It’s a dangerous business,
going out your door
Thomas Hillman first drew my attention to the sobering differences between Tolkien’s work and Peter Jackson’s LOTR film trilogy. When I read his blog, “Beyond This Be Elves! Sam and Story (2),” an awful revelation confronted me. I was one of those shallow fans who thought omitting Tom Bombadil was Jackson’s biggest mistake.
I felt a little less superficial when Hillman admitted he didn’t connect dots until he began re-reading The Fellowship. Then he realized how wrong Jackson’s bubbling rendition of the “Road” song was. In the staging of this scene, the film misses the heart of Tolkien’s story.
It is a dark tale. There are no heroes at the end. Frodo succumbs to the Ring’s temptation, and its destruction is an accident of fate. The undeserved adulation of others embarrasses him.
The Road goes ever on and on,
And I must follow it, if I can
Susana Polo points out that Tolkien’s staying power with audiences rests in the hopelessness of Frodo’s journey. Sam doesn’t feel the blackness. In the book, he never says, “If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” Instead, as Hillman notes, “His round eyes were wide open—for he was looking across lands he had never seen to a new horizon.
‘Do Elves live in those woods?,’ he asked.”
Sam is excited. He is stepping into another world, one that only existed in his imagination until now. Frodo is silent. His thoughts are with the world he is leaving behind. He understands he may never see the Shire again. He does not expect to return. Unaware that he is speaking aloud, he talks about following the Road “if I can” and “with weary feet” and “whither … I cannot say.”
“That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo’s rhyming,” says Pippin. “It does not sound altogether encouraging.”
There is nothing about the Road that is encouraging. Frodo’s only comfort is the reminder that Bilbo took the same path before him. “He [Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road,” Frodo replies. “It was like a great river. Its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary.”
Its springs were at every doorstep. Every path is its tributary. In other words, we are all traveling that same Road with Frodo.
“You step onto the Road, and if you
don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing
where you might be swept off to.”
Roads, paths, rivers, tributaries—these are popular and common metaphors for our journey from the womb to the grave. Whatever our reservations, our fears, our hopes, we are part of that fellowship traveling with the hobbits. What do we expect to find at journey’s end? Where might this Road sweep us off to? Or is the Road itself its own end?
According to Polo, people love The Lord of the Rings because it is a story of defiant hope in the face of utter hopelessness. In other words, we live as fully as we can despite the inevitability of our end. Hillman insists that courage is not the same thing as hope. It is Frodo’s courage in the face of certain defeat that keeps him on the Road, bolstered by the courage of those who traveled it before him.
We must all leave the security and familiarity of the Shire eventually. There is no choice in this. The Road goes on and on, and we must follow it. We would never know true hope or true courage otherwise, but Bilbo had it right. Journeying outside of one’s comfort zones is a dangerous business.