But now that I'm actually here, where do I even start? I suppose I'm firstly curious as to what's the proper pronunciation of Khazad-dûm (Ben?); I assume the "dûm" is pronounced the same as the "Doom" that is repeated throughout this chapter (that's how it's pronounced in the films, anyways), as a way to foreshadow the doom awaiting them without being quite so obvious about it. The actual "û" itself (called a "u-circumflex," according to all-knowing Wikipedia) is used in French, Friulian (an Italian dialect), Kurdish, Turkish, Welsh, and Masovian (a Polish dialect). Given Tolkien's academic interest in philology generally and the languages that influenced Old English specifically (as shown by his famed work on Beowulf), I'm pretty sure he intended either the French or the Welsh; if the former, then "û"(as used in "jeûne") approximates the English "oo" sound in "doom"--though not exactly, which probably has the intended effect of lending an air of exoticism, antiquity, and other-worldliness to these dark proceedings. But if the latter, then "û"sounds closer to the "i"-sound in the English "it" or "pin." If such is the case, then the proper pronunciation is something like "Khazad-dim," which would serve to emphasize how "dim" the light literally is in Moria, how dim their chances of escape, and how dim their hopes after the fall of Gandalf.
Probably both pronunciations are implied: the "dim-"ness of their hopes and the "doom" that pursues them are collapsed into one with that brilliant "dûm." Knowing Tolkien's linguistic proclivities, I wouldn't it past him. (And while I'm thinking about it, just what language is everyone speaking in LoTR? We hear about all the Elvin tongues and the Dwarvish and etc, but what is the default language that everyone talks with each other? Surely not the Queen's English, despite all the poems rhyming, right? Is there some sort of Middle-Earth Esperanto everyone just seems to know, some lingua franca that helps folks communicate across races? Ben? It's just so interesting to me that for the purposes of the narrative, everyone seems to speak in this normalized, modern, British English, while entire new languages and writing systems are invented wholesale by Tolkien when he wants to sound exotic; this is all to say that that little "û" really stands out as a rare instance when he inflects his 20th-century English with its ancient sources in LoTR).
But all this dry academic discussion (like so much intellectual pontificating) is really just a mask for what I actually want to talk about in this chapter: the problem of suffering. In the next novel we will of course learn what happens to Gandalf, but I have to assume that for many first time readers in 1954 (and I'm also currently split between Eric and Ben as to whether a novel's first duty is to its first-time readers--Eric's camp--or to what it reveals to faithful re-readers--Ben's camp), that Gandalf's sacrifice surely felt like an out-of-nowhere gut-punch, a sudden signal that none of your favorite characters are safe (especially decades before George R.R. Martin). What was the point of that?! some of them surely shouted. Why did he have to sacrifice himself?! Yes, we will find him purified and exalted when we next encounter him as Gandalf the White, but we will also learn of the great pains that had to pass through to get there. If memory serves, a cheap, easy resurrection that robs death of its meaning this is not.
I guess what I'm getting at is this, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about in my own life: what we want isn't to live a life free of pain, no--we read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings precisely because we want Bilbo and Frodo to get out of there domestic little Hobbit holes and have some adventures! No, no, we can put up with almost any pain as long as there is a reason for it; Nietzsche said, "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." It's not that we don't want the pain, it's that we want the pain to be worth it.
By The Two Towers, everyone's pain--Gandalf's, the Fellowships', the reader's--will have proven at least partially worth it. But there is no guarantee of that now, at the end of this here chapter. For Tolkien's master stroke here isn't so much that he sacrificed Gandalf (there have been Christ-figures as long as there have been stories)--no, it's that he delayed for an entire novel, in agonizing, unresolvable limbo, the question of when, even if, the pain will finally be worth it. Just like we all usually do. For a Fantasy series, that is brutally real.
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