Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 5

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Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 5 · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to an author's journey, a site cast on being myth-makers, podcasts for
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  fancy fans and fancy creatives. And today we have reached chapter 5, a conspiracy
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  are masked. Now we are still in the shy, just about, but this is where there's like a tonal
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  shift is just beginning to start. So as we most of us will know, when Tolkien started writing
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  the Lord of the Rings, he thought he was writing a follow-up to the Hobbit and for a long
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  time his letters and to his brains, he refers to it as sort of Hobbit, you know, the Hobbit book.
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  And you notice in his letters as the 1940s begins, he occasionally starts to call it ring and there's
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  one reference I've come across to Lord of the Ring. That's a singular Lord of the Ring. So he's
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  obviously playing around with suitable titles, but he's still very much thinking about it as in
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  this earlier stage, because in this part is written in the 30s, obviously he's continually revising.
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  And the conspiracy on mast is still akin to what you read in the Hobbit, things that make it that
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  sort of more childlike tone of the bath song, which is sort of full of absurdity and the pranks
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  of spilling the water all over the floor, their sort of fixation on mushrooms, yet more food,
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  that's very sort of the feast aspects that you've got a lot of in the Hobbit. And you've still got
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  the sort of fatty-bolger-type comic Hobbit character, though interesting with fatty, because even
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  though he is this stay-at-home, literally Hobbit, he is the one who is warning of the perils to come,
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  and it's sort of debate about, I'd rather have my job than your job. So he does actually begin
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  to serve a more of a, the person who is warning that adventures may be ahead, and that of course
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  is a reader, you want those adventures to come. And there's also another song in this chapter,
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  which is the one that Mary and Pickin have prepared for leaving, which is set to the same tune as
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  the dwarf song. So if you're listening to this book, and you're listening to the Andy Circus
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  version, he sings the same song as the dwarf song in the Hobbit film, which actually is quite a
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  repetitive tune. Personally, I prefer the one in the BBC version of this, a dramatized version in
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  the eighties. Anyway, so what is beginning to change the tone? Well, I think one of the things
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  that I'm noticing in this chapter is the very specific details of landscape. We've had this
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  already on the walking episodes, but you can really see not just a vague world of land,
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  it's very specific. So when they cross the brandy wine river, we get details about Brandy Hall,
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  and the history of Brandy Hall, how it looks, how it feels, and how Gore and Dad Oldbuck
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  establishes the family, crossed the river to set up this colony of the Shire. And you can actually
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  see, it's such a visually created impression of something which has no bearing on the story.
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  And this is one of the beautiful things about Tolkien's writing, is there seems to be this sort
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  of room and depths, and that was certainly part of the Spenic cast on me that I felt you won't
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  go to rub through, you know, it was at silver plate, it was silver, you didn't just rub the
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  plate off and find common old tin underneath, it's all the way through. And this is one of those
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  passages. I reckon if this was sent into HarperCollins today, I publish HarperCollins, I can imagine
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  an editor today striking the out, saying unnecessary, unnecessary detail, but of course it's all part
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  of the, you know, it is a slow, narratorial tone, he feels he's got time to tell us this,
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  and I think this is one of the challenges for someone who is reading Lord The Rings reluctantly,
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  is these opening chapters do take a long time to get going, and the tone is often childlike,
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  and you get things which have no bearing on the main story. And you have all that prologue
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  material, so I can see why people give up, it's almost, it would almost be an argument if you've
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  got a friend who doesn't like the book or can't get going on it. It may be say, right, right,
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  start here, because this is the chapter, as we'll see in a minute, where Frodo actually makes his
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  decision to go the next day, and suddenly things start to speed up and we're getting more into the
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  pace at the rest of the book follows. So that's why this is an interesting pivotal chapter. It's
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  as though Tolkien suddenly thinks, right, this is what I'm going to do with this story. I know I'm
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  going with it. So there's some little details in this, which I really appreciate, when we're talking
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  about Buckland, there's a note about sometimes people keeping their doors locked. Now, unless you've
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  had the experience of living in an English village, you might think that's a bit of a strange
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  detail, but actually even now, in some villages, the doors will be open, they won't be locked. In fact,
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  where I live, which is in the middle of a village these days, some friends came around for supper
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  and gave up because our door was locked. They thought it would be open. I haven't been in cities,
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  you see, though I don't keep my doors open, but it's quite common for doors to be unlocked with
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  this idea that you can just call round. So we know that Buckland is more dangerous because people
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  there are the outside of the river, so they feel there may be strangers wandering around.
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  So we're edging out into a wilder, more dangerous landscape. There is another difference, which is
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  where sort of drawing out, which is an authorial decision versus what you might do as a screenwriter.
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  So if you remember this part as in the film, in fact, what they do is they jump over the next
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  couple of chapters, but just this bit where they're coming from farm and maggots is driving them
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  to the ferry and they meet Mary at the ferry. It's slow. There aren't intermediate threats.
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  There's a conversation. The threat is, in fact, from Mary. They see this rider coming towards
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  them and they wonder who it is, and there's a moment of tension. His voice is muffled. They think
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  it might be an enemy, and then it's revealed as Mary. So it's a very low level, not a jump scare.
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  It's a low level moment of tension. In the film version, Peter Jackson and Philip
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  O'Brien's and Fanwashed gave this the chase through the woods and being chased by the horseman
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  jumping onto the ferry, Frodo almost not managing it and having to do that leap. So it's
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  obviously much more an action sequence, and then they cut. They forget all about Crick Hollow
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  decisions, Old Forest, Tom Bombardill, and they go straight from there to Bri. But one of the
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  absolute joys of having a good film series and an excellent book is that the reading the book
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  is still a very different experience and it's loads more to come in this chapter and the next
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  and the one after that, which are some of the best bits in Fellowship of the Ring, I think.
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  Not available in all states. There is one when I was reading it closely for this
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  this podcast. There was one element which I found I wondered about, which is when they see the
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  riders sniffing at the bank on the opposite side of the river, they're in relatively safe because
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  they've taken the ferry with them. It's like you do your own polling across the river.
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  Frodo asks Mary if the horse, can they reach us? And Mary says, they've got to go up to the bridge
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  and I've never known, which is miles up the river, or maybe horses could swim but I've never heard of it.
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  The problem about this is Frodo spent a lot of time in Buckland and he would know this.
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  It's you try not to get characters telling each other something they both know.
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  I personally think it'd be better if Sam had asked that question because Sam is the one who's
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  ignorant of anything outside, you know, Hobbiton and it's in the environment. So I just noticed
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  that as being, I'm not sure about that, I think that's the wrong person to ask that question.
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  Anyway, tiny, tiny, tiny detail, it doesn't matter and it's the first time I've noticed it.
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  There is another thing I've noticed as an author reading this passage, or this whole chapter,
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  is the access all areas narrator. So we've had the narrator dipping back into the past telling us
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  about how the Buckland was founded. There's actually quite a funny series of colonies being set
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  up here because in the prologue material, the people of Bri regard the Hobbits of the Shire as
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  people who've been sent out to the colonies, like they've colonized the Shire thinking they're
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  the original community. And now the people of the Shire think the Bucklanders are the colonizers.
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  So being the historian of the piece, that voice giving the history is that sort of omniscient idea,
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  but the conceit that Tolkien had in his mind when he was writing is of course this is an account
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  of the story compiled. Firstly, it starts off with Bilbo compiling it, then Frodo compiling it,
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  then Sam finishing off. So one way of looking at this ability to know all of what's going on all
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  around is a bit like, I don't know, the way a gospel is put together, from the accounts
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  of all the people who saw it. So it's like a patchwork of people's experiences, which explains why
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  in this chapter you get to see Frodo's anxiety that he is going to have to tell his friends that
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  he's about to leave the Shire, but you also get the other side of that conspiracy. You've got
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  Pippin saying to Mary, he's about to tell us, so you see both sides. It is an interesting variation
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  on the omniscient narrator, and I hadn't really thought about this reading backwards from the
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  red book. In fact, before he finished the story in his letters, Tolkien is projecting forwards
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  how he is going to finish, and at that point he's saying, oh, I think the last chapter will be
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  Sam reading this book to his children. They're like a reveal that this is sort of Sam
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  reading the stories put together by Frodo and Bilbo and himself, which explains, I think,
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  how it isn't a static. It's not Tolkien being the narrator, I suppose is what I'm saying here.
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  It's the characters inside the world sharing like a patchwork experience. That is the consistent
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  thread throughout. And another thing I've noticed as an author looking at the way he writes his
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  chapter is the idea of a conspiracy is very economical. So what this allows him to do is
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  immediately have the other people going on the journey already up to speed on what they're doing,
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  why they're doing it, and even better, they've got everything ready. And this is where the pace
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  picks up, because I think if we've got this bit and then we've had Frodo having a long discussion,
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  a quick hollow about how they how they need to leave the shire and then saying, no, don't go
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  Frodo, you know, that would have just been horribly, horribly long. So it's almost as if
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  right at the edge of the shire, let's get going. What's the quickest way to get going?
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  And one of the things to differentiate between the hobbits here is that you see Mary is,
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  it acts something like a lieutenant to Frodo. Frodo's the captain of this little group.
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  And Sam is like his ballet, his Batman, not Batman, but, you know, his his ballet or helper,
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  which was something you would get in the army when during the First World War. In a comic world,
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  if you've watched any of the Black Adders, it's the Baldric role. That's a comic version of this.
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  And Mary here is acting like the right-hand man, right-hand hobbit to Frodo, having worked out
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  the logistics. So he's got the money, he's hired the ponies, he's planned an exit strategy.
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  And Mary very often has that role whilst they're on their own. We'll see that when we get to
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  Bri as well. So I think there is, it's easy to sometimes stick all the hobbits a bit the same.
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  Mary and Pippin are interchangeable. But Mary is that bit older, Pippin is the younger one,
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  Pippin is the more mischievous one, the one who's playing the pranks. And it's nice to see these
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  distinctions brought in here. And then we have Frodo's decision, we must go at once, you know,
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  I've got to go, I've got to leave immediately. And this is where finally we get to leave the shire.
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  But before we do leave the shire the next morning, there is one last moment which is the night
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  and Frodo's dream. This dream serves a number of purposes. I think it adds to the sense of
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  doom because the last image is the noise of thunder and a sudden light in the sky which one assumes
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  with the thunder is lightning. And there is a sense of Frodo's end. It's as though he's already dreaming
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  about where he ends because he dreams of the sea, which he says he's never seen with his waking
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  eyes but he often dreams about. It's as though the powers that be in Lord the Rings are hinting his end.
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  And it's a sort of poetry in this where you foreshadow what's going to happen to a character
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  really early on so that when we get to the last chapter of the last book, it seems right that
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  that's where he's going to go. But it also gives us a very rare glimpse of what happens
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  further west of the shire because he talks and describes in his dream he has a great desire to
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  climb a tall white tower standing alone on a high ridge. And if you look at the map you see the tower
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  hills. And if I remember rightly one of the signs of the flourishing of the hobbits at the end
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  is that future generations go out and colonise. There's that bird again. They go out and colonise
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  that part of the shire. They spread a little bit beyond the old boundaries. And I think it's
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  one of the places where the red book is kept. So there's a lovely interlacing here on details
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  which are very resonant about the end of the story coming here as the last thing before you
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  leave the shire. And with that we are now ready to get up early the next morning and go into the
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