Ents, Elves, and Eriador by Dickerson Matthew T.;Evans Jonathan D.; & Jonathan Evans

Author:Dickerson, Matthew T.;Evans, Jonathan D.; & Jonathan Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Out of the Shire and into the Wild (But Not All at Once)

Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, an important scene takes place in a shadowy tunnel under a thick hedge near the eastern border of Buckland, an outlying region settled by Hobbits on the far side of the Brandywine River. Frodo and company are discussing their departure from known regions of Buckland and the Shire into the dark, unknown, ominous Old Forest:

Merry got down and unlocked the gate, and when they had passed through he pushed it to again. It shut with a clang, and the lock clicked. The sound was ominous.

“There!” said Merry. “You have left the Shire and are now outside, and on the edge of the Old Forest.” (I/vi)

In Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of Tolkien’s work, scenes of the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil have been excised entirely, and the hedge and locked iron gate that mark the clear transition into the Old Forest do not appear. However, Jackson seems to have realized that something important is happening here, so he included a variation of it. In the film version, it is a sunny afternoon, not a gloomy early morning, and the boundary is marked by a change in the color of the grass instead of a locked iron gate. Further, rather than Merry talking to Pippin, it is Sam talking to Frodo. When he steps across an imaginary line, Sam remarks:

SAM: “This is it.”

FRODO: “This is what?”

SAM: “If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.”

In the film, the liminal importance of this moment is reinforced visually by three large black birds perched ominously on a scarecrow in the background. These details highlight the significance of the event for Sam, a stereotype of Hobbit parochialism who also serves as an index character for the exploration of the natural world of Middle-earth. In the course of the story, it is Sam who develops most as a character, and crossing the border of the Shire into the wilder world outside is the first step in his initiation into maturity; for him, this is a significant threshold moment. But the liminality of this scene for all four travelers is no less marked in the book than it is in the movie. In fact, it is laced with unmistakable signs of foreboding. These include rather obvious narrational comments (“The sound was ominous”) and formulaic auditory signals, including the clanging of a gate and the click of a lock. These details direct the reader to regard this unmistakably as the significant crossing of a boundary. Indeed, one of the most important environmental contrasts in Middle-earth is between farmland and wilderness—between the friendly, cultivated fields of the Shire and the wild, untamed realms summed up in the atmosphere of Fangorn and the Old Forest.

The reader is not disappointed. Soon hereafter, the travelers encounter changes in the environment that make unavoidable distinctions between the agrarian comforts of the Shire and the hostile forces outside it.

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