In Bilbo’s footsteps

Hobbiton, by J R R Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring
by J R R Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings Vol. 1.
HarperCollins 2012 (1954)

One of the delights of rereading a favourite book, even one enjoyed multiple times, is the possibility of discovering new aspects to enjoy, despite much remaining familiar. So it is with this, my sixth or seventh visit to Middle-earth in this form, and the surprise is that the tale has not yet grown stale.

What I once saw as longueurs to skim through or skip altogether are now like an overlooked drawer or two in a treasure chest, and even passages I thought I knew well are now revealed new-minted and shiny as if I’d once considered them poor tawdry things. Knowing Tolkien had the capacity to revise and recast and rethink his material over several years has served as a lesson, for me as a reader, to re-evaluate.

Though he was, against his inclination, persuaded to publish his epic fantasy in three volumes (thus potentially jeopardising the integrity of the whole) The Fellowship of the Ring, comprising Books One and Two, does in fact hang together as a narrative, its ending acting as a caesura before the next stage when we follow different individuals and interwoven timelines in The Two Towers. This therefore justifies any overview of the volume as an individual entity.

Map of Middle Earth by Chris Taylor and Chris Guerette http://www.ititches.com/middleearth/me.pdf

How does this first volume maintain its integrity? Because it by and large focuses on a single narrative strand featuring hobbits, with only brief digressions — as in Beowulf — to fill in background and supply explanations. In this way, and despite the author’s initial uncertainty about where his story was going, The Fellowship turns out to be a rerun of the plot of The Hobbit up to the arrival at Lake-town, Esgaroth. Though plenty of commentators have pointed out this sameness of plotting, it’s a feature worth emphasising and exploring.

Both narratives of course begin with a party, Bilbo Baggins’s first unexpected one and then the other, clearly “long-expected”. Thereafter a company of travellers including either Bilbo or Frodo set off on the road east, but what takes just one chapter in The Hobbit takes up most of Book One in The Fellowship. The earlier narrative takes us at a pace through Hobbit-lands (with good roads and one or two unnamed inns, perhaps The Prancing Pony and The Forsaken Inn), through the Lone-lands with evil-looking castles (perhaps including Weathertop) to a stone bridge, very likely the Last Bridge over the Hoarwell River. All these are duplicated, but now in copious detail for The Lord of the Rings.

In the chapter entitled ‘Roast Mutton’ in the children’s book Bilbo, the dwarves and Gandalf encounter trolls; these are the same trolls (now petrified) which Frodo and the other hobbits, along with Strider and Gandalf, come across in the Trollshaws. Then it’s off to the Last Homely House, Elrond’s Rivendell. A journey under the Misty Mountains features in both narratives, attacks by goblins and, later, wolves the counterparts of the epic’s orcs and Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Rescue by eagles, safe lodgings (either at Beorn’s house, or in Caras Galadhon), and travels through forests (Mirkwood, or Lothlorien) end with a trip on a river to a body of water (the Long Lake, or Nen Hithoel before the Falls of Rauros).

But while Bilbo’s journey, despite the perils and hazards, is told with knowing whimsy, Frodo’s in Bilbo’s footsteps is altogether more serious. The often extempore ditties sung by dwarves or goblins, which to me severely strain belief in The Hobbit, are replaced by carefully crafted songs in The Fellowship which speak of deep tradition and ancient lore. Even Bilbo’s apparently newly-composed song shyly performed in The Fellowship to the company in Rivendell intimates his adherence to a bardic craft that excluded the kind of jejune rhymes that Tolkien had thought would entertain a young readership.

Towards the end of this first volume Tolkien eschews the path taken in the earlier work, though we note both involve a climactic battle, a distant mountain, and a quest which requires the renunciation of a treasured object. Tolkien found it hard to give up on what might be disparaged as “hobbit talk” and which dominates much of the earlier part of this volume; when we come to the breaking of the fellowship preceding the second volume there will be fewer opportunities for such inconsequential chats, either between Frodo and Sam (or indeed the other hobbits Merry and Pippin). The tale, already dark, assumes an almost unmitigated sombreness; conversations are ponderous, warnings portentous, histories profound.

This review has necessarily assumed a familiarity with the nature and content of Tolkien’s legendarium, for even non-fans of fantasy will to some extent be aware of the plot and personages of this cultural phenomenon. What I haven’t assumed is that you’re aware of my fascination for the intrinsic worth of this literary epic, but I hope that by now you may have gained just a little inkling of that.

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#TalkingTolkien

Reviewed as part of #TalkingTolkien, my umpteenth read of The Lord of the Rings, and in anticipation of the #1954Club, a week dedicated to titles published in 1954, hosted by Karen and Simon and running from 18th to 24th April.