The Great Tolkien Reread: The Ring Goes South

"The Fellowship" by Robin Robinson, 2024

'We cannot go further tonight,' said Boromir. 'Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell voices on the air; and these stones are aimed at us.'

'I do call it the wind,' said Aragorn. 'But that does not make what you say untrue. There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have little love for those that go on two legs, and yet are not in league with Sauron, but have purposes of their own. Some have been in this world longer than he.'

Fourteen chapters into the book titled The Fellowship of the Ring, the fellowship of the Ring is formed, and sets out on its mission. We are now once again in journeying mode, with all that Book One of Fellowship had taught us to expect from that type of storytelling: detailed, granular nature writing, challenging landscapes, and a wilderness that quickly proves more stubborn than expected.

So far in this journey, we have had wrong turns, short cuts that made for long delays, and evil trees. But every one of our heroes' misadventures eventually served to bring them further along towards their destination. The attempted, and eventually failed, ascent of Caradhras in "The Ring Goes South" is a leveling up of The Lord of the Rings's established preoccupation with landscape and its challenges. For the first time, the landscape rears up (figuratively, but also maybe not just) and says: No. You cannot pass.

Along the way there are some entertaining flourishes, since this is the reader's first real chance to spend time with new characters who will become key to the rest of the novel. Boromir gets to show his usefulness when the company is snowed in on the slopes of Caradhras, and rather sweetly looks out for the hobbits. Legolas twinkle-toes a bit ("Then swift as a runner over firm sand he shot away, and quickly overtaking the toiling men, with a wave of his hand he passed them, and sped into the distance, and vanished around the rocky turn"). Gimli waxes rhapsodic about the mountains of his ancestors. This is also a good chapter for Sam, whose plain hobbit sense, as well as his deceptively wry sense of humor, are often on display. His pack, for example, includes "various small belongings of his master's that Frodo had forgotten and Sam had stowed to bring them out in triumph when they were called for."

From a storytelling standpoint, however, "The Ring Goes South" feels like a strange choice for the beginning of the fellowship's journey. Later on we will learn that this narrative cul-de-sac was necessary for Aragorn to agree to Gandalf's actual plan, to travel through Moria. But in the moment, it's hard not to be baffled by this interlude. Very few of the authors who have followed in Tolkien's footsteps, I think, have ever written a whole chapter in which their heroes try to get somewhere by taking a certain route, only to finally conclude that they can't get there from here.

The most useful way to regard the failed attempt at Caradhras might be that it is Tolkien reminding us that nature, in Middle Earth, is often possessed of intention. Journeying through Hollin, which was once the elf realm of Eregion, Legolas can hear the earth lament its lost inhabitants: "deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the Havens long ago." Later the travelers encounter flocks of birds darkening the skies, seemingly searching for something. Are they looking for Frodo? Are they acting on someone's behalf? Or are they simply responding to the ferment in Middle Earth with their own migration, no different than the refugees crowding Bree? It will take a while for our heroes to learn the answers to these questions, but for the time being their conclusion is unchanged: "Hollin is no longer wholesome for us: it is being watched."

What follows, in the ascent of Caradhras, is a direct conflict with the mountain. The wind rises, and stones fly at the travelers. The snow comes sooner in the year and lower on the slopes than it should. Fires will not light. A storm forces our heroes to overnight in the most meagre of shelters, where the hobbits nearly freeze to death. Even when day breaks, the mountain reveals a forbidding, inhuman landscape.

As the light grew stronger it showed a silent shrouded world. Below their refuge were white humps and domes and shapeless deeps beneath which the path that they had trodden was altogether lost; but the heights above were hidden in great clouds still heavy with the threat of snow.

Regarding this scenery, Gimli darkly pronounces that "Caradhras has not forgiven us". Forgiven them for what? Why does the mountain hate those who would ascend it? Is it, as Boromir suggests, in league with the Enemy? Or does it have, as Aragorn counters, its own grudges and scores to settle?

This is not a question the novel will answer. The most useful way to consider "The Ring Goes South", I think, might be as a dark reflection of "In the House of Tom Bombadil". Like that chapter, it reminds us that there are aspects of Middle Earth that exist sideways of the War of the Ring, and which will refuse to become involved in it even as they exert power over those who are. That they are wrapped up in their own stories, into which the heroes of this novel intrude at their own peril. Against Tom's benevolence, his willingness to lend a hand even as he refuses to join Frodo's story, we have Caradhras's stern, almost lethal demand to be excluded from this narrative.

A cold wind flowed down behind them, as they turned their back on the Redhorn Gate, and stumbled wearily down the slope. Caradhras had defeated them.

Next time: If going over the mountain = bad, maybe going under the mountain = good? On June 30th, the fellowship takes an alternate route in "A Journey in the Dark" and "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm". 

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