Scouring of the Shire

"The Scouring of the Shire" is the second to last chapter in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

After returning from to the Shire, the five travelers stay overnight at The Prancing Pony in Bree where they catch up on the last year's local events with proprieter Barliman Butterbur. They learn that strangers from the South have come to settle in and around Bree, much to the discomfort of the peace-loving Men and Hobbits indigenous to the region. Barliman is impressed to discover that Strider has been crowned King of Gondor.

Gandalf takes the four Hobbits - Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, and Peregrin Took - part way to the Shire but detours to have a long talk with Tom Bombadil. He assures the four that their training in the War of the Ring will be sufficient to settle the troubles, and what ensues is in some ways anti-climactic.

When they discover that the evil they had fought in Mordor had come home to roost, they rouse the Shire and are able to kill or drive off the evil-doers that infested it. With the assistance of Farmer Cotton, Merry and Pippin lead the Battle of Bywater, the last battle in the War of the Ring, in which 19 hobbits died.

Saruman and Wormtongue find their ends shortly thereafter, when Worm avenges a kick from his master by cutting his throat and is shot to death by Hobbits. An eerie column of smoke arises from Saruman's corpse and is blown away in the wind, a scene reminiscent of Sauron's demise. Frodo covers the suddenly shriveled skull of Saruman and turns away.

Commentary
Despite Tolkien's much-publicised dislike of allegory, this chapter can be viewed as the most directly allegorical component of the book. The transformation of the Shire from rural idyll to industrial wasteland heavily parallels Tolkien's own views of the destruction of the English countryside by the steady creep of industrialisation. In particular, the loss of the old Mill in Bywater, only to be replaced by a much larger, grimier version, mimics an event from Tolkien's childhood. Tolkien himself commented that the symbolism lay in the feeling of loss he felt after returning from the First World War, to discover that many of his close friends had died, and the world he remembered from his youth had largely disappeared.

Book vs. movie
The Scouring of the Shire is among the most prominent scenes not featured in the theatrical release of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, except for one part of it which is shown in the Mirror of Galadriel in "The Fellowship of the Ring". However, later scenes of Frodo's return to the Shire in "The Return of the King" show the Shire as completely unchanged, so within the film adaptation it is intended as an alternate future that was avoided.