Like any good writer, J.R.R.Tolkien is a master of using literary devices to “paint” the reader a picture of the ancient and dangerous Mirkwood Forest. The dangers of the forest are foreshadowed when the narrator says, “Now began the most dangerous part of all the journey.” Since our adventurers have encountered stone giants in the mountains, the goblin attack and escape through their tunnels, and the Wargs trapping them in the trees, it has to give the reader pause to be told that these were