin) Took. This begins an extended passage in which Tolkien details some of the geography of the Shire as they pass it hour by hour. Again, we note the lack of urgency among the hobbits. They do not seem to note the warning signs. Frodo had tarried in large part because he expected Gandalf to return and join them, but the wizard never arrived. He had told Frodo before leaving that, “I have heard something that has made me anxious and needs looking into”: not exactly the kind of words that engender confidence.
Adding to the mystery, Frodo had overheard a conversation the night of his departure between Sam’s father, the old Gaffer, and a dark stranger asking after the name Baggins. The Gaffer had thought Frodo already departed and therefore turned the stranger away. This provided a sense of relief to Frodo, though he did not know exactly why.
As the three friends continue their journey on foot through the woods and meadows of the Shire, making their bed amid the tree roots and drawing water from a creek, the quaintness of their surroundings is contrasted with this growing unease. For years, the hobbits of the Shire have attempted to shut themselves off from the wider world. They have convinced themselves that their own little world is all that matters, and that what is will always be. Yet in this chapter, the outer world breaks into the world of hobbits in a powerful way, and we come to see the very existence of the Shire as a kind of historical interlude. There are far more ancient forces at work who walked the paths of that land before the hobbits arrived and who will be there after it ends.
Mid-way through the chapter and only a day or so into their journey, the hobbits realize that a rider is fast approaching them on the road. Even as he felt a sense of unease around the dark stranger who turned up in Hobbiton, we are told that in this moment Frodo had “a sudden desire to hide from the view of the rider.” The three hobbits therefore conceal themselves in a hollow, and only Frodo can still see the road.
The figure that arrives on a black horse is like something out of a nightmare: “a large man…wrapped in a great black cloak and hood, so that only his boots in the high stirrups showed below; his face was shadowed and invisible.” The man does not dismount, but turns his head about while sniffing the air, clearly looking for something or someone. This is no longer a general sense of urgency or an abstract fear. It is real and objective, sitting within striking distance of Frodo. The anxiety has taken physical form.
A sudden unreasoning fear of discovery laid hold of Frodo, and he thought of his Ring. He hardly dared to breathe, and yet the desire to get it out of his pocket became so strong that he began slowly to move his hand. He felt that he had only to slip it on, and then he would be safe.[4]
Fortunately, the Black Rider departs. The hobbits quickly realize upon discussing the matter that he must have been the same one who spoke with the Gaffer the previous night. Clearly, this person is looking for Frodo and knows the hobbits intend to go to Buckland. The three friends therefore keep out of sight and increase their sense of urgency.
A few hours later, as dark is falling and the hobbits are singing a bedtime song, they hear approaching hoofbeats once more and hide in the dark of the wood. A Black Rider approaches again and begins sniffing along the ground, crawling in the direction of Frodo, who had remained closer to the road to get a better view of the stranger. Again, Frodo feels a powerful desire to put on the Ring, but the sound of elf song fills the air and causes the Black Rider to retreat.
We can discern at this point that there is some connection between the evil of the Ring and the evil of this strange dark creature, or possibly creatures. Whenever they are near, Frodo is tempted to put on the Ring and use its power of invisibility. Is the Ring itself urging Frodo to use it? Can the creatures sense the power of the Ring? We do not receive immediate answers to these questions, nor do we find out the identity of the Black Rider(s). We simply sense that the evil that was spoken of by Gandalf regarding the One Ring is indeed present and active.
The darkness of the rider is contrasted with the light of the elves. Indeed, they are a light that causes shadowy figures to flee into greater darkness. Even as we sense the Black Rider is evil upon instinct, so we instinctively sense the elves are good from the light they emit. “They passed slowly, and the hobbits could see the starlight glimmering on their hair and in their eyes. They bore no lights, yet as they walked a shimmer, like the light of the moon above the rim of the hills before it rises, seemed to fall about their feet.”[5]
The elves have come upon the hobbits at the most opportune time: just when they were threatened with discovery by the Black Rider and their hopes were giving way to anxiety. Even as the dark figure on a horse causes the hobbits to see that the dangers of the wider world have broken in to their own, so the presence of the elves causes them to glimpse something large and more beautiful: a source of comfort that we might almost call divine. Indeed, had the hobbits understood the subject of the elves’ song, they would have known just how ancient was the light reflected upon them.
O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sown,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see your silver blossom blown!
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.[6]
Though Tolkien does not mention it in this chapter, the character referenced in the song is Varda, one of the Valar. (singular: Vala) The Valar are the highest beings in Arda, the mythical world of which Middle-earth is a part. Though some have called them gods, this is not quite right. The most comparable creatures within Christianity would be angels, for Tolkien envisions a single, all-powerful deity within his mythological world.
The existence of these near-divine beings in Arda is the unspoken source of the nebulous force for good eluded to by Gandalf. You will not read the word God in The Lord of the Rings, but everywhere you will see the powerful and hopeful influence of something that seems very much like God. Only with the posthumous publication of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion did fans begin to realize the full spiritual reality of the world he had created.
Varda is the one mentioned in the elves’ song, albeit by another name. She is a Vala of light, having literally caused the stars to shine. Therefore, while walking under the stars, it is to her that the elves direct their song. Though Varda is nowhere to be found in Middle-earth—she resides beyond the “Western Seas” spoken of in the lyric—all that is light is in a sense connected to her.
In the earliest days of Arda, before elves, men, dwarves, or hobbits came into being, Varda’s light was both coveted and hated by Melkor. Time and again, he attacked the light she brought to the world, and though he was cast into the outer darkness, the battle continued in a sense, for Sauron became the new Dark Lord bent on destroying all that is light and good. Thus, the song of the elves speaks to an ancient goodness as well as an ancient war.
The hobbits fall in with the elves and are led to a literal forest hall, with trees for columns, branches for a ceiling, and a floor of grass. When Pippin and Sam have had their fill of food and fall asleep beneath the trees, Frodo has a private discussion with the elf Gildor. Here the nature of Frodo’s journey is brought into stark relief, for the elf senses his trouble. “You are leaving the Shire, and yet you doubt that you will find what you seek, or accomplish what you intend, or that you will ever return. Is not that so?” Gildor asks Frodo.[7]
Much of what weighs upon the hobbit is spoken at this time: how he had expected Gandalf’s return and fears the appearance of the Black Riders. When he mentions the latter, Gildor refuses to reveal the identity of the dark creatures, “lest terror should keep you from your journey.”[8] This does nothing to set Frodo at ease.
‘I cannot imagine what information could be more terrifying than your hints and warnings,’ exclaimed Frodo. ‘I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?’
‘But it is not your own Shire,’ said Gildor. ‘Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.’[9]
This is a profound exchange that recalls the themes of these early chapters: home and leaving, the meshing of past and present, the return of ancient foes, and a will of good that is nonetheless at work. We began with small people in a small world, but now the wide world has made itself known in various ways. Those who like Frodo sense something greater at work and long to learn more are bound to encounter things beyond their wildest imaginations. The journey is never what one expects.
Do we too live in a small world with small people that is acted upon by forces beyond our understanding? That is a question worth considering. Frodo Baggins needs answers urgently, for evil is rising and only some will of good can stop it: that and the heroism of great and common folk alike. The home that was worth a fight is already in the middle of one. The Shire is no longer safe.
Thus the journey of Frodo
Baggins begins, but it is not his journey alone. The title of the chapter,
“Three is Company,” reveals to us that this is not a solo fight. When Gandalf
did not return in time, Frodo was joined by Sam and Pippin, with Merry awaiting
them all in Buckland. It is not uncommon that in those journeys we expect to
undergo alone, we are joined by faithful friends. That faithfulness will become
another important theme of Tolkien’s greatest work as the journey of Frodo
Baggins continues.
A FEW NOTES ABOUT SOURCES:
- The articles in this series freely include references to material in other books by J.R.R. Tolkien that are part of the same narrative, particularly The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. Citations will only be provided in the case of direct quotations.
- Any citations that include merely a number are from J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings, Single volume movie tie-in edition (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994). - All biblical quotations are taken from The New American Standard Bible (1995 edition), copyright The Lockman Foundation.
[1] 72
[2] 64
[3] 64
[4] 73
[5] 78
[6] 78
[7] 81
[8] 82
[9] 82