XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark
"Stan Brown" skrev i meddelelsen
news:MPG.2ce3e725636f451f98e255@news.individual.net...
> In the house of Tom Bombadil, Frodo in a dream saw Gandalf's rescue
> from Isengard, and later he commented on it during the Council of
> Elrond.
> But earlier, at the end of Chapter 5, he had a "vague dream" that
> I've not been able to connect to any of the events of the book. Can
> anyone interpret it?
> "Eventually he fell into a vague dream, in which he seemed to be
> looking out of a high window over a dark sea of tangled trees. Down
> below among the roots there was the sound of creatures crawling and
> snuffling. He felt sure they would smell him out sooner or later.
> "Then he heard a noise in the distance. At first he thought it was a
> great wind coming over the leaves of the forest. Then he knew that it
> was not leaves, but the sound of the Sea far-off; a sound he had
> never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams.
> Suddenly he found he was out in the open. There were no trees after
> all. He was on a dark heath, and there was a strange salt smell in
> the air. Looking up he saw before him a tall white tower, standing
> alone on a high ridge. A great desire came over him to climb the
> tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards
> the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a
> noise of thunder."
My best guess is that the dream is not to be interpreted as a mapping of
specific events. The first part of the dream seems to tie in with the
servants of Sauron searching for him; and the Nazgūl who had almost found
him had sniffed for him. Gandalf had told him a bit abut the snuffling
Gollum, also searching for the Ring. The Woody End was fresh in his memory,
and he had just decided to enter another and much more sinister forest. He
was not used to high windows in his real life yet, but knew towers well
enough from the tales of Bilbo and Gandalf. Dreams are often a jumble of
things that are on your mind, both in the forefront and in the substrata,
and something that is on your mind can often surface in various guises from
one dream to the next.
As for the latter part of the dream, I suppose it ties in with his
knowledge about the world outside the Shire, such as he had at the time, as
well as his longings; and he was about to satisfy his longing to see the
Wide World, though under less than desirable conditions. In the foreword
is mention of the three Elf-towers on the Tower Hills, the westernmost of
which would permit one to see the Sea, according to the Westfarthing
hobbits. Granted that this tower stood alone on a green mound, while
Frodo's dream had a tower on a ridge. Perhaps in his real life Frodo was
more used to heaths and ridges than to mounds. Although he had no seaside
experience, he probably knew from Tales from Abroad that the sea makes a
peculiar wooshing sound as the waves break on the shore, and the air smells
of salt. I suppose it is anyone's guess if he had received fragments of
foresight in his dreaming, although foresight given to some individuals is
an established fact within the story.
Tolkien's purpose in putting that dream might be his fondness for adding
depth to the story by putting in loose ends. I suppose the only way that we
can find out is if Tolkien wrote a comment on it in a letter or some scrap
of paper that hasn't been published yet, or something.
Korax.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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