LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 02 - The Shadow of the Past

[Boromir88]

Other points I took away from the chapter this time around...

I always noted Frodo's disgust and disbelief when Gandalf tells him that Gollum was not so different from hobbits. Frodo simply can't believe there is any connection to someone so vile and done as many awful deeds as Gollum has done. I know how much this changes when Frodo encounters and spared Gollum's life. They are both so closely tied by the Ring, but I really took notice for the first time that there is a connection between the two that doesn't involve the Ring. In the same way that Bilbo and Gollum were familiar with the same riddles, in this chapter we see Frodo shares Gollum's inquisitive mind to discover new paths:

Frodo went tramping over the Shire with them; but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times; as Bilbo had done.

So it went on, until his forties were running out, and his fiftieth birthday was drawing near: fifty was a number that he felt was somehow significant (or ominous); it was at any rate at that age that adventure had suddenly befallen Bilbo. Frodo began to feel restless, and the old paths seemed too well-trodden. He looked at maps, and wondered what lay beyond their edges: maps made in the Shire showed mostly white spaces beyond its borders. He took to wandering further afield and more often by himself; and Merry and his other friends watched him anxiously. Often he was seen walking and talking with strange wayfarers that began at this time to appear in the Shire.

Frodo's restlessness is described twice as "wandering." He gets no more enjoyment walking the "old paths that seemed to well-trodden," he wanders further from home and mostly on his own. I only recently connected Frodo's "wandering" to a trait similar to Gollum's. Yes, Gollum stayed hidden in his mountain cave, but he had the same wandering spirit to discover secrets and pathways:

'All the "great secrets" under the mountains had turned out to be just empty night: there was nothing more to find out, nothing worth doing, only nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering. He was altogether wretched. He hated the dark, and he hated light more: he hated everything, and the Ring most of all.'

Gollum leaves the mountains and continues on wandering, actually tracing Bilbo's paths and then answers the "summons" to Mordor where the are new paths and secrets he discovers in his aimless wandering. Frodo doesn't want to see it yet, but there is more connecting the two than the Ring. Or this wandering that leads to no purpose could be an effect of the Ring as well?

Ted Sandyman is one of the more humorous characters to me. Without a doubt he's obnoxious and annoying, but every time I read Ted's dialogue, I just can't stop picturing the ultimate internet troll. "I didn't see it, so it can't be true! You said Hal saw it? Well he's always saying he saw something."

"Walking trees! No way, what he saw was just an elm tree."
But there are no elm trees in this area
"Then he couldn't have seen an elm tree!"

I just want to yell at Sam to stop feeding the troll.

[Formendacil]

I had nothing to say for "A Long-Awaited Party," and then somehow a whole grocery list of thoughts occurred for "The Shadow of the Past." Skim-reading through the thread (and getting side-tracked here or there), it fascinates me that I had so many thoughts that WEREN'T already touched on in this thread's 14-year history!

1. The narrator is very coy about whether or not Frodo actually meets Elves--we're definitely supposed to think he does, but it's interesting to me that we're never directly told it. And since it's definitely a new experience when Frodo meets Gildor & Co, he's not meeting High Elves. It's kind of a pity we don't see any of these meetings. If they're not High Elves, are they Elves of Eriador or Elves from beyond heading for the Havens? If they're Elves of Eriador, does that mean they're Nandor--or are we talking about Sindar--or is it even right in a post-Lindon, post-Eregion, post-Last Alliance, end-of-the-Third-Age era to make those distinctions?


2. On a similar note, I'd love to know more about the Dwarves streaming towards the Blue Mountains. They're presumably not Longbeards, which would give us the only real post-Nauglamír look at non-Longbeard Dwarves. Where did these Dwarves live before? What roads did they take to Eriador? It seems unlike they came through Gondor or Rohan, given the attitude of Éomer on first encountering Gimli (he lumps him with Legolas a creature out of legend), and there are distinct obstacles in coming through Mirkwood. Could they have lived in the Grey Mountains?

And what if some of them ARE Longbeards? Could there be Dwarves (remember, they're a race characterised as businessmen more than warriors) who see the way the wind is blowing in Erebor and DON'T want to see things hit the fan? If they're non-Longbeards and if they're coming from further East than Erebor, are they going right past Dáin's kingdom and making the hard journey through Mirkwood and over the mountains and what does THAT say?

Both these questions are the kind of RPG fodder that I find fascinating (and would love to see explored).


3. "His [Gandalf's] hair was perhaps whiter than it had been then, and his beard and eyebrows were perhaps longer."

Just how long ARE Gandalf's eyebrows? I think it's The Hobbit that says they stick out below the brim of his hat, but apparently that wasn't long enough--Tolkien says they might even be longer. If you have no concept of hyperbole, this is downright comic.


4. The whole concept of this thread came up--and in short, it's kind of a chicken-and-egg question: which came first, the full poem ("Three Rings for the Elven-kings..."), which Gandalf says is a poem known to the wise, or are the two verses engraved on the Ring older?

If the poem came first, does it fit with Sauron's personality to quote someone else's poetry on his magnum opus. Actually, scratch that: it's not even possible for the poem to have existed pre-the One Ring, because why would a poem exist in which the One Ring is referenced before the One Ring existed.

But, on the other hand, why would there be a poem "long known in Elven-lore" that has a direct quote from the One Ring? Even granting that the Ring is certainly important enough to have lore about preserved, would the Elves *REALLY* directly quote Sauron? (There's more about the poem in "The Council of Elrond"--or in "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" about these lines being Sauron's... but no more to clarify why the Elves would preserve his words directly in their lore.) I think the reason this bothers me a little is that the Elves are *so* offended when Gandalf recites the Black Speech in Rivendell--and, granted, the lore isn't preserved in the Black Speech, but it is still Sauron's own words and they're distinctly triumphal. And it's not as if the Elves preserved those words alone--someone, presumably an Elf, took the trouble to build a whole longer poem around them. It's almost like the most edgy kind of musical sampling you can imagine.


5. "I wish it need not have happened in my time" is one of those really identifiable moments, and Gandalf's advice has a LOT of applicability here. Give it enough time and the easily read-in allegory that has always been possible (though disavowed) will turn to some kind of golden prophecy: "Oh, Tolkien was prophecying the events of the 2020s. Frodo's dismay is that of any millennial born in the 1980s and 1990s, who remembered the golden years and Bilbo [i.e. the Greatest Generations] tales of adventures. Gandalf's advice is a prescient comfort to those who would have to face the Digital Takeover and the Fall of Democracy."


6. Ending on a creepy note: "Then why didn't he track Bilbo further," asked Frodo. "Why didn't he come the Shire?"

Gandalf answers that Gollum meant to and got distracted, and while it certainly wasn't GOOD news for Middle-earth that he ended up in Mordor, I still kind of feel that we were spared the horror story of Gollum making his way by pitch blackness down the East Road, propagating the same horrors in Bree and Buckland that he left in the Wilderland and Dale. Can you imagine him creeping up to a quiet Bag-End some dark night and trying to murder Bilbo in his sleep? Gives me the shivers--but I'll admit that if the Amazon Lord of the Rings series turns out to be an anthology of What If? alternative stories and this is one, I'll be all in.

[Boromir88]

4. The whole concept of this thread came up--and in short, it's kind of a chicken-and-egg question: which came first, the full poem ("Three Rings for the Elven-kings..."), which Gandalf says is a poem known to the wise, or are the two verses engraved on the Ring older?~Formendacil

Could it be the lines engraved on the One Ring were just a later addition to the poem. The original being:

Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Then at some point the "One Ring" verses were just added on later. I don't think it would be unheard of. Bilbo's "The Road goes ever on and on" alters throughout the story.

In A Long-Expected Party Bilbo says: "Pursuing it with eager feet"

In Three is Company Frodo changes "eager feet" to "weary feet".

And finally in Many Partings, Bilbo changes the last couple lines:

"Let them a journey new begin
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet."

Granted Bilbo's road poem is not the same as a poem "long known in Elven-lore." And there is this underlying theme from the Elves that they're simply fighting the "long defeat." Fighting the long defeat is depressing and sad to think about, but the moral being there is always hope, even if it's just a fool's hope. It's why all the good and wise characters are pretty clear they're not prognosticators.

Gandalf advices Frodo that "not even the very wise can see all ends."

Elrond counsels against an oath being placed on anyone in the Fellowship, because who knows what decisions each member of the Fellowship will have to make. Gimli says sworn word will strengthen a quaking heart. Elrond responds "or break it."

Galadriel tells Frodo she's not in the future-telling business. Her Mirror cannot predict the future.

I guess this is me saying in a roundabout way, it might be depressing the Elves would include Sauron's triumph in making the One Ring, but it's also kind of Elven if you think about their "fight the long defeat" theme.

[Huinesoron]

I've always assumed that the full Verse of the Rings was written to memorialise the betrayal that was the One. Gandalf says:

Out of the Black Years come the words that the Smiths of Eregion heard, and knew that they had been betrayed:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.

When did they hear Sauron's words? Did Celebrimbor hear them when Sauron forged or first wore the One (we know he was 'aware of him')? Or did Eregion only find out exactly what the One had been forged for when Sauron's armies were already on their doorstep?

Either way, the full poem feels like a message of warning, letting the Wise keep alive the memory of exactly what the problem is. Yes, Elves still have three of the Rings - but here's where we've figured out Sauron sent the others, and here's what he's planning. If you ever start thinking that maybe he's not so much of a big deal, remember, he forged the One for the explicit purpose of ruling and binding all the others.

hS