The area of the most common words, comes in Mirkwood.  Thorin and Company have been starving, the dark and depressing atmosphere weighing them down.

At the very nadir, [08.016], Bilbo peers into the darkness at the boat across the stream and Fili hooks it.  Suddenly – watch the line rise –  the deer appears, Thorin shoots, Bombur falls into the water, and at the top of that meteoric straight-line rise in the frequency of uncommon words,

[08.057]  they all left the path and plunged into the forest together.

From there, the differently-angled climbing peak in Mirkwood includes the drawing and naming of Sting, the moment that Bilbo decides to become a hero and lead the spiders away, and his spontaneous poetry!

We’re carefully remembering that each point on the graph represents the mid-point of a five-thousand word window – the stream-crossing and the drawing of Sting happen well within a single window whose point is on the sharply rising line.  Let’s also keep in mind that the word “spider” is among the uncommon words.  I am having fun looking at the specific points, however, and I hope you are as well, Word Fans.

Our adventures in Mirkwood are not quite over!  The dip at 53,000 comes a few pages before the end of chapter eight when the company is relieved to have been rescued and the perspective shifts to Thorin’s capture by the Wood-Elves.  The peak at 57,000 begins the daring Chapter 9 escape out of the Elvenking’s fortress.