There was so much valuable information in this chapter. I found Shippey’s discussion of symmetry that is found in Tolkien’s trilogy very enlightening. It takes a person like Shippey, who devoted his life to language and Tolkien, to tell us things the average reader would not pick up on, such as that there are the same number of scene-shifts and scenes of threat in books I and II. I never really compared Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas’ confrontation with Eomer with the meeting of Sam, Frodo, and Faramir. I also like how Shippey points out that the characters of Denethor and Theoden are strongly parallelled. I hadn’t thought about the fact that these two characters die around the same time. Another aspect of the narrative that many readers, including myself, don’t pick up on is that the voice that speaks to Frodo on the summit of Amon Hen to take the ring off is not the inner voice of Frodo, but the voice of Gandalf. This example effectively illustrates Tolkien’s complex technique of interlace.
I also enjoyed reading about some of the things Tolkien had changed from his original drafts. Shippey says that Tolkien did not have an overall plan, but was “writing his way into the story.” This way would have been extremely difficult. I hadn’t known that Tolkien himself had said the ring wasn’t very dangerous and then had to go back to change this in The Hobbit so that he could write The Lord of the Rings. I also found it interesting that in some of Tolkien’s drafts Treebeard was responsible for imprisoning Gandalf instead of Sarumon. What I particularily found alarming was that The Hobbit was published almost by accident when a pupil of Tolkien’s recommended it to a publisher’s representative. That means both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were at risk to never being “rediscovered!” It is interesting that Tolkien’s previously written poem about Tom Bombadil helped him get the story going when he didn’t know where to start.
Once again, Shippey points out how Tolkien formed an authentic fantasy world. I found his discussion about names and how they imply that the things they label exist, highly insightful. I like how Shippey defends Tolkien’s slow-paced start in the first book with the fact that Tolkien was giving us names and further developing the world seen in The Hobbit. I think that this was very important for Tolkien because he was laying a strong foundation for the story, painting a picture of the hobbits’ beloved home, as well as revealing his own love of nature to the readers through heavy description. I also like when Shippey points out that Tolkien did not need to use all of the names of places in the story because that says there is a world outside of the story. It is interesting how Tolkien used different ways of speaking for characters to show distinctions between cultures as well as the sometimes unspoken competition between Boromir and Aragorn.
I liked reading Shippey’s discussion of Sarumon in this chapter, especially when he compares Sarumon’s claim that Gandalf could help him persuade Sauron to the British intellects thinking they could get along with Hitler and Stalin. It is interesting that Shippey says Sarumon is on the way to Orwell’s “doublethink.” I like how Tolkien used how Sarumon says things as a window into how reliable he is as a character. Finally, I thought it is accurate to compare Sarumon’s speaking to that of politicians because it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly what he means.
Emily Marvin? October 19, 2008, at 04:10 PM
