The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths, and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.​

Pictured: Wize, pontificating to DLP on the subject of LotR, 2021, colourised.


There's something about the opening sentence that I quite like - and it's the exact same thing we see in the first sentence of HP and the PS - in that it's this incredibly mundane statement. Two of the most impactful fantasy stories in modern history, and they open with lines about a birthday party and middle class normality.

I love that we see mention of the Gamgee affinity for potatoes on the third page of the entire saga, but I'm appalled that the books use the -ize spelling, even if both are recognised in British English.

Speaking of HP, Petunia would have fit right in with some of the hobbits we see, the way they love to gossip. I remember being infuriated at reading some of the liberties various hobbits took when I first read the books (their auctioning of Bag End in The Hobbit, and their search for buried treasure in LotR). The first pages of these chapters do an excellent job in illuminating what kind of people the hobbits tend to be, for good and ill.

Gandalf rocking the eyebrows. I had a very particular image of Gandalf in my mind, due entirely to McKellen, so it's interesting to read about his blue hat and silver scarf.

And of course we're less than seven pages in and Tolkien wastes no time in including some of the script he's invented, with Gandalf's symbol and the elf-rune.

We see a lot of mention of dwarves and connections to Erebor and Dale, which for some reason I wasn't expecting. I had assumed that Bilbo's return to Bag End had insulated him from the outside world in much the same way the Shire was insulated, but it seems that he was able to place orders and maintain communication with old friends quite easily.

Again with spelling choices. You have to assume that Tolkien did it deliberately, given his talent and focus in the area.

Page 41 (of my edition), the Ring. I think it's wild that this small ring, seemingly one of many magical artifacts from The Hobbit, is so noteworthy. How would we be today, reading this for the first time? A small item from the first book that the protagonist took home with him turns out to be the goddam soul of the dark lord.

The scene of Gandalf convincing Bilbo to leave the Ring behind. It's just one of those scenes that gets better on the reread.

I found a goddam dogeared page in my book. Young me was a goddam philistine.

Bilbo's gift giving after his departure is, at the risk of lowering the tone of the thread, incredibly based. I aspire to banter on such a level.

Mention number 2.

The swarm of hobbits arriving after hearing that things were being given away - I think I'd lose my mind if I had neighbours like these. This characterisation of them is one of the things that has stuck with me over the years.

The Ring seems to have shifted its 'allegiance' to Frodo without any trouble. There's also a hint that it is giving him a bit of wanderlust, and even showing him images in dreams.

Interesting that we see this glimpse of something greater opposing Sauron. Another composer, you might say.

Holy fucking shit Gollum. I do not remember that line at all. Gollum the baby eater.

We're told that Gollum had made his way to Mordor, where he was tortured for information. Presumably these are the 'friends' that Gollum seemed fiendishly pleased to have earlier, that would help him get revenge on Bilbo. I think it's notable that even after this ordeal, Gandalf was still able to 'put the fear of fire' into him and compel him to reveal his tale.

I love that this is set up in the very first chapter, this payoff for the end.

I wonder if this has implications for the other times the Ring came close to destruction - had the bearer been forced to destroy it, would they have been driven insane? Had Elrond coerced Isildur, would we have a mad king? Or does Gandalf speak of mental domination, and that the act of using the Ringbearers mind to overcome the Ring would break them?

Fucking drag them Frodo. Or is this perhaps a sign of the Ring's influence?

Did Sam just try to pull a fast one on Gandalf?

I think the most important part of the end of these chapters, is Gandalf's unseen internal dialogue on hobbits, even if he did speak some small portion of his thoughts. I think here is where he first considered Frodo as something more than someone who needed to be defended from evil, but as someone who could have a hand in its ending.

 

Gamgee speaking well of Bilbo is interesting. We see a hint of that genteel master/servant relationship here which is elaborated on in Frodo and Sam. Bilbo is consulting with Gamgee as an expert in his particular field of interest, and this condescension is a sign of Bilbo's good character.

Something we miss in the films (of course this comparison will be omnipresent for most of us), which I admit I'd completely forgotten about, was the length of the party. It ran from elevenses onwards - encompassing multiple meals. Not just the timeframe in which hobbits have those meals, with buffet food available to be grazed on, but lunch and tea as two separate full sit-down meals for all the guests together, with further periods of eating, drinking, and dancing in-between.

Hobbits know how to fucking live, man.

There's some interesting spelling choice in here. Connexions, "into the Water" and a few others. Like Wize noted, there's no way this is accidental given Tolkein's linguistics obsession. Some may be simple anachronisms given the time in which this was written, but mostly it's more than that - he's deliberately using anachronisms from an even earlier time, even from a time which never actually happened, to evoke this sort of nostalgia for forgotten pastoral life. It's pretty cool. And I can just seethe in sympathetic rage for ignorant readers at all the people who didn't get it and complained about his "mistakes".

Bilbo's gift giving marks him as a sarcastic little bastard. Also interesting is that the entire party debacle was a set up to make giving away the ring easier, mixed in with all the other gifts. Although he doesn't quite grasp why, Bilbo's aware that the ring has an uncanny hold on him, and a part of him wants it gone. This chapter also calls into question the story of how the ring came into Bilbo's possession - Frodo has heard the true story, not the one he told the dwarves and put in his book - that he won it in a game of riddles. I'm partial to the fan theory that Bilbo straight-up stole the ring, and Frodo heard the events we see happen in the Hobbit - a middle ground between the reality of basic bitch theft and the fiction of winning it as a prize in a game of riddles.

Gandalf dips, seeming weighed down by something. Foreshadowwwwww.

 

so numerology is not Tolkien's strong point, but he makes it seem like he knows what he's doing. The numbers 111, 33, and 22 are the numbers used in chapter 1. If it was just 111, I'd chalk it to enjoying the number. add 33 on and now it seems deliberate. Add more and i'm hunting for hidden meanings in numbers. does 111 mean 3 ones? which would make 111 of bilbo and 33 of frodo meaning 3 groups of 3. does that mean the 3 elven rings, and the three hobit bearers of the one ring (smeagol, bilbo, frodo) and the third age? And since its bilbo's goodbye party and frodo's goodbye to childhood party, does that fortell the end of the third age, the end of the the one ring, and the passing of the three elven rings into the West? And is september 22nd , 9 and 2, that adds up to 11, which means ellevenses, which is the start of the party, and...
(i stopped here before I ended up with a bigger conspiracy room).

"I put the fear of fire on him." Not in him, like we would use colloquially, but the fear of fire on him. I'm not sure what that actually means, but it serves to make Gandalf the Wizard seem even more scary and unnatural. Anyone could put the fear of God in someone, but Gandalf can put the fear of fire ON someone.

Also, we meet our first female character in Lobelia. I'm not sure why I'm keeping track of this, partially to prove that "there are no women in tolkien" wrong, but also the acknowledge the lack of role they play.

favorite line from the chapters:
"Many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

 

Frodo came of age on Bilbo's 111th birthday. That basically means in human terms he turned 18 and Bilbo up and ran off, which I find more amusing now.

I love how Gandalf is a highly accomplished pyrotechnic, at least by hobbit standards. Yes he had magic helping, but we know from later chapters that he has to have something to work with, so those fireworks must have been legitimate.

I can't even remember not knowing the story of Lord of the rings, so I can't really imagine not knowing what the ring is, but the way it's made ominous by its effects on Bilbo in the first chapter is nicely done.

I'd forgotten Bilbo went off with dwarves and not by himself, the movies have really thrown off my memories of the books.

I only really remember Lobelia stealing Bilbo's spoons, but many of the other hobbits also seemed happy to walk away with more than they were specifically gifted. Maybe Lobeila wasn't quite so out of the ordinary in that way.


Gandalf never touched the ring in the movies, but he holds it in chapter 2, before throwing it in the fire.

Are the elven rings Rings of Power? Gandalf says only Bilbo has ever given up a Ring of Power voluntarily, but at this point Gandalf should have Narya, given voluntarily by Cirdan.

 

"it will have to be paid for,' 'it isn't natural, and trouble will come of it!" - and this is basically foreshadowing again, because trouble did come from it, even though Bilbo wasn't the one to bear the consequences.

The length of the speech - the movie seemed to make it drag on due to tension and scenes cutting back and forth, but the actual speech in the book took me less than 5 minutes.

In fact, on reflection, I'm not sure if it's just my age or the fact that I last re-read lord of the rings before med school - maybe years of academic reading dry facts has made me find LoTR much more palatable. Even "the boring parts"

'So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.' - I think this quote is very reminiscent to myself personally, especially throughout working in emergency during COVID, and even now as omicron looms and COVID drags into year 3.

‘I should like to save the Shire, if I could – though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.' - An interesting line. I often forget how sympathetic Frodo is based on the movies- though I must confess I am highly biased in favour of Sam. But this too reminds me of the tragedy that after all that is said and done, Frodo has saved the shire - but he was never able to fully enjoy the peace in it again. And despite the wanderlust, I feel even now, the idea of having somewhere I used to belong to is indeed a comforting thought.

 

Okay so I read these first two way back when and then never commented about them and yesterday picked up from chapter 3, so working from memory here, but looking through my highlights I mainly love the hobbits. Tolkien does a great job building it so that for the rest of the book we can really see why they miss it and would go to these lengths to try and preserve it.

Sam in particular is a delight from the start, and I'm glad we're gonna get to see so much more of him before it's done.