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

I've always found it a little bit silly that just when Sam needs access to the impregnable fortress, all the guards of said fortress murder each other. It's all very convenient, no? Of course, we can say it goes back to the theme of evil conquering itself, etc., and that the groundwork was laid at the end of the last book in Gorbag and Shagrat's conversation, yes, yes, it's true -- but nevertheless it seems like a bit of a copout. Chalk it up to plot reasons and move on, I guess.

An in-universe explanation, of course, is that Sauron's attention is directed elsewhere, namely, the battle of the Pelennor Fields. Orcs were never particularly reliable or trustworthy servants, and here that problem is clearly laid out. They're tribal to the extreme, so that when one leader gets into a tiff with another leader, the two tribes duke it out until nobody's left at all. Then the last man standing gets to have the first word with the boss about how the other guy was the "rebel" (to use Shagrat's words). I suppose it says something interesting about narratives; Snaga and Shagrat were concerned that Gorbag's men were the first ones to escape out the gate, because then they get to frame the narrative to the higher-ups. I wonder if this is something that happens regularly: a massive, pitched battle between two warring orc-factions that decimates the guard of a critically important structure designed to prevent anyone from sneaking into Mordor and, you know, destroying the Ring of Power. You'd think an evil overlord could find better help.

The textual clue that Shagrat is holding the mithril-coat and Sam's sword also kind of takes the sting away from the climax of Book V: the reader now knows that Frodo's safe and sound, at least for the moment, back with Sam, and that Sauron and his minions weren't really about to begin torturing Frodo when Gandalf and Co. reject their demands at the end of "Black Gate Opens." I vaguely remember feeling a little disappointed at some of the tension being taken out of these chapters when I realized that Frodo and Sam were fairly invulnerable, after all.

Of course, the text deals with more than just physical vulnerability. As Jacob pointed out, Frodo's sudden snap from grateful freed captive to crazed, Ring-addicted Gollum-figure is an abrupt one. In my mind, Frodo's ongoing PTSD after the Ring is destroyed is one of the most powerful themes of this final book. Tolkien also cleverly lays the foundation for the climax between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum here, as he has done throughout the entire text.

I will note that Sam's reluctance to give the Ring back to Frodo is, in the text, described this way: "Now it had come to it, Sam felt reluctant to give up the Ring and burden his master with it again." I appreciate this ambiguous line. Sam's concern for his master seems perfectly natural, and on the one hand, we did just witness Sam overcoming the Ring's temptation and press forward towards a more noble goal. It's tempting to think that his reluctance to hand over the Ring to its original bearer is nothing more than his own charitable impulse. But we know how the Ring operates. It's wholly insidious. If it can't claim an individual through outright, overt temptation, it works slowly from within to corrupt and destroy. It makes Sam's overtly self-sacrificing impulse take on a more sinister tone. Given enough time, the Ring could consume even the best of hobbits (as we of course see in the climax). And this theme of subtle corruption of course has its own real-life parallels. Our lives can take dangerous turns if we aren't constantly making proper course-corrections.

This chapter was very plot-heavy. We start grappling with more weighty issues, as the crushing weight of the Ring bears down on Frodo, starting in the next chapter.