Latest / Mythmakers / Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 11

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Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 1 Chapter 11 · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to Mythbakers. You're listening to The Sidecast, Lord of the Rings and
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  author's journey. And we have reached Chapter 11 in Fellowship of the Ring, the chapter
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  called A Life in the Dark. And leading you through it today is me and my name is Julia
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  Golding. I'm primarily an author and so I'm looking at it from the point of view of what
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  I see Tolkien doing as a fellow author in writing this book. So the beginning of this chapter
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  is quite unique. It's one of the first tie-ups in the interlaced structure of Lord of the Rings
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  interlaced by that I mean, you cut back to other activity that's happening, sort of almost
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  concurrently with what you're following in the main thread of the story. And very unusually,
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  the cutaway here is back to the Shire, back to Borold Fatty Bulger in Crick Hollow. And I
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  can't think of anything else similar in the book. Well, we'll be looking for them as we
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  go along. But this is the only one that I could think of where we go to a character not actually
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  involved in the main fellowship, the main thrust of the story. I suppose there is an exception,
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  actually. I've just thought about that. The story towards the end of Farahmeer and Airwin also
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  gets its own moment. But that seems to be appropriately, you know, end matters. But anyway,
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  this cutaway is very unusual. How does it work in terms of whose point of view it is?
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  So you remember we were talking about how the conceit is that this is actually the work of the
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  Hobbits, the Lord of the Rings, primarily by Frodo but supplemented by the recollections of his
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  friends. So one could imagine that he has picked up this story from Fatty when he came home.
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  But what's special about it is it's written like a thriller. Just have a look at it, just read it
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  carefully. We don't know that Fatty has escaped when the Black Riders break into the House of
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  Crick Hollow. It's a very good stylistic lesson in suspense if you want to see how to write
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  suspense. The Black Riders burst in and then are thwarted because Fatty has run away and they're
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  just left with an empty cloak. There's a wonderful evocation of atmosphere just before they
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  break in. You've got the cock crowing, which to me reminded me of things like Peter's portrayal
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  in the story of the passion in the Bible. But there's sort of an idea of that lonely voice
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  of the cock crowing before the change in mood, the arrival of the dawn, this cock is crowing still
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  in the night. And there's this wonderful sentence which goes in the dark without moon or stars,
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  a drawn blade gleamed as if a chill light had been unsheathed. So he focuses on the weapon there,
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  a drawn blade gleamed. We don't need the rest of it and we can imagine the Black Riders holding
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  it. He focuses on the weapon and the threat that it poses. And of course it's a thing that catches
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  the light, the thing that can be seen. The Black Riders here, there are a small subset of the Black
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  Riders because they've split up at this point. Note how they're upping their game as it were
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  because they actually do physical harm to the structure. They break down the door and they also
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  declare Mordor openly, openly in the name of Mordor. So it's, there's a shift here in the sense
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  that they are getting more and more dangerous, which we'll see is fulfilled by the end of this
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  chapter. Their attack is broken up by the horns of Buckland and the use of horns is always seen
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  as a positive change, almost always. I think there are some horns that come along with the
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  the orc army later, but in this case these kind of horns are seen as the good men and women
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  getting ready to defend their homeland. We get this of course again wonderfully at Minnes Tirith
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  the rival of the Rahirim and their horns signals the change in the course of the battle.
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  And then again an echo of this when Mary returns with the other hobbits and he has been given a
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  horn and he uses it to rouse the shire. So there's that little horn echo all the way through the
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  story, which is part of the beautiful theme themes. It's like a motif in music, almost as if
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  Tolkien is hearing the horns play in the background here. I would just like to do hats off here to
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  fatty who is told to have run over a mile at this point. That is pretty impressive fatty.
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  And we also get another little glimpse back into the past of the shire because we get
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  a mention that such a drastic attack hadn't happened for over 100 years, not since the white
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  walls came in the fell winter when the brandy wine was frozen over. So there's a history here of
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  the doings of the shire folk, which is snuck in at this point. And that's part of weaving
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  the very very similitude of the world of middle earth. We feel that we can go back and still
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  find out more about it. So turning to look at the shire was unusual, but we also get a really
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  rare dip into the minds of the enemy here. So following the conceit that Frodo is one writing, he
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  is projecting this. I'm not so sure actually when Tolkien was writing the book at this stage if he
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  was that tidy in the when he thought about things, that was maybe a later idea which he worked
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  back through. So his narrator does move around more. It's certainly in the early parts of Lord
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  of the Rings. But anyway, we glimpse into the mind of the enemy, let the little people blow,
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  Saron would deal with them later. And then we get the turning point here where we go from this
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  incident where the black riders are thwarted, Frodo has left, Frodo is gone. And we turn back
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  to Frodo and Strider in the francing pony. It's quite a cinematic moment, it's like a cinematic cut.
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  And we find Strider sitting guard. And there is a connection to what is happening because Frodo
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  feels he hears the horn and the cock crowing. The cock could of course be in British, but the horn
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  seemed like an echo on some kind of spiritual level between him and the events in the Shire.
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  It's the way of connecting Frodo to the cutaway that we've just been seeing. It's almost as if
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  it could have been a dream from him, but Tolkien doesn't go as far as suggesting that he's
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  sort of seeing it in some kind of clairvoyant way. It's much more of a
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  carrying on the theme into the next paragraph. And of course, we have a very similar thing
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  happening in Brie. There's a coordinated attack by the black riders. And fortunately,
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  because they haven't gone to their bedrooms, they do not get injured at all and they hardly know
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  it's happening. It kind of happens in the dark and is less scary as a result. Why duck the
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  opportunity? In the film version, Strider is talking about them as you see them go into the bedrooms.
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  That isn't the way it's handled here. It's partly because the big attack comes at the end of
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  this chapter and you don't want to shoot that bolt too early, so you hold that back and wait
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  for later. It's fun here that we actually get the aftermath of the attack through
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  Barlim and Butterbur's reaction, and it's another opportunity for showing how his character works.
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  We get his character priorities, which he puts it this way. Guests are unable to sleep in their beds
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  and good bolsters ruined an all. So he's worried about what it's cost him as well as the disturbance
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  to his guests. Anyway, the result of all of this, of course, is that they're frustrated out of
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  their early starts and the Hobbits agree that they have to carry more because their ponies are also
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  fled in the night and Mary does find some silver lining in this, which is that they have time for
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  breakfast. It's always nice to have this turn back to those appetites of the Hobbits, the grounding
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  that they give to this epic heroic tale. It's even from their point of view, you also have to remember
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  breakfast. I'm fascinated by the little insight we get here into the exchange rate of
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  middle earth. There's very little on yet economics of the place, but they seem to use a currency
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  of silver pennies, and 30 is regarded as sufficient compensation for the loss of the ponies.
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  And there's a little paragraph here which then projects forward saying what happens to the horses.
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  They go to join Fati Lumpkin, who is Tom Bombardill's pony, and then sent back to work in Bri.
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  And I wonder why it was there, and my suspicion is that this is there to snip off the trailing end.
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  So if this was being told to his family, as it and to those around him,
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  reading it to the inklings, it's the answer to what happened to the ponies.
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  Snip that off so people don't wander about it. There's a useful summary, which Tolkien's
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  very good at this. There's another sort of summary element that he also does in this chapter.
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  But the one I'm thinking of is in my addition on page 192, where we get a recap of all that's
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  just happened. So if we've been darting away back to the Shire and then we're coming back to
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  Bri, there's a summary here of everything that's happened overnight. Frodo's vanishing trick,
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  the appearance of the black horseman, the robbing of the stables, and not least the news that
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  Strider the Ranger had joined the mysterious hobbits, made such a tale as was last for many
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  uneventful years. It's a good way of just getting us back on track in terms of storytelling.
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  Then they do set off with poor old Bill, who is the half-starved pony, who is sold to them for
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  exorbitant amount of pennies by the mysteriously mean Bill Furny. And as they go, there's this little
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  interaction with Bill Furny, which is similar to the kind of interactions that Sam has with
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  the miller's son back in the Shire. And Sam seems to be the one that's picked on again,
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  because Bill Furny, who has taken the trouble to learn their names, he shows his disrespect for them
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  by giving them disparaging nicknames. He calls Strider, stick at Nort Strider. And Sam, who is actually
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  called Sam Wise, he gives him the diminutive Sammy, which immediately sort of patronises him.
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  And Sam shows his marksman skill by nailing him on the nose with an apple, and he has that sort
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  of greater side of waste of a good apple. And this is the moment where they shake off
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  these kind of semi-comic characters. Bill Furny isn't a threat. He is a threat in the sense that
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  he is passing news about them, but he is not a serious threat. And this is the last time
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  we see this level of character, and off they go into the world with Strider.
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  We're immediately back into a world of very precise geolocations. We know there's a description
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  again of exactly where Archit and Kuhm and all the villages around Bri lie. And behind it,
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  you can hear the echo of the voice of Strider telling them. To their left they could see some of the
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  houses and hobbit holes of Staddle on the gentler south eastern slopes of the hill. Down in a deep
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  hollow away north of the road, there were wisps of rising smoke that showed where Kuhm lay.
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  Archit was hidden in the trees beyond. So there's a sense here that they don't know this
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  precisely without Strider. So you can hear Strider almost being the tour guide telling them
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  where it is. And that use of, it's almost in direct speech, the echo of the voice of a character
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  is a very fine way to write. You get it a lot in Jane Austen by the way, if you look at Jane Austen
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  full of these moments. But it also helps us get a sense of yes, we're off again, we're in a real
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  landscape and we're going. Strider displays that he is the professional by the great comeback
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  to Pippin. My cart short or long don't go wrong. He has confidence and we feel as though they're
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  on a much more sound footing for their journeys, because if you think what they've done so far,
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  they've been going from one disaster to another. So we get the impression that even if the going
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  is tough, they are with someone who knows what he's doing. I don't know what you think about the
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  marshes here. I think they're wonderful. It was brilliantly evoking just how uncomfortable it
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  can be to walk even in fairly mild landscapes. This isn't the the snowstorm of Kaira Drassor
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  or anything like that. They're not getting sucked down into a bog in some dramatic fashion. They're
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  just getting eaten and live by midges. And anybody who has come to the UK particularly to Scotland
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  in the summer knows what midges are. They're tiny little blackflies that leave a nasty bite.
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  So there are certain times of year to avoid walking in Scotland, for example, in certain places.
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  And there's wonderful evocation of just how miserable it is to be in this kind of landscape.
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  They spend a miserable day in this lonely and unpleasant country. Their camping place was
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  damp, cold and uncomfortable, and the biting insects were not let them sleep. There were also
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  abominable creatures haunting the reeds and tussocks that from the sound of them were evil
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  relatives of the cricket. So horrible, uncomfortable, and they are actually suffering here.
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  But it's also toughening them up. We see later that they're tightening their belts,
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  they're literally, is it like they're training wheels for the longer journey to come? That
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  that sort of series of nights and days making their way through midwater marshes.
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  The section break has a wonderful evocation of strider. And we get this again. We had him
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  keeping watch at the inn, Frodo woke up and saw him, and again he's doing the same thing here.
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  Frodo lay down again, but for a long while he could still see the white flashes,
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  and against them the tall, dark figure of strider, standing silent and watchful.
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  So with Frodo's strider here is watching the light flashing on weather top,
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  which connects this moment, another bit of the interlacing here, to what is happening in
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  Gandalf's story, which we find out a little bit later in this chapter. But that image of strider
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  standing almost like a statue, I think it makes him feel mythic. You know, he is heroic. He's in
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  that register. The hobbits are worrying about being eaten by midges and losing good apples,
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  but strider is the one who is standing watch getting on with the serious business of guiding them.
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  He also has some sage advice for them. He says to them when they're feeling how hostile the landscape
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  is, not all the birds are to be trusted, and they're other spies more evil than they are.
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  There's actually a line pretty much the same as this in line in the Witch and the Wardrobe,
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  where Mr Beaver tells them that all the birds are to be trusted. That's may have been a echo
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  that CS Lewis picked up, but it could also be of course from just the fact that during wartime,
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  when this section was written, everywhere they went, there were posters saying,
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  Careless talk costs lives. The sense that you were being spied upon, there might be a German
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  informant hidden somewhere behind you. So it's here in terms of
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  birds and other animals keeping watch, but you can see the idea of the invigilation that they
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  felt under during the war. So I mentioned that strider is mythic, but he's not Superman.
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  I like the fact that he isn't quite sure. He never says, oh absolutely, I know what we got to do.
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  He asks their opinion. He admits when he isn't quite sure which is the best way to go.
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  And there's a wonderful evocation of mood in these sections. I particularly love about these
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  sections. I don't know about you, but I love the bits which haven't been treated by films,
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  because when I come across them, I feel they're still mine, or hours. But there's in this passage
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  when they're going along the hills, just having got out of Mitchwater marsh to approach weather top
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  from an unexpected direction. And there's this wonderful passage about the landscape that in,
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  a few melancholy birds were piping and wailing until the round red sun sank slowly
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  into the western shadows, then an empty silence fell. And it prompts all the hobbits to think of
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  home. But just have a look at that passage, because Tolkien is immersed in Anglo-Saxon poetry
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  and the rhyming scheme of that older verse, which isn't end rhymes. I'm a poet and I didn't know
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  it, not the end rhyme idea. It is the eliteration, which is the first sound of a word. So I'll read
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  that again and listen for the R sound and the S sound that make this one sentence pretty much
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  a little poem. A few melancholy birds were piping and wailing until all the round red sun sank slowly
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  into the western shadows, then an empty silence fell. So if you're wondering why you react so
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  strongly to Tolkien's story, not just on a level of the plot and the excitement of that and the
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  values, I think there's also a poetry under the prose that we all are responding to. His nature
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  writing, I'm going to keep on saying this, his nature writing is amongst the best. So we've seen
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  the hobbits have had to struggle through their training wheels, they're not even training wheels,
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  it's more like some awful entry to the military type assault course that they've been on,
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  going through the ritual water marshes and they're talking about having to tighten their belts
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  because they're not eating as much and they're doing a lot more walking and Frodo makes the quip
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  about one day, you know, he might turn into a race which strider clamps down very quickly. He
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  doesn't want even the mention of such things because he knows far more than they do at this stage
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  that that is a real possibility, that is the big threat and it comes out more explicitly later.
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  The big threat to Frodo is that he will become a less powerful version of the ring raids themselves.
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  So we are approaching Weathertop now, which is one of our way markers in this story, but they come
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  along the west of the ridge, the hobbits could see what looked to be the remains of green grown
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  walls and dikes and in the cliffs they're still stood the ruins of old works of stone. Again,
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  lots of s's making that almost like poetry, but what I wanted to point out here is just how familiar
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  this landscape is to people in the UK. In England I live near the downs, which is a long line of hills,
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  not dissimilar to Weathertop. And you can see Roman ruins, you can see Anglo-Saxon remains,
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  Iron Age remains, dikes, ditches, all these things are there, but they're obviously more famous
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  places like offers dike, which is one of the old fortifications between England and Wales
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  and Hadrian's War, but by the Romans. So it feels like a real landscape and a landscape that has
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  been lived in by many generations of people going back into the mists of time.
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  So as they approach Weathertop, this is an opportunity for Mary to ask more of the treasure trove
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  of law that clearly Aragon has. But the surprise here is the answer doesn't come from
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  Strider, but Sam, who continually surprises us in this story, he comes up with the wonderful
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  Gilgalad song, which he says Bilbo talked to him and Aragon says Bilbo must have translated it
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  from a much longer lay the fall of Gilgalad. Now this is one of my favourite bits of Tolkien poetry,
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  and it's beautiful when sang. If you want to find a really good version of this,
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  I would highly recommend listening to the BBC Radio Drama version of it, where the actor Bill Nye,
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  young Bill Nye sings it, it's absolutely wonderful, and I often sing it myself because it's so brilliant.
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  And there's an evocation of Gilgalad who if you've been watching the rings of power, he is the
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  high king in that story in the second age. And again, Strider doesn't want mention of dark subjects,
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  so he sort of turns away, he says Sam stops telling, so I didn't learn the stuff in Mordor,
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  and Strider basically says yes, that is the wrong thing for us to talk about. Do not speak
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  that name so loudly. So like Voldemort in Harry Potter, we don't want to go round shouting Mordor
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  because it brings Mordor down upon us. So they separate for setting up camp when they reach
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  the base of weather top. And it's just Frodo, Mary and Aragorn who go up the hill. That's actually
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  a fairly unusual combination because normally Sam is inseparable from Frodo, but I think this is a
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  sign of them being still here, a bit like a lami troupe. Sam is the valet, the servant, who would
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  set up the, you know, put the kettle on, basically. Pippin is the junior, and Mary is, as we saw
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  earlier on, he's, I think got slightly more responsible role, so he's like the assistant to Frodo,
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  Aragorn is their guide. Anyway, that's what I feel is going on here, up they go to Reconoiter,
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  and we get the connection back to the lightning flashes that were mentioned a few paragraphs before,
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  a couple of pages before. And Aragorn puts together the fact that Gandalf probably stood there,
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  and it was the battle that they saw. There's also a moment here to do one of those
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  way marker things that he does. Remember, we had this in the Old Forest where they reached a high
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  point and they could see out beyond the Old Forest where they were going. This is another,
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  but we get here sketched in the road all the way to Rivendell, which is pretty much the rest of the
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  journey in this first book of Lord of the Rings. And Strider is telling us the reader and them
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  what lies ahead and how long it will take. And again, this is just one of those repetitions that
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  Tolkien does to keep us on track. When you've got a complicated epic journey like this, these
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  little moments where you recap without it feeling too boring, but necessary information keeps us
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  able to imagine the journey that lies ahead. And this is where Strider admits he's made a mistake
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  because he hears a cry and he thinks that he's been standing up there too long, but it also
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  gives them the opportunity to know that the enemy is approaching. What is interesting I can
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  notice, and I only noticed it on this read which I don't know how many times I've read Lord of the Rings,
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  but you can almost sense the approach of the Black Riders through the bitterness and cynicism
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  of Frodo who's normally not like this because he says a fortnight's of Frodo, a lot may happen in
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  that time. And it goes on into dip into his thoughts. He wished bitterly that his fortune had left him
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  in the quiet and beloved Shire. He stared down at the hateful road leading back westwards to his
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  home. It may be like there's like this malevolent cloud or influence that goes in front of the
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  Black Riders, and he's particularly susceptible to it. I don't know if that is intentional,
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  but it certainly makes the arrival of the Black Riders absolutely the right moment for them to come.
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  He's maybe he sensed them even before he sees them. So they retreat to the down and they
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  rejoin the others. Here we get, well I think it's the equivalent of a briefing. Strider admits his
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  mistake to the whole company about having stood up there too long, but he also explains the nature
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  of the enemy. He says, they themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast
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  shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys. At all times they smell the glad
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  of living things, desiring and hating it. So I think this is quite indicative of the way talking
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  thinks about the nature of evil. Evil is emptiness, evil is hunger, want and unsatisfied desire.
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  They're never going to be satisfied. They're always going to want an hunger and be empty,
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  because if you think of the opposites of all of those, fullness, satisfaction, happiness,
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  they're all the things that the good have. They're satisfied with enough. They don't want more.
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  The way they function is as a huge negative, which of course goes well with the fact that they're
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  like a blackness, the black shape within the blackness, even more darker than everything else
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  around them, which is how they're described as their approach. But considering that Strider is later
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  to reveal to be the king at this stage, we see that his relationship with the Hobbits has
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  settled down to an ease of exchange, because when he tells them the pretty dynast of the situation
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  they're in, Sam does get a sort of clap back on him. After Strider suggests that they light a
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  fire, which is a thing the riders do not love, may be muttered, Sam. He's also as good a way of
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  saying, here we are as I can think of bar shouting. So he's not there without thought,
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  his giving his own, hate me worth, is Sam. So here we get a fire night scene.
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  And it goes back to the song that Sam had sung about Gil Gallad, and around the fireside to distract
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  themselves from the fear and the terror of what's out there. Frodo begins to explain a little bit
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  about what he knows about Gil Gallad, and then Argonne stops him saying, that's not the right
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  tale for now. So he tells the tale, which is the closest to his heart. We know that
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  Argonne and Arwen see themselves of echoes of Baron and Luthian. We also know that this story
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  is the one that was dearest to Tolkien's heart, because he associated his wife with
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  Tnuviel and himself with Baron, so much so that that is the only words on their tunes,
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  up in the Warvercott Cemetery, Luthian and Baron. Frodo, mysterious for anyone who doesn't know
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  the Lord of the Rings, but beautiful for those of us who do. And he tells the story of Tnuviel and
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  Baron twice. First of all, he gives, I'm just counting here, one, two, three, four, five, six,
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  seven, eight, nine, nine verses of their first meeting. And this is based on an incident that
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  Tolkien remembered from the early days of his marriage to Edith when he was in the army and she
• 30:49
  was following him around when she could, when he was in camps or convalescing in different places
• 30:56
  in England. And they were out on a walk in the countryside near Hull, and she danced beneath what
• 31:07
  are called by Tolkien hemlock, but they're actually better known as Queen Nance Lace or Kalpasni,
• 31:14
  which are tall weeds. Basically, they grow in lots of woodlands, but have a beautiful white
• 31:22
  lacy flower. They can be really huge. Anyway, she dance quite spontaneously. Imagine this young girl
• 31:30
  in love, any marriage, you know, beautiful, lovely scene. And that kept as a moment in Tolkien's
• 31:38
  heart, and it's the heart of this story. And that is the scene he reads. God, not he reads,
• 31:47
  it's a scene that arrogant relates. So for example, here we go, their Baron came from the mountains
• 31:56
  cold and lost he wandered under leaves and where the Elven River rolled, he walked alone and
• 32:02
  sorrowing. He peered between the hemlocked leaves and saw in wonder flowers of gold upon her mantle
• 32:10
  and her sleeves and her hair like shadow following. So she's dancing in this sort of moodlet
• 32:18
  glade. So it's a beautiful story to tell the hobbits. They don't know at this point that
• 32:24
  it has a personal application for strider, but he pauses and tells them the song again in case
• 32:32
  they didn't get the references. And he's tells them in prose the same story. That's quite rare
• 32:40
  if you think about it because this story is not a part of the main action, but the fact that it's
• 32:45
  been told twice points out that we as readers should pay attention to it, think about the themes.
• 32:52
  So we get a brave couple, elf and men joined together to go and take a duel from the crown
• 33:01
  of Morgoth who is the big baddie before Sauron. So there are echoes of that in the what they're trying
• 33:11
  to do. They're doing the opposite. They're trying to get rid of a duel, but elves and men and
• 33:16
  dwarves and hobbits are banding together to defeat evil by taking a duel away permanently from
• 33:26
  the principle, you know, the powers of darkness in this world. But this also in terms of narrative,
• 33:32
  you can follow the Laura on this, go back into the Silmarillion and there's also a separate
• 33:38
  volume called Baron and Luthian. You can read this to your heart content, but what is it doing here?
• 33:45
  Are the one thing it's doing here is it's providing the brightest, most beautiful,
• 33:51
  most enchanted light as possible in that glade in the dark, a sort of starlit scene, which is just
• 34:01
  about to be contrasted with the darkest moment in the first part of this journey, an attack by Black
• 34:10
  Riders. So that contrast I think is important, it's why it's here. And after having heard this story
• 34:18
  and relishing it, there's a change in tone and mood as they break up to get ready to go to sleep,
• 34:27
  to stretch their legs. Frodo fills a cold dread and Sam and Mary who have wandered away
• 34:36
  from the campfire rush back and bring him reports, a bit like reporting to their commanding officer,
• 34:44
  the scouts have gone out and come back telling him that they feel this uncanny evil
• 34:52
  has is approaching. And it's they tell him he's still in charge of their little walking
• 34:58
  party there. And it's just as well they do want them because of course this is where we get
• 35:05
  the attack that we have been waiting for. Imagine how close this must have felt to the experience
• 35:10
  of being in the trenches where you knew you could be attacked at any time but you didn't know quite
• 35:15
  when it was happening. And then you get the little signs it was about to happen and then you get
• 35:20
  ready, stand ready to defend your position. It has that feel to it that they're in a sort of
• 35:24
  del which is a bit like a trench and they're waiting for the enemy to arrive. And when they do come,
• 35:33
  it is the squeeping slowness because first of all they're seen in the distance. So black were
• 35:39
  they that they seem like black holes in this deep shade behind them. And the hobbits all as they
• 35:48
  approach the hobbits are overcome with the terror of them. Pippin and Mary are literally overcome.
• 35:55
  Sam rushes to Frodo's side and Frodo has an even worse experience because he's dealing with a much
• 36:02
  bigger battle of having to resist their will to put on the ring and he described as he must put it on
• 36:11
  and he can't, poor Frodo, he can't battle it, he puts it on and then there's this transition here
• 36:19
  where we see for the first time what happens when the ring is put on in the presence of the evil
• 36:27
  that it represents. And it's like going into a negative of if you the setting, the filter setting
• 36:36
  where you put negative, black becomes white and white becomes black. And it's well worth reading
• 36:42
  how the black riders are described. He was able to see beneath their black wrappings.
• 36:49
  There were five tall figures, two standing on the lip of the del, three advancing in their white
• 36:56
  faces burned keen and merciless eyes. Under their mantles were long gray robes. Upon their gray hairs
• 37:03
  were helms of silver. In their haggard hands were swords of steel. Their eyes fell on him and pierced
• 37:11
  him as they rushed towards him. So their eyes pierced him even before the dagger does. And it's worth
• 37:20
  mentioning here that there is no prejudice here that black eagle was evil because in their
• 37:26
  tourist form the raves are white and gray. It's quite well done in the film version but I remember
• 37:34
  seeing it also in the cartoon version, which I don't particularly like the cartoon version but
• 37:40
  this bit in the cartoon is pretty well done. It lends itself to that graphic flip of the switch.
• 37:47
  Frodo is often seen as being quite passive and he does sort of disappear a lot towards the later
• 37:53
  part of the story because of the toll that the ring has taken on him. But here we do see his bravery.
• 38:01
  He is able to draw his sword to make a go at defending himself unlike the other hobbits who
• 38:08
  have sort of overcome. And he also finds the right words. Oh, El-Bareth Gil-Flauniel.
• 38:16
  What he's referring to here is the the father, the goddess who makes the stars. So it means
• 38:24
  the queen of the stars, the person who made the stars, but that is her title El-Bareth Gil-Flauniel.
• 38:31
  I'm even more importantly than appealing to starlight and the powers of good to drive away the
• 38:39
  darkness. He also takes off the ring. He doesn't hand it over, he clutches it in his hand.
• 38:47
  And another form of light is a thing which drives the black riders away because
• 38:51
  Strider at this point leaps him with firebrands and is able to force them back. Though unfortunately
• 39:00
  the job has been done because the chief of the black riders has managed to pierce Frodo's shoulder
• 39:07
  with his morgue or blade. And that leads into the next chapter.
• 39:37
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