At Asking the Wrong Questions, Abigail Nussbaum continues the Great Tolkien Reread with “A Knife in the Dark” and “Flight to the Ford” from The Fellowship Of The Ring, Book 1. “These chapters contain some of the novel’s most memorable events, but taken as a whole they feel like a synthesis of all the ideas we’ve talked about in this series so far. We have Tolkien’s detailed, granular nature writing, as Strider guides the group off the Road, through marshes, over hills, and on to tracks that only he and the other Rangers know. The presence of history as written across the landscape of Middle Earth, as expressed in both the bare remnants of the old North Kingdom watchtower of Amon Sûl, and the three petrified trolls left over from Bilbo’s adventure in The Hobbit. Frodo’s growing physical courage, and the Ring’s increasing power over him. And, of course, the Black Riders, who here come to the apex of their power and horror (horseriding edition).

For this essay, then, I want to offer not a single analysis, but a few stray ideas that haven’t found their place elsewhere in this series so far, before we gear up for the forming of the Fellowship, and the journey to Mordor.”

Read more here.