The Council of Elrond

Participants in the Council of Elrond, on map of the northwest of Middle-earth. All come to seek advice; Elrond tells them he summoned them.[9] All locations are diagrammatic.

The half-elven Master of Rivendell, Elrond, tells the representatives of all the Free Peoples that although they all had seemingly come for their own reasons, he had summoned them to speak for their people about the Ring and the danger from Sauron. The Dwarf Glóin tells that a messenger from Sauron had asked his king, Dáin II Ironfoot, for news of Bilbo and his ring, promising three Dwarf-Rings in return. Dáin, suspicious, had sent Glóin and his son Gimli to Rivendell for advice.[9]

Boromir, son of the Steward of Gondor, narrates a dream that both he and his brother Faramir had had, that darkness in the east had been answered by a voice from the west, reciting

Seek for the Sword that was broken;
In Imladris it dwells.
There shall be taken counsels
Stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token
That Doom is near at hand.
For Isildur's Bane shall waken,
And the Halfling forth shall stand.[9]

At this, Strider displays his broken sword, Narsil, and reveals that he is Aragorn, the heir of Isildur. In the battle that ended the Second Age, Isildur had used the broken sword to cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand, but refused to destroy it, claiming it for himself. The Ring had been lost when Isildur was killed; it was his bane, the thing that caused his death.[9]

Elrond summons Frodo to show the Ring; Boromir is astonished it should have come to such an unlikely recipient. Bilbo tells how the Ring came into his possession, after his meeting with Gollum, described in The Hobbit.[9] Gandalf explains how the Ring had lengthened Gollum's life, how he had found a scroll written by Isildur which told how to identify the ring by its "fiery letters", and that he and Frodo had seen these in Frodo's home.[9]

Aragorn tells of his long search for Gollum, that he finally captured him and gave him to Thranduil's Elves in Mirkwood to hold in safety. At this, Thranduil's son Legolas tells of Gollum's escape. Gandalf tells the shocked meeting that Gollum may yet have a part to play. Gandalf reports further bad news: that the chief Wizard, Saruman, has betrayed them and is now working to become a power in his own right. Gandalf was captured by Saruman, so he had been unable to meet Frodo as he had promised. He escaped when Gwaihir the Eagle rescued him.[9]

The Council debates what to do with the Ring, but all the proposals are seen not to work. Elrond says that the Ring must be destroyed, and that the only way is to bring it to the fire of Mount Doom in Mordor, where it was forged. Frodo takes this task upon himself. Samwise Gamgee, who had been listening, though he had not been invited, asks if Frodo would have to go alone. Elrond tells Sam that he can go with his master.[9]

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, in a passage cited at length by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force, whose success may be gauged by the fact that few pause to recognize its complexity."[1][10] Shippey writes that it boldly ignores many rules of writing, being long at 15,000 words, but "in it nothing happens: it consists entirely of people talking".[1] Further, there are many speakers: twelve of them present in the meeting, and another seven quoted in the longest speech, Gandalf's, which, Shippey notes, takes up half the chapter. In addition, the chapter's account of its complex committee meeting "could very easily have disintegrated, lost its way, or simply become too boring to follow".[1] It did not do so, in Shippey's view, because Tolkien had an "extremely firm grasp of the history [of Middle-earth]", and because he had an "unusual ability to suggest cultural variation by differences in mode of speech".[1] Shippey mentions another distinctive structural feature of the chapter. The whole two-book volume is narrated as a single strand with Frodo as the protagonist, except for the flashback narratives within "The Shadow of the Past" and "The Council of Elrond".[11]

Kate Nepveu, writing for Tor.com, calls the chapter enormous but one of her favourites, noting that it "parallels and revises"[12] "The Shadow of the Past", both chapters mixing summary and quoted dialogue.[12] The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger adds that the two chapters are similar in that "the past must be recapitulated by Gandalf or Elrond [in their respective flashback sections] in order to explain the present".[13]

Peter Jackson, in his Lord of the Rings film trilogy, chose to transform the structure of Tolkien's chapter, moving Sauron's forging of the Ring in the Second Age, his overthrow by an alliance of Elves and Men, and the taking of the Ring by Isildur to a dramatic film prologue, narrated with voice-over.[20] This resolves a major problem for the film-maker in the narrative, namely that Tolkien tells much of the history through "talking heads", reflecting long after the events on what they meant, and violating the basic "show, don't tell" principle of film. The council scene in Jackson's 2001 film The Fellowship of the Ring is thus much shorter, and with far less speech, than Tolkien's chapter.[21]

Peter Jackson's portrayal of the Council of Elrond in his 2001 film The Fellowship of the Ring is visually effective but brief and noisy, in contrast to Tolkien's quietly reflective meeting.[2]

The Tolkien scholar Daniel Timmons, mainly critical of Jackson's interpretation, writes that Jackson alters the moment when Frodo accepts the quest to destroy the Ring, "but this time elevates Frodo to the stature that Tolkien has portrayed throughout his book".[2] Timmons notes that Jackson favours the "frenetic moment, the council arguing, over Tolkien's [approach], the council in quiet reflection".[2] He writes that the scene succeeds in "vividly and effectively" displaying Frodo's "momentous decision. We see Frodo's inner struggle, his doubts, his fears, balanced against his sense that he is the right one for the task; he recognizes that his humble and non-aggressive nature make him the best available person to bear this burden. Alas, would that many more such moments existed in Jackson's film."[2]

The scholar of film Judith Kollmann notes that the chapter is the longest in that book, and "a major nexus"[22] that explains the power and threat of the One Ring, introduces the final members of the Fellowship of the Ring, and defines the planned quest to destroy it. She describes Tolkien's version as working systematically through the agenda, "a council conducted with dignity and in peace".[22] She writes that in Jackson's film, "virtually everything is changed":[22] Frodo is healed but his recovery is not celebrated; Frodo and Sam have "bags packed and waiting",[22] eager to return to the Shire; Elrond and Gandalf are "almost ... conspiratorial";[22] the Council is "framed, not by hobbits, but by Aragorn"[22] who meets Boromir before the Council, and Arwen after it. Thus, she writes, Jackson has shifted the emphasis from Frodo to Aragorn as hero.[22]

• "The Scouring of the Shire"

• Carpenter, Humphrey (1978) [1977]. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. G. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0-04-928039-7.
• Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981). The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-31555-2.
• Croft, Janet Brennan, ed. (2005). Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. Mythopoeic Press. ISBN 978-1887726092.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2001) [1997]. A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie. Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87338-699-9.
• Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (2005). The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. HarperCollins. pp. 74–91. ISBN 978-0-007-20907-1.
• Kocher, Paul (1974) [1972]. Master of Middle-earth: The Achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140038774.
• Nepveu, Kate (27 March 2009). "LotR re-read: Fellowship II.2, 'The Council of Elrond'". Tor.com. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
• Rutledge, Fleming (2004). The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-80282-497-4.
• Shippey, Tom (2001). J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
• Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (3rd ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0261102750.
• Timmons, Daniel (2013) [2007]. "Jackson, Peter". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 303–310. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (29 July 1954). The Fellowship of the Ring. Allen & Unwin. OCLC 12228601.