[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Professor Hedgethistle

But back to the darker elements I was on about. There are a lot of very depressing and even melancholic touches to the chapter, making the ‘journey in the dark’ as much metaphorical as literal.

What really struck me, in terms of the bleakness of this chapter, is the number of times that Moria is mentioned as a place of dread and fear before the Fellowship even enters it:

On all the others a dread fell at the mention of that name. Even to the hobbits it was a legend of vague fear.

Hold up! It must be a pretty fearsome place if rumour of it has penetrated even the Shire's insular society.

"It is a name of ill omen," said Boromir.

Ill omen indeed.

"The name of Moria is black"

Boromir again. And he's right. The name means "Black Pit" (although Gandalf chastises him for comparing it to Mordor).

"I too once passed the Dimrill Gate," said Aragorn quietly; "but though I also came out again, the memory is very evil. I do not wish to enter Moria a second time."

Oo'er! It can't be a very nice place to be if it even unsettles Aragorn. Incidentally, it is interesting that his memory of it is of a "very evil" place, given that he also has a feeling that it will be particularly dangerous for Gandalf. I had always thought of this as a premonition of sorts, but did he perhaps pick up some vague impression as to what sleeps there the last time he passed through?

"There it lies," he said, pointing away south-eastwards to where the mountains' sides fell sheer into shadows at their feet."

Gandalf is talking of the west wall of Moria. It lies in shadow.

Beyond the ominous water were reared vast cliffs, their stern faces pallid in the fading light.

An even earlier hint that danger might lurk the lake before the west wall. But also the cliffs in which the unseen gate lies are described as stern. Not a particularly good omen.

Under the looming cliffs they had looked like mere bushes, when seen far off from the top of the Stair; but now they towered overhead, stiff, dark, and silent, throwing deep night-shadows about their feet, standing like sentinel pillars at the end of the road.

Even the holly trees which stand either side of the west gate, trees of a type which had previously brought comfort through their association with the Elven realm of Hollin, are described as dark, shadowy and forbidding.

The language used in these descriptions of Moria, together with the changed landscape and the other dark touches that Fordim mentions, all contribute towards the bleakness of this chapter. But they also ensure that we can be in no doubt, as the Fellowship enter Moria, that it is a dark and dangerous place indeed.

Originally Posted by Fordim again

I’m not honestly entirely sure why the chapter seems so determined to be relentlessly bleak.

I wonder whether there is any connection between the bleakness of this chapter and the darkness of the years in which Tolkien was writing this section of the book. In the Foreword, he writes:

In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while.

Like Tolkien, the Fellowship have been plodding on through dark times up to this point. I wonder if the journey had become so bleak that he was unsure where it should go from here (metaphorically speaking). Of course, when he resumed nearly a year later, the darkness only grew before the light of Lothlorien was reached.