Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 7

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Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 7 · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello, welcome to a Mythbaker's sidecast, Lord of the Rings and Authors journey. My name is Julia Golding and in these episodes I'm taking us through my favourite book, The Lord of the Rings, looking at it from a writer's perspective.
• 0:22
  And today we have reached chapter 7 in the Fellowship of the Ring. That is the chapter called in the House of Tom Bombadil.
• 0:32
  Right, well this is a chapter which will be completely unfamiliar to anybody who only knows the story from the films.
• 0:40
  Because Tom Bombadil has been jumped over by most people who have told the story because there is a feeling that he doesn't fit.
• 0:51
  I was looking at this at the end of the last episode. There are things about Tom which make him unlike any other character in the story.
• 1:00
  And one of the things that emerged for me when I was looking again at this chapter for this sidecast is how in a way he is exceptional.
• 1:12
  But he is also more of middle earthy than anybody else. And so I've got a renewed appreciation for him.
• 1:21
  It's almost as if Tolkien has put in in these early chapters through the synthesis of his imagination, a character who is a kind of touchstone.
• 1:30
  Because you remember all the elves want to go west. That's their ultimate destination. They may love middle earth but they're not here for the duration. They're heading out.
• 1:41
  Whereas Tom, as we see, is in a way the first and last of everything that goes on in middle earth, the outer and the omega.
• 1:50
  And those religious overtones I think are entirely deliberate.
• 1:55
  Anyway, let's think about it in terms of where we are in the story.
• 1:59
  So we're emerging from the frightening episode with the willow tree and also a rather spooky journey through the old forest because Tom Bombadil has gone ahead.
• 2:15
  But then we get this break. We've entered into one of those little havens that Tolkien gives us in the story.
• 2:21
  You can probably think of the others. We've got the haven of Rivendell, even the inn at Brie, which to a certain extent is a bit of a haven.
• 2:31
  But certainly Rivendell and Laughlorian and also one of my favorite is a Thillion, the episode when Frodo and Sam meet Faramid, but that's jumping way ahead.
• 2:43
  We're not anywhere near that part yet.
• 2:46
  And the House of Tom Bombadil is a haven and this is given to us in very clear language.
• 2:54
  It's the language of generosity note. He calls it the wide stone threshold, not a narrow gate.
• 3:00
  It's wide and it's full of the light of lamps and many candles.
• 3:04
  So we get a sense of the doors being open. The lights are on and everybody is welcome inside.
• 3:10
  So the first piece person we meet in Tom Bombadil's house is actually Goldbury.
• 3:18
  And I want to point out here one of those stylistic ticks that Tolkien has, which is to invert the normal sentence structure.
• 3:26
  English is quite flexible. It's fine to do this, but it gives in this case a more, I suppose more storytelling, more portentous introduction.
• 3:39
  So you could have said in a chair, sat a woman, but we have to wait.
• 3:45
  It's like we're approaching her. The sentence makes us approach her slowly with appreciation in a chair at the far side of the room facing the outer door, sat a woman and we land like in front of her.
• 3:59
  She brought it brought to her very feet, and he uses this quite often in the speech of characters of a higher register, the sort of rangers and wizards and dinner thought they quite often have a inversion of speech, which feels to us almost,
• 4:20
  a little bit medieval. There's something more less like the natural speech patterns of the hobbits.
• 4:29
  And when the hobbits start doing it, you know they're sort of acting up to their company. Anyway, one of the ways to learn about this is just to read out that paragraph to yourself because it goes on to a lovely description of what she's wearing.
• 4:42
  All the time making her comparisons to things to do with the river and river foliage because she is in a way a river personified. She is the river daughter.
• 4:53
  Quite what a river daughter is. We are never really told, but we get the sense that she isn't human. She isn't an elf. She has come out of the natural world.
• 5:05
  She's the spirit of the local river in some some way, and I don't think we need to totally understand it because it's part of being mysterious, which is the heart of Tom and Goldbury.
• 5:19
  There are things in nature we as humans slash hobbits never get to understand completely.
• 5:26
  We also see all the way through this chapter just how they are reflections of each other. So she liked Tom is impetuous and quick. She moves, she jumps, she leaps and her speech falls into a similar pattern to her to his and she also is depicted laughing.
• 5:46
  So here's in her you can imagine they have a matching Pachama sets as well. They are very much made for each other.
• 5:54
  I think it's worth pausing here that this is probably aside from the augmentures someone like Lebedia, sack full baggins. This is the first time we meet a woman.
• 6:05
  Oh, there was Mrs maggot wasn't there, but she was very much just serving supper. But in this case, the first proper introduction to women we get to women has got her own opinions and extended things to say.
• 6:17
  And we know that talking doesn't do ordinary run of the mill women. They're all cleanly with the exception of Yoris and we have to wait all the way through to return of the king before we meet her.
• 6:35
  It's just what you get with talking. That's his world. Anyway, back to Goldbri's welcome. Note that her speech patterns have the rhythm of something like an incantation or a song or a poem.
• 6:52
  And they act like a counter charm to the evil that they've just passed through. And we also have the almost religious banishing you can imagine it bit like a, you know, a priest coming in and blessing a house because obviously talking had a Roman Catholic upbringing.
• 7:10
  There's a sense of she's sprinkling her holy water and getting rid of all the bad vibes in our terminology with her language and her speech speech has power in the Goldbri and Tom Bombardial world.
• 7:28
  So talking is saying they're not elves and he makes this very clear because he talks about the kind of magic they do have. And is this intriguing phrase that the magic is less keen and lofty than the elves.
• 7:45
  Deeper and nearer to mortal heart, marvellous and yet not strange. And this connects to what I was saying that in a way, Tom Bombardial and Goldbri are even more of middle earth than the elves.
• 8:02
  They have every right to be there and they will still be there when everybody else has come and gone. And just on a bit of character development here, we see that Frodo again is the first to find the right words.
• 8:15
  And he also shows his memory for verse because he repeats the song they heard from Tom Bombardial on the path near the willow.
• 8:23
  He does have this ability to rise to the occasion Frodo and you can see why he does become the friend of wizards and kings because there is something noble in another way he conducts himself in courts.
• 8:36
  This is the court in the sense of king and queen of Tom and Goldbri and he is the approaching ambassador from the shower with the right words. It's always something a little bit finer about Frodo, which others do also remark on.
• 8:53
  So what I like about Tom and Goldbri and the way they're imagined is the association with the seasons. Goldbri is very much spring and summer, which hops over to spring again, which is referenced in the the drive about her.
• 9:11
  There's almost a sense that if you went to see her in winter, would she be awake, would she be there, would she be hibernating, she's associated with those seasons.
• 9:22
  So she's surrounded by the last of the lilies and her colors are all spring like colors, their green, their white, their silver and her hair is sort of golden fair.
• 9:35
  These are the colors, which we also was associated with Galadriel, there's a little bit of a repeat going on here, but the effect with her isn't the ethereal starlight feel of the Galadriel, it's very much a spring and earthy feel.
• 9:52
  And Frodo asks her because she seems a friendly and approachable and has got rid of their fears, they ask the key question that hovers over this chapter and will come up again, which is who is Tom Bombardill.
• 10:05
  Now critics have been trying to answer this one for many years and of course one answer is, well, Tom Bombardill is a character based on a children's toy made who was entered into the story by talking to police's family.
• 10:19
  Yeah, that's one perfectly reasonable answer, but in terms of the law, Tom Bombardill is, I think we're coming to see the voice of Middle-Earth is like the natural world personified speaking out in a way that no other character does.
• 10:41
  And Goldbury's answer is almost biblical, well, it is biblical because the her first answer is he is now.
• 10:54
  If you know your genesis and your Bible that I am, he is, is attributed only to God, so it's probably maybe talking and thought hang on a minute, I don't want to go too far down that road.
• 11:09
  So Goldbury goes on to give it a bit of a gloss, she says that he is master of wood, water and hill, a bit like Adam and Eve.
• 11:20
  In fact, there's something very Adam and Eve about the two of them, a bit like Adam, he's in charge, but he doesn't possess.
• 11:27
  He's in charge of the garden, but he is there to tend it and name it and talk to it, but he's not there to exploit it or possess it.
• 11:37
  And that lack of the hold of worldly goods over him is what makes him truly free.
• 11:44
  And what you're seeing here is a version of living which is in harmony with nature and is totally free, it's a beautiful image of the possibility of living in the natural world in balance.
• 11:57
  So that his mastery is absolutely the opposite kind of mastery to Sauron, which is all about possessing.
• 12:05
  And Sauron's ring makes a person who wears it want to also possess like a dragon acquire everything, swallow it up in themselves, whereas Tom Bumberdale wants everything to be their own thing.
• 12:18
  So if you're trying to answer the question of why have this chapter, I think it's this thematic opposite that we understand more what the darkness of Sauron is if we understand what the lightness of Tom Bumberdale and Goldbury means.
• 12:36
  So I said that Goldbury is here associated with spring and summer, we also get Tom coming in associated with autumn, he moves with the season, he comes in crowned with autumn leaves and also note the rhythm of everything he says and the simple nouns and plain adjectives that he uses are just colors and the word ripe for the apples.
• 13:03
  It all seems incredibly wholesome, there's nothing sophisticated, it's rustic.
• 13:10
  The scene where I sometimes find my sort of taste buds reminding me is in Beyond's house in the Hobbit when they're served the things that Beyond tends that his honey, his honey cakes.
• 13:24
  There's an element of that rustic charm which is that down to earth magic here of Tom and Goldbury and the sentence pattern is it feels like rocking to and fro try reading it out you'll see what I mean they are of all the characters aside from golem.
• 13:47
  They are the ones with the most idiosyncratic speech pattern I guess maybe three bit also has something very unique in his sort of prolics nature.
• 13:59
  Yeah so I'll allow him into the group so we've got Tom and Goldbury with this rocking rhythm and if you ever hear an audio version of it you'll find that the readers are almost trying to sing it as they speak it.
• 14:12
  It's well worth reading it aloud yourself and then you've got obviously golem's incredible speech which I'm looking forward to exploring how that's put together.
• 14:21
  And she is with his long pauses and his run of words so he runs at things and their long extensions whereas Goldbury and Thomas sort of bounding leaping echoing rhyming so it's very distinct.
• 14:42
  And everything I noticed here is this is the first place they stop outside the shy and there's something very much like a hobbit hole in this house it doesn't seem to have an upstairs maybe it does but we don't go upstairs and the kind of half the food the comfortable bedrooms the facilities were washing it does seem very close to the shy in the way it set up and maybe maybe Tom was the architectural
• 15:10
  consultant and how they actually lived in the shy but it seems to be a real kinship between Tom and the hobbits just in the way he lives which means it's not so very foreign.
• 15:22
  And note that we're even in the fact furnishings we're still harping on these colors of yellow green white those words are being struck like a bell again and again and we even get green slippers which I would rather fancy a pair of.
• 15:39
  And the spell that this house is weaving a totally benign spell affects the hobbits and we get this charming description of them sitting at supper and they all almost seem to be singing as they speak.
• 15:55
  And this is one of the really strong talents of the many many talents of talking is this ability to make an atmosphere of a place feel so real that we can imagine we all feel as though we could go for walk in middle earth and visit it and this is how he does it you see his characters not just passing through a place they become the place they take it on board they are the behavior changes in those places.
• 16:23
  And we are sort of living through them vicariously and we feel what they are feeling very brilliantly done.
• 16:32
  Then there's a transition in his chapter where we started off with all the lights were on and now as the mood changes the light concentrates around the hearth and this is the shift to the storytelling.
• 16:47
  And Goldbury at this point leaves them and there's this wonderful description that is almost as if when she leaves them she transforms back to being the river is this I sometimes wonder if she is actually really real she always feels like a hallucination at times.
• 17:06
  But anyway so when she leaves the sound of her footsteps was like a stream falling gently way downhill over cool stones in the quiet of night just a little sidebar if you're watching the rings of power series Goldbury appears in that off of screen I don't know if she's going to pitch up in later episodes but I can see why they chose to do that because there is something.
• 17:33
  She does seem to vanish ebb and flow which is great for a river daughter anyway Tom very much stays with them.
• 17:43
  And he begins to tell them tales giving them the answers to some of their questions without them even having to ask ask for them and what I think I want to point out here is the way Tom talks about himself he talks about we and he also talks about himself in the third person.
• 18:04
  And what I think you'd sometimes say that this is not the Royal we it's as though he cannot think of himself separate from the world in which he lives it could of course be him and Goldbury but you suspect it's also him and all his ponies plus all the creatures and the trees that that's the we he's talking about.
• 18:25
  And when he's talking about himself in the third person I get the impression here that the mindset behind that is his identity is spread beyond himself so talking has created a unique version of the third person.
• 18:41
  Here the person talking about himself which isn't self-absorbed and then we get a very good example here of how Tom drifts from speech into verse he just drifts from one to another.
• 18:56
  And you can see on the page there's two clumps of of verse but it's the second one is most like a conversation because he's giving them the answer to why he was passing the willow tree at that particular time.
• 19:11
  He says and that proved well for you for now I shall no longer go down deep again along the forest water and so on this is freshly minted verse in answer to the particular thing that happened today he lives on this cusp where speech is song and song is speech.
• 19:32
  And that's when Frodo asks about more information about willow man but Mary and Pippin who had the worst of the experience being trapped inside the tree don't want any dark thoughts before bed very sensibly.
• 19:45
  And Tom agrees with them and he sort of sends them off to bed and note what he does here is a bit like the the charm that gold be wove when they first arrive he does this thing where he speaks and imperatives to them he tells them to sleep till the morning light rest on the pillow and those kind of imperatives particularly the double one two things where he says do this do that he uses that same.
• 20:15
  Emulation to well the willow tree and to defeat the barrow white it's like it's the way he exercises his power do this do that but not it always seems not bossy it's just oh yeah that's the right thing to do that's that's the that's the same good thing to do.
• 20:37
  So it's no I think it would be a jolly good idea if you got to bed now it's right got to bed he'd know nightly noise.
• 20:44
  So now we get the break between the two days that we spend in Tom's house and that is the nighttime dreams talking often uses dreams to foreshadow and reflect on the themes and his story.
• 21:01
  And this is one of them it's actually one of the most extended of them because we get three of the fellowship having a dream photos dream is different because he dreams of Gandalf escaping from ice and guard.
• 21:16
  But we don't know the meaning of this until later we don't know who exactly is escaping though there are some.
• 21:23
  Elements here which would need us to think of it as being Gandalf and we don't really know anything about ice and guard at this stage so it's a glimpse of a teaser for what's going to come later and possibly a hint at why Gandalf isn't there we also learn it doesn't happen on the same night as the events happen so it's a dream that comes to him later after the events have happened but it's a way of connecting the different parts of the story which.
• 21:50
  As this story does braid and spread out dreams are one of the ways that the characters are connected and I'm just a little side note I want to highlight here is the wonderful description of the wolves yammering that's a great word I don't know if that is the world yammer but I know exactly what he means by that it's probably got some great.
• 22:15
  A technological origin but the perfect word to describe the walls of I think ice and guard Mary and Pippin what's the purpose of their dreams well they're both kind of PTSD dreams.
• 22:28
  Pippin dreams of tweak hands and Mary dreams of drowning although of course it was Frodo who had the near drowning experience but what this is about is to say that.
• 22:40
  The power of gold breeze words come to them like the soothing of a frightened child and this does make us feel there is a responsible adult in the room at element here still slightly the nursery tale tale for the nursery here you don't need to worry too much because the.
• 23:04
  The older maternal figure saying don't worry no one's going to get near you it still has the power and dispels the the the daytime fears.
• 23:16
  And then of course we get the little chuckle that Sam let like a log if that's content of the log if logs are contented yet we get you Sam.
• 23:26
  Now we move into the second day and here we get one of those delicious weather transitions that we get in talking and this is a transition to a rainy day it's a fabulous description love it but I want to just pick out one.
• 23:42
  Art of a sentence which sums it up it's brilliance Frodo's looking at the window just to see if there's any.
• 23:50
  hoof marks or anything like that it's all it's all plain and clear there was no riders near the house but anyway he gets he gets a good view of the beans.
• 24:00
  The red flowers on the beans began to glow against the wet green leaves now I don't know how much sense this makes to people around the world but talking was a keen gardener and one of the most commonly grown kind of beans here is the wonderful runner been.
• 24:20
  And there probably are other beans with red flowers but that's the one I remember from growing up they climb up structures like like 10 pole type structures and they have a very very solid green color with this red red color.
• 24:37
  They're very small flowers but talking is absolutely right on a dull day these red flowers do glow it's probably some light signature in them that are trans insects pollinators but he has captured brilliantly what it's like to be out in a country garden on a dull day in England of which there are many.
• 25:03
  Anyway Tom comes in from leapy on the hill tops we sense that well he is bigger than his person there is a feeling that we don't we don't see him doing that but we totally believe he could.
• 25:20
  I think in like in this he feels almost godlike in a demigod way and we sense we he has his powers barely kept in barely bridled that thing about not getting wet you know be able to move amongst the raindrops not falling on him he's also aware he's aware they had a bad night and he's ready to dispel it with a jolly good breakfast.
• 25:43
  There's one other as well as the red beans I just want to point out the chalky path detail so I live on the downs just south of Oxford and the downs which talking new and loved and we are in down land because that's where we're going to the barrow downs are made of chalk and when it rains indeed the chalky paths to become like milky in the rain they're also really slippery.
• 26:11
  Pretty dangerous parts in the rain but it's a wonderful piece of observation and the rainy day gives the hobbits the excuse to stay for an extra day in this haven with Tom and Goldbury and of course they sit down and tell stories of course they do.
• 26:29
  But this I think is one of my favorite tell telling exchanges here because.
• 26:35
  They tell you so much about the character just note we don't hear all the stories that Tom tells but it's notable that.
• 26:45
  The way it's described is he tells some stories of evil things and good things things friendly and things unfriendly crawl things and kind things and secrets hidden under brambles.
• 27:00
  Tom lives in a world of things he's not in some half other world the else have access to this sort of special plane almost.
• 27:12
  Which is there being their magic Tom is rooted in things and it's not without purpose what's clear is that he.
• 27:24
  Um he's telling them the things they need to know and he goes on to tell them about how the wood feels about what's happening in the wide world and how we meet it's all some others who are doing this and probably humans too.
• 27:44
  But he has the wonderful line how the trees are filled with hatred for those that go free upon the earth, gnawing biting breaking hacking burning destroyers and usurpers so how we look to the trees and the things planted in the soil.
• 28:03
  And that line case you think it sounds familiar is given to tree beard in the Peter Jackson version and in fact a lot of the best stuff.
• 28:11
  In the tree beard in the film comes from these Tom Bombadil sections so let's give them back in our imagination to Tom because a Tom thought rather than a tree beard thought.
• 28:24
  And he gets down to describing the great willow and its dominion over all of the forest and we get to understand that of course they always were going to enter what the little hobbits could not stop was that confrontation.
• 28:37
  And we get a sense of how powerful the willow is it's interesting to note that Tom's theory of the trees all talking to each other and communicating with each other is of course where.
• 28:49
  Biology has reached with trees and the amazing ways that trees release certain chemicals and pollen and all sorts of things to communicate so talking's way ahead here or Tom his character Tom is.
• 29:04
  But if the willow is so powerful it makes you think how much more powerful Tom is because he is able to bring that great willow under his control by just falling it off basically he told it off.
• 29:21
  Slapped it on the side with a stick and it released the hobbits so we've left behind that particular threat.
• 29:29
  And then we get this absolutely fabulous passage which in my version is on page 141 i don't know if your edition is the same but it's the what i'm calling here the fast forward of history on the barrow downs.
• 29:44
  Talking doesn't let us forget which is what's just over the horizon and oh it's just just wonderful suddenly Tom's talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream over bubbling waterfalls over pebbles and worn rocks and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies.
• 30:04
  One drink at last up on to the downs so he leads us there they heard of the great barrows and the green mounds and the stone rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills sheep were pleating in flocks.
• 30:18
  Green walls and white walls rose there were fortresses on the heights kings of little kingdoms fought together and the young sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords.
• 30:32
  So here we've got the idea that the sun is young because Tom existed before the sun was made in the cosmology of middle earth and that the kings are little and there was which was obviously vast and of huge importance to their history and their timeline feels small to Tom and to the barrow downs.
• 30:59
  There was victory and defeat and towers fell fortresses were burned and flames went up into the sky gold was piled on the buyers of dead kings and queens and mounds covered them and the stone doors were shut and the grass grew over all sheep walked for a while biting the grass but soon the hills were empty again.
• 31:21
  We start with sheep we go back to sheep. I just love this passage in fact when I we have a tradition in our family of reading Lord the Rings to our children when they get to an age when they can appreciate it and I always look forward to reading this passage it's poetry it is absolutely wonderful.
• 31:39
  And then we get the danger a shadow came out of dark places far away and the bones were stirred in the mound barrow whites walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers and gold chains in the wind stone rings green
• 31:56
  grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight absolutely I don't I'm not going to gloss that it's perfect just go back and enjoy it and linger on that because it's a wonderful sense of the history or middle earth but also set within the frame where it's just a tiny episode against a much bigger world and that is the strength of Tolkien's world building it's all about
• 32:25
  repeating new vistas further and further away and he goes on it's like listening to a symphony of stories which passes from mood to mood who know how symphony moves through different fast sections and slow sections and it captivates so much emotion that's what Tom storytelling is like and it ends keeps going and ends on this absolutely wonderful final note which is after they're going back in time
• 32:56
  still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight when only the elf sires were awake and we fall into one of the most beautiful silences in Tolkien and I love that use of silence that words fail and everybody is just sitting there
• 33:14
  breathless and that's when Frodo comes in with a repeat of that question he's been told that Tom is the master so he uses that title but he still doesn't understand it's it feels like a
• 33:28
  a kind of question that the disciples ask Jesus in the gospels who are you master
• 33:34
  I can't think of another moment in not the rings quite like this there is reverence for gladriel
• 33:39
  definitely and Frodo again is the one marvelling at her and her power but that who are you
• 33:48
  yeah maybe when Gandalf comes back there is that sense of who are you really but this is I think the most
• 33:54
  powerful of all those moments and just like with Goldberg's answer he says this is Tom says only
• 34:03
  answer to that question is your name and he adds to master eldest which is the lot of the rings
• 34:13
  is full of very old things tree-bid elves but Tom Bombadil is the oldest I guess the valour are
• 34:23
  even older because they existed before the world but without them being around Tom is the eldest
• 34:30
  and then we have a transition away from this quiet bit like the council of error El ronda long
• 34:37
  section of information more beautifully more poetically given in this case but we and shorter
• 34:46
  but then we get a movement to something else we get a movement to a meal of course we do
• 34:52
  and here we get a wonderful image of a very equal marriage just set out here and laying the table
• 34:58
  they both weaving around each other with the ease of people who know each other very well
• 35:05
  note here the coloring again Goldbree is in silver and white with shoes like fishes male
• 35:12
  male as in chain male you've got that heraldic feel but it's also really earthy because it's
• 35:19
  fish something you know in a in a in a stream you're going to get fish so it connects to her origins
• 35:27
  but also that male idea it's not fishy scales it's fishy's male elevates her to the the
• 35:35
  lady of legend and Tom here is in clean blue with rain wash that rain wash blue forget me knots
• 35:44
  and green stockings blue and green and we can see why Tom and Goldbree seem to like the hobbits
• 35:50
  because they're very good guests they have honest appetites and they're happy cheerful and they
• 35:56
  seemingly have no guile and we hear that Goldbree's songs here that she sings and she's certain for
• 36:04
  doose and speaking her songs are described like rivers we get a little bit more information
• 36:11
  from Tom as they have a sort of post-prandial pause and he tells us or tells the hobbits that he
• 36:19
  rates farmer maggot has been one of the wisest people in the shire and I love this touch because
• 36:25
  we are just outside the borders of the shire and it brings home how the shire looks different from
• 36:29
  the outside and we also get through all the plot another important little note which is Gildor
• 36:36
  who is the elf they met in the shire he has passed word that they are traveling on their own and
• 36:42
  this is an important plot point to link why people turn up when they do it's not coincidence
• 36:49
  Gildor has set the news running and in Gandalf Gandalf's absence other people are stepping up to
• 36:55
  meet the hobbits and try and help them and then we get one of those fascinating ring encounters
• 37:02
  there are several during the story we've had Gandalf and we have the ring at the council of Elrond
• 37:11
  and then of course we get Galadriel and Teptation of the Ring and so on it's these moments are pivot
• 37:19
  points and this is a very different one to all the others because it's suggesting that is a way
• 37:26
  of understanding this story where the ring isn't a nothing it's not important it's not important
• 37:32
  to Tom he says show me the precious ring it's not precious to him he's using that I think almost
• 37:39
  ironically jokingly and his he's one of the very few people to hold the ring and it's comical
• 37:50
  and alarming he holds it up to his eye the eye of Saron is the big image of how embodied Saron is
• 37:57
  at this stage in his existence and here we get the blue eye of Tom looking through the circle
• 38:05
  it's sort of scary but funny and then we learn that he doesn't disappear when he puts it on
• 38:14
  which of course means everyone realizes that the ring has no power over him and potentially he
• 38:22
  has no power over the ring either it's just nothing to him it's not his business and that comes up
• 38:31
  again at the council of Elrond that you know could he look after it and the answer there is well he
• 38:38
  just forget about it because it's not in his doesn't fit it in his world and his way of behaving
• 38:45
  and it's noticeable here the bad effect of the ring because it's the first guile the first
• 38:50
  craftiness creeps into the house because when Frodo gets the ring back lovely description here
• 38:58
  that he feels like a person who has lent something a trinket to a juggler is it minimine
• 39:04
  have they changed it they swapped it out and he's suspicious so he to test it out he puts it on
• 39:12
  which he's been told not to do and he tries to creep away so it gets the sense that the ring drives
• 39:17
  you apart it makes you act in a way that isn't be a good guest it sort of against the spirit of the
• 39:26
  tomb bombardier house and tom's response is priceless take off your golden ring your hands more
• 39:34
  fair without it totally sums up for the healthy reaction to the ring is it's better of not wearing it
• 39:43
  and then we come to the end of this day and as they go to bed we get the last of these words
• 39:52
  advice of what to avoid which means of course they're going to walk straight into that danger
• 39:59
  it's the trailing end that draws us out of this haven to end up on the on the stone barrows
• 40:09
  but we also know that tom has taught them the get out of jail free song the ho tom bombardier
• 40:16
  tom bombardier low song so we're also comforted by the fact that he's not kicking out with no hope
• 40:23
  he's saying don't go there but if you do go there remember this song so it again it ends on a
• 40:28
  note of comfort but I think we can probably all guess what's going to happen tomorrow
• 40:34
  thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the oxford center for fantasy
• 40:46
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• 40:53
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• 41:00
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