Episode 72 Summary

Tony Meade

Active Member
SESSION 72

Comment and Gandalf’s victory or defeat:
  • Strider’s reluctance to declare Gandalf the victor in the fight with the Ringwraiths may come from his knowledge of their tactics. He knows that they strike and withdraw and strike again.
  • He also later seems to know something about the Morgul blade and how it works, and so he knows that it’s use might also be a possibility.
  • None of these would preclude Gandalf from driving the Nazgûl away and from placing his sign, but they also don’t mean that he beat or destroyed them. They are soon in pursuit of him.
  • This is also a kind of foreshadowing of the kind of attach that will happen this night, where the Ringwraiths will be driven off by fire, but after using the Morgul blade and then withdrawing.
  • Strider knows that the weapons of the enemy are insidious, which makes victory unclear.
On food in the wild:
  • Note: The scene as depicted in the films is very different from the scene in the book, though it captures something of the hobbits’ resilience and good cheer in tough circumstances. However, it removes the feeling of fear and loneliness of the hobbits being in the wild. In a sense the hobbits, they are trespassing far outside of the usual territories of all hobbits in the west.
  • The emphasis on the idea that they are in an area that almost all people avoid adds to the sense of trespassing, and a sense of desperation sets in about the lack of food.
  • Note: This parallels Bilbo’s night before encountering the trolls, as he was very hungry then.
  • There is a shift back into storyteller mode with the narrator explaining the current situation in the Lone-lands and the area around Weathertop.
  • Note: The East Road seems to have been primarily built by the dwarves, and it is they that use it the most in their role as traders and merchants. The dwarves are the most regular travelers. We are not told where the East Road ends, or if it goes past or through Khazad-dûm. The way to the Hollin gate might have been a side trail, and we don’t know if it continues over the mountains.
  • Strider again goes out of his way to be gentle with the hobbits about their concerns, but he alleviates their concerns about running out of food with their need to escape pursuit.
  • He seems to want them to keep all of their dangers in mind and in perspective, but he also wants them to keep hope, as this the way to resist the Ringwraiths.
Strider begins the resistance:
  • The cold and darkness emphasize how their warmth and life will stand out in these lands, and how that might attract the Ringwraiths.
  • Is the cold entirely natural? It is October, but there is an implication that the Nazgûl are increasing the cold and darkness around them in some way.
  • Note: Frodo will later say that the winged creature carrying the Nazgûl on the Anduin felt colder than a Balrog to Gimli, and this is how he identifies it.
  • We don’t know exactly where the Ringwraiths are right now, but we have seen the way that they assaulted the house in Crickhollow first with a spiritual siege of fear and loneliness.
  • As the spiritual battle has already begun, Strider is telling them tales to keep them from fear. This is how they can resist the Ringwraiths, though Strider may be aware of their presence.
  • Strider is not only telling the hobbits cheerful stories. He includes the tales of both good and evil deeds in order to talk about their heroism, and so inspire the hobbits.
Strider chooses a new tale to tell:
  • This is the third time that Strider has interrupted the hobbits to keep them from speaking about things related to Mordor or other dark ideas.
  • Why doesn’t Strider want Frodo to tell a story about Gil-galad? It cannot be because many of the main characters die, as they still win and destroy Sauron’s physical form.
  • It might seem as though that a story about the victory of good over evil would be appropriate.
  • There is a sense in which the end of the story of the Last Alliance is the beginning of their story.
  • Also, the hope for any military power to defeat Sauron no longer exists, so that’s impossible.
  • If only the story of Gil-galad is being told, the story is a tragic story, outside of the context.
  • It’s important to remember that one reason that Strider rebuked Pippin for speaking loudly about going to Mordor is that this is supposed to be a secret, and their hope is in secrecy.
  • Knowing that the Ringwraiths themselves are nearby, he doesn’t want them to overhear.
  • There is also the fact that the story of the Last Alliance is Ring-oriented, which is also bad.
  • Strider once again emphasizes hope for the future in telling them to look forward to hearing the story in full in Rivendell. This goes along with the hope of food there.
  • Frodo has translated Gil-galad’s name as Starlight, but he parallels this with the translation of Elendil’s name as “Elf-friend”. This is important both for Frodo and Aragorn.
  • Though Merry has a similar impulse as Sam, though it is Sam who asks for a tale of the Elves before the fading time.
The metatextual importance the tale of Tinúviel:
  • It seems as though the moment that Tolkien chooses to include the tale of Beren and Lúthien in the story of The Lord of the Rings is the moment where he fully brings together the fairytale world of The Hobbit and The Silmarillion into a single mythology.
  • Tolkien had borrowed names and concepts from The Silmarillion, but they are full of contradictions to how they are presented in the original Silmarillion material. There was no continuity between the two.
  • For instance, the reason that the Arkenstone seems so much like one of the Silmarils is because that is a recycled concept from when Tolkien translated part of the Quenta Silmarillion into Anglo-Saxon, and his translation for “Silmaril” was very similar to “Arkenstone”, but he never intended the two stories to be directly related.
  • He treated his own older material as something to borrow in the same way that he also borrowed from Beowulf in the same way.
  • As Tolkien begins the sequel to The Hobbit, he wants to make it consistent with the world of that story, not with the Silmarillion mythology.
  • However, at the moment when he brings in the tale of Tinúviel, he decides that all of this legendarium is a single mythology, which he will make all work together as one thing.
  • This changed the writing of The Lord of the Rings and changed the kind of book that it became.
On Elrond’s memory the tale of Tinúviel:

  • Strider’s assertion that only Elrond remembers the story as it was told of old raises questions. Who is remembering it wrong? From whom did Elrond hear this story?
  • It’s possible that Elrond may have been told this story by Eärendil or Elwing when he was a boy among the refugees of Doriath and Gondolin, or maybe by Maglor.
  • Strider may be referring to Elrond’s age and the way in which the story is told, not the accuracy of the plot details. Elrond may be the only one who remembers an older style.
  • The version that the Numenoreans told may have been distorted because it was told by Men.
  • Galadriel’s position with respect to the time of Beren and Lúthien is unclear, and in the writing, Galadriel was a late addition to the Silmarillion tradition, as she was created for this story.
  • Note: Galadriel is a very incidental character in the published version of The Silmarillion because Tolkien wrote her into it later, and never fully settled on her First and Second Age story.
  • Glorfindel would have been in Gondolin during this time and died relatively soon afterwards. However, he might have heard Lúthien’s song before Mandos in Valinor before his return.
END OF SESSION
 

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