Matt DeForrest
Active Member
I had to miss the last live session and have just caught up. I wanted to offer a thought about Sam’s reactions to Bree in this passage:
“He had imagined himself meeting giants taller than trees, and other creatures even more terrifying, some time or other in the course of his journey; but at the moment he was finding his first sight of Men and their tall houses quite enough, indeed too much for the dark end of a tiring day. He pictured black horses standing all saddled in the shadows of the inn-yard, and Black Riders peering out of dark upper windows.”
I think that the conversation about Sam and having sighted men can be addressed by the absence of two commas around “and their tall houses.” Sam’s sense of disquiet here, I would argue, has to do with the scale of the world of men rather than never having seen men. It isn’t his first sight of men. It is his first sight of “Men and their tall houses.”
I can’t recall who mentioned that this was akin to a country kid getting his first look at the big city. It is the scale of the big city here. When we go to a city, it is still proportional to us. Doors and windows, for example, are scaled for us even when they are big. In the case of Bree, the scale is much bigger — akin to Corey’s example of Jack encountering the world above the clouds after climbing the beanstalk.
To spell it out a little more, Sam has lived in a one-story world where the biggest building is probably a two story mill. The mill of his memory would roughly fit within a single story of the Prancing Pony. So, to him, the height of the Prancing Pony is somewhere between six and eight stories tall (including the foundation that requires the steps up and the roof space). That contrast in scale will make him feel much smaller, by comparison, than any of us would. A normal door for us would feel like the gate where three hobbits could enter at once.
That, I would argue, is why he imaginatively places the Black Riders in the upper windows, instead of peeking out from behind the curtains on the much more immediately threatening first floor. It creates a sense of the Prancing Pony looming over him, as the Black Rider tried to do to his father and Farmer Maggot.
“He had imagined himself meeting giants taller than trees, and other creatures even more terrifying, some time or other in the course of his journey; but at the moment he was finding his first sight of Men and their tall houses quite enough, indeed too much for the dark end of a tiring day. He pictured black horses standing all saddled in the shadows of the inn-yard, and Black Riders peering out of dark upper windows.”
I think that the conversation about Sam and having sighted men can be addressed by the absence of two commas around “and their tall houses.” Sam’s sense of disquiet here, I would argue, has to do with the scale of the world of men rather than never having seen men. It isn’t his first sight of men. It is his first sight of “Men and their tall houses.”
I can’t recall who mentioned that this was akin to a country kid getting his first look at the big city. It is the scale of the big city here. When we go to a city, it is still proportional to us. Doors and windows, for example, are scaled for us even when they are big. In the case of Bree, the scale is much bigger — akin to Corey’s example of Jack encountering the world above the clouds after climbing the beanstalk.
To spell it out a little more, Sam has lived in a one-story world where the biggest building is probably a two story mill. The mill of his memory would roughly fit within a single story of the Prancing Pony. So, to him, the height of the Prancing Pony is somewhere between six and eight stories tall (including the foundation that requires the steps up and the roof space). That contrast in scale will make him feel much smaller, by comparison, than any of us would. A normal door for us would feel like the gate where three hobbits could enter at once.
That, I would argue, is why he imaginatively places the Black Riders in the upper windows, instead of peeking out from behind the curtains on the much more immediately threatening first floor. It creates a sense of the Prancing Pony looming over him, as the Black Rider tried to do to his father and Farmer Maggot.