Resentment over Frodo’s ability to withstand the perils of time also starts to show up fast: “ Some folk have all the luck“. The Shire, keeping that rural streak, passes the attributes of the father (figure) to the son, and it’s easy to imagine them all describing Frodo as “queer” or “cracked” down in the pub, and blaming it on Bilbo’s influence and his Buckland heritage. Sure, he’s the Master of Bag End – I do like that a moment is taken to acknowledge the simple pleasure of Frodo being “ the Mr Baggins of Bag End” – and has lots of money and friends, but he’s always identified primarily as the nephew of “ Mad Baggins“, in no way seen as simply his own man. You get a sense of Frodo being stuck in the shadow of his Uncle. The first few pages give us a glimpse of the 17 years between chapters, a quite sizable amount of time, and Frodo’s increasing need to travel and go out beyond the borders of the Shire, to those “ white spaces” on the maps. We’ve set the scene in the Shire, and established the Ring as being quite bad, so it’s time to get more into the nitty gritty. The bedrock of the story that Tolkien wants to tell is being revealed here and now. By the time Elrond comes around, we’re fully aware of the magnitude of the quest and what has to be done, it’s mostly just filling stuff out and introducing new characters. A lot of questions have been raised in the readers mind by the events of the first chapter, and Tolkien, to his credit, isn’t going to be drawing things out for too long. I would consider this one more important because, at this early stage, the exposition is way more important. “The Shadow of the Past” is the first of two main exposition chapters, the other, of course, being Book Two’s “ The Council of Elrond“.
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