Chapter 10: Strider
Well, at this point in the journey we’ve met 5 of the members of the titular Fellowship, all of whom had uttered a line of dialogue by no later than the middle of Chapter 3, so it’s about time we met the 6th Fellow, and it’s fitting that when he finally shows up he gets a chapter named after him. Our collective memory of Strider is intensely shaped, of course, by the incomparably talented Viggo Mortensen, who really is a fine actor and plays the role very well -- I went looking for some good Strider art and the Internet is lousy with people’s fan drawings that are clearly just Viggo in a thin beard. This piece by the artist Matthew Stewart (another occasional M:TG artist) is at least a little distant from Viggo in the face, though everything else about this screams the Peter Jackson scene -- https://talesfromthecards.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/strider.jpg I couldn’t find a great screengrab of it, but I do want to note in passing that my personal image of Aragorn is very different because as a kid my imagination was powerfully shaped by Ralph Bakshi’s really, really, very not-good animated adaptation of the first 57% of The Lord of the Rings -- a taller, darker-complexioned, clean-shaven depiction of Strider that looked like a cross between a buff Leonard Nimoy and a stocky Charles Bronson. I say it’s that image, and it is, but really what sticks with me is the voice -- Bakshi made a lot of weird and even baffling decisions, but casting John Hurt as Aragorn counts as a great one, and it’s his voice I hear, far more than Viggo’s, as I read.
I want to point out here that, once again, if this weird blog-like adventure of mine is at all fun for you, you really ought to track down The Return of the Shadow and read Christopher Tolkien’s reconstruction of his father’s experience trying to write this story. I am reminded of it here just because Tolkien’s original idea for this character -- the shadowy guide figure encountered at the Prancing Pony -- was once far enough from the Strider we know and love that I really think you need to encounter it. I can’t do it justice -- if I only share a couple of details it’ll seem like I’m making a joke, and if I try to describe it in a lot more detail I’ll just be transcribing a couple chapters of that book. So all I’ll say is that Strider’s origins are in a character by another name and race with a totally different back story -- and that in a weird way I think that character worked, and I can’t help but think of him a little as I read, here. But let’s deal with the Strider we actually meet.
I like Strider so much, since he steps into the light at the beginning of this chapter with the one thing these hobbit man-children lack: credibility as a hero. Everything about him projects a kind of hard-won confidence -- he’s not an arrogant man, but he’s hardly a patient man either, and so he’s willing to try to leverage his understanding of the dangers and opportunities ahead of them to get them to take him on as guide. He and the hobbits are deeply mistrustful of each other, and there’s a sort of rationale here -- on his side, all he knows about them is that they are foolish creatures, having sent one of their company to wander the streets at night while the other three went into the common room and did everything short of drawing a big lidless eye on the walls to let everybody know who they were and what they might be carrying. On their side, they’ve finally woken up to the dangers around themselves just in time to be suspicious of the wrong people, but of course they don’t know that -- they just know that this shadowy fellow has stalked them and eavesdropped on them (I bet Sam kept extra quiet for that part, myself) and has now cornered them in the parlour where he’s anxious to get a commitment from them to trust him wholeheartedly. It’s a little good fortune, of course, that thaws the ice -- Gandalf’s letter, in particular, and Butterbur’s nearly too late but luckily just in time memory -- but I’d like to point out that I think we could have gotten there anyway.
As wary as Sam is, Frodo seems willing to engage with Strider from the start -- he voices suspicions of him, but he does so in a pretty open way, and with a framing that I think invites Strider to win him over. And as frustrated as Strider is -- his point, which he’s making just as Butterbur enters, that they really have no way to reach Rivendell without him is of course both totally accurate and useless as a persuasive argument -- I think it’s also clear that there’s a vulnerability and an openness to him that he would have employed in the end to win a little trust. It’s one thing to be humble, but this is a guy with a kingly name -- Aragorn -- who is content to be called “Walking Guy” by the locals, and who carries around with him the broken sword that reminds him of the failures of his ancestors. I like the power of the “shards of Narsil” scene in the Jackson film, but there’s something a lot more significant, I think, about the idea that Aragorn literally carries a useless weapon at his side. I especially like that this is a detail shared with us here, right at the outset of knowing him -- and that it’s a detail he shares with Sam in particular, saying “not much use, is it, Sam?” and then, when he gets no response, following up by saying that “with Sam’s permission we will call that settled.” We might interpret that to mean that Sam is still sulking or wary, so Tolkien almost immediately gives Sam a line of dialogue -- he asks what Weathertop is, and Strider answers -- that makes pretty plain that he’s accepted that Strider is an experienced guide and a person whose answers he’ll choose to trust. So I think we have to read that exchange as being significant -- that in showing Sam the broken sword, even without Sam having all the background detail to interpret it, he’s showing enough of himself that it silences the critic in Sam’s head and forces him to view the person standing in front of him as someone with integrity.
It’s important for us to keep one hand grasping the man we meet here in Bree, given the journey we’ll take with him -- the King who will inaugurate the coming age of Peace starts out as a grimy, shadowy figure crouched in the corner of an inn, doubted even by a relatively cheerful innkeeper. He is a man without a company -- there are no attendants here, and if he has friends, they are nowhere nearby. His only symbols to confirm his identity are a shattered sword, and a bit of poetry that describes him as someone who doesn’t look great on first inspection. This is a place and a role he has chosen for himself, and I think it will be meaningful to reflect on why he would have chosen this world, and what it will take (and what it will mean) for him to choose another path, moving forward.
I know, I’ve been focused on Strider, but it IS his chapter, after all. I’ll finish up here, though, by just praising the spirit of our hobbits -- they do shine a bit here. As I’ve already alluded to earlier in this post, Frodo, after a string of some bad and rash decisions, does a masterful job here of neither being too trusting nor shutting the door to a potentially important ally. This is the kind of independent judgment that Gildor was preparing him for -- had Gildor chosen to hand over a lot of information about the Nazgul, it’s not clear to me it would have helped him, and it certainly could have left him here wanting someone else to come in and resolve the question of whether to trust Strider or not. Sam is perfect here in his role as Frodo’s stoutest guardian -- he plays the role of prosecutor with Strider, and does so very effectively, forcing Strider to reveal who he really is in order for them to trust him. I think in doing so he forges a much more meaningful connection with Strider than might have existed if they just treated him as a sort of hired hand to convey them to Rivendell -- he’s not their servant. He is Aragorn, and if by life or death he can save them, he will. Pippin’s in a smaller role, of course, and he gets the brunt of a pretty dismissive assessment by Strider, who presumes Pippin could not endure the kind of hardships he’s survived -- Strider’s wrong about him but only in a sense. The Pippin we’ve known so far -- happy-go-lucky rich man’s son Pippin, with a joke for every circumstance -- might well not be tough enough to take it, but fortunately, we grow. And what Pippin will have to endure, not just physically but psychologically, over the coming year or so of in-world time, would scare the crap out of Strider as much as it would Pippin, at this point. Lastly, bravo Merry Brandybuck -- who even Strider calls brave (if foolish) -- for following the bad guys at great personal risk and coming away with just enough information to ensure they will live to see the next morning. Merry’s good for a lot more than silliness, as I’ve said more than once already, and I like his role here as the guy who manages to combine some of Pippin’s impulsiveness, Sam’s protective love, and Frodo’s sense of mission into this course of action that, though foolhardy, proves decisively important. The four hobbits could easily have ended up a little too interchangeable (as many of the thirteen dwarves did, alas, in The Hobbit), but Tolkien’s doing a lot to hang on to each one’s personality, and to keep them consistent while continuing to add some depth and some character growth over time. It makes a big difference, as a reader, to have characters treated this thoughtfully.
Okay, well, that’s it for me, though of course there’s more here I could unpack (and I would be glad to hear comments on any of this. Onward tomorrow to Chapter 11, where the company will do all it can to survive A Knife in the Dark.