Captain Kirk stays dead for scarcely 10 minutes in Star Trek Into Darkness; Nick Fury dies and returns before the end of Captain America 2; Professor X is hand-waved back to life, practically as an afterthought, just in time for X-Men: Days of Future Passed; Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc., all have been killed off and brought back to life so many times by now that the question is no longer how the series will carry on without 'em, but only in what preposterous way they'll be resurrected this time. Ironically, stories of courageous superheros are the most cowardly of all at facing the finality of death.
Yet I suspect it didn't always used to be this way. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is killed by Vader, and then stays dead; he comes back as a helpful ghost, yes, but never in a manner that can directly influence events again. Spock is resurrected in Star Trek III, sure, but Kirk must sacrifice literally everything that matters to him--his career, his ship, his son--to bring it about. As recently as the '80s, resurrections in fiction were apparently far more rare, costly, and meaningful than they are now.
Which takes me back to 1954: was the appearance of Gandalf the White truly an astonishing event? Were readers really fooled into thinking our heroes were being accosted by the treacherous Saruman, not their old friend? I'm seriously asking.
As for myself, I have vague childhood memories of being surprised by Gandalf's reappearance--as well as more than a little unnerved by his descriptions of falling "beyond light and knowledge," down into places "Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves," where "the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he", as Gandalf engages in a Battle Royale wherein "If there were a year to spend, I would not tell you all," a fight that ends in a Pyrrhic Victory atop a mountain that leaves him "alone, forgotten, without escape," as he "lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth."
A cheap, easy resurrection that robs death of its meaning Gandalf's is not. Indeed, I do believe I had the dim feeling as young reader that if this was the cost of becoming Gandalf the White, then I wasn't entirely sure the price was worth it. He hath drunken out of that bitter cup, yeah, to the very dregs.
Yet despite the unimaginable pains he suffered to return (all the more ominous in his lack of detail), Gandalf's reappearance still feels strangely...low-key? In fact, there is a curious lack of stakes surrounding this chapter altogether. Mostly it functions as an utterly redundant data-dump, wherein Aragorn et al learn all about Merry and Pippin and Treebeard and the Ents barely a chapter after we the readers have already learned it, only now we have to hear about it all over again, with no new information to add besides. It's all so needlessly repetitive, and I seriously think at least half of this chapter could have been excised.
On a more positive note: Aragorn is a lot less indecisive in this chapter, I suppose--throughout their trackings, he makes life-and-death decisions quickly, firmly, and authoritatively, in contrast to the waffling figure from the end of Fellowship. Whether this signifies genuine character growth on his part, or is just Tolkien trying to hurry up to the next episode, is open for debate.
And the chapter does at least have a heckuva closer:
"I see a great smoke," said Legolas, "What may that be?"
"Battle and war!" said Gandalf, "Ride on!"
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