Back in my teen years, when I still played RPGs, I recall that there was a peculiar sort of melancholy that came with wondering back to the start of the map. After so many hours of game-play and experience-points, you now find that all those formidable villains that gave you so much grief when you were still trying to get the hang of the controls are now pansies, push-overs. But there's little sense of achievement, no cock-sure swagger, that comes from re-exploring those first levels; on the contrary, there's a nagging sense of waste--partly from all the irretrievable time you blew playing video-games (time that was perhaps better spent studying Spanish or Greek history or volunteering at shelters or protesting wars), but also from the feeling that you've abandoned all forward momentum, that you are exhibiting a rather childish nostalgia for places that literally never were. You are not only not moving forward with the game, you are not moving forward with your life (that might be why I finally quit playing video-games).
That, I think, is the peculiar melancholy facing Frodo and company as they near the Shire. From our old friends Butterbur and Nob in the Prancing Pony, we learn that all's not well in the neighborhood. Commerce with the Shire has slowed to a stand-still, a sort of police state with checkpoints has arisen, and the people of Bree now lock their doors at night. Swiftly we learn that Saruman is likely behind it all. The Hobbits are initially non-plussed, because they have Gandalf with them to set it right--except that Gandalf declares that that's not his job anymore, that in fact he is going to catch-up with Tom Bombadil instead (because I guess Tolkien couldn't pass up one more chance for Tom to be completely useless). Besides, says Gandalf, "you will need no help. You are grown now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you" (340). Don't you see, Hobbits? You have so many more experience-points now! The gang that once huddled in fear of Farmer Maggot have slain Shelob, Witch-Kings, Orcs, and faced the wrath of Mordor itself; nothing in the mere Shire can frighten them now. This should be a triumphant homecoming for them. But the knife-wound in Frodo's shoulder, the one that refuses to fully heal, says otherwise.
Now, I have some quibbles with Gandalf's reasoning here: first of all, if his mission on Middle-Earth is (vaguely) to "set things right again," then as long as Saruman is still around to wreck mischief, well then Gandalf still hasn't quite finished his mission, now has he. Nevertheless, there is still something charming about how Gandalf sets off our little Hobbit band to defeat the final Boss for themselves. It feels less that Gandalf can't be bothered to help than it is that he wants the Hobbits to see for themselves how much they've grown. That's how this whole series started, isn't it; in The Hobbit, Gandalf nudged Bilbo Baggins into a treasure-hunt with the Dwarves not so much because they actually needed his help than because he wanted to help Bilbo grow a bit, get out of his comfort zone, realize some of his potential. Frodo was forced into the Ring Quest by much more dire circumstance, but Gandalf's purposes with him are much the same: to not only save the world, but to help Frodo become more than he is, as well. It is a personal-growth that dates clear back to the episode with the Barrow-Wights, when Frodo realized:
"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" (Fellowship pg. 194).
Likewise, Gandalf sends the Hobbits back to the Shire alone, so that they can realize for themselves that they now have the inner-strength and confidence necessary to solve all their problems for themselves, and not always wait for Gandalf to bail them out. According to Joseph Campbell, that is the whole point of the Hero Cycle: for the hero to not only save the world, but to save himself, to achieve Apotheosis, resurrect, and ascend to a higher level. The Cycle, as implied by the very term, ends with the Hero returning home triumphant, to save his people, as these Hobbits now do. Like Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, our heroes come home to clear out the usurpers.
But then, one of the frequent criticisms leveled against Campbell (besides his over-reliance on patternism, reductionism, and formula) is that, in myth, the Hero rarely if ever returns. Hercules does not return home to Greece once he ascends Mt. Olympus.
Aeneus cannot return to Troy, or even to Dido. Odysseus cannot stay home
in Ithaca but must travel inland with an oar o'er his shoulder to pay
oblations to Poseidon. Luke Skywalker does not return to his Uncle's farm on Tatooine. Harry Potter never returns to finish his senior year at Hogwarts. And Jesus Christ does not return to the carpentry shop in Nazareth.
And Frodo cannot stay in the Shire, as we will find in a couple chapters. Hence the melancholy, that I mentioned earlier, of going back. Probably because we cannot go back, not really, not ever. The Hero Cycle is not a cycle at all. Frodo is re-visiting the Shire, but not actually returning. It's like revisiting your old home-town, or the house you were born in, your old High School . You can maybe enjoy a few fleeting moments of
pleasant nostalgia, but anything more than that makes you restless, makes you feel arrested, like you're wasting time. You didn't undergo all that growth just to return to where you started.
"It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded", says Sam as they approach the Shire; "Not to me," says Frodo, "To me it feels more like falling asleep again" (341). Not only can't we return home again, we shouldn't, either. The end-credits song that closes out The Two Towers film perhaps has it right: "You can never go home."
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