The Great Tolkien Reread: The Shadow of the Past

"Frodo and Gandalf" by Alan Lee

[Gandalf] paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: 'This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power. He greatly desires it—but he must not get it.'

Frodo sat silent and motionless. Fear seemed to stretch out a vast hand, like a dark cloud rising in the East and looming up to engulf him. 'This ring!' he stammered. 'How, how on earth did it come to me?'

Hot on the heels of a chapter spent in the hustle and bustle of objectively trivial pursuits, steeped in the mundane concerns of an extremely silly group of people, comes a chapter that forces us—as well as our unwilling and terrified hero—to pay attention to the concerns of the outside world. After an absence of years, during which Frodo has both settled into life as master of Bag End and felt the repeated urge to follow Bilbo on his adventures, Gandalf returns and reveals to him both the nature of his ring and what he must do about the danger it poses to him, to the Shire, and to all of Middle Earth.

It is, essentially, an infodump—albeit a somewhat condensed one; we will learn more about the history of the Ring, about Gandalf's reasons for believing Bilbo and Frodo's ring to the One Ring, and about the reasons for his upcoming absence from the story, at the council of Elrond. As such, it is perhaps tempting for a reader who is familiar with the novel (or the movies) to rush through it. But that runs the risk of missing the curious fact that this table-setting chapter, this extended conversation between two characters sitting in a comfortable parlor on a sunny day, lays out everything that The Lord of the Rings is about.

It is not simply that two of the most quotable passages in the novel—"I wish it need not have happened in my time" and "do not be so eager to deal out death in judgment"—appear in this chapter, barely fifty pages into the story and before the journeying and adventuring have even begun. Every idea that ends up playing into the conclusion of the quest to destroy the Ring is spelled out in these pages: that Frodo may conceal the Ring and refrain from using it, but is incapable of giving it up or making a direct effort to destroy it; that Gollum is drawn to the Ring; that both the Ring itself and Sauron are acting to effect their reunion; that some force put the Ring in Bilbo and then Frodo's path in order to prevent this; and that Gollum has some role to play in that force's plans.

A reader coming to the novel for the first time will most likely not be able to see the outcome that these separate facts are all pointing towards, but nevertheless the shape of the novel's conclusion has been laid out. One might almost suspect Gandalf himself of perceiving this shape—or at least, of realizing that it will be Frodo's fate to take the Ring all the way to Mount Doom. Certainly there is something both fervent and fatalistic about the way he encourages Frodo to accept the role of the Ring's guardian.

'I do really wish to destroy it!' cried Frodo. 'Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?'

'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.'

Another way in which "The Shadow of the Past" lays out the crux of the novel to come is in how it develops a character who is both old and new. In the midst of all its scene-setting, it is also an in-depth and involving re-introduction to Gollum. On my first reading of this chapter, I did not expect Gollum to become an important character in the sequel to The Hobbit. He seemed to me like an instrumental figure, whose job was to pass the Ring along to Bilbo (and later to direct Sauron's gaze onto him and the Shire), but whose role in the story was concluded. A later reading reveals how foolish this assumption was. Not even J.R.R. Tolkien would put so much storytelling effort into a character he did not plan to revisit. 

The story of Sméagol and Déagol, in which we learn not only how the ring came to Gollum but what effect it immediately had on him (and perhaps, what was already in him for it to influence), is on its own one of the novel's most affecting interludes, a brisk bit of horror that is also, as Gandalf says, extremely sad. It lays out Gollum's monstrousness in unflinching detail, while also reminding us that he was once a person—and that some echoes of that person still exist in him. (And, of course, by reimagining Gollum as a type of hobbit, it forces us to consider his personhood, and lays a foundation for his relationship with Frodo.)

The rest of the chapter repeatedly showcases Gollum's sniveling self-justifications and barely-concealed bloodlust. "He muttered that he was going to get his own back. People would see if he would stand being kicked, and driven into a hole and then robbed. Gollum had good friends now, good friends and very strong. They would help him. Baggins would pay for it." It's startling how voice-y and present even this reported, mediated speech is. You can practically hear the cadence of Gollum's speech as you read it, and the sense it gives us of who this character will become in The Lord of the Rings is a powerful one. The Gollum we met in The Hobbit is present here, but so is the Sméagol of the story we just heard, and the more complex, more ambivalent figure that Gollum will become under Frodo's reluctant tutelage. And even at only a few pages, there is something oppressive about the combination of malice and pitiableness that shines through these words, the relentlessness of Gollum's resentment and feelings of injury, and the sliver of justification that he has for those feelings. 

Perhaps the assumption that Gollum had played out his role and left the stage is not simply a failure to recognize the shape of the story taking form before us. Perhaps, like Frodo, we want to believe that we will not be seeing Gollum again, because the thought of spending more time with him is too much to bear. But of course, Gollum has been assigned a role in this story. Not only by the force that placed the Ring in his path, then Bilbo's, and now Frodo's, but by an author who knows that he has written too interesting a character to let go of. But that is a problem for future Frodo (and Sam) to deal with. For now, there is simply the prospect of a journey.

Next time: The first stage of Frodo's journey is covered in "Three is Company", "A Short Cut to Mushrooms", and "A Conspiracy Unmasked"

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