Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 2 Chapter 2

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and this is one of our regular Sidecasts where we take an author's journey through the Lord of the Rings. And today we have reached book two, chapter two. So that's the second half of the Fellowship of the Ring and it's the chapter called the Council of Elrond. Now the first thing I want to bring to your attention is just how long this chapter is. I was looking at the audio versions, which gives you, you know, the recorded length, gives you a good idea of just how long they all are, and this one is over two hours to be read aloud twice the amount of the usual chapter. And also you'll notice that this chapter is people sitting in a room talking about stuff. So to a certain extent there's a don't try this at home for budding authors out there. There's a lot of telling us and not showing us in this chapter. So the question I suppose that I want to start putting on the table right up front is does he get away with it? Does the Council of Elrond chapter actually work in the novel? And I think the answer must be as to how curious we are at this stage in the story about the history of the ring, the nature of the mission and what is going to be done with it, but also sort of to balance the fact that it's people sitting in the room. He gets away with it, by the way stories are told. So, for example, the way Gandalf recounts his section is a kind of dramatized narrative, a bit like a flashback. His section is a kind of dramatized narrative, a bit like a flashback. So before we actually get into the council part of this chapter, which is most of it, I just want to draw your attention to the beautiful scene setting that goes on. You may remember that I mentioned how when you have a waking up scene, which you're going to have several of, you need to make them all a bit different from each other. Yeah, so we get this lovely section when Frodo first gets up and it's so delicately described. I want to read it to you. 02:34 Next day, frodo work early, feeling refreshed and well. He walked along the terraces above the loud, flowing brunin and watch the pale, cool sun rise above the far mountains and shine down, slanting through the thin silver mist. The dew upon, the yellow leaves was glimmering and the woven nets of gossamer twinkled on every bush. Now, if you've read any of Tolkien's poetry, you'll know that in there are some words that he's particularly fond of Glimmering, silver mist, gossamer nets, leaves and it gives you that delicacy which seems to stand for the architecture and the positioning of Rivendell. So it's a very economical way of establishing mood and tone. Just a little respite before he goes into this very long meeting. I know what we feel like when we all go into long Zoom meetings. So here's Frodo going into his long conference call. 03:41 We then move to the location for the meeting, which is described as being outdoors on a porch. If your main point of reference is the films, they tried to replicate that, though it obviously was in a studio in order to make it possible to film. I like to let my imagination really imagine a place that is truly full of fresh air and that again fits with the idea that the elves are part of nature. They're not going to be away in a conference room idea that the elves are part of nature. They're not going to be away in a conference room like they might do in Minas Tirith, they're out in nature. Anyway, all lovely touches. 04:11 Okay, what about the actual Council of Elrond itself? How is it structured and how does he get away with a very long chapter of people telling us stuff? Well, I think the answer is that it's quite well structured in terms of it falls into parts. They could have had actually chapter divisions and to break it up. So the first part is the kind of preamble, where we get the dwarves and the dwarven rings as a theme and that is introduced at this point, which leads on to a sort of ancient history account from Elrond, with the delightful sort of detail that he was there to see it. Then we get a kind of political interlude, then we get a big chunk of Gandalf and we'll look at that in a minute and then the last section, the fourth section is the what do we do with the ring? 05:10 Okay, so first of all the main speaker is Gloin, who's come from the Lonely Mountain, with news about messengers offering one of the lesser rings, one of the dwarven rings, as a kind of bribe to give them information about Bilbo, and this kind of connects to the Hobbit. Of course it connects to the ring, so it's a nice way of entering into the story. Plus, it also makes the point that we have represented here all the main bodies of people, with the exception of the Lorien elves and the men of Dale and thinking off the top of my head, yeah, the people of Rohan, but almost everybody else is there. They are part of this council deciding what's going to be done with the ring, and Glóin represents the dwarves. Of course, his son is Gim gimli, so watch that space because that becomes important later on. So, after gloin, we get a very elegant summary of the entire history of middle earth, thanks to elrond. He really is a master of history. It's a very beautiful way of reading the material which is in the appendices. 06:24 At the end of Return of the King and what I like here, because we don't forget character we get the fact that he suddenly breaks off his account and says Thereupon Elrond paused a while and sighed. I remember well the splendor of their banners. He said this is the last alliance of elves and men. It recalled to me the glory of the elder days and the hosts of Beleriand. So many great princes and captains were assembled, and yet not so many nor so fair as when Thangorodrim was broken and the elves deemed that evil was ended forever. And it was not so. 07:07 Lots of things going on in here. He's referring to the events at the end of the first age there, and Frodo quite rightly, kind of says what you remember, and Elrond explains just how old he is. My memory reaches back even to the elder days. Earendil was my sire, who was born in Gondolin before its fall, and my mother was Elwing, daughter of Dior, son of Lucian and Doriath. I have seen three ages in the west of the world and many defeats and many fruitless victories. So there's some important things going on here. There's the sense that history repeats itself. That's a platitude, isn't it? But it is also very true that you only need to know a little bit about history. You see the same patterns coming back again. The elves thought that evil was defeated, but no, it comes back in a new form. And we also get a sense here of the lineage of Elrond. If we hadn't twigged just how daring Bilbo's song was in the last chapter, we now find out yeah, okay, elrond is the descendant of the person Bilbo was singing about, and we also. 08:15 What is the overall effect of this? This is to make the decision they are making here part of a chain of events stretching right back to the first stage. But also it puts it in a historic context and gives it grandeur. This isn't just the Monday morning meeting in Rivendell, this is a council of Elrond for all time. So what the author is doing here is bigging it up is another way of putting it. It is making us focus on the fact that this is a very big decision. It's going to become part of history and that raises the stakes and raises the tension. 08:53 So Elrond mentions that Isildur took the ring, and this is an interesting little interjection here from Boromir. Boromir is going to keep breaking in because we have to remember that Boromir is the one who breaks the fellowship in many ways and he's already breaking up the Council of Elrond. So good character note here. It's consistent. But he says we didn't know that, we didn't know that Isildur took the ring, and it shows how men's knowledge gets lost over time. A little bit later on in the same chapter we'll hear how Gandalf goes to the libraries and finds a record of Isildur looking at the ring. So the information was available but it's just not accessed, not retrieved or not generally known by somebody of Boromir's level of education. Others may have known, but for him. It's a surprise. 09:44 And then Elrond comes back in again and completes the story from the moment when Isildur took the ring and it was lost to history, and then he sort of hop and skips over the rest of history to the present day. Now there are so many treasures here for Tolkien fans. It's the kind of thing which might put off someone who's reading it for the adventure or for pace, you know sort of action things happening. But I certainly love reading it and always see something new in it when I go back to it. But I certainly love reading it and always see something new in it when I go back to it. 10:20 And with that sense of history weighing on us, we then move from that to what brings Boromir here. So we've got the establishment of who and what Gondor is. That's quite important. It's the first time we're hearing about it properly in this book. And Boromir then gets his moment to talk about his journey here and why he came as a result of a prophecy we also get a very brief mention of it came to his brother as well, though we have to wait until two towers, until we meet Faramir. There's an element in Boromir of special pleading. So he's just heard how the elves and the dwarves and everybody have been fighting the Dark Lord for a long time. But he sort of wants everyone to know that they've been trying really hard in Minas Tirith and they're basically the ones holding back the sea that's about to come over, the sea of evil that's about to come out of Mordor. 11:17 And there's a sort of gentle correction given by Aragorn in the next few exchanges, because Aragorn outs himself. He says here I am, here is the sword that was broken. And Frodo immediately clicks in his head who Aragorn is clicks in his head who Aragorn is. So up to this point he's had lots of hints given him in the conversations with Tom Bombadil and Bilbo, referring him to the Dunedin, all these kinds of things. But Frodo now realizes oh yes, that is the king of the northern and the southern kingdom, so therefore heir of Isildur. Therefore the ring should go to him. 12:02 And it's always really important how people respond to being offered the ring. So rather than Aragorn saying, oh yeah, thanks very much, I'll take it, I'll use it in this point is not given much time but Aragorn very importantly and elegantly rejects the ring. He says it does not belong to either of us, it being the ring, but it has been ordained that you should hold it for a while. And because Aragorn has that ability to reject unnecessary power, that proves that he is worthy of being the king. That is why he gets rewarded in the end, because he plays his part, supporting others in the destruction of the ring, rather than going the route which Boromir is arguing for is to take it for yourself and use it to fight evil with its own powers. 12:57 Now, at this point we're entering into the political section. As a result of Frodo's speaking up and offering the ring to Aragorn, gandalf is the one who commands him to bring it out and show everybody. It's not like how it happens in the film. There's no suggestion. He kind of puts it down and says my job done. Uh, I think the suggestion is he's holding it out and it's he's the still, still the one, as aragorn says, still the one holding it at this point. 13:27 But what is important to notice here is there is a hint of boromir's greed and need for it. Very good writers will seed into their story. It's like doing a murder mystery. You want to put in the little hints that then will bear fruit later. And here is one from Boromir. And it got it after. Elrond says behold Isildur's bane, we've got this line. 13:54 Boromir's eyes glinted as he gazed on the golden thing. The halfling, he muttered, is then the doom of Minas Tirith come at last. So he's putting it together and you can sort of see the cogs in his brain putting it all as to what does this mean? This is the end of my city, and he's corrected at this point by you know he's feeling pretty much like the doomsday has come. 14:28 One of the people he attacks is Aragorn, by saying what do we need with a broken blade, not understanding that it can be reforged, of course? Um, and at this point bilbo steps forward and defends aragorn and repeats the all that is gold does not glitter. That the verse that we had back at brie. And this is where we get aragorn's gentle correction. So aragorn is a very good diplomat. He doesn't bristle with offense, but he just says what the rangers have been doing, their ways of defending the north, and sort of basically telling Boromir look, son, we've been working hard too. And making the argument that it's not just in one place that the tide of evil has been kept back. So that's the political section, which is about the politics of men and how the king's return might be received by the people of Minas Tirith who feel they've been fighting this fight on their own. The intervention by Bilbo gives us the opportunity for Bilbo to say his part in the history of the ring, which is done as a summary, which is good, because we've all read the Hobbit. 15:51 We then move into the section where Gandalf talks about what he's been doing in the sort of to prove what the ring is. And if you're wondering what they're going to be doing in the film the Hunt for Gollum, it's this material here, as well as the appendices that they'll be drawing on, so you might want to have a quick look at that. It falls at this point in the Council of Elrond and we've got here Gandalf telling all of this in what I would call an unreal narrative mode, in that it actually reads more like a flashback. So that's where it feels more like action rather than the sort of here's an account of my holiday kind of thing. He's actually dramatizing the events with ventriloquizing the voices who are speaking. So in fact it's a disguised form of flashback. And we get here the capture of Gollum, and Aragorn mentions how tedious he found looking after Gollum, which of course is setting it up for how it's going to feel to Frodo and Sam having to drag Gollum with them across the Dead Marshes. 17:10 Then there's a very important bit here. One of the few times maybe the only time in fact, I'm just trying to think if there is another time, it's certainly the only extended time of black speech when gandalf reads out the inscription. It's a. I actually think it's quite a beautiful language. It's kind of um, it's quite fun to hear the different versions read it out, but the harshness of the sounds. 17:38 There is the conceit here that even speaking black speech is like letting off a sort of toxic bomb in Rivendell. No one has said these words before and Elrond and everyone feels quite shaken by it Ashnaz dubato luk ashnaz gimba tul. Ashnaz srakato luk ark bozum ishi krimpa tul. So it actually prompts Elrond to kind of tell Gandalf off in a way, and Gandalf says no, I have to say this because if you don't want and here's the quote, for if that tongue is not soon to be heard in every corner of the West, they have to understand that this really is the ring that belongs to the Dark Lord. I want to just underline here that the way that's phrased is really important, because one of the reasons why Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings, he said, is in order to have a world in which Elvish is spoken. So by having an event which might mean only black speech is spoken, it destroys the world where Elvish is spoken. So it's interesting that it's put as a battle between languages at this point. 18:56 Then we have a little revelation here, moving the plot along, where Boromir is asking what part Gollum might have and Aragorn and Legolas talk about where Gollum ended up. Aragorn thinks he's safely with the Mirkwood elves and Legolas has to confess that Gollum gave them the slip because the elves used to let him go up a tree and enjoy the breeze and therefore he escaped because some orcs came along. So we know he's loose, and it's a way of reminding us, keep putting in our minds why are we spending so much time on Gollum here, a character we've not yet met? Why are we spending so much time on Gollum here, a character we've not yet met? Well, we'll. It sort of pays off, doesn't it? Later, when he actually enters the narrative, he's not coming out of the blue, his arrival is heralded. So, again, that's another good sort of writerly thing to do is to keep on putting those breadcrumb trails down so that when it happens it feels earned. And there's an important statement here from Gandalf. Before we go back into a long piece of narrative by Gandalf where he says, well, well, he is gone, but he may play a part yet that neither he nor Sauron has foreseen, there's this feeling that the gandalf has an instinctual knowledge of how this might turn out. He's not saying it's guaranteed that it's all going to go well, but he doesn't think that the ultimate power is sauron and that evil things can work to the good, which fits in with the larger philosophy of the creation of Middle-earth and this world. 20:43 Okay, so now we're in the third part of this chapter. Are you still with me? Told you it was long. And here we've got the marvellous account of Gandalf's journeying, why he didn't turn up in the Shire. So we get the meeting with Radagast that sends him off to Sauron, and then the mortifying experience for Gandalf of being trapped by the man who should be the head wizard, should be a chief ally, who's turning out to be on the side of the evil ones, and how. We know, other than the sophistry of Saruman's desire for the ring. You know well, we can use it to do good or defeat the evil, which of course Gandalf sees through. 21:37 We get the very key discussion about the nature of the white. So he was Saruman the white white. So he was Saruman the white, and he reveals himself now as Saruman of many colours. And when Gandalf challenges him on this, saruman says that white serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed, the white page can be overwritten and the white light can be broken, and Gandalf says in which case it is no longer white and he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. 22:19 Another thing I like about this is it connects very subtly to Tolkien's view of creativity. To Tolkien's view of creativity because he has, in his poem Misappear, the line about how we are splinters of the single white light. So the white light is the creator's light, it's the holy light, and while the splinters can be good, they can also be splinters for evil. So we are picking up the fragments when we are doing our sub-creation, and so there's an image here of uh saruman was originally from, he was at one of the maya, he was originally one of the divine beings, products of this white light and he's gone away from that and he's left, he's breaking apart, he's just got splinters and fragments that he's building with and of course you'll notice there's now a gap at the top of the wizard hierarchy which of course Gandalf will earn pretty soon. It's just a fantastic drama of Gandalf being stranded at the top of the tower, unable to intervene, and it all looks pretty grim and his hopes rest on whether or not the rot in the wizarding ranks has reached Radagast or not, because Radagast proves to be innocent and he has come good for Gandalf because through him Gwaihir arrives at the tower to bring news, as Radagast requested, and that is the means of escape for Gandalf, is the means of escape for Gandalf. 24:16 Also, note here that we get introduction of Rohan, so we're laying the path ahead for where the two towers is going to go, and it's kind of mixed reviews for Rohan at this point, with a dispute over whether or not they are giving horses to the black riders and whether or not they're sort of in some way corrupted. Of course we find the corruption is there and it's in a different form and actually stemming from Saruman, really not from Mordor, and one of the redeeming features of Boromir is that he firmly defends his allies, says. I've not heard anything bad about my mates in Rohan, so you know that's a good note of loyalty from Boromir. We also get mention here of Shadowfax. So again, when Shadowfax enters the narrative in Two in two towers he's already been introduced here and just looking at it from an author's point of view, shadow facts solves a problem. 25:17 I've been writing books set in the early 19th century and one of the issues I get is how to get people to places quick enough in a time before combustion engine and railways or airplanes, helicopters, so you've got either walking pace or you've got horses as your technology, and here we've got a magic horse who can get us. You can sort of cut the travel time for us and it's just a really helpful thing to speed up a narrative and you'll notice, as a way of signaling that Gandalf is hurrying is we almost get a speeded up narrative as well. So we've got. He calls in briefly on Gaffer yeah, a little bit of Gaffer Gamgee. He calls in briefly on Butterbur we get a little bit of Gaffer Gamgee. He calls in briefly on Butterbur we get a little bit of that. So the pace quickens once he's out of the Orthanc jail. So fabulous bit of storytelling flashback there from Gandalf. 26:24 Then we move into the fourth quarter and this is begun when Elrond reflects on what Gandalf has says. And this gives a chance for them to decide what they're going to do with the ring. That's the main point here. They've proved that all the links in the chain and the test of fire and the fiery words, they know they've got the real one. It's not a fake. They know that it has to be destroyed and they know that they have. What the political situation is? That's all what the Council of Elrond has established. So, within that context, what are they going to do with it? 27:05 And this section really is trying to answer all the questions that might be rising in a reader's mind. So, for example, they talk about can we send it back to Bombadil? And this is one of the reflections on who Bombadil is. Elrond calls him Yawen Ben Adar, oldest and fatherless, and they have a discussion about him being an unsafe guardian for the ring because it's just not his business. And there is a feeling here that they're sort of saying well, can we send it over the sea? No, can we do this, can we do that? It's trying to herd the logic of the narrative in one direction only. And elrond sums that up, really, when he says gandalf has revealed to us that we cannot destroy it by any craft we here possess. So, and the idea of putting it down into the sea? Well, that's no good, because someone as long-lived as gandalf knows that seas change, land masses, masses change. They've lost Numenor and Beleriand. These things do move and change. So we get to the crunch point, and Elrond is the one who has the wisdom to foresee what they must do, which he says. They must take a road that's unexpected. We must send the ring to the fire. 28:29 And after all this talking, there's a very strategic use of silence here, and the person who kind of breaks it is Boromir. Remember what I'm saying about? There's a hint here that he's always going to be a bit of the grit in the works. He's still thinking we can use it, whereas everybody else has moved beyond that and understood that that's not possible. And the fate of the three elven rings who might end up fading as a result of destroying the ring and certainly being overwhelmed if sauron recaptures the ring? So we want to have a sense of all the rings of power. What's going to happen to them. 29:18 There's a hint here of what should be done, because elrond puts this statement out there. Yet such is off the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world. Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. And Bilbo is the one to take the hint. He says, right, I must go. And his offer is met with affection. But actually I think the wisest heads in the room have probably already worked out what the next step is. 29:54 But they don't force it on Frodo. They let him come to that realization himself, because there's another silence. And the point of this there's two silences and fairly quick succession here is that it makes frodo's decision more momentous. It's a calm before the storm. He frodo himself, except for when he was asked to tell his own story, which again is in report. We don't hear it, we just hear it mentioned that he he did speak, um, he's been largely quiet, and the one thing he does stand up is say is I will, I will take the ring, though I do not know the way. And there's a significant line break there. Normally line breaks are used to indicate a change of scene or a sort of underlining and in the here it's in the in the as an underlining. It's a kind of we've got to pause at this moment to register what Frodo has has offered to do so. 31:01 After that offer has been taken and accepted, elrond immediately says he doesn't need to go alone and in a typical sort of Tolkien-esque mood, there's a lightning of the mood because Sam pops up. 31:15 He's been hiding, listening and he sums it up with the hobbit sense which really keeps Lord of the Rings grounded and something which comes back to the experience of the common person, which is a nice pickle we have landed ourself in, mr Frodo. So all this highfalutin talk comes down to being a nice pickle for two poor hobbits who've got to take the ring into Mordor. So a very long chapter, probably a total nightmare for anybody to adapt and to realize because there is so much being said. But when you're reading it in the novel I think you don't notice how long it is because the storytelling is so gripping, particularly the answering all those questions about what Gandalf had been doing and why he took so long to arrive. So in a way it's also a very satisfying chapter because it gives us loads of answers and it sets up what's going to happen next? So we are pivoting into the fellowship part of the Fellowship of the Ring and the fellowship kicks off in the very next chapter with leaving Rivendell. 32:35 - Speaker 2 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. 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