[Boromir88]

Other points I took away from the chapter this time around...

I always noted Frodo's disgust and disbelief when Gandalf tells him that Gollum was not so different from hobbits. Frodo simply can't believe there is any connection to someone so vile and done as many awful deeds as Gollum has done. I know how much this changes when Frodo encounters and spared Gollum's life. They are both so closely tied by the Ring, but I really took notice for the first time that there is a connection between the two that doesn't involve the Ring. In the same way that Bilbo and Gollum were familiar with the same riddles, in this chapter we see Frodo shares Gollum's inquisitive mind to discover new paths:

Frodo went tramping over the Shire with them; but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times; as Bilbo had done.

So it went on, until his forties were running out, and his fiftieth birthday was drawing near: fifty was a number that he felt was somehow significant (or ominous); it was at any rate at that age that adventure had suddenly befallen Bilbo. Frodo began to feel restless, and the old paths seemed too well-trodden. He looked at maps, and wondered what lay beyond their edges: maps made in the Shire showed mostly white spaces beyond its borders. He took to wandering further afield and more often by himself; and Merry and his other friends watched him anxiously. Often he was seen walking and talking with strange wayfarers that began at this time to appear in the Shire.

Frodo's restlessness is described twice as "wandering." He gets no more enjoyment walking the "old paths that seemed to well-trodden," he wanders further from home and mostly on his own. I only recently connected Frodo's "wandering" to a trait similar to Gollum's. Yes, Gollum stayed hidden in his mountain cave, but he had the same wandering spirit to discover secrets and pathways:

'All the "great secrets" under the mountains had turned out to be just empty night: there was nothing more to find out, nothing worth doing, only nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering. He was altogether wretched. He hated the dark, and he hated light more: he hated everything, and the Ring most of all.'

Gollum leaves the mountains and continues on wandering, actually tracing Bilbo's paths and then answers the "summons" to Mordor where the are new paths and secrets he discovers in his aimless wandering. Frodo doesn't want to see it yet, but there is more connecting the two than the Ring. Or this wandering that leads to no purpose could be an effect of the Ring as well?

Ted Sandyman is one of the more humorous characters to me. Without a doubt he's obnoxious and annoying, but every time I read Ted's dialogue, I just can't stop picturing the ultimate internet troll. "I didn't see it, so it can't be true! You said Hal saw it? Well he's always saying he saw something."

"Walking trees! No way, what he saw was just an elm tree."
But there are no elm trees in this area
"Then he couldn't have seen an elm tree!"

I just want to yell at Sam to stop feeding the troll.