I’m rereading
The Hobbit, and I’ve noticed a small thing.
At the beginning of chapter 6, “Out the Frying Pan into the Fire”, after Bilbo has spared the life of Gollum and so begun his stewardship of the One Ring with mercy and pity, he faces a second test after he escapes the goblin-tunnels:
Quote:
He still wandered on, … but all the while a very uncomfortable thought was growing inside him. He wondered whether he ought not, now he had the magic ring, to go back into the horrible, horrible, tunnels and look for his friends. He had just made up his mind that it was his duty, that he must turn back – and very miserable he felt about it – when he heard voices.
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It strikes me that this is very similar to the test the Frodo faced in the barrow as the Barrow-wight approached his sleeping friends to kill them with the sword across their necks:
Quote:
[A] wild thought of escape came to [Frodo]. He wondered if he put on the Ring, whether the Barrow-wight would miss him, and he might find some way out. He thought of himself running free over the grass, grieving for Merry, and Sam, and Pippin, but free and alive himself. Gandalf would admit that there had been nothing else he could do.
But the courage that had been awakened in him was now too strong: he could not leave his friends so easily. He wavered, groping in his pocket, and then fought with himself again; and as he did so the arm crept nearer. Suddenly resolve hardened in him, and he seized a short sword that lay beside him, and kneeling he stooped low over the bodies of his companions. With what strength he had he hewed at the crawling arm near the wrist, and the hand broke off; but at the same moment the sword splintered up to the hilt.
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This seems to me essentially the same test for both Bilbo and Frodo: to abandon his companions or help them. Bilbo’s situation is a little different, of course: he’s lost with Gandalf and the Dwarves, so going back to look for them might be argued as much for his good as for theirs; though it was an extremely courageous thing for him to determine to do. And Frodo’s temptation probably came from the Ring itself: putting it on would reveal him to the Barrow-wight, which would have captured him and the Ring, enabling the Witch-king to come and retrieve them both. But the tests seem to me remarkably similar.