[davem]

Had Elrond already decided what to do with the Ring? Had Gandalf? Or were they really examining every option here before deciding? They certainly did explore every possibility, from the brave to the reckless via the absolutely inane - 'Lets through it in the Sea! That'll solve our problem!'. Its pretty obvious that some of them are either not the sharpest knives in the drawer, or they are petrified out of their wits.

We learn quite a lot about a number of characters - Aragorn has a nasty side - he was 'not gentle' with Gollum, & in fact virtually admits to 'taming Smeagol' by beating him & depriving him of food & water. Gandalf shows for the first time his mastery in a battle of wits, twisting Saruman's arguments, tearing them apart. In a sense he actually does break them to find what they are made of, & shows Saruman up for what he truly is. Bilbo's offer to take back the Ring shows both his courage & that the desire for it has not left him. Frodo, while wanting desperately to remain in rivendell with Bilbo suddenly finds himself speaking words which seem to come from someone else - the 'other half' of him, which Gildor spoke to him of in the earlier draft.

And Boromir - certainly not the Boromir of the movie! This Boromir is so full of himself, so certain of his superior wisdom - as far as he's concerned he's the warrior - he's been on the front lines & knows what these 'armchair generals' don't - that there's something very powerful & very nasty heading right for their comfortable little world that's going to pounce & gobble them all up. And what do they do in the face of that? Why, start heating up the forge to turn their most devastating 'sword' into a ploughshare!

The Dwarves are confused - Gloin virtually admits that Dain hasn't decided what to do about the Messenger's offer - well, if all the dwarvish hoards of wealth had at root a Ring, how tempting would the offer of one of them be? Yet, the Dwarves themselves claim to be 'concerned' only about what the men of Dale might do. The Elves of Mirkwood seem pretty careless in their custodianship of Gollum - they effectively fall asleep on watch, allow him to escape, & then end their pursuit of him because they get a bit too close to Dol Guldur, &, well, they don't go that way, so they just had to forget the whole thing.

What we have is everyone caught up in their own concerns, & looking to pass the buck. They gather in Rivendell to ask for counsel, & it basically takes Elrond & Gandalf, with a little help from Aragorn, 30 odd pages to snap them out of their self obsession, & get them to wake up, stop being stupid ('No, really, we could throw it in the Sea, walk away & pretend it never happened!' - 'Why, I'm sorry, but that's not a very intelligent suggestion! What we should do is hand it over to that looney prancing about in the Old Forest, walk away & pretend it never happened!' 'No, This is foolishness! The intelligent thing to do is give it to me, let me total Sauron, & then, er, well, we can cross that bridge when we come to it' etc, etc, etc).

What we're seeing is a bunch of people who really haven't got a clue, being guided to agree on the only possible sensible option - take it to the Fire & destroy it. I think Elrond knew what the descision would have to be all along, & was almost sitting back & letting everyone get their stupid ideas out of the way, so that they could be shown to be silly, & in the end, hopefully, they would all come to see what he knew was the inevitable course. Perhaps we have a play on words in the title of this chapter - not simply the Council of Elrond, but the counsel of Elrond, because in the end, its his show, he steers it where he knows it must go.