"At the Sign of the Prancing Pony" - Ben's Thoughts

We're finally back on track with "Prancing Pony." The tension is high, the stakes are raised and -- wait, this chapter really is much shorter than I remembered it being. I suppose in my mind, I always combined it with the next one ("Strider"), where we get the full introduction of Aragorn and more about Gandalf's whereabouts, as well as additional hints about the Black Riders. Here, the Riders are barely mentioned, but Tolkien still manages to convey the looming threat they cast over everything.

The main impression that I got from this chapter is that, boy, these Hobbits are out of their depth. While Frodo is suspicious right off the bat, what with his distrust of Harry the gatekeeper, his decisions just aren't all that sensible throughout this chapter. Let's review: first, only Frodo is traveling under an assumed name. The others are all going by their given names (Mr. Brandybuck, Mr. Took, and Sam Gamgee). This might as well be a bullhorn shouting to anyone searching for the four Hobbits that have recently disappeared from the Shire -- not least among them a Hobbit with, coincidentally, the same full name as Mr. Frodo's personal manservant! Sheesh, Frodo, you and your compadres need a better cover story.

Second, the Hobbits completely disregard common sense by 1) splitting up and 2) visiting the common room. I suppose their curiosity gets the better of them, but c'mon, my lads, you're trying to stay out of sight. As the book reminds us again and again, visitors from the Shire are rare but not unheard of; what if somebody happened to be there that knew Frodo or one of his cousins by sight? And that is quite apart from the possibility that the Riders have an agent of some sort checking out the inn, which seems the only place in the whole town where the Hobbits would want to stay for the night (and this, of course, turns out to be the case, what with Bill Ferny and possibly Saruman's squint-eyed lackey as well). Likewise, Merry goes out for a stroll -- at night -- in the town none of them know and all are unsure about. Not a good idea. Hasn't he read books like these before?

In any case, the obliviousness of the Hobbits is part of the fun. By the time Frodo is standing up on the table and drawing everyone's attention to him, the reader just knows something very bad is about to happen. Tolkien does a really good job of casting the Hobbits into the thick of things and showing that they are in way, way over their heads. Good thing Strider swoops down to save them.

The narrator tries to cast some suspicion upon Strider here at the beginning. He is the only person in the common room who is overtly watching the Hobbits, and we are told that the suggestion that Frodo put on the Ring comes from something in the common room itself. This is a bit odd, since we know that Aragorn wants nothing more than for Frodo to sit down and shut his stupid mouth. Who then is exerting this influence? I suppose you could say it is the Ring itself, as Jacob points out, since none of the other denizens of the Prancing Pony seem capable of sending these psychic signals. But if that were the case, wouldn't it have been easier to say so? Something I toyed with was the possibility that one of the Ringwraiths was actually present in the common room, just sans his physical black-clothed form. But I think that says too much about what the Riders knew at this point.

A quick note on the song: yes, Tolkien's occasional injections of songs and poems can be a bit jarring. I was talking to a friend the other night about the Tolkien and the Wheel of Time (the epic fantasy doorstopper series by Robert Jordan). He said that it was difficult to skim through the molasses-paced middle half of the Wheel of Time series, because one never knew what was important and what was just filler. But in LOTR, it's easy -- just skip over everything that's italicized!

I certainly see where he was coming from -- the cheeky little song about drunken cats and men in the moon is just a little too cutesy for me, and certainly far too long. I think Tolkien could have trimmed things down about 6 verses. But that was his prerogative, and I didn't find the little song too objectionable this time around. We'll revisit this theme, no doubt, as we get into the longer poems later in "Fellowship."

There are two other points that need to be addressed about this chapter. The first is, of course, Strider himself. Tolkien's introduction of him is delightful. The initial description of his clothing perfectly conveys the kind of life this man leads, right down to the leather on his boots. This description benefits even more, I think, from a lot of the material in the appendices, which reveals that Aragorn has lived a very long life to this point -- he is several hundred years old, if I recall correctly. He has served kings in both Rohan and Gondor, and has traveled much of the world many times over (Gandalf introduced him in "Shadow of the Past" as "the greatest traveler of the Age" or something like that). And yet, here this very important man is, in a backwater inn, waiting for and safeguarding four senseless Hobbits. Tells you something about the stock he puts in the quest (or at least in Gandalf's instructions).

I do note that Aragorn gets a bit of physical description when he dramatically lowers his hood for Frodo's benefit: "shaggy hair flecked with grey"; "pale stern face"; "a pair of keen grey eyes". (If Frodo was genre-savvy in the least, he wouldn't be worried about whether Aragorn is a bad guy or not; Tolkien -- and as a result generations of knock-off fantasy authors -- just love using gray eyes as a symbol of nobility. I guess because they're rarer than plain ol' blue ones?) I like that we do get a look at Aragorn, but would it have killed him to describe the Hobbits? I'm going to stop complaining about it, but it still bothers me.

The final note is the extreme burst of worldbuilding that takes place in this chapter. The Hobbits' world is suddenly a lot bigger. The brief history of Bree -- which feels much more at home placed here than the random "history of Brandybuck Hall" that we got at the beginning of "Conspiracy" (perhaps because Brandybuck Hall held only tangential importance to the main narrative) -- gives the reader a thorough overview of what to expect in this new locale (doubly important because Bree is only barely touched upon in the Foreward). Men that have dug in and lasted longer than those irresponsible Arnor folk! Non-Shire Hobbits! Heck, wandering tramp-Hobbits even get a mention! (That last brings to mind the possibility that Eriador is completely infested with lazy wandering Hobbits just itching to come across companies of Elves traveling to Lindon so they can mooch off of their free food and booze.)

Most interesting, and something that I was completely oblivious to on previous re-reads, is the looming threat of change to the community of Bree. The "squint-eyed Southron" makes it most explicit -- times are changing, and the people of Bree had best get used to new folk in town. Of course, the sociological importance of that assertion is undermined somewhat by the fact that this fellow is most likely a spy for Saruman looking for the Ring himself (or at the very least new people to enslave), but it makes sense that, in the wake of the War of the Ring, refugees from over the Misty Mountains, or from Rohan, or from wherever, would be showing up (or, dare I say it -- immigrating?) to northern Eriador and shaking things up in the process. Butterbur is insistent that the people of Bree don't like change, and don't like things that are out of the ordinary. Their insular attitude comes across as a bit off-putting. But I imagine those same sentiments were being echoed in Tolkien's day, and, indeed, are just as relevant today. A small thing in an epic story that brings it just a little bit closer to home.