The talking fox of Woody End

[Alcuin]

…A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.

‘Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.

This passage from Fellowship of the Ring always bothered me. It seems so … out of place. Childish. Cutesy. Almost like Beatrix Potter - whose work I freely admit I enjoy, but a completely different genre.

In Reader's Companion, Hammond and Scull comment,

To be told what the fox thought is a curious departure from the narrative, which otherwise records the experiences of those taking part. It is much more in the manner of The Hobbit, with an outside narrator inserting comments, a device Tolkien grew to dislike.

Except that I never recall Tolkien inserting the thoughts or “words” of creatures like foxes or birds (excepting the ravens of the Lonely Mountain, who do use normal speech to communicate with the Dwarves). Even in Farmer Giles of Ham, Garm, the talking dog, communicates with Giles using words. I suppose that makes Garm a “magical” dog, but that story also features a talking, half-tamed dragon, “half-tamed” out of fear of Caudimordax, “Tailbiter”, a magical sword that cuts off dragon’s tails just for starters! But Farmer Giles is a happy, light-hearted story, one suitable for children even younger than those to whom parents (or grandparents) might read The Hobbit. Lord of the Rings is an altogether cat of a different stripe. Why insert a talking fox?

In my old copy of Lord of the Rings, this incident is at the top of page 71. Midway on page 76, Frodo meets Gildor and the Noldorin pilgrims, whose mere presence drives away Khamûl the Nazgûl. And I realized something.

The Lord of the Rings picks up where The Hobbit left off. The Hobbit is a children’s tale, written for Tolkien’s own children, written because whenever their father erred in his recitations by memory, his children (usually led by second-eldest Michael) corrected his recollections, something along the lines of, “But last night you said…” So the doting father wrote it all down. As readers “listening in” as Tolkien tells his children a marvelous and entertaining story, we participate with the children. It’s a story meant to be read aloud, and even the frightening parts (the spiders of Mirkwood were intended to frighten young Michael, and did the same to my granddaughter, who made me stop) are intended to entertain and enrapture children. As The Lord of the Rings begins, our ears are still tuned to hear The Hobbit. Yes, Gandalf frightens Frodo with a terrifying tale of the origin of the Ring, but that’s a just a story. When Frodo and Sam and Pippin finally set off across the Shire on a carefree walk, we’re still “listening in” as if listening to The Hobbit.

At the high point of this part of the story, the Hobbits are sleeping among the roots of a great tree like children nestled in their parents’ arms. The fox sees them, and we hear his internal dialogue, almost like a marvelous children’s story, “listening in” in a way that supersedes even what we experience in The Hobbit.

They awaken, and trouble is not far away. First the Nazgûl comes upon them but cannot determine what troubles him: he rides on. Then he overtakes them a second time, but the Noldor follow hard upon his arrival, and he retreats. Then Gildor speaks with Frodo. The Elf “of the House of Finrod” must at least be one of Finrod’s counselors of old: It is likely, I think, that Gildor was one with whom Finrod took council before leaving Nargothrond with Beren. “[A]dvice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.” All courses ran ill indeed for Finrod. “[D]o not go alone. Take such friends as are trusty and willing.” Even so must Gildor have also advised Finrod.

From this point on, until he at last boards ship with Elrond and Galadriel and Gandalf, Frodo is no longer in the world he had before inhabited. He is not even in the (for Middle-earth) day-to-day world his uncle Bilbo inhabited with the Dwarves. He is in the world the Edain inhabited, the world Aragorn inhabits: the Middle-earth of the Noldor, the Middle-earth of their ever-repeating wars against Morgoth and Sauron. He has crossed a boundary and can never leave. He can never truly return home: for Frodo, home is gone forever.

The last signpost of that happy, carefree world Frodo left behind is a talking fox.