"The Ride of the Rohirrim" - Jacob's Thoughts

First off: what on earth are the Wild Men supposed to be??  Much like the Oathbreakers, the Paths of the Dead, the return of the Rangers, Eowyn's dilemma, and so many other elements in Book V, their appearance just feels so left-field (no matter Merry's awkward insistence that he had seen them before), unnecessary, puzzling, random and above all beside the point.  More egregiously: Their grass-skirts, stilted patois, and "Noble Savage" demeanor straight out of Dryden or James Fenimore Cooper, all comes from an uncomfortably racist lineage of indigenous caricatures that the English long used to romanticize Natives even as they slaughtered them.  I am disappointed to find the Professor indulging in such lazy stereotypes, for reasons both ethical and aesthetic.

Moreover, on a thematic level, the Wild Men don't appear to fit in with anything--as the very title of this novel suggests (not to mention the unqualified fanfare that will greet King Aragorn), Tolkien, like a true British subject, is a big fan of civilization and its contents.  As such, the paleolithic Wild Men fit nowhere within Tolkien's larger schema.  By contrast, consider the Hobbits in their tidy little holes, Tom Bombadil with his flowers, the Elves in their tranquil realms--Tolkien harbors obvious affection for domesticity and stability.  Nature is nice and all, but only insofar as it is carefully tended and pruned (no Old Forests or Caradhras Mountains for Tolkien, thank you very much!).  He no more advocates for a turn towards the "primitive" than he does towards the totalitarian Mordor state.  So then why introduce the Wild Men at all?  They are clearly not intended as an alternative to Middle-Earth medievalism, nor does Tolkien evince the slightest interest in exploring the ethics of indigenous rights (e.g. the blasé manner in which Tolkien alludes to how Rohan had previously hunted Wild Men like animals--as though that were no big deal, just something that happened--likewise disconcerts me). 

Even on a strictly technical level, their contribution to the plot is largely nil--why did we even need to introduce these one-off stock-figures to help Rohan get around Mordor's forces in the first place?  What, Rohan's own scouts couldn't have found a way themselves?  Come to think of it, why did we even need a whole chapter for them to figure that out?  Or why did there need to be an obstacle in their way at all?  Why couldn't we just cut straight to the battle, since the previous chapter literally ends with them arriving to save the day?  Why drag out a foregone conclusion? Why does this chapter even exist?

For that matter, why is Merry's pointless POV privileged here?  And why has Tolkien suddenly chosen now of all times to romanticize warfare with such giddy language, after describing it all in such drab terms before?   This is just such an odd, redundant, retrograde, excisable chapter.

"The Passing of the Grey Company" - Eric's Thoughts

The chapter transitions from Gandalf/Pippin to Merry/Theoden/Strider/Legolas/Gimli/Eowyn. Merry, like Pippin, offers his sword to Theoden. (That's called literary symmetry.) Meanwhile, these guys called Rangers randomly show up. Now, Aragon (Strider) keeps acting a little fishy and goes off with the Rangers, and the Rangers have a fishy looking furled staff with a banner, but hey, that's ok.

Theoden and Merry go off, and at this point I'm drifting, but suddenly, lo! Strider finally gives some answers about why he's been so skulky -- he looked into the palantir!! My eyelids immediately stop drooping and I read on, eager to learn about the confrontation between Strider and Sauron. This part's a little bit interesting, but soon after it turns out Theoden left Eowyn behind, and she begs Aragon to take her with him to face the lands of the dead. Aragon refuses. Then, Aragon/Gimli/Legolas enter the lands of the dead to fulfill some promise that is described for the very first time that the story progresses. Ok. Tolkien is kind of winging it right now, but that's ok.

The lands of the dead prove less than scary. Aragon and Co. see some shadows, and blow a horn, and announce that everyone needs to come along. The dead seem to be ok with that, and follow they do.

Analysis:

Yeah, this chapter was kind of a snooze. Didn't help that I was tired when I read it, but I literally was drifting until Aragon reveals he had just had a confrontation with Sauron. But that short bit of interesting writing was short lived.

Again, like the last chapter, this chapter suffers from a lack of external conflict and a basic plot goal. At least the banner was unfurled in the lands of the dead. Phew! Excellent foreshadowing on Tolkien's part! -- note that the banner was foreshadowed earlier by the Ranger carrying it.

"The Siege of Gondor" - Jacob's Thoughts

Let's just get this out of the way: Denethor is the worst.  He is sending his last living son--the one he had earlier sent into a hopeless battle with nary a kind word, no less--to the funeral pyre without even checking his vitals.  He is abandoning his city to its doom, letting others take all the hits while he gives himself over solely to his own despair.  Rarely has grief been more selfish.

And yet, and yet.

I find I can't really join in the choruses of condemnation against Denethor, for his failings are ours, too. For he is behaving so erratically because he has lost all hope, and he has lost all hope because his first son was killed, the Enemy is at the gates, any possible allies are few and distant, and he learns that the wizard who's supposed to be helping him has let their one chance, their one boon--the One Ring--wander right into the enemy's grasp with some hapless halfling.

Frankly, Denethor's objections to Gandalf make a sad sort of sense: why on earth did he send the Ring away with Frodo?  Wasn't that just the most insane, idiotic plan ever?!  Yes, with the benefit of hindsight, it will turn out to have been the best strategy all along, the winning move; but when you have only a 1% chance of destroying the Dark Lord once and for all but a 99% of ruining everything--especially compared to having only, say, a 10% chance of only temporarily defeating Mordor, but a 90% chance of at least keeping the Ring out of Sauron's grasp (even if it still eats at your own soul)--well, by that arithmetic, Denethor's initial plan for the Ring appears far more sensible than Gandalf's.  And when Gandalf himself confesses to Pippin that there was only ever a dim hope to begin with, it would appear to justify Denethor's assessment of the situation.

This is not to defend Denethor, nor excuse him, but just to at least get where he's coming from.

Denethor likewise fascinates me because he is such a compelling portrait of a man given over to complete despair.  The way he releases Pippin from his service with a "go die in the manner you see fit," the way he openly wails at how the lines of Kings and Stewards are at an end, all this indicates a man who has truly abandoned all hope.  For all his arrogant macho posturing (e.g. dropping his cloak to reveal the armor he wears night and day and so forth), the man collapses like an accordion at the signal moment.  Like his eldest Boromir, his fate is so tragic precisely because his could so easily be ours.

In a sense, he is the mirror-image to Theoden, a man who shakes off his doldrums to rise to the challenge when he's needed most; Denethor by contrast prepares all his life for battle, only to sink into despair when the enemy comes.  Something feels...realistic about this pairing.  I have to think that Tolkien, in the trenches of the Great War, saw some of both: men of cynicism and hopelessness who reveal a forgotten courage when called upon, and arrogant men of strength and will who wilt like flowers in the face of danger.

And here's the thing: you don't know which one you're going to be until the trial moment, either! Theoden is who we hope we will be, but Denethor is in the cards, too.  You also don't know whom your friends and allies will be, either, and you're going to have to deal with both responses in a fire-fight.  Let us not judge Denethor till we are faced with the same challenge, too.

I don't want to finish without noting this chapter's excellent ending: Gandalf personally faces the Nazgûl at the gates of Gondor, "under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed," commanding the demon back to the abyss as only a man who has personally slain a Balrog can do--and the insolent Nazgûl in turn uncloaking his invisible head, like we haven't seen a Dark Rider do since they had Frodo cornered in "Flight to the Ford," and for the same reason: to exult in the totality of his triumph.

And with the same effect: right when the Nazgûl thinks he's won, lo and behold, a light breaks, pierces the darkness, and horses ride to the rescue--"Rohan had come at last."

"The Muster of Rohan" - Jacob's Thoughts

Yeesh, Ben wasn't kidding when he called these next few chapters a slog.  I have hardly any memories of Book V, and for good reason, I increasingly find.  Chapters that contain killer lines like "So we come to it in the end...the great battle of our time, in which many things shall pass away" should fill one with excitement, euphoria, anticipation and awe; instead, I'm filled with mere relief that this whole exhausting drag will finally come to a close.

Who knows, maybe all this dragging is performative; as we discussed clear back in the Battle of Helm's Deep, there is in reality nothing euphoric or exciting about war.  The main war-time memories of most folks, civilian and military alike, is of it all just being one big monotonous slog.  For Tolkien, a veteran of WWI and a survivor of WWII, "adventure" was perhaps the last thing he associated with war--he probably couldn't have written an exciting battle scene even if he'd wanted to, which he clearly didn't.

Moreover, this whole subplot of Merry and Eowyn-in-drag not wanting to be left behind for the final battle either needed to have been introduced far earlier or cut altogether, because right now neither character is developed enough, nor are the readers sufficiently invested in them, for their predicament to carry much resonance.  (I have the same complaint about the Oathbreakers, recall).

Compared to the far greater arcs about the destruction of the Ring and the Return of the King, Merry's mopiness before Theoden is borderline asinine.  Much like the Palantir with Pippin, the whole situation just feels like a mere plot device to get Merry into the thick of the action, with some pathos tacked-on to make it less obvious.  Moreover, these various plot-devices feel unnecessary: Tolkien got Merry and Pippin to the Siege of Orthanc without hardly any melodramatics whatsoever.  Tolkien is starting to rush, and it shows.

A friend of mine once ranted that she believed most trilogies would be far better served as duologies; that most authors, in their quest for that magical, marketable "3", end up resorting to a whole lot of unnecessary padding, which undercuts the impact of their endings.  LoTR may be Exhibit A, the progenitor of both the modern Trilogy and of its worst excesses. I'm still excited for some of the thrilling scenes to come, but I think Ben may be right, that Return of the King is overall less than the sum of its parts.  Here's hoping we're wrong.

"Minas Tirith" - Eric's Thoughts

Yes, yes, I know. No blog yet about the movie. I'm still deciding whether I'm going to watch it. It's just sooooo long and I remember it being pretty cheesy. What can a man do against such reckless hate (against a movie)???

But the good news is I read the first chapter of Return of the King. It wasn't a bad one -- at the beginning. Gandalf goes into Minas Tirith with Pippin, they meet with Denethor, Pippin swears to be a good hobbit to Denethor (i.e. conscripts into the army), Gandalf is amused by it, and a random soldier teaches passcodes to the Hobbit, and the random soldier's son makes fun of the hobbit's height but then they walk around Minas Tirith with a man-crush and literally holding each other's hands. The chapter ends with a cliffhanger of . . . another meeting with Denethor. What could the madman want now? (We don't know he's been driven mad yet.)

I thought the chapter was a bit slow at the beginning, but on some level does some necessary world building. The reader can picture Minas Tirith and its seven levels. (Why seven?)

The scene picks up when Pippin and Gandalf meet the Steward Denethor. Denethor is an interesting fellow--the reader can immediately tell he has a string of darkness to him, and that something is not quite right. Of course, Tolkien sells it as the death of his most favored son, but a repeat reader knows what's really going on: Denethor's been looking at things he shouldn't.

Beregond is the random soldier that introduces Pippin to life as a citizen. Nothing particularly exciting about Beregond, he seemed like a pretty flat character, but so is Pippin. The absence of Denethor and Gandalf for the remainder of the chapter becomes apparent: nothing really happens except that Pippin sees some of the city, and hangs out with something who far taller but fifteen years younger.

Now that I think about it, this is actually kind of a weird chapter, and excluding the cameos of Gandalf and Denethor, I found it to be a little tiring. A little more plotting might have been nice here. Pippin aimlessly walks around Minas Tirith without a real objective, and while he does, so does the reader.

"Minas Tirith" - Ben's Thoughts

I had hoped to wait and begin "Return of the King" after Eric blogged about his thoughts on the "Two Towers" film, but since that hasn't been forthcoming, onward into the final book. The first thing to note is that I've always felt "Return of the King" to be an underwhelming title, one that fails to fully encapsulate the themes of the book. It focuses on such a narrow selection of what happens, to the exclusion of the (in my mind) far more important and weighty matters of the destruction of the Ring and the fallout of the war on each of the characters.

And much like the title, I think I've always felt this final book is less than the sum of its parts. There are truly masterful sections in this final journey -- namely, the three chapters from Sam and Frodo's perspective leading up to Mount Doom; the Battle of the Pellenor Fields; and large portions of the denouement, particularly the Scouring of the Shire. But it's padded out with a whole lot of filler, and this first chapter is no exception.

Sadly, as Jacob noted, Pippin's ordeal at the hands of the palantir and Sauron seem terribly downplayed in the chapter. They are only referenced in the first few paragraphs (except possibly for Pippin's ongoing complaint of gloom and loneliness, but he hardly seems singular on that score) and then forgotten. More and more, the palantir seems like a plot device to advance Gandalf and Pippin to the new setting of Minas Tirith.

The new setting is, however, a masterclass in worldbuilding. Here, Tolkien creates a society and people that is wholly different from the Rohirrim we encountered in the last book. It's also helpful that Tolkien chooses to introduce us to the Gondorians (Gondormen? I don't think he ever spells out a clever moniker like "Rohirrim" for the Gondor-folk) through a common soldier, Beregond. By keeping Denethor opaque at this point (and more on Denethor in a moment), he heightens the tension while still providing a relatable figure for the reader to latch onto. Bergil is a bit annoying (and unnecessary -- it seems excessive when Tolkien could have just had Beregond accompany Pippin throughout the chapter), but Beregond is nothing but endearing from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, the transition to Minas Tirith takes the wind out of the sails of the narrative. When we last saw these protagonists, they were rocketing away from Isengard, with the fury of the Nazgul soaring overhead. Now, they're plunked down in a fortress with no forward motion in sight. Perhaps that's the intention -- Tolkien does, after all, have Beregond voice the objection that the men of Gondor can do nothing but wait for their foes to descend upon them -- but it certainly drags the reader down into the malaise with them. I remember being disappointed to come to these chapters after finishing "Two Towers," with its climactic ending. The book should have begun with a bang, but Tolkien insists on easing the reader into the new setting.

Also questionable is the choice of narrator: our boy Pippin. Forcing the reader to experience the city through the eyes of the most immature of the hobbits is frustrating, and forces the reader to digress into episodes like "feeding Gandalf's horse" and "making jokes with 10-year old boy." When you boil the chapter down, a good third of it is Pippin wandering around and moping. Additionally, is Pippin really so idiotic that he hasn't made the connection that Aragorn has a claim to the throne of Gondor? Really, how has he not been eaten by something before now, if he is that clueless?

Complaints about Pippin aside, what the chapter really does well is set up the character of Denethor, who is easily the best part of these Gondor chapters in Book V. Tantalizing hints about the extent of Denethor's power are dropped throughout the section featuring him, and his clash with Gandalf is fascinating. What other leader, to this point, would make Gandalf sit and wait for the sole purpose of showing his authority? And from what other leader would Gandalf put up with it, other than a catty remark at parting? Pippin does acknowledge that Gandalf is the stronger and wiser of the two, but the conflict set up from the beginning energizes the chapter beyond what the rest of it deserves. Denethor's remark at the outset is downright frightening, given the context of the looming war that may snuff out the kingdom for good:

Then the old man looked up. Pippin saw his carven face with its proud bones and skin like ivory, and the long curved nose between the dark deep eyes; and he was reminded not so much of Boromir as of Aragorn. "Dark indeed is the hour," said the old man, "and at such times you are wont to come, Mithrandir. But though all the signs forebode that the doom of Gondor is drawing nigh, less now to me is that darkness than my own darkness."

The Steward of Gondor places his grief above the danger that faces the realm? What kind of a place has Gandalf brought Pippin to? Gandalf's instructions to not mention Aragorn, or the Ring, amplify the reader's concern. Gandalf is right; this is no Theoden, with whom the party could be open and honest. This is a dangerous, powerful man, whose goals and means in achieving them may not align fully with Gandalf's. And Gandalf makes sure that Denethor knows he understands that, and reciprocates in full: "And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come." Gondor may fall, but Gandalf's struggle will go on, with or without her.

The next few chapters are a slog, but we'll plow through them to get to the good stuff. Onward!

"The Passing of the Grey Company" - Jacob's Thoughts

One of the hoariest old saws of the creative writing workshop is "show, don't tell."  That this maxim only rose to prominence in the post-WWII period (and that largely thanks to the nefarious influence of Iowa) is once again demonstrated by the fact that Return of the King often ignores the maxim entirely.  For example, in this chapter, we are told all about how Aragorn had his long-awaited Skype session with Sauron in the Orb of Orthanc, and apparently (with great effort) wrested away log-in privileges from the Dark Lord, so to speak.  Likewise, the legendary Broken Blade has been reforged.  Now, these are both highly significant events that signal the advent of Strider's full transformation into Aragorn the King--yet we only learn of both events from a dinner conversation, which is frankly rather anti-climactic.  I would kind of liked to have witnessed the scene wherein Aragorn wrestles with Sauron in a battle of wills through the Palantir (my goodness, we saw Pippin do it, so why not show far-more-important Strider?!); I would also have liked to actually see the reforging of the Sword--or at least its presentation to Aragorn--with just a touch more fanfare.  It's chapters like these that perhaps encouraged the rise of "show, don't tell" in the first place.

But then elsewhere in this chapter, Tolkien runs into the opposite problem, wherein he does show, but doesn't really tell at all: case in point, the arrival of the Rangers. I had plumb forgotten that Strider was a member of that mysterious order, so little had they come up since Strider's first introduction!  In fact, the order remains a mystery: what is their organizational structure?  Their history?  How do they recruit?  What, exactly, are their missions, and how do they choose them?  The Rangers arrive cloaked, and remain thusly opaque (if memory serves) for the rest of the novel.  It's just kinda odd that a series with such a massively mapped-out mythology should both introduce and re-introduce the Rangers in such a tossed off manner, presuming a readerly familiarity with the group that he has not set up, which just feels so uncharacteristic of the Professor (even one-off Shelob gets a full history, so why not the Rangers!)

Likewise uncharacteristic: Tolkein's rather left-field introduction of the Oathbreakers, haunting the Paths of the Dead.  There had simply been no foreshadowing, no allusion, no prior reference or set-up for them this whole series long.  This has not been the case for just about every other place the Fellowship has visited throughout LoTR.  I am supposed to feel the intense fear of the company as they cross the threshold (and having Gimli serve as our POV helps a little), yet there has not been even a tenth of the world building as there was for, say, the Mines of Moriah--or Mordor itself.  Hence, this meeting with the dead simply does not pack the same punch.  It feels like Tolkien started to rush through things as he sensed himself finally getting towards the end.

Also: how the heck am I supposed to treat the dead in this universe??  Like I said, Tolkien has otherwise done such an admirable job of working out his mythology here, but it occurs to me that he has included precious little discussion throughout this series of what the Middle-Earth Afterlife looks like, about the nature of its Spirits, Gods, Devils, Heavens, Hells, Purgatories, and the like.  What are the folk-beliefs, the orthodoxies, the legends and doctrines of the dead in Middle-Earth?  Do any of these people go to Church?  Do they participate in any rites, rituals, or sacraments?  There have been a few scattered prayers of distress here and there, but no clear working out of any sort of religious system.  Given Tolkien's own open Christianity, this utter neglect of the theological is especially baffling.

I nit-pick these underdeveloped parts because this self-same chapter still reminds us that Tolkien does know how to properly set things up when he feels like it!  For here is where Eowyn first offers her blade in the service of Aragorn--which he of course refuses, but this only sets up a pay-off for later down the line when she joins the final battle.  As Ben has repeatedly noted, Tolkien could have really used a strong editor.