"The Stairs of Cirith Ungol" - Ben's Thoughts

"Stairs" is an interesting chapter that covers a lot of ground, but I feel like the sum is less than its parts. Jacob highlights the interesting metatextual commentary that crops up towards the end; the description of Minas Morgul is chilling and the exeunt of the army terrifying; the climb up the Straight Stair captures the hobbits' physical exhaustion; and Sam's conversation with Gollum at the end is suitably frustrating for the reader ("Sam! You blew it!"). But I'm left a little cold at the amount of territory the chapter had to cover, because I feel like these parts, all marvelous gems of writing, don't seem to quite gel.

One of the problems is that I'm never able to quite visualize what Minas Morgul looks like, exactly, despite the beautiful prose. We're told in turns that it is a "city," but also "walls and a tower"; which, exactly? "Corpse-light", a "light that illuminates nothing" is evocative, but what does it mean? And the tower has a revolving head on top of it? What, like a lighthouse? Like the rotating restaurant I ate at in San Antonio that one time? Go figure. Tolkien nailed the description of Orthanc, in my opinion, but his second Tower doesn't live up to the comparison. (Or is the second tower Barad-dur? Or is it Kirith Ungol itself? The text is never quite clear).

Then after the army issues from the gate (a convenient timeline-marker for the next book, as we will see when we return to Pippin's perspective), the Lord of the Nazgul senses... something... in the valley with him, and we're loaded up with a lot of Tolkien's "perhaps" phrases without actually getting into his head. The Phial of Galadriel makes its return after not having been mentioned in ten chapters, and the Witch-King, stymied, goes on his way. In this section I'm somewhat confused with the narrative informing us that Frodo no longer has any desire to seize the Ring as his own: "[H]e felt no inclination to yield to it. . . . There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror thought it was". I'll have to keep a careful eye out for how this squares with the climax of Book 6, where (spoiler alert) Frodo succumbs to the temptation of the Ring completely.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that the set-pieces transition so quickly that it gives the reader a bit of whiplash. I found the meta commentary (which, in isolation, is just as delightful as Jacob has highlighted) jarring when placed back to back with the climb and Sam and Gollum's confrontation. It's interesting that Tolkien does choose to place it here, although I suppose this is his last opportunity for Frodo to have a thoughtful conversation of this nature before the conflict ramps up to 11. The pause in the action does allow the hobbits to catch a much-needed nap, and sets the stage for what may be the most beautiful and tragic description of Gollum in all of LOTR:

"The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim, and grey, old and tired. . . . For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing."

That last sentence works even better when read out loud, with pauses punctuating after every word: "An old. Starved. Pitiable. Thing." Gollum has discarded everything, even his own identity, in his obsession with the Ring. He is functionally a time traveler, sling-shotted forward thousands of years in time, but he cares nothing for his surroundings. He is still consumed by his lust for the Ring. I suppose that all came crashing down on him in that moment... until Sam blows it. ("Sam! You blew it!")

Sam. So infuriating. So unfortunately true to life and to his own character. Next up, Gollum executes his master plan. It doesn't go over so well, to no one's surprise.