7. Homeward Bound; 8. The Scouring of the Shire
Before Gandalf and the hobbits reach Bree and the Prancing Pony, they pass Weathertop. Frodo is tormented by the wound the Witch‑king inflicted on him. When Gandalf asks about it, he replies: “There is really no going back. Even if I make it to the Shire, it will not be the same, for I shall not be the same.”
Autumn has come, and when they arrive in Bree everything is bleak – rain, wind, harsh and dark. The Prancing Pony turns out to be rather deserted. Bree and the hobbits’ land have suffered from strangled trade and an influx of “bad folk.” Butterbur has much to lament, but Gandalf reassures him that there is now a new king on the throne and everything will be set right: “All evil things will be driven out. In time the wild will not be wild any longer, and there will be people and fields where once there was only wilderness.” We note further expressions of how the dark and unknown are to give way to the civilisation of consciousness.
Eventually they ride on westward. (We may note that the hobbits return to the Shire on horseback, though they left it on foot, which from a symbolic perspective may indicate that through the adventure they have learned to cooperate with their “instincts.”) Meanwhile they discuss Butterbur’s information about the misery that has struck the Shire during their absence. Gandalf will not help them with this. He says: “You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so.”
He expresses that the individuation process he sent them out on, and which they have completed, has given them the ability to handle conflicts that did not exist in the Shire, and which they could not have handled, while they were still “children.” Gandalf has done his part, awakened the call, brought the hobbits to take the step out into the adult world. Once they have reached this degree of maturity, they no longer need a wise old man (who, Jung argues, appears when the ego is somwhat of a fool[1]). Although the hobbits were by no means children according to the story, Gandalf continues: “You will need no help. You are grown up now.” While the literal narrative tells of an adult Frodo setting out on an adventure, it nonetheless confirms our premise that the hobbits, regardless of age, were like children in the Shire, in symbiosis with the Great Mother, and that this was what the daimon could not tolerate –and so on…
Gandalf then tells them that he is going to see Tom Bombadil. We have previously discussed their relationship and noted that it is significant that now when everyone is returning home, Gandalf ends his adventure with Bombadil. He says that Bombadil is the moss and he himself the “rolling” stone, thus illustrating that they are indeed two sides of the same image – one passive and the other active. But now Gandalf has finished rolling, as he says, and will become resting like Bombadil; almost as if also this spirit merges into matter when the hobbits leave it behind.
The last we see of Gandalf (apart from the Grey Havens) is when he, like a spirit, flies toward the Barrow‑downs: “He turned Shadowfax off the Road, and the great horse leaped the green dike that here ran beside it; and then at a cry from Gandalf he was gone, racing towards the Barrow-downs like a wind from the North.”
Merry then describes the development we have noted: “Well, here we are now, just the four of us who set out together. All the others we have left behind, one by one. It feels almost like a dream slowly fading away.”
“Not for me,” says Frodo. We may think of the hobbits as a single personality, in which above all Sam, but also Merry and Pippin, function as hypostases of Frodo. Broadly speaking, the Ring‑bearer –especially after the breaking of the Fellowship – represents the inner journey, while Merry and Pippin, who after the separation at the river accompany Aragorn (and his “hypostases” Legolas and Gimli), represent the outer – at least in the sense that the Mother belongs to the collective unconscious, while the Father belongs to the collective conscious. When Merry, as they reach the Shire, again takes up the role of leader and soon assumes command in the external conflict, Frodo sinks back and becomes almost a moral backbone. He acquires a spiritual quality with his star and now belongs to a great extent belong to the dream world. For him the underworld (to use James Hillman’s term[2]) is ever‑present, no matter what outer environment he finds himself in – he has his star and his wound, and unforgettable experiences.
But he adds: “To me it feels more like I am going to sleep again.” In relation to what has just been said, one may understand this as Frodo “sinking” further into the underworld as Merry, Sam, and Pippin – the extraverted ego, so to speak – take command. Frodo becomes “the fourth” we have spoken of, representing the dark earth that Gandalf urged Aragorn not to forget when establishing order in the world.
8. The Scouring of the Shire
As the hobbits approach their homeland they come to a roadblock. The surroundings are described as “un‑Shirelike”; there are not only roadblocks and guards, but also darkness and gloom, and the hobbits are wet and tired. When they make it further into the heartland, they see that the inn stands deserted with broken windows, and squint‑eyed men from Isengard outside. They see debris, broken carts, rubbish –chaos. “Yes, this is Mordor,” says Frodo. Chaos has seeped into the Shire during their absence, and ruffians ensure that the inhabitants obey their draconian rules. When the company sees that the Party Tree has been cut down, Sam finally bursts into tears, prompting a thug to mock him for his weakness.
We recognise the image of the dead tree from Minas Tirith, where it in short symbolised the tyrannical masculinity that had suppressed the feminine energy. In the Shire the situation was the reverse: here the trees flourished and the masculine energy was absent – an equivalent one‑sidedness and stifled development. Now the conditions have changed dramatically in both domains: in Minas Tirith the masculine and the feminine are united, while the Tyrannical Father dominates the Shire instead.
One may entertain the thought that the dominance of the Good Mother led to an external pressure from the Tyrannical Father, in order to counteract the one‑sidedness. According to the narrative it was the Dúnedain who held it back, but from a psychological perspective it was repression. Frodo was unaware of the border‑guards around the Mother’s land because he was an unconscious character in symbiosis with her. When the call is awakened in Frodo and he leaves the Shire with his Ring, the Dúnedain/repression ceases, whereupon the dams, so to speak, burst and the opposite of the Mother flows in. As we have discussed, the content itself is not evil, but as a result of the repression it has been coloured by the darkness of the underworld and by displaced and thus perverted instincts. It rises up as something destructive, aggressive, and oppressive. What has occurred is therefore enantiodromia, an extreme attitude turning into its opposite:
This characteristic phenomenon appears practically always when an extreme, one‑sided tendency dominates consciousness; in time an equally powerful counter‑position builds up, which first inhibits conscious behaviour and then breaks through conscious control.[3]
In this context the Shire represents the attitude of consciousness. It becomes the hobbits’ task to find a path between the extremes, to resolve the conflict that has arisen. One may say that this is the second task they receive from Gandalf: first to enter the darkness in order to confront the unconscious, and then to face the ensuing conflict in consciousness.
But we may extend this to include the outer world, which Merry, Pippin, and Sam represent (the extraverted, while Frodo is the introverted). For the Shire is a society to which the individuated personality returns after the descensus ad inferos, the necessary descent into Hades. While he followed this call he was forced to devote all his energy to this adventure, which means that he neglected the society to which he belongs. According to Jung it is his duty to “pay back.” He writes:
Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individuant leaves behind him for the world, that is the guilt he must endeavour to redeem. He must offer a ransom in place of himself, that is, he must bring forth values which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective personal sphere. /.../
The individuant has no a priori claim to any kind of esteem. He has to be content with whatever esteem flows to him from outside by virtue of the values he creates. Not only has society a right, it also has a duty to condemn the individuant if he fails to create equivalent values, for he is a deserter.[4]
In our context we see how the hobbits make a great contribution to the Shire and gradually bring it to flourish, while Frodo himself leaves behind the immensely valuable Red Book, which he works on during his final time on earth.
Returning to the course of events, the hobbits realise that they must rise up against the tyranny. Merry takes command of his own accord. The horn he received from Éowyn, the death‑defying shield‑maiden, represents his leadership. We also saw at the beginning of the story how Merry gave the impression of being an “adult” hobbit who led the others. But then he fell into the shadow of other leaders – Bombadil, Aragorn, Gandalf, and so on. Now he appears as his true self and takes the lead on his own. He initiates the uprising and personally leads the troops. He sounds the horn from Rohan and impresses in every way.
Sam, for his part, hurries to the Cotton family to urge the father to join the uprising, but also, of course, to see Rose. It is briefly indicated here that they already have an established relationship. But we recall that according to the story she first appeared in Mordor, that she symbolically arose during that wandering through desolation as an anima figure. One may play with the notion that they have an ”established” relationship because they first met during his adventure rather than in the Shire, and that as a result she takes concrete form in the outer world, perhaps through projection.
Violence is imminent and Frodo, who will not take an active part in the fighting, urges his friends under no circumstances to kill another hobbit. He also prevents hobbits from beating a fallen enemy, and in general shows moral backbone in his otherwise passive role.
Gandalf said that the hobbits are grown up now and will surely manage the challenges. This chapter describes how they as a result of the adventure are able to handle serious conflicts that would have been overwhelming for them while they were still “children.”
When they first reach their home region, they come, as mentioned, to a roadblock. One of the guards recognises Merry and exclaims: “They said you were dead! That you perished in the Old Forest.” We know that the Old Forest is the unknown bordering the Shire, that is, the threshold of the unconscious. The guard thus expresses both that the hobbits have been “away,” on the other side, and that this has involved death and resurrection. It is significant that it is Merry who is addressed here on the border of the Shire, since it underscores our earlier discussion that Merry takes the lead in this outer world and not Frodo. Merry and Pippin in particular then act decisively – tearing down the roadblock, taking a room in the guardhouse in defiance of the guards’ “orders,” pulling down posted rules, and so on. They do not intend to submit to the Tyrannical Father’s decrees.
As discussed, the story began in the Good Mother’s embrace, and when the bond to her is broken, her compensating opposite flows in and takes over – and just as the symbiosis with the Mother was extreme, its opposite becomes extreme. We recognise this pattern from Frodo’s adventure, when he was again and again thrown between extremes – Black Riders and laughing Elves, the devouring tree and Goldberry, the monsters of Moria and the Good Mother in Lórien, and so on. When Frodo had left one extreme he helplessly found himself in its opposite, a violently oscillating wave that crashed back and forth against the walls of the vessel – while the water itself, according to the laws of physics, unceasingly strived for equilibrium. According to Jung, the psyche functions in a corresponding way: it is a self‑regulating system with compensating opposites,[5] which can be united through the transcendent function – or “the third.”[6]
Confrontation with the Tyrannical Father
In fact it was Lotho who first began introducing the negative masculinity into the Shire; Saruman arrived only later and took over the operation. But the political manoeuvring matters little to us; regardless of this, the Leader establishes a tyranny in which more and more rules are imposed, harvests are handled centrally and distributed arbitrarily (while they naturally enrich the elite), and defiant hobbits are thrown into prison. Everything is rule‑based; the Leader does not like “people moving about freely” – everything must be controlled. In addition, trees are cut down, wooden buildings burned, stone buildings erected, chimneys spew black smoke, hobbit‑holes stand empty. On the one hand order, on the other chaos.
An interesting detail in all this is that old Lobelia has also been thrown into prison, because she was defiant. She refused to submit. As previously suggested, she is something of a virgin figure. We may recall that she was a widow at the beginning of the story, which is one of the images of the virgin archetype. It is therefore consistent that the masculine tyranny must reject her. After the unrest the hobbits free Lobelia. Frodo and Lobelia get along well – they are reconciled. Frodo no longer has difficulties with the independent, concretised femininity. But it is also significant, in relation to the commentary on “The Steward and the King,” that Lobelia dies before the story ends. As we showed in that commentary, there is ultimately no place for a wholly independent woman in Middle‑earth.
The development reaches its climax. The squint‑eyed men refer to Sharkey as their leader (as opposed to the deposed Lotho). The name is curious, not least because Tolkien adds a footnote to it, with an uncharacteristic uncertainty: “It was probably Orkish in origin: sharkû, ‘old man’.” But it is worth noting that it is not orcs who call him Sharkey, but men. One gets the sense that the curious name came to Tolkien as an intuitive impulse, and that he then needed an explanation for it – perhaps because the name does not quite fit Middle‑earth?[7] Everyone likely associates the word with “shark,” and and he is clearly meant to be perceived as a dangerous, mindless predator with with eyes filled with nothingness – which in turn is a fitting image for the blind tyranny driven by dark instincts (in the dark sea of the unconscious).
So Tolkien states that the name probably means “old man.” This “correction” of the name in turn evokes the Old King archetype, which has been one of the central images in the story. Saruman was one of the three figures who embodied this image (the first meeting with Théoden included), and perhaps the one who carried the identification the furthest. As Old Man we understand – if we had not already – that Saruman has not been renewed in any way, but is still driven by the same archetype.
When we think of archetypes we may imagine something grand by definition, but this need not be the case. We have discussed how the archetype risks flooding the ego, which then both identifies with the content and to a greater or lesser degree hands over the helm to it – the ego is, so to speak, carried along. If the person in question is able to embody the archetype, grand actions may follow, both good and evil, as we know.
Aragorn has embodied the Wanderer, the Healer, the King; Gandalf the Old Wise Man and Sky Spirit; Frodo the Abandoned Child who grows into a Hero; Denethor the Tyrannical Father; and Galadriel the Good Mother. But the archetype – like the Self or the daimon – does not adapt itself to the ego’s capacities or to a person’s circumstances;[8] it strikes the human being amorally and, let’s say, thoughtlessly regardless. If a person’s abilities and life‑circumstances do not allow a coherent manifestation of these inner forces, he may be destroyed by them, or else merely manifest a dreadful conflict between identity and environment. As the White, later Many‑coloured Wizard in his tower, Saruman can let the energy flow freely in domination, enslavement, war, and destruction. But when the staff has been broken, there remains only a figure who appears pathetic in the eyes of those around him. He illustrates the rise and fall we recognise from the theatrical dictators of the twentieth century.
Gandalf has on two occasions attempted to redeem Saruman after his power and the enchantment of his surroundings had been broken, giving him a chance to find a new way forward when the old one had reached its end. But both times he was mockingly rejected. Saruman still sees himself as a great and influential man whose task is to elevate himself at the expense of others, thereby imposing upon the world his delusions about how it ought to function. As noted, he has become a pathetic figure, and this discrepancy between identity and environment only makes him more bitter and hateful, more driven to show them all who is in charge. Since the archetype is greater than the human being, and he will pursue it no matter what the cost – this serves a higher purpose, and as such the ends justify the means, according to the delusions of inflation.
Saruman now leads the takeover of the Mother’s land and once again delights in opportunities for ravaging and enslavement. But even though he and his ruffians personify evil, they ride, so to speak, on a natural and in itself neutral wave of impersonal compensation. The ruffians bluntly tell the returning hobbits what it is all about: “This country needs waking up and putting in order, and Sharkey intends to see to it.” Nothing prevents the ruffians, they say, from “ living in this fat little country where you have lazed long enough.”
If we recall the foreword to the book and the first chapter, with the undeveloped hobbits slumbering in holes, caring for nothing but food and drink, the ruffians symbolise a painful awakening. Nature, or the self‑regulating psyche, does once again not tolerate this “neurotic” one‑sidedness and its accompanying flight from life. Jung describes the hobbits’ state of complacent slumber:
“The lovely apparition of the puer aeternus [eternal boy] is, alas, a form of illusion. In reality he is a parasite on the mother, a creature of her imagination, who only lives when rooted in the maternal body. In actual psychic experience the mother corresponds to the collective unconscious, and the son to consciousness, which fancies itself free but must ever again succumb to the power of sleep and deadening unconsciousness.”[9]
The Tyrannical Father and his ruffians serve in a sense the Self, whose amoral effect is experienced as dangerous and exceedingly painful. Once again we have a situation in which the hobbits, as a result of unconsciousness and one‑sidedness, are thrown between extremes. It need not, of course, be this way, but a collective that lives in holes in the ground and literally hides from the adult world must face a brutal awakening if it is to awaken at all. If one imagines these hobbits going to Doctor Jung, he might help them negotiate – at least figuratively – the double nature of the Self, in order to establish a conscious relation to its opposites and thereby find balance in life. Jung speaks in this regard of tao and its conscious attunement to yin and yang, as opposed to the one‑sidedness of flight or fight.[10]
Frodo has in broad terms made that realisation. One may say that he to some extent embodies tao during the cleansing of the Shire. He is actively passive, ensuring that a measure of balance is maintained while others are swept along by the dynamics of war. But soon he will also attempt to mediate between one side and the other. While the hobbits want to kill Saruman (to repress the misery), Frodo wishes to remain attuned and let him go his own way once he is defeated. We shall return to this shortly, but before we continue we may recall Frodo’s ability to establish a conscious relation to, to be attuned to, and to compromise with his own shadow (Gollum, from Emyn Muil to Ithilien), without either rejecting it or being overwhelmed by it. But this maturity and awareness have been entirely absent in the hobbit collective, and in the end the counter‑reaction came mercilessly.
Frodo and his companions finally meet the complacent Saruman at Bag End. Since his own home has been ruined, the homes of the “self‑satisfied” hobbits may just as well be ravaged too, he claims. The hobbits’ land will not be restored within their lifetimes, he announces with as much smugness as superfluity.
Note that Saruman in the Shire is an ordinary, if tyrannical, old man. He is no longer a wizard. The Shire illustrates what we may call a conflict of consciousness, not unconscious dynamics pulling from the underworld like devouring trees, giant spiders, and wizards in black towers. Here there are no monsters and no magic, which underscores our earlier observations that the return to the Shire represents the return to the outer world, where Merry is taking lead and Frodo becomes a kind of inner wisdom.
Saruman no longer has any power in Shire either, becasue Merry and Pippin, in their splendid uniforms and glittering mail from Rohan and Gondor respectively, have cleared out the ruffians. All Saruman has left is the satisfaction of having destroyed the world of the mother‑bound hobbits. Frodo tells him to go his way. The assembled hobbits protest: “Kill him!” But Frodo says: “It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; nothing is healed by it.”
Saruman calls for his wretched servant: “Worm!” Wormtongue comes out of a shed “like a dog.” We hear echoes of the underworld through which Frodo wandered for so long. Saruman begins to walk with Wormtongue slouching behind him. As the Old Man passes Frodo, he thrusts a knife at him, but it does not pierce the mithril coat. The hobbits overpower Saruman, and Sam is on the verge of killing him.
”‘No, Sam!’ said Frodo. ‘Do not kill him even now. For he has not hurt me. And in any case I do not wish him to be slain in this evil mood. He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against. He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it.’”
Saruman rises and stares at the thrice‑initiated Frodo with astonishment, respect, and hatred. ”You have grown, Halfling. Yes, you have grown very much.”
He turns to leave. Wormtongue hesitates. Frodo says that Wormtongue has done him no harm and does not need to follow after Saruman. He may stay here and rest before going his own way. Just as Gandalf once did, Frodo offers him another path, a chance to find a new way forward.
Saruman mocks his companion and reveals before everyone that Wormtongue has killed Lotho. Then he kicks him like a dog. Something breaks in the wretch; he growls like a dog, leaps at Saruman, and cuts his throat. Then he runs off. But he does not get far, for he is struck down by three arrows.
Merry says that this was the last tremor of the war.
”I hope so,” says Frodo. ”The very last stroke. But to think that it should fall here, at the very door of Bag End!”
The scene illustrates how the inner conflict is also the outer, how the two worlds, through the archetype, slide together and give a hint of unus mundus (“one world”).[11]
The final scene of the Great Conflict thus takes place where everything began – Bag End, which for so long was a dead end, the symbol of the symbiosis with the Mother, where Frodo lived contentedly in his effortless world of abundance. Until one day Gandalf, nine years after Frodo last saw him, knocked on the window of his study. Frodo opened the door to him – and let in a shadow from the past.
Footnotes
[1] Jung, Visions, p. 562.
[2] James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld (New York: HarperPerennial, 1979).
[3] Jung, "Definitions," CW 6, par. 709.
[4] C. G. Jung, ”Adaptation, Individuation, Collectivity,” The Symbolic Life, CW 18, ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), par. 1095f.
[5] Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, par. 92.
[6] We have addressed this area earlier. See, for instance, "The Breaking of the Fellowship" and "The Siege of Gondor.”
[7] The name was in earlier versions of the manuscript assigned first to a villain, then to a bandit leader who had taken possession of Bag End, and only thereafter to Saruman. This supports the assumption that the meaning of the name arose as a later construction, so to speak, since it fits the dethroned wizard as if tailor‑made. (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Sharkey, retrieved 25 March 2026.)
[8] Cf. Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, p. 239-242.
[9] Jung, Symbols of Transformation, par. 393.
[10] Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, p. 241.
[11] Cf. Jung, ”Flying Saucers”, CW 10, par. 780.