Let's Read Tolkien 79: Homeward Bound

At last the hobbits had their faces turned toward home.

Gandalf and the four hobbits set off from Rivendell for Bree. Frodo has some flashbacks on the way, but they have a comfortable trip to the Prancing Pony. There, they learn from Barliman that Bill Ferny and some of the other suspicious Bree-men tried to take over Bree or something, and were chased out in a fight that left several people dead. Ever since, life in Bree has been more or less miserable, with the Rangers gone and everything. Gandalf and the hobbits reassure him that now that the war is over and there's a king again, everything will be fine again. Barliman has to have it explained to him multiple times that the king is Strider. The hobbits are also told that all is not well in the Shire, and Sam is reunited with Bill the Pony. Finally they take off for the Shire, and Gandalf leaves them at the Old Forest, where he intends to go spend some quality time with Tom Bombadil.

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Let's be honest here: this entire (very short) chapter only exists so that Barliman can be told that Strider is now the king.

This chapter also closes the circle on the morality play of Arnor: in the Council of Elrond, Aragorn called Barliman fat and complained that people like him don't understand how the Rangers keep them safe. Well, now that the dúnedain have taken off to fight in the War of the Ring, the woods around Bree are suddenly infested with wolves, bandits and monsters as if it was Skyrim, and the people of Bree presumably now realize the value of the Rangers. I don't really know what Tolkien was going for with this. Maybe he just thought it was cool. But for a 21st-century reader, the idea that there is a secret network of surveillance and violence keeping you safe and you need to be thankful for it is really kind of sinister.

Finally, I think we should take a moment with Frodo's last words in this chapter.

"Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together," said Merry. "We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded."

"Not to me," said Frodo. "To me it feels more like falling asleep again."

I talked earlier about how the Shire may seem like a perfect rural utopia, but it really isn't to Frodo. Even Bilbo, originally introduced to us as the absolute embodiment of middle-class hobbitness, ends up settling in Rivendell. To the others, returning to the Shire is a Bilbo-like homecoming and a lived-happily-ever-after storybook ending; to Frodo, it isn't. As he puts it to Gandalf, "I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden". More to the point, what will be his place in a society that, like Barliman, has no comprehension whatsoever of what he's gone through? It would be interesting to contrast Frodo's experience with that of World War I veterans - like Tolkien.

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Next time: border formalities.