The Great Tolkien Reread: A Knife in the Dark, Flight to the Ford

"Ringwraith" by Anato Finnstark

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. Their eyes fell upon him and pierced him, as they rushed towards him. Desperate, he drew his own sword, and it seemed to him that it flickered red, as if it was a firebrand. Two of the figures halted. The third was taller than the others: his hair was long and gleaming and on his helm was a crown. In one hand he held a long sword, and in the other a knife; both the knife and the hand that held it glowed with a pale light. He sprang forward and bore down on Frodo.

We have arrived at the midpoint of The Fellowship of the Ring with the last, desperate leg of Frodo, the hobbits, and Strider's flight to Rivendell ahead of the Black Riders. Strider's guidance means that the hobbits make good time and travel relatively safely in the wilderness for the first time, but an attempt to reconnect with Gandalf at the old lookout point, Weathertop, goes awry. Frodo is injured by one of the Black Riders, a wound that leaves him feverish and near death. Glorfindel, a warrior dispatched by Elrond, arrives and helps guide the party to the river passage before Rivendell, where Frodo makes one final dash for safety.

These chapters contain some of the novel's most memorable events, but taken as a whole they feel like a synthesis of all the ideas we've talked about in this series so far. We have Tolkien's detailed, granular nature writing, as Strider guides the group off the Road, through marshes, over hills, and on to tracks that only he and the other Rangers know. The presence of history as written across the landscape of Middle Earth, as expressed in both the bare remnants of the old North Kingdom watchtower of Amon Sûl, and the three petrified trolls left over from Bilbo's adventure in The Hobbit. Frodo's growing physical courage, and the Ring's increasing power over him. And, of course, the Black Riders, who here come to the apex of their power and horror (horseriding edition).

For this essay, then, I want to offer not a single analysis, but a few stray ideas that haven't found their place elsewhere in this series so far, before we gear up for the forming of the Fellowship, and the journey to Mordor.

***

"A Knife in the Dark" opens not with the journey towards Rivendell, but with a bit of housekeeping. First up, we glance back at Fatty Bolger and the Shire, where the Crickhollow house is attacked by the Black Riders, who discover that Frodo has left. It's a rare case of Tolkien leaving the restricted third person perspective on the hobbits' party (which is often a restricted third person view of Frodo), and a reminder that he was writing before the "rules" of how multi-stranded fantasy stories were codified and handed down to new authors as holy writ.

Throughout the chapters we've read so far, we've seen moments where the narrative changes perspective simply because it serves the story to do so. There is another one in "A Knife in the Dark", in which we look ahead into the future to learn that Barliman Butterbur, having felt obliged to pay the hobbits after their ponies were stolen in the night, will come out ahead in the end when the ponies are returned to him—a passage that ends with a classic Tolkien barb: "They had to work harder in Bree, but Bob treated them well; so on the whole they were lucky: they missed a dark and dangerous journey. But they never came to Rivendell."

This is also a passage that reminds us of hobbits' fundamental toughness. Fatty Bolger, the coward who wouldn't join Frodo's journey, nevertheless has the courage and presence of mind to outsmart the Black Riders, leaving by the back door as they besiege the Crickhollow house, and raising the alarm. The hobbits of Buckland chase the Riders away, though perhaps not entirely against their will: "Let the little people blow! Sauron would deal with them later. Meanwhile they had another errand: they knew now that the house was empty and the Ring had gone. They rode down the guards at the gate and vanished from the Shire." Right at our last glimpse of the Shire until the end of Return of the King, we are reminded that the hobbits' courage is at least in part a function of its rarely being required.

***

On their way out of Bree, Frodo catches sight of the southerner who is suspected of conspiring with Bill Ferny to hand the hobbits over the Black Riders, and who is the one who stole their ponies.

In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.

'So that's where that southerner is hiding!' he thought. 'He looks more than half like a goblin.'

This is, shall we say, not great. One of the fundamental conceits of The Lord of the Rings is that blood is destiny—not entirely, to be certain, but to a very great degree. This is often expressed through the Númenorean bloodline having inherently superior qualities of longevity, foresight, and mental fortitude, derived from their elvish heritage. Aragorn's claim to the throne of Gondor is not only that Isildur is his great-times-a-very-large-number grandfather, but in the fact that he recalls, in his bearing and aura, the grandeur of Númenor.

And, well, if you believe that there is superior blood in the world, then it follows that there is also inferior blood. Ferny's southern friend is the first instance in The Lord of the Rings of a character whose evilness is indicated by the hint of blood-mixing with the lesser races such as orcs and goblins, but he won't be the last. The association of that bad blood with the physical characteristics of non-white people will also continue to be a throughline.

The best that can be said about this is that it's not a point that Tolkien belabors. The Lord of the Rings is not a purely eugenicist work, and there are examples in it of characters who let down the promise of their heritage, as well as those who rise above it—Faramir, for example, is described as a sort of throwback; despite his family line being mixed for many generations with the men of Gondor and Rohan, he carries the light of Númenor, just as Aragorn does. As for the part-orcs and part-goblins, this is not something Tolkien lingers over. But at the end of the day, this is still a part of the book, and can't be ignored.

***

I haven't said anything yet in this series about another controversial aspect of Tolkien's writing, the poetry. These two chapters offer an opportunity to correct the oversight. For some reason, traveling with Strider in mortal peril brings out the poetry maven in our heroes, in quite a range of styles and topics. Sam quotes from Bilbo's translation of "The Fall of Gil-Galad", which while not as instantly catchy as "The road goes ever on..." or "All that is gold does not glitter...", still has an echo of the same bouncy cadence. Aragorn sings of Beren and Lúthien. Sam recites a comedy song about a troll. If you want to get a sense of whether you get on with Tolkien's Middle Earth poetry, you could do worse than just reading these two chapters.

Here's where I have to admit that for the most part, I do not get on with Tolkien's poetry. This is mostly my fault: I am a very unmusical person, and these are all poems that are meant to be sung. As I've never been able to imagine even a half-persuasive melody for them, I tend to not to be able to connect with them. When characters in the novel listen to poems about elves who came to a bad end thousands of years ago, or to a lament for their recently-lost leader Gandalf, they are moved to tears. But I never feel the same.

Though I'll probably never be a great fan of Tolkien's poetry, there are two things that have made me appreciate it more in this most recent rereading. The first is searching online for musical renditions of the poems. There are some amazingly talented people out there who have been inspired by this novel, and I've found that I can make up for my lack of musicality by borrowing their vision. The various versions of "Old Tom Bombadil", for example, all have the bounce and liveliness that I've never been able to impose on the poem by reading it on a page.

The second thing that has made me appreciate the poems a bit more is having read Tolkien's ancillary material. As an introduction to figures like Gil-Galad and Lúthien, I find the poems in "A Knife in the Dark" somewhat on the opaque side. But coming to them as someone who already knows the story, it's easier to appreciate what they're doing with it.

***

And that's a wrap on Book One of The Fellowship of the Ring! Next time, on April 21st, we'll be taking advantage of the break in the story to veer further afield in Tolkien's writing, with a discussion of The Hobbit.

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