Chapter 5: The White Rider
Jacob's Thoughts (4/11/15)
I'm honestly curious, how shocking was the resurrection of Gandalf to first time readers in 1954? On the one hand, the Christ story of the savior who sacrifices himself, descends into hell, then returns more powerful than before, is a tale as old as, well, the Christ story. So the trope can't have felt that novel. Moreover, nowadays it's practically a trope unto itself to complain of the cheapness of death in comic books and film.
Captain Kirk stays dead for scarcely 10 minutes in Star Trek Into Darkness; Nick Fury dies and returns before the end ofCaptain 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:
So Gandalf is back. Let's get right down to it -- as a child, and still today, I was always vaguely unsettled by Gandalf the White. I believe that Tolkien writes him subtly differently than he did Gandalf the Grey, which is for the best and to be expected. But there was always something about him that was, well, a bit OFF to me about the character afterwards, like there was someone else entirely swimming around inside Gandalf's skin.
And I think the text, to some degree, supports this feeling on my part. Aragorn and company are completely unable to recognize Gandalf prior to the reveal of his face. I know they are not expecting to see someone who is dead, but his gait, his stance, and even his voice are not recognized. Tolkien doesn't quite come out and say it, but it's pretty clear that a spell of some kind has been laid to prevent them from attacking or doing much of anything while the wizard approaches. And then, once Legolas and Aragorn name him (Legolas, of course, with the Elvish "Mithrandir!") Gandalf's voice "was the voice of their old friend and guide." Heavily implied, of course, is the fact that prior to that point, it had not been the same at all!
Of course at this point in our lives our perception of Gandalf the White is hopelessly muddled up with Jackson's version -- the noble, calm, and reassuring Gandalf the White that laughs helplessly while Merry and Pippin jump on Frodo's bed. This Gandalf, however, is one that inspires both joy and fear, and who proclaims himself the second most dangerous (not powerful, but dangerous) being in Middle-earth. This is a Gandalf who does not even remember his own name until Aragorn and Legolas tell him. ("'As for my name!'" Gandalf says to himself before he is unmasked, laughing at the joke none of the others get: he can't tell them because he does not remember.) In some alternate universe, Tolkien takes Gandalf down a darker path and he becomes the Big Evil of a LOTR sequel.
We'll see if my subtle sense of "squick" at Gandalf's new incarnation carries forward as I read. I mention it here because it brought home for me the sense of disappointment that I always felt as a child towards this new Gandalf -- this is a different character than the one we grew to love in The Hobbit and "Fellowship." As he says: "'I have forgotten much that I thought I knew' [in other words, incorrect or false perceptions he had picked up as Gandalf the Grey] 'and learned again much that I had forgotten' [reclaiming knowledge from his true incarnation of a god-like Maia]".
The description of the battle between Gandalf and the Balrog is suitably epic and frustratingly opaque. The description, as ever, is marvelous: "His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake." "Thunder they heard, and lightning, they said, smote upon Celebdil, and leaped back broken into tongues of fire. . . . A great smoke rose about us, vapour and steam. Ice fell like rain." It's probably good that Tolkien didn't dwell too long on this fight, because it's only tangential to the story; the Balrog is a relic of Morgoth's evil that really has little place inLOTR; I know I wrote about this back in "Fellowship," but it's unclear whether the Balrog would have even followed Sauron's commands at all had he summoned it or sought to use it in the war. It's perhaps telling that Sauron did not have the Balrog at his command; I find it unlikely that he wouldn't have perceived its precense in Moria when he can perceive other Maia, Gandalf in particular, so keenly. If he knew it was there, he would have tried to use it if he could. The fact that he didn't speaks volumes. Sauron's power is much diminished from that of past ages.
That's about it from this chapter. There are some curious discrepancies regarding the age of Treebeard versus the Elves: Gandalf refers to Treebeard as "the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth." Well, we know that Galadriel came from Valinor in the first Age; Cirdan at the Havens as well is an ancient Elf; so is Treebeard really older than Galadriel? Perhaps Galadriel was born in Valinor after the Ents' awakening in Middle-earth. Interesting food for thought. Other tidbits include marginal characterization of Gimli as a debbie downer and all-around pessimist, but also as the most pragmatic member of the team when he recommends "axe-ing first, axe-ing questions later" when the wizard appears and Our Heroes think it's Saruman. Gandalf punctures the balloon of competence that is the reader's perception of Saruman, as well, when he basically writes him off as having already lost this war, and saying that "I look into his mind and I see his doubt."
Good chapter, good setup for the rest of Book III, but Gandalf is kinda weird and scary. That's all I've got.
Eric's Thoughts (6/27/15)
This chapter is excellent. The reader by now is expecting Saruman to pop up, as foreshadowed earlier in the book. Indeed, that is exactly what I expected reading this chapter for the first time long ago. When Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas are easily overpowered, you think they're doomed.
Turns out, it's Gandalf! Definitely a WTF if there ever is one. Why would Gandalf forget his friends? It made no sense when I read it as a kid, and it still makes no sense now. Just roll with it, Tolkien seems to say when Gandalf gives his vague, amnesic description about what happened. And we do, and it's fun.
It seems to me that Tolkien gave Gandalf amnesia as a plot device so that he could have a tense confrontation, showcase Gandalf's power, easily resolve it, and move onto other things. I didn't know what "reincarnation" was when I was younger, but even now, I find it to be a stretch. Tolkien doesn't establish the rules, so he expects us to just accept whatever he says. Why does fighting with a Balrog cause amnesia and rebirth? Did Gandalf actually die? -- seems like he just fell in a puddle. Why wasn't Gandalf this powerful before?
Whatever the case, it makes for a strange chapter that's fun to read. Gandalf is more than a little creepy in this chapter -- he's menacing. It's an interesting change from the lovable pipe-smoking aphorism-quoting wizard.
But I guess that's what books are about, right? Watching characters progress.
Captain Kirk stays dead for scarcely 10 minutes in Star Trek Into Darkness; Nick Fury dies and returns before the end ofCaptain 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!"Ben's Thoughts (6/11/15)
So Gandalf is back. Let's get right down to it -- as a child, and still today, I was always vaguely unsettled by Gandalf the White. I believe that Tolkien writes him subtly differently than he did Gandalf the Grey, which is for the best and to be expected. But there was always something about him that was, well, a bit OFF to me about the character afterwards, like there was someone else entirely swimming around inside Gandalf's skin.
And I think the text, to some degree, supports this feeling on my part. Aragorn and company are completely unable to recognize Gandalf prior to the reveal of his face. I know they are not expecting to see someone who is dead, but his gait, his stance, and even his voice are not recognized. Tolkien doesn't quite come out and say it, but it's pretty clear that a spell of some kind has been laid to prevent them from attacking or doing much of anything while the wizard approaches. And then, once Legolas and Aragorn name him (Legolas, of course, with the Elvish "Mithrandir!") Gandalf's voice "was the voice of their old friend and guide." Heavily implied, of course, is the fact that prior to that point, it had not been the same at all!
Of course at this point in our lives our perception of Gandalf the White is hopelessly muddled up with Jackson's version -- the noble, calm, and reassuring Gandalf the White that laughs helplessly while Merry and Pippin jump on Frodo's bed. This Gandalf, however, is one that inspires both joy and fear, and who proclaims himself the second most dangerous (not powerful, but dangerous) being in Middle-earth. This is a Gandalf who does not even remember his own name until Aragorn and Legolas tell him. ("'As for my name!'" Gandalf says to himself before he is unmasked, laughing at the joke none of the others get: he can't tell them because he does not remember.) In some alternate universe, Tolkien takes Gandalf down a darker path and he becomes the Big Evil of a LOTR sequel.
We'll see if my subtle sense of "squick" at Gandalf's new incarnation carries forward as I read. I mention it here because it brought home for me the sense of disappointment that I always felt as a child towards this new Gandalf -- this is a different character than the one we grew to love in The Hobbit and "Fellowship." As he says: "'I have forgotten much that I thought I knew' [in other words, incorrect or false perceptions he had picked up as Gandalf the Grey] 'and learned again much that I had forgotten' [reclaiming knowledge from his true incarnation of a god-like Maia]".
The description of the battle between Gandalf and the Balrog is suitably epic and frustratingly opaque. The description, as ever, is marvelous: "His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake." "Thunder they heard, and lightning, they said, smote upon Celebdil, and leaped back broken into tongues of fire. . . . A great smoke rose about us, vapour and steam. Ice fell like rain." It's probably good that Tolkien didn't dwell too long on this fight, because it's only tangential to the story; the Balrog is a relic of Morgoth's evil that really has little place inLOTR; I know I wrote about this back in "Fellowship," but it's unclear whether the Balrog would have even followed Sauron's commands at all had he summoned it or sought to use it in the war. It's perhaps telling that Sauron did not have the Balrog at his command; I find it unlikely that he wouldn't have perceived its precense in Moria when he can perceive other Maia, Gandalf in particular, so keenly. If he knew it was there, he would have tried to use it if he could. The fact that he didn't speaks volumes. Sauron's power is much diminished from that of past ages.
That's about it from this chapter. There are some curious discrepancies regarding the age of Treebeard versus the Elves: Gandalf refers to Treebeard as "the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth." Well, we know that Galadriel came from Valinor in the first Age; Cirdan at the Havens as well is an ancient Elf; so is Treebeard really older than Galadriel? Perhaps Galadriel was born in Valinor after the Ents' awakening in Middle-earth. Interesting food for thought. Other tidbits include marginal characterization of Gimli as a debbie downer and all-around pessimist, but also as the most pragmatic member of the team when he recommends "axe-ing first, axe-ing questions later" when the wizard appears and Our Heroes think it's Saruman. Gandalf punctures the balloon of competence that is the reader's perception of Saruman, as well, when he basically writes him off as having already lost this war, and saying that "I look into his mind and I see his doubt."
Good chapter, good setup for the rest of Book III, but Gandalf is kinda weird and scary. That's all I've got.
Eric's Thoughts (6/27/15)
This chapter is excellent. The reader by now is expecting Saruman to pop up, as foreshadowed earlier in the book. Indeed, that is exactly what I expected reading this chapter for the first time long ago. When Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas are easily overpowered, you think they're doomed.
Turns out, it's Gandalf! Definitely a WTF if there ever is one. Why would Gandalf forget his friends? It made no sense when I read it as a kid, and it still makes no sense now. Just roll with it, Tolkien seems to say when Gandalf gives his vague, amnesic description about what happened. And we do, and it's fun.
It seems to me that Tolkien gave Gandalf amnesia as a plot device so that he could have a tense confrontation, showcase Gandalf's power, easily resolve it, and move onto other things. I didn't know what "reincarnation" was when I was younger, but even now, I find it to be a stretch. Tolkien doesn't establish the rules, so he expects us to just accept whatever he says. Why does fighting with a Balrog cause amnesia and rebirth? Did Gandalf actually die? -- seems like he just fell in a puddle. Why wasn't Gandalf this powerful before?
Whatever the case, it makes for a strange chapter that's fun to read. Gandalf is more than a little creepy in this chapter -- he's menacing. It's an interesting change from the lovable pipe-smoking aphorism-quoting wizard.
But I guess that's what books are about, right? Watching characters progress.
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