So now you’ve left Lorien and you’re going down the Great River, and, as it turns out, you’re on a frontier. More or less, what’s on the left bank is more under Sauron’s control; you can see the banks bare of vegetation. More or less, what’s on the right bank is more under the control of everyone else – lots of vegetation. But, like most frontiers, the boundaries are really vague, and shifting. There are raids on either side; sometimes, someone gains a semi-permanent hold on the other side of the River; and it may be that there’s a Sauron tide in which the boundary shifts to the other side, all along the River, and now you’re really in enemy territory. Still, you’re pretty confident that this is the frontier, and will be so down to your big decision point.
This is also Tolkien’s hiker earth. Not too many people to worry about, all the way down. It’s not the lower stretches of the Rhine, well populated; it’s more like the US-Canada border all along Montana. So, with a little care, you can go down at the pace you choose, break a few temporary barriers along the way, and get there just fine. You don’t have to be on hair-trigger alert all the way down. Also, with the big decision to make, it’s reasonable to make it anywhere along the road, even at the end.
So what does the Fellowship do? Basically, it drifts. It proceeds at the pace the River gives it. In a sense, it waits for something to make up its mind for it, neither rushing the decision by racing to get to the Falls fast nor dragging its feet so we delay the decision as long as possible. This isn’t travel; it’s a frame of mind. It’s a way of handling the decision process. Let’s go to the Falls, understanding that we are going there – can’t avoid the decision – but giving maximum time for the decision to be made for us along the way. And, of course, it helps to find out that Sauron is further along in his plans than we suspect. Flying beasts? Orcs on the wrong side of the River? Good to know when we decide.
And as part of that process, you feel the frontier. Little inoculating jabs, so you understand how life is going to change as you move into Mordor, quick incursion, back out, quick incursion, back out, preparing your mind. Your senses are alive to the non-Sauron part of Middle Earth; what will they sense that’s changed in Sauron’s part? How do you handle that change? Baby steps.
And this frontier thing is a wonderful part of Middle Earth. A great River, wide and then full of rapids. Huge statues, marking vanished borders. Little hidden islands of refuge. And all culminating in the biggest of all lakes, and the Falls to the rest of the story. Little jabs of wonder. A frontier to a far greater story. We’re nearly at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, the first movement of the symphony. It’s the right time.
So let’s peek ahead at the final Chapter, the decision point. There’s a mental decision, and an integrated physical decision, for everyone in the Fellowship, individually and collectively. The River takes us to the closest point outside Sauron’s control to Frodo’s goal (Mount Doom) unless we go around through Gondor. So the physical decision is: go into Sauron’s turf, go into Gondor, or go somewhere else outside Sauron’s turf – and Rohan is the obvious alternative. Meanwhile, the mental decision that each has to make individually is, do I split from Frodo or do I stay with him, which is the same thing as the decision, what’s best for the goal of the Quest?
And what we see is that these people are letting the evolution of their personalities and their relations with the rest of the Fellowship begin to make that mental decision for them. Gimli and Legolas are becoming buddies; they’re going to stick together, and that’s going to determine each of their decisions. Aragorn is desperately trying to be a leader at the level of a mini-God like Gandalf; he’s going to “feel” the gestalt that a high person feels, composed of races and nature and history and individuals interacting in society, in his “heart”, and combine it with Gandalf’s “pity”, and when that’s clear, he’ll decide, knowing that clarity will happen, hoping that it happens in time.
And Boromir is going to play out his split personality, wider and wider swings, until the point where a triggering event brings out both the best and the worst in him – his angel and devil on his shoulder. And Merry and Pippin are in different boats than Frodo, beginning to sense that leaving Frodo is inevitable and that they have to establish links with the rest of the Fellowship from now on, lead or follow. And Sam is being faced with Gollum when Frodo is asleep, and realizing that supporting Frodo doesn’t mean just passively cooking and cleaning and providing a friendly hobbit voice: he has to make his own moves as well, make his own decisions, handle things when Frodo can’t, stay with Frodo even when Frodo tells him please don’t, if it’s the right thing for Frodo.
And Frodo?
We find out in the next Chapter that he already knows what he has to do. He probably has known it on some level since he accepted his task in the Great Council, it has just become clearer and clearer. His only question is when he is going to do it, when he is going to leave everyone and go straight to Mount Doom, focused entirely on just getting there. Otherwise, sooner or later, any companion will give in to temptation and turn on him, almost certainly keeping him from getting there.
But he wants to delay it as possible because he needs those friendly crutches as long as possible to slow the process of addiction as much as possible, to take the burden of everything else from him when he is struggling with the addiction. And he is very, very afraid that without those friendly crutches he will fail to get to Mount Doom. Hell, he doesn’t even know how to get through the surface of the bubble, Mordor’s ring of mountains.
And we reach the lake, and reach Parth Galen, and it is a golden summery afternoon, and there is a lawn there, and it is as if we are about to have a picnic, one last picnic with our parents before the summer vacation ends, and it’s time to decide. Time to launch those boats out into the future, into the wider world, away from our parents, and walk forward into maturity.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
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