The influence of Bilbo in Rivendell by the Ring was over time, not over the distance to the Shire.
The Ring is in Bilbo’s head after he possessed it for so long, and it doesn’t need to affect him directly to still have power over him. It worked slow on Bilbo, but it still worked.
The damage that the Ring does to Bilbo and Frodo is permanent, even after the Ring is destroyed. This is why they must pass into the West to be healed.
This looks like the direct influence of the Ring and what happens in the presence of the Ring, but in Bilbo’s case he is not in direct contact with the Ring, which says something about Bilbo’s state.
What this may mean is that the proximity of the Ring is not necessary to its temptations. This raises the question as to how active the Ring is being in all of these temptations.
Note: Some readers think of the influence of the Ring as either consciously acting through a type of telepathy, or passively like a piece of radioactive material, but these depend on proximity. Bilbo’s temptation at a distance is a piece of counterevidence against these ideas. In the Council, it will be speculated that the Ring can still influence from the bottom of the Sea, and Saruman is corrupted by desire for the Ring even though he has never been in its presence.
It’s also important that Bilbo resisted this temptation, even in the presence of the Ring. Though he has shown a moment of weakness in asking to see the Ring, he recoils from it in the end.
Bilbo recapitulates and confirms his decision to leave the Ring behind in this moment, and in a way, he solidifies it for good.
Is the Ring amoral rather than evil? Elrond and Gandalf believe that the Ring is evil in its conception, and that it’s more than a passive tool, as all its owners follow the same pattern.
It’s unclear if the corruption is external, or being drawn forth from its owner’s hearts, but the fact that they’re all corrupted in the same way and even use the same word “precious” is telling.
As the Ring embodies Sauron’s will to dominate Middle-earth, and to bind all others to his will, the Ring affects its bearers by inspiring a desire to bind themselves to it and dominate others.
Is it possible that Sauron himself has been affected in a similar way by the Ring? All of the Ring’s will and power is Sauron’s, and his desire for it is like that of a sorcerer and their phylactery.
Unlike all the other bearers, except Gollum, Sauron is dependent on the continued existence of the Ring for his own current manifestation. Only Gollum will die when the Ring is destroyed.
It’s not clear if Sauron also refers to the Ring as “precious”, but the other Ringbearers maybe echoing Sauron when they do so.
Sauron knows that the Ring can be destroyed and that he is vulnerable to this, and he also knows that another could take up the Ring and throw him down, so the threats are real.
There may be an element of wishful thinking in Sauron’s belief that no one would destroy the Ring rather than take it up, but this is encouraged by the fact that it wasn’t destroyed before.
Sauron is the one person who willingly chooses to bind himself to the Ring when he creates it, but in doing so, he sees a means to an end and is willing to take the risk to achieve mastery.
The arrival of the Silmaril:
There is no explanation as to who Elwing is in the poem, though we may know she was Eärendil’s wife if we remember Aragorn’s telling of the Beren and Lúthien story.
Elwing is connected with light in the darkness, both literally and figuratively, because of the Silmaril. The Silmaril was also mentioned in Aragorn’s summary of the Beren and Lúthien story.
The actual nature or origin of the Silmarils is not explained here, though it is suggested by the pairing of “diamond” and “fire upon”, and we are told they are the “brightest of all jewels”.
Note: The carcanet that Elwing is wearing is the Nauglamír, wherein the Silmaril was set by the Dwarves, and which had been worn by Lúthien before her death.
Note: There is a parallel here between the Silmarils and the Sampo in The Kalevala, in that the reader understands that it is valuable and important enough to go to war for, but not why. In a similar way, we are told something similar about the war of the Noldor against Morgoth.
The hard break in line eight is the only one in this stanza, and it comes at the turning point in the story, when he has given up on his quest, and Elwing arrives with the Silmaril to help Eärendil.
While changing the pace with breaks, Tolkien doesn’t alter the rhyme scheme’s flow.
In stanza three, Eärendil had been driven away and defeated by a wind from the West, and it seems to be into this same storm he turns with the Silmaril upon his brow.
The mention of the darkness again gives the impression that the only light seen was the ship.
There is a sense in which Eärendil is transgressing in his attempt to pass into the West before, but now he is being helped by the wind at his back due to the Silmaril and Elwing herself.
Where he was being rejected before, he is now being invited, and in some way compelled, to enter into the West through the storm.
What is being distressed? The storm is bearing the boat through the paths as described. What is being distressed is the boat, not the seas, despite the proximity in the text.
The boat being distressed may actually refer to the passengers on the boat though metonymy.
There is a significant reversal of normal syntax throughout this stanza in the descriptions.
The word “distressed” is a part participial phrase, not a direct past tense verb.
There is significant alliteration in “boat it bore with biting breath”, the most so far in the poem.
Note: Poetry still requires syntax rules to be obeyed, even when vocabulary rules are broken, such as in Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”, so the syntax allows the nonsense words to work. English prose doesn’t allow one to stretch the syntax as much as in inflected languages.
The distance between all the descriptors and their objects give the impression of the chaos of the moment of this storm. There may also be a double meaning of “distressed” and the “seas”.
Note: These kinds of complicated interactions of descriptions are usually the result of editing, and not forethought by the poet who is expressing what comes out at the time.
In what sense is the storm “free”? It seems to be because its origin is supernatural in the Otherworld and is independent of the normal weather patterns.
The “biting breath” implies cold, but it is being compared to the “might of death”. This means that this wind at the back of the boat is completely irresistible, and his arrival is inevitable.
The storm only arises once he turns his prow to the West, but once that is chosen, his course is set by outside forces. The passage from east to west is compared to death.
Note: From The Silmarillion, we know not only that Eärendil cannot return to the east, because his home has been destroyed, but that he will never return from the West, either.
On strands of pearl:
The enjambment of the lines returns mostly to regular in stanza five, reflecting the calming of the winds. The few exceptions are different from earlier stanzas.
The “Evernight” is connected to the “Night of Naught” from which he was rejected before, while this time he is being borne through it on the waves.
Note: The description of the waves bearing him is very similar to the description of the waves that bore Elendil’s folk away from Númenor during the Downfall, and to Middle-earth.
Eärendil is passing over lands that had sunk below the Sea even before the beginning of days. He is not going backwards of time, but this emphasizes the timelessness of this part of the world.
The music described is actually a metaphor for the sound of the crashing of the waves, which is why gold and jewels are being rolled on the beach, like on a stony beach.
How is “wan” to be understood to describe jewels? Usually it used negatively to describe sickness, but in this context, it could mean pale or dull, or wan in comparison to the Silmaril.
The use of the word “jewels” implies that these are cut, not raw stones, which we call “gems”.
We are only told what Eärendil can hear, but not what he can see on the beach. So far, we have only been told about the darkness, and the only light seems to the Silmaril on his brow.
He had been in search of light and a bright shore, but what he finds is the opposite of that.
Only when he sees the twilight is there a reference to any light source other than the Silmaril.
Note: This is the first time in The Lord of the Rings that Valinor or Eldamar has been mentioned.
The comma after Valinor highlights both it and Eldamar as something special and to linger there. It also emphasizes that Eldamar is distinct from Valinor, even though neither are defined.
We can see that the “Elda” word element is related to the Elves, and therefore it is hinted that “Elvenhome” is the English translation of Eldamar.
Note: The mention of the Mountain may conjure images of places like Mount Olympus, which is not inappropriate in this context.
To Elvenhome the green and fair:
Note: Though the proper names are not explained, their placement in the rhyme scheme evokes the sense that they have meaning and are appropriate to the setting.
“Elvenhome” is the first clear name and connects to Sam’s description of the Elves’ leaving.
There is a connection through assonance between “Ilmarin” and the surrounding adjectives.
The word “Tirion” translates as “tower”, which makes its alliteration with “towers” appropriate.
We see that Tirion is a city with many towers, and Shadowmere is connected to the darkness.
Only when he reaches Elvenhome does he get to see color, as well as other senses, like smell.
The towers are described as “pale of glass” and the pre-1500 connotation of “glass” is “mirror”.
This is then connected to the fact that these mirror-like towers are then themselves reflected in the Shadowmere. This gives a sense of interconnected reflections and lights.
Note: Even though the conception of the Middle-earth story began with the idea of the Eärendil myth, it remained mostly unwritten throughout Tolkien's lifetime. Aside from the short prose account in The Silmarillion, this poem is the only other version of Eärendil's adventures, and this is by far the longest and fullest account. Tolkien had many ideas for Eärendil's adventures, and he was intended to be the greatest hero of the Elder Days, but Tolkien never wrote an account of all his travels.
