Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
But back to the traces of this intermediate 'Blue Mountains' phase: remember that as Tolkien wrote what we know as Book I the geography was entirely vague; the regions between Hobbiton and Rivendell had not been mapped , and T never did successfully square Frodo's journey from Weathertop with what had been said of Bilbo- how on earth did it take Aragorn the Ranger many days to cover ground Thorin & Co. managed in a couple of hours? He tried to rewrite it in the Second Edition but it still doesn't really work.
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I know this is a side topic here but I'm wondering...
A) is my understanding of Tolkien's solution correct?
B) if correct, is it an acceptable solution (if never published!); or in other words, does placing the Troll encounter 25 miles east of the Hoarwell (and somewhat North of the road) fit well enough with
The Lord of the Rings, considering the difficulties Strider and the Hobbits encountered?
As noted, according to the revised Hobbit the Stone-trolls appear to be close to the bridge (of Mitheithel), that is, just after the bridge and seemingly not that far from where the Dwarves stopped and saw the fire -- raising the question concerning Strider!
For the '1960 Hobbit' Tolkien set out to fix this among other problems: the bridge here is broken, but he noted:
'Bridge to point where troll fire seen: 20 miles' (Timelines And Itinerary, History of The Hobbit) and a bit later writes:
'Episode of the trolls occurs night of May 19, at a point about 25 miles from the Bridge.'
So the Dwarves were seemingly reimagined as journeying well past the river now, and in the text of the actual chapter (here called
The Broken Bridge actually), the Dwarves and Bilbo travel after fording the river, and at last when it was
'... night-dark under the Trees, Thorin called a halt. The wind was still blowing, but the rain-storm was passing. The clouds were breaking, and away in the East before them a waning moon was tilted between the flying rags.'
But Tolkien abandoned this entire revision of
The Hobbit seemingly on the advice of a friend -- and he was having other problems with the dates and moon phases as well, among everything else. However, when it came time for the 1966 Third Edition (if I've understood all this correctly), Tolkien added the bridge in
The Hobbit but nothing of this related detail! and so the Trolls still seem to be close to the river and not that far from the Dwarves (where they stopped).
John Rateliff (History of the Hobbit) agrees with Carpenter that Tolkien probably did not have the 1960 material before him when he made the change to the 1966 Hobbit. And so this never really helped much, except possibly in theory (since we know Tolkien was arguably at least thinking this way). Aragorn crossed the same bridge (now not broken in any case) and:
'... a mile further on they came to a narrow ravine that led away northwards through the steep lands on the left of the Road. Here Strider turned aside,...'
Again, if I recall correctly Aragorn and the Hobbits had difficulties travelling in the wilderness, including going 'too far' North, and this more detailed revision could have at least
better accounted for how they eventually came upon the Trolls, ultimately coming back to the road at a point east from where they had left it.
What do you (anyone) think of this 'intended' fix?
Although if we imagine this recasting to be true, we arguably 'move' where the Trolls seem to be according to
The Hobbit.