Latest / Mythmakers / He's Much More Dangerous than He Looks - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 1

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He's Much More Dangerous than He Looks - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 1 · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers.
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  MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators brought to you by Yoxford
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  Centre.
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  For fantasy, my name is Julia Golding.
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  Now I am continuing a series where we read our way through the Lord of the Rings chapter
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  by chapter.
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  And today it's an exciting new start because we are halfway through the two towers.
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  We've reached book four and this is where the story flips back to see what Frodo and
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  Sam have been up to while the other members of the fellowship have been mostly in Rohan.
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  And we are at chapter one, the taming of smegel.
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  And when we're doing this, we're looking at what the author is doing.
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  So we're looking at the choices made by Tolkien from a sort of literary point of view as
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  he's writing this long epic work.
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  So this chapter has three main sections.
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  It starts with catching up with Frodo and Sam who are lost on the emin wheel.
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  And then there's an episode where they're on the edge of a cliff and they're climbing
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  down.
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  This is where the Elven wrote comes in useful.
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  And then finally it's when we meet one of the most fascinating characters in all of fantasy.
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  So you know, hold on to your hats for that.
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  That is of course golem though because the chapter is called the taming of smegel, perhaps
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  we should call him smegel.
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  So let's have a look at what's going on.
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  This is one of the chapters that starts with dialogue and it throws you straight in.
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  So it starts with Sam saying, well master, we're in a fix and no mistake.
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  So we're immediately right in the middle of the present, the problem that they're facing
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  which is they can't get to where they need to go.
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  They can see it but they can't get there.
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  One of the things strikes me about this chapter after the colourful scenes in Rohan, the battles,
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  the ends, the palantir, the dramatic showdown with Saruman.
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  This chapter is all about frustration and confusion.
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  It's unlikely I think to be many people's favourite chapter unless they like it because
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  of the introduction of smegel, slash golem.
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  Because it is frustrating and a bit confusing to read because well they are in a huge rocky
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  landscape when they are lost and in a way with the repetition of the words for these
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  small scale stone formations, the gullies, the cracks, the fishes, it is quite difficult
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  to get a grasp of what they're surrounded by unlike other places which Tolkien describes
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  in full.
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  The description here seems to just pile on the confusion and that I think is intentional.
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  But we do get the overwhelming mood of this whole chapter.
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  There's a couple of areas of fun and hilarity and lightness but mainly it's this sense
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  of ominous for boating.
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  That's what's going on here and this particular sentence at the beginning sums it up for me.
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  Night was gathering over the shapeless lands before them, note their shapeless who can't
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  grasp them.
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  The sickly green of them was fading to a sullen brown.
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  So the pallet of this is Grey's Greens Browns and at night obviously black.
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  So it's unpleasant, it's cold, it's damp, it's miserable.
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  And in a sense, as so often we've talking, the landscape is a reflection of the state
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  of that part of their quest.
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  The landscape is this, what you know they call the pathetic fallacy where something external
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  seems to reflect something internal though of course in this case the landscape is also
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  producing that feeling of confusion and being lost.
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  Looking at what they're talking about we get the repetition of the word fix that you're
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  in a fix.
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  That's quite a colloquial word for a dilemma or a puzzle but Sam is very good at summing
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  it up in good commoner garden phrasing, so he's saying we're in a fix we can't get to
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  more door.
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  That's the one place in all the lands we've ever heard of that we don't want to see
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  any closer and that's the one place we're trying to get to.
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  So the dialogue here is doing a useful task of just reminding us of what's at stake
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  for these two, what their motivation is.
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  And I think it's interesting because we're now in a scenario which we haven't had since
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  well some very early conversations with Frodo and Sam.
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  They've always had other people around them on the whole.
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  It's been a few moments when they're on their own, particularly at the end of fellowship.
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  Right here they're going to be a long stretch when it's the two of them relying on each
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  other.
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  And we get this balance between the two, we've got Sam sort of stepping forward and becoming
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  more valuable, more of a character in some sense, he holds more of the page, but we've
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  also got an element of quietness, firmness and withholding to Frodo, which begins at this
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  point, in a way he begins to slip away from us.
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  And as we get further and further into the story as the ring gets a bigger hold on him,
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  there is a sort of erosion of Frodo and this is some of the places where it just begins
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  to creep in.
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  It's a very slow, it's a dimmer switch effect, it's not a sudden break.
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  And also, I thought it was quite funny that we get Sam channeling Macbeth.
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  Because when in answer to Frodo's sort of half-up thing saying, you know, perhaps another
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  day will show us a path, we've got Sam saying, or another and another and another.
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  And that is the most famous three-part thing of that kind, is a similar thought.
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  It's Macbeth's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, I think it's, well, maybe it's, I think
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  it's slightly accidental, but it made me laugh to think that there's an echo of Macbeth
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  in Sam.
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  And we do know, of course, Macbeth was in Tolkien's thoughts, particularly in the chapters
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  on the ends going to Eisengard, so it's not a totally wild association.
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  But compared to Sam, who is in a way still fretting and struggling against his fate, Frodo
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  is notably quieter and accepting, because his answer is, it's my doom, I think, to go
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  to that shadow yonder so that a way will be found, but will good or evil show it to me.
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  It isn't a way, I think, that in itself is almost like a summary of Frodo's dilemma
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  all during this book, and we've got doom here meant as your fate, not as something which
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  is inevitably a bad thing, not a doom in that sense, but it's the idea of fate.
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  And that idea is, will good or evil show it to me, is echoed throughout the story, we're
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  going to hear it again, but it's the idea that even the wise cannot see what might be
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  played by characters who seem evil, sometimes they are part of the solution that actually
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  produces the good.
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  Other echoes, this is actually a very echoey chapter, because there is an echo here of
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  Aragorn in what Frodo says.
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  If you, this is happening contemporaneously to Aragorn regretting his choices when the
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  fellowship is broken, because we've gone back to more or less that point three days
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  in after that moment.
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  And Frodo says, all my choices have proved ill, which is very much what Aragorn was saying
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  when they find Boromig dead and both of the hobbits taken, Mary and Pippin taken.
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  But there's also this irony at play here, because we've seen that Aragorn's choices
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  have in fact ended up with the Oberthro Saruman, you know, in a roundabout way, but it is,
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  I think Gandalf describes the hobbits like Pebble's starting an avalanche.
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  So we may be thinking as readers, hoping for a happy ending of some sort, that it is
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  the choices that produce, that seem ill might actually produce the good.
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  And of course, what this chapter is really about, and in some ways it is as important
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  as the chapter when Frodo chooses to take the ring, coming out of the council of Aragorn,
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  it's his decision he takes about Gollum's fate that actually decides the fate of the
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  nation, the fate of the world.
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  So what is a conversation doing here?
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  An interesting thing about these Frodo and Sam chapters like this is that there is
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  less description on the whole and more conversation taking the role of a sort of narratorial intervention.
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  Because the conversation reiterates the stakes, recaps the situation, we catch up on the
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  state of mind of the characters, we also are reminded of the contrast in this world,
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  referring to the sort of homeluness of the way they behave with each other.
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  Sam is comparing Lembass, he would, you know, he'd like a bit, some beer, he wants to
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  go down the pub rather than be stuck in this place.
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  I imagine that's a conversation that would have been had in the trenches, no matter what
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  came in the rations, they all prefer to be back home.
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  And there's a clear sense, they are two little hobbits carrying the shire into this very,
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  the opposite of the shire landscape, so all of that is done in the dialogue.
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  So moving on, there is a remarkable number of words in this chapter to do with this broken
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  stony landscape, we've got gullies, we've got stones, we've got cliffs, we've got fishes,
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  we've got rocks, we've got, oh, it's all, and sort of stunted trees.
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  It's all there, and it is a landscape which is the most hostile that you can imagine to
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  a sort of barefoot hobbit.
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  They are stuck, and they come to the conclusion that the only way forward is to risk climbing
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  down a cliff.
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  And here gives a chance for the hobbit's contrasting characters to be shown, and that's one of
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  the roles of action, these smaller pieces of action, which aren't the set piece battles.
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  What someone does when facing an obstacle reveals who they are really, and you've got Sam's
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  foolish bravery set against Frodo, he's also courageous, but he's more deliberate, he
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  has the skills, he's very competent, he's shown as competent in this chapter.
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  And also he wants to actually take some time to think about things, whereas Sam will say,
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  I'll go first, and this discussion about how they're going to go about it with Frodo
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  making free climbing his way down this cliff is suddenly cut short, and that's the word
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  that's given, cut short, and then there's a dramatic line break.
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  We've looked at the role of line breaks earlier in the 2000, and this is one of the ones
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  which really does punctuated, because we've got the drama of the line break as a sudden
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  onset of both a sort of lightning storm and an overflight high up of a black rider on
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  a nascar, and this causes Frodo to lose his grip and to fall at a short distance.
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  Look, if you look at how this is written, Tolkien goes on to write the next bit where they
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  are recovering from that fight as a quickly tossing between the points of view of both Sam
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  and Frodo.
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  Now one of the early pieces of editorial feedback I got right at the beginning of my career
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  from an American editor is, don't jump heads, Tolkien does jump heads, it's possibly
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  where I picked it up from, but here he's not doing it without thinking about it, he is
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  doing it because he's showing how this appears to Frodo and how this appears to Sam, and
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  it's very important that juxtaposition, because one is stuck on the ledge, the other is
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  above, so it's this dizzying sort of journey that reader has taken between the two.
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  And of course Frodo has gone blind temporarily, and it's into this that Sam, who is sometimes
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  a bit sick on the uptake remembers his carrying rope, and there is nobody harsher than Sam
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  on himself, he calls himself a numbscal, a nini hammer, colloquial words for being done.
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  And I like it, it's hard to remember what it was like to first read this, but because
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  the archetypal things that they take with them, the star glass, the cloaks, the lambass
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  and so on, there's not that many items for a reason, remember, and the lack of rope and
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  Sam picking up some rope, as they left Lothlorian, was highlighted, that many a reader would
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  have been shouting at the book already, Sam, you idiot, it's in the pack.
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  So anyway, out he brings this wonderful artifact, which is the first, in fact, in this part
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  of the two towers, because there are these key things that they're holding, be it the cloak,
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  be it the bread, be it the star glass, be it sting and so on, that sort of have their
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  moment. And this rope is the first of these given an extended role in this chapter.
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  And it becomes almost like a little character, and it comes down with a faint silver sheen
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  so that it lightens. The first things it does is it lightens Frodo's vision, which had
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  gone temporarily blind. I think it's an interesting way to, when you've got a world that has this
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  sort of sense of a magical charge, and this rope has an element of magic about it, if you
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  imbue it with a sense of its own identity and personality, people often do this with swords,
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  of course, or weapons. It gives it more charge, and it connects to the character, of course,
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  who gave it to the Hobbits in the first place, possibly held here, but certainly the elves.
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  Another connection here is the one about the storm, because it's described the storm goes out
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  beyond having passed over them, it goes out to Gondor and Rohan, sweeps around like that. And it's
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  connecting the other parts of the story through the weather. Those names are checked. We know that
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  the destination of the rest of the fellowship is Gondor, and currently in Rohan, so it connects
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  the stories in that way, just subtly, ringing that particular bell.
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• 17:10
  And as it moves on, hope returns. We've got a nice description of the sky that underlines that,
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  the deep blue sky of evening, opened once more. And a few pallid stars appeared, like small white
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  holes in the canopy above the crescent moon. This ever presence of the stars is another very
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  important theme, which keeps being reiterated. Of course, we're moving towards the most important
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  of these, which comes later in the return of the king. But let's note it here as being a sign of,
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  yes, like the faint silvery light. There is that sense of beauty, which the Elven world
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  represents in Middle-Earth. If you're wondering about elves, it's about 45 inches. It was based on
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  45 inches is sort of like if you could pay out a rope, like stretch it out, folded over,
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  that was 45 inches was like a man's sort of natural width. It might even be
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  sort of from the top of the hand to the elbow. I was told that once, if you wrap it around
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  that, that's a sort of 45 inches. In the same way as a man's foot was often 12 inches like, you know,
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  the measurement of the foot. I haven't worked out what it is in centimeters, but we don't want to
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  put centimeters into Middle-Earth, do we? It's not the right measurement.
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  And we follow on with much more conversation between the two of them,
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  with Sam's colloquialisms coming through. And do note here, he's very assertive. He's not at all
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  obsequious. And I think there's very often a misunderstanding of modern readers of what a master
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  servant relationship was like. Certainly for Tolkien's generation, it wasn't,
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  it wasn't regarded as being a lesser role to be someone servant. And of course in a Christian
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  context, which is Tolkien's background, being a servant is to be like Jesus, so clearly dignified.
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  But if you think of other literary examples of master and servant, the Jews and the Worcester
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  in the comic vein, being someone servant doesn't mean that you're obsequious.
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  In fact, obsequious servants are usually given very poor press in literature over the time,
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  if you think of like Uriah heap in David Copperfield, for example. And I'm sure this is what
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  Tolkien felt about his relationship with the people who were his Batman or his valet in the trenches.
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  It was a partnership coming from different social strata, but we will see of course that Sam
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  rises up the society of middle earth in terms of his social standing through his role here.
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  And the other thing that the conversation does here is it does the scene setting very much like
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  dialogue in a play. They say what you need to know about the state of the moon and so on, they're
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  telling you this. And we also get here, I mentioned there's a few moments of comedy, the rope provides
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  one of the main ones, which is once they're both safely down this cliff that they've got down,
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  that they've descended. Sam regretfully gives a tug on the rope and it comes away. Sam
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  fell over and the long gray coil slidded silently down on top of him. It's very visual, you can see
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  it sort of just spiraling down. It has a personality of this rope and this encourages Sam to make a
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  connection between where they are now and his thoughts of home. Sam very often refers back to the
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  Shire. It's the touchstone for him, of course, as it is for Frodo, but Sam's references come from
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  there mainly. And he talks about his Uncle Andy, who had a rope walk at Tyfield. Now, rope walk
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  isn't something for acrobats, but that kind of rope walk. A rope walk was the name for a
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  rope making factory because in order to make ropes for the navy and others, you would have
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  these long lengths being twisted between various points and you'd walk along them, of course. It's a
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  long, long, you need long ropes. Tyfields, obviously, Ty, as I'm talking something fun with the
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  idea of tying things in this field, so there he is, threading it into his narrative in the names.
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  And I'm with Sam because Frodo's not worried too much about why the rope comes down, but Sam really
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  doesn't want either his rope rope skills, i.e. he's not tying all the elves or the rope to be offended.
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  He says, I think the rope came off itself when I called. So that finishes that idea of the rope being
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  like a little character. You would think that this would be the moment when they would have got
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  through this obstacle and right there on their way, they're going to reach the marshes, but no,
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  I'd forgotten this until I was reading it carefully because this isn't a chapter I often go
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  back to because of the confusion at the beginning. They immediately turn back by arriving at another
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  Fisher, another gully, and this is a frustration in the chapter. It doesn't perceive forwards,
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  or at least not yet, and they have to more or less go back to the point where they climb down.
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  But this is one of those backward movements that proves an advance because it's there
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  that they see golem approaching. There's a strange little exclamation from Sam here
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  when he's reacting to the sort of, you know, having to go back. And that's stakes and adders.
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  What I look, I think I've probably often read that in my, you know, skimming past as snakes and
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  ladders because that fits the idea that, you know, you might climb up a ladder, but you would come
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  slipping back down on as snake. It would fit with their scenario, but perhaps Tolkien felt that
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  mentioning that game was too present day, so snakes and adders, adders of course be a kind of snake.
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  It kind of produces a connection to the game without being taking us out of the frame of this
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  archaic world he's describing. Okay, so now we're on to the last section, which is the arrival of
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  golem. And this is where we get the first full glimpse of golem. We've seen him in the dark,
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  we've seen him in the river, but we haven't seen him close to in detail.
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  The companion to Lord of the Rings, which I've been using to help me as I've been doing this
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  read through the one by Hammond and Skull, has a fascinating little section on this about how
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  Tolkien was upset by the illustrations that kept coming back for the foreign language editions
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  of Lord of the Rings, in part because people were taking his comparison of golem to insects,
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  like spiders or frogs, very literally, when he's clear that they're like, they're like this, they
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  aren't a frog or a spider. And the description obviously is more of an emaciated,
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  ravaged, twisted, hobbit-like creature because he seems to be roughly the same height as the hobbits
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  themselves. Anyway, Frodo is the one who really gets golem because he says right from the start,
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  he's much more dangerous than he looks. So indeed, that is golem, isn't it?
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  Now, I think that looking at it from a writer's point of view, the most remarkable thing
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  Tolkien has done with this character and it's quite innovative. There were some characters who
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  are sort of divided against themselves in fantasy. I'm thinking back to some early 19th century novels.
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  You've got James Hock, confessions of a justified sinner, which I think is from 1824. And of
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  course, later, something that Tolkien definitely would have known is the Dr. Jacqueline, Mr. Hyde
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  story. But what Tolkien does here, which is fascinating, is that he combines those in two,
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  it's not the both of those characters of the split inside the pathality of golem smegel
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  of present at the same time talking to each other. And he does this primarily or almost entirely
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  through dialogue. It's not a mon, well, I suppose it's technically a monologue, isn't it,
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  but basically it's a dialogue. Anyone who's seen the films of the Andy Circus performance
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  will know exactly what I'm talking about. He flicks on a dime, but yet it's all in the Tolkien,
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  it's not a clever actor interpreting the text. Though it's that too, it's actually led by the author
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  in this case. And it's a real masterclass in how to characterize somebody in the way that they speak.
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  We are also given some physical clues as well. We're told that his voices are creaking and whistling
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  voice. There's lots of simple and S sounds. And we'll look at a moment at this sort of sentence
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  structure as well. So it's all there. It's very well crafted. And it reads out very well.
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  If you are listening to audio versions of this on your dog walks or whatever, one of the
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  things that's a delight of the Andy Circus red version of this is that you hear him do
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  the extended dialogue, all the golem bits in his golem voice. So this is a great chapter to
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  listen to in that version. One of the things to note from a writing point of view is that
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  it's very, golem knows exactly what he's doing. He, when he talks about himself, self-referential
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  and says precious with a lowercase P, he is talking about himself, loving himself, the precious
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  that is himself. When the speech has a capital P, my precious, then he's talking about the ring.
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  So next time you read it, do look out for that because it helps, well it makes it clearer. In fact,
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  what he's actually saying, once you notice the difference, but also it shows that golem has a very
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  clear delineation. The precious is an ex, I would say that he is an extension of the precious.
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  I was about to say the precious is an extension of him, but it's actually the other way around
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  that that's the the capital P precious and he is the sort of servant of it.
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  Also note that his thoughts are are stuck in obsessive circles. He repeats himself a lot,
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  thieves, thieves and so on and he often refers to the same grievances. He just goes round and round
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  and round. He is exhausted, he's a tired, broken record in terms of his inner monologue.
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  And his entry into the story is very vivid and I think perhaps this is one of the best visualisations
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  in this chapter. He's coming down the same rock face that the hobbit's climbed down and he's
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  coming down head first because he seems to be smelling the track. As he did so, he falls because he
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  reaches an undercut place where he can't cling on. As he did so, he curled his legs and arms up
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  round him like a spider whose descending thread is snapped. I can totally see that in my head. It's also
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  you know there is is it for for shattering maybe, but the idea of course he is also the spider's
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  servant which we will only find out in a few chapters. This takes us on to the key moment of this
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  book really, as in the two towers. It is the key moment when they decide what to do with golem.
• 30:29
  And after the tussle, when they restrain golem, we have some flashbacks and there's actually two of
• 30:38
  them. I hadn't noticed this until I read it this time. We've got Frodo remembering an entire
• 30:46
  conversation with Gandalf that happened on that morning in the shire long, long ago.
• 30:53
  And it's replayed. I don't think it's exactly word for word, but it's the gist or almost
• 30:59
  the entirety of that conversation slightly, slightly changed. It would be if you were remembering
• 31:05
  a conversation. And of course he is recalling that it Gandalf saying,
• 31:18
  when Bilbo met golem, it was pity that stayed his hand. And that's an absolutely key sentence in
• 31:27
  the whole book. And note here that pity is given a capital P. When Gandalf speaks of pity,
• 31:36
  it's like a powerful, almost religious concept. And you've got the cattle P pressure, which is evil
• 31:46
  and obsession and everything that's bad, consuming you, contrasted with the capital P pity,
• 31:56
  which is the characteristic of those who are good in this story. And we also get the very telling
• 32:04
  phrase that Frodo remembers, even the wise cannot see all ends. That goes back to what Frodo was
• 32:10
  saying about, is it good or ill? It's going to show me the way. And Frodo is standing there talking
• 32:20
  to the Gandalf who at this stage he thinks is dead. And he's finally replying to the question
• 32:30
  that Gandalf raised at that time. And he says, for now that I see him, I do pity him. And that
• 32:41
  quality in Frodo is what's going to save the world in terms of the middle earth world.
• 32:47
  I think this what follows here is what are the best dialogues in the story, in fact, one of the best
• 32:54
  dialogues in fantasy. And you've got Sam watching this balance, this struggle between Frodo and Gollum.
• 33:05
  The sort of questioning of why Gollum is there and so on. And you see that Frodo is no pushover.
• 33:13
  He is the officer in charge of this little scouting party that's out in the no man's land.
• 33:19
  And you get lots of little phrases that sum up Gollum's character. Because when he's trying to answer
• 33:27
  a question, he goes, yes, yes, no. That's him. He's torn. He can't give a straight answer.
• 33:34
  He wants to lie, but he can't quite. He's just fractured, broken.
• 33:41
  And after we've having seen Frodo refer to his past, we then get a little moment where Gollum
• 33:46
  is lost in his past, where he's reliving what seems to have been his torture. And Frodo understands this.
• 33:58
  And his response to seeing Gollum sort of have this flashback to these traumatic events is,
• 34:05
  but if you really wish to be free of him, that's Sauron. If you really wish to be free of him again,
• 34:11
  then you must help me. Gollum doesn't know what that means at this point.
• 34:17
  And Gollum's reaction is a sort of silent, truckulent, almost tarve-like refusal.
• 34:25
  And how we tell this is he breaks into little sentences, sort of, he's being rude in a way.
• 34:39
  Sneary. Always there. Orcs will take you all the way. Easy to find orcs. Easy to the river.
• 34:45
  Don't ask me, go. Poor poor smegel. He went away long ago. They took his precious and his lost now.
• 34:52
  At that poor poor smegel, he went away long ago, is truer than Gollum.
• 34:58
  Smegel knows, of course, he's lost himself when he found the ring.
• 35:04
  And Frodo's strength is actually most evident at this point, because he cuts through Gollum's rubbish.
• 35:15
  And he says, get up. Right, come on. It's the sort of cool to let's stop this.
• 35:20
  You're not going to pull the wool over my eyes.
• 35:25
  And this is where they put the rope on Gollum, and you get the, you know,
• 35:30
  the histrionics of Gollum wailing and whining.
• 35:33
  And one of the telling little details here is Frodo becomes convinced that
• 35:38
  Sam has been cruel and tied it too tight. And then you notice this or any checks. He finds that
• 35:44
  Sam had been gentler than his words. So Sam betrays himself in his actions, even though his
• 35:50
  words may on occasion be a bit, well, not exactly cruel, but certainly short tempered.
• 35:58
  And now they're going to talking about the rope. There's a lovely, the objection.
• 36:04
  The objection from Gollum is that elves twisted it. And that word twisted, of course,
• 36:08
  when we're reading that, we're thinking, well, yeah, you've been twisted. You've been twisted by
• 36:13
  Sarron. So you've got the twisted rope of the elves versus the twisted character, the body of
• 36:21
  poor old Gollum. And carrying on with this idea of Frodo actually being much stronger than perhaps
• 36:28
  the rather gentler, sweet young, a larger wood version of this is that when Gollum says he
• 36:36
  will swear on the ring, you've got Frodo saying, how dare you? How dare you say that? And we know
• 36:43
  that's a worrying sign because Frodo is getting under the power of the ring too. But he's not yet succumbed.
• 36:49
  He still knows himself. And he's doing this with stern pity. So pity isn't soft and soggy,
• 36:57
  it's stern. And this is where Sam as the external point of view is useful because in this
• 37:05
  standoff between the two, Gollum and Frodo. Sam is thinking that Frodo looks like a mighty lord
• 37:12
  who hid his brightness in grey cloud and at his feet a little whining dog. Yet, and that's
• 37:19
  his perhaps the interesting qualification here. Yet the two were in some way a kin and not alien,
• 37:26
  they could reach one another's minds. Sam knows his outside of this. Note that it's not till
• 37:34
  Sam has actually had the experience of wearing the ring right towards the end when he has his moment
• 37:39
  of pity with Gollum that he can fully sympathise. And Gollum makes his vow. And of course,
• 37:49
  if we're reading carefully, we will see that it's a dangerous one. I, so it's a unitary self,
• 37:57
  that's more often svegal who says that. I will serve the master of the precious. Who is the master of
• 38:04
  the precious? Obviously, that's the wiggle room he's left himself. And he flips into being friendly,
• 38:14
  and this is what Sam is thinking now, friendly and pitifully anxious to please, but that just sets
• 38:21
  Sam's teeth on edge even more. He distrusts him even more when he's trying to please, which I think
• 38:27
  is quite apparent. And of course, we will be getting that moment of almost salvation for Gollum coming
• 38:34
  up not too long after. So it's a fascinating chapter, perhaps not the easiest one to read because
• 38:42
  of the confusion of the landscape and the frustrations and the feeling that we're not going forwards,
• 38:48
  but circling, but actually we've made a huge step forward in terms of the real quest that's
• 38:52
  going on in a quest. And it ends as it started on an anonymous note. Over all the leagues of waste
• 39:00
  before the gates of Mordor, there was a black silence. And the next chapter will take us onto the
• 39:07
  dead marshes. So we'll see what happens to them then. Thank you very much for listening. And as I said,
• 39:15
  may seem a difficult chapter to read, but we are meeting one of those great characters in
• 39:20
  fancy literature, so it's worth battling our way through.
• 39:29
  Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast.
• 39:32
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• 39:39
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