"At The Sign of the Prancing Pony" - Jacob's Thoughts

Something I've noticed this read through is how innocuous most everyone's intro has been: Bilbo is reintroduced prepping adorably for his "eleventy-first birthday"; Frodo is casually introduced as the adopted nephew before being foregrounded as the protagonist; Sam is trimming the hedges, Pippin just sort of tags along, Merry just sort of invites himself; and now Strider, the heir apparent to the throne of man, the Messiah figure, the once and future King, perhaps the single most important character in this entire mythology next to only Frodo himself, is first introduced as but a cloaked figure brooding in a corner of an old inn with an old wooden pipe.

There actually feels something a touch realistic about these casual introductions: for people constantly pass in and out of each others' lives, casually, simply, without fanfare or ceremony, and then leave without leaving much of an impact or memory (we've already had a host of characters like that in the novel thus far).  Only much, much later do we realize who the most important people in our lives are, who will turn out to have the greatest impact, the largest influence--and there is no way to predict that ahead of time!

Serious, if you had asked me in, say, 2005, who my closest friends would still be nearly a decade later, and who wouldn't, I don't think I would have made a single correct guess.  People with whom I thought I'd be life-long friends have just kinda drifted away, while folks who made little impression on me when I first met them later turned out to be among the most important to me--and a far larger legion of them simply passed through my life like ships in the night, as I doubtless did with them, too.  So I guess all I'm saying is I appreciate and admire Tolkien's method of introducing characters without even hinting at their later importance; whether that was intentional or not matters less to me than the fact that it works.

But back to the chapter at hand!  After spending several chapters of trying to find different ways to say, "Man, none of this is really going anywhere, is it," it's frankly a relief to rejoin the main narrative.  The Black Riders are once again an immediate threat, there are dark agents of Sauron milling about, suspicion and paranoia abound, as troubling news from distant lands hint at major events soon to come.  The irony is that not a whole lot happens in this chapter either; but unlike the previous flight-from-the-Shire chapters, this chapter at least feels like there are actual stakes involved, that real tension is being built up.  There is finally a sense of forward momentum.

Perhaps the most enlightening moment in this chapter for me are the hints at the actual agency of the Ring, which seems to have slipped onto Frodo's finger almost against his will.  There was some scant discussion of the Ring's agency clear back in ch. 2, when Gandalf explained how the Ring abandoned its owners one at a time when it could make no further use of them; and now we get to see the Ring act in similar manner against Frodo!  The Ring is no longer a mere MacGuffin, a burden, a package to be delivered like in so many spy thrillers, no--the Ring is fully capable of and willing to participate in its own adventure, and to toy with and betray the Fellowship whenever it feels like it, making it all the more dangerous, powerful, and interesting.

Perhaps it would be helpful to remember that this series is not entitled The Hobbit Part 2, nor The Adventures of Frodo Baggins, but The LORD of the Rings.  This Ring really is the main character, the center of all the action, it is the one still exerting its lordship, exercising its power, still trying to call the shots, the antagonist that literally everyone else is reacting against, both for good and for evil.

This Ring really is the "LORD" of all others, and it will not share power willingly.  I will be curious to track how the Ring exerts its agency in the future.