Yeesh, Ben wasn't kidding when he called these next few chapters a slog. I have hardly any memories of Book V, and for good reason, I increasingly find. Chapters that contain killer lines like "So we come to it in the end...the great battle of our time, in which many things shall pass away" should fill one with excitement, euphoria, anticipation and awe; instead, I'm filled with mere relief that this whole exhausting drag will finally come to a close.
Who knows, maybe all this dragging is performative; as we discussed clear back in the Battle of Helm's Deep, there is in reality nothing euphoric or exciting about war. The main war-time memories of most folks, civilian and military alike, is of it all just being one big monotonous slog. For Tolkien, a veteran of WWI and a survivor of WWII, "adventure" was perhaps the last thing he associated with war--he probably couldn't have written an exciting battle scene even if he'd wanted to, which he clearly didn't.
Moreover, this whole subplot of Merry and Eowyn-in-drag not wanting to be left behind for the final battle either needed to have been introduced far earlier or cut altogether, because right now neither character is developed enough, nor are the readers sufficiently invested in them, for their predicament to carry much resonance. (I have the same complaint about the Oathbreakers, recall).
Compared to the far greater arcs about the destruction of the Ring and the Return of the King, Merry's mopiness before Theoden is borderline asinine. Much like the Palantir with Pippin, the whole situation just feels like a mere plot device to get Merry into the thick of the action, with some pathos tacked-on to make it less obvious. Moreover, these various plot-devices feel unnecessary: Tolkien got Merry and Pippin to the Siege of Orthanc without hardly any melodramatics whatsoever. Tolkien is starting to rush, and it shows.
A friend of mine once ranted that she believed most trilogies would be far better served as duologies; that most authors, in their quest for that magical, marketable "3", end up resorting to a whole lot of unnecessary padding, which undercuts the impact of their endings. LoTR may be Exhibit A, the progenitor of both the modern Trilogy and of its worst excesses. I'm still excited for some of the thrilling scenes to come, but I think Ben may be right, that Return of the King is overall less than the sum of its parts. Here's hoping we're wrong.
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