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

To borrow a line from the film: "I have no memory of this place."

Even as it's been ages since I last read Fellowship of the Ring, yet still its basic contours and plot beats have felt familiar to me throughout this re-reading--that is, right up til this chapter.  For whatever reason, I had just assumed that Frodo and company exited the Old Forest directly to the Prancing Pony, where we could then get on with the main narrative.  I had completely forgotten the Barrow-Downs episode.  Hence, this tangent with the Barrow-wights and the fog was all as disorienting and strange to me as it apparently was to the Hobbits. 

To pick up a thread from Eric, this sort of side adventure feels structurally out of place--fine in and of itself, and very expertly done in terms of tone and description and feel, but really doing very little to either develop the characters or move the plot forward.  To paraphrase an earlier comment by Ben, this is the sort of random episode that would fit in a novel like The Hobbit, not the sort epic that Tolkien himself perhaps did not yet realize he was actually making (I may have to rescind my earlier optimism that Tolkien had this series all planned out from the beginning).

Moreover, my impatience with Tom Bombadil increases here, because this chapter reveals his real value, how helpful he could actually be, his knack for arriving at their darkest moment, only for that help to literally never come up again!  The Wights, too, while genuinely chilling and threatening, likewise never return to trouble our heroes.  They are not apparent agents of Sauron, nor do they appear to have any motivations more profound than that of a common mugger.  The Wights aren't foreshadowing, no: they're just dry runs.

I suppose one could make the argument that dry runs is exactly what this chapter is supposed to be: our domestic little hobbits really have no idea what dangers await them, and they need this practice, and these guides, to help break them into the epic they must soon inhabit. They will face far worst than the Old Forest, and that alone, so first they must face the Forest, and that with a kind guide for now to help them out when they get stuck.  Tom Bombadil is the training wheels, so to speak. Also, the Wights are nowhere near as frightening as the Black Riders, but they are still pretty frightening, and so the hobbits must learn how to encounter them before they can level up to the Black Riders, in a manner of speaking.

I suppose, in this more charitable reading, "Fog on the Barrow-Downs" is more about Frodo learning something about himself, of the courage he is capable of, than it is about any of these seeming inconsequential side-quests.  Frodo had to learn something about Frodo, I suppose.  As Tolkien himself writes:

"There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.  Frodo was neither very fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire.  He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him.  He found himself stiffening, as if for a final spring; he no longer felt limp like a helpless prey" (pg. 194).

That passage clarified much about the hobbits--and especially Frodo--for me, particularly for why Gandalf seemed to place such implicit faith in them, and for that reason alone I am grateful for this chapter.  Perhaps all these sill side-quests out of the Shire were just an inadvertent training ground, to toughen up our little hobbits for the big adventure ahead of them. 

But now, as we at last approach the sign of the Prancing Pony, the training wheels come off.  There will be no more Tom Bombadil's to rescue the hobbits at the last second, and no more enemies that are merely mischievous but not actively malicious, like the Trees and the Wights.  Here's hoping that from here on out, we formally abandon the episodic-structure of The Hobbit, and that the stakes begin to feel real.