Hi,
I am new here, and working my way through the episodes. And I just want to say that I love following the close reading you are doing!
While there have been instances along the way where I thouhgt I wanted to comment, I have also wanted to wait until I am caught up, but I am not really sure how much of it will feel relevant.
Anyhow, I have worked my way up to episode 140, and in the disussion about Aragorn smiling, I became curious about this. If I remember correctly, it was said that Aragorn smiles 3 or 4 times? (Please correct me if I am wrong). The gist of the conversation was that Aragorn does not smile much, and therefore it is of note when it is said that he smiles. This both fit and didn't fit with my impression of Aragron. Yes, he is grim, and the times he smiles feels like they are important, but I also have this image of him smiling clear in my head. So I did some searching and counted how many times he is described as smiling in the tekst. And then I looked at all the instances of "smile" being used, and which characters where smiling.
My e-book gave me 76 instances of "smile" in the whole book - appendixes inculded. One I would not count at all, because it talks about the smials and have 'smile' as a spelling, but of the others I counted who was smiling (or not - a few instances is about characters not smiling), and I made a count:
21 characters smiles once, and two of them are also said to not smile, so that accounts for 23 of the instances. The remaining characters who smiles more than once, are:
Elrond: 2
Gloin: 2
Sam: 2
Biblo: 3
Théoden: 3
Frodo: 4 (and not once)
Galadriel: 4
Faramir: 5
Gandalf: 6 or 7 (Saruman tells him not to smile at him, but it is not noted in the narrative)
Aragorn: 14 or 15 (in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen it says he became grim to look at, "unless he chanced to smile"), and once it is told that he does not smile.
Aragorn smiles more than any of them, it seems!
Now, it can be that the narrator mentions Aragorns smiles more than others because it seems remakable that he should smile. And I also thought I saw something of a patteren of when characters smiles: there are, for example, no smiles in the Field of Cormalon, which I would imagine being a smiling occation. And all of Frodo's smiles are on the border of or in Mordor. It looks like the characters' smiles are more likely to be mentioned when the general situation (or mabye in Aragorns case) makes smiles to be unlikely or not expected.
Now, this is not a perfect pattern, and all the smiles does not follow it, but can it be that smiling is a way the characters keep up their spirit when things look grim? Or that the narrator is signaling something to us: there is hope, they can still smile. I am remided of the description of Aragorn in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen:
"His face was sad and stern because of the doom that was laid on him, and yet hope dwelt ever in the depths of his heart, from which mirth would arise at times like a spring from the rock."
I have not checked how it is with laughter - a qucik search shows 261 instances - but that might also have some patterns. At least it seems like there is more laughing than smiling reported.
I will probably have to come back to other questions or commets. I am not enterly sure where they would fit, and am still trying to find my way around the forum here.
I am new here, and working my way through the episodes. And I just want to say that I love following the close reading you are doing!
While there have been instances along the way where I thouhgt I wanted to comment, I have also wanted to wait until I am caught up, but I am not really sure how much of it will feel relevant.
Anyhow, I have worked my way up to episode 140, and in the disussion about Aragorn smiling, I became curious about this. If I remember correctly, it was said that Aragorn smiles 3 or 4 times? (Please correct me if I am wrong). The gist of the conversation was that Aragorn does not smile much, and therefore it is of note when it is said that he smiles. This both fit and didn't fit with my impression of Aragron. Yes, he is grim, and the times he smiles feels like they are important, but I also have this image of him smiling clear in my head. So I did some searching and counted how many times he is described as smiling in the tekst. And then I looked at all the instances of "smile" being used, and which characters where smiling.
My e-book gave me 76 instances of "smile" in the whole book - appendixes inculded. One I would not count at all, because it talks about the smials and have 'smile' as a spelling, but of the others I counted who was smiling (or not - a few instances is about characters not smiling), and I made a count:
21 characters smiles once, and two of them are also said to not smile, so that accounts for 23 of the instances. The remaining characters who smiles more than once, are:
Elrond: 2
Gloin: 2
Sam: 2
Biblo: 3
Théoden: 3
Frodo: 4 (and not once)
Galadriel: 4
Faramir: 5
Gandalf: 6 or 7 (Saruman tells him not to smile at him, but it is not noted in the narrative)
Aragorn: 14 or 15 (in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen it says he became grim to look at, "unless he chanced to smile"), and once it is told that he does not smile.
Aragorn smiles more than any of them, it seems!
Now, it can be that the narrator mentions Aragorns smiles more than others because it seems remakable that he should smile. And I also thought I saw something of a patteren of when characters smiles: there are, for example, no smiles in the Field of Cormalon, which I would imagine being a smiling occation. And all of Frodo's smiles are on the border of or in Mordor. It looks like the characters' smiles are more likely to be mentioned when the general situation (or mabye in Aragorns case) makes smiles to be unlikely or not expected.
Now, this is not a perfect pattern, and all the smiles does not follow it, but can it be that smiling is a way the characters keep up their spirit when things look grim? Or that the narrator is signaling something to us: there is hope, they can still smile. I am remided of the description of Aragorn in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen:
"His face was sad and stern because of the doom that was laid on him, and yet hope dwelt ever in the depths of his heart, from which mirth would arise at times like a spring from the rock."
I have not checked how it is with laughter - a qucik search shows 261 instances - but that might also have some patterns. At least it seems like there is more laughing than smiling reported.
I will probably have to come back to other questions or commets. I am not enterly sure where they would fit, and am still trying to find my way around the forum here.