"A Knife In The Dark" - Jacob's Thoughts

It feels like an absolute crime to stop right on this cliff hanger, especially since we're so close to the end of Book 1; nevertheless there is already too much to talk about in just this chapter, so restrain myself I must.

Frankly, this chapter doesn't feel like it should work at all, what with all the needless, extraneous detail about how the alarm went off and the horses were let loose and they were going to get an early start but instead got to eat a big breakfast anyways (whew, I guess!) while they tracked down a replacement carrier-pony that they didn't get a good deal on but don't worry cause Fatty McInnkeeper (bless his soul) ended up getting a good deal out of it that somehow involved Tom Bombadil in some typically useless way much later, and then they were on the main road then they weren't and they were in yet another Old Forest of sorts, and there was yet another excruciatingly long poem, with a bunch of dense pseudo-historical context and name dropping from Strider that didn't actually clarify anything and also there were birds and foxes, I guess?

Basically, this chapter could have very easily been Old Forest redux, dreadfully boring and pedantic and excisable.  But apparently somewhere between chapters 6 and 12 Tolkien really hit his stride, because "A Knife In The Dark" was genuinely gripping and exciting.  What changed?

It's the Black Riders, isn't it.

For this chapter starts with them bona fide smashing down a door in only two tries, then violently trashing the place, before scattering at the town alarm.  Up till then, the Black Riders' menace had only been in their general, vague creepiness; their threat was only implied.  Seeing them engage in actual physical violence ups the ante, and confirms that they are a real, ruthless danger.

The temptation here might be, now that you've revealed the violence of your enemy, to just let them go on warpath, spreading carnage and mayhem wherever they go.  And indeed, there is something almost Terminator-esque about the Black Riders, in their inhumanity, implacability, indestructibility, as they systematically and machine-like explore every possible trail the hobbits could have traveled, methodically eliminating every Sarah Connor in the phone book so to speak, weaving their web till they inevitably find them.

That's the word I'm looking for, inevitable: there is just this inevitability about them, that you can run but not hide, and not even run that long!  As Kyle Reese says in the first Terminator: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!"  The same could be said of the Black Riders.

Yet Tolkien does not elect to go the rampaging Terminator route, perhaps intuitively understanding that now that their violent potential has been revealed, returning them to the shadows makes them even more menacing than ever.  As such, while Strider and the hobbits travel, it's only in sly allusion that the terrible threat of the Black Riders is hinted at, as when Frodo jokes about how all this travel is thinning him down:

"'I hope the thinning process will not go on indefinitely, or I shall become a wraith.'
'Do not speak of such things!' said Strider quickly, and with surprising earnestness."

Or later, when Pippin hear's tell of their ultimate destination:

"'Going to Mordor!' cried Pippin, 'I hope it won't come to that!'
'Do not speak that name so loudly!' said Strider."

In each of these instances, it is Strider alone who appears to be fully cognizant of the horrors that hunt them.  We've only barely met Strider, but, to paraphrase Ben, he is clearly 200% more competent than all the hobbits combined, and we can already tell he is a deeply experienced traveler and fighter; we know that he has seen, heard, and experienced things that the others can scarcely imagine, and thus not much can frighten him.  Hence, if he can barely stand to hear about "wraiths" and "Mordor" (especially after quoting it so brazenly in the Prancing Pony), then we know there must be something awful about the pursuing Riders.  Our imagination is thus allowed to make them just that more terrifying.

The real danger here then--narratively, I mean--is that actually revealing the Black Riders, to see them as they actually are, is tantamount to revealing the scary monster as just a stuntman in a plastic suit with an obvious zipper, a total let-down.  Tolkien's choice to actually show the Black Riders, to see what Frodo sees when he puts on the Ring, was frankly a gutsy move.

And I think it pays off.  It speaks well of Tolkien that the true form of the Black Riders is more uncanny and unsettling--and therefore frightening--than whatever blood-thirsty monster most our imaginations conjured up on our own:

"Immediately, though everything else remained as before, dim and dark, the shapes became terribly clear. He was able to see beneath their black wrappings.  There were five tall figures: two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing.  In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel."

There's just something almost...frail...about the Black Riders...Tolkien doesn't call them walking corpses, cause he doesn't have to.  If they weren't already dead, they'd be in  nursing homes.  They are clearly consumed by a power without which they couldn't even stand on their own, which again, renders them that more unnerving.  In a perverse sort of way, I think it's similar to how evil children (e.g. Children of the Corn, that one Twilight Zone episode, etc) are creepy too--something about seeing what should be the most vulnerable members of our society (kids, the elderly) being suddenly over-powering--and sans any of the love or tenderness normally associated with them--makes them uncanny.

A word on uncanny, since I used it earlier: Freud said it means literally "un-house-like," or "un-homey."  It is the opposite of feeling cozy, comfortable, settled in your little hobbit hole.  That is, something needs to feel in a strange way like it doesn't belong there at all, as though it upsets your sense of belonging in this world just by its presence.  For another reason why I think the Black Riders work so well is in just how uncanny they are.  Consider Strider's explanation of how the Black Riders perceive the world:

"They themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys; and in the dark they perceive many signs and forms that are hidden from us: then they are most to be feared.  And at all times they smell the blood of living things, desiring and hating it.  Senses, too, there are other than sight or smell.  We can feel their presence--it troubled our hearts, as soon as we came here, and before we saw them; they feel ours more keenly.  Also...the Ring draws them" (emphasis added).

Our intrepid heroes can just feel something wrong about the Riders; they are uncanny, they "troubled our hearts", before we ever even saw them we knew something was off, something was wrong.  And now, what's even more terrifying: to them, we are uncanny too!  They feel that we don't belong here--and not just us, but all living things!  They desire our blood and hate it, too!  Sauron and his agents are unsettled by the mere presence of living life, and so they seek not just to dominate it, but destroy it.  Suddenly that clarifies of all of what's at stake in this frightening war.

And the first life we see them attack is dear Frodo himself--and after all these chapters of them circling around, closing in, like sharks sniffing after blood, like Terminators working down the phone book, the inevitability comes at last to a head, and they "bore down" on our protagonist and drive into him a literal knife in the dark, as the chapter title promised.

And yet, once more, as dark as the darkness may be, as much as their darkness can look like "black holes" compared with the pitch blackness of night itself...the light is still stronger!  For Strider, who now reveals the full extent of his hyper-competence, even after he's betrayed how absolutely terrified he is of these Riders, still attacks them and drives them away with but the flames of the camp fire.

But more than literal light drives these Black Riders away: at the climactic moment, Frodo cries out, "O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!"  This prayer of sorts, this incantation (I'm sure Ben can fill us in far better as to the full portent of these words), I do believe somehow helps drives these demons away.  Remember how Strider cautioned the hobbits earlier against speaking dark words like "wraith" and "Mordor," even refusing to tell a particular story in such a dark place; well, apparently there are light words too, bright ones even, that can pierce even the darkest darkness of the night.

But now I'm in danger of getting ahead of myself!  I must wait till next week to post my thoughts on the exciting conclusion of this episode, which is when I also plan to give my thoughts about Book 1 in total.  Until then, I think I can safely say that after the slow start--and particularly the Tom Bombadil trilogy--these last few chapters have covered a multitude of sins.