Chapter 5: The Ride of the Rohirrim
Jacob's Thoughts (10/2/16)
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.
Ben's Thoughts (12/13/16)
Once again I'm confronted with the difficulty that Tolkien obviously had in plotting Book V. He wants Merry to join the fracas before the gates of Minas Tirith, and he wants to make sure that his carefully-laid timeline adds up from chapter to chapter, perspective to perspective. The trouble is that he displays a strange reluctance to abandon a particular character for a long period of time.
I maintain that the best way to solve this problem would have been to have just one, rather than two, chapters about the Rohirrim and their journey to Minas Tirith (essentially, to combine "Muster" and "Ride") into one extended chapter. Tolkien deftly handled extended journey sequences in previous books; "The Great River" comes to mind from Book II, where the narration alternated between several POVs quite smoothly and major episodes were highlighted as the Fellowship journeyed down the Anduin River. Why something like that could not have been employed here is beyond me.
The frustrating thing about this chapter is that it ends with a bang. The Rohirrim's sneaky entry past the Rammas and into the Pellenor, combined with the tense pause before their final triumphant charge, is excellent stuff. It's just the lead-up was, as Jacob irately points out, totally unnecessary.
In the end, I agree with his assessment that the Wild Men could have been excised from the narrative and it would have been all for the better. I will, however, attempt to address the Wild Men's place among Tolkien's thematic elements. In the last several chapters -- really, ever since Frodo's meeting with Faramir in Book IV -- the Professor has been highlighting his hierarchy of Men, from the pinnacle (Numenoreans) down to the most base (the uncomfortably stereotyped Haradrim and other vassals of Sauron). Generally, there's a clear curve from the heights to the depths; force of will, art, literature, supernatural ability, and the like are at their peak with the Men of the West and at their nadir with the Men of the East. The question is, where do the Wild Men fit in? On the one hand, they embody the kind of Men present in Middle-earth before the Numenoreans returned to the land in the Second Age -- primitives. They are the distant kin of the Dead, now rallied by Aragorn at the Stone of Erech, who betrayed Gondor thousands of years ago. Yet here, the Wild Men are united with the Rohirrim in their opposition of Sauron, even if they're not willing to descend from the hills and actually engage in outright warfare.
While the stereotypes are fairly reprehensible, I do think that Tolkien was mildly challenging his own smooth ethnic model by inserting a good, righteous -- but primitive -- culture into the mix. I would like to think he's reminding himself that there's no such thing as an absolute; truth and goodness is found in every culture and walk of life. Unfortunately, I can't complain about Jacob's criticism of the execution of that idea, nor about his complaint that it simply isn't necessary or helpful at this point in the narrative.
Take the chapter for what it's worth -- which is the final sequence -- and we'll move on to what I remember being far better: the big battle.
Eric's Thoughts (1/19/17)
Jacob and Ben attacked this chapter so "savagely" that I am left with no choice except to defend it. I submit that this is the greatest chapter in the whole series.
Jacob and Ben first point out that the chapter is pointless, that the chapter involves random "Wild Men" and could have been streamlined with other chapters or cut entirely. Well, Jacob and Ben are wrong. How else would the Riders of Rohirrim have gotten around orc patrols guarding the road? If the Riders had to fight their way through the orcs, the forces of Sauron would have been better prepared. So this chapter is critical both in terms of plot and pacing.
Then Jacob and Ben complain that the Wild Men don't "fit" with anything. Not so. Jacob and Ben fail to mention that the Wild Men are very much like the Wights we saw earlier in Fellowship of the Ring. Specious at first glance, yes, but after you analyze it further, you realize how fundamental they are to the plot.
Jacob and Ben then complain that the Wild Men are lazy stereotypes. Even if that is true, isn't anything a type of stereotype? And isn't calling something a stereotype . . . stereotypical? What Jacob and Ben don't realize is that their critique of the Wild Men is nothing more than a stereotypical criticism about stereotypes.
Finally, Jacob and Ben forget that this chapter provided critical character development for Merry and Dernhelm. By reading this chapter, the reader gains rock-solid insight into who Dernhelm is. The reader learns slowly that Dernhelm doesn't talk much, but his presence affords Merry protection so that Merry can talk, even though Merry was not allowed to come. The reader also learns that Merry is good at snooping--the chapter reveals who these Wild Men are by Merry eavesdropping into their plotting. So that point was critical as well.
All in all, a masterful chapter.
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.
Ben's Thoughts (12/13/16)
Once again I'm confronted with the difficulty that Tolkien obviously had in plotting Book V. He wants Merry to join the fracas before the gates of Minas Tirith, and he wants to make sure that his carefully-laid timeline adds up from chapter to chapter, perspective to perspective. The trouble is that he displays a strange reluctance to abandon a particular character for a long period of time.
I maintain that the best way to solve this problem would have been to have just one, rather than two, chapters about the Rohirrim and their journey to Minas Tirith (essentially, to combine "Muster" and "Ride") into one extended chapter. Tolkien deftly handled extended journey sequences in previous books; "The Great River" comes to mind from Book II, where the narration alternated between several POVs quite smoothly and major episodes were highlighted as the Fellowship journeyed down the Anduin River. Why something like that could not have been employed here is beyond me.
The frustrating thing about this chapter is that it ends with a bang. The Rohirrim's sneaky entry past the Rammas and into the Pellenor, combined with the tense pause before their final triumphant charge, is excellent stuff. It's just the lead-up was, as Jacob irately points out, totally unnecessary.
In the end, I agree with his assessment that the Wild Men could have been excised from the narrative and it would have been all for the better. I will, however, attempt to address the Wild Men's place among Tolkien's thematic elements. In the last several chapters -- really, ever since Frodo's meeting with Faramir in Book IV -- the Professor has been highlighting his hierarchy of Men, from the pinnacle (Numenoreans) down to the most base (the uncomfortably stereotyped Haradrim and other vassals of Sauron). Generally, there's a clear curve from the heights to the depths; force of will, art, literature, supernatural ability, and the like are at their peak with the Men of the West and at their nadir with the Men of the East. The question is, where do the Wild Men fit in? On the one hand, they embody the kind of Men present in Middle-earth before the Numenoreans returned to the land in the Second Age -- primitives. They are the distant kin of the Dead, now rallied by Aragorn at the Stone of Erech, who betrayed Gondor thousands of years ago. Yet here, the Wild Men are united with the Rohirrim in their opposition of Sauron, even if they're not willing to descend from the hills and actually engage in outright warfare.
While the stereotypes are fairly reprehensible, I do think that Tolkien was mildly challenging his own smooth ethnic model by inserting a good, righteous -- but primitive -- culture into the mix. I would like to think he's reminding himself that there's no such thing as an absolute; truth and goodness is found in every culture and walk of life. Unfortunately, I can't complain about Jacob's criticism of the execution of that idea, nor about his complaint that it simply isn't necessary or helpful at this point in the narrative.
Take the chapter for what it's worth -- which is the final sequence -- and we'll move on to what I remember being far better: the big battle.
Eric's Thoughts (1/19/17)
Jacob and Ben attacked this chapter so "savagely" that I am left with no choice except to defend it. I submit that this is the greatest chapter in the whole series.
Jacob and Ben first point out that the chapter is pointless, that the chapter involves random "Wild Men" and could have been streamlined with other chapters or cut entirely. Well, Jacob and Ben are wrong. How else would the Riders of Rohirrim have gotten around orc patrols guarding the road? If the Riders had to fight their way through the orcs, the forces of Sauron would have been better prepared. So this chapter is critical both in terms of plot and pacing.
Then Jacob and Ben complain that the Wild Men don't "fit" with anything. Not so. Jacob and Ben fail to mention that the Wild Men are very much like the Wights we saw earlier in Fellowship of the Ring. Specious at first glance, yes, but after you analyze it further, you realize how fundamental they are to the plot.
Jacob and Ben then complain that the Wild Men are lazy stereotypes. Even if that is true, isn't anything a type of stereotype? And isn't calling something a stereotype . . . stereotypical? What Jacob and Ben don't realize is that their critique of the Wild Men is nothing more than a stereotypical criticism about stereotypes.
Finally, Jacob and Ben forget that this chapter provided critical character development for Merry and Dernhelm. By reading this chapter, the reader gains rock-solid insight into who Dernhelm is. The reader learns slowly that Dernhelm doesn't talk much, but his presence affords Merry protection so that Merry can talk, even though Merry was not allowed to come. The reader also learns that Merry is good at snooping--the chapter reveals who these Wild Men are by Merry eavesdropping into their plotting. So that point was critical as well.
All in all, a masterful chapter.
No comments:
Post a Comment