Lord of the Rings - Part II
In Part I, we looked at the lost message at the Houses of Healing. Again -I repeat - I loved the movies and thought Jackson did a credible job in an impossible task. But he missed the heart of the message. In this part let’s look at the missing conclusion.
The Scouring of the Shire (spoiler alert)
In the movie, after the crowning of Aragorn the hobbits return to Shire and some of the characters leave for the Grey Havens. The chapter about the Scouring of the Shire near the end of the book is omitted by both the theater and extended versions. There is a major message - a conclusion - if you will in that chapter that needed to be told. Jackson saw the story as anti-climatic. It isn’t. It is the heart of the message.
In the movie, Aragorn is crowned and the hobbits head homeward. Frodo, however, has really failed at his task. Frodo didn’t throw the ring in the volcano. Frodo is not the stallion, he’s a gelding. He has yet to become a man. And there he goes, off into the sunset (Grey Havens), still holding his wound. He never became a man. To quote, C.S. Lewis, Frodo stands where most men are today. God calls us to be stallions, instead we run as geldings. And geldings can’t bear fruit. Jackson missed this.
Look at the way Tolkien told the story. Frodo is an Everyman. He has failed his adventure, failed his calling. He didn’t put that ring in the volcano. He did not have the strength to complete his task. We (both men and women) all carry the wound. We inherited it from Adam and Eve. Men seldom get the message from their own father that they have the strength for their calling, adventure, and battle. As Paul says in Romans:
… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
NKJV Rom. 3:23-24
Frodo is in a major depression as he heads back to the Shire. He is a gelding, not a stallion. Book version: As Frodo heads back to the Shire, he begins to get the message that things are not right in the Shire. Reaching home, he finds many of the hobbits in jail, buildings destroyed, and the famous birthday tree has been chopped down. Some bad dudes have been destroying the place and the town is in bad shape.
It is Frodo that marshalls the hobbits together into a fighting force, Frodo that takes the leadership, and it is from him that the hobbits rally and defeat their enemies, who are none other than Saruman and Wormwood. As Wormwood and Saruman both lay dead, it is then that Frodo, now a man and healed in the deepest sense of the word, moves to leave the Shire to the Grey Havens.
We encourage people to read the third part, the Return of the King, as Tolkien wrote it.