Chapter 11: A Knife in the Dark
Jacob's Thoughts (4/24/14)
It feels like an absolute crime to stop right on this cliff hanger, especially since we're so close to the end of Book 1; nevertheless there is already too much to talk about in just thischapter, so restrain myself I must.
Frankly, this chapter doesn't feel like it should work at all, what with all the needless, extraneous detail about how the alarm went off and the horses were let loose and theywere going to get an early start but instead got to eat a big breakfast anyways (whew, I guess!) while they tracked down a replacement carrier-pony that they didn't get a good deal on but don't worry cause Fatty McInnkeeper (bless his soul) ended up getting a good deal out of it that somehow involved Tom Bombadil in some typically useless way much later, and then they were on the main road then they weren't and they were in yet anotherOld Forest of sorts, and there was yet another excruciatingly long poem, with a bunch of dense pseudo-historical context and name dropping from Strider that didn't actually clarify anything and also there were birds and foxes, I guess?
Basically, this chapter could have very easily been Old Forest redux, dreadfully boring and pedantic and excisable. But apparently somewhere between chapters 6 and 12 Tolkien really hit his stride, because "A Knife In The Dark" was genuinely gripping and exciting. What changed?
It's the Black Riders, isn't it.
For this chapter starts with them bona fide smashing down a door in only two tries, then violently trashing the place, before scattering at the town alarm. Up till then, the Black Riders' menace had only been in their general, vague creepiness; their threat was only implied. Seeing them engage in actual physical violence ups the ante, and confirms that they are a real, ruthless danger.
The temptation here might be, now that you've revealed the violence of your enemy, to just let them go on warpath, spreading carnage and mayhem wherever they go. And indeed, there is something almost Terminator-esque about the Black Riders, in their inhumanity, implacability, indestructibility, as they systematically and machine-like explore every possible trail the hobbits could have traveled, methodically eliminating every Sarah Connor in the phone book so to speak, weaving their web till they inevitably find them.
That's the word I'm looking for, inevitable: there is just this inevitability about them, that you can run but not hide, and not even run that long! As Kyle Reese says in the first Terminator: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!" The same could be said of the Black Riders.
Yet Tolkien does not elect to go the rampaging Terminator route, perhaps intuitively understanding that now that their violent potential has been revealed, returning them to the shadows makes them even more menacing than ever. As such, while Strider and the hobbits travel, it's only in sly allusion that the terrible threat of the Black Riders is hinted at, as when Frodo jokes about how all this travel is thinning him down:
The real danger here then--narratively, I mean--is that actually revealing the Black Riders, to see them as they actually are, is tantamount to revealing the scary monster as just a stuntman in a plastic suit with an obvious zipper, a total let-down. Tolkien's choice to actually show the Black Riders, to see what Frodo sees when he puts on the Ring, was frankly a gutsy move.
And I think it pays off. It speaks well of Tolkien that the true form of the Black Riders is more uncanny and unsettling--and therefore frightening--than whatever blood-thirsty monster most our imaginations conjured up on our own:
A word on uncanny, since I used it earlier: Freud said it means literally "un-house-like," or "un-homey." It is the opposite of feeling cozy, comfortable, settled in your little hobbit hole. That is, something needs to feel in a strange way like it doesn't belong there at all, as though it upsets your sense of belonging in this world just by its presence. For another reason why I think the Black Riders work so well is in just how uncanny they are. Consider Strider's explanation of how the Black Riders perceive the world:
And the first life we see them attack is dear Frodo himself--and after all these chapters of them circling around, closing in, like sharks sniffing after blood, like Terminators working down the phone book, the inevitability comes at last to a head, and they "bore down" on our protagonist and drive into him a literal knife in the dark, as the chapter title promised.
And yet, once more, as dark as the darkness may be, as much as their darkness can look like "black holes" compared with the pitch blackness of night itself...the light is still stronger! For Strider, who now reveals the full extent of his hyper-competence, even after he's betrayed how absolutely terrified he is of these Riders, still attacks them and drives them away with but the flames of the camp fire.
But more than literal light drives these Black Riders away: at the climactic moment, Frodo cries out, "O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!" This prayer of sorts, this incantation (I'm sure Ben can fill us in far better as to the full portent of these words), I do believe somehow helps drives these demons away. Remember how Strider cautioned the hobbits earlier against speaking dark words like "wraith" and "Mordor," even refusing to tell a particular story in such a dark place; well, apparently there are light words too, bright ones even, that can pierce even the darkest darkness of the night.
But now I'm in danger of getting ahead of myself! I must wait till next week to post my thoughts on the exciting conclusion of this episode, which is when I also plan to give my thoughts about Book 1 in total. Until then, I think I can safely say that after the slow start--and particularly the Tom Bombadil trilogy--these last few chapters have covered a multitude of sins.
Eric's Thoughts (4/25/14)
I have to disagree with Jacob on this early scene in this chapter—the scene where the black riders knock down Fatty Bolger’s door. Jacob argues that this makes the black riders more menacing. Personally though, I think it would have been just as menacing to have the hobbits wake up to slashed bedsheets in the other room, which is exactly Tolkien did. Additionally, the Black Rider point of view (“Let the little people blow! Sauron will deal with them later.”) is anything but menacing. The voice of the black riders sounds like more of a fun Tolkien voice from the Hobbit than sinister and evil.
Additionally, the opening of this chapter draws out a weakness that we critiqued at length previously. Earlier in our reviews, we critiqued the pointlessness of Fatty Bolger, and as we rightly remembered, Fatty made a reappearance in this chapter, running away from black riders, only to faint on someone’s doorstep saying that he hasn’t got it (i.e. the Ring). *Sigh*. Fatty Bolger does it again by proving himself to be a pointless character. Indeed, one might say that Fatty is only dead weight in this story. You might even say that he doesn’t quite carry his own weight, in a manner of speaking. You might even say that can’t quite keep up to stride and . . . okay, I’m done making corpulent jokes.
Ben's Thoughts (5/3/14)
"Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Awake!" Now this is a chapter.
It's chapters like this that made me fall in love with Tolkien -- and that make me forgive all of the slow introduction that came before. It has suspense, horror, beautiful travelogue, magnificent worldbuilding, lyrical poetry, action, and character building for all of the main characters (well, Pippin gets a little shortchanged). What more could you ask for in a chapter? I only have a few complaints (which I will address shortly).
Let's get the most obvious out of the way right off the bat. Fatty Bolger. Why did we need to return to him? Why was he important to the narrative at all? I like the suspense generated from the very outset with the creeping threat of the Riders, a glimpse into their physical abilities, and even the brief POV from the Riders themselves. But why Fatty Bolger? The only thing that the Riders' attack on Crickhollow adds to the story is a sense that the Riders are able to coordinate their attacks (as it seems this one and the assault on the inn occurred simultaneously). My question is why this sequence couldn't have been set in Bree? The Riders could have approached the inn, busted down the door, etc. in just the same way. I feel like Tolkien was clinging to Fatty Bolger's character for some reason -- perhaps in an earlier draft he had more to do, like the all-but-discarded 'Folco Boffin'? Maybe he just couldn't bear to excise him completely from the story. But if I was his editor, I would have encouraged him to do so, that's for sure. To use up that suspense on Fatty Bolger was a complete waste.
But despite this weak opening sequence, the chapter can only go up from there. The sequence of Strider and the Hobbits attempting to leave Bree was just the right amount of whimsical humor for me this time around (and as Eric pointed out -- Nob! He brightens your day whenever he's mentioned!) Of course the Hobbits were stymied in their attempts to leave quietly -- you can imagine Strider grinding his teeth as he leaves town under the eye of all those curious townsfolk. And yet at the same time a glimmer of insight is given into Strider's psyche, thanks to Bill Ferny, of all people. His comment that Strider "finally found a friend," and Strider's non-response to that jab, goes to show that under his gruff exterior, Strider probably is touched by the fact that he has been accepted by the Hobbits and Frodo in particular. After all that time alone, it would be nice to have some company (even if that company includes Pippin). I makes me sad to think that I don't remember these little tidbits of character development surviving into the "Aragorn the Savior-King" phases of later books.
A few nitpicks about the leave-taking sequence: First, as someone else pointed out, what is the deal with that aside about the ponies? I suppose Tolkien can't resist name-dropping his favorite character Tom Bombadil one more time (and who could pass up an excuse to mention "Fatty Lumpkin" -- the second "Fatty" character mentioned in the chapter; you can just see Tolkien giggling at his typewriter about such a hi-LARious nickname), but what really gets my goat is the quasi-spoiler of "[the ponies] missed a dark and dangerous journey. But they never came to Rivendell." Call me quaint, but I prefer my fiction to be suspenseful and the plot to keep me guessing. All but telling me up front that the company makes it to Rivendell is not exactly my favorite literary device.
I won't go into detail this time about Tolkien's beautiful descriptions and how he makes the journey of these characters come alive for me. But I certainly want to mention just how evocative his language is and how easy he makes it to conjure images of the landscape into your mind. One passage will suffice:
But back to Beren and Lúthien. For the uninitiated, the full story can be found in The Silmarillion. The story is one of two mostly-fleshed-out and realized short stories contained in that book (the other being the dark tragedy of Túrin Turambar, who in the course of the story kills his best friend, is the major cause of the destruction of one of the Elf-kingdoms, marries his sister by accident, and then causes her to commit suicide). The short version of Beren and Lúthien is as follows: Beren is the last scion of one of the noble houses of Men, who encounters Lúthien in an enchanted forest. Lúthien is an Elf, the daughter of Elwê (one of the three original rulers of the Elves) and Melian (a Maia), which makes her half-goddess (I suppose). Elwê Thingol at that time is trying to keep his kingdom out of the wars between Morgoth and the sons of Fêanor, and he refuses to let his beloved daughter Lúthien marry a Man of a house sworn to fight Morgoth. So Thingol decides to stop the marriage by making Lúthien's bride-price impossible -- he asks Beren to get him one of the Silmarils in exchange for his daughter's hand, which were at that time securely ensconced in Morgoth's iron crown.
Anyway, many adventures later, Beren and Lúthien manage to retrieve the Silmaril from Morgoth's crown, but Beren's hand (which contains the Silmaril) gets eaten by a wolf, and he dies in the process of retrieving it. Lúthien's love for him is so great that she dies as well and the Valar allow them both to return to mortality to live as mortals so they can be together. Aragorn has a strong connection to this story, because his romance with Elrond's daughter Arwen mirrors Beren's of Lúthien: Elrond won't let Aragorn marry his Elvish daughter Arwen until Sauron is defeated and Aragorn secures the crown of Gondor and Arnor. "Beren and Lúthien" really is a beautiful story. I would highly recommend that one (as well as "Túrin Turambar", because of and despite of all its almost wacky tragic elements) from Silmarillion even if you don't read anything else in that book.
The poem is quite lovely in an of itself: its structure is an interesting A-B-A-C, B-A-B-C pattern (which perhaps is a traditional one, but my poetry classes are nearly ten years behind me and I can't place it), and the words just flow off the tongue when recited. "One moment stood she, and a spell / His voice laid on her: Beren came, / And doom fell on Tinúviel / That in his arms lay glistening." It captures description and emotion equally well, in my opinion. Nobody else really talked about it in their commentary -- I'd be interested to see what your thoughts were on the poem specifically.
Strider's lyrical recitation is the calm before the storm of the Riders' attack on the camp. I don't really understand what Strider was planning here; did he know it was hopeless to try and hide, and he figured that he could beat off the Riders when they arrived with the fire they had lit? Because he didn't really try to conceal the camp, and if he wanted a defensible position, surely the top of Weathertop would have been better? Oh well. It certainly raises the tension with the Hobbits rushing back to inform Strider about the approaching shadows, and how the Riders are poised on the rim of the hollow, ready to rush down and strike.
The Riders truly are terrible, aren't they? Tolkien's description of them is masterful:
It feels like an absolute crime to stop right on this cliff hanger, especially since we're so close to the end of Book 1; nevertheless there is already too much to talk about in just thischapter, so restrain myself I must.
Frankly, this chapter doesn't feel like it should work at all, what with all the needless, extraneous detail about how the alarm went off and the horses were let loose and theywere going to get an early start but instead got to eat a big breakfast anyways (whew, I guess!) while they tracked down a replacement carrier-pony that they didn't get a good deal on but don't worry cause Fatty McInnkeeper (bless his soul) ended up getting a good deal out of it that somehow involved Tom Bombadil in some typically useless way much later, and then they were on the main road then they weren't and they were in yet anotherOld Forest of sorts, and there was yet another excruciatingly long poem, with a bunch of dense pseudo-historical context and name dropping from Strider that didn't actually clarify anything and also there were birds and foxes, I guess?
Basically, this chapter could have very easily been Old Forest redux, dreadfully boring and pedantic and excisable. But apparently somewhere between chapters 6 and 12 Tolkien really hit his stride, because "A Knife In The Dark" was genuinely gripping and exciting. What changed?
It's the Black Riders, isn't it.
For this chapter starts with them bona fide smashing down a door in only two tries, then violently trashing the place, before scattering at the town alarm. Up till then, the Black Riders' menace had only been in their general, vague creepiness; their threat was only implied. Seeing them engage in actual physical violence ups the ante, and confirms that they are a real, ruthless danger.
The temptation here might be, now that you've revealed the violence of your enemy, to just let them go on warpath, spreading carnage and mayhem wherever they go. And indeed, there is something almost Terminator-esque about the Black Riders, in their inhumanity, implacability, indestructibility, as they systematically and machine-like explore every possible trail the hobbits could have traveled, methodically eliminating every Sarah Connor in the phone book so to speak, weaving their web till they inevitably find them.
That's the word I'm looking for, inevitable: there is just this inevitability about them, that you can run but not hide, and not even run that long! As Kyle Reese says in the first Terminator: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!" The same could be said of the Black Riders.
Yet Tolkien does not elect to go the rampaging Terminator route, perhaps intuitively understanding that now that their violent potential has been revealed, returning them to the shadows makes them even more menacing than ever. As such, while Strider and the hobbits travel, it's only in sly allusion that the terrible threat of the Black Riders is hinted at, as when Frodo jokes about how all this travel is thinning him down:
"'I hope the thinning process will not go on indefinitely, or I shall become a wraith.'Or later, when Pippin hear's tell of their ultimate destination:
'Do not speak of such things!' said Strider quickly, and with surprising earnestness."
"'Going to Mordor!' cried Pippin, 'I hope it won't come to that!'In each of these instances, it is Strider alone who appears to be fully cognizant of the horrors that hunt them. We've only barely met Strider, but, to paraphrase Ben, he is clearly 200% more competent than all the hobbits combined, and we can already tell he is a deeply experienced traveler and fighter; we know that he has seen, heard, and experienced things that the others can scarcely imagine, and thus not much can frighten him. Hence, if he can barely stand to hear about "wraiths" and "Mordor" (especially after quoting it so brazenly in the Prancing Pony), then we know there must be something awful about the pursuing Riders. Our imagination is thus allowed to make them just that more terrifying.
'Do not speak that name so loudly!' said Strider."
The real danger here then--narratively, I mean--is that actually revealing the Black Riders, to see them as they actually are, is tantamount to revealing the scary monster as just a stuntman in a plastic suit with an obvious zipper, a total let-down. Tolkien's choice to actually show the Black Riders, to see what Frodo sees when he puts on the Ring, was frankly a gutsy move.
And I think it pays off. It speaks well of Tolkien that the true form of the Black Riders is more uncanny and unsettling--and therefore frightening--than whatever blood-thirsty monster most our imaginations conjured up on our own:
"Immediately, though everything else remained as before, dim and dark, the shapes became terribly clear. He was able to see beneath their black wrappings. There were five tall figures: two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing. In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel."There's just something almost...frail...about the Black Riders...Tolkien doesn't call them walking corpses, cause he doesn't have to. If they weren't already dead, they'd be in nursing homes. They are clearly consumed by a power without which they couldn't even stand on their own, which again, renders them that more unnerving. In a perverse sort of way, I think it's similar to how evil children (e.g. Children of the Corn, that one Twilight Zone episode, etc) are creepy too--something about seeing what should be the most vulnerable members of our society (kids, the elderly) being suddenly over-powering--and sans any of the love or tenderness normally associated with them--makes them uncanny.
A word on uncanny, since I used it earlier: Freud said it means literally "un-house-like," or "un-homey." It is the opposite of feeling cozy, comfortable, settled in your little hobbit hole. That is, something needs to feel in a strange way like it doesn't belong there at all, as though it upsets your sense of belonging in this world just by its presence. For another reason why I think the Black Riders work so well is in just how uncanny they are. Consider Strider's explanation of how the Black Riders perceive the world:
"They themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys; and in the dark they perceive many signs and forms that are hidden from us: then they are most to be feared. And at all times they smell the blood of living things, desiring and hating it. Senses, too, there are other than sight or smell. We can feel their presence--it troubled our hearts, as soon as we came here, and before we saw them; they feel ours more keenly. Also...the Ring draws them" (emphasis added).Our intrepid heroes can just feel something wrong about the Riders; they are uncanny, they "troubled our hearts", before we ever even saw them we knew something was off, something was wrong. And now, what's even more terrifying: to them, we are uncanny too! They feel that we don't belong here--and not just us, but all living things! They desire our blood and hate it, too! Sauron and his agents are unsettled by the mere presence of living life, and so they seek not just to dominate it, but destroy it. Suddenly that clarifies of all of what's at stake in this frightening war.
And the first life we see them attack is dear Frodo himself--and after all these chapters of them circling around, closing in, like sharks sniffing after blood, like Terminators working down the phone book, the inevitability comes at last to a head, and they "bore down" on our protagonist and drive into him a literal knife in the dark, as the chapter title promised.
And yet, once more, as dark as the darkness may be, as much as their darkness can look like "black holes" compared with the pitch blackness of night itself...the light is still stronger! For Strider, who now reveals the full extent of his hyper-competence, even after he's betrayed how absolutely terrified he is of these Riders, still attacks them and drives them away with but the flames of the camp fire.
But more than literal light drives these Black Riders away: at the climactic moment, Frodo cries out, "O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!" This prayer of sorts, this incantation (I'm sure Ben can fill us in far better as to the full portent of these words), I do believe somehow helps drives these demons away. Remember how Strider cautioned the hobbits earlier against speaking dark words like "wraith" and "Mordor," even refusing to tell a particular story in such a dark place; well, apparently there are light words too, bright ones even, that can pierce even the darkest darkness of the night.
But now I'm in danger of getting ahead of myself! I must wait till next week to post my thoughts on the exciting conclusion of this episode, which is when I also plan to give my thoughts about Book 1 in total. Until then, I think I can safely say that after the slow start--and particularly the Tom Bombadil trilogy--these last few chapters have covered a multitude of sins.
Eric's Thoughts (4/25/14)
I have to disagree with Jacob on this early scene in this chapter—the scene where the black riders knock down Fatty Bolger’s door. Jacob argues that this makes the black riders more menacing. Personally though, I think it would have been just as menacing to have the hobbits wake up to slashed bedsheets in the other room, which is exactly Tolkien did. Additionally, the Black Rider point of view (“Let the little people blow! Sauron will deal with them later.”) is anything but menacing. The voice of the black riders sounds like more of a fun Tolkien voice from the Hobbit than sinister and evil.
Additionally, the opening of this chapter draws out a weakness that we critiqued at length previously. Earlier in our reviews, we critiqued the pointlessness of Fatty Bolger, and as we rightly remembered, Fatty made a reappearance in this chapter, running away from black riders, only to faint on someone’s doorstep saying that he hasn’t got it (i.e. the Ring). *Sigh*. Fatty Bolger does it again by proving himself to be a pointless character. Indeed, one might say that Fatty is only dead weight in this story. You might even say that he doesn’t quite carry his own weight, in a manner of speaking. You might even say that can’t quite keep up to stride and . . . okay, I’m done making corpulent jokes.
The chapter then transitions to Frodo, and how the Black Riders have stolen the ponies. Fortunately, this means that the hobbits can have breakfast, as Merry points out good-naturedly. (Plus Merry says, “Let’s get hold of Nob!”) Any scene that references Nob is a good scene. After all, it was Nob that bravely scared away the Black Riders in the Prancing Pony chapter. Perhaps Nob is the real hero of these middling chapters? Mr. Tolkien, my only complaint about this Nob character is that we didn't get to spend more time with him!
Something else that’s interesting is that Butterbur pays for the hobbits’ lost ponies, being an “honest man.” But why is Butterbur suddenly responsible for the hobbits’ ponies? The hobbits were the ones that drew the black riders into Bree. This kind of strikes me as unjust that Butterbur is paying. In any event, clearly Butterbur needed to hang up a sign in his stables stating that he assumes no responsibility for lost or stolen ponies, and that guests use the stables at their own risk. In this vein, the paragraphs discussing what happened to the ponies and how Butterbur ended up doing alright out of the deal is another cut.
Jacob is completely right to point out that the difference between this chapter, when they are entering the wild, and this chapter, is that the riders are starting to act serious and attack. Additionally, I think the other difference is that Strider is here, which while also 200% more competent than the hobbits, is also 200% more interesting. Plus flies and midges (in the quagmire scene) pose nasty threats that stimulate a reader’s attention. There’s also the possibility that Strider is not who he says he is, though to an experienced reader this obviously poses no threat.
It’s bizarre that Strider is making towards Weathertop when he states that the Black Riders are likely to make for it as well, as it “commands a large view” of the surrounding countryside. Weighing the odds of finding Gandalf (which Strider admits is “faint”) against the danger of running into Black Riders, this seems like a big mistake. Naturally the reader knows this, safe at home. But still, Strider, come on. Use some better judgment. You’re like 80 years old, son.
Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but every time I see a poem I skip those pages. Skipping the poems certainly gives me a good feeling of progress. Maybe that’s why Tolkien included them. I’m sensing this chapter is Ben bait, with the history and references to the Silmarils. Although I read the Similarion long ago, Ben will undoubtedly provide much more insight.
The chapter ends with Frodo getting stabbed. Undoubtedly a great scene: this is why people read Lord of the Rings. Frodo putting on the ring was the best thing that could have happened from a reader’s point of view: we momentarily get to see the riders described—essentially as old walking corpses, though Tolkien doesn’t say it outright.
Overall the chapter was a fun read. What I’m wondering right now was how to integrate the strength of the riders, as Jacob points out the fact that the riders’ broke down the door in two knocks shows unnatural strength, while also cutting those earlier scenes involving Fatty. But I still think this particular detail isn’t necessary. Upturned bedsheets and a splintered door hanging by one latch would have also showed that the Riders are capable and strong.
What really made the difference, I think, between this chapter and those slogging chapters is Strider. Strider has interesting insights, and says far more intriguing things than Pippin complaining about a lack of second breakfast. Note that in the earlier chapters the hobbits were pursued (although I admit not as directly, and the threat of the riders is still somewhat unknown), yet those chapters were boring. So it just goes to show how important good characters are in maintaining a reader’s attention, and how a single character can completely change a scene dynamic, and make things much more pleasurable for the reader.
Ben's Thoughts (5/3/14)
"Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Awake!" Now this is a chapter.
It's chapters like this that made me fall in love with Tolkien -- and that make me forgive all of the slow introduction that came before. It has suspense, horror, beautiful travelogue, magnificent worldbuilding, lyrical poetry, action, and character building for all of the main characters (well, Pippin gets a little shortchanged). What more could you ask for in a chapter? I only have a few complaints (which I will address shortly).
Let's get the most obvious out of the way right off the bat. Fatty Bolger. Why did we need to return to him? Why was he important to the narrative at all? I like the suspense generated from the very outset with the creeping threat of the Riders, a glimpse into their physical abilities, and even the brief POV from the Riders themselves. But why Fatty Bolger? The only thing that the Riders' attack on Crickhollow adds to the story is a sense that the Riders are able to coordinate their attacks (as it seems this one and the assault on the inn occurred simultaneously). My question is why this sequence couldn't have been set in Bree? The Riders could have approached the inn, busted down the door, etc. in just the same way. I feel like Tolkien was clinging to Fatty Bolger's character for some reason -- perhaps in an earlier draft he had more to do, like the all-but-discarded 'Folco Boffin'? Maybe he just couldn't bear to excise him completely from the story. But if I was his editor, I would have encouraged him to do so, that's for sure. To use up that suspense on Fatty Bolger was a complete waste.
But despite this weak opening sequence, the chapter can only go up from there. The sequence of Strider and the Hobbits attempting to leave Bree was just the right amount of whimsical humor for me this time around (and as Eric pointed out -- Nob! He brightens your day whenever he's mentioned!) Of course the Hobbits were stymied in their attempts to leave quietly -- you can imagine Strider grinding his teeth as he leaves town under the eye of all those curious townsfolk. And yet at the same time a glimmer of insight is given into Strider's psyche, thanks to Bill Ferny, of all people. His comment that Strider "finally found a friend," and Strider's non-response to that jab, goes to show that under his gruff exterior, Strider probably is touched by the fact that he has been accepted by the Hobbits and Frodo in particular. After all that time alone, it would be nice to have some company (even if that company includes Pippin). I makes me sad to think that I don't remember these little tidbits of character development surviving into the "Aragorn the Savior-King" phases of later books.
A few nitpicks about the leave-taking sequence: First, as someone else pointed out, what is the deal with that aside about the ponies? I suppose Tolkien can't resist name-dropping his favorite character Tom Bombadil one more time (and who could pass up an excuse to mention "Fatty Lumpkin" -- the second "Fatty" character mentioned in the chapter; you can just see Tolkien giggling at his typewriter about such a hi-LARious nickname), but what really gets my goat is the quasi-spoiler of "[the ponies] missed a dark and dangerous journey. But they never came to Rivendell." Call me quaint, but I prefer my fiction to be suspenseful and the plot to keep me guessing. All but telling me up front that the company makes it to Rivendell is not exactly my favorite literary device.
I won't go into detail this time about Tolkien's beautiful descriptions and how he makes the journey of these characters come alive for me. But I certainly want to mention just how evocative his language is and how easy he makes it to conjure images of the landscape into your mind. One passage will suffice:
"Standing upon the rim of the ruined circle, they saw all round below them a wide prospect, for the most part of lands empty and featureless, except for patches of woodland away to the south . . . . Beneath them on this southern side there ran like a ribbon the Old Road, coming out of the West and winding up and down, until it faded behind a ridge of dark land to the east. . . . Following its line eastward with their eyes they saw the Mountains: the nearer foothills were brown and sombre; behind them stood taller shapes of grey, and behind those again were high white peaks glimmering among the clouds."On to the worldbuilding aspect of this chapter (that I see Jacob is so eager to learn about). Against my best instincts, I really loved the poem of Beren and Lúthien that surfaced here. Far from sticking out like a sore thumb as I remember some of Tolkien's poems do, this one felt right at home. The idea that the company might want to focus on something beautiful to take their minds off of the horrors surrounding them, hiding down in that dell, resonated with me. Another nice touch was Sam's unexpected depths surfacing with the poem about Gil-galad, and Strider's quasi-indignation that Bilbo had (apparently) intimated to Sam that he had written the poem in the first instance. The elaboration upon Sam's character, as well, was appreciated. Strider was also quick to cut Frodo off when he realized that Frodo was going to go into the war of Sauron and the Elves in the Second Age, which I agree was probably not an appropriate topic with the Nazgûl closing in on them.
But back to Beren and Lúthien. For the uninitiated, the full story can be found in The Silmarillion. The story is one of two mostly-fleshed-out and realized short stories contained in that book (the other being the dark tragedy of Túrin Turambar, who in the course of the story kills his best friend, is the major cause of the destruction of one of the Elf-kingdoms, marries his sister by accident, and then causes her to commit suicide). The short version of Beren and Lúthien is as follows: Beren is the last scion of one of the noble houses of Men, who encounters Lúthien in an enchanted forest. Lúthien is an Elf, the daughter of Elwê (one of the three original rulers of the Elves) and Melian (a Maia), which makes her half-goddess (I suppose). Elwê Thingol at that time is trying to keep his kingdom out of the wars between Morgoth and the sons of Fêanor, and he refuses to let his beloved daughter Lúthien marry a Man of a house sworn to fight Morgoth. So Thingol decides to stop the marriage by making Lúthien's bride-price impossible -- he asks Beren to get him one of the Silmarils in exchange for his daughter's hand, which were at that time securely ensconced in Morgoth's iron crown.
Anyway, many adventures later, Beren and Lúthien manage to retrieve the Silmaril from Morgoth's crown, but Beren's hand (which contains the Silmaril) gets eaten by a wolf, and he dies in the process of retrieving it. Lúthien's love for him is so great that she dies as well and the Valar allow them both to return to mortality to live as mortals so they can be together. Aragorn has a strong connection to this story, because his romance with Elrond's daughter Arwen mirrors Beren's of Lúthien: Elrond won't let Aragorn marry his Elvish daughter Arwen until Sauron is defeated and Aragorn secures the crown of Gondor and Arnor. "Beren and Lúthien" really is a beautiful story. I would highly recommend that one (as well as "Túrin Turambar", because of and despite of all its almost wacky tragic elements) from Silmarillion even if you don't read anything else in that book.
The poem is quite lovely in an of itself: its structure is an interesting A-B-A-C, B-A-B-C pattern (which perhaps is a traditional one, but my poetry classes are nearly ten years behind me and I can't place it), and the words just flow off the tongue when recited. "One moment stood she, and a spell / His voice laid on her: Beren came, / And doom fell on Tinúviel / That in his arms lay glistening." It captures description and emotion equally well, in my opinion. Nobody else really talked about it in their commentary -- I'd be interested to see what your thoughts were on the poem specifically.
Strider's lyrical recitation is the calm before the storm of the Riders' attack on the camp. I don't really understand what Strider was planning here; did he know it was hopeless to try and hide, and he figured that he could beat off the Riders when they arrived with the fire they had lit? Because he didn't really try to conceal the camp, and if he wanted a defensible position, surely the top of Weathertop would have been better? Oh well. It certainly raises the tension with the Hobbits rushing back to inform Strider about the approaching shadows, and how the Riders are poised on the rim of the hollow, ready to rush down and strike.
The Riders truly are terrible, aren't they? Tolkien's description of them is masterful:
"There were five figures: two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing. In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel. . . . The third was taller than the others: his hair was long and gleaming and on his helm was a crown."That's all for now. I'll leave my discussion of "Elbereth" for the next chapter, where Strider references it in greater detail. What an amazing chapter. I know I'm gushing, but let's see if Tolkien can top it in the future.
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