Did Frodo want Bilbo to die?

Question

I was reading in the first volume of the Lord of the Rings recently, and ran across this quote when Gandalf and Frodo are talking about the Ring for the first time after its true nature has been discovered.

"There wasn’t any permanent harm done, was there?" asked Frodo anxiously. "He would get all right in time, wouldn’t he? Be able to rest in peace, I mean?"

What did Tolkien mean by "rest in peace"? Evidently, in modern terms it usually refers to death, but was that what Frodo was referring to, or was this a foreshadowing of Bilbo's journey across the sea?

Answer 1

He's referring to Bilbo's retirement to Rivendell. Bilbo's plan was to relax, listen to the songs, translate some books, and work on his memoirs. As Gandalf put it in the next line: ‘He felt better at once'.

I don't think Frodo had Bilbo's longer-term prospects in mind. He didn't know that a journey across the Sea was in the cards. All the rest Bilbo was expected to get was at the Last Homely House.

Frodo (and Hobbits in general) don't seem to think much about the Afterlife, and the uncertainty of what happens when you go The Elves Know Not Whither. "Rest" doesn't seem to figure into it: maybe for Elves, in Mandos, but not for Men.

It is a bit of an oddity for Tolkien to have used a phrase there with such clearly Catholic overtones. He generally tried to avoid evoking our religion(s) into Middle-earth. Tolkien's ear sometimes failed to notice when his turns of phrase had other meanings. (Every time he mentions "Tirion upon Túna" I still mentally add "... upon Rye"). So I think here he's referring simply to the straightforward event: Bilbo went to Imladris, to rest, peacefully.

Answer 2

Remembering that Tolkien was Catholic, I would suggest that the meaning is not specifically or simply death, but rather the ability to rest in peace after death -- which in Catholic terms means to be reconciled with God. Thus I think the import of Frodo's question is whether or not Bilbo has been irredeemably corrupted by the ring.

Though Bilbo's passage over the sea would constitute his resting in peace, I don't know that I would go so far as to call this a deliberate foreshadowing. It is all too easy to find associations in any text is you look hard enough. I would want foreshadowing to we written in a heavier hand than this before I called it by that name.

Answer 3

Consider what Gandalf told Frodo about the ring:

A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until every minute is weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings.

Immediately after that, Frodo starts asking about Bilbo, and in the context of this, Frodo would obviously prefer Bilbo to eventually die rather than have that happen to him.

(Also I believe that Tolkien assumed Frodo to be good on the whole, and that he assumed that a reasonably good person accepts that dying is the natural course of events, and not something to be opposed to, but this is just conjecture.)

Answer 4

I doubt it very much. This conversation between Frodo and Gandalf occurs very early on in The Fellowship of the Ring, the second chapter in fact (The Shadow of the Past). Frodo had not even used the Ring, or fallen under its spell. Since Bilbo had already lived well beyond any normal lifespan, it would be understandable if Frodo had thought about his eventual demise.

I don't think that the books indicate when Frodo learned that Bilbo (and he himself) would be joining the Elves on their exodus into the West. There may be some intimation of it in The Return of the King, but it is years since I have read the books.

Answer 5

First, I would say that Frodo was okay with Bilbo not spending eternity living. This would have been likely multiplied when he saw what the ring did to Gollum.

Second, this question also reminds me about something from Harry Potter which might help. In the end of Philosopher's Stone (or Sorcerer's Stone for Americans like me) Harry asks Dumbledore if Nicolas Flamel would die. Dumbledore says

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

This is the end of the quote saying that Nicolas is okay with dying after such a long life. The whole conversation talks how Nicolas and his wife would last a little longer after the destruction of the stone, and that they agreed with Dumbledore to do this plan. This situation might be similar to Bilbo who said himself that he has felt he has lived too long and that this might be a case where Bilbo is just ready to accept death when it comes.