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02-14-2018, 05:17 AM | #1 | ||
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The talking fox of Woody End
Quote:
In Reader's Companion, Hammond and Scull comment, Quote:
In my old copy of Lord of the Rings, this incident is at the top of page 71. Midway on page 76, Frodo meets Gildor and the Noldorin pilgrims, whose mere presence drives away Khamûl the Nazgûl. And I realized something. The Lord of the Rings picks up where The Hobbit left off. The Hobbit is a children’s tale, written for Tolkien’s own children, written because whenever their father erred in his recitations by memory, his children (usually led by second-eldest Michael) corrected his recollections, something along the lines of, “But last night you said…” So the doting father wrote it all down. As readers “listening in” as Tolkien tells his children a marvelous and entertaining story, we participate with the children. It’s a story meant to be read aloud, and even the frightening parts (the spiders of Mirkwood were intended to frighten young Michael, and did the same to my granddaughter, who made me stop) are intended to entertain and enrapture children. As The Lord of the Rings begins, our ears are still tuned to hear The Hobbit. Yes, Gandalf frightens Frodo with a terrifying tale of the origin of the Ring, but that’s a just a story. When Frodo and Sam and Pippin finally set off across the Shire on a carefree walk, we’re still “listening in” as if listening to The Hobbit. At the high point of this part of the story, the Hobbits are sleeping among the roots of a great tree like children nestled in their parents’ arms. The fox sees them, and we hear his internal dialogue, almost like a marvelous children’s story, “listening in” in a way that supersedes even what we experience in The Hobbit. They awaken, and trouble is not far away. First the Nazgûl comes upon them but cannot determine what troubles him: he rides on. Then he overtakes them a second time, but the Noldor follow hard upon his arrival, and he retreats. Then Gildor speaks with Frodo. The Elf “of the House of Finrod” must at least be one of Finrod’s counselors of old: It is likely, I think, that Gildor was one with whom Finrod took council before leaving Nargothrond with Beren. “[A]dvice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.” All courses ran ill indeed for Finrod. “[D]o not go alone. Take such friends as are trusty and willing.” Even so must Gildor have also advised Finrod. From this point on, until he at last boards ship with Elrond and Galadriel and Gandalf, Frodo is no longer in the world he had before inhabited. He is not even in the (for Middle-earth) day-to-day world his uncle Bilbo inhabited with the Dwarves. He is in the world the Edain inhabited, the world Aragorn inhabits: the Middle-earth of the Noldor, the Middle-earth of their ever-repeating wars against Morgoth and Sauron. He has crossed a boundary and can never leave. He can never truly return home: for Frodo, home is gone forever. The last signpost of that happy, carefree world Frodo left behind is a talking fox. |
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02-14-2018, 09:30 AM | #2 |
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Or at least a thinking fox. Whose thoughts get recorded in the story.
Crazy thought I've never had before... The fox wouldn't have anything to do with CS Lewis' Narnia creatures, would it? Influenced by? Jab at? I wonder whatever became of the fox. Anyone up for some fanfic on it? Or an RPG? Dare we christen it "Frodo's Fox"?
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02-15-2018, 07:15 PM | #3 |
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No. Tolkien's fox was written about fifteen years earlier than the Narnia stories.
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02-16-2018, 01:05 AM | #4 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
Back to the subject. I seriously doubt that the fox was a randomly chosen creature. Lewis was a medievalist: if I am not mistaken, Narnia is in fact a complex medieval-style allegory composed by Lewis and based upon his nearly-unmatched knowledge and understanding of medieval allegory. I think the fox was indeed chosen to demark the shift in story-telling. I don’t think anyone else - not on this board, and not among professional interpreters of Tolkien - has noticed this before. It’s taken me over forty-four years and perhaps a hundred readings to notice it, along with reading a lot of criticism of the scene both from folks like us and from academicians. It seems deliberately obvious: nearly everyone notices and is aggravated by the fox, but no one notes the shift it marks. It must be a signpost, an intentional marking of a particular turn in the story. Why then a fox? My guess is that C.S. Lewis suggested a fox. Hoping to substantiate it, I looked up “fox in medieval literature” on Google and found quite a bit of reference material, particularly about Reynard the Fox, “the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure,” as Wikipedia puts it. There are a great many other references (over 950,000 tonight), and I have not time to plow through more than a sampling. Does anyone have any idea why Tolkien would choose to mark this part of the story with a fox rather than, say, a squirrel or a badger or bird or some other creature? |
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02-16-2018, 02:06 AM | #5 |
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No idea. Why does a fox fit best in your theory?
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02-16-2018, 02:24 AM | #6 |
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09-14-2020, 10:27 AM | #7 |
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I think a fox is a good choice over any other creature, for the reasons Earniel stated. Squirrels are too common, it would be odd to pick one squirrel out of the bunch when squirrels wouldn't even be notable. Badgers and porcupines are too specific, they are not just a popular forest animal. An owl could work, but that is a little too close to the bird spies of Saruman. A wolf or bear would be too threatening. A fox has the right aesthetic and the right behavior, they are curious and I can imagine one taking notice of some hobbits and then going about his business.
I don't know that there's a really significant reason for the fox. I figured it was just the author's artistic license (not Tolkien, I mean the in-world author). Just a harmless little bit of whimsy. As the story gets more serious, so does the tone of the writing. That said, I always had a thing for the fox and in fact I've used some variation of "shire fox" as a username on the internet several times.
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10-15-2020, 11:02 AM | #8 |
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Would have been fun in the FOTR movie - if they had a fox turn to observe the hobbits setting out on their journey.
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03-11-2021, 02:15 PM | #9 |
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Gonna resurrect this thread...
Three Thains of the Took line had the name "Isengrim." If you dig into the Reynard tales you will quickly find that Reynard's principle opponent was "Isengrim the Wolf." As an aside - the name breaks down to Iron + Fierce in Anglo Saxon. Lewis and Tolkien were both medievalists and being teachers of medieval literature would have been absolutely aware of the Reynard cycle. Given that Lord of the Rings is patterned after medieval epics (much like Narnia is after medieval allegories) it makes perfect sense from this perspective that an "English thinking" fox would make an appearance in some fashion. I think the dissonance comes from expectation of a modern novel having a consistent voice. Works of medieval literature often have more than one author (much like the Red Book of Westmarch) and changes in the narrative voice and style of Lord of the Rings can be expected. Last edited by FernStump : 03-11-2021 at 02:20 PM. Reason: clarification and typo removal |
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