Abducted by Fellowship Friday P - CH. 3

Hello to all! And welcome to the first of my five Fellowship Friday Posts!

I know I originally said that we would only have to read three chapters a week to finish The Fellowship of the Rings in August, turns out I was waaay off! I don't know what I was thinking! So I have decided, instead, to break it down by page number since there are five Fridays in August and just over 500 pages in the Fellowship.

Now I didn't have that many people sign up to read through this with me, and that is Okay! There will be prizes given to anyone that finishes all of the books, or to whomever just hangs in there the longest! But, don't worry about keeping pace with me. If you want to jump ahead feel free, and if you fall behind don't sweat it! 

So here is my post for ...

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS

prologue - chapter  3

In the prologue I learned that it just might be possible that I am a hobbit. Not only are they short and fat, they avoid wearing shoes, and appreciate the joy of leading a "simple" life, but they also avoid technology where at all possible! 

 "They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated then a forge bellow."

 Sound familiar to anyone else?

Another thing I learned from reading the prologue was that Meriadoc Brandybuck grows up to become a writer! I always knew that Frodo did some writing, and Bilbo of course, but I had forgotten that after all their adventures Merry goes on to write many books. Including one titled the Herblore of the Shire where we learn that hobbits were the first creatures to put their weeds into a pipe, thus creating pipeweed.

When the actual story begins Bilbo is getting ready to celebrate his 111 birthday and Frodo, who shares a birthday with Bilbo, is getting ready to turn 33. A large party is to be thrown, and this is when I realized that even if I had been a hobbit in a past life, I'm sure glad I am not one now! Their partys are CRAZY!!!!

So, Bilbo throws his party and there is good food, good drinks, and of course fireworks! After delivering a speech Bilbo uses a special Ring to vanish and travel back to his hobbit hole completely invisible. Not long after arriving home Gandolf joins him and they have a very famous conversation in which Bilbo tells Gandolf:

...I feel all thin...like butter that has been stretched over too much bread...

 And Gandolf tells him that after Bilbo is gone, he will keep two eyes on young Frodo, as often as he can spare them.

After Bilbo leaves, the story picks up again when Gandolf returns in the spring before Frodo's 50th birthday, after a rather long absence, just to tell him that the Ring his uncle left him is cursed and he now has to leave home or very bad things will happen! This is when we first get to hear the story of how the Ring came to be.

The rings of power were made in Eregior, some were mere trinkets but others were great. Of the great rings the Elves got three, the Dwarfs got seven, nine were given to Men, and one was for Sauron the Dark Lord of Mordor. Sauron's ring is the greatest of them all and has power over the others. When the Elves realize this they go into hiding and are not touched by Sauron's darkness. Things don't go to well for the Dwarfs though, Sauron's minions are able to find three of the rings but the rest have all been consumed by dragons. As much as it sucked to be one of the Dwarf Lords at that time, it sucked even more to be one of the Men! They were so consumed by the power of their rings that it turned them into Ringwraiths (a.k.a. Black Riders).

One day Gil-galad (an Elven King) and Elendil (from the men of Westenesse) are able to defeat Sauron in battle however they parish in the process. Elendil's son, Isildur, cuts the ring from Sauron's hand. Sauron's spirit is then forced to flee and takes shape as a shadow in Mirkwood.

 Eventually, Isildur is incredibly careless and looses the Ring in the river of Anduin. I was always told to remove my jewelry before going into the water, but hey, it is not like Isildur had his dad around to remind him of this, so what are you going to do?

The Ring is later found by a hobbit-like creature named Deagol, who gets killed by his friend Smeagol because Smeagol wanted the Ring as a birthday present. Which, I have to admit, is pretty much how I would act if I didn't get what I wanted on my birthday!

After years upon years upon years spent with the Ring Smeagol turns into the creature Gollum and then looses the Ring to Bilbo and Bilbo leaves the Ring to Frodo. And now that Frodo knows the Ring is dangerous he is on his way out of the Shire with his good friends Pippin and Sam. By the end of chapter three they have already run into two Black Riders (or the same Black Rider twice) and met up with an Elf named Gildor and his friends. After staying the night with them, I believe Frodo, Sam, and Pippin will be meeting up with Merry at his home in Buckland, so there is much more to come!

Recently my friend Steph did some posts over at Thefakesteph.com, where at the end she included the life lessons she was learning from this vampire series. I'm not sure if that was her idea or someone else's but I thought it was great so I am going to adopt it for my Lord of the Rings posts.

LIFE LESSON #1

People really need to learn to register for their birthdays!

Think about it, if Frodo had simply registered for his gifts on his 33 birthday, then when Bilbo tried to leave him the Ring he could have been like "No, thanks Uncle!"

And if Smeagol had registered for his birthday then when he tried to take the Ring from Deagol, Deagol could have shown him the copy of his registry and been like "You didn't ask for it therefore you don't get it. Now, back off and quit trying to choke me you greedy midget!"