Frodo's Pronoun Use: "Our" Ring

[amysrevenge]

In the reading from Episode 5, in Chapter Two Frodo asks (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) "What does this have to do with Bilbo, and our ring?"

That "our" jumped right out at me. Hit me like an express bus.

As far as we know, to this point even though he's possessed it for 17 years, Frodo has never actually worn the ring. I'm wondering if that's why he's still saying "our ring" and not "my ring".

 

[NotACat]

As far as we know, to this point even though he's possessed it for 17 years, Frodo has never actually worn the ring. I'm wondering if that's why he's still saying "our ring" and not "my ring".

I was going to say "but of course he did, Merry saw him," but that wasn't Frodo, that was Bilbo.

But there is another construction to put on that phrasing: it's a ring that both he and Bilbo have owned at some point, so it has belonged to both of them at some point. Remember that Bilbo will refer to it as "that ring of mine" when talking with Frodo in Rivendell: he doesn't mean "the ring that is mine" he means "the ring that was mine".

I don't know whether Frodo ever mentions anything else that he and Bilbo might have owned in common, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were to talk about "our mantel-clock", for example, as synonymous with "Bilbo's mantel-clock that he left me".

 

[amysrevenge]

Yeah but there's no malevolent force behind the mantle-clock driving Frodo to claim it as his very own. He would gladly refer to Bag End and all its contents as "ours" to the end of his days, I'm sure, but the ring would be constantly working to be referred to as "mine".

And I'm not so sure I agree about that characterization of Bilbo in Rivendell, but we can wait for 6 months until we get there and see how we feel about it then.