Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 12

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Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 12 · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre. For fantasy, my name is Julia Golding and
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  this is one of our sidecasts where we are taking an author's look at the writing of the
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  Lord of the Rings and we have reached chapter 12 in the Fellowship of the Ring which is
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  called Flight to the Ford. This actually comes at the end of the first book. Now the
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  first thing I notice when I come to this chapter is is extremely long and there's a sort
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  of aimlessness and difficulty and frustration in this chapter which reflects the experience
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  of the Hobbits and Strider trying to make their way to Rivendell after Frodo having been
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  attacked on weather top. I wonder too if there was a certain element of difficulty that
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  Tolkien was experiencing in writing this because it does feel labored and pained but also
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  entirely brilliant as a result because of the mnemetic effect of that difficulty making it
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  quieter a long chapter, difficult chapter to read so that you get an overview of what's going
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  on in this chapter. It starts with the immediate aftermath of the attack on weather top which
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  will look at in a second. Then there's a journey where Frodo is put on Bill and they keep taking
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  wrong turnings or can't find a path. It's uncertain that they're making good time and in the
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  right direction there's a ticking clock in this chapter which is the state of Frodo so they're
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  battling not only the black riders but also Frodo's condition so if you're thinking about it
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  in a righty way that's a good strategy for giving urgency to counteract the feeling that they're
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  going in the wrong direction. Then there's the one sign of hope which is finding the jewel on
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  the bridge, a sense that maybe someone else is out there to help them. Before they wander off into
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  the lands which bring them into connection with the troll story from the Hobbit so we get to
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  revisit to a famous incident in the previous novel. Then we meet Glorfindel, things seem to be
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  getting back on track and the end of the chapter speeds up hugely and then there's the very dramatic
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  action-packed scene at the end which gives the chapter its title, The Flight to the Ford.
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  I suppose that's four main bits isn't it? There's the initial aftermath of Frodo's injury,
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  there's the feeling, the frustrating journey, there's the troll episode and then there's
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  the flight to the Ford. Let's take those individually. One of the first things you notice about
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  the response to the weather top attack is that talking shows how fiction can do very easily
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  what is much harder for say a film to do which is have a section where the characters explain
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  how they experience the same event very differently. Whereas for the Hobbits, it was a very
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  the Hobbits aside from Frodo that is, it was confusion, they were cries in the dark, they weren't
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  short as happening. Frodo is the one who sees the pale kings, the race because he is in the
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  half world of the ring and of course Arrigorn is seeing it as the scene of combat because he's the
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  one who comes in with fire and drives them off. Many of you will have watched the films, of course,
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  I suspect, almost all of you and what a film can't do is break off very easily to show the different
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  points of view. So in the film, all of the Hobbits are equally threatened and they're cleared out
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  at the path until Frodo is the last man standing, falls over, gets stabbed, Arrigorn arrives.
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  So there isn't that confusion in the same way as there is in the narrative and that's because
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  the film in a way tidy things up because it's trying to give a clear description in celluloid
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  what's going on and the book is allowed to let the confusion, the fog of war, it
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  carry on existing, it's an experience of battle which no doubt Tolkien knew very well from his own
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  time on in the Great War. It's interesting here that if you remember we all have sort of
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  read the whole series, it's hard to go back to the innocent first reading and Sam in a way is
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  reflecting perhaps what we should be feeling which is a distrust of what exactly Strider is.
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  In this section what we see is Strider almost wooing Sam to trust him and he asks Sam
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  to help him as he tries to heal Frodo and he sort of confides in Sam. It's as though he recognizes
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  that Sam is the one responsible for looking after his master. It's an old-fashioned relationship,
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  the kind of thing you might get with a valet or a body man or as they would call it in the
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  military in the First World War. So that puts him in relationship to saying I've got to go through
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  Sam if I'm going to do something for Frodo and by recognising that is almost trying to persuade
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  Sam to trust him. There's some lovely features in this section. We've got the arrival of the Grey
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  Dawn which is the same point to which the knife melts and here these images of grainess
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  disappearance of the knife connects with the fact that Frodo is in serious peril of turning into
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  a race or going into the race world. That kind of disappearance grainess is fading is how his
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  jeopardy is described and we see Strider taking on a sort of even more authoritative tone than he
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  has to date with Frodo out of the picture to a certain degree because Frodo was the leader of the
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  Hobbits before this. He is taking over with a series of declarative statements and authority
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  and you also get a hint of what later is revealed as his kingship in the ability to heal.
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  So he finds the Atholass, Ting's foil, clues in the name and we are told that the men of the
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  West brought this to Middle-earth so we're getting a glimpse of his background, a hint,
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  very subtle which we can enjoy on a second reading, probably not notice on a first.
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  And then we get the description of the smell of the Atholass once it is broken down and sort of
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  turned into a Roman therapy moment. Shall we call it where it's sort of put in hot water and the
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  smell is released. Now there's a learning point here for all of us who are doing descriptions if
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  we're going to have a dominant sensory moment which isn't sight, it's very good to do it when
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  sight is excluded or dimmed. So in the grey light of dawn is the perfect time to do this and we get
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  as a result, as a reader, a much stronger impact of that steam and how it is described by those
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  who are feeling it, how it lightens their spirits. And it also connects to our own memories of
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  scent. Scent is one of those things which really mainlines it straight to
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  recreating experiences in our head. I've got various scents which immediately catapult me back to
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  places I've smelled the same thing like my primary school and you know those sorts of things.
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  The first place I worked in London, the scent does it in a way that a picture doesn't.
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  I think this is going on with scent and for Tolkien it might mean something like the use of
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  incense in church because as a Catholic he would be used to the burning of incense which has a
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  wonderful powerful slap in the face scent which associates with something holy, something healing,
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  something spiritual, sacramental. And I think all of these are wrapped up in the use of
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  Athelis. And of course this is one of our prefiguring events because this little moment of healing
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  then becomes a bigger moment in Gondor when he arrogant is brought in to heal those who have
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  fallen under the witch king. But that's coming later. What I like about this section
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  is the insight it gives us into Frodo in the film version because Elijah Wood was
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  painfully young when he was cast. Frodo always feels a bit like a sacrificial victim offered up
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  to carry the burdens of the grownups. This isn't at all the Frodo of the book. He is more of an
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  officer class. He is in his fifties so he's a fully mature hobbit and he's also far more active
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  in the story because we are inside his point of view certainly in this first novel we are.
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  And I like the fact that he is full of self-recrimination. He's not a victim here. He feels he
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  participated in his own downfall however overwhelming the odds were. And the sentence go he bitterly
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  regretted his foolishness and reproached himself for weakness of will. For he now perceived that
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  in putting on the ring he obeyed not his own desire but the commanding wish of his enemies.
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  Feels a bit like the Lord's Prayer lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. He was
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  tempted and he didn't escape. And that's a key thing. He isn't a saintly figure Frodo. He is
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  flawed though he does resist far better than many other people would do and that point is also
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  made. He himself is aware of his own failures which is why he is such a great character and why
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  he truly is a hero. It's not an easy job that he is doing. So a little bit of lightness takes over
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  from this dark moment of Frodo's injury. We see Bill comes into his own. His unloaded Frodo is
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  able to sit on him and the things that he was carrying are redistributed around the rest of the
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  company. And I love the fact that you've got these values that keep coming up. So Sam shows pity
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  to Bill helps nurture him feed him up and that pity and care and concern is rewarded by Bill
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  being able to carry his master for him. And that theme of taking pity on someone who is of
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  some thing, some creature is of course repeated in the story of Gollum which is absolutely pivotal
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  to the eventual success of the quest. So we set off for this frustrating series of paragraphs
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  about walking through a cheerlist land where you are not sure exactly where you were going.
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  And it is all summed up at the end after four days of pass by a description of the times when
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  there rests the night scene and it's a quintessentially Tolkienian sentence. They dreaded the dark
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  hours and kept watch in pairs by night, expecting at any time to see black shapes stalking in the
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  grey night dimly lit by the cloud-veiled moon but they saw nothing and heard no sound but the
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  sigh of withered leaves and grass. So you've got the sense of darkness, cloud-veiled moon,
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  the grey night being stalked by black shapes and then inability to see their way forward
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  and almost being soundless except for the sighing of withered leaves and grass. And there's a
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  reflection of how they feel in that landscape, particularly Frodo's state of mind because we are
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  told that he feels he's in us at half-world, a half-existence, a grey existence, he feels withered,
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  fading. So the world around them is reflecting what Frodo is experiencing.
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  So and of course the threat here of the black shapes being the dark, the black riders
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  following them keeps the sense of peril going. In this context, the one point of clarity is strider.
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  So he is their geographical guide and he's description of exactly where they are
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  even though he feels a bit lost and doesn't know quite the trail, he knows where they are.
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  He just doesn't know how to get from A to B without being caught. And his description is so good
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  that this is exactly the point where you will turn to Tolkien's maps and realise what
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  realised world this is because you can chart exactly where they are on his maps.
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  It feels almost as though having read this you could get out an ordnance survey map
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  which is in the UK it's our sort of detailed map and plot exactly where they are.
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  And after having this sort of map moment we carry on in the
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  difficultness of the journey Frodo is fading, the hobbits are suffering and the black riders
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  are stalking them. But even so we get another bright spot. This is what Tolkien does even in those
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  dreadful passages in Mordor. There is moments where they find like a little stream of water or
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  something to lighten that darkness or see a star in the sky. Here the hope is very tangible.
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  They come across a jewel, a single pale green jewel that has been left in the roadway to mark
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  that the bridge is safe to cross. Arrogant takes that as a clear sign. We're told it's an elf stone
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  barrel and we know from what we get to know I should say and what
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  Arrogant here already knows is that elf stones don't just drop by chance. You remember when
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  Pippin leaves his brooch in the mud in the passage when he and Mary are carried off by the
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  orcs in Rohan and Legolas, Gimli and Arrogant are following. Arrogant sees the brooch and says
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  not idly to the leaves of lorian form. So we know that these things are left on purpose and he takes
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  it as a sign that there is help potentially on the way. So from the cheerless lands of the
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  pre elf stone moment we go into threatening ununfriendly lands and this is again a mimesis, a sort
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  of echo of the fact that Frodo is getting progressively ill and it's noticeable here. There are a clever
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  set of hints because Frodo's thoughts go to Bilbo's journey from the Hobbit and we get lots of
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  little hints of what's about to happen. And Strider also gives us a bigger historical view so
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  whereas Frodo is thinking of fairly recent history in Bilbo, Strider gives a brief recap of the
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  history of Angmar and the end of the northern kingdom which those of you who know will know
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  his kingdom potentially and this is an example of the vistas that we don't get explained that Tolkien
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  felt was the source of the power of his story. The you always want to not know every story,
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  it's got to be disappearing horizons and certainly until the publishing of the third volume
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  and much later the summer really and these were not explained these references. So the first
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  lot of people reading this will just be had these wonderful hints when they don't know exactly
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  what's going on. And Pippin who is of course the youngest of the Hobbits of the shortest
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  attention span and life span is the one who's saying oh how on earth do people remember all of this?
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  The Shire itself is a relatively new place but for Pippin the Shire is basically there
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  what history is about. It's a bit similar to say like an American feeling that America's history
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  begins with the Pilgrim fathers and things before that didn't really exist, it's a bit similar to
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  that. And it's Aragorn who has the longer view here where he says that the heirs of a lendil
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  remember hint hint and also that Rivendell where Elrond lives which of course is an Elven kingdom
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  has a much longer memory than someone like a Hobbit would do. And there's also a hint here to
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  the future romance. It's not a romance in the sense of romantic love, Lord of the Rings but he
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  does mention that Rivendell is where his heart is so a little nod to Arwen one imagines though we
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  could also say it's where he feels at home. We go to from having had a cheerless land threatening
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  and unfriendly land we then get wetness and difficulty is raining they're feeling super miserable
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  and if you're going to be doing a chapter which is dangerously well backtracking and struggling
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  changing what that struggle is helps because it helps the reader organize it in their head
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  otherwise they may give up and put the book down. And Strider here is also suffering but of course
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  he's the most stoic of them but he isn't superhuman and he is aware that he's made mistakes he's
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  worried that they've wandered into troll country. Another hint remember Frodo is thinking about
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  Bilbo's journey we know what's coming well this foreshadowing but what's important about what he's
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  saying here is how he concludes his worries about his own mistakes is he says do not give up hope
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  Sam do not give up hope and in a way that one line sums up the message throughout Lord of the Rings
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  if you're fighting the long to feet if the elves are going to leave if we're moving from a golden
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  age into a less glorious future do not give up hope and and that is really what Strider
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  arrogant stands for it's the return of hope and now we have the bit which connects the journey
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  in the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings if you know anything about the writing of the Hobbit you'll
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  know that it was originally conceived as not being part of middle earth but was gradually folded
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  in as time went on and revised so that the journey that Bilbo goes on which was in an undefined
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  landscape as regards the legendarium material that Tolkien was already devising it's now firmly
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  fixed onto the same pretty much the same path that Frodo is taking to Rivendell and there's a pleasure
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  here of just we all might tweak at different points and I think that that is really fun for
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  Tolkien to consider when do they guess that I'm going to do this when is my reader going to
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  realize and there's plenty of hints so they've come across a path and Pippin says strong arms and
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  heavy feet made it okay that's a hint and then they come across an empty troll hole and at this
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  point Frodo says nothing so if he I think is a hint here that he and Strider are ahead of the game
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  from the others and then of course they come across the statues of the or the stone trolls
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  who were the ones who stopped Bilbo and the dwarves and were contemplating eating them
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  until they were turned to stone by the dawn in one of the sort of early adventures in the Hobbit
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  and Frodo laughs here such a relief to find Frodo laughing after all of his suffering and he says
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  we are forgetting our family history so after the darkness the difficulty the wetness the
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  rain all of those frustrations we are in a way back on familiar paths and things begin to speed up
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  because and cheer up for a bit and they're they feel well enough to have one of
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  their breaks for poetry where Sam sings what is one of Tolkien's recycle poems so Tolkien would
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  write poems as a bit of fun and when he came to a part in the novel where he needed a song
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  he would go to his poetry books and convert it into a middle-earth appropriate song and put it
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  in so if you look at his collected poems monumental task has been done in the three volume
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  collection of his poems you can trace the evolution of this poem from one that did sort of have
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  references to more modern folkloric elements to something which fits which loses those
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  frame-breaking you know take us out of middle-earth to more modern setting loses all that and becomes part
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  of the world of this period of the ring and Sam is the one who is given the authorship of it
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  I think there's a suggestion here that Sam represents the troll Tolkien talking when he's in his
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  comic verse vein and Frodo says about Sam that he has gone from being a conspirator to a gestor
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  and maybe he will become a wizard and a warrior which in a sense certainly a warrior he does get to be
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  we also have some answers here we learn from Frodo what became of the treasure that Bilbo had
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  Frodo said he gave it all away because he didn't feel it belonged to him
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  and do you remember that right early on when Bilbo leaves he becomes a folkloric figure of
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  mad baggins who pops back in with carrying bundles of treasure um there is a sense how
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  Bilbo that image of Bilbo has separated from the real Bilbo the real Bilbo what real Bilbo was one
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  of social conscience let me say charitable Bilbo as opposed to the comic folkloric figure that he
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  becomes in the shire so the trolls are a happy cheering incident and it's a longer section here than
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  the way it's portrayed in the film in the film they didn't want to lose the tension and so Frodo
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  only sees it in a kind of fever dream here it's actually much more enjoyed myself indulgent in a way
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  episode they get back on the road and they hear hooves and bells this is reminiscent of how
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  Tolkien started writing the whole novel because in the first attempt when the the hobbits
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  were setting off on their journey they heard hooves and bells on the road and it was going to be
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  Gandalf but he changed that and turned it into a black rider here we've got the same connection of
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  hooves and bells but we have it being Glothindel who is one of the great elf lords now he got cut
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  from the film version so it's great fun if you want to find fresh pastures to dig a little bit into
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  this character because he has a long history you can trace him through the extra material and it's a
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  high elf and so that means he's one of the lineage like Galadriel who are of a more noble nature
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  rather than the woodland elves and the silver elves the description here is borrowed for how Armin
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  first appears in the film so Glothindel to Frodo it appeared that a white light was shining through
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  the form and raiment of the rider as though through a thin veil so the elves have or the
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  pice of the elves have this almost spiritual presence and the description the conversation that
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  then follows we see the interlacing of the plot that the reason Glothindel is there isn't because
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  Gandalf has arrived but because Gildor sent word now Gildor those of you who are keeping up
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  Gildor is the elf who they met in the woods of the Shire and he actually turns out to be
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  one of the dominoes that sets a whole row of dominoes going because people know to look out
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  for Frodo the good guys no to look out for him so it makes that seemingly isolated
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  episode actually is lacing its way through to have the result that Gildor's arrival isn't
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  coincidence but intentional you don't want to put too many coincidences in a novel because it
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  means that it doesn't feel earned whereas this feels like an earned arrival Glothindel
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  like arrogant also has healing skills and here things begin to speed up Frodo is put on the horse
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  and the elf horse that is poor old Bill gets a break and then we have one of the cordials
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  one of the special magic foods remember the elves in the woods of the Shire also had special food
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  we get the sort of drink this flask pass round which has a sort of pepping up power to it
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  and then we get to the last section of this chapter so just recapping we've had the aftermath
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  of the attack we've had the difficult journey we've had the troll interlude and now we are getting
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  the full scale gallop to the forwards of Bruinin and it's a sudden burst of activity
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  what I like about the way this is described by Tolkien in preference to the Peter Jackson film
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  is that Frodo is active in the Peter Jackson film he's basically where he's a not even a
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  Elijah Wood he's like a little stuffed puppet sitting on Arwin's lap and you can kind of tell that
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  he's out of it and it's Arwin who's the hero in the film here it's Frodo so he doesn't want to ride
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  off and leave his friends but Glothindel gives one of our wonderful lines of Elvish with
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  always love this one Nora Lim Nora Lim Ashvaloth so off he goes the horse carrying Frodo away
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  and Frodo is still present he's still active but he's also half in the world of the race even though
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  he hasn't got the ring on he's near the end of his strength because of the wound in his shoulder
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  and he writes or Tolkien writes he could see them clearly now roved in white and grey
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  and we have on in this section a wonderfully hair-breaths escape where there's short sentences
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  he feels rather than sees the presence of those chasing him it's literally just getting out in
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  front of the nose of the lead horse very very exciting wonderful piece of writing if you want to
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  find out how to write a chase have a look at this section and then you get a moment of stillness
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  where he gets into the river and he knows that he cannot escape them if they cross then he that's it
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  and so he defies them and he says go back and he names Elbreth and Lothian the Fair
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  it's wonderful that in this world of mainly masculine heroes that actually the most powerful names
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  are feminine Elbreth is a female one god valar and Lothian of course is the Lothian that
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  embeddened the elf maiden who confronts more Goth or Melkor the original bad presence prior to
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  Saron the darkest of all dark lords and it's female beauty that he puts up against the darkness of
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  the black male black riders and then there's the intervention of the release of the spell
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  which brings the waters down on the black riders and it's fitting that because we've had Frodo
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  hanging on he barely sees what's happening and then he passes out so it ends with him hearing and
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  seeing no more but he does glimpse the boulders and the white horses white horses black riders
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  so there's the one he sees it in a dream like confusion but we get the sense of power but also
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  because it's the end of the first book it is a cliffhanger he's unconscious has he survived
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  has he been swept away we don't know because that's where the chapter ends and it's one of the strongest
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  chapter ends in Lord of the Rings because it's also fittingly the end of the first book
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