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GreenHillFox
Bree
Jul 21 2022, 11:04am
Post #1 of 12
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A small theory, to (dis)agree with
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May I refer to the following text from FotR Ch. 2 (“Three is company”), which refers to Sam’s meeting with Elves:
Sam could never describe in words, nor picture clearly to himself, what he felt or thought that night, though it remained in his memory as one of the chief events of his life.
I found it a little odd for Sam, who would soon meet Elrond, Arwen and later on even Galadriel and her mirror, to maintain a meeting with Gildor Inglorion as a “chief event of his life” nonetheless.
Isn’t that a bit exaggerated, when looking at the complete story?
I have the somewhat risky impression that this sentence may be a consequence of the author developing his story as he wrote. He may not have foreseen everything in advance as he was writing this sentence, so early on in the story. Since he developed new versions of much, it may have been a “left over”.
Thanks for any comments!
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SirDennisC
Half-elven
Jul 24 2022, 3:18am
Post #3 of 12
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XD
Perhaps a different analogy will suffice **he says, oblivious of the room**
One morning about 30 years ago, just before waking I dreamed of an open window. In the dream it was the cool of the day, and a sweet-smelling breeze gently billowed a fine, light cornflower drapery about the window. That was the whole dream. It wasn’t even part of a longer dream. Yet the sense of peace and wellbeing it evoked lingers vividly in my mind. It is a chief dream of my life, and I go back to it often.
Maybe it was like that for Sam?
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Aug 1 2022, 3:50pm
Post #5 of 12
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It's the night when 'something happens' to Sam
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In the morning, when the elves have vanished, Frodo remarks on a strange change that has come over Sam. Sam makes a faltering explanation of it:
‘Do you feel any need to leave the Shire now–now that your wish to see them has come true already?’ he [Frodo] asked.
‘Yes, sir. I don’t know how to say it, but after last night I feel different. I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back. It isn’t to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want–I don’t rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.’
‘I don’t altogether. But I understand that Gandalf chose me a good companion. I am content. We will go together.’
A Short Cut To Mushrooms (LOTR BK I, Ch 4): we discussed this here
So I wonder whether supper with Gildor is tied up in Sam's menory with the time he went beyond going on a quest thing 'because of his devotion to Frodo', 'because Gandalf has told him to' or 'to see the elves'. He's now seeing himself as having some more mystical (or at least hard to articulate) purpose. I don't think we ever find out how that happened (though we know the elves insisted 'don't leave him'; maybe hatcing in Sam's mind the idea that he is essential to whatever it is that is to come, and not just to carry the pans and do the cooking).
Now of course it could also be to do with Tolkien writing as he went along, and not anticipating grander meetings with even greater folk. But Tolkien of course also went back over the text several times, and with great attention to detail. We have discussed things that seem to be errors in the final text that were right in earlier drafts, and maybe this is another one of them.
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"there is the internet truth that good comments encourage other good comments, and bad comments encourage other bad comments"
David Allen Green QC
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Aug 1 2022, 6:08pm
Post #6 of 12
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;). And also - Elves here at their most alien
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Elves seem to vary - in a long-ago post I commented that elves seem quite different under different circumstances. I included:
Alien elves - ones whose behaviour and motivations are inscrutable. The first encounter with the Mirkwood elves (they keep 'magically' disappearing) is an example. Or Arwen is so ethereal that she exists in the story mostly as the effect she has on other characters. Gildor and his party are a bit in this camp for me, and a bit in the next, which is....
Elves for plot and character. - As a techincal point about writing, these elves can't be too inscrutable, I suppose, because their actions and motivations have to make some sense if we readers are to follow what is happening. Feanor, Luthien, Elrond, Galadriel and Legolas are examples I'd put in this group. Sometimes we get glimpses of their strangeness, but I find I can go many pages without them seeming strange. Legolas, for example, might as well be a Man for much of the story, I think. The Elf King of TH becomes the leader of the regional power later in the book, 'helpfully' interfering in his neighbours affairs (or so I presented in in my Hobbit read-through, at least). It's much more politics than mystery.
[...and I went on (and on). You don't have to, but here's the link]
So maybe this comes down to there always being something dreamlike, mystical and keep-trying-to-understand-what-that-was-about in the meeting with Gildor, which didn't apply to, say, Elrond, Galadriel or Legolas.
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"there is the internet truth that good comments encourage other good comments, and bad comments encourage other bad comments"
David Allen Green QC
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Felagund
Rohan
Aug 1 2022, 9:32pm
Post #7 of 12
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You got me interested in whether Tolkien's drafts could shed any light on this and the answer strikes me as sort of! Sam Gamgee takes quite a long time to enter into the story as a character, at least by that name, let alone this particular encounter with Gildor's party. And the line you quote from 'Three is company' is absent from the earliest drafts. What we do get though is something of a composite, whereby two hobbits, 'Frodo Took' and 'Odo Took' had a dreamlike experience of the meal provided by Gildor. Odo (proto-Pippin, more or less) goes into something resembling an Epicurean stupor; and of Frodo (proto-Sam, sort of), we have:
"[he] afterwards recalled little of either food or drink, for his mind was filled with the light under the trees, the elf-faces, the sound of voices so various and so beautiful that he felt in a waking dream."
As in the quote from the final version, this (let's stick with it) proto-Sam has something akin to a spiritual experience. I'll cheekily borrow from Eldy and noWizardme's posts that both capture things nicely, in different ways: the 'first time' effect of an 'awakening' for this character, who could be described as crossing a threshold, just as he'll soon be crossing the threshold of the world outside of the Shire.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Aug 2 2022, 5:31pm
Post #8 of 12
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I do like a bit of Working from HoME
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...and congratulations on being able to track how the published versions of the characters emerge - I did try to do that once.but realised I'd have to do much more cclose reading & other labour than I've ever had time for so far!
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"there is the internet truth that good comments encourage other good comments, and bad comments encourage other bad comments"
David Allen Green QC
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GreenHillFox
Bree
Aug 2 2022, 6:18pm
Post #9 of 12
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Thank you for all these comments which I am reading with interest and much appreciation.
As regards Sam’s emotions and deep impressions about things he never had experienced before, there is also a paragraph, not much earlier on, where he gazes upon the unknown with wonder:
‘The road goes on for ever,’ said Pippin; ‘but I can’t without a rest. It is high time for lunch.’ He sat down on the bank at the side of the road and looked away east into the haze, beyond which lay the River, and the end of the Shire in which he had spent all his life. Sam stood by him. His round eyes were wide open – for he was looking across lands he had never seen to a new horizon.
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Felagund
Rohan
Aug 2 2022, 8:31pm
Post #10 of 12
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I forgot to include the source! But yes, HoMe indeed. Volume 6 to be precise, chapter 2: 'From Hobbiton to the Woody End'.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Timbo_mbadil
Rivendell
Oct 27 2022, 11:29pm
Post #11 of 12
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That is one hell of a nice dream though! //
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Otherness represents that which bourgeois ideology cannot recognize or accept but must deal with (…)
Robin Wood 2003, p. 49. "Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan – and beyond". Columbia University Press, New York, Chichester, West Sussex.
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Timbo_mbadil
Rivendell
Oct 28 2022, 12:36am
Post #12 of 12
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(closer to 3, in fact), I think it is both "the first impression" and a lack of polishing the HoMe-stage.
I begin to suspect something about LOTR that in over 40yrs had never crossed my mind, and it is blasphemous.
The book might not be perfect.
Yes, that is a shock to myself.
And I might have an even more heretic thought: What if JRRT had not have held LOTR in such high a regard as we do? Could it have been "just a book" that he had agreed to write 15yrs earlier and in the end simply wanted to deliver? (But that's a thought way beyond my judgement at the moment.)
Otherness represents that which bourgeois ideology cannot recognize or accept but must deal with (…)
Robin Wood 2003, p. 49. "Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan – and beyond". Columbia University Press, New York, Chichester, West Sussex.
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