Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.

One of the benefits of taking a text like this, a novel or anything, and looking at it at such a close level, this, this extremely close read-through very slowly, is that so much of the nuance of the writing becomes apparent. And little things, of course, like specific word use and the order that events

have happened and character arcs and things like that. But even other little details, like

the way the story twists and turns and the way how just a few

paragraphs earlier the text was going in one direction, and then all of a sudden it takes

a turn.

And of course, if you're just doing a regular readthrough, you would notice some of this, but

it gives us the time to look back and go, okay, this new section feels different.

Why was the previous section necessary before we got to this section?

Now, what am I talking about?

Well, in today's section of the text, we get to the very first time that we actually have

a conversation between Bilbo and Gandalf about the ring.

And the entire time that we've been reading through this first chapter,

we've been getting these stories from other people, from other perspectives.

There's a lot that has been set up already to define Bilbo as a good person.

How many times have we heard somebody say something that would be questionable about Bilbo. And yet

somebody else, the old Gaffer, Sam, whoever, already in the text rises to the occasion to

defend Bilbo. Even the narrator mentions multiple times that Bilbo was generous with his money,

that he wasn't judgmental towards others, even though they were

judgmental towards him.

Now, he may not have appreciated the Sackville Baggins's because, well, you know, they're just

...