We consider chapter VI.7 of The Return of the King, “Homeward Bound,” in this installment of the Lord of the Rings re-read. The usual spoilers for all things Tolkien and comments after the jump.
What Happens
The hobbits and Gandalf ride toward the Shire. Frodo is silent and uneasy on October 6th, the anniversary of his being wounded at Weathertop. He recovers quickly, though hurries past Weathertop when they come to it.
They arrive in Bree at the end of October, finding signs of past trouble and The Prancing Pony nearly empty. Butterbur tells them that Bill Ferny and Harry Goatleaf had taken up with strangers, likely letting them through the gates on the night of a fight that killed five members of the town, and that they are all now living as robbers in the woods. They tell Butterbur their news and, with difficulty, convey to him that Strider is now King. Sam is reunited with Bill the pony.
When they leave, Butterbur hints at trouble in the Shire. Gandalf leaves them near the Barrow-downs to have a long talk with Tom Bombadil, telling them that they need no help now. The four hobbits are left alone as at the start of their journey, as though waking from a dream (Merry) or falling back to sleep (Frodo).
Comments
I have little to say about this chapter, which is short and transitional. As I noted at the end of last post, we’re back at an inn, and indeed back at the last inn that they had been in. Like the rest of the inns all the way back in Book I (in each of the first three chapters), The Prancing Pony was and is a way to see what the rest of these societies, particularly the more typical inhabitants who don’t go off adventuring, think of recent events.
I’ve just gone and re-read Butterbur’s prior appearances. The principal difference I can see is that he’s more emphatic about insularity, about wanting Bree to be left alone, which is perfectly understandable considering that the majority of newcomers recently killed a bunch of residents and then took up banditry. I think we can presume, however, that the forthcoming new age will restore some balance to people’s attitudes about newcomers.
(We’re not actually told the reason for the fight that killed five people. I imagine the strangers in league with Goatleaf and Ferny wanted to take control of the town as a base of operations, as Bree seems more valuable that way than as a one-time source of loot. There’s also nothing further about the “dark shapes in the woods, dreadful things that it makes the blood run cold to think of”; this implies to me something less ordinary than wolves or Orcs, but what I’m not sure.)
I find it mildly amusing that Gandalf’s power of rekindling hearts is basically ineffective on Butterbur: all his talk of better times bounces right off Butterbur until Sam comes out with the plain statement that Strider is the new King. I don’t think it’s necessary to read this as showing the diminished power of Gandalf’s ring or his shift in role, merely that Butterbur is not the quickest to grasp new ideas or change course. (Though I don’t blame him for being confused about what “chief of the Rangers” implies, considering how long it took for the text to make that clear to readers, back in Fellowship.)
* * *
The opening of this chapter, and the very ending, continue to set up Frodo’s leaving for Valinor. Frodo experiences the first anniversary of one of his major wounds, his stabbing by the Nazgûl, and has this conversation with Gandalf:
‘Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,’ said Gandalf.
‘I fear it may be so with mine,’ said Frodo. ‘There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’
I think his question indicates that he’s not seriously considering Arwen’s offer yet, because if he was, that would be the obvious answer. So he’s already, before even seeing the Shire, accepting that it may no longer be his home. But he hasn’t taken the next and much more difficult step of accepting that he has no home in Middle-earth now.
* * *
And we also have more setup for the Scouring. No new information, but even clearer signals about what roles the hobbits are going to play in dealing with it. Indeed, the Bree folk see them as “like riders upon errantry out of almost forgotten tales.” Which points up an interesting tension that the Scouring proper will be dealing with, the shiny bright pleasures of horns and swords and righteous butt-kicking, versus the grimy sadness of death and destruction and the fall of Saruman, all the things that can’t be fixed by errantry.
This is where Gandalf leaves them, to go back to the Shire alone as they came out of it—the last of the high-fantasy trappings that they mostly shed last chapter, except of course now they are themselves, in part, high-fantasy trappings. Gandalf says something very peculiar when he leaves them:
‘I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so.’
“Trained for”? That implies a purpose and intent behind their all coming on the journey that—well, it’s not inconsistent with the previously-stated reasons for their presence, but all the same, I find it really weird in a way that I find hard to articulate.
No Bombadil, not even a glimpse. I have a vague memory of someone, possibly Jo Walton, saying something to the effect of the tone having moved on too far, so that even a single “merry dol” would be too much, but I can’t seem to find it. At any rate, for all that I like extended catch-up endings, I am grateful that we don’t detour through Tom and Goldberry’s country and the Barrow-downs again. Waiting even longer for the Scouring would get on my nerves, tone issues aside (and I quite agree with Jo or whoever-it-was).
* * *
Finally, Bill the pony is back. Way back when, Gandalf directed him to “come in time to Elrond’s house, or wherever you wish to go.” He apparently preferred Bree to Rivendell, which is just another way he’s a good match for Sam.
Actual action next time, in the penultimate chapter.
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Kate Nepveu was born in South Korea and grew up in New England. She now lives in upstate New York where she is practicing law, raising a family, and (in her copious free time) writing at her LiveJournal and booklog.
Rather strange, isn’t it, that Bill the Pony would choose Bree over Rivendell, considering how he was treated when he lived there!
I vividly remember how Debbie Ridpath Ohi obsessed over Bill’s fate during her read-through of LotR; it was one of the funnier aspects of the blog. (Incidentally, I’ve compiled a set of direct links to the Wayback Machine archives of her posts; perhaps it would be a good thing to put them all in one place, somewhere?)
The German radio version ends where Gandalf leaves the hobbits to visit Tom.
(6/VII, Homeward Bound)
(copied from my comment on chapter I.7 )
Like Butterbur, Tom Bombadil shows that not everybody thinks the adventures of the heros were important. Butterbur doesn’t care about a distant king until he realizes that he knows him personally and Tom is only interested in the Ents who are probably only a footnote in the official histories of Gondor.
There are a lot of fun moments here, especially Butterbur’s idea of what makes Strider a king [“what, with a big cup and everything?”].
Regarding “It’s what you were trained for:”
I think this goes back to Gandalf’s core mission, which was to rally the Free Peoples to stand up for themselves and fight evil whithout relying on the Valar to pull their fat out of the fire [which seems to always involve dropping the Homeland under water…]. The hobbitses are now grown and able to take care of themselves.
In addition, I read an essay once which I think has some weight to it that the Fellowship was a social experiment to see if the different races could get along and work together despite the estrangement that Sauron had fostered. Remember how Legolas and Gimli originally were bickering all the time about the old days and what was who’s fault? Part of Gandalf’s mission may have been to see if the peoples of Middle Earth had overcome their earlier [perhaps juvenile] distrust and antagonism and could cooperate and work together, thereby again showing that they didn’t need a Higher Power to rescue them; they could work together and rescue themselves. No further need for wizards, Rings, palantir, and all the other “supernatural” forces that are all being removed from the playing field at this time.
Anyway, I think that’s what the “you were trained for this task” business is about, and it makes sense in the structure of the classic fairy tale where the hero becomes self-sufficient at the end and doesn’t need the Wise Old Man any more…
Deliberately trained or not the Hobbits have learned a thing or two.
I wanted so much for everything to come out happy and well, and here’s where I began to see that for Frodo it wouldn’t happen.
Tom Bombadil really belongs to an earlier age–like Gandalf now I guess.
At the end of this chapter, the copyeditor should have written in big red letters: “Who is Lotho?”
He emerges as a villain in the next chapter and he’s appeared exactly once in the story up until now, as a non-speaking walkon.
I’ve always really liked the Scouring, though I mourn for the changes it brings – the trees destroyed, and the hobbits, so long protected from the real world, finding it comes to them in a most unpleasant way. The bit where the lads rally the hobbitry to shoot down all the Shirriff’s men was truly awesome, and I read it from time to time just for the sheer YAY! factor.
I remember thinking, when I read this chapter, that Frodo seemed much like my grandfather, a career infantryman who went through all of WWII – he was in France for the fall (evaced with the Highlanders from much further south than Dunquerque), then in North Africa with Monty, Sicily briefly, and then back to England to prepare for D-Day. Thankfully, he didn’t go on the day itself, but followed up a couple of days after the invasion – then up through Belgium and Holland alongside the Canadians.
He wouldn’t talk much about his war experience; he would share only the funny stories, and none of the ghastly ones. But he had that same haunted look, deep at the back of his eyes, that I imagine in Frodo’s eyes here. He passed recently, having lived through all that and making it to 92 years old.
Anyway, that experience, my grandfather’s (and I shouldn’t ignore – all four of my grandparents served in uniform!), really brought home Frodo’s uneasiness here.
Regarding “Trained” – an interesting use of words. But Kate answered it also with comments about Bree. Gandalf let it be. Bree would change in the new Kingdom, if only because of more traffic and a renewed interest (new king’s “hometown” and all).
But is Bree is sheltered and peculiar, The Shire is off the map. Bree is used to travelers. The Shire, while acknowledging passers through, really are unknown, except in passing stories. The King’s new influence will have a profound change on the Shire, even before the Scouring. Aragorn would always want it protected and sheltered. But with the safety of the realm, protection (Rangerwise) will be less necessary. And travel will be more frequent. The Agrarian economy will have to change. Now that the Hobbits have “seen the world”, they will be the vanguard of newness to come. Call it “training” or emersion therapy.
Interesting that Gandalf would so obviously point it out.
I always did, and still do, roll my eyes at Frodo’s wound anniversaries. Their effects, yes; but on a calendar schedule?
I don’t feel that the Hobbits were deliberately “trained” for victory in the Shire; it’s really just a fortuitous by-product of the XP they gained over the past year and some months. They are still themselves at the core (except maybe Frodo), just more capable.
I’ve always thought they were orcs escaping from the defeats of Sauron’s northern battles, clearing out of Gundabad, Moria, the goblin place in the high passes in The Hobbit, and other such places – because the places were known to the victors and they wanted somewhere else where they couldn’t be tracked down and killed.
You must remember, Butterbur knows practically nothing about anyone else other than the Little Folk – he knows nothing about orcs, nothing about wargs, nothing about trolls, nothing whatever, except the little that gets passed down, twisted, and distorted through the stories and songs … so a glimpse of a battle-scarred and armoured orc hiding in the woods, glaring hatefully at the meal he can’t get because to dine on his “neighbour” out in the open invites reprisals – would make one’s blood run cold.
And don’t forget barrow-wights, trolls, and various other upstanding citizens of the former Angmar…