Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 2 Chapter 2

Transcript

Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 2 Chapter 2 · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, my name is Julia Golding and
• 0:18
  this is one of our regular sidecasts where we take an author's journey through the Lord
• 0:24
  of the Rings and today we have reached Book 2 chapter 2 so that's the second half of
• 0:31
  the Fellowship of the Ring and it's the chapter called The Council of Elrond. Now the first
• 0:38
  thing I want to bring to your attention is just how long this chapter is. I was looking
• 0:44
  at the audio versions which gives you the recorded length, gives you a good idea of just
• 0:49
  how long they all are and this one is over two hours to be read aloud twice the amount
• 0:57
  of the usual chapter and also you'll notice that this chapter is people sitting in a room
• 1:04
  talking about stuff so to a certain extent there's a don't try this at home for budding
• 1:11
  authors out there is a lot of telling us not showing us in this chapter so the question
• 1:19
  I suppose that I want to start putting on the table right up front is does he get away
• 1:25
  with it? Does the Council of Elrond chapter actually work in the novel and I think the
• 1:33
  answer must be as to how curious we are at this stage in the story about the history
• 1:40
  of the Ring, the nature of the mission and what is going to be done with it but also sort
• 1:48
  of to balance the fact that it's people sitting in the room. He gets away with it by the
• 1:53
  way stories are told so for example the the way Gandalf recounts his section is a kind
• 2:02
  of dramatized narrative like a flashback. So before we actually get into the Council part
• 2:08
  of this chapter which is most of it and I just want to draw your attention to the beautiful
• 2:13
  scene setting that goes on. You may remember that I mentioned how when you have a waking
• 2:19
  up scene which you're going to have several of you need to make them all a bit different
• 2:23
  from each other. Yeah so we get this lovely section when Frodo first gets up and it's
• 2:30
  so delicately described I want to read it to you. Next day Frodo work early feeling refreshed
• 2:37
  and well. He walked along the terraces above the loud flowing Bruinen and watched the pale
• 2:43
  cool sun rise above the far mountains and shined down, slanting through the thin silver
• 2:49
  mist. The dew upon the yellow leaves was glimmering and the woven nets of Gossamer twinkled
• 2:56
  on every bush. Now if you've read any of Tolkien's poetry you'll know that in there
• 3:01
  are some words his particularly fond of glimmering silver mist, Gossamer nets, leaves and
• 3:12
  it gives you that delicacy which seems to stand for the architecture and the positioning
• 3:19
  of Rivendale. So it's a very economical way of establishing mood and tone just a little
• 3:25
  respite before he goes into this very long meeting and I know what we feel like when
• 3:30
  we were going to long zoom meetings and his Frodo going into his long conference call.
• 3:35
  We then move to the location for the meeting which is described as being outdoors on a
• 3:41
  porch. If your main point of reference is the films they tried to replicate that though
• 3:48
  it obviously was in a studio in order to make it possible to film. I like to let my imagination
• 3:53
  really imagine a place that is truly full of fresh air. And that again fits with the
• 3:59
  idea that the elves are part of nature. They're not going to be away in a conference room
• 4:05
  like they might do in Miniseries, they're out in nature. Anyway all lovely touches. Okay
• 4:11
  what about the actual council of Elrond itself? How has it structured and how does he get
• 4:17
  away with a very long chapter of people telling us stuff? Well I think the answer is that
• 4:25
  it's quite well structured in terms of it falls into parts. They could have had actually
• 4:30
  chapter divisions and break it up. So the first part is the kind of preamble where we get
• 4:37
  the dwarves and the dwarven rings as a theme that is introduced at this point which leads
• 4:46
  on to a sort of ancient history account from Elrond with the delightful sort of detail that
• 4:53
  he was there to see it. Then we get a kind of political interlude. Then we get a big chunk
• 5:00
  of Gandalf. And we'll look at that in a minute. And then the last section, the fourth section
• 5:07
  is the what do we do with the ring? Okay so first of all the main speaker is Glouin
• 5:14
  who's come from the Lonely Mountain with news about messengers offering one of the lesser
• 5:22
  rings, one of the dwarven rings is a kind of bribe to give them information about Bilbo.
• 5:28
  And this kind of connects to the Hobbit of course it connects to the ring so it's a nice
• 5:33
  way of entering into the story. Plus it also makes the point that we have represented here
• 5:40
  all the main bodies of people with the exception of the lorian elves and the men of Dale
• 5:50
  and think of sort of my head. Yeah the people of Rohan but almost everybody else is there.
• 5:56
  They are part of this council deciding what's going to be done with the ring. And Glouin
• 6:02
  represents the dwarves of course. His son is Gimli so watch that space because that becomes
• 6:08
  important later on. So after Glouin we get a very elegant summary of the entire history of
• 6:14
  middle earth. Thanks to Elron he really is a master of history. It's a very beautiful way of reading
• 6:21
  the material which is in the appendices at the end of Return of the King. And what I like here
• 6:29
  because we don't forget character. We get the fact that he suddenly breaks off his account
• 6:36
  and says thereupon Elron paused and a while inside. I remember well the splendor of their banners he
• 6:44
  said. This is the last light of elves, elves and men. It recalled to me the glory of the elder days
• 6:51
  and the hosts of Beleriand. So many great princes and captains were assembled. And yet not so many
• 6:59
  nor so fair as when Sankarodrim was broken and the elves deemed that evil was ended forever.
• 7:05
  And it was not so. Lots of things going on in here. He's referring to the events at the end of
• 7:11
  the the first age there. And Frodo quite rightly kind of says what you remember. And Elron
• 7:19
  explains just how old he is. My memory reaches back even to the elder days.
• 7:24
  Here Endel was my sire who was born in Gondolin before its full. And my mother was
• 7:29
  Elwing daughter of Dior, son of Lucian and Doriath. I have seen three ages in the west of the world
• 7:36
  and many defeats and many fruitless victories. So there's some important things going on here.
• 7:42
  There's the sense that history repeats itself. That's a platitude isn't it, but it is also very
• 7:48
  true that you only need to know a little bit about history. You see the same patterns coming
• 7:52
  back again. The elves thought that evil was defeated, but no, it comes back in a new form.
• 7:58
  And we also get a sense here of the lineage of Elron. If we hadn't tweaked just how daring
• 8:05
  Bilbo's song was in the last chapter, we now find out. Yeah, okay. He is Elron is the descendant
• 8:11
  of the person Bilbo was singing about. And we also, what is the overall effect of this? This is
• 8:18
  to make the decision they are making here part of a chain of events, right, stretching right back
• 8:25
  to the first stage, but also it puts it in a historic context and gives it grandeur. This isn't just
• 8:32
  the Monday morning meeting in Rivendell. This is a council of Elron for all time. So what the author
• 8:39
  is doing here is bigging it up. It's another way of putting it. It's making us focus on the fact
• 8:44
  that this is a very big decision. It's going to become part of history. And that raises the stakes
• 8:50
  and raises the tension. So Elron mentions that Isildur took the ring. And this is an interesting
• 8:57
  little interjection here from Boromir. Boromir is going to keep breaking in because we have to remember
• 9:02
  that Boromir is the one who breaks the fellowship in many ways. And he's already breaking up the
• 9:06
  council of Elron. So good character note here. It's consistent. But he says we didn't know that. We
• 9:13
  didn't know that Isildur took the ring. And it shows how men's knowledge gets lost over time.
• 9:19
  A little bit later on in the same chapter we'll hear how Gandalf goes to the libraries and finds
• 9:25
  a record of Isildur looking at the ring. So the information was available but it's just not access
• 9:32
  to not retrieved or not generally known by somebody of Boromir's level of education. Others may
• 9:40
  have known but for him it's a surprise. And then Elron comes back in again and completes the story
• 9:48
  from the moment when Isildur took the ring and it was lost to history. And then he sort of
• 9:56
  hopp and skips over the rest of history to the present day. Now there are so many treasures here
• 10:01
  for talking fans. It's the kind of thing which might put off someone who's reading it for
• 10:07
  the adventure or for pace sort of action things happening. But I certainly love reading it and
• 10:14
  always see something new in it when I go back to it. And with that sense of history weighing on us
• 10:22
  we then move from that to what brings Boromir here. So we've got the establishment of who and what
• 10:29
  Gondor is. That's quite important. It's the first time we're hearing about it properly in the
• 10:34
  in this book. And Boromir then gets his moment to talk about his journey here and why he came as a
• 10:43
  result of a prophecy. We also get a very brief mention of it came to his brother as well
• 10:50
  that we have to wait until two hours until we meet for a minute. It's an element in Boromir of
• 10:56
  special pleading. So he's just heard how the elves and the dwarves and and everybody have been
• 11:03
  fighting the Dark Lord for a long time. But he sort of wants everyone to know that they've been
• 11:07
  trying really hard in ministerous and they're basically the ones holding back the sea that's
• 11:12
  about to come over the sea of evil that's about to come out of Mordor. And there's a sort of gentle
• 11:19
  correction given by Aragon in the next few exchanges. Because Aragon outs himself he says here I am
• 11:28
  here is the sword that was broken. And Frodo is immediately clicks in his head who Aragon is.
• 11:36
  So up to this point he's had lots of hints given him in the conversations with Tom Bomberdale
• 11:44
  and Bilbo referring him to the Dunardine. All these kind of things but Frodo now realizes oh yes
• 11:52
  that is the king of the northern and the southern kingdom so therefore
• 11:56
  heir of Isildal therefore the ring should go to him. And it's always really important how people
• 12:04
  respond to being offered the ring. So rather than Aragon say oh yeah thanks very much I'll take it
• 12:11
  I'll use it. In this point it's not given much time but Aragon very importantly and elegantly
• 12:20
  rejects the ring. He says it does not belong to either of us it being the ring but it has been
• 12:28
  ordained that you should hold it for a while. And because Aragon has that ability to reject
• 12:35
  unnecessary power that proves that he is worthy of being the king. That is why he gets rewarded
• 12:43
  in the end because he plays his part supporting others in the destruction of the ring rather than
• 12:49
  going the route which Boramir is arguing for is to take it for yourself and use it to fight evil
• 12:55
  with its own powers. Now at this point we're entering into the political section. As a result of
• 13:02
  Frodo's speaking up and offering the ring to Aragon Gandalf is the one who commands him to bring
• 13:08
  it out and show everybody. It's not like how it happens in the film there's no suggestion he kind of
• 13:15
  puts it down and says my job done. I think the suggestion is he's holding it out and he's the
• 13:22
  still the one as Aragon said. It's still the one holding it at this point. But what is important
• 13:29
  to notice here is there is a hint of Boramir's greed and need for it. Very good writers will
• 13:37
  seed into their story. It's like I'm doing a murder mystery. You want to put in the little hints
• 13:44
  that then will bear fruit later and here is one from Boramir and it got it. After Aragon says,
• 13:51
  behold Isldo's bane, we've got this line Boramir's eyes glinted as he gazed on the golden thing,
• 13:59
  thing. The halfling he must have is then the doom of ministerous come at last. So he's putting it
• 14:08
  together and you can sort of see the cogs in his brain putting it all as to what does this mean
• 14:15
  this is the end of my city and he's corrected at this point by you know he's feeling pretty
• 14:25
  much like the doomsday has come. One of the people he attacks is Aragon by saying what do we
• 14:32
  need with a broken blade not understanding that it can be reforged of course and at this point
• 14:38
  Bilbo steps forward and defends Aragon and repeats the all that is glot gold does not litter the
• 14:47
  the verse that we had back at Bri and this is where we get Aragon's gentle correction. So Aragon
• 14:54
  is a very good diplomat. He doesn't bristle with offense but he just says what the Rangers have
• 15:02
  been doing their ways of defending the north and sort of basically telling Boramir looks
• 15:11
  that we've been working hard too and making the argument that it's not just in one place that
• 15:19
  the tide of evil has been kept back. So that's a political section which is about the politics of
• 15:27
  men and how the king's return might be received by the people of minister who feel they've been
• 15:34
  fighting this fight on their own. The intervention by Bilbo gives us the opportunity for Bilbo to say
• 15:43
  his part in the history of the ring which is done as a summary which is good because we've all
• 15:49
  read the Hobbit. We then move into the section where Gandalf talks about what he's been doing
• 15:57
  in the sort of to prove what the ring is and if you're wondering what they're going to be doing
• 16:04
  in the film The Hump for Gollum it's this material here as well as the appendices that they'll be
• 16:09
  drawing on so you might want to know how quick look at that. It falls at this point in the
• 16:15
  Council of Aragon and we've got here Gandalf telling all of this in what I would call an
• 16:23
  unreal narrative mode in that it actually reads more like a flashback. So that's where it feels
• 16:30
  more like action rather than the sort of here's an account of my holiday kind of thing. He's actually
• 16:37
  dramatising the events with ventriloquising the voices that who are speaking. So in fact it's a
• 16:47
  disguised form of flashback and we get here the capture of Gollum and Aragon mentions how
• 16:55
  tedious he found looking after Gollum which of course is setting it out for how it's going to
• 17:03
  feel to Frodo and Sam having to drag Gollum with them across the dead marshes.
• 17:10
  Then there's a very important bit here one of the few times maybe the only time in fact
• 17:16
  I'm just trying to think if there is another time it's certainly the only extended time of black
• 17:20
  speech when Gandalf reads out the inscription. It's a I actually think it's quite a beautiful language
• 17:27
  it's quite fun to hear the different versions read it out but the harshness of the sounds
• 17:37
  there is the conceit here that the even speaking black speech is like letting off a sort of toxic
• 17:44
  bomb in Rivendell. No one has said these words before and Elrond and everyone it feels quite shaken
• 17:53
  by it. Ashnaz, Dubato, Luke, Ashnaz, Gimba, Toul, Ashnaz, Srakato, Luke, Archbosum, Ishii, Crimpatoul.
• 18:02
  So it actually prompts Elrond to kind of tell Gandalf off in a way and Gandalf says no now I have
• 18:14
  to say this because if you don't want and here's the quote for if that tongue is not soon to be heard
• 18:20
  in every corner of the west they have to understand that this really is the ring that belongs to the
• 18:27
  Dark Lord. I want to just underline here that this is the way that's phrased is really important
• 18:33
  because one of the reasons why Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings he said is in order to have a
• 18:39
  world in which Elvish is spoken. So by having an event which might mean only black speeches
• 18:48
  spoken it destroys the world where Elvish is spoken so it's interesting that it's put as a
• 18:52
  battle between languages at this point. Then we have a little revelation here moving the plot
• 18:59
  along and where Boramir is asking what part Gollum might have and Aragorn and Legolas talk about
• 19:08
  where Gollum ended up. Aragorn thinks he's safely with the Muckwood Elves and Legolas has to confess
• 19:16
  that Gollum gave them the slip because the Elves used to let him go up a tree and enjoy the breeze
• 19:23
  and therefore he escaped because some orcs came along. So we know he's loose and it's a way of
• 19:30
  reminding us keep putting in our minds why are we spending so much time on Gollum here a character
• 19:35
  we've not yet met. Well it sort of pays off doesn't it later when he actually enters the narrative.
• 19:42
  He's not coming out of the blue he's arrival is heralded so again that's another good sort of
• 19:48
  rightfully thing to do is to keep on putting those breadcrumb trails down so that when it happens
• 19:53
  it feels unt and there's an important statement here from Gandalf before we go back into a long
• 20:02
  piece of narrative by Gandalf where he says well well he is gone but he may play a part yet
• 20:09
  that neither he nor Sarron has foreseen. There's this feeling that the Gandalf has an instinctual
• 20:18
  knowledge of how this might turn out. He's not saying it's guaranteed that it's all going to go well
• 20:25
  but he doesn't think that the ultimate power is Sarron and that evil things can work to the good
• 20:35
  which fits in with the larger philosophy of the creation of Middle-earth and this world.
• 20:43
  Okay so now we're in the sort of third part of this chapter you still with me
• 20:49
  told you it was long and here we've got the marvellous account of Gandalf's
• 20:56
  journey journeying why he didn't turn up in the shire so we get the meeting with Radagast
• 21:02
  that sends him off to Saddam and then the mortifying experience for Gandalf of being trapped
• 21:11
  by the man who should be the head wizard should be a chief ally who's turning out to be on the side
• 21:19
  of the evil ones and how we know other than the sophistry of of Sarron's desire for the ring you
• 21:30
  know well we can use it to do good or defeat the evil which of course Gandalf sees through
• 21:37
  we get the very key discussion about the nature of the white so he was Sarron the white
• 21:46
  and he reveals himself now as Sarron of many colours and when Gandalf challenges him on this
• 21:56
  Sarron says that white serves as a beginning white cloth may be dyed the white page can be overwritten
• 22:04
  and the white light can be broken and Gandalf says in which case it is no longer white
• 22:12
  and he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom
• 22:18
  another thing I like about this is it connects very subtly to Tolkien's view of creativity
• 22:28
  because he has in his poem myth appear the line about how we are splinters of the single white light
• 22:37
  so the white light is the creator's light it's the holy light and while the splinters can be good
• 22:45
  they can also be splinters for evil so we are picking up the fragments when we are doing our subcreation
• 22:53
  and so there's an image here of Sarron was originally from he was at one of the Maya he was originally
• 23:01
  one of the divine beings products of this white light and he's gone away from that and he's left
• 23:11
  breaking apart he's just got splinters and fragments that he's building with and of course
• 23:17
  you'll have noticed there's now a gap at the top of the wizard hierarchy which of course Gandalf will
• 23:24
  earn pretty soon it's just a fantastic drama of Gandalf being stranded at the top of the tower
• 23:35
  unable to intervene and it all looks pretty grim and he's hopes rest on whether or not the rot in
• 23:43
  the wizarding ranks has reached Radagast or not because Radagast proves to be innocent and he has
• 23:53
  come good for Gandalf because through him Guai here arrives at the tower to bring news as
• 24:00
  Radagast requested and that is the means of escape from for Gandalf also note here that we get
• 24:11
  introduction of Rohan so we're laying the path ahead for where the two towers is going to go
• 24:19
  and it's kind of mixed reviews for Rohan at this point with a dispute over whether or not they are
• 24:25
  giving horses to the black riders and whether or not they're sort of in some way corrupted
• 24:33
  of course we find the corruption is is there and it's in a different form and actually stemming
• 24:38
  from Saruman really not from Mordor and one of the redeeming features of Boromir is that he firmly
• 24:48
  defends his allies says I've not heard anything bad about my mates in Rohan so you know
• 24:54
  that's a good note of loyalty from Boromir we get we also get mentioned here of Shadowfax so
• 25:04
  again when Shadowfax enters the narrative in two towers he's already been introduced here
• 25:11
  and just looking at it from an author's point of view Shadowfax solves a problem
• 25:17
  I've been writing books set in the early 19th century and one of the issues I get is how to get
• 25:23
  people two places quick enough in a time before combustion engine and railways or aeroplanes helicopters
• 25:32
  so you've got either walking pace or you've got horses as your technology and here we've got a
• 25:39
  magic horse who can get us we can sort of cut the travel time for us and it's just a really helpful
• 25:47
  thing to speed up than a narrative and you'll notice as a way of signaling that Gandalf is
• 25:58
  hurrying is we almost get a speeded up narrative as well so we've got he calls in briefly on Gaffa
• 26:04
  we get a little bit of Gaffa Gamji he calls in briefly on Butterburget a little bit of that so
• 26:10
  the pace quickens once he's out of the Orphank jail so fabulous bit of storytelling flashback there
• 26:21
  from Gandalf then we move into the fourth quarter and this is begun when Elron reflects on what
• 26:29
  Gandalf has says and this gives a chance for them to decide what they're going to do with the ring
• 26:38
  that's the main point here they've proved that all the links in the chain and the test of fire
• 26:46
  and the fiery words they know they've got the real one it's not a fake they know it has to be destroyed
• 26:53
  and they know that they have what the political situation is that's all what the council of Elron
• 27:00
  has established so within that context what are they going to do with it and this section really
• 27:06
  is trying to answer all the questions that might be rising in a reader's mind so for example they
• 27:13
  talk about can we send it back to Bombardill and this is one of the reflections on who Bombardill
• 27:21
  is Elron calls him Yuen Ben Adar oldest and fatherless and they have a discussion about him being
• 27:30
  an unsafe guardian for the ring because it's just not his business and there is a feeling here
• 27:36
  that they're sort of saying well can we send it over the sea no can we do this can we do that
• 27:41
  it's trying to hurt the logic of the narrative in one direction only and Elron sums that up really
• 27:50
  when he says Gandalf has revealed to us that we cannot destroy it by any craft we hear possess
• 27:56
  so and the idea of putting it down into the sea well that's no good because someone as long
• 28:03
  lived as Gandalf knows that seas change lambass is change they've lost Numenor and Beleriand these
• 28:11
  things do move and change so we get to the crunch point and Elron is the one who has the wisdom to
• 28:20
  foresee what they must do which he says they must take and a road that's unexpected we must send
• 28:27
  the ring to the fire and after all this talking there's a very strategic use of silence here
• 28:38
  and the person who kind of breaks it is Boromir remember what I'm saying about there's a hint
• 28:45
  here that he's always going to be a bit of a the grit in in the works he's still thinking we
• 28:52
  can use it whereas everybody else has moved beyond that and understood that that's not possible
• 28:58
  and this is a discussion about the fate of the seven dwarf rings and the fate of the three elven
• 29:04
  rings who might end up fading as a result of destroying the ring and certainly being overwhelmed
• 29:11
  if Sauron recaptures the ring so we want to have a sense of all the rings of power what's going to
• 29:16
  happen to them is a hint here of what should be done because Elron puts this statement out there
• 29:25
  yet such is off the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world small hands do them
• 29:31
  because they must while the eyes of the great are elsewhere and Bilbo is the one to take the
• 29:38
  hint he says right I must go and his offer is met with affection but actually I think the the
• 29:49
  wisest heads in the room have probably already worked out what the next step is but they don't force
• 29:55
  it on Frodo they let him come to that realization himself because there's another silence
• 30:02
  and the point of this there's two sentences and fairly quick succession here is that it makes Frodo's
• 30:11
  decision more momentous so calm before the storm he Frodo himself except for when he was asked to tell
• 30:18
  his own story which again is in report we don't hear it we just hear it mentioned that he he did
• 30:24
  speak he's been largely quiet and the one thing he does stand up to say is I will I will take the ring
• 30:33
  that I do not know the way and there's a significant line break there normally line breaks are used
• 30:42
  to indicate a change of scene or a sort of underlining and in the here it's in the
• 30:49
  in the so in as an underlining it's a kind of we've got a pause at this moment to register
• 30:56
  what Frodo has has offered to do so after that offer has been taken and accepted Elron
• 31:05
  immediately says he doesn't need to go alone and in a typical sort of Tolkien-esque mood there's
• 31:12
  a lightning of the mood because Sam pops up he's been hiding listening and he sums it up with the
• 31:19
  hobbit sense which really keeps Lord of the Rings grounded and something which comes back to the
• 31:25
  experience of the common person which is a nice pickle we have landed ourselves in Mr Frodo so all
• 31:32
  this high-faluting talk comes down to being a nice pickle for two poor hobbits who've got to take
• 31:38
  the ring into model so a very long chapter probably a total nightmare for anybody to adapt and to
• 31:47
  realise because there is so much being said but when you're reading it in the novel I think you
• 31:55
  don't notice how long it is because the storytelling is so gripping particularly the answering all
• 32:02
  those questions about what Gandalf had been doing and why he took so long to arrive so in a way it's
• 32:08
  also a very satisfying chapter because it gives us loads of answers and it sets up what's going to
• 32:16
  happen next so we are pivoting into the fellowship part of the fellowship of the ring and the fellowship
• 32:25
  kicks off in the very next chapter we're leaving Rivendown.
• 32:35
  Thanks for listening to MythMakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy
• 32:42
  visit OxfordCenterForFatasy.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses
• 32:49
  in person stays in Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe
• 32:56
  wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide