Comprehension Questions for the PROLOGUE – BOOK ONE: CHAPTER I, A LONG-EXPECTED PARTY

 

1. From what year and what event are all dates of the shire-reckoning calculated?  (Answers at bottom.)
2. How did the hobbits come to settle the Shire?
3. Where was Frodo raised, and how did he come to live with Bilbo Baggins?
4. What do the hobbits mean by “filling up the corners”?
5. What are Bilbo’s “three purposes” for gathering his 144 guests at his birthday dinner?
6. Why does Bilbo want to go away?

 

BOOK ONE: CHAPTER II, THE SHADOW OF THE PAST – CHAPTER III, THREE IS COMPANY

 

1. How does Frodo learn of the Enemy and the rebuilding of the Dark Tower in the Land of Mordor?
2. Who is Saruman the White?
3. What has Gandalf been doing during the seventeen years following Bilbo’s disappearance?
4. Who was Sméagol, and who has he become?
5. Why does Frodo so readily agree with Gandalf’s advice that he go to Rivendell?
6. Why does Gildor say to Frodo, “I name you Elf-friend”?

 

 

LOT's  O  LINKs  or  Story Board

 

Answers for the PROLOGUE – BOOK ONE: CHAPTER I, A LONG-EXPECTED PARTY

1. About this time legend among the hobbits first becomes history with a reckoning of the years.  For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of Hobbits.  They passed over the Bridge of Stonebows, that had been built in the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took all the land beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs.  All that was demanded of them was that they should keep the Great Bridge in repair, and all other bridges and roads, speed the king’s messengers, and acknowledge his lordship.

Thus began the Shire-reckoning, for the year of the crossing of the Brandy-wine (as the Hobbits turned the name) became Year One of the Shire, and all later dates were reckoned from it.

(From Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Rings Page four.)

 

2. At once the western Hobbits fell in love with their new land, and they remained there, and soon passed once more out of the history of Men and of Elves.  While there was still a king they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at all with events in the world outside.  To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to aid the king, or so they maintained, though no tales of Men record it.  But in that war the North Kingdom ended; and then the Hobbits took the land for their own, and they choose from their own chiefs a Thain to hold the authority of the king that was gone.

(From Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Rings Page five.)

 

3. He grew up in Buckland until his parents drowned; Bilbo then adopted him and raised him. 

 

 

4.  Full of good food and drink (wine).  Page 28

 

 

5. “That I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.”  “Secondly, to celebrate my birthday… Our birthday…”  “…,the anniversary of my arrival by barrel at Esgaroth on the Long Lake…”  (From Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Rings Page 29 and/or 30)

 

 

6. He needs a Holiday, he feels thin, sort of stretched.  (Reasons better explained later in the story.) Page 32 or there abouts.

 

 

Answers, BOOK ONE: CHAPTER II, THE SHADOW OF THE PAST – CHAPTER III, THREE IS COMPANY

 

1. Gandalf tells him.
2. Chief of Gandalf’s order and head of the Council.
3. Research, investigating the ring and its path to Bilbo, putting the pieces together to figure out a riddle…
4. Hobbit-kind that lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland, he becomes Gollum.
5. Frodo knows that the Shire is in danger because of him.
6. It is the only help he can give at this time, he is going to pass the word that Frodo is an ally of the Elves.  (This is my guess if you have a better idea of the meaning send me an email with the answer.)