[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

(Random thought: I say 'any part of the Third Age', but Eeriness, dated 1914, has a certain resonance with Frodo's vision in Galadriel's mirror. A fun thought experiment: what if the dreams & visions mentioned in LotR are all Tolkien had to work from - how much of the story can you reconstruct?)

Just for giggles, I went through and did this for Fellowship. It turns out there's a lot of it there!:

Originally Posted by FotR 2

[Frodo] found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.

The Misty Mountains.

Originally Posted by FotR 5

Eventually [Frodo] fell into a vague dream, in which he seemed to be looking out of a high window over a dark sea of tangled trees. Down below among the roots there was the sound of creatures crawling and snuffling. He felt sure they would smell him out sooner or later.

Then he heard a noise in the distance. At first he thought it was a great wind coming over the leaves of the forest. Then he knew that it was not leaves, but the sound of the Sea far-off; a sound he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams. Suddenly he found he was out in the open. There were no trees after all. He was on a dark heath, and there was a strange salt smell in the air. Looking up he saw before him a tall white tower, standing alone on a high ridge. A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.

The Black Riders (possibly), & the call of the Sea, with specifically the White Towers.

Originally Posted by FotR 7

In the dead night, Frodo lay in a dream without light. Then he saw the young moon rising; under its thin light there loomed before him a black wall of rock, pierced by a dark arch like a great gate. It seemed to Frodo that he was lifted up, and passing over he saw that the rock-wall was a circle of hills, and that within it was a plain, and in the midst of the plain stood a pinnacle of stone, like a vast tower but not made by hands. On its top stood the figure of a man. The moon as it rose seemed to hang for a moment above his head and glistened in his white hair as the wind stirred it. Up from the dark plain below came the crying of fell voices, and the howling of many wolves. Suddenly a shadow, like the shape of great wings, passed across the moon. The figure lifted his arms and a light flashed from the staff that he wielded. A mighty eagle swept down and bore him away. The voices wailed and the wolves yammered. There was a noise like a strong wind blowing, and on it was borne the sound of hoofs, galloping, galloping, galloping from the East. ‘Black Riders!’ thought Frodo as he wakened, with the sound of the hoofs still echoing in his mind.

Isengard, Gandalf, the Eagles, and the Black Riders for sure.

Originally Posted by FotR 7

At his side Pippin lay dreaming pleasantly; but a change came over his dreams and he turned and groaned. Suddenly he woke, or thought he had waked, and yet still heard in the darkness the sound that had disturbed his dream: tip-tap, squeak: the noise was like branches fretting in the wind, twig-fingers scraping wall and window: creak, creak, creak. He wondered if there were willow-trees close to the house; and then suddenly he had a dreadful feeling that he was not in an ordinary house at all, but inside the willow and listening to that horrible dry creaking voice laughing at him again.

Old Man Willow (which would explain why the Bombadil diversion is so prominent, and why Tolkien wanted tree-men in from the start).

Originally Posted by FotR 7

It was the sound of water that Merry heard falling into his quiet sleep: water streaming down gently, and then spreading, spreading irresistibly all round the house into a dark shoreless pool. It gurgled under the walls, and was rising slowly but surely. ‘I shall be drowned!’ he thought. It will find its way in, and then I shall drown.’ He felt that he was lying in a soft slimy bog, and springing up he set his foot on the corner of a cold hard flagstone.

???

Originally Posted by FotR 8

But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind; a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.

Frodo's journey to Aman.

Originally Posted by FotR 8

'What in the name of wonder?' began Merry, feeling the golden circlet that had slipped over one eye. Then he stopped, and a shadow came over his face, and he closed his eyes. 'Of course, I remember!' he said. 'The men of Carn Dûm came on us at night, and we were worsted. Ah! the spear in my heart!' He clutched at his breast. 'No! No!' he said, opening his eyes. 'What am I saying? I have been dreaming. Where did you get to, Frodo?'

The fall of Arnor, and the Witch-King. If the Barrow-Wight was a presence in this dream, it again explains the Bombadil diversion.

Originally Posted by FotR 10

He seemed to be asleep. "I thought I had fallen into deep water," he says to me, when I shook him. Very queer he was, and as soon as I had roused him, he got up and ran back here like a hare.'

'I am afraid that's true,' said Merry, 'though I don't know what I said. I had an ugly dream, which I can't remember.'

The deep water again; Tolkien really hammered this for Merry, but never really made use of it.

Originally Posted by FotR 11

Frodo soon went to sleep again; but his dreams were again troubled with the noise of wind and of galloping hoofs. The wind seemed to be curling round the house and shaking it; and far off he heard a horn blowing wildly.

The raid on Crickhollow.

Originally Posted by FotR 12

[Sam] lay down again and passed into an uneasy dream, in which he walked on the grass in his garden in the Shire, but it seemed faint and dim, less clear than the tall black shadows that stood looking over the hedge.

The Shire, and the return of the Shadow.

Originally Posted by FotR 12

Frodo lay half in a dream, imagining that endless dark wings were sweeping by above him, and that on the wings rode pursuers that sought him in all the hollows of the hills.

The Winged Nazgul.

Originally Posted by FotR 13

[Frodo, on the Earendil poem]'I was half asleep when you began, and it seemed to follow on from something that I was dreaming about.'

Probably Earendil.

Originally Posted by FotR 14

[Boromir] 'For on the eve of the sudden assault a dream came to my brother in a troubled sleep; and afterwards a like dream came oft to him again, and once to me.

'In that dream I thought the eastern sky grew dark and there was a growing thunder, but in the West a pale light lingered, and out of it I heard a voice, remote but clear, crying:

Seek for the Sword that was broken: [&c]

The heart of the story, really.

Originally Posted by FotR 15

'They stand tall in our dreams: Baraz, Zirak, Shathûr.'

The Mountains of Moria.

Originally Posted by FotR 15

A great sleepiness came over Frodo; he felt himself sinking fast into a warm and hazy dream. He thought a fire was heating his toes, and out of the shadows on the other side of the hearth he heard Bilbo's voice speaking. I don't think much of your diary, he said. Snowstorms on January the twelfth: there was no need to come back to report that!

But I wanted rest and sleep, Bilbo, Frodo answered with an effort, when he felt himself shaken, and he came back painfully to wakefulness.

In theory, both Frodo and Bilbo, though this is very much a narrative device.

Originally Posted by FotR 19

[Sam's vision in the Mirror]

Heaps of stuff! The entire Cirith Ungol episode and the Scouring.

Originally Posted by FotR 19

[Frodo's vision in the Mirror]

Gandalf, Saruman, Bilbo the scholar, the fall of Numenor, the origin of Gondor, arguably the Battle of the Pelennor and the White Ship, plus of course Sauron.

Gollum's appearances throughout FotR are also repeatedly described as dreams, and 'lantern eyes in the dark' is a perfectly plausible dream.#

Put together, you actually get a lot of the story even in the very first book. Frodo's journey is almost all there, in fact - from Black Riders chasing him from the Shire clear through to the Ship sailing.

Of course, dreams are also a time-hallowed literary foreshadowing device, so this doesn't actually prove anything.

hS