Prologue 4: Of the Finding of the Ring

t is in this chapter where the line that explicitly connects the events of Tolkien’s children’s classic The Hobbit to the current story is drawn. It recounts, very briefly, the entire book focusing mainly on the chapter "Riddles in the Dark." And it is here that Tolkien in fact subtly lays out most of the themes that permeate the Lord of The Rings.

“Riddles in the Dark” has always seemed like the most powerful chapter in the Hobbit. There idea of Bilbo, stuck in the pitch-black bowels of a Mountain, lost, with no way out coming across the horrendous figure of Gollum, a ruined, corrupted, murderous and mad hobbit himself (as it turns out) is so resonant, so primal, so…real.

This chapter is very much the turning point of the story for Bilbo, and a turning point for his character. For it is in this chapter that Bilbo loses his wistful longing for home, his rather petty complaints and problems; it is here he plunges into his role as Adventurer; it is here where the brave and clever hero, surviving on wit, bravery and magic is born.

And it is here he meets what he might eventually become: a twisted, dishonest version of himself who uses his power for the most selfish of needs — robbing living beings of life so he can eat: a cannibal of a character who survives on baby orc and the grubs of the earth; someone so deep in self-loathing there is almost no hope of spiritual redemption or healing.

It’s all very “monomyth”, Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum. (Hero's journey - Wikipedia).

It is not clear to me if Tolkien was aware of Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung. He probably was. It is also equally possible that what Campbell articulated was just in the air in scholastic circles of the early twentieth century, especially those circles concerned with history and myth — like Tolkien was.

For Tolkien, I think, history and myth were entertwined (with language.) But anyway, this seems to almost self-consciously fits into that old story.

Now, there is something a little old hat about the monomyth in 2017. I’ve seen probably a dozen action movies in the last five years and I always notice these same tired motifs: call to adventure, denial, crossing the threshold, descent into the underworld, the “inner cave”, the greatest fear, death and resurrection, reward and return journey…In fact, I always announce the plot points outloud to my wife when we are watching some movie.

I suppose this is all ultimately the fault of George Lucas. It was he who really popularised the monomyth to modern movie audiences. And if you are a Hollywood hack who needs a success, I can hardly blame you for sticking to it.

But in 1937, I guess the story was not as hackneyed: it connected directly with myth and was something new. Fantasy may have had it’s Conans and Cthulus, but it wasn’t consciously connected to myth until Tolkien came along…well, maybe Lord Dunsany did so but his works actually read like myths. Howard’s, enjoyable as they are, in their archaic, sexist way, speak to the more…well, teenage boy in all of us.

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By connecting this chapter, especially, to the new story, Tolkien really reveals his genius. Because by using the magical aid that transforms Bilbo into a hero and suggesting instead that it was actually the beginning of Bilbo’s villainy…Tolkien begins to lay out his central theme of the corruptive influence of Power. But, oh, how subtly is it done!

Few fans know this, but the version of “Riddles in the Dark”, indeed of the entire Hobbit that most of us have read, is NOT the version that was published in 1937. What is available now in bookstores is the revised version. If you have a copy of the HObbit: it will likely say “the authorised edition” somewhere on it. I know the version I first bought in 1981 said so. (upper right-hand corner.)

Now, this is all connected to some shady business dealings of an American publisher, who apparently published the Hobbit in a form that Tolkien did not like or authorize — something which he ends his Foreward bitching about…well, not in the current copy I have. Amusingly, his little rant about the American publisher whose behaviour, he suggests, is more reminiscent of Isengard than the (slightly sardonically put) "Saviours of the West,” has been cut from my new Kindle edition. (Why? To avoid offending modern Americans? Although I suppose at this point the people who he rants against are all dead — as is Tolkien himself. Tolkien was the ultimately winner of that little exchange, I think we can all agree. Because I have no idea who he was talking about; and the Lord of the Rings continues to sell.)

Anyway, I don’t want to go too far into this: for one thing I’m not a hundred percent clear what Tolkien is talking about.

The thing is, at some point, Tolkien revised the Hobbit: he cut out some references to modern appliances and machines and he rewrote Riddles in the Dark. Because, in the original, just as this sub-chapter mentions, Gollum does not promise to “show Bilbo the way out.” He promises to “give him a present.” Which he lies about, and going to get “the present”, with which he plans to murder Bilbo, he finds that it is gone and eventually guesses that Bilbo has, in fact, found it.

The revised version is much more plausible…even if the Lord of the Rings didn’t exist and the “birthday present”, the Ring, wasn’t known to be evil. It just seems kind of silly, the whole “present” bit…

So, here Tolkien is able to cast the original version as, you know, the original version: the version written by Bilbo himself, in a fit of uncharacteristic dishonesty.

So the revised version we all know and love is actually the version that has been revised by Bilbo’s heirs, the writers of the Lord of the Rings, Frodo, Sam, the Gondorian scribe Findegil and the Valar alone know who else. It’s a cool little explanation, not only of the original story not meshing with the current story, but also an excuse for the revised edition.

Afterwards, in his fussy attempt to keep up pretences that what we are reading is a scholarly translation, he goes on to explain that much of the book has been translated from a copy of the original Red Book of Westmarch called the Thain’s Book, which was brought to Gondor in the Fourth Age by Peregrin Took (good old Pippin, rereaders!) and had much lore and history added to it by various historians of Gondor and Rohan and the Shire….which explains the wavering tone of the prose in various bits of the of the story; and the markedly different and pedantic tone of the appendices and, indeed, this Prologue.

It’s this very fussiness of course which makes Tolkien Tolkien; and makes the world-building of the Lord of the Rings so unusually tight.

Finally, Tolkien introduces another of his brief themes: the theme of Beauty Lost as he mentions the fact that at some point Celeborn (the husband of Galadriel) leaves Middle Earth and ‘ sigh him went the last living memory of the Elder Days in Middle Earth. ‘

For loss is a major theme of the book…as it must have been to Tolkien the fifty-year old who lost his youth along with most of his friends in the muddy trenches of WWI; and whose children for which he wrote the Hobbit, his first literary sucess were growing older and going away. His son Christopher, the still-living executor of his estate, was stationed in South Africa during the SEcond World War, when Tolkien was working diligently on the story.

And when Christopher Tolkien passes away, what living memories will pass with him of the Elder Days in Middle Earth?

Anyway, on to the story — in the next entry.