144 – Nobody’s Fault but Mine (and Yours, and Isildur’s)

Gandalf and Elrond come to terms with their own past mistakes while Aragorn reveals the lengths to which he’s gone to repair the faults of Isildur. As the story continues to unfold, the truth becomes clear to all at the Council of Elrond: Frodo’s ring is the One Ring cut from the hand of Sauron, and Gandalf isn’t afraid to use strong words — in the Black Speech — to prove it. We meet Radagast (in flashback), get word nerdy on a rather condescending name for Hobbits, and look for eucatastrophes in our favorite non-Tolkien stories.

For more analysis and information on Orkish and the Black Speech by Helge Fauskanger, see the website Ardalambion here: https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/orkish.htm

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Recommended Reading:

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) pp. 244-251, “The Council of Elrond”

Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, hardcover)

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback)

Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Silmarillion (Mariner Books, paperback)

Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (Mariner Books, paperback)

Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Peoples of Middle-earth (The History of Middle-earth, Vol. 12) (HarperCollins, paperback)

Gilliver, Peter, Jeremy Marshall, Edmund Weiner. The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, hardcover)

Kocher, Paul H. Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien (Del Rey, paperback)

Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)

Tolkien, J. R. R. and Douglas A. Anderson, ed. The Annotated Hobbit (HarperCollins, hardcover)

Join the discussion

1 comment
  • I think Mandos is just telling it how it be: All elves are going to fade, whether they like it or not. It’s just that the ones in Aman are presumably getting a smoother gentler transition facilitated by the Valar; whereas the elves who cling to Middle Earth past their time will make things harder on themselves* until they must seek the Grey Havens, or in the case of particularly stubborn ones, until their fëa consumes their hröa and they have nowhere else to go but to Mandos’ hall, unless they wish to wander the earth as powerless disembodied wraiths for the remainder of time.

    *like being stretched, perhaps, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread?

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