Transcript
Welcome to Lord of the Rings, a writer's journey, where we take a look at our favourite book from the perspective of a writer. My name is Julia Golding and I spend most of my time as an author but I'm also an unashamed Tolkien enthusiast. We have now reached Chapter 3. 3 is Company. So, picking up from the end of the last chapter, we are given this mission that the Ring must be destroyed and the Dark Lord mustn't get hold of it. And then what happens? There's a definite setback in the pace. The chapter unusually actually starts with a direct speech act by Gandalf. You ought to go quietly and you ought to go soon. But neither of those things really happen because this is a chapter which really is about delays and definitely goes at a leisurely pace. So, looking at it structurally, we begin with Frodo and Gandalf in conversation. This conversation does achieve two things. It's the first mention that it might be Frodo's fate to go to the cracks of doom. So, laying that thought in our heads at this point very early on. And we also have the actual destination of the first part of the story decided, which is Gandalf's suggestion that Frodo goes to Rivendell. And the way it's written, it does seem at this point that maybe that's as far as Tolkien has got in his planning of the story. He can foresee that there is going to be some showdown at the cracks of doom. But as far as Frodo's journey is concerned, he has a vague sense that it's going at this stage as far as Rivendell. We also get the first mention here of the important character of Elrond Half-Elven, who readers of The Hobbit will know from that book. But that title Half-Elven, which Frodo understands, is perhaps not immediately apparent to the reader. That is because Elrond's parents are Erendil and Elwing, who are characters from back in the much earlier period. But they are themselves, both of them, half-elven. And in their marriage, they combine the lines of Idril and Tuor and Beren and Lúthien, who were the two marriages between men and elves prior to the Aragorn and Arwen that is the culmination of this story. Anyway, so that's why he's called Half-Elven. And as a sort of side note, in case you haven't picked it up, his brother Elros goes on to found the Númenor or the Men of Westerness lineage. He chooses mortality. So he is an ancestor of Aragorn, making Elrond in a sense, at many removes, a kind of uncle figure. So after the Frodo and Gandalf conversation, we then go back to the Hobbit perspective that's become quite familiar to us from the earlier chapters. And note that by now, whereas the first chapter had the Ivy Bush conversation and the second chapter, the Green Dragon conversation with the younger generation, we actually get them both combined because the news that Frodo is selling Bag End, he's doing this as a cover for Leaving the Shire, is so shocking to the people in the Shire that giants and other portents on the borders were forgotten for more important matters. We're always going back to this frame of reference of how the Shire folks see the events of history. And of course, we get this right at the end of the story with how people are not so much interested in what's happened to the four travelers. They see everything through the lens of the Shire, which is both comic, but also part of their rootedness. And part of the news is that Frodo has sold his lovely hole to Lovelia Sackville Baggins and her son Lotho, because it's a little note here that Lotho has died. That's Lovelia's husband. That reminded me to mention that there was actually some working names in earlier drafts of this part of the book in those years when Tolkien was fretting over exactly what was going to happen. When some of the names of the Hobbits, or it's a chief Hobbit was Bingo, Odo and Frodo. And he did for a while consider having Bingo as the main name of the character all the way through. Fortunately, he changed his mind. But these names Lotho and Odo, for example, seem to be part of that time when he was playing with those particular sounds for suitable Hobbit names. We also get here the theme of layers of subterfuge. So Frodo sells his house, giving one reason why he's doing it, gets Merry to buy him a house, but doesn't tell Merry that he's not going to settle there and pretends to everybody he hasn't yet bought a house. So there's this confusion that he's sowing in his attempt to leave quietly. And then in the last conversation with Gandalf before he leaves, we get the handover. It's a handover from Gandalf, who's going to be absent from the narrative for quite some time now to the Hobbits themselves. And this is where the narrative rests most of the time from now onwards. And it's also a sense we're finally getting going. I also just wanted to make a little shout out to Folko Boffin, who I have missed until this read through. He's mentioned as a friend of Frodo. I'd clocked that Fatty Bolger was there, but Folko, who disappears from the narrative really, I'm presuming he takes part in the scouring of the Shire and so on, but he is mentioned as a friend and then completely forgotten. So we're left with Merry and Fatty going off with the carts, Folko going home, and the three companions mentioned in the chapter title are Frodo, Sam and Pippin. Now there's a little note here. Lobelia comes to try and claim the house a little bit early. I heard someone say somewhere that not offering Lobelia tea was the worst insult somebody, an English person could pay someone. I don't think that's true. I think it's just a sense that he doesn't want her to stay. You don't offer tea to people you don't want to stay and talk to. Anyway, I also don't think it's very admirable that they leave her the washing up. It is a little bit of a sexist world, the world of these bachelor hobbits. Now, the main thing I want to talk about in the writer's journey in this particular chapter is some wonderful evocations of place, but absolutely charged with emotion. And here we get a very good example, just as they're about to leave. The sun went down. Bag End seemed sad and gloomy and disheveled. Frodo wandered round the familiar rooms and saw the light of the sunset fade on the walls and the shadows creep out of the corners. So that's a sort of darkening of the mood, but that word dishevelled, that's a very Tolkien word. It comes up again in relation to a description of a woodland being or a forest being dishevelled. It's normally used of a person. Someone is, you know, like you go through a hedge, you come out dishevelled. So therefore it means that Bag End is given a sort of personality. It's dishevelled, it's neglected, it's empty. It's a very good choice of word. And without any fanfare, we get introduction to one of the most scary of our bad guys, which is the introduction of a Black Rider. It's muted though because Frodo is overhearing a conversation where he can really only hear Gaffer Gamgee's part of that. And Gaffer Gamgee is knocked out by the Black Rider. Black Riders themselves, they gain in power as this book goes on. They gain in power as their numbers increase. But at this point, Tolkien is still playing his cards close to his chest. On a second reading, you know what's going on. But the first time you read this, you're unaware just how important this conversation is and how much in danger Gaffer Gamgee is and Frodo himself. But it reminds us that Frodo is hunted and people are looking for him. So thankfully, finally, he actually gets going. Still, there's no particular hurry. They're walking at night through landscape that they've walked many times before that they know like the back of their hands. And what I want to highlight here, which is a huge strength of Tolkien's writing, which is that everything is very specific. You feel as though you could actually pick up this book and if this place existed, you could use it as a guide to how to go on this walk. But his descriptions are always loaded with a certain kind of mood and atmosphere. And in this first one, as they leave Bag End, there's this subtle poetry of thinness. It starts with Frodo joking that if he carries on walking, he'll burn off some of his fat and he'll end up like a willow wand. But that then, that idea of thinness, then seems to be folded into the landscape. It's full of spindly images. You've got the black ribbon of the stream, the smoke-like wisps of mist, the thin clad birches. These are all in the next paragraph or two. It's a reminder that Tolkien is also a poet. His use of the language when it comes to the landscape is particularly subtle, powerful and really well imagined. This isn't a vague fantasy world somewhere other. This is a landscape that he makes you believe in 100%. And as they settle down for the night in the roots of a big pine tree making a fire of the pine cones and dry wood, you almost feel as though you're getting a guide to camping in the English countryside. Tolkien and his friends love their walking holidays so they probably actually themselves did something very much like this. And then there's an odd note. A fox enters the story and is given a moment when we hear the thoughts of this fox thinking how strange it is to see the hobbits abroad at night. Now this is possibly one of the last echoes of a book meant for children, the idea of an animal with sort of human like thoughts. But it also is in step with the idea of the Shire being friendly. It's foxes they have in the Shire, not the wolves and the wags that they will later meet. I can't think of another occasion when the narrator actually goes into the head of an animal. Obviously there are speaking animals like the eagles, but this little passage is an oddity and carrying on with this theme of the brilliance of the nature writing you get in Tolkien. And why I would personally choose it as my desert island book because I feel transported back to some of the most beautiful parts of the English countryside when I'm reading this. You get that delightful detail familiar to anyone who's been camping of waking up after the first night, finding lying on the ground he's actually quite tough on the old bones and Frodo leaping up. He plays a game on his companions, but then he has this moment where he goes off on his own and there's a moment of sublimity, which is absolutely beautiful. He's watching the sunrise. Away eastward the sun was rising red out of the mist that lay thick on the world. Touched with gold and red, the autumn trees seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy sea. So the thin wisps of mist that we met the night before where everything was spindly and pale have ripened overnight into this almost lush harvest of reds and golds. It's wonderfully done. When Frodo returns to his companions and is told off for not getting the water, there's a little conversation about the road itself and how it goes ever on and on. And we get the reprise of the poem that Bilbo recited as he started his journey. But now we get Bilbo as the presiding spirit, the presiding genius of this story. He's often mentioned as the traveller who went before. So his poetry goes with them and also his thoughts. And his thoughts also act as telling us how serious this adventure will become. He's quoted as saying, "You step into the road and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." And going back to the applicability, this is one of those little sayings in the book which I found really thought-provoking. The Lord of the Rings is a book full of worldly wisdom as well as otherworldly magic. And you can count on Pippin to break the mood by his rather more practical demand to have a rest. This is a point worth making here that Tolkien is differentiating the characters of these three hobbits and later Merry right from early on. So Pippin is often the one who says, "Right, let's eat. Let's go to this pub. Let's have a rest." He's very much on a holiday mood when he's out for this journey. Sam is minding his position, I suppose you'd call it. He knows how serious this journey really is. He's aware that he is there as the servant to Frodo. So he tends not to speak until he gets really excited. He tends to agree with Frodo more, for example. And Frodo is the one who perceives the sublime in the landscape, the one who we spend most time really in his head of all the hobbits at this stage. That will change. And now we come to their first close brush with the Black Rider, if you don't count the one with Gaffer Gamgee. In an early draft of this novel, this was the bit where Tolkien came unstuck really. He actually had Gandalf arriving at this point. Think how that would work in terms of a plot. It immediately destroys any form of tension. Where's the jeopardy? Keeping Gandalf away so that they have to be on their own for the adventure is a much more exciting direction to take. And it wasn't until he realised that it shouldn't be Gandalf arriving, it should be a Black Rider that he got going again with this plot. Another thing that you can notice here is that there is a sense of what you tend to call a rule of three. There are going to be three encounters with this Black Rider, two in this chapter. And our story listening training means that somewhere in the back of our minds, we're thinking, oh, the third one's going to be the most serious. So the first time we get Frodo having a gut feeling that things aren't right, but also notice the way he asks them to hide. It's the most British way of possibly asking somebody to get off the road. It takes him quite a few sentences. It may not matter much, he said apologetically, but I would rather not be seen on the road by anyone. I'm sick of my doings being noticed and discussed. And if it is Gandalf, he added as an afterthought, we can give him a little surprise to pay him out for being so late. Let's get out of sight. And this is the first of our near misses. When the Black Rider arrives, it's Frodo who's able to see him most clearly because he doesn't hide as far off the road as the others. He's the one who notices the looking or smelling. And he also gets the feeling that he should put on the ring. It's not his willpower that saves him here. It's the Black Rider deciding to move on. So that's a near miss where Frodo does nothing to escape it. It's the Black Rider's impatience that saves him. Once the Black Rider goes on, Sam then recalls what his father told him about his visitor. So we get a second look at that conversation that Frodo part overheard. And then the next section is really about the hobbits coming down from their fear. They come back to thinking, well, you know, we're still in the Shire. What really bad things can happen in the Shire? They're still in the world of the fox rather than the wolves. To highlight this, they find a really safe place to have another of their little rests, which is this tree stump that they can get right inside. There's a feeling of nesting. Makes us feel that hobbits are actually quite like little wild animals in a way. They're cocooned there for a while, safe and away from the Black Riders. And because they've had a moment of relaxation from the tension, their high spirits return and we get another poem about walking. And this one has the theme of returning home after a long walk. Upon the half, the fire is red, that one. What's really interesting about this, if you're the kind of person who skips over the poems, actually have another look at this because it's a bit like Tolkien's laying down clues for us. Many of the things they say they will see actually come to be. Of course, there's the sudden tree. Well, that's Old Man Willow. The standing stone. That's the barrow rites. The new road. Well, that's their path they have to find. And a secret gate, of course, is Moria. And finally, there's a mention of hidden paths that run towards the moon or to the sun. That's not unlike the very last journey Frodo takes with Bilbo in the Elven boat, because that journey defies the normal rules of geography. And this happy song is then interrupted by the second time the Black Rider becomes a threat. And again, remembering that we're doing this from the author's point of view, what's happened here is he's lightened the tone in order that he can darken it again. And because we're in this rule of three, the second time Frodo feels the urge to put on the ring, he experienced it as much stronger than before. He's not saved by his own willpower. He's saved by the arrival of the elves who are singing a song as they approach through the woodlands. And this scares off the Black Rider. This is the first time we get an Elven poem. It's called a hymn and it's to one of the Valar. It's to Elbereth, who is known over in the Undying Lands as Varda. She is the demigod, the Valar, who put the stars in the sky. And Gilthoniel means star kindler, which of course is what she did. Some people say that this song, this hymn draws on Tolkien's experience of hymns to Mary in his Roman Catholic life. You might find that a helpful idea, but certainly Elbereth, Gilthoniel, is the Valar that Frodo will invoke at very key moments during the course of this story. And the whole idea of starlight, starlight above, starlight trapped in Galadriel's file, and the star that Sam sees in Mordor much later. These are moments when Elbereth's presence is felt in the novel. We don't get the Elvish here. We get a kind of translation of it as Frodo understands it. There's some things here which are worth mentioning because there is this weaving that goes on in Lord of the Rings that I've mentioned already. There are images here that appear much later. So for example, the one about woven trees with stars behind them. This imagery is very similar to what Sam sings at one of the darkest moments in Mordor when he's separated from Frodo. It starts in Western lands beneath the sun. It's got some of the same imagery picked up from this Elven song. This song also marks the Elves out as high Elves. Now, if you want the full history of the Elves, you have to go and read the Silmarillion. But just in brief, there were some Elves who always remained in Middle-earth. Those were often referred to as the Woodland Elves, and they speak a different form of Elvish. They speak Sindarin. High Elves speak Quenya, and that's the language that Frodo is going to use a little bit later on. But we know that they are these high Elves, the ones who didn't stay in Middle-earth but went over to the Undying Lands. They accepted the invitation of the Valar to go and live with them. The break came when the Silmarils entered the story and many of them at that point came over to Middle-earth on a quest to regain those jewels, which was led by a particular Elf called Fëanor. Anyway, that story is very well told in the Silmarillion, so just go and have a look at that if you want to find the full story. Which means that Gildor Inglorion, the Elf who introduces himself, is part of that exile. The Elves who exiled Galadriel is also part of that. This means he's incredibly old. He isn't an Elf who is much named in the Silmarillion, so his backstory is a little bit opaque. But we do get a sense here that he has been in Middle-earth for a very long time and that he, like Galadriel, is part of the Elf community who knows what it's like on the other side of the sea. He's seen the starlight on the Western seas. For someone who is so old, I think it is worth mentioning that these Elves are pretty rude. They call the Hobbits dull. One gathers because Frodo doesn't seem that upset. This is done as a teasing, but there doesn't seem to be much suggestion that they're going to invite the Hobbits to join them until Pippin mentions the Black Riders. That's when they get serious. When the Elves issue their invitation for the Hobbits to go with them, this is the moment when Frodo first shows just how deep his learning is because he thanks them in Quenya, which is the language of the High Elves. It's a bit like what would an equivalent be? It would be something like finding an ordinary person able to thank a scholar in ancient Greek. It's elegant, beautiful, and a surprise because the Hobbits are not known for their fluency in the Elven tongues. The Elves now walk the Hobbits to their favourite camping spot. There are so many wonderful passages in Tolkien describing the nature of the countryside they're passing through. I just want to point out one particular little phrase here. They go through "breaks of hazel". Now, "breaks" are a kind of thicket. He uses the word "thicket" a bit in the next sentence, but "breaks of hazel". It's got that quality about the words, like twigs snapping. I think this adds to the power of these little descriptions. We're right with them pushing our way through the undergrowth. The Elves stop above Woodle. I love this description because you've got them in this opening in the trees, looking down on the lights of the Hobbit village in the distance and above them the stars. This is how the Elves are in Middle-earth. There are all the Hobbits and other folk down in the valley. The Elves are in this sort of midpoint between ordinary folk and the skies. There's something a little bit elevated about them. In the first chapter, we had the excitement of Gandalf's fireworks. Here we've got the excitement the Elves feel, and that's passed on to the Hobbits for the rising of the constellation of Menelvagor, which equates to Orion. Here's a nice link back to Elbereth, where we started with their song because she is the one who put Menelvagor in the skies, the Swordman of the Sky. Let's note here too the first of these woodland palaces that the Hobbits get to visit, Natural Halls. I've got a feeling that Tolkien went through the woodlands of England looking for these places because, of course, trees do naturally form these clearings. The next time we see something like this is when Merry and Pippin are staying with Treebeard. Tolkien isn't ashamed to repeat with variation some ideas that he likes, such as being saved by eagles. He's not afraid to bring them back in, and these natural halls made of trees are one of those places that he likes to take us. We now get the feast, though it's interesting that Frodo compares it to good enough for a birthday party. We're still a little bit in the world of the children's tale, aren't we? Also note that elves don't travel light. They bring dishes and bowls and all sorts of things, large amounts of food. I'm not sure where they kept it, but suddenly they're serving a feast in the middle of this natural feasting hall. I want to draw your attention to a technique that Tolkien introduces here, and he does it several times, well, many times. That is when there's something that happens like this, he then reports on the reactions of the hobbits individually. A bit like a reporter going around and saying, "Well, what did you think of this?" You've got Pippin's reaction, but then you've got Sam, and Sam is said to regard this as one of the chief events of his life. It's not actually mentioned again, well, other than hearing that Gildor sent the messages ahead in the wilderness about them. But Sam's impression of this isn't mentioned again. Maybe it's because it's the first time Sam meets elves, and that's a very important part of Sam's experience in this story, is why he really wanted to leave the Shire in the first place. He's achieved it without even leaving the Shire. It's also worth noting just how good Tolkien is at making us almost taste the food and smell the smells of something which is not in our experience. We're going to get that much later on when we meet the Lembas bread in Lorien. But here, the bread that is served, Pippin says, "It was a bread surpassing the savour of a fair white loaf to one who is starving." The imagery of that and the berries and the water, pure, clean, makes your mouth water just reading those words. This kind of interview technique where the narrator tells us what the hobbits thought of something after it's happened, like when they've had some time to think about the experience, is an example where the narrator seems to have a kind of foreknowledge, steps ahead of us in the story. It does mean that we know Sam isn't going to die tomorrow, for example, because we know he's had time to talk about it later. So I suppose it does remove some of the jeopardy a bit because we feel he's going to survive. I think it's something that Tolkien doesn't do as often as the peril facing his characters actually increases. He doesn't want us to think that it's, "Don't worry about it. They're going to be okay," with this kind of little projection into the future. The last substantial passage in this chapter is, of course, the conversation between Gildor and Frodo, which is a little bit like a memory of the Gandalf-Frodo conversation, except Gildor is far less informative, infuriatingly so. This prompts Frodo to snap back at him with the phrase, "Go not to the Elsweyr council, for they will say both no and yes," which makes Gildor laugh. I think it's very true, isn't it? Don't go to the Elsweyr council. Galadriel is going to demonstrate something of the same qualities later on. The spirit that Frodo shows here does actually prompt Gildor to give him a straight answer, which does prove to be good advice. Go at once and don't go alone. And the last note in this chapter is that about courage. We've had kindness and generosity. Courage is something which is like the third part of the Hobbit character. And Frodo is the one to raise it because he says he doesn't know he's got the courage for the test that's ahead of him. Gildor comes back with, "Courage is found in unlikely places," which does ring true throughout the story because the four Hobbits, the most unlikely heroes, turn out to find courage in unlikely places. And it's fitting that he ends by naming Frodo "Elf Friend." Frodo is going to be an elf friend and friend to all of Middle-earth by what he does. And the chapter ends with Frodo announcing that it's time to go to sleep. So what do we make of this third chapter? Well, we finally got going, though, of course, it's not at a great pace. They're still walking in a leisurely fashion. And even when they do meet the Black Rider, which does give this sense of danger, they do recover from it or they're saved by the elves. So it's not the nail-biting journey it could be. Tolkien is saving that. He's probably aware that he's going to darken it and increase the pace and the danger. So he doesn't want to fire all his arrows here in this third chapter. But what I relish about this chapter is the feeling like I'm going on a country walk. The magic of the elves and being with the elves is impressive for Sam and for Pippin and for Frodo. But for me, what's most impressive is walking through the countryside with these three friends. And that's why it's a chapter that's particularly rewarding to go back to.
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