Quote 3
“[Bilbo]
used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river:
its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary.”
The Lord of the Rings is
a quest narrative, as the characters spend much of their time on
the road, traveling toward the various destinations to which the
quest takes them. Indeed, this tradition of the road narrative is
a staple of Western literature. Texts ranging from the Danish epic Beowulf to
Cervantes’s Don Quixote to Kerouac’s On
the Road feature protagonists who take to the road in search
of something. Here, as Frodo quotes Bilbo just as the hobbits set
out in Book I, Chapter 3, Tolkien creates
an image of the road as a river, carrying its travelers along in
its current. This current works at the narrative level to advance
the plot, keeping the Fellowship moving into fresh encounters and
oftentimes into the unknown. Furthermore, the road serves as one
of the most potent and charged metaphors in all of The Lord
of the Rings. In part, the road represents the passing
of time and the ages that time sweeps into the past, just as the
road sweeps travelers off into the distant horizon. The road also represents
the interconnectedness of all things, the fact that even the smallest
footpath in the Shire leads, through many merges and branches, to
the most distant and sinister places in Middle-earth. Though the
Shire itself may be a place of comfort and familiarity, the road
serves as a subtle yet constant reminder that the unknown outside
world is present, and merely a journey away.
