Chapter 3: Three's Company
Back again. It’s heating up at work and my Czech lessons are started; a teacher was ill and we’re taking on a new client which is going to be one of our biggest. So I’ve had to postpone my weekly escape to Middle-Earth and it is possible that posts may come a bit more sporadically as my hitherto work-free Monday mornings and Tuesday mornings are probably going to be filled with lessons.
When I first read this chapter at 10, I don’t think I had ever heard the “Two’s company, three’s a crowd” adage. So the name of this chapter seemed a bit incongruous to me, recalling as it did the seventies sitcom, Three’s Company. In retrospect, I am amazed my parents allowed me to watch this show at all. Can you imagine such a risque TV show being shown now? Isn’t it interesting that, as social prohibitions on sexual practices deemed formerly taboo (homosexuality and fetishes, trans-genderism, et al) are relaxed, popular culture and its attitude towards sex seems to get more Puritanical? The formerly taboo’d have just joined the puritanically self-righteous.
The lecherous pursuits of Jack Tripper; the sleazy exploits of Larry; the unbridled horniness of Mrs. Roper and the flamboyant, gay-ish yet desperately hard-up Mr. Furley seem almost X-rated today. I was watching that stuff at 8. So was everybody else.
Ah, The seventies! Time of my child-hood. Sweat soaked and hairy, pungent, redolent of perfume and sex; innocent times of bikes in the humid summer, mosquitoes at night, Star Wars and orgies. (As a child, I did not partake in these last.)
What a time to have been alive.
I definitely was a Janet man, all the way, though. I never saw the appeal in Jackie’s dippy blondness. Janet to me was the hot one. Good ole Joyce DeWitt.
Anyway, it’s appropos that I begin this with a short reminiscence of my lost childhood, because that is what Three is Company is all about.
Of course, Tolkien shows, he doesn’t tell.
The story is told firmly from the view point of Frodo; a few glimpses into the minds of Sam and Pippin are culled AFTER the fact: as if the writer of the book(Frodo, for the most part) had interviewed Pippin and Sam. This is good, of course, for, as will be revealed a few chapters hence, there is more to Pippin, in particular, than Frodo is aware of. And thus the reader is unaware, too.
But the writing describing the three hobbits as they travel uphill and down, through wood and meadow is exquisitely wrought by Tolkien; who wouldn’t want to go hiking and sleeping under the stars with these delightful hobbits in this delightful lovely land of tree and dale?
Really, when you think about it, they are really roughing it too. There are no tents, and, though I imagine they have some kind of sleeping bag(they must keep something besides food and cookery gear in their overstuffed backpacks), it is all pretty much just bare bones camping. These guys are hard core.
Although it all serves the story, you have to wonder at how much of this is little more than a memory of Tolkien’s younger days; a memory of a time when he was young and carefree and could go traipsing about the English country-side on a warm autumn day. So lovingly is the gentle, pleasant landscape rendered by his carefully chosen, always very Anglo-Saxon based words; and yet the story does move along.
We go from early summer (or late spring) to autumn in just a few paragraphs, really. And the chapter, rather long at twenty pages, flies by.
We learn that Gandalf has got news that compels him to leave Frodo, promising to be back by his birthday at the latest. This of course begs the question: how did Gandalf, who, according to the text, has been “hiding in Bag End” and not really venturing out, get news at all? It’s a mystery that is never explained but we know who he meets immediately after leaving Frodo (and the Shire): Radagast the Brown.
Radegast is of course one of the Five Wizards, one who serves the Vala Yavanna, who is the sort of Mother Nature Goddess who rules and looks after the flora and fauna of Middle Earth. Saruman calls Radagast derisively “Radagast the bird-tamer.”
Could it be that bird-song has alerted Gandalf to Radagast’s presence? I think it likely. Of course it could also have come to Gandalf in a dream; and it is also clear (later on) that Gandalf and the High Elves have a way of communicating messages psychically, though “the messages may go astray” when sent long distance. Perhaps Gandalf just had a feeling and has learned to trust those feelings due to his deep faith. At any rate, it is an instance of magic, I feel.
Like most of the magic in the series, it is a very subtle thing: one that would be easily explained away.
Here is the thing about the Ringwraiths in this chapter and the next few. They are really terrifying. Even as a 46 year old man who has read this book umpteen times, Tolkien’s writing really makes them come alive for the reader. There is dark mystery about them.
Reading this chapter, as Frodo lies hidden in the twilight among the weeds, I am brought back to my childhood and youth: playing hide-and-seek in the dark; feeling the terror as I hid in the dark; hearing the breath of IT coming closer, the soft pad of his feet…even though IT was actually my friend…or my cousin…or my sister.
The hobbits desperate flight from the quiet, snuffling Black Riders brings all that back for me. The twilight terror of the black-clad surely-evil man crawling towards you as you hide.
From what depths did Tolkien bring these scary images? His own games of hide and seek as a child? Some war-time experience, hiding in the muddy trenches of France, while a gas-masked German crawled over Noman’s land? Whatever it was, it works.
The fact that the Hobbits are saved from the Black Rider by the timely appearance of the Elves; and not just any Elves, but High Elves singing potent and magical hymns to Elbereth, the Sky-Kindler, who listens to the prayers of Middle Earth seems like pure deux ex machina; and indeed, Gildor Inglorion himself notes that it is likely that the meeting has more about it than mere chance. (I.e., literally deux ex machina.)
I will note Gildor’s company bear no lanterns or lights, yet a “soft glow" seems to be about them. Of course, as High Elves, they live in two worlds: the world of the Seen and the Unseen, the Spiritual Realm where they appear as mighty beings of Light. Do all the Hobbits see the glow or is it only Frodo, as the Ringbearer, who is able to see this spirit light? At any rate, it seems that the Ring-wraith was scared off by it, blinded by its Holiness…and one mustn’t discount the power that the hymn to Elbereth evokes, as we see later in the series when Sam’s heavy-heartedness is alleviated by his own hymn to the Goddess.
All this is extremely subtle and easily missed.
Of course the “Hall” the Elves lead them too: a corridor in the woods, with a bonfire and torches on the tree-pillars, while the company sit on tree stumps and dine on magical food is a strong setting that seems almost culled from the collective unconscious…it is dream-like, yet authentic and somehow meaningful in and of itself. There are depths of mystery even here: how does Tolkien find these images that speak so potently? (It also echoes the woodland halls in which Bilbo finds the Wood-Elves partying in Mirkwood back in the Hobbit.)
But why didn’t the Elves accompany Frodo further? They can see that beings of great dark power are pursuing Frodo and his companions…they know that Frodo is no match for the Ringwraiths. Yet they seem to let it all go; they tell Frodo to flee the Black Riders; they tell him to run as fast and far as he can; they counsel him to not even wait for Gandalf.
And then they let him be? How irresponsible!
Well one explanation is that Tolkien himself had not fully developed the idea of the Ringwraiths yet; he likely knew the answers Frodo posed to Gildor no better than Frodo himself. But I will chalk it up to fate. Gildor feels he was fated to meet Frodo and rescue him from the Black Rider. Likely he feels that similar strokes of fate await Frodo in the future. At least it satisfies somewhat: these are beings of spiritual light; it is likely they seem an uncommon light around Frodo himself. And of course, Frodo as a Hero with a capital H must learn to stand on his own two feet.
I feel if this had been a more modern fantasy story, though, Gildor would have decided to accompany Frodo…whicih probably would have necessitated some showdown between him and the Black Riders fairly quickly…which actually would have been much lamer than the slow, unfolding way Tolkien tells the story.
But maybe that is why some of these kids don’t like Tolkien? Because they expect some grand magical showdown right away?
Only a bit of the Marxist bit, notable in 2017 because of its absence: Pippin, son of the Thain of the Shire; as near to a Crown Prince as the Hobbits get, jokingly scolds Sam for not having bath-water ready. (A joke of course; Sam of course reacts instinctively as his lackey upbringing has taught him: as if he had done something wrong.)
There is no question of class roles in this story…because the ruling class are actually benevolent. Pippin, of course, ends up cooking breakfast himself and expects Frodo to fetch water…there is no actual rank on this hike.
The hobbits are equals, even as they inhabit different strata of society. Pre-Marx, is the only way I describe it.
They set off at ten o’clock…It seems quite late to me, actually. I get up at, like, 4.15 half of the week and at six the other half. These hobbits are certainly in no hurry; at that point, nothing pursues them and Frodo is merely saying goodbye to his youth, as slowly as gently as he can.
And of course there are the songs: a sort of take on Bilbo’s Road song from Chapter One; and another Bilbo song that these three indefatigable wayfarers sing: again with the theme of walking and exploring, a song of wonder and adventure; of the mystery ahead… and yet, somehow tinged with the hints of shadows to come and the loss of something. In the moment it seems like a joyous song, but there is something deeply melancholy about it in retrospect.
Tolkien’s lyrical abilities are great.
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On this overcast blustery late-October day, with the winds whistling in the corner of the window and the red leaves of autumn blowing around in the air outside; under this dark-grey sky, I, like Tolkien, yearn for a time of freedom when responsibilities were far and friends were near; and larger folk could rescue me from the deadly games I played, feed me delights, give me advice and warnings about things I knew nothing about and lay me down to deep, utterly restful slumber.
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