The reunion of Bilbo and Frodo should have been purely joyous event.
However, the Ring casts a shadow over it:
‘Have you got it here?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘I can’t help feeling
curious, you know, after all I’ve heard. I should very much like just to
see it again.’
‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ answered Frodo, feeling a strange reluctance. ‘It
looks just the same as ever it did.’
‘Well, I should just like to see it for a moment,’said Bilbo.
When he had dressed, Frodo found that while he slept the Ring had been hung
about his neck on a new chain, light but strong. Slowly he drew it
out. Bilbo put out his hand. But Frodo quickly drew back the
Ring. To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer
looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them , and through it
he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony
groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him.
The music around them seemed to falter and a silence fell. Bilbo looked
quickly at Frodo’s face and passed his hand across his eyes. ’I understand
now,’ he said. ‘Put it away! I am sorry: sorry you have come in for this
burden: sorry about everything. Don’t adventures ever have an end?’
1) I think this is the climactic scene of this chapter and a very important
scene in FotR as a whole. We have heard about how the Ring transformed
Smeagol into Gollum. But now we begin to see the effects on characters we
know. I think we see the both the seeds of Frodo’s eventual inability to
give up the Ring and, through Bilbo, the depth of the after effects of bearing
the Ring. What is the reason for Frodo's reluctance to show Bilbo the
Ring? Is it concern for Bilbo or something else? Did it occur to
you at this point that Frodo would not be able to give up the Ring in the
end? Or, like me, did you blithely assume that of course Frodo would be
able to overcome the Ring?
2) Is the vision of Bilbo that Frodo sees a sort of mirage caused by the Ring
working on Frodo? Or is Frodo actually seeing “beyond the veil” as he did
with Glorfindel and looking at Bilbo’s soul as it is worked on by desire
for the Ring? Do you think Frodo’s lingering
“transparency” from the Morgul-knife wound gives him the ability to perceive
things beyond the abilities of most mortals?
3) Why does Bilbo pass his hand over his eyes? Wouldn’t it make more
sense for Frodo to be the one who rubs his eyes? So you think Bilbo saw
something when he looked at Frodo? Or was it just that he saw hatred on
Frodo’s
expression?
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Books, good books, are ambivalent, pulling you away from your life, pushing you into it, often at one and the same time. ----Diary of a Left-handed Birdwatcher --Leonard Nathan
