9. At the Sign of the Prancing Pony; 10. Strider
It is well-established that Aragorn (or Strider, as he is known in Bree) is symbolically connected to the experience at the Barrow-downs. However, there exists an additional link between the events at the Barrow-downs and those that follow in Bree, namely in the very name of the inn, The Prancing Pony. We recall that when Frodo rode through the stone gate at the Barrow-downs, formed by two great standing stones, his pony pranced, causing him to fall off. This moment marked the beginning of a rite of passage, which in turn led Frodo to the inn and his encounter with Aragorn.
We do not believe these coincidences were deliberately planned by Tolkien but rather are the result of his intuitive, associative writing process. He discovers what unfolds by writing with an open door to the unconscious. As he himself stated:
“I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. ... I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea of who he was than had Frodo.”[1]
This inner, unconscious dynamic – this subterranean current of archetypal imagery – not only produces black riders, hollow trees, and archaic rituals that surprise even the author himself, but also gives rise to coincidences that Tolkien may not have consciously reflected upon. The narrative flows as a stream of images, associations, themes, and analogies that the author captures and shapes into a story. He does not sit and calculate what will happen next but opens himself to what is already flowing within him, transcribing what emerges. One reason the saga captivates generation after generation of readers is that Tolkien’s stream of archetypal imagery resides within us all. We recognize it, even feel it, though not on a conscious level. This imbues the story with a magical, enchanting quality that, while not unique, is remarkably rare in our myth-deprived culture.
Thus, we move from the prancing pony at the Barrow-downs to The Prancing Pony in Bree, where grown men welcome the hobbits into their company. As this is a pivotal event, it bears repeating that ordinary adult men have not appeared in the saga until this point.
The masculine imagery, initiated with Tom Bombadil’s stone house, continued through the obelisk and the barrows, also characterizes Bree, which consists of stone houses reached via a road that crosses a stone causeway. The inn itself is a three-story building, the tallest structure encountered thus far. When the hobbits are served their meal, it includes cold cuts. This is the first time they are offered meat, which they wash down with ale – further details that illustrate the psychological-symbolic progression.
As Frodo sits in the common room, looking around, he notices “a strange, weather-beaten man” listening to the hobbits’ conversation. This man is mysterious, cloaked with his hood up, his clothes worn and his leather boots caked with dried mud. He is a wanderer from the wilderness, known in Bree as Strider. “Funny you should ask about him,” says the innkeeper when Frodo inquires about the enigmatic figure, though he neither explains why it is amusing nor reveals anything about the wanderer. (Possibly because the author have nothing to say about the stranger at this point.)
Aragorn is a hero with a host of attributes that define the archetype – he is a chivalrous, masculine, orphaned wanderer. Jung writes:
“The heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, the nostalgia for the lost mother.”[2]
The adventure has only just begun, but the mother theme follows us all the way to its climax. In the Shire, the Good Mother was everything, and the attachment to her was symbolized by the Ring. Gandalf urged Frodo to take the Ring and set out on an adventure, with the logical consequence of breaking that bond. By doing so, true femininity is integrated, represented in the saga by women. The absence of this concrete femininity is a central theme in the story. Once we leave the world of the Good Mother and are initiated into the world of men, a longing for the feminine element arises, embodied by the motherless wanderer Aragorn. It is only now that Frodo/the ego develops a conscious relationship with femininity and is capable of longing for it as a tangible value.
This is an archetypal image often found in creation myths, where that which is united (typically heaven and earth) is separated, thereby allowing awareness of opposites to emerge. As a result, the two long for and yearn for each other, ultimately to be reunited, but – thanks to the presence of consciousness – on a higher level. If we apply this mythological image to our saga, it begins with an established, seemingly eternal union between the hobbits and the Good Mother. This union is wholly unconscious (illustrated by the fact that the mother is not concretized and thus is something the hobbits have no conscious relationship with) and therefore “low,” of value only as a starting point. (Compare this to the Garden of Eden.) The first old man compels Frodo to leave this symbiosis, and the second old man initiates him, leading to a separation from the mother, which Aragorn exemplifies. This man is aware of being separated from and longing for his counterpart, which is why he wanders alone across lands and kingdoms. (In his conversation with the hobbits, he reveals a desire for acceptance, to be acknowledged and received for who he is – a symptom of a mother complex.) The saga then strives toward a reunion of opposites on a higher, conscious level. The power of the Ring prevents this, and thus the bond it represents must be broken.
The male hero invites Frodo to a brief conversation at the inn, warning him about his friends’ careless talk with strangers. This short scene symbolizes how Frodo integrates the masculine element as a result of the rite of passage at the Barrow-downs, just as the “forefather” Tom Bombadil foretold.
The hobbits cause a scene, Frodo inadvertently puts on the Ring, and so forth. This is a dramatically significant scene, as there are people in Bree searching for the Ring, but from a symbolic perspective, it lacks deeper meaning, so we move on to the next chapter.
10. Strider
When the hobbits are alone with Aragorn, he suggests they join forces, further expressing how the protagonist has integrated the content the figure represents; it has become – or will become – a guiding principle for Frodo.
Aragorn reveals that the Black Riders are searching for Frodo, adding, “I know those riders.” This is significant. We know the riders were pursuing the hobbits as they left the Shire and began their journey, but they faded from the narrative during the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, and the Barrow-downs. Now, as the hobbits integrate the good masculinity embodied by Aragorn, the riders re-emerge as something dangerous that Aragorn “knows,” meaning he has a relationship with it. Since Aragorn is good and the riders are evil – both being “grown men” – we can infer that the riders represent his shadow, the dark side of masculinity in this context. At this stage of the story, the ego cannot yet integrate this shadow, and thus it must be repressed, expressed in the saga as the need to avoid, hide from, and flee the riders.
“They are terrible!” Aragorn exclaims, his face taking on a pained expression, “as if he were in anguish.” We understand that he has confronted this shadow before, which explains why he “knows” them. But as Aragorn represents a mature masculinity, he is ready to face it again. This is why he declares they should head to Weathertop, fully aware – through a symbolic understanding of the progression – that the riders will be there; they belong to that place, as we shall see.
Aragorn’s close connection to the riders as his shadow is further illustrated by Merry encountering a Black Rider at the same time Frodo meets Aragorn. If we consider Frodo and Merry as aspects of the same figure (Sam, Merry, and Pippin can be seen as hypostases of Frodo), it follows that Aragorn and the riders represent opposites of the same content. While Merry wanders in Bree, he is overwhelmed by a rider’s “black breath,” but as they attempt to take the unconscious hobbit, they are interrupted by an inn employee searching for him. (Note that the black riders does not resort to masculine violence but uses paralyzing magic.) As Merry begins to recover, he says he thought he had fallen into deep water. This is telling, as “deep water” is a mother symbol, engulfing and suffocating. The methods of these Ringwraiths mirror those of the Terrible Mother. (At least until the Ford, where water washes them away; they later re-emerge with new traits.) We will return to this when we encounter the Black Riders at Weathertop.
It is further significant that the riders re-emerge precisely in Bree, where the hobbits are first included in the world of grown men. The riders should not be understood as Aragorn’s personal shadow so much as the collective shadow of masculinity – power, control, greed, and so forth. This is underscored in the conversation at the inn, where it is noted that the riders come from Mordor, representing the dark counterforce awakened when Bilbo found the Ring.
Two additional events at the inn are worth noting briefly. While the hobbits speak with Aragorn, the innkeeper delivers a letter from Gandalf that he had forgotten to give them. In the letter, the wizard refers to the Ranger and urges the hobbits to take him as their guide. Now that Frodo has followed the Wise Old Man’s urging and undergone initiation, Aragorn becomes Gandalf’s proxy. As mentioned, Gandalf, as the Wise Old Man, is not needed between the Shire and Rivendell; in fact, he is not meant to be present. He hands over to Tom Bombadil, who hands over to Aragorn. Gandalf, Bombadil, and Aragorn are all “good fathers” who play different roles at different points in Frodo’s adventure (or development, or individuation). Until Rivendell, which marks the end of the adventure’s first, symbolically charged part, these three men never appear in the same scene and can thus be seen as three facets of the same symbol.
In light of the letter’s contents, Aragorn shows his broken sword. This is the same blade that Isildur, in ancient times, used to cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand, thereby claiming it. Aragorn’s fate is thus tied to the Ring and, by extension, to the Black Riders (or Ringwraiths, as they will later be called as the story clarifies). That this adventurer and guardian wanders with a broken sword in its sheath is remarkable, even implausible from a rational perspective, but it aligns with the castration theme expected in such a mother-bound narrative. We will address this further later. For now, we note that this longing, motherless, homeless wanderer carries a broken manhood. “But the time is near when it shall be forged anew,” he says, seemingly unperturbed.
We may return to this question, but it can be understood that the Ring-bearer redeems Aragorn’s masculinity. He indeed declares himself ready to die for Frodo if necessary – an unexpected statement from a rational perspective. Frodo himself is not particularly significant in the “war of the Ring,” as far as we can tell, while Aragorn is undeniably crucial. We must conclude that Frodo, as the Ring-bearer, symbolically plays a pivotal role in Aragorn’s fate – so pivotal that Aragorn would rather die than let Frodo perish. We can only interpret this as Frodo being vital because he is the Ring-bearer, and Aragorn’s destiny is, as noted, tied to the Ring, the bond to the Great Mother. If this bond were lost at the wrong time, in the wrong way, Aragorn would be nothing.
Footnotes
[1] Tolkien, Letters, p. 216.
[2] Carl Gustav Jung, Symbols of Transformation, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2nd ed., The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), par. 124.