A Rest Before Worse Roads

Lessons from Four Months of LoTR

Exactly four months ago, we began our adventure with Frodo, who since then has hardly left the Shire and still has a very long, very difficult journey ahead of him. But as we have seen already, the rest of Middle-earth is preparing for the great war that shall decide the fate of them all, whether they realize it or not.

Gandalf is imprisoned on Orthanc, Saruman’s true colors—quite literally in his extravagant multi-colored robe—have been shown, while Boromir continues on his rough, solitary journey from Minas Tirith to Rivendell, where the major players in the fight for Middle-earth against Sauron will gather to decide how they will defend their peace. But Sauron himself, never idle, never sleepless, most recently has fixed his eye and military force on Thranduil and the Elves of Mirkwood, loosing Gollum from his gentle chains and sending him to the dark caverns of Moria, where we will encounter him again later.

Frodo has begun to think about leaving, but the Black Riders will not force his hand until September, and even then (unlike in the movies) they will only reach the Prancing Pony in Bree by the second to last day of that month. And only in October will they truly be on their way, a Ranger by the name of Strider guiding them on as safe a path as there is during this dark time, and by late October they will arrive in Rivendell, narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Nine Riders. Still, there will be much to discuss, and to plan, and from there Frodo still has to trek to Mordor (and back again!), a most tiring thought for Frodo if he had known it, so perhaps it is best he had no inkling as of yet that his journey would take him farther than Rivendell, and would be more painful and terrifying than he could have ever imagined in his wildest dreams.

Unlike Frodo, those of us rereading know very well what his journey entails, and it is strange to think that we have begun this read-a-long four months ago, and yet how little has changed! How little Frodo has traveled, how much he still has to go, how much we have gone through in the same amount of time, as our hobbit whiled his time away in the comfort of his Baggins hobbit hole!

In reflecting on how quickly these last four months passed, I suppose I can sympathize with Frodo. Perhaps he keeps telling himself he will begin to pack up and go tomorrow, or next week, or next month, when the days will surely not be as hot and sluggish, when he will no longer feel like napping every day after a nice big hobbit lunch, when the grass will not be so plush and green, perfect for a picnic under the shade of a large tree when he can read a book in which he can live a thousand adventures without lifting more than a finger if he likes.

Last week I had the chance to travel to another city and visit many of my friends on my way to visiting family in Portugal. Crossing continents and oceans always brings that peculiar feeling of unreality, as if our bodies cannot fathom living the same life in more than one location, nor feel truly at home in more than one place. In fact, since I had spent a few months in Portugal with my grandparents only a year ago, returning to the same spaces where I had spent much time writing or reading, watching TV or eating, brought back a rush of familiarity and memories so that it felt as though my nearly one year away felt like no time at all. Perhaps my life was truly split into two, I keep thinking, on the one hand my life back in the States for most of the year, on the other my brief life here in my grandparents’ apartment, so that writing in the same place I wrote in exactly a year ago feels like picking up the threads of a past life and pretending that the intervening months did not happen.

I wonder if Frodo might later reflect on his travels this way. When he returns to the Shire, to the lush Baggins home untouched during the several months he was away, will he feel like I do, trying to pick up the pieces of a past life, ignoring the months away on a different adventure, as if he had been a different person on his way to Mordor? Or will he sense that lingering reminder—perhaps from an old wound, like the one he will receive on Weathertop very soon—that his old life ended the moment he held the One Ring in his palm and decided to destroy it, that even the same places we know are subject to changes, to adventures of their own, and are not necessarily the same when we return to them, just as we are not the same people who once left them?

Four months have passed with little to read of The Lord of the Rings, because Frodo himself has done little. Sometimes life itself feels like this, slow and sluggish, and yet at the same time, passes a bit too quick, the days blurring together the less remarkable they are. This is all about to change in a few weeks, as the Black Riders rapidly approach the Shire. I am sure in another four months we, as Frodo, will have a different perspective on our joint adventure, as each day will soon bring momentous changes filled with triumphs and tragedies, and each decision will carry the weight of the world. Soon we will long for those quiet, slow days blurring together in peace, when nothing worth writing home about—or worth writing in a book—ever happened.

Perhaps these past four months may teach us a quiet lesson, that there is value in things staying the same, in slowness and comfort, in days that pass swiftly because they are unremarkable, just as there is value in change, in discomfort and danger on paths yet untrodden. A short, unassuming passage (though bearing a very famous quote) in the next chapter we shall read in The Lord of the Rings, I think, sums it all up best:

Frodo was silent. He too was gazing eastward along the road, as if he had never seen it before. Suddenly he spoke, aloud but as if to himself, saying slowly:

The Road goes ever on and on 
Down from the door where it began. 
Now far ahead the Road has gone, 
And I must follow, if I can, 
Pursuing it with weary feet, 
Until it joins some larger way, 
Where many paths and errands meet. 
And whither then? I cannot say.

‘That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo’s rhyming,’ said Pippin. ‘Or is it one of your imitations? It does not sound altogether encouraging.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Frodo. ‘It came to me then, as if I was making it up; but I may have heard it long ago. Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?” He used to say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he had been out for a long walk.’

‘Well, the Road won’t sweep me anywhere for an hour at least,’ said Pippin, unslinging his pack. The others followed his example, putting their packs against the bank and their legs out into the road. After a rest they had a good lunch, and then more rest.

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For those reading, we will finish The Hobbit Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders,” by August 23rd. I’ll send out a reminder when we are closer to the date.

As for The Lord of the Rings, patience it is! We rest with Pippin until mid-September, when suddenly the Road will turn and indeed take us to worse places than the Lonely Mountain…