Point of View

ArnoleIstari

New Member
Well after over a year of not only listening to the podcast but also bringing my character in LOTRO up to speed with the class, I finally have caught up!

Something I noticed way back in Chapter 2 was the point of view that the story as a whole takes, specifically how little we get of Gandalf's POV. The passage I'm thinking of is this: "Gandalf was thinking of a spring, nearly eighty years before, when Bilbo had run out of Bag End without a handkerchief. His hair was perhaps whiter than it had been then, and his beard and eyebrows were perhaps longer, and his face more lined with care and wisdom; but his eyes were as bright as ever, and he smoked and blew smoke-rings with the same vigour and delight."

Again this passage caught my attention because it is so seldom that we get Gandalf's POV(at least that I remember), and really only the first sentence speaks to what he is thinking. The rest of the passage talks about his outward appearance, something that would be easily noticeable by the writer of the story, presumably Frodo here. What I find curious is that it is clearly Gandalf leading the Fellowship into Hollin, and yet we get nothing of his POV. This might be easily explained in story as Frodo accounting for what he observed when he was with everyone, as opposed to later when everyone is split and afterwards he has to gather accounts from everyone else's POV.

I think moving forward it would be interesting to keep an eye out for when the tone of the story speaks to someone's POV, specifically when it details their mood or what they're thinking. Specifically when something is being described that isn't easily discerned from the outside, such as the vigour of pipe smoking.
 
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