"Lothlórien" - Jacob's Thoughts

"We must do without hope."

 -Aragorn

With that despairing line, Aragorn makes clear that though no dark things ultimately follow the Fellowship out of Moria (as he had feared), still the darkness itself has stuck to them.  A general bleak hopelessness permeates this chapter, and follows them all the way to titular Lothlórien itself, where the normally-reverie-filled Elves catalog with a weary sense of resignation how, one by one, all their potential escape routes have been closed off--as though the thought of being forced to abandon their beloved realm in the face of the Evil One wasn't heart-breaking enough.

I found this chapter to be peculiarly unsettling, which was particularly intriguing given how, plot wise, all that really happens is they escape safely away from Moria.  Hooray, cigars all around, right?  But the Fellowship's escape from Moria is a Pyrrhic victory, and what's more a temporary one--Sting is still glowing blue, even in these Elfin realms.  And oh yes, Gandalf's gone--one gets the feeling that the Fellowship is perpetually denied a chance to properly grieve.

In trying to localize my unsettled feeling in this chapter, I think it's connected to the fact that Moria, while dark and dangerous, was still nonetheless a known property; it was an evil place, yes, but still just that, a place, one sequestered off deep under the Earth.  There was the implicit assurance that if they could just get through Moria, then things would be peachy again.  But in these increasingly dark times, evil is no longer quarantined away, but spreads forth its borders and contaminates the very top-soil around them. More than that, even, the evil has infected themselves--hopelessness has taken a firm root in their hearts.  The Elves likewise fully own up to how the power of Sauron is demonstrated by how he can divide his enemies through distrust--yet still they are plagued by distrust, and simply shrug their shoulders about it and keep on distrusting, as though there is nothing else to be done about it.  Even Aragorn says they live no longer for hope but for vengeance--in a different series, that would sound like the first steps towards converting to the Dark Side. 

Of course, I'm not suggesting that Aragorn is actually taking the first bitter steps towards becoming a Sith or anything here, no--if it was simple as all that, we'd be fine, for one turning to the Dark Side could then just as easily turn back to the Light.  No, what makes this darkness so unsettling, I think, is just how resigned everyone is to it, how self-aware they are of the Darkness they carry like a chronic disease, yet can't do much more than just carry it around like a dull pain at the bottom of their gut--never debilitating, never grievous, but also ever present, ever irritating.  It's a sort of Chinese Water Torture for the soul, where the anguish originates less from the mere drops of water (harmless in and of themselves), than from their inescapability.  While plot wise not much happens in this chapter, it does a good job, I think, of setting the table for the next chapter, as it subtly illustrates just how badly our Fellowship needs a break, needs some ray of light.

A closing note on Gollum: here I think was a narrative master-stroke on Tolkien's part.  For the feeling one gets as he sneaks up suspiciously on our Frodo, only to be scared away by the Elf lord, is "close call!"  And it was a close call indeed, but not for the reasons one might first assume; that is, it is not poor Frodo we should be wiping our brows for here, but for all of Middle-Earth, that the Elf lord did not kill Gollum while he still could.  For as Eric noted clear back at the start of this project, if Gollum had been slain here or anywhere between The Hobbit and The Return of the King, then Sauron would have won.