For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

[davem]

Originally Posted by alatar

If Merry were in a semi-sleeping state, and the Barrow Wight was 'talking 'bout the glory days,' these thoughts could have taken shape in Merry's dream state. Like when you watch a movie and later that night you dream of something from the same.

This is certainly a possible explanation. Of course it kind of kills an interesting discussion stone dead. Another explanation (one which Flieger goes with) is that Tolkien is playing with (or perhaps 'exploring') ideas about time, space & the nature of consciousness - is Merry's conciousness bound within his own time & space, or not? Flieger cites the analogy of two observers' experience of a river - one in a boat, experiencing from 'ground level' the twists & turns, the trees & fields, the sun & wind, serially, one after another in time. The second observer is in an aircraft, looking down & seeing the whole river as a whole - what the first observer may take hours to experience the second will see in a single 'flash'.

So, we have two completely different ways of experiencing the same thing. The observer in the aircraft, has an extra freedom - he or she can choose to land at any point - in fact, if the aircraft is a helicopter, he or she could land at any point (a particular tree, or house) & then go back aloft & drop to any other point they chose.

Think of the first observer as representing our everyday experience of time - one event following another. The second observer represents a kind of (theoretical) 'higher' consciousness above the first, but able to 'drop in' on any point. Except in Tolkien's use here this higher consciousness can 'drop in' to serial lives.

This would merely be another possible interpretation (& a quite outlandish one at that) if Tolkien hadn't been exploring this idea if 'serial consciousnesses' in other works ("The Lost Road pre LotR & Notion Club Papers during a break from writing LotR). As with ideas about time which he was playing with during the writing of LotR (no time was to have passed while the Fellowship was in Lorien at one stagbe in the development of the story) what we have with Merry's experience is Tolkien exploring some very interesting ideas about what consciousness in & where it is 'located'. Clearly for Tolkien consciousness is not 'bound' to any particular place or time - Galadriel's Mirror allows both Frodo & Sam to see the future - how? Because in some way it enables their 'observer 1' consciousness to get into the aircraft, climb & look down at events from 'observer 2's' perspective. In the same way, Frodo's dream in Bombadil's house (where he sees the Undying Lands is actually a vision of the end of the Journey he is just beginning. He has got into the aircraft & is able to 'look down' on a different part of the River.)

Or wone could use the analogy of a book - when we read a book we are in the position of observer one, following events serially, seeing what comes next. But the book we hold in our hands contains the whole story, & we could jump in at any point, experience the world of the story from the place & time of any of the characters - in fact, like Frodo we too could skip from 'The House of Tom Bombadil' to 'The Grey Havens' omitting completely the intervening 900 pages.....