Chapter Six: The Old Forest and Chapter Seven: In the House of Tom Bombadil

Hello there,
I've chosen to group these two chapters as they seemed to flow into each other very well, and are very much two sections of one episode of the journey.

In these chapters, the four hobbits choose to go off into the Forest, a place of mystery and legend. As they travel through the woods, Merry and Pippin are seized by a great willow tree, for in this forest the trees move and speak to each other. Frodo and Sam try to release them by burning and cuttign at the tree but only succeed in making it angry. They are rescued by Tom Bombadil, a sort of forest man who lives amongst the trees. He addresses the tree "Old Man Willow" as if it were a person, and it actually responds to his command to release the hobbits. Tom Bombadil had me impressed by the second paragraph of his appearance, a rare occurrence for a minor side character. He takes the hobbits to his home where they meet his beautiful naiad-like wife Goldberry and spend the night before setting off again in the morning. I very much enjoyed the passage in which Bombadil speaks of the trees and the nature of Old Man Willow, who he calls a "survivor." He says that Willow's hateful actions were in part the product of the destruction caused by the mobile creatures of the earth. I found this reminiscent of today's deforestation problems and wished that the trees of our forests fought back. Tom Bombadil also handles the Ring directly, something that seems unusual to me.

In relation to the film, I understand that the faster pace made it difficult and unnecessary to portray this part of the book, but I love Bombadil's character and wish that they could have found a way to incorporate him. I also noticed that Frodo's dream reminded me quite a lot of Gandalf's escape from Isengard: the tower, the staff-wielding figure, and the egress by eagle. I hope to see a further portrayal of this scene later as I loved the film's Saruman versus Gandalf (You... have elected... the way... of PAIN!).

Just a brief idea of future posts: in addition to finishing the book, I hope to talk some about Tolkien and his works, Renaissance Festivals and the like, and maybe do a review/talk about of some of The Lord of the Rings video games.

Thanks for reading,
C