"Fog on the Barrow-Downs" - Ben's Thoughts

This chapter concludes the "Tom Bombadil Trilogy." Like I said before, I think that these three chapters would make an excellent stand-alone short story about some unsuspecting Hobbits' trials and travails getting to Bree to visit family (or maybe a particularly adventurous Took searching for the Barrow-downs' treasure). But they don't serve a lot of narrative purpose in LOTR. I did think that Jacob's thought about how these chapters prepare the Hobbits, especially Frodo, for the horrors to come has some merit. I just don't think it's entirely worth derailing everything to get there.

This chapter, while probably the most interesting plot-wise of the three, is not without its own problems. I feel that the major ones are of tone. The chapter bounces back and forth between hokey silliness (both in terms of Tom and the quasi-horror vibe from inside the Barrow) to quite beautiful descriptions to ominous foreboding, often quick enough for the reader to feel whiplash. Let's get down to brass tacks.

The chapter opens with the Hobbits' farewell to Tom and Goldberry. Tom gets such a perfunctory goodbye that even the most casual reader surely must be alerted "we're going to see him again!", especially after all the muckety-mucking about how spoooooky the Barrow-downs are. I have to roll my eyes, however, with respect to Frodo's goodbye to Goldberry -- his distress at not seeing her before he leaves seems either pathetic (a la the best-friend-in-love-with-your-wife) or cribbed from the "chivalry files" of mid-20th century Britain, where the sight of the pure, pedestal-enshrined woman gives the weary wanderer such hope and fortitude for the coming journey that he cannot do without that final glimpse. My eye-roll might be less pronounced with respect to option 2 if Frodo ever gave Goldberry a second thought. Since he does not, I suppose we are forced to conclude that he just thought Goldberry was really hot. Plus -- she "danced"? What, was she really dancing up there?

Anyway. On a more positive note, the description of the landscape from the top of Goldberry's hill is really quite stunning. I remember many times in my life where I've looked out from a height and been flabbergasted by the enormity and beauty of the world around me, and Tolkien manages to capture this feeling rather well, in my opinion. I feel obligated to quote the passage in full:

"In [the West] the land rose in wooded ridges, green, yellow, russet under the sun, beyond which lay hidden the valley of the Brandywine. To the South, over the line of the Withywindle, there was a distant glint like pale glass where the Brandywine River made a great loop in the lowlands . . . . Northward beyond the dwindling downs the land ran away in flats and swellings of grey and green and pale earth-colours, until it faded into a featureless and shadowy distance. Eastward the Barrow-downs rose, ridge upon ridge into the morning, and vanished out of eyesight into a guess: it was no more than a guess of blue and a remote white glimmer blending with the hem of the sky, but it spoke to them, out of memory and old tales, of the high and distant mountains."

Of course, away from Tom's rescuing presence, the Hobbits quickly find themselves out of their depth. At lunchtime, they quite stupidly take a nap near the standing stone, and for all of the description of how sinister that hollow is where they park for a break, there's no hint of foul magical play going on like there was with Old Man Willow. So basically they fell for the same trick twice, but this time nobody was exerting any kind of influence over them -- they were just dumb and fell asleep. That's not likely to endear a reader to the intelligence of Our Heroes, Professor Tolkien. Oh well.

From this point, the tone shifts into "foreboding" mode, with the gathering fog and the indistinct goals of the line of shrubs the Hobbits see in the distance. This middle section is (barring a description at the very end) the best part of the chapter, as Tolkien effectively ratchets up the tension, separates Frodo from his sidekicks, and finally punctuates everything with Frodo's miserable exclamation of "Where are you?" This line is followed by one of the best uses of a section break that I've seen in literature, as it adds a hefty punch to how alone Frodo is and how final that feeling is brought home to him.

But things have to get weird from here -- Frodo is captured by the Barrow-wight (what exactly the Wights are, as Jacob points out, is never really explained. Sauron's influence is somehow involved, because they started popping up (like daisies!) when his influence grows in Mirkwood, we learned from Gandalf in Chapter 2, but since they used to be Men of the West, that seems a little inconsistent) and we have the "dance of the creepy hand" and the unpleasant thought of the Wight de-robing Sam, Merry, and Pippin and playing dress-up with them so they can better resemble ritual sacrifice. (Don't pretend you weren't unnerved when Tom says later, "you won't find your clothes again.") Maybe creepy crawly hands were scarier back in the day, but I don't think I was ever unnerved by the green light and the hand, even when I read this for the first time when I was, like, 10 years old. And what is with the hand, anyway? The sense of space in the Barrow is not really conveyed well -- is it severed even before Frodo whacks it? Is the Barrow's arm stretching, like Mister Fantastic, as it creeps towards the sword? In any case, Frodo musters some courage (an admittedly nice bit of character development, shame the other Hobbits don't get any) and then summons Tom to save the day.

My writing on this chapter has proved a bit more snarky than I had originally envisioned, so I will end things on a high note. The vision the Hobbits share about the Men of Arnor when Tom gives them the swords is perhaps the first time in these books that Tolkien manages to convey (as he does so beautifully later on) the powerful weight of history, as well as the sadness and joy of existence, that accompanies the people of Middle-earth. I can't think of a better way to describe the Númenoreans that how it is handled here:

"As he spoke they had a vision as it were of a great expanse of years behind them, like a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow."

What better way to foreshadow the arrival of Aragorn, the "son of forgotten kings," as Tom puts it, than with this vision? These Men, Aragorn's ancestors, did not lead pleasant lives -- but they were unbowed and stalwart. And life is a lot like that, in my opinion (for LDS folks, this certainly recalls Lehi's dream to me). A shadowy field, that makes one grim at times, but the challenge is about presenting yourself unbowed before the things life slings at you. Kudos, Tolkien, for invoking these kinds of thoughts in me on the umpteenth re-read of this book. What you had to say really resonated with me.