First, a matter of business: one chapter a week is, as it turns out, very easy to work into my schedule (I have posts at the least drafted covering up to the Ford of Bruinen). So I’m going to start posting twice weekly, on Fridays as well as on Mondays. Onward to the Old Forest!
Tolkien is super evocative when he wants to be. The Hobbits set out before dawn (dragging Pippin along), and Tolkien perfectly captures the feeling of what the world is like before sunrise in late summer or early fall. Quiet, with an occasional sound as the world starts to stir. A chill air, a grey sky, dew everywhere. The Hedge that borders Buckland is “netted over with silver cobwebs,” which is a description that I just love. And then the Hobbits get into the forest. It’s close, it’s heavy, and as the sun rises it gets hot and humid. I’m feeling miserable and sleepy just thinking about trudging along in that, and I don’t have Old Man Willow whispering to me to go to sleep.
So speaking of Old Man Willow. When the crowd at /r/TolkienFans is feeling pedantic (well, more pedantic than usual) we sometimes get into debates about what exactly is Old Man Willow. For my part, I’m going to invoke Occam’s Razor and say he’s a Huorn. One of the mostly-awake trees that Treebeard will sic on Saruman’s Orcs later on.
Luckily, Old Man Willow is no match for Tom Bombadil, and his attempts to kill the Hobbits are foiled by a strange man singing silly songs.
I find I really don’t have much to say about this chapter specifically. It’s a going-from-here-to-there chapter, as so many are in LotR. This is often cited as a criticism (“people just walking for chapter after chapter”) but that’s part of what makes these books great. I truly don’t understand how people can’t figure out that the journey isn’t an impediment to the story, it is the story. “Journey before destination,” some might say, or perhaps, “How you get there is the worthier part.”
Since I don’t really have much to say on this chapter (and I promise you I’ll make up for it next week when we spend some quality time with Tom), I’m going to introduce my favorite of all Tolkien artists: a Chinese artist named Jian Guo, probably best known in /r/Fantasy circles for this breathtakingly awesome cover for the Chinese-language version of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. He does a ton of amazing SF/F work, including a bunch of Tolkien-inspired stuff. And not just movie stuff like much of the Tolkien art out there: he digs into The Silmarillion for a lot of his inspiration. Anyway, I’ll share his depictions of relevant scenes as we move forward. What we’ve missed so far is his depiction of the Long-Expected Party and Frodo, Sam, and Pippin’s evening with Gildor. I’ll also throw in his depiction of JRR Tolkien himself. Here’s his Deviant Art page, and it’s worth it to take some time to explore.
Next week: we don’t learn nearly enough badger-lore to satisfy me when we spend some time in the house of Tom Bombadil.