Summary — Fog on the Barrow-downs
The next morning, Tom sends off the hobbits, who head
north into the hills of the Barrow-downs. At noon, they stop atop
a strange, flat-topped hill with a single stone standing in its
center. Off to the north, the Downs seem to be ending, which is
an encouraging sight, but the hills to the east appear foreboding.
The hobbits stretch their legs and eat a full lunch of the food
Tom has given them. Unfortunately, their full stomachs, the warm
sun, and their fatigue, perhaps combined with some power of the
hill itself, cause them to fall asleep.
When they awake, the sun is setting and a thick fog has
settled over the Downs. They quickly head back down the hill in
what they think is a northerly direction. Frodo believes he sees
the exit to the Downs, and he rushes ahead, calling out to the other
hobbits. When Frodo reaches what he thought was the gate, he turns
to find that he is alone. He hears distant cries and runs forward.
He reaches the top of a hill and sees a barrow in front of him.
A deep voice speaks to Frodo and says it has been waiting for him.
Suddenly, a dark figure appears and grabs him with an icy grip.
Frodo falls unconscious.
When Frodo wakes up, he is inside a barrow, under the
hills. He realizes that a Barrow-wight has captured him. He is afraid,
but he steels himself with desperate courage. Next to him lie the
other three hobbits, pale and unconscious, adorned with gold and
jewelry and with a giant sword lying across their necks. In the
eerie cold, Frodo hears a voice chanting. He sees a long arm walking
on its fingers toward the sword. For a moment, Frodo panics and
feels tempted to put the Ring on his finger and run away. Unwilling
to abandon his friends, however, he grabs a nearby dagger and, with
all his remaining strength, cuts off the reaching hand. There is
a shriek, and the sword shatters, but the Barrow-wight then makes
a growling sound.
Falling over Merry, Frodo suddenly remembers the song
Tom Bombadil taught them. He begins to sing and soon hears a reply:
old Tom comes crashing into the mound, collapsing the Barrow-wight’s chamber.
Tom helps the hobbits out onto the grass, where they recover from
the Barrow-wight’s spell. Tom takes the Barrow-wight’s treasure
out into the sunlight and leaves it on top of the hill for passersby
to sift through. Tom takes a beautiful brooch from the treasure
and, looking at it, sadly thinks of the woman who once wore it.
Returning their ponies and their packs, Tom takes daggers from the
Barrow-wight’s treasure mound and gives one to each hobbit.
Tom leads the hobbits out of the Downs and safely to the
East Road. He will not pass out of his country, but he directs the
hobbits to the nearby town of Bree, where there is a fine inn where
they can spend the night. Before they get to Bree, Frodo tells his
companions that in front of strangers they should refer to him not
as Mr. Baggins, but as Mr. Underhill—a precaution Gandalf earlier
reminded Frodo to take.
Analysis
The encounter with the Barrow-wight allows us to learn
more about Tolkien’s vision of evil. Of course, Sauron emerges as
the major figure of wickedness in The Lord of the Rings, the
being whose nefarious intentions shape the plot of the novel. But
Sauron does not have a monopoly on immorality or selfishness, and
the presence of the Barrow-wight—or mound demon, as we might call
him in more modern English—reminds us that nastiness in Tolkien
comes in many shapes and sizes. There is nothing to indicate that
the Barrow-wight has any connections with Sauron, or that it is
doing anything to further Sauron’s aims. The demon is, in a sense,
a free agent of evil. Yet even so, there are uncanny resemblances
between the Barrow-wight and the Dark Lord. Like Sauron, the wight
is in search of jewelry, and is willing to kill to get it. Moreover,
the independently moving arm of the wight—which walks spookily on
its fingers—may remind us of the severed finger of Sauron, detached
when Isildur took the Ring from him. Neither the wight nor Sauron
has a personality in The Lord of the Rings; they
are incarnations of wickedness rather than fully formed characters.
They reach and grab with no soul or personality, as if they have
hands but no hearts or minds.
