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the fellowship of the ring: prologue

It may be tempting for some readers to skip this and jump straight into the first chapter; doing so would not limit your ability to understand the book proper. But Tolkien makes good use of his prologue to ease us into the coming narrative. The first paragraph suggests that Middle-earth is not some fantastical land sprung from the imagination of an author, but rather our own world, separated from us only by time. The Hobbit was not a fictional novel for children; it was taken from an account written by Bilbo Baggins himself in the Red Book of Westmarch. This sense of history not only encourages our suspension of disbelief, but pervades the book thematically as well. As we will learn throughout the story, the events of ages past weigh heavily on the present time of The Lord of the Rings.

The history of the Hobbits detailed here, including a section devoted entirely to pipe-weed that heavily quotes Meriadoc Brandybuck’s Herblore of the Shire, further blurs our reality with that of Middle-earth and connects us with the people we will encounter in these pages. And really, they’re just like us: they love their home, they love their food, they love books filled with information about themselves, and they do that thing where you have no use for an item and it’s cluttering up your house but for some reason you can’t bring yourself to just throw it away. They call such items “mathoms,” a useful word I think we should all agree to incorporate into the English language.

Even those who have read The Hobbit will still find the section “Of the Finding of the Ring” worthwhile. It reframes Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum as the most significant moment of the book within the context of its impact on Middle-earth as a whole, and establishes  a sense of unease about Bilbo’s ownership of the ring. Why was he so hesitant to tell the truth of how he obtained it? The question adds a good undercurrent of tension to the coming chapter. This section also reminds us of and emphasizes the role of “luck” in Bilbo finding the Ring. Just like The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings will frequently acknowledge the unlikelihood of the good things that happen or the terrible things that don’t happen. This trilogy, though, will more directly suggest that there may be more to such instances than mere chance; perhaps there is a greater purpose at play.



favorite quote

and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk . . . They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it.

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