And now we arrive at Mos Eisly space port--I mean, Platform 9 3/4--I mean, the village of Buckland. In terms of that Campbellian hero cycle, Buckland is (like its Star Wars and Harry Potter analogues) the threshold between the known world and the unknown, between the safety of the familiar against the hazards of the not. There is no longer this gradual increase of danger as before, but an abrupt demarcation line, both literally and figuratively--Hobbits who don't know better claim that they would rather risk a run-in with the ever-nearing Dark Riders than venture into the Old Forest, and Buckland sits right at its frontier. This is a place for both rest and preparation, with the implication that only those who are mentally prepared for greater dangers should proceed ahead.
As far as Campbellian threshold guardians go, I kinda like this one: Buckland hints at the hidden tenacity of Hobbits (which is what perhaps Gandalf always saw in them--and what Frodo et al. will need to call upon later), what with it being a final bastion of Hobbit domesticity butting right up against the ever-threatening darkness of the Old Forest; as Tolkien understatedly notes, this is the place where Hobbits begin to lock their doors at night.
Yet despite the danger, it is here in Buckland that Hobbits have still stubbornly set up a home, refusing to let the menace of the Old Forrest disturb their peace and tranquility. Hobbits may be quotidian, but they are aggressively so--they do indeed possess the strength of character to preserve their world (and maybe the rest of the world, too).
However, what I find strangest about this chapter is not the implied threats to come, but Tolkien's choice to focus on the character development...of Merry, of all people! Even while our ostensible protagonist Frodo remains rather nebulously defined, it is the minor character Merry who here takes center stage--and talk about contrasts between the film and the book! In the Peter Jackson, Merry is but one part of some sort of Laurel & Hardy routine with Pippin, as indistinguishable as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, there for occasional heroics but mostly just laughs; but here in the chapter, Merry is a veritable Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant investigator reclining back in his easy-chair to explain his expert deductions, keen observations, and clever conspiracies, in how he uncovered the mystery of the Ring and Frodo's journey.
Serious, it's like Tolkien stole a scene from Arthur Conan Doyle and re-enacted it here. Suddenly Merry feels more like a genuine asset than a mere comic relief. I'll be interested to see if that characterization holds consistent throughout the rest of the series.
But then, though the focus here is mostly on Merry, this chapter does provide a brief glimpse into the psyche of our man Frodo, and that in the most literal way possible--the final paragraph gives us his dream that night. He hears oceans that he's never seen in waking life; he moves from the claustrophobia of the neighboring Old Forest to the agoraphobia of this tree-less dreamscape (though in my experience in the Midwest, claustrophobia and agoraphobia are not quite so separate as one might assume--the flat, empty views cause the horizons to close in on you, not expand them); he sees a white tower that he feels an overwhelming desire to climb, to see the sea at last (just as how Ben said he understands Frodo's yearning for the mountains, I, as an ocean-child myself, understand this desire for the sea); and it is not immediately clear whether this edifice represents the temptations of the Ring, teasing him towards the tower of Mordor and his unwitting destruction, or if it perhaps represents a place of safety and exaltation where Frodo can potentially see the West Havens beyond his approaching sea of trials.
Maybe both.
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