Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 2 Chapter 3

00:05 - Speaker 1 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 today we are continuing our author's journey in Lord of the Rings and we have reached chapter three of the second book in the Fellowship of the Ring, and the chapter is called the Ring Goes South. Now you would think, if you're in the northern hemisphere, that if we go south it gets warmer, but no, this is the chapter that goes further into winter and right up to the top of snowy Caradhras. So first of all, let's look at the structure of this chapter. So we've come out of the very long Council of Elrond structure and we're now in a chapter which is basically in three parts. We have a Rivendell section where they're preparing to go on the journey. We have a middle section in the sandwich when they are out in the wilds and we see the fellowship working together for the first time, and then we have the section where they climb the mountain and are turned back. So the first thing to notice as this chapter begins is that we go into the Hobbit council after the council of Elrond, and I would say this is a bit like the comedic recap of the previous chapter, though there is some decisions taken and some delightful new information given us. But we get here particularly the beginnings or elaboration on the Pippin and Gandalf duo, which we're going to see throughout the entirety of the Lord of the Rings, where Pippin has his immortal line about them needing a person of intelligence to go on the quest and Gandalf says well, that rules you out, doesn't it? We also get the sort of feeling from the other hobbits that they just took so long and really didn't decide anything. It's a bit like the reaction Pippin and Merry have, with justification, to the moot, the Entmoot that's coming on later. We also get some very important things said by Bilbo. So it may be a sort of funny recap of what's gone before, but we do get a very poignant thing that Bilbo says because Frodo is facing his journey, and Bilbo says you know, have you thought of an ending of your story? And Frodo says ah, yes, several and all are dark and unpleasant. And Bilbo immediately says oh no, that won't do. Books ought to have good endings. How would this do? And they all settled down and lived together happily ever after. And one of the most important concepts in Tolkien's writing is the eucatastrophe, which is a sudden reversal of good, something turning good out of seeming disaster, though it's notable that Sam adds the poignant. And where will they live? That's what I often wonder, which again foreshadows the end, because indeed not everybody gets to live happily ever after in the shire. There is a different ending for Frodo and for Bilbo. 03:32 We also get some fragments of poetry here. When winter first begins to bite and stones crack, in the frosty night, when pools are black and trees are bare, it tis evil in the wild to fare, underlining Bilbo's role here as a sort of repository of wisdom. So we have some sections in this book which leap over passages of time, and this is very necessary because you're not going to itemize moment by moment what is basically two thirds of a year of story. Two-thirds of a year of story. So we get here the sense or the summary of Rivendell as a haven. It feels a bit like they're on leave from the war and it must have reminded Tolkien when he wrote this, of the moments when he would have been on leave from the front line in the First World War or even when he had his children who were in the forces in the Second World War coming home to visit, away from danger. But you don't want to let the tension drop and he sustains it here by making this ominous note but low in the south one star shone red. So they're going south and that's where the one star shines red. This is a way of not letting all the air out of your story so that it ends up being flabby, keeping it tense and taut. So if you are going to have a element of relaxation or recuperation in the story, do remember to keep the tension running in some way so we get after. 05:08 This moment where they've had some time off nearly two months is described. I remember when I first read this, thinking why are they waiting two months? I couldn't understand it and in a way, I'm still not entirely sure why it takes two months. I know that they are seeking extra information, but I think the answer may be more to do with the date that Tolkien wanted them to set out on than anything else, but I don't know. What do you think? But anyway, it does give them time to send out messengers and this gives us the wider picture of what is happening in the world around. 05:42 And there is a theme in this chapter about who sees the bigger picture. There are hints always that Elrond, aragorn, gandalf, legolas sees the bigger picture and Sam Pippin and the Hobbit's bar, frodo, are sort of more close, focused, living in the moment. Frodo are sort of more close, focused, living in the moment. But it's also used this chapter, this section in this chapter, to remind us of certain things that Tolkien wants to foreshadow. So we've got Gollum mentioned again. Remember, we've not actually met Gollum in person yet, but he's been popping up again and again as a character. And we also get an answer to what happened to the Black Riders, which can be summed up as they're down but not defeated. 06:32 So once the messengers come back, elrond is ready to send everybody out and this is where we get one of the Elrond ceremonial moments. He summons Frodo and gives him the chance, second chance, to say if he wants to go Again. This is important. He's undertaking this of his own free will and this is where he gathers the fellowship and what I like about this section. After we get the sort of courtly roll call of Aragorn saying may I accompany you again, and that kind of thing, we get Pippin's protest about being left off the list and this bathos is bringing it down to the level of ordinary people, I think, is what keeps the Lord of the Rings with its feet firmly on the ground. And Pippin has the particularly powerful protest that he will follow anyway, and he has to be sent home tied in a sack if he's left off the list, and this is persuasive enough for Elrond for him to then announce okay, pippin and Merry, you're on the team, except his words, for this are now the tale of nine is filled, so we're back to the more courtly tone of elrond after the pippin protest. 07:52 I think tolkien is particularly good at this flexibility of rising up and down registers from the very antiquated, high-flown language of some of the heroic characters down to the absolutely commoner garden language of someone like Sam, and we'll see this all the way through the book. Just a note here for those of you who may have missed it, because it's not given a huge emphasis considering its role in the story. But this is the point in the book where the sword is forged anew. It doesn't come later, as in the film version, and it's a decision taken by Aragorn because he knows he is in a sense going out to fight a battle on the borders of Mordor as it's described, and this is a moment where he either rises to his ancestry or fails. And in order to mark the moment because the sword was broken in the battle on the borders of Mordor it's reforged and given a new name, anduril Flame of the West. 09:04 And I would say that in this chapter it's full of important swords and artifacts. It's one of those chapters which is delightful to imagine, all these things being dusted off and brought out of keeping or polished to go on this journey. And characters are often associated with key artifacts, as we'll see as we go on. And it's particularly sweet, I think, at this moment, that Bilbo, immediately after Anduril is reforged, gives Sting to Frodo. So Sting is given its own little hobbit style lineage very important artifact in its own right and it will go on to do great deeds and has already done them. 09:54 But I think it's important here to reiterate that Bilbo is the hobbit who can give things up that he cares for. He gives up sting because he knows that it's no longer something he needs, and he gives up the mithril coat this is what he says was given to him by Thorin. He calls it a pretty thing and useful and it later comes into its own in Moria, of course, and its value is mentioned there. I think I'm in the camp that Bilbo knows full well that it's very valuable. He's been spending enough time in the world to know exactly how valuable it is and he is very happy to hand over something that's worth more than the Shire in order to save and protect his beloved nephew. But of course the hobbits are not really comfortable in this world of helms and shields and swords and these things, so the dwarven male is hidden under his clothes and that kind of stands for what hobbits are like, of course, and that is a parallel made later that they are more than meets the eye. 11:11 Another very lovely moment here is the restrained emotion of farewell, where there's a sort of very English gentleman oh, I can't slap you on your back because you're too hard. That kind of stuff Of two young, two men, hobbits, who are shy about expressing emotion. But yet Bilbo finds a way because he gives this beautiful poem which, when I was asking for favorite poems online, this was the one that actually most people said was their favorite. It starts with um, I sit before beside the fire and think, and it's a wonderful reflection on what it's like to grow old and to think of your place in history. But he is telling Frodo what he's going to be doing. Whilst Frodo is away on this perilous adventure he's going to be, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door. That's his role. He is waiting. So it's a very emotional moment and beautifully expressed in poetry, right. 12:20 So now we're ready to go, we're ready to set out, and again Elrond is striving to do a couple of things here. He's striving to make the moment sort of fitting for the importance of what's happening. He's also giving them instructions about going in secrecy. So they set out on a cold, grey day near the end of December, I think. Just to answer the question I raised earlier, why do they wait this long? The cold grey day in December is the 25th of December, and there's very often important real-world days underlying the days of the Hobbit calendar, shall we say. And Tolkien liked the idea of setting the ring out on the quest on what is celebrated as Christmas Day in the Catholic Church. 13:15 The setting out has another couple of things worth noting here from a writing point of view. We have the moment when both Boromir and Gimli push back on Elrond, and this tells you a lot about both the characters and the culture of the elves and the dwarves. So Elrond is striving for secrecy. They're supposed to be leaving quietly at dawn, no one's supposed to notice. But Boromir gets out his horn and gives it a good old blast and Elrond challenges him, saying well why? You know you shouldn't be doing that and you should not do it again until you're on the borders of your own land, which again is foreshadowing poor old Boromir's fate. But Boromir is showing that he is not really with this program. He is on the quest but he has got his own agenda and that is absolutely key to why he fractures the fellowship at the end. And also it connects and brings attention to the horn, which becomes the artifact that symbolizes Boromir. It's it's what ends up on the lap of Denethor in Return of the King. So very clever here Tolkien is combining all of these important character notes, plot notes, in this one moment we also get Gimli giving the dwarf point of view when Elrond's saying you know those of you who want to turn back. 14:46 If your courage fails, that's okay of thing. He's. He's sort of saying I understand how difficult this is going to be. And the dwarf weighs in saying oh, you know, none of us would do that. No, no, no person um would back out so quickly, and there's a sort of trying to cap each other that happens. Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens, said Gimli. Maybe, said Elrond. But let him not vow to walk in the dark who has not yet seen the nightfall Yet. Sworn word may strengthen quaking hearts, said Gimli, or break it, said Elrond. So he does get the last word, despite Gimli's best attempts to undercut. You know, master Elrond. So he does get the last word, despite Gimli's best attempts to undercut. You know, master Elrond. But it gives you that sense of the um toing and froing between the elf and the dwarf culture there, and also you get an insight into what Gimli is going to be like as a companion rushing in refusing to turn back. 15:49 It's interesting, though, that this section is told a lot of. It is told from Sam's point of view. We go into his headspace where he's thinking about Bill the pony, who is going to be their beast of burden, and his worries about what he's forgotten to pack. There's a lovely little note about how he's looking forward to bringing out various small belongings of his masters, which he will bring out in triumph when they are called for. You get the sense of him as the valet, the aid to camp for Frodo here, very much looking after his master's interests. And then he settles on the realisation he's forgotten to bring rope again seeded in so that when he lacks rope later on and gets given it in Lothlorien then that's a sort of great relief because it's always in the back of his mind he hasn't got it and he needs it. So again, notice that those little details are delightfully put in here. Little details are delightfully put in here. Okay, so that's the end of the Rivendell section and off they go. 16:53 Here we get in the film. They give this the first time. The fellowship theme is played and the equivalent of that is a description here which begins in the paragraph paragraph at the Ford of Bruinin, because we get who's walking, where Gandalf walked in front and with him went Aragorn who knew this land even in the dark, and there's a sort of counting off of the other members of the fellowship coming behind. And it is also the moment where most of us turn to the maps. It's very important to the success of this fantasy that we feel as though it's a real world To many of us. In a way it has become a real world because we see it in our real world when we're walking around in it. But also there's a little note here, again from a style point of view, because we've got a fortnight that is skipped over at this point. A fortnight, by the way, for those of you who aren't in the uk, is a two weeks. Frodo remembered little of it, so we're told there that we're in frodo's point of view and it's a way of fast forwarding because frodo can't remember it, so he can't tell bilbo on his return what happened. 18:01 So we're going to skip over to the first important thing, which is when they reach Holland. Here is a description of mountains and maps, and we keep having these character moments because Pippin basically confesses he couldn't really make head or tail of maps. It's not as bad as Sam, as we find out later, but having an ignorant person on the team means that it gives the excuse for the other characters to explain. This is an important device when you need to give information to the reader without feeling it like a big sort of information dump. And the fact that Pippin can't make sense of the landscape gives Gandalf the chance to sort of explain where they are. 18:48 And Gimli then takes over with a wonderful section reading out the names of this landscape in the dwarf language. So he calls the mountains Barazirak and Shathur and he goes on to say Yonder stands barazin, bar the red horn, cruel caradras, and beyond him are silver tine and cloudy head, keleb deal the white and fan we told the gray, which we call zirak, zigil and bundu shatur. Wonderful names, I mean. You can look at, look for them on the, but also hear the echoes of the dwarven culture that is going on underlining the next couple of chapters as we get to Moria. And if you are a person who is building a fantasy around languages, of course you'll be looking for the natural moments to drop them in. And this is what Tolkien does. He drops them in in a very natural way. 19:50 We also get Gandalf sketching out the way ahead. So he talks about the various stages of their journey. So they're going to go through the mountains or over the mountains, down the Silverlo to the Secret Woods and then on to the Great River and then to the end of the story. And it's important in a chapter where which is actually about turning back and frustration, that we still feel as a reader that we are. The narrative momentum is forward. Very helpful little intervention there by Gandalf. 20:24 This chapter is also full of moments when, for the first time outside Rivendell, the fellowships speak. We've heard Boromir, we've heard Gimli and now we get Legolas. And it's notable that Legolas is talking about time, because some of the most memorable Legolas moments are really about the nature of the passage of time. There's a beautiful one coming in the future on the Great River chapter, but here he's talking about how the land forgets. He says but the elves of this land were of a strange race, of a race strange to us, of the sylvan folk, and the trees and the grass do not now remember them. Only I hear the stones lament them deep. They delved us fair, they wrought us high, they high, they builded us, but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the havens long ago. 21:13 It's a beautiful passage, that, and it reminds you of lots of things. It reminds you of how long-lived elves are, how there are different kinds of elves. So a sylvan elf is one who lives in the woods. These are elves. That made things More about that in a second, his lament for those going over to the west. So it beautifully encapsulates the situation of the elves in Middle Earth. 21:41 I always enjoy in this chapter seeing Aragorn in ranger mode. They have one of the moments when they're camping together as the fellowship Some are on watch, some are sleeping Love all this detail. And Aragorn is the one who senses that the crebine or the crows are abroad and this is important for retaining a sense of threat. So they're not just camping, they have to hide, they have to put out the fires, they have to make sure that they remain as little impact on the landscape as possible and we get a sense here of the land turning against them. This passage always reminds me a bit of when the children go through the wardrobe into Narnia and Mr Beaver warns them that not all the animals are friendly to the enemies of the White Witch. And obviously CS Lewis would have heard this passage long before he wrote that. So I sometimes wonder if the Holland section is in the back of his mind as he wrote that section in the Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe. 22:54 But for all the menace and threat, we can count on Pippin to give us a nice down-to-earth, hobbit response. Well, if that isn't a plague and a nuisance, these are not characters who float above the, the narrative without feeling frustrations and grumbles and hunger and thirst and tiredness. They're very much reacting as many of us would if we were put in that situation. This is going back to the, the grounding effect of having hobbits along for the ride or the walk in this case. But we also get a insight here into sam's growth as a character. So sam was originally interested in the culture of the elves way back in the shire. He's now interested in the culture of the dwarves. He says to frodo, reflecting on gimli's earlier words, a fair jawcracker, dwarf language must be. And you get the sense of his eyes being opened to what's outside the shire. But also we get told very clearly he has no sense of maps because he's out of his reckoning. He's a hobbit who navigated his way by familiarity with a landscape, not by maps or anything written by other people. So it's actually that's what we're doing here. If you think of tolkien plate spinning, so he's got nine plates up on the poles plus the story plate 10, and he has to do a bit of spinning for the Strider Aragorn character, a bit of spinning for Boromir, a bit for Gimli, a bit for Legolas, a bit for Gandalf and so on, and he does it absolutely beautifully. It's actually, in my view, much better than the company of dwarves in the Hobbit, where the rest of the dwarves who weren't Thorin and Balin, I suppose most, and Bomba, most of them were sort of indistinguishable from each other, but the fellowship is beautifully delineated in a very clear way so we can all imagine these different energies and characters in the fellowship. 25:09 So after having spent some time in Sam's sort of perspective, we are back with Frodo, and Frodo is reflecting on the landscape. He finds it an old landscape, he notices the remains of an ancient road and he looks at the. It's a beautifully written, brief passage of description about the black stones and the shadows. Many of them look to have been worked by hands, though now they lay tumbled and ruinous in a bleak, barren land. All throughout, lord of the rings, there are traces of earlier civilizations. We saw this on the old road, we saw this this on Weathertop, we see it in Athelion and here in Holland we get it again. And for those of you who want to make a connection to the rings of power, this area is where Celebrimbor and his elves, who made things, including rings. This is the area they set up as their kingdom. So that is what is being remembered. 26:10 But notice that Tolkien doesn't weigh us down with too much information. He's almost giving us the atmosphere without the names and the details. At this point, celebrimbor does get a mention at the gates of Moria, but we don't get too many diverge at this point. You'd have to glean the information from the appendices if you wanted to find out who these elves were. At this point I always sit up and notice when tolkien mentioned stars. He absolutely loves stars, but here it serves the purpose of reminding us of the threat. So we had the red star earlier. Now we get the stars briefly shut out by a shadow, and this is the hint of the return of the Black Riders in their form of Nazgul. So Tolkien is telling us of a threat to come without naming it. 27:03 I mentioned that this is a down-to-earth fellowship and this is particularly shown that the two most heroic characters, which is Gandalf and Aragorn by heroic I mean high register, longest lineage characters. They are having a disagreement about the way to go, and this is what Frodo is listening into. It's interesting to sort of find yourself in the position of someone who isn't taking the decision he has to later take decisions, but at this point he is listening in and so he's reactive and his reaction is he's relieved not to have to go the dark way that Aragorn mourns against. So they take the decision to go up the mountain. So remember my plate spinning analogy. This is where Boromir really gets his most extended period of being the hero which is referred to again after he's died. 27:58 When Pippin tells this tale again to his father, denethor, and we get to see lots of his strong points, you get a sense of a really good leader of men. He's very practical. He better get some wood together, faggots. That's like a bundle of wood to take with us up the mountain. And he's proved to be. Have good foresight here, because the snow comes. It's very lovely the way the snow arrives, because it arrives just gently. It's a really gentle form a few flakes that frodo notices, and we get snow in both its forms here, both as a benign excuse for a holiday versus the cruel snow which they're about to experience. And we get a call out or a shout out for Shire history with memories of the fell winter that happened long before the living memory of most hobbits, and here there's a reflection of the longer history of the Shire which most hobbits are ignorant of because they tend to live within the living generation memory. 29:08 Gandalf isn't always the easiest of companions because there is basically an I told you so to Aragorn. Poor old Aragorn is trying his best, but I suppose perhaps there is a sense here. I think there's a growing sense that Gandalf knows he's got to go under but he's not going to rush into this decision. He's hoping there is an easier way out. It's made this cup pass from me kind of moment, thinking about it in a biblical sense. But he, you know, poor old Aragorn. But it does lead to a debate about who is behind it all and it's interesting here that there is a suggestion it could be the long arm of Sauron reaching out this far. Boromir hears fell voices on the air. So a suggestion almost of enchantment. In the film they made this Saruman, which geographically makes sense because he lives nearer. But Gimli, I think, gives the most convincing explanation. He says Caladras was called the Cruel and had an ill name long years ago when rumour of Sauron had not been heard in these lands. 30:22 What I like about this is kind of a companion piece to the presence of Tom Bombadil in the landscape. There are some powers in Middle-earth that are nothing to do with the War of the Ring, whose enmities and urges predate current history, and I think that reminds us of the age of the land and the long perspective, which is very often where we are encouraged to look by Tolkien. Look at the long perspective. It's not all about this. These are characters who are part of a much more complicated woven tapestry of history, or, to use the foundational myth of middle earth, they are tunes and themes within a much bigger symphony played by iluvitar. So they are in trouble in the snow, halfway up the mountain and here we get one of these miracle foods are produced. This time it's the Miravor cordial that Gandalf has on him Remember there was a cordial similar to this that Gildor had right back in the Shire, and later on we're going to get Lembas bread and even, in a man's sense, Faramir's provisions of food are sort of like a miraculous finding. We also get the miracle little spring that Frodo and Sam find in Mordor. So putting these very memorable moments of refreshment and relief and reprieve are very important in these dark moments, because the dark seems darker as a result, but also the light is more precious and more intense. 32:09 We also get Gandalf doing one of his rare moments of magic. Doing one of his rare moments of magic, he's mostly spared the magic for fun, putting it into fireworks. He doesn't go around waving his wand in a Harry Potter way, he holds back. But this chapter and the next couple are where he does most of his magic and he uses it first here in a small way, for lighting a fire. And he is reluctant because he says I have written gandalf is here in signs that can read, can be read from rivendell to the mouths of anduin. I'm interested in this. There's something else going on here, if you think about the map, because Gandalf is reminding us of them as this small presence high up on a mountain and all the world around them. So he's got this bigger view, the wider view which I mentioned as a theme of this. He reminds us of the world outside the storm. So they are forced to turn back. 33:15 Now, in my plate spinning analogy here, legolas gets another spin and he is at his most elven here and possibly at his most annoying of everybody else, because Boromir, who is at his most heroic, is ploughing his way down the mountain and Legolas runs by on his light shoes, feet making little imprint on the snow, basically saying I'm off to find the sun. He doesn't seem that worried, whereas the other characters do feel that there is real threat of the death, of exposure. For Legolas this doesn't seem such a big deal. It may be that he's doing this. I suppose it depends how you read it, how you would play it if you were thinking about it in terms of the film. It could be encouraging that he's the one who finds that the snow only goes so far down the mountain they can get out, or it could be a bit smug. So it depends how you're reading your Legolas as to how nice this comes across. I think I would find it a little bit annoying. If I'm Gimli I would definitely find it annoying. 34:23 But Boromir's leadership role here is very clear because he's the one who's giving the solution. So when the hobbits are worried that they haven't got the energy to go down the mountain, he says don't worry, I can carry you. So he carries Pippin. It's particularly sweet that there is a connection here between Pippin and Boromir carries Pippin. It's particularly sweet that there is a connection here between Pippin and Boromir because Pippin becomes the man of Gondor, one of the guard, and he's described as widening the passage with his arms even as he's carrying Pippin down the mountain, which is lovely moment for Boromir. 34:53 And they have to turn up and give up. But they're not giving up totally, they're just having, they're being forced to take the path that Gandalf doesn't want. So we remember that this is the way none of them want to go. They're going to have to go and in fact it's a bit like Chekhov's if you mention a gun in the first act, it has to fire later. If you mentioned another path that you don't want to take, it's pretty good to actually have to take it. 35:19 That's what the reader is expecting. Story expectation is building up here. Gimli is the one to personify and address the mountain and sort of shake his fist at caradhras, and there's a beautiful final sentence pure Tolkien here. A cold wind flowed down behind them as they turned their backs on the red horn gate and stumbled wearily down the slope. Caradhras had defeated them Great end to the chapter. And like the champion boxer who's knocked out, they stagger away, ready to come back again to fight the battle, but in a different arena. And the next chapter will take us through some more perils and to the gates of Moria. 36:14 - Speaker 2 Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. 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