"The Land of Shadow" - Jacob's Thoughts

I wonder how often, during the World Wars, Tolkien felt like Frodo and Sam in Mordor: eternally surrounded and besieged by the forces of darkness, hatred, and hopelessness, occasionally punctuated by brief moments of daylight and rumors of victories abroad...only to then be immediately beset once more by further shadows, doubt, and darkness.  I'll be honest, I've been understanding that feeling a lot more than I'd like to lately.

Other things I'm tried of feeling: that I just read yet another bridge-gap chapter, one that doesn't give me much to talk about.  I mean, I get what it's trying to do: it's giving us a firm sense of place, immersing us into the ugliness and horror of Mordor, making the reader feel the weight so fully that when victory finally comes, it will taste that much more sweeter, pack that much more of a punch.

What struck me the most, however, is the fact that, well, this is the only real chapter we spend in Mordor, isn't it!  Like, doesn't it feel as though we've already spent chapters here?  Haven't Sam and Frodo been trudging their way here all along?  But no, they've only been making their way along the peripheries this whole time, they've only just now crossed the borders of this polity.  I guess what I'm saying is that it feels almost superfluous to have spent this extended chapter in Mordor; we've otherwise gotten such a strong sense of place from other peoples' descriptions and our encounters with its inhabitants, that to actually be there is a just tad anticlimactic, since we are encountering exactly what we expected.

Moreover, Sam's idle curiosity as to how the heck Sauron feeds and keeps all his soldiers and slaves in this arid wasteland, far from hand-waving away the logistical dilemma, serves only to foreground it.  How on Middle-Earth does Sauron keep his all his vast hosts supplied??  I almost wonder if the real reason Sauron is so intent on conquering the world isn't just because he's power-hungry, but because he just plain needs more arable land. ("We need breathing room!" "Earth, Hitler, 1938.")