*Varda* -- you quoted the following lines from the end of the chapter, and I'd just like to bring forward here to make a quick point:
Quote:
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but Frodo thought the old wizard looked unusually bent, almost as if he was carrying a great weight. The evening was closing in, and his cloaked figure quickly vanished into the twilight.
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Can anyone say "foreshadowing"? Is it just me or is Gandalf here being presented as a precursor to Frodo who will, in the future, be "bent, almost as if he was carrying a great weight" as he walks into Mordor. Frodo will also be a "cloaked figure" who "vanish[es] into the twilight." What I like about this foreshadowing moment is that it presents to Frodo (through whose eyes we 'see' Gandalf) the good and the bad of his journey to come. He will be "bent" from having to bear the "great weight" of the Ring, but the cloak he will be wearing is the cloak of Lorien. The vanishing act he will pull "into the twilight" will be both his walking-through-darkness as he trudges through Mordor toward Mount Doom, and his final 'vanishing act' as he disappears into the "twilight" of the West.
Oh, and there are more connections here. The chapter that has described how Bilbo has "vanished" from the Shire (a very visible vanishing in terms of his prank at the party, if you know what I mean) now ends with another "vanishing" -- which makes sense since this chapter is all about the Ring, which when one puts on makes one "vanish into twilight" in the sense that one becomes a wraith under the "shadow" of the Dark Lord.
*whew* That Tolkien sure can put a lot of syntactic energy into the most seemingly simple lines.
Once again, I find it interesting that this moment alludes to both the good and the bad that awaits Frodo in his future: to both the dangers he must pass through (the burden of the Ring), the aid he will recieve (the cloak of Galadriel), and the two possible ends that await him: vanishing into the twilight of the Ring, or disappearing into the evening of the setting sun.