The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp 60,61
“What have you decided to do?” Gandalf rouses Frodo from his thoughts because the time has come for choosing. Gandalf has told the long and unhappy story of the Ring from the time of its making to the unlikely and entirely unlooked for manner in which itT came into Frodo’s possession. He has also told Frodo that Sauron is searching for the Ring, searching for the Shire and searching for a hobbit called Baggins.
Frodo announces his decision.
“I cannot keep the Ring and stay here. I ought to leave Bag End, leave the Shire, leave everything and go away.”
Frodo sighs because he has to go into exile and perhaps an exile that will never end. But at the same time he is filled with excitement because there is a true adventure beckoning him. “As he was speaking a great desire to follow Bilbo flamed up in his heart… It was so strong that it overcame his fear.”
Gandalf is amazed!
“Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I’ve said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.”
And in saying this Gandalf echoed words that Tolkien himself wrote to his publisher in 1938 in reply to their wish for a sequel to The Hobbit.
“The sequel to The Hobbit has remained where it stopped. It has lost my favour, and I have no idea what to do with it… Nearly all the motives that I can use were packed into the original book, so that a sequel will appear either ‘thinner’ or merely repetitional… I am personally immensely amused by hobbits as such, and can contemplate them eating and making their rather fatuous jokes indefinitely.”
So Tolkien himself has been “amazed” by his own creation which is a rather wonderful thought. Like Gandalf he had thought that he knew all that there was to know about hobbits and that it comprised fatuous jokes and eating. Like Gandalf he rather enjoyed the company of hobbits but he could not see them playing any part in what he termed in the same letter, “the ‘pure’ fairy stories or mythologies of The Silmarillion“. That is until he met Frodo Baggins and I am not using a mere figure of speech here. For there have been few writers who have been more conscious that they are sub-creators than J.R.R Tolkien. Tolkien was not so much an inventor of story as a discoverer. He became a wanderer in his own mythology, learning the languages of Arda and listening to stories as they were told to him in the original tongues. It is not a mere literary device that The Lord of the Rings is a story formed from The Red Book of Westmarch as written by Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and with notes and additions from their literary heirs and executors. It has to be that way.
And all this makes the moment in which Frodo takes Gandalf by surprise all the more wonderful because Tolkien could only have written this scene if he had not been taken by surprise himself. And being taken by surprise he is ready to lead us step by wonderful step all the way through this voyage of discovery right through to the very last page.
Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings 
The sense of sub-creating is so strong in Tolkiens writing (I had no idea calling it that way when I read Lord of the Rings the first time of course), that I as a 14 year old did wonder for a while if this had really happened long ago.
Thank you so much for taking me back to pieces I wrote a few years ago! It has been good to re-read them.
Like you, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my early teens. It works as a story for young people and it works in a totally different way for those in their early 70s as I am now.
I love that first impression that you had. Was it long ago or is it contemporary? Of course, the scenes in the Shire are set in the world of rural England in Tolkien’s childhood into which Gandalf brings a story that is ancient, mythological in structure, and yet terrifyingly contemporary. The Ring is really present and poses such a danger to the comfortable Shire.
Hi Stephen, thank you for your reply. If WordPress doesn’t give me too much trouble, I already had a couple not coming through, I’ll take you back to your old posts some more.
Looking back, I was 12, not 14 when I read it the first time, decades ago, in my late 50’s now. I read it as an adventure story then, only slowly starting to see its depth. The online communities are a treasure trove for that.
Finding your blog has me rereading it front to back again, instead of only fragments. And much slower, so not to pass over important details. Thank you for that!
Tolkien wrote such an incredible mix of mythical and modern that it can be hard to see where the one begins and the other ends.
I am so pleased that my blog has encouraged you to read The Lord of the Rings again, Nienke. I hope that it will be a rich experience.
Tolkien’s mix of the modern and the mythical is a wonderful thing. He understood the modern world as something that is mythical, something that is enchanted. If you remember that wonderful scene when Aragorn meets Eomer for the first time you will remember how they speak about this to each other.
I reread it at least once a year in my teen years, and often enough after. I had to buy the book a couple of times, it being worn so much that it wasn’t pleasant reading anymore. Slowly getting into the depth of the tale.
It’s a pity I can’t remember my first reaction to some of the crucial scenes like the fall of Gandalf or when Frodo claims the Ring at Mount Doom. I may have read with such speed that it didn’t even really register. I do remember my dismay when Boromir tried to take the Ring, couldn’t see that ending other than with him taking it.
I do love that scene between Aragorn and Eomer, there you do see the mix of myth and modern. A people like the Rohirrim (Saxons or even Iron Age) wouldn’t have lived in a disenchanted world, but in the tale they almost are. They still have the tales of Elves and Ents, but don’t expect it to touch them in their daily lives anymore.
What a lovely comment, Nienke!
I loved your story about how you had to buy your first two times. I am sure that this is a story that can be told around the world. I had to work on the farm that my Dad ran on Saturday mornings for a number of weeks to buy my first copy and it all felt worthwhile. I felt so proud when I held my own copy of The Lord of the Rings in my hands.
And thank you for sharing your reaction to some of the big scenes of the story.
My first ones were the then already decades old books of my parents, paperbacks with old glue that couldn’t withstand my reading again and again. I still have them somewhere, can’t throw them away, but they’re completely loose leaved now. They were in the Dutch translation.
Then I bought it in omnibus in English, used, and had to do that a second time. Now that one is nearing its end of life too and I will get a third. Maybe time for a bound book?
How lovely that you still have those copies.