"The Tower of Cirith Ungol" - Jacob's Thoughts

I am intent on finishing the series this year.  Sally forth friends.

I was explaining to my students the other day about how if they wanted good grades in my class, then their papers need to be detailed, specific, and use as much imagery as possible; one student then chirped up with, "So you want us to write like a fantasy novel?  Like Lord of the Rings?"  I smiled as I mentioned that I was currently re-reading the series myself.  "Oh man, they're fantastic!" he enthused, to which I immediately responded, "Yes, but not flawless."  For indeed, as we've catalogued throughout this blog, Tolkien's inconsistent-characterization, knotty-plotting, and slow-pacing have often been liabilities.  "Nevertheless," I told him, "We are able to forgive a lot in Tolkien, precisely because he is so detailed--we can see Middle-Earth in our minds when we read it."  That became my teaching moment, of how I likewise am willing to forgive a lot in freshmen writing, just so long as it is specific, imagistic, and clear (otherwise, my grading is ruthless).

This anecdote serves as a round-about way to say that this chapter, in many ways, is emblematic of the series as a whole: it goes on a little long, there's a rather needless poem shoehorned in, I'm not entirely sure what the Tower of Cirith Ungol even looks like or where everything is in relation to each other--nevertheless, I sure as heck know how it feels to be there: the foreboding, the hopelessness, the darkness both literal and metaphysical. I'm willing to forgive a lot in Tolkien's writing--including the little Laurel & Hardy routine in how Sam takes out that tripping Orc--because I can still picture what the place is like even after putting the book down.

One of the most spine-tingling details of Tolkien's portrait of the Tower is when Sam realizes that this place is intended to keep people in more than to keep them out.  It was originally built by the men of Westernesse to keep an eye on Mordor, but even after Sauron commandeered it for himself, he still found it useful for preventing his innumerable slaves from escaping.  Perhaps Tolkien was influenced by the then-current fall of the Iron Curtain, or the rise of the Berlin Wall, all of which were intended less to keep out the West than to keep people in; in any case, there is a horror in that detail, a feeling of entrapment, a sense of all of that's at stake.

But of course the most foreboding detail of all--after all of the Orc slaughters and vulture-faced stone-guardians and Nazguls surveilling overhead and shadows so complete you lose all sense of time--is also the most understated: the sudden reluctance with which Sam returns the Ring to Frodo, and the vehemence with which Frodo snatches it back, refuses to share its burden, and calls Sam a thief.  Yes, Frodo immediately apologizes and Sam takes it in stride, but the message is alarmingly clear, in case anyone had forgotten it: even in the Land of Shadows, Frodo and Sam may still turn out to be their own worst enemies.

But then, such is the case with everyone in Mordor.  For Tolkien also helpfully informs us that Sauron hasn't spotted them yet because the shadows he had created to disguise himself are now getting in his own way.  Sauron is finding that he is his own worst enemy, too--and that levels the playing field somewhat.