"Flotsam and Jetsam" - Ben's Thoughts

I have a lot less to say about this chapter than the last one. It's certainly deflating to hear about the assault on Isengard after the fact; the outcome is predetermined, so the reader is robbed of any sort of tension. We even know that Quickbeam, the only other Ent we have had any kind of connection with from the text, is going to be all right when he goes chasing after Saruman, because the party saw him alive and well in the last chapter guarding the doors of Orthanc.

So I do have to question Tolkien's choice in giving this afterthought of an explanation to the hobbits' simplified rendition. Wouldn't it have been better to see the thing in person? The question, I suppose, is whether a direct depiction of the assault is more important than the buildup to the big reveal that Gandalf & Co. don't have to attack the place themselves; it's already been done for them. I'd argue that a direct depiction would have been much more useful than this awkward recounting. The astute reader can already guess that Isengard has been taken care of: Gandalf's complete nonchalance about the whole matter, as well as the fact that the Ents and Hurons are obviously hanging about the area kind of gives up the game well before we see the torn-down doors and flooded interior.

So here's how I would have divided these chapters: I would have lumped the clean-up at Helm's Deep at the end of "Helm's Deep" itself, and then I would have had a new chapter (perhaps entitled "Rock and Stone," after Treebeard's statement about his "business" with Isengard) recounting the assault and the aftermath, ending with Treebeard talking to the hobbits about the king and Gandalf's impending arrival. Then a third chapter could have brought the company down the road to Isengard and taken them all the way to the doors of Orthanc, ready for their confrontation with Saruman that's about to take place in the next chapter. Part of me is suspicious that Tolkien had it like this at one point, what with all of the verbatim dialogue that Merry and Pippin spout out to Aragorn and friends when they're lounging about; for the life of me I can't see how the way it was done was better. Two back-to-back exciting battle chapters, each very different in format, setting, and characters than the other, seems to be better than having two completely-blase chapters like these.

The most interesting thing about this chapter is the continuation of the ominous foreshadowing about "things" going badly in the Shire in the hobbits' absence. "Scouring of the Shire" is the highlight of the end of the series for me, and it's nice to see some seeds planted slowly along the way.