r Ten

Join Cam and Maggie for the last pages of Fellowship. Boromir takes a turn for the worst and Tolkien imbues his breakdown with echoes of Smaug, Gollum, and Sam. We analyze Frodo’s “terror and grief” at Boromir’s betrayal and finally decide whether or not Fellowship was a horror book. Maggie leads a discussion on Frodo’s agency as a protagonist and Tolkien’s confused message about free will. Cam continues the discussion into the vision sequence that positions Gandalf and Sauron as the angel and devil sitting on Frodo’s shoulders. Tolkien’s characterizations are strikingly different than what you’d expect from traditional religious allegory, and we explore his reversal at depth. Cam gets all excited.

In our Second Breakfast, Cam brings us some more notes from Christopher Tolkien’s The History of The Lord of the Rings. Topics include: Tom Bombadil’s purpose, JRRT’s hectic compositional style, and the author’s first sketch of the Rivendell sequence. We also look ahead to next week, when we will watch the rest of the Fellowship movie (the 4K extended cut) and consider a few quieter moments from the book that we hope to see on screen.

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Discussion of Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter Ten