I have a hard time forgetting that scene in The Hobbit—the book, obviously, because the movie sucked—where the Company takes shelter in a cave just as a storm is beginning, a storm in which giants hurl stones at one another. (Tolkien, as part of his genius, mentions this last part casually). Bilbo and the dwarfs are then kidnapped at night by Goblins issuing from the back of the cave; but Bilbo is quick enough to shout a warning, which allows Gandalf to escape and come back later to save the day.
If you will endure a few clichés, I find this scene an apt metaphor for emotional life.
When the elements become unbearable, many of us seek shelter in some form or another. People who have “found God” have found shelter, and it’s no coincidence that the weather in their life has been stormy. Likewise, people hide under ledges such as “everything happens for a reason” to escape the chaotic possibility that nothing happens for a reason. Weather itself happens for no discernable Reason. I mean, there is cause-and-effect—“winds from the southwest will push the storm into Boston”—but no all-encompassing Purpose, at least as far as we can tell. Certainly nothing of the kind people have long imagined, e.g., “the storm is punishment for our sins.”
Often, shelter is already occupied. There is a limit, after all, to the number of havens in the physical world, whether land-based or psychological. Established inhabitants of these sanctuaries tend to either draw newcomers in or send them away. As readers, perhaps we fault the Goblins less for capturing the Company than the Company for neglecting to set a guard or being sluggish in their response—except for Bilbo and Gandalf, of course, who together generated enough awareness to resist and escape.
(Throughout the book, these two are contrasted with the Dwarves’ uniformity and single-mindedness: Bilbo by way of an earthy common sense, Gandalf by way of general superiority.1 It is no coincidence that they combine to elude the shelter’s trap. The Dwarves, on the other hand, are easy marks.)
Now, without Gandalf the light-bearer, the Company would never again have seen the light of day; and there is a sense in Tolkien that those who have gone long periods without sunlight have a false perception of reality. Gollum is an easy example, as is Saruman after he stops walking Fangorn Forest and acquires “a mind of wheels and machines.” These two become obsessed with their own selfish desires, their own single-minded ambitions, in part because they are literally shut off from the rest of the world: Gollum deep in the Misty Mountains, Saruman in the Tower of Orthanc.2
Importantly, once the Company escapes, it is sunlight that protects them. The Goblins cannot endure it. It is only when darkness falls that the Company is again pursued. Surely there are parallels here to our own institutional shelters? When things are going poorly in the world, when night seems to be descending, institutions like religion and politics draw strength from our fear and uncertainty. They promise us the death of easy answers. In times of war, disease, and economic turmoil—or when a power grows in the East—institutional shelters feel a little bolder in chasing people who have previously slipped their grasp.
What, then, is the emotional equivalent of staying under the sun, enduring the elements, and resisting shelter? Living the classically artistic life, I think, in which one puts experience of a truthful order above everything else—pain, danger, and discomfort be damned. The payout is to watch giants hurling rocks at one another, and know that it’s true.
But truth, suggests Tolkien, is not the only reward. Bilbo, after all, becomes rich. I see this as an easy out. Tolkien should have made Bilbo reflect on the worth of his journey without a bag of gold propping up his estimation. In other words, Bilbo should have been forced to reflect on whether his journey was worth it, when adventure and truth were his only prizes.
Bilbo should have returned home poorer than he left, by at least a Bag End. As it happens, Tolkien was already at work on that very thing.
Gandalf is literally the “light-bearer” and can be conceptualized as the wielder of Truth. He has walked “three-hundred times the life of men” and is more alert for it. Bilbo, meanwhile, is literally lighter than the rest of them. He is praised for his soft footsteps, his small size. Indeed, his diminutiveness is contrasted with that of the dwarves in how deftly he moves; he often laments that the dwarves are so loud and clumsy.
We should note that the Dwarves, too, are portrayed as “hid[ing] in their mountains, seeking riches…car[ing] nothing for the troubles of others.”