In one of his Prefaces to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien notes that many early readers of the book thought that the chapter called “The Scouring of the Shire” is a kind of commentary on the rigors of the immediate post-war years of what David Kynaston has called “Austerity Britain.” No, Tolkien insisted, it is not; that chapter “is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset.” That is, from the beginning of his tale he had foreseen what the dominance of Sauron (and Saruman) would mean for the Shire, and had understood that, should that domination be overcome, some kind of reckoning would be necessary. 

That reckoning takes the form of a “scouring,” and you should always pay attention to Tolkien’s words, especially when they are in any way unusual. He could have said “cleansing” or “purification” or could have invoked a very different image for putting things right.* But scouring is what we do to something that is not just dirty but has become encrusted — to a surface to which something foreign (old food, rust) has become affixed and cannot easily be removed. Scouring requires strenuous effort because the foreign object is highly resistant to removal — it seems to want to remain. And the foreign material obscures the intrinsic character of the object: the shining thing cannot shine. 

And so when faced with an object that requires scouring we are tempted, sometimes, to throw it away and start over — to give up on it. But let’s look a little deeper into the word. The OED tells me that there are closely related terms in other European languages and that they all trace back to a key Latin word: cūrāre, care (from which we also get “cure”). Scouring is ex + cūrāre, to care for something by cleaning it out. To cure it. To return it to its proper cleanliness and shine and gloss. 

To repair it. And the hobbits have to repair the Shire because it is their home. Starting over is not an option. 

As everyone knows, the hero’s journey culminates in a nostos, a homecoming. One of the other interesting things the OED tells me is that repair as a noun may have this meaning: 

return, return home, place one returns to, residence, home, abode (c1100 in Old French), meeting (12th cent.), place (13th cent.), visit, visiting, frequenting (13th cent.), place of refuge, refuge (14th cent.) … Compare post-classical Latin repairium, reparium, reperium harbour, haunt, resort 

Such a network of meanings survives for us, if at all, only as a comic archaism: Let us repair to the pub for a restorative draught! But they were once central to this word, not only in its noun forms but in its verb forms as well: 

Anglo-Norman repeirer, reparier, repairir, etc., Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French repairier, Anglo-Norman and Middle French repairer, reparer, Middle French reperer ... to return, go back, to go home, to head for, to go, to arrive, (of memory, strength, etc.) to return (also reflexive; end of the 11th cent.; also c1100 as repadrer), to dwell, reside, stay, to frequent (12th cent.) 

We could say, then, that at the end of The Lord of the Rings the hobbits repair to the Shire to repair it.

There is in both scouring and repairing a strong suggestion of restoration: of bringing something back to its ideal condition and proper function. (Not always, but sometimes — and this is a point I want to return to — the restoration is accomplished less by what we do than by what we refrain from doing. Thus Shakespeare in Cymbeline: “Mans ore-labor'd sense Repaires it selfe by rest.” Milton in Samson Agonistes: “Secret refreshings, that repair his strength.”) When we are away from home, home naturally falls into disrepair; and does so even more quickly if it is not left alone but rather is despoiled by those who do not love it. This can be seen as vividly in the Odyssey as in The Lord of the Rings.  

A question to ask myself: What do I despair of repairing? I would rather discard than scour. Scouring is a lot of work for an uncertain result. But I will do it for anything and anywhere I think of as my harbor, my place of refuge — my home. 

• Since writing this I have learned, from Volume IX of Christopher Tolkien’s History of Middle-Earth, that his father’s first title for this chapter was “The Mending of the Shire.” For obvious reasons I like “Scouring” better.