The Hall of Fire

There's an oft-quoted letter in which JRRT says that Tom is meant as a representation of the spirit of the English countryside. If so, then the countryside itself is to be seen as poetic!

I'm in! I don't come onto the site every day, and mostly I'm trying to catch up with reading all the posts relating to the chapters that have been done already. But I do want to continue!

I'm so glad to see this list continue!

Then again, humor doesn't always translate across the Atlantic or across time or even across occupational or social classes. And then there are those who scoff at the Shire chapters without noticing the humor. There's less excuse, though, for missing the humor in Gandalf's exasperation with Pippin, ...

Oh, to have an insider's ear on the British Isles! How rich all of this must be to you, in ways we from outside can never (well, hardly ever) know.

There's been so much to say in this thread. I can hardly remember what it was like to read this chapter the first time--that was almost 47 years ago. But the writing is wonderful. The descriptions are especially powerful; You Are There! I always wondered why Frodo alone of all of them was not dresse...

Does it make the fat truly crispy? not chewy? Otherwise I'll be trimming it to death the way I do ham or any other meat. Sorry, but I have an overactive gag response and after 66 years I doubt it'll go away!

Right, but the form is different. English bacon is what we'd call ham, from a part of the critter that has its muscle broken up by other things. Cooking it longer would just make it tougher, and wouldn't do a thing to the fat. American bacon is slab bacon cut thin, fat and muscle striped, which if i...

I like the tone of the prologue, written as by a historian. It is very true to life, as it were: true to the academic format. And it does give the reader a little hope as to the fates of Merry and Pippin and Sam, at least! Not that the average first-time reader will remember those things as the stor...

Not at all; but one must be sure that the aid really is in the asker's best interest, not just what the giver thinks it ought to be. Yes, sometimes the giver really does know best, but one should always examine one's motives.
There are a lot of examples on both sides, of course.

Yes, I know. But I like to do these things in order. It's been ages since I've re-read the whole work, so I'm taking my sweet time, reading the posts on each chapter in order and answering if I can think of something fresh. That is, when I remember to go onto this board.

Without hobbits, many of us wouldn't care about the rest! They're the necessary viewpoint characters that allow us to discover Middle-earth in all its complexity. And that goes even for those who don't particularly like hobbits.

But for those of us who LOVE hobbits...!

The whole problem with trying to do good is thinking you know better than the recipient of the good. This is a very real problem everywhere. Remember the whole "white man's burden" thing from the 19th century? Those with much intelligence but less wisdom are very prone to this sort of thin...

Something occurred to me about the hobbits' awareness of Tom. Some seem to know him, according to "Adventures," but Merry the ever-inquisitive seems not to have heard of him before! Glitch, perhaps? Can anyone rationalize this?

I am super-late to this discussion, having discovered this site less than a year ago; but I'm now following the LOTR discussion with great interest, and wishing there were something I could say! You could, if you you would like, start a new thread on the next chapter (Book II, Chapter 5). I'm still...

The problem with that is that American bacon and English bacon are two such different things! (Give me super-crisp American bacon any day--it's about the only way I'll eat meat fat!) I agree with what's been said about the tension-and-relief aspects of the chapter. It helps prepare the reader for mu...

I never thought of the elves in quite that way, but that's an interesting point. It does make the elves more "humane," if I could use that term, a little less distant, and to the average person a little less "snobby." Otherwise, stating that the elves have their own labors and so...

This would be an answer to the discussion on another board about the nature of the Ring: agent or amplifier? This discussion definitely puts it in the category of amplifier. But so are other things in the story, e.g. Lothlórien. Galadriel says that there is no evil there that people don't bring in w...

That's an interesting take on his role, and a rather gloomy one. Probably, though, Tolkien would agree. In certain moods, I find his work Quite gloomy! There is hope, but, knowing his Catholicism, the hope is a religious one, not a temporal one.

60 views and 8 votes? :suspicious: Well, there's no option for "sort of." I was brought up Catholic by my very Catholic mother, who claimed she was nowhere near as devout as her mother had been. My father had been raised Universalist, but he hadn't practiced for years. And he was divorced...