Flammifer
Well-Known Member
In the seventh paragraph of ‘The Council of Elrond’, the narrator (Frodo?) tells us, “To Frodo his dangerous flight, and the rumours of the darkness growing in the world outside, already seemed only the memories of a troubled dream”.
How do you all interpret this?
Some of my thoughts and questions are:
How do all of you read this?
How do you all interpret this?
Some of my thoughts and questions are:
- The healing in Rivendell, both physical, and also spiritual in the Hall of Fire, has been very powerful.
- Was it just ‘his dangerous flight’ that seems like a dream? Or is it most of his whole life up until now?
- To what extent has Frodo been almost ‘re-born’ after his near-wraithification?
- In this moment, just before the Council, the past is a dream. Frodo is not thinking about the unplanned future. He is hearing ‘the noise of bubbling waters’, the singing of the birds. He is feeling that, ‘a wholesome peace lay on the land’. Why this image of Frodo at peace in the now in Rivendell?
- This emphasizes, Frodo’s feeling just before he says, “I will take the Ring (to Mordor)”, when “An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart”. It is interesting that his longing is to remain in Rivendell, rather than say return to the Shire. Does this illustrate how sacrificial the decision to bear the Ring onward was?
- To what extent was it even a decision? Frodo felt, “as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken”. He also, “wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice”. When was this doom created? During the Song of the Ainur? When did Frodo first become dimly aware of this doom at some level? When hearing ‘Earendil the Mariner’?
- Is Frodo’s longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell a foreshadowing of his eventual fate, to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side (though not in Rivendell)?
How do all of you read this?
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