I think
Fordim's points on the nature of the River are incredibly significant - its not only the physical River which carries the Fellowship, but also the 'river' of Time. this is a chapter which focusses primarily on being ‘carried’, being ‘swept along’. Aragorn himself makes the connection when he says:
‘Winter is nearly gone.
Time flows on to a spring of little hope.’
In the last chapter, our final glimpse of Lorien, specifically of Galadriel herself, was:
Quote:
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As they passed her they turned & their eyes watched her slowly floating away from them. For so it seemed to them: Lorien was slipping slowly backward, like a bright ship masted with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey & leafless world.
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Suddenly, its not they who are standing still watching things pass away from them, it is they themselves who are sailing away, down the River, but also through time. Lorien was a passive time for them, now they are moving - or more precisely they are choosing to be moved both through space & through time. In Lorien it was as if there was
no Time at all, now, in this chapter we are given a very specific time scale for the events. Time had stopped, now it is moving, even if only to a ‘spring of little hope’.
I suspect that’s why this chapter seems so ‘cluttered’ with events - almost too many to keep up with. Like the Fellowship, we’ve been in the Timeless Land, where even though a month had passed we ourselves cannot ‘remember’ more than a few days there. Its as if Time itself was waiting for us to emerge, with a month’s worth of events for us to deal with in a few days. We’ve experienced both Elvish ‘Time’ while in Lorien, & now, in this chapter, we will experience Human ‘Time’, where change is so fast that we can hardly keep up. The sudden rush, the panic, the attacks by enemies - all of it is like awakening from a soothing dream to a hectic day. And so it is - Elves inhabit the dreamworld, Men the waking world. If the Fellowship are ‘passively’ carried along by the ‘Great River’ of Time, well, aren’t we all? For three chapters we’ve inhabited the dreamworld of Lothlorien (the
Dreamflower) now we have awakened.