"The Battle of the Pelennor Fields" - Jacob's Thoughts

Eowyn finally gets her big moment, the ostensible pay-off we've been building up to the past few chapters.  The Nazgul first gets some most excellent trash talk as he warns her that if she does not stand aside, he won't merely kill her, but bear her away "beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless eye," for "No living man may hinder me!"  Which of course just sets up Eowyn for the killer rejoinder: "But no living man am I!  You look upon a woman."  She then skillfully dispatches the flying beast, and straight-up slays the Nazgul--women are apparently the Black Rider's one weakness, I guess?  Not since Macbeth has such a formidable villain been defeated by such a bare technicality.

Of course, she doesn't do it alone; she gets an assist from dinky little Merry, whom the Nazgul had no more regarded than he would a "worm in the mud."  As with Shelob and Sam, the enemy's easy disregard of these doddering Hobbits is what proves their immediate undoing--it's what will prove Sauron's, too.  That is the definite theme emerging in these concluding chapters.

I still maintain that Eowyn's last stand is not nearly developed enough to pack as much punch as Tolkien clearly wants it to have; nevertheless, the grand fanfare and grandiose language with which he describes her combat is just too darn earnest for me to hate on too much.  The professor's enthusiasm covers a multitude of sins.

But not all of them; and if Mordor's constant overlook of the Hobbits is the emergent theme of these chapters, likewise I note that anti-climax is becoming this novel's recurrent failing.  Just as Pippin's midnight flight from Sauron is deflated by his easy arrival into Minus Tirith, this chapter opens by revealing how Gandalf's climactic showdown with the Nazgul at the city gates ends with...the Nazgul promptly flying away.  Just like that.  Call me eccentric, but I kinda would've liked to see Gandalf himself actually battle one of these mofos!  In fact, I think I would've been more invested in such a combat than I was in Eowyn's. Come to think of it, besides that one quick light-show to liberate King Theoden, we have not actually beheld Gandalf the White in action once!  Even Gandalf the Gray we got to see duel a Balrog.  I keep being told how much more powerful Gandalf the White is, but I'm apparently going to have to take everyone's word for it, because Tolkien simply refuses to show it.

Another anti-climax: the arrival of Aragorn from the Paths of the Dead.  While I'll admit it was somewhat stirring to see the Black-sailed Navy suddenly unfurl the long-lost banner of the King (in the original False Flag operation) to the rejoicing of Rohan and the dismay of Mordor, nevertheless the utter absence of the actual Oathbreakers in the ensuing melee had me scratching my head.

Of course my reading is still far too colored by the Peter Jackson film, wherein these swarming ghosts pour from the ships to make short work of the hosts of Mordor in a thrilling shower of CGI.  Tolkien, by contrast, does not even bother to show them in the climactic moment.  I complained earlier about how left-field the Oathbreakers felt to the narrative, but if you're going to introduce them, then at least have the decency to show them!  Does everything Aragorn-related--his stare-down with Sauron, the reforging of the Sword--have to happen off screen??  The titular Return of the King should not feel so strangely off-handed.  Here is another moment that I am going to have concede to the Jackson version.

More egregiously, in the Tolkien text, some of Mordor's most vicious forces are made up of what are clearly black people, "black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues"--which is, you know, hugely problematic.  Likewise, the fact that this war is explicitly presented as a battle between the innumerable hordes of the East verses the noble-men of the West has profoundly uncomfortable Orientalist valences (a deep-seated European fear of Asia that so often justified the West's most repressive colonialism) that would have sent Edward Sa'id's eyes rolling into his head. Again, the Professor is clearly rushing at this point, as shown by how some of his most deep-seated, culturally-conditioned prejudices are starting to seep through. 

"The Ride of the Rohirrim" - Jacob's Thoughts

First off: what on earth are the Wild Men supposed to be??  Much like the Oathbreakers, the Paths of the Dead, the return of the Rangers, Eowyn's dilemma, and so many other elements in Book V, their appearance just feels so left-field (no matter Merry's awkward insistence that he had seen them before), unnecessary, puzzling, random and above all beside the point.  More egregiously: Their grass-skirts, stilted patois, and "Noble Savage" demeanor straight out of Dryden or James Fenimore Cooper, all comes from an uncomfortably racist lineage of indigenous caricatures that the English long used to romanticize Natives even as they slaughtered them.  I am disappointed to find the Professor indulging in such lazy stereotypes, for reasons both ethical and aesthetic.

Moreover, on a thematic level, the Wild Men don't appear to fit in with anything--as the very title of this novel suggests (not to mention the unqualified fanfare that will greet King Aragorn), Tolkien, like a true British subject, is a big fan of civilization and its contents.  As such, the paleolithic Wild Men fit nowhere within Tolkien's larger schema.  By contrast, consider the Hobbits in their tidy little holes, Tom Bombadil with his flowers, the Elves in their tranquil realms--Tolkien harbors obvious affection for domesticity and stability.  Nature is nice and all, but only insofar as it is carefully tended and pruned (no Old Forests or Caradhras Mountains for Tolkien, thank you very much!).  He no more advocates for a turn towards the "primitive" than he does towards the totalitarian Mordor state.  So then why introduce the Wild Men at all?  They are clearly not intended as an alternative to Middle-Earth medievalism, nor does Tolkien evince the slightest interest in exploring the ethics of indigenous rights (e.g. the blasé manner in which Tolkien alludes to how Rohan had previously hunted Wild Men like animals--as though that were no big deal, just something that happened--likewise disconcerts me). 

Even on a strictly technical level, their contribution to the plot is largely nil--why did we even need to introduce these one-off stock-figures to help Rohan get around Mordor's forces in the first place?  What, Rohan's own scouts couldn't have found a way themselves?  Come to think of it, why did we even need a whole chapter for them to figure that out?  Or why did there need to be an obstacle in their way at all?  Why couldn't we just cut straight to the battle, since the previous chapter literally ends with them arriving to save the day?  Why drag out a foregone conclusion? Why does this chapter even exist?

For that matter, why is Merry's pointless POV privileged here?  And why has Tolkien suddenly chosen now of all times to romanticize warfare with such giddy language, after describing it all in such drab terms before?   This is just such an odd, redundant, retrograde, excisable chapter.