One such example is when the four hobbits Merry, Pippin, Sam and Frodo, stay in the house of Tom Bombadil to find some safety and recuperation after their encounters with the moving and talking trees of the Old Forest. Frodo is visited by two dreams. He is unsettled by them as he doesn’t understand them, but they are both highly significant in detailing what is to come. The first dream shows him a glimpse of a man standing atop a tall tower shadowed in darkness. There is no light save that of the moon, but the figure manages to create a light from the staff he wields, until ‘a mighty eagle swept down and bore him away.’
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This is of course a vision of Frodo’s dear friend Gandalf the Grey, and how he escapes from the tower of Orthanc where he is currently being held captive by Saruman the White. The second dream is of a sweet voice singing to him out of a time of great desperation, and he can hear it “growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver until at last, it rolls back, and a far green country opens before him under a swift sunrise.” This dream is actually a small and rare glimpse of the Undying Lands, to which he will travel at the end of his journey with the One Ring. The words presented here are what inspired the lyrics for ‘Into The West,’ one of the most powerful songs in the films, and are also said by Gandalf as he tries to comfort Pippin at the battle of Minas Tirith in the film adaptation of the Return of the King.
Another character who is visited by many visions and dreams is Faramir, son of Denethor the Steward of Gondor. Whilst at the Council of Elrond, Boromir his older brother describes how ‘on the eve of the sudden assault, a dream came to my brother in a troubled sleep; and afterward a like dream came oft to him again and once to me.’ The dream involves a prophecy mentioning the broken sword of Aragorn and his forebears, a token of the doom at hand, which is a reference to the ring of power, and the word Halfling, which obviously refers to Frodo himself, as Halfling is another term for Hobbit.
Many fans use this dream, and the fact that it visited Faramir far more than it visited Boromir, to argue that Faramir should have been sent to join the fellowship instead, but others believe that everything happened for a reason, and in the order that it was supposed to. Faramir is also haunted by another dream in the books, of a ‘great dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, and coming on, darkness unescapable.’
Interestingly, the presentation of this dream in the film adaptation is given to Eowyn, who relays it to Aragorn as a nightmare in the great halls of Edoras, but it actually appears in the book in the words of Faramir, who recounts it to Eowyn in the houses of healing where they meet and fall in love. The dream is said to be one that Tolkien had often, and a strangely reoccurring dream that many of his family members had.
There is also the question of visions and prophecies that occur in other ways throughout the story. The most famous examples of these include Galadriel’s mirror, which shows ‘Things that were, things that are, and some things that have not yet come to pass.’ In the film adaptation, Frodo is shown a vision of the Scouring of The Shire at the hands of the evil Saruman and the despicable Grima Wormtongue. Another object within Middle Earth that allows its viewer to see visions of different events in time and space, as well as communicating telepathically with anyone who owns one of the seven counterparts in the Palantir, the seeing stones. It is in one of these crystal orbs that Pippin sees his own vision of the attack on Minas Tirith, and the white tree of Gondor, which gives enough time and warning for Gandalf to muster a defense.
And of course, the most famous prophecy in the book, which includes lines ‘renewed shall be blade that was broken’ and ‘the crownless again shall be king’ which are the foretelling of the future of Aragorn as the rightful king of Gondor. This prophetic poem appears in the books in Gandalf’s letter, and in the films in the voice of Arwen who convinced Elrond to reforge Narsil.
Arwen too sees a vision of her son in the woods, which is why she decides to stay in Middle Earth, rather than join her mother in the Undying Lands. Throughout the course of both books and films, the dreams and visions of several characters often change their actions, and thus the course of their destinies.
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