4. A Shortcut to Mushrooms; 5. A Conspiracy Unmasked
In Chapter 4, Frodo awakens the day after the wondrous night with the elves in a small leafy bower, that is, not unexpectedly, enveloped. The elves are gone but have left behind food and invigorating drink for the hobbits. The meal consists of bread and fruit, in contrast to meat or anything else that implies masculine activity.
The hobbits continue their journey toward the house Frodo is supposedly moving to. But this is a cover; in reality, he aims to secretly make his way to Rivendell with his ring. The journey, after the drama of the changes in the Shire, the threat of the Black Riders, and the encounter with the elves, is relatively uneventful. It is true that they spot a rider in the distance and pay a visit to Maggot, who has been visited by one of the Big Folk (Riders), but otherwise, no drama or symbolically significant events arise.
The following chapter, “A Conspiracy Unmasked,” is, from this perspective, also relatively devoid of content, but we may note that, according to the cover story, Frodo is moving to a house, not a hole, which suggests a certain development. Merry, who now rejoins the group, acts in line with this as a particularly “grown-up” hobbit, possessing unexpected knowledge and paternally looking after the others.
Another detail worth noting is that the hobbits bathe for the first time in the story. They thus undergo a purification before the next step in their development, the significance of which we will return to.
Finally, Frodo has a dream recounted in the tale. In brief, it seems to foreshadow the end of all things. We may have reason to revisit its content in another context, but it is, in any case, significant that this dream occurs now, as the next day they truly leave the land of the hobbits and cross the final boundary into the darkness of the unconscious.
Interlude: Do the Riders Truly Represent “Grown Men”?
Since the hobbits do indeed see (and hear) the Black Riders during these otherwise, from a symbolic perspective, relatively uneventful chapters - about which we consequently have little to say - we take the opportunity to elaborate on a point made in an earlier text: namely, the Black Riders as a symbol of “grown men,” whom the hobbits, as “children,” avoid. Can it really be that simple?
The short answer is no, it is not that simple. We know that Tolkien’s work is not an allegory where one thing represents another (such as the ring “being” the atomic bomb, to mention a historically popular assumption). Rather, it is an intuitively written story whose archetypal images are not random but form a pattern, a largely coherent narrative with functioning internal logic. Since the tale is “archetypal,” i.e. a stream of images that more or less autonomously emerges from the unconscious like a dream, we can only understand it from a psychological perspective through its symbols.
We have no intention of elaborating on Jungian concepts in these texts - that would become too lengthy, and Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon is available online for those who wish to explore them - but we wish to emphasize that a symbol is not a sign or an allegory. Jung states that “an expression that stands for a known thing remains merely a sign and is never a symbol,” or, put differently, an allegory. In our consideration, we thus assume that the images in the saga are symbols, something essentially unknown. These archetypal images or symbols are one reason why generations of young readers are gripped by the tale in a way they are not by fables or traffic signs.
“[The symbol] is always a product of a highly complex nature, for it is composed of elements from all the psychic functions. It is therefore neither of a rational nor an irrational nature. It certainly has a side that accommodates reason, but also one that is inaccessible to reason, for it is composed not only of rational elements but also of irrational elements from pure inner and outer perception.”
Jung further states:
“The living symbol cannot arise in a dull or poorly developed psyche, for such a psyche will be content with the already existing symbols offered by tradition. Only the passionate yearning of a highly developed psyche, for which the existing symbol no longer conveys the highest union in a single expression, can give rise to a new symbol. But precisely because the symbol arises from humanity’s highest spiritual achievements and must simultaneously encompass the deepest foundations of its essence, [it must] originate from the lowest and most primitive layers of the psyche.”[1]
The ring, the Black Riders, the elves, Lothlórien, and so forth, are, from our perspective, symbols; this means they can be interpreted and more or less understood, certainly, but only in their context and only to a certain extent. The land of the hobbits is, in our view, undoubtedly a depiction of a world of children in the bosom of the Great Mother. This does not mean, however, that the hobbits are children, even an allegory for children, but rather that the story uses the image of this short people who neither work nor meet women, yet eat well and live in abundance, and are afraid of the “big folk,” as a symbolic depiction of a state that can be described as “children” in “the bosom of the Good Mother.”
We know that neither Bilbo nor Frodo are children, but the story describes in various ways how they exist in a childlike state, in a psychological situation which may be described as "childlike." Since this is clear from the outset of the tale, we understand that this is the initial situation, and since it is unsatisfactory in its one-sidedness (if we, with Jung, assume that the psyche strives for wholeness), we can conclude that the tale is about breaking this bond, which in Jungian terms would be to individuate, to become a more whole and mature human being.
This is the starting point. Then we reach a point where the matter is settled - according to the tale: Frodo must take the ring out of this state to break the bond to the mother archetype that the ring (here) represents.
This leads us to the Black Riders, who have now been actualized in the story. Like other symbols, we must view them in the context in which they appear, particularly where they first emerge. If we establish that Frodo represents a one-sided, childlike state in the bosom of the Good Mother that he must grow out of, it is expected that he perceives "the other" - the unknown ahead - as dangerous. If this wasn't the case, he would already have done so, as growth is a natural process in all organisms. "The other" is, by definition, unwanted and is consequently experienced as negative, even though it represents natural progression. ("Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking, Why else would spring hesitate?" as Karin Boye writes.)
The first dangerous thing Frodo actually encounters in the tale is the “big folk.” Since the tale has the characters who speak of the Black Riders - Ham, Pippin, Maggot - refer to them as “the big folk,” it implies that these respective beings are, from the hobbits’ perspective, synonymous. In this sense the Black Riders are the big folk, and since they are clearly not women, they are grown men; the tale describes them as the enemy the hobbits must flee from. There's a conflict, in short.
So the symbolic situation does not mean that Frodo is a child, that the ring is a bond to the mother archetype, or that the rider is “an adult man.” Rather, this description of each symbol pertains only to what they represent in their context, in the situation in the tale where they appear. We cannot say exactly what the symbol “means,” and for that reason, we must content ourselves with describing the aspect of the symbol that we perceive and that is thus relevant at present. As the tale progresses and the dynamics change, other aspects of the symbol, due to its new context, will become more relevant and more descriptive of what is happening, from the psychological perspective of development.
In a letter, Jung makes a similar clarification regarding the symbol and its context.[2] He says that a symbol fascinates because it is “true,” but only temporarily, as it is intended for a specific situation. If the situation changes, a new understanding is required, even if it still pertains to the same archetypal content. As long as the tale evolves, so too will the symbol unfold. We see a corresponding dynamic over time in our dreams. If psychological development stalls, however, the symbol will not evolve over time - or on the contrary, it may degenerate.
Returning to our tale, we see that Bilbo does not develop while he remains in the Shire with the ring. He only becomes more “thin and stretched,” as he himself describes it to Gandalf; but he does not develop because the dynamic does not evolve. Frodo, however, will develop, and the ring he carries will consequently do so as well; this means that we can understand the ring as a symbol in one way in the Shire, in another with Tom Bombadil, a third on Weathertop, and in yet other, more troubling ways as we approach Mordor.
But there is also another possible perspective on the symbol that we believe is valuable to highlight. If we follow Jung and acknowledge that the symbol is something essentially unknown, and that we are drawn to it because the unknown is rationally inaccessible (beyond the prism, let us say, that we see in the situation) and thus evokes fascination, the question becomes how we should relate to it to better understand its presumably valuable content.
The answer to that question cannot be to rely on our rational consciousness, as we have already established that the symbolic content is beyond its one-sidedness. Consequently, we must allow ourselves to be a bit irrational too. In this context, that means acknowledging the unclear and contradictory and meeting the content naively.
For instance, what does it mean that the Black Rider, at the second encounter with the hobbits, does not draw his sword and charge but instead dismounts and crawls forward? What kind of creature crawls? Humans do not crawl when pursuing hobbits, nor do wraiths, which, being essentially spirits, should rather float. We will not theorize about the rider’s crawling here but leave this question open, at best to spark the benevolent reader’s imagination:
If you allow yourself to be naive - why would a Black Rider crawl toward Frodo? He is, after all, a wraith on a horse.
What else crawls toward Frodo in Middle-earth? How should one understand the symbol of crawling, and why is it manifested by a Black Rider?
The Lord of the Rings is teeming, as we shall see, with unexpected details of this kind - elements that can scarcely be understood through rational means alone. We will observe this many times, how the rational attitude we almost always orient ourselves by cannot explain a host of peculiarities in our tale.
To mention just one - which we will need to return to - in order not to get too far ahead of events, it is, from a rational perspective, utterly incomprehensible that the warrior and guardian Aragorn, who has taken it upon himself to protect the Shire from monsters, carries a broken blade in his scabbard. As far as we know, he has no other weapon, yet as far as we can tell, he frequently finds himself in close combat. And still, he carries his broken blade, which he never misses an opportunity to proudly display, seemingly to impress those around him.
How are we to understand this rationally? Are we to understand that Aragorn, every time he faces monsters in battle draws a broken weapon? As this broken heirloom is very important to him, the rational mind would reasonably argue, why doesn’t he leave it in Rivendell and take a weapon that works on his adventures? His behavior, like that of so many others, is entirely irrational. One cannot, with intellectual honesty, understand this rationally.
But can we understand this example irrationally, that is, symbolically? Yes, we can, for as a symbol, Aragorn’s broken blade in the scabbard at his belt is consistent (as we will return to). But to see this, one must be a bit irrational, sink a little into one’s, let us say, childhood’s symbolic world, and view the image naively.
When we consider all the peculiarities of the tale, we must be naive if we wish to make any contact with the symbols. Reading Jung’s Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, for example, one is struck by how often he returns to precisely this point. For instance, if someone dreams that she is in her bed on the upper floor of a house and a burglar breaks in through the window, it is not just a “burglar,” according to Jung. The naive attitude notices the fact that the intruder did not enter through the backdoor downstairs but through the window on the second floor. It is thus not an ordinary burglar; it is a burglar who can fly or climb walls. What kind of figure flies or climbs walls? “Be naive!” Jung urges the participants, to spark their imagination, to let go of their habitual rationality. For that is the nature of symbols: they are not random, but there is content that can be understood if one allows oneself to be naive and playful, if one allows oneself to meet the imagery of the unconscious halfway.
“To interpret such a thing we must again take it quite naively. Naiveté is a vice in ordinary life, but in psychology one cannot be naive enough, because these things are based on the primitive mind.”[3]
So when we say that the Black Riders represent the grown man that the hobbit/children fear, because integrating this content necessarily entails separation from the Great Mother, one should not understand this as what the Riders fundamentally mean, any more than Frodo is literally a child. Rather, what we mean is that the symbols of hobbits and Riders (as something essentially unknown) appear in a certain way in their encounter, given the specific situation, in a manner that is comprehensible, meaningful, and supported by the rest of the tale.