"The Last Debate" - Ben's Thoughts

This is another placeholder chapter, and has the awkward structure of being divided into two parts - first Legolas and Gimli's entrance into the city and their story told to Merry and Pippin of what they've been doing since "Grey Company" at the beginning of the book; and second, the titular "debate," which turns more into Gandalf lecturing than anyone actually debating, about how best to commit the forces of Gondor and Rohan going forward.

The debate is not particular interesting, in my opinion. Gandalf is in effect informing Imrahil and Eomer what the reader (and Aragorn) already knows: essentially that the struggle is hopeless unless Frodo destroys the Ring. His plan is to distract Sauron by pretending that Aragorn is the new "Ringlord" and hoping that in his arrogance, Sauron will not watch his own land, but will focus entirely on the advancing host of Gondor. Imrahil laughs at the paltry numbers they can muster, and Gandalf replies that it's no laughing matter -- they are stalling to protect their lands and people.

Jacob is absolutely right that these concluding chapters mirror themes from "Fellowship" -- I caught an echo of Gandalf's counsel to Frodo from "The Shadow of the Past" in his words to the captains here. In "Shadow," Frodo laments that he has to be the one to bear the burden of the Ring, and live in such dark times. Gandalf replies, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Here, to the captains, he tells them to not be worried about the future, and instead focus on the present: "[I]t is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." Gandalf here echoes the words of Christ: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34). Our responsibility is to what we can accomplish here in the present. Of course that involves reflections on the consequences of our actions, but fear of what may come generally results in paralysis in the now. Similarly, when Frodo gripes that he'd rather live in some more comfortable, past age, Gandalf reminds him that too much nostalgia about the past leads to a sense of hopelessness in the present. Instead, Frodo needed to latch on to that "terrible chance" that lead the good guys to the tenuous, but hopeful position they find themselves in during Book V.

In other news, Gimli and Legolas exchange some banter and tell a story. I've already expressed what I believe to be the very poor plotting of relegating this story to a few off-screen descriptions, just for the sake of a surprise twist when Aragorn disembarks from the Umbar fleet in "Battle of the Pelennor Fields," especially considering that in exchange we were subjected to the dreck of "Muster of Rohan" and "Ride of the Rohirrim."

I will note one interesting exchange, however: Gimli and Legolas both  note the desolation of the city, both in terms of regression of mechanical and technological skill, and in the arts and beautiful aspects of the people and the city itself.

GIMLI: "It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise."

LEGOLAS: "Yet seldom do they fail of their seed, and that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli."

GIMLI: "And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess."

LEGOLAS: "To that the Elves know not the answer."

How depressing. But it certainly speaks to the human condition, and to our day -- like cockroaches, the human race will almost certainly endure, because of our innate intelligence (not necessarily wisdom) and adaptability. But will it be worth it? Or will the legacy of humankind simply be a litany of "might-have-beens?"

To that, the Elves, Tolkien, and I (a great trifecta, to be sure) know not the answer.