During all its long hours of cloud and fitful sun they hardly paused, now striding, now running, as if no weariness could quench the fire that burned them … At dusk they halted again. Gimli was still deep in slumber, but Legolas was standing, gazing northwards into the darkness, thoughtful and silent as a young tree in a windless night … So the third day of their pursuit began. Only twice in the day’s march had they rested for a brief while, and twelve leagues now lay between them and the eastern wall where they had stood at dawn … He cast himself on the ground and fell at once into sleep … Before dawn was in the sky he woke and rose. “As nightshade was closing about them Aragorn halted. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, the Three Hunters, are running through Rohan, chasing the Orcs that had captured Merry and Pippin. Let’s look for clues in another passage, this one from “The Two Towers”. And even that, I admit, requires a leap of the imagination.
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In “The Lord of the Rings”, the closest we get to a character “using the bathroom”, so to speak, is the passage above, when Frodo walks off for no apparent reason. In fact, in all of Tolkien’s voluminous writings about his invented world, the only specific mention of the topic I can find is at the beginning of “The Hobbit”, when he lists “bathrooms” among the rooms in Bilbo’s home. In the thousand-plus pages of “The Lord of the Rings,” in the midst of all the walking, running, riding, boating and sleeping out of doors done by the characters, never once, as far as I can tell, does Tolkien deal directly with that inescapable fact of biology: Human beings (and presumably hobbits, Elves and Dwarves) urinate and defecate. Why, first thing in the morning, would I walk away from the campsite without a word of explanation? It’s an interpretation based on my own camping experiences. There’s another possibility, however, one that strikes me when I attempt to read between the lines of that passage.
![the lord of the rings ring frodos desire to wear the ring the lord of the rings ring frodos desire to wear the ring](https://miro.medium.com/max/666/1*1a3wYfvHmRwawHJPreH8Eg.jpeg)
There’s a load of geographical description in “The Lord of the Rings.” That’s possible, but what’s the narrative function of Frodo admiring the view? What does that tell us, the readers? Was the author giving us the lay of the land?
![the lord of the rings ring frodos desire to wear the ring the lord of the rings ring frodos desire to wear the ring](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Frodo-and-the-hobbits-not-corrupted-by-the-one-ring-lord-of-the-rings-.jpg)
So maybe Frodo was just admiring the view? As far as the hobbits knew at that time, they had nothing to worry about: “even Frodo feared no danger yet, for they were still in the heart of the Shire.” Perhaps Frodo was scouting the road for enemies? When questioned, he doesn’t explain his actions – but we know he wasn’t getting water.Ī few possibilities come to mind, though none seem definitive. Frodo wakes up, walks off, observes the sun, the trees and the road and walks back to the campsite. I’ve never really understood the significance of that scene. ‘We thought you had gone to find some,’ said Pippin, busy setting out the food, and cups. ‘I don’t keep water in my pockets,’ said Frodo. When he returned Sam and Pippin had got a good fire going.
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A little below him to the left the road ran down steeply into a hollow and disappeared. Touched with gold and red the autumn trees seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy sea. Away eastward the sun was rising red out of the mists that lay thick on the world. “…stripped the blankets from Pippin and rolled him over, and then walked off to the edge of the wood. Still in the Shire, they had slept under a tree. Tolkien bothered to include it.įrodo, Sam and Pippin had just woken up after the first night of their journey, the journey that would take the Ring from Bag End all the way to Mordor. There’s a passage near the beginning of “The Fellowship of the Ring” (the book, not the movie) that, on the surface, seems peculiarly innocuous – so innocuous that I’m not sure why J.R.R.