Libertad
Legend
Note: I began this series much earlier on other forums, but am reposting it here. Doing 1 post a day so as to avoid intimidating walls of texts for readers.
While tabletop gaming is still very near and dear to my heart, I've been getting more into reading more traditional literature. And I figured, why not start with the genre-definer of modern fantasy as we know it?
I don't mind spoiler discussion, as I already absorbed huge portions of the trilogy via cultural osmosis as well as related media. To show off my prior experience, I did read the Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring a long time ago. The Hobbit was read twice, the Fellowship once, but I recall more details about the former than the latter. Thus, I'm starting off with the Fellowship rather than rerereading the Hobbit.
My thoughts will be shared in a listed format rather than heavily paraphrasing the books' contents. For those who wish to get a fuller experience, feel welcome to read along with me!
Foreword and Prologue
1. My version of the book (by Houghton Mifflin) came with both a Foreword and Prologue, the latter being labeled "Concerning Hobbits," giving some world-building about the history and culture of Middle-Earth's unlikeliest heroic people. It was very good, and did a lot to show how even among the hobbits there's quite a bit of diversity and that their society was subject to change. For instance, they used to have a ruling Thain but over time became self-governing, that there's a museum in Michel Delving dedicated to historical artifacts of their people, how the Bree hobbits view their brethren in the Shire as "colonists," and how in modern times only the richest and poorest hobbits live in "hobbit holes" as many transitioned to more traditional above-ground lodgings.
2. One thing I will say about being a weakness of Tolkien is that while he does a great job in world-building, he does this via telling more than showing so far. I understand that the prologue is meant to set the scene, but I feel that more modern fiction would instead have such elements arise either directly in the story or in natural conversation. A similar thing is in regards to Gandalf going into detail about Smeagol's backstory of how he came upon the One Ring and how he left the mountains to take revenge on Bilbo for stealing it away, covered later in Chapter 2.
3. Another thing I like about the hobbits is that while they're currently isolated from much of Middle-Earth, they used to be on friendly relations with dwarves, elves, and men. But for elves in particular, they had an undescribed falling out and they stopped associating. And the dwarves long used roads in the Shire to visit the mines in Blue Mountain.
Chapter 1: A Long-Expected Party
1. Tolkien does a good jobt at painting a wider picture of Bilbo, Frodo, and their countryside living in ways that forward the plot. For instance, scenes of rumor-mongering hobbits speculating about Bilbo's upcoming birthday party and what hidden treasure he surely has under his house. Or how 144 is referred to as a Gross for units of measurement which is never used for people, so when Bilbo does so in his speech it ends up being a faux pas. One thing that I do find funny is how Gandalf ends up wearing out his welcome in Hobbiton after Bilbo's disappearing act, where people end up blaming the wizard for supposedly driving Bilbo insane and running off into the wilderness to die.
Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past
1. I like how the sounds of Sam's gardening shears outside are used as foreshadowing of his eavesdropping. Rather than have it left undescribed to show how keen-eared Gandalf is, Tolkien previously establishes the Gamgeee's relationship with Bilbo and Frodo as gardeners, then having it stop during their convo gives the reader time to clue themselves in ahead of time.
2. When Gandalf began talking about how he and Aragorn spent a long journey full of hardship in tracking down Gollum, that made me realize how much of a missed opportunity that was the Gollum video game. Far more people would love a game where you play as those two, instead.
3. Also, I can tell better what people only watched the shows/movies of LotR based on Gandalf answering early on other ways of "getting rid of" the Ring by Frodo. Like taking it to an isolated place like Gollum did, so that nobody would find it. Gandalf explains that the Ring practically has a mind of its own and if it wants to be found, it has a way of doing so.
Chapter 3: Three is Company
1. I wonder if the chapter's name and number was done this way intentionally.
2. I like how Tolkien does brief mentions of local places and landmarks to showcase that it's not just an empty stretch of wilderness Frodo's party is journeying through. Even if it's just saying a landmark's name without any further explanation, this shows that our heroes are still in familiar territory, that they're still operating on what is known and within their relative comfort zone.
3. I find it interesting that the Ring-Wraiths are capable of speaking in the Common/Westron tongue, even if it isn't "onscreen." Contrast to Peter Jackson's movies, where I only recall them shrieking. In a way, this makes sense, as they were once human and thus should still retain some of their knowledge before they became corrupted by Sauron/the Ring/whatever was originally responsible for said corruption.
4. Having the Ring-Wraiths show up twice on the road demonstrates that it's not a coincidence, that Frodo is being actively hunted.
5. While brief, I do like how the elf travelers declare Frodo to be Elf-Friend due to him having some fluency in their language as well as having been on positive terms with Bilbo. It demonstrates that at the very least, Frodo was interested enough in their people to learn about how they speak and the lore they saw fit to put to paper. In addition to the prologue talking about Hobbit groups and Hobbit culture, I do like how Frodo mentions that they're High Elves. This is a subtle way of showing that the Elves aren't a monolithic group, and along with the aforementioned familiarity with their songs demonstrates that he's more familiar with them than Sam and Pippin.
