Tolkien Tuesdays: Re-Reading "The Lord of the Rings": "A Long-Expected Party"
In the first chapter of "The Fellowship of the Ring," we re-encounter our beloved Bilbo, meet his heir Frodo, and begin to see the contours of the darkness to come.
Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
No matter how many times I read The Lord of the Rings, I will always love the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring. As I wrote about the prologue, these chapters excel at immersing right away in the world (and tone) of The Hobbit, even as they also give us an inkling of the darkness and conflict to come. I mean, who doesn’t love “A Long-Expected Party,” with its rich descriptions of the various aspects of Bilbo’s long-awaited birthday celebration, its depiction of his increasingly-obvious dependence on the Ring, or the appearance of the loathsome Sackville-Bagginses? For that matter, who doesn’t love the way that this chapter so skillfully weaves together the light and the dark, with hints that not is as well in the Shire as the hobbits would like to believe?
Perhaps no sequence achieves this quite as much as the conversation between the Gaffer and various other residents of the district. Among other things, we learn of the rather ominous set of events that led to Frodo’s becoming an orphan and being sent to live with Bilbo: his parents drowned while out on a boat. While the Gaffer is more than willing to go with the official story, there are others who are a little more inclined to see a more sinister slant to the events, much to the former’s disgruntlement. It’s a little bit of a sour note, made all the more so by the presence of a stranger who comments on the possibility that there might be jools secreted away up at Bag End.
Of course, the full significance of this conversation won’t become obvious until the very end, when it’s finally revealed that there have long been hobbits working with the nefarious Saruman, sowing discontent and tyranny even within the humble bounds of the Shire. Even at this point, however, it’s clear that there are good hobbits and bad hobbits and, considering the fact that the Sandymans will come to play a key role in Saruman’s and Lotho’s efforts to subvert the Shire and turn it into an industrial wasteland, these events will have their echo at the end of the novel.
This conversation also reveals one of the most fascinating aspects of Bilbo’s life. While his adventures and achievements have made him into a person worthy of respect and adulation to those who live outside the Shire, to those inside it these are exactly the reason to suspect him and find him both peculiar and more than a little distrusted. All of this comes to a head during his speech, and it’s particularly striking that this sequence is related through the point of view of the audience rather than Bilbo himself, which allows us to understand just what a contradictory place he occupies in the Shire. His idiosyncrasies are tolerated because he’s wealthy but, except for his close friends, most of his other relations seem to view him with a mixture of bemusement and alarm, particularly once he disappears right in front of their eyes.
And speaking of Bilbo…this is the chapter where we get to see the extent to which the Ring has started to really assert its hold on him. Even though his extraordinary longevity might seem like a cause for celebration, the narrator also makes it clear that this, too, has begun to raise some eyebrows among his friends and neighbors. The old hobbit is himself aware of it, and his comment about feeling like butter stretched over too much bread is one that is as haunting as it is quaint. And then, of course, there’s the moment when he comes close to actually challenging Gandalf outright, which is the clearest indication yet that there is something amiss.
For the most part, however, this chapter leans into the joy and good cheer of Bilbo’s birthday party. There’s something uniquely pleasurable about getting to spend time with the hobbits in all of their cheerful absurdity, watching them indulge in all of the simple pleasures that make life so simple and unadorned for their kind. This chapter includes more of the anthropology that was such a uniquely fun part of the “Prologue,” and we learn about the various social habits and phrases of the hobbits (I am going to commit to using the phrase “filling up the corners” from now on, though I’m going to avoid the costly mistake of referring to a group of people as a “gross”).
And then there are the presents. It’s only a short part of the chapter, but I can’t help but laugh out loud at the beautiful silliness of the presents that Bilbo leaves to sundry relatives, whether it’s an umbrella for a relation who was known for taking umbrellas or, most notably, the batch of silver spoons left to the sour-faced Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Though the SBs are only a very minor part of the story (for the moment, at least), there’s something particularly enjoyable about seeing them, particularly Lobelia. Say what you will about her, she is nevertheless the kind of person who isn’t going to take a defeat lying down. She’s going to fight for what she thinks is her rightful due, no matter how unpleasant she has to be in order to do so.
For me, “A Long-Expected Party” is a pitch-perfect beginning to the story that unfolds in The Fellowship of the Ring. In both its title and its tone it is a callback to The Hobbit while, at the same time, it contains enough hints of what is to come for a savvy reader to feel just the faintest chill over their skin. We don’t yet know what the Ring is or why it seems to have exerted such a powerful hold over Bilbo, but we already have an inkling that it is going to take on an ever-greater significance. And, as Gandalf departs looking wearier than Frodo has ever seen him, we also know that his role in the affairs of the world is going to be a heavy burden, indeed.
Next up, we’ll be diving into another of my favorite chapters, “The Shadow of the Past.” Stay tuned!