The Lord of the Rings

Revisiting Middle Earth: “Unfinished Tales”

There’s something both satisfying and frustrating about “Unfinished Tales,” a posthumous collection of J.R.R. Tolkien fetishism. You get JRRT at his most didactic, listing chronologies of imaginary kingships as if he were tracing the lineage of Jesus. You get Christopher Tolkien at his most pompous, pointing out all of the petty differences between versions of his father’s stories in lots of dry footnotes.

Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Return of the King”

The Return of the King is probably the volume of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy that I remembered the least.

It’s also the book that differs the most from Peter Jackson’s film treatment. But Return of the King has always been my least favorite of the three movies, and many of the wonderful moments in that film — the lighting of the beacons, Faramir’s charge on Osgiliath, the catapult battle, Pippin and Gandalf’s discussion about the afterlife — are scenes that Jackson either invented or wildly embellished. (Unfortunately, PJ also invented Sam and Frodo’s falling out over some missing lembas wafers. Ugh.)

'Return of the King' coverSo there were all kinds of gems awaiting me on my re-reading of ROTK. I had completely forgotten about Beregond, Guard of the Citadel, and the heroic role he plays in saving Faramir from death at the hands of Denethor. I had only a faint recollection of Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Wild Men. I didn’t recall that our heroes have a run-in with Saruman before the Hobbits return to the Shire. I had forgotten that the only reason Merry was able to wound the Lord of the Nazgûl was because of his sword, picked up at the Barrow-downs in the early chapters of Fellowship.

The first half of the book (book 5 of the Lord of the Rings proper) has simply masterful pacing. The way the tension builds throughout the siege of Gondor… and then Gandalf confronts the Lord of the Nazgûl… and then suddenly the horns of the Rohirrim blow… and then we backtrack to see the ride of the Rohirrim… oh man, is that good. It’s the big build-up that was sorely lacking before the battle of Helm’s Deep in Two Towers.

A single theme kept running through my head as I read Return of the King. It’s the way evil acts continually redound to the greater good in the end. Think of how Merry found his sword. The Hobbits’ capture by the wights in the Barrow-downs certainly seemed like a bad turn when it happened; but this serendipitous encounter enables Merry to critically wound the Nazgûl at just the right time, thus possibly saving the entire battle from going sour and changing the fate of all Middle Earth.

But nothing’s that cut and dried in Return of the King. There’s an unsettling kind of moral determinism lurking behind the scenes here, and indeed throughout the entire trilogy. Perhaps “moral determinism” is the wrong thing to call it, but I can’t think of a better phrase to use. It’s this pervasive sense that not only does the darkness exist, but it’s actually necessary and an integral component to the light.

Why do I think that? Because it seems like Tolkien is constantly giving us matched pairs of characters, one of whom turns to the path of light and one of whom follows the path of darkness.

Take for example the characters of Denethor and Théoden, the Steward of Gondor and the King of Rohan. Clearly Tolkien means to draw very strong parallels between the two. Notice the similarities:

  • Both are rulers of their respective lands (Gondor and Rohan)
  • Both have recently lost firstborn sons in battle (Boromir and Théodred)
  • Both have ambivalent feelings about their remaining heirs (Faramir and Éomer)
  • Both are confronted with a devastating siege (Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep)
  • Both have been striving against an insidious higher power (Sauron and Saruman)
  • Both take on a Hobbit squire (Pippin and Merry)
  • Both men had fathers for whom Aragorn fought in his youth (Ecthelion and Thengel)
  • Both are initially mistrustful of Gandalf
  • Both eventually grant Gandalf favors early in the saga (access to the Gondorian archives and the loan of Shadowfax)
  • Both die in The Return of the King

But obviously there’s a crucial difference between the two; one selflessly redeems himself and dies in battle, while the other stews in his bitterness until he finally commits suicide.

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Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Two Towers”

Many people who read The Lord of the Rings falter somewhere in The Two Towers, and that’s perfectly understandable. According to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Foreword to the Second Edition of LOTR, he actually faltered in the writing of it, putting the book down for two years before picking up again in book 4. (“Foresight had failed and I had no time for thought,” says J.R.R.)

'The Two Towers' book coverIt’s a difficult book. Frodo and Sam, the characters we’re most invested in, disappear for a couple hundred pages; Gandalf is presumably dead in the book’s opening chapters; Boromir’s definitely dead; and Aragorn is still something of a distant figure. Gimli is interesting enough but hardly crucial to the plot, and it’s difficult to give two figs about Legolas.

Then we have the problem of the Rohirrim. As far as I’m concerned, Tolkien doesn’t do a very good job getting the audience to buy in to the kingdom of Rohan. I was shocked to discover that Éowyn is given less than a page in Two Towers, barely enough time for her to show up and cast eyes lovingly at Aragorn. Erkenbrand, Háma, and Gamling are just tertiary characters, nobody we particularly care about. The only person who really grabs your attention in these opening chapters about the Riddermark is Éomer. Before we’ve formed any emotional attachment to Rohan, Théoden’s off to Helm’s Deep.

As for Théoden? Théoden becomes more likable as the book goes on, and he really comes into his own when he rejects Saruman’s offer of peace at Orthanc. But when we first see him, the king of Rohan is just a cranky old man under the sway of bad counsel. Then Gandalf shows up, speaks a few strong words, casts Wormtongue down on his belly — and Théoden has a baffling change of heart. In my LOTR omnibus edition, we first meet Théoden on page 501; Gandalf casts Wormtongue down on page 503; on page 507, the king’s already mustering the troops. Too quick.

Now Gandalf is supposed to be a Maiar of old, and it’s said somewhere that his “magic” is to inspire the people of Middle Earth. To restore them to their youth and vigor, to rekindle the divine spark within. So that could certainly explain Théoden’s sudden shift. But then why didn’t Gandalf accomplish the same thing the last time he saw the king? Okay, there’s a convenient excuse — Gandalf was in a big hurry. But Gandalf’s obviously been in and out of this place many times, and Saruman’s poisoning took years.

So Théoden’s conversion is somewhat puzzling and the Rohirrim are still strangers. Therefore I wasn’t particularly invested in the battle of Helm’s Deep. The battle itself is the first extended battle sequence Tolkien had written since the Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit, and it’s considerably better done than that. But Peter Jackson’s instincts were correct in trying to build up this battle with every scrap of back story he could find. I struggled hard to care about anyone here but Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli.

But I want to come back to Théoden’s choice to cast aside Gríma Wormtongue and follow the advice of Gandalf, because such choices are what this book is made of. Everyone gets their moment of choice in Two Towers.

Sam and Frodo stand on the brink of Mordor and decide to press on, even if nobody is left alive to know about it. Saruman is given a clear choice by Gandalf to come down from Orthanc and walk the long, hard road towards forgiveness, or to rot in his tower. Treebeard and the ents must decide whether to confront Saruman or to sit back and await “the withering of all woods.” Even Gollum has a moment standing over the sleeping bodies of Sam and Frodo on the stairs of Cirith Ungol where he briefly reconsiders his evil plot to lead the hobbits to Shelob.

So what are our characters choosing between? For Tolkien, the choice is not complex: there’s light, and then there’s darkness.

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Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Fellowship of the Ring”

Ideally one should write about the three books of The Lord of the Rings as a unit, since that’s the way J.R.R. Tolkien wrote them. It was the publisher’s decision to split the novel into three parts, a decision that the author only grudgingly accepted. He wanted LOTR published in six parts, with book 1 called The Return of the Shadow, and book 2 called The Fellowship of the Ring.

'Fellowship of the Ring' book coverBut more importantly, in an ideal world one would be able to discuss The Fellowship of the Ring without being overshadowed by Peter Jackson’s film of the same name. Unfortunately, for me that’s impossible. I’ve seen the films probably a dozen times each since their release, enough that I can recite most of the dialogue word for word. The Extended Edition of Fellowship is one of my favorite films ever, ever, ever.

But this is the first time I’ve re-read Tolkien since the film’s release, so I was constantly reacting to things that were different from what I’m used to — as if the books were the adaptation of the films and not the other way around. And in case that’s not irritating enough, I couldn’t picture anyone but Viggo Mortensen and Elijah Wood as Aragorn and Frodo, while Ian McKellen’s voice kept ringing out whenever Gandalf opened his mouth. It’s kind of like reading those annoying New Testament Bibles where Jesus’s words are printed in red; every snippet of dialogue that was used in the films stands out.

It’s especially a nuisance when you consider that J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson had vastly different agendas. Jackson made wonderful films in their own right. But they’re distinctly different in tone from the books, and I’m convinced now that Tolkien himself would have hated them.

What’s the difference? Take just one example, the battle with the orcs and the cave troll in the mines of Moria. Jackson lavishes plenty of attention on the battle, with multiple decapitations, thrown swords, close escapes, and a (somewhat clunky) CGI troll that vexes the Fellowship for a good ten minutes. But in the book, here’s how Tolkien describes that battle:

The affray was sharp, but the orcs were dismayed by the fierceness of the defence. Legolas shot two through the throat. Gimli hewed the legs from under another that had sprung up on Balin’s tomb. Boromir and Aragorn slew many. When thirteen had fallen the rest fled shrieking, leaving the defenders unharmed, except for Sam who had a scratch along the scalp.

There are a few more paragraphs describing the setup and denouement, but you can tell that Tolkien’s heart isn’t in it. The entirety of the scene that Jackson spends fifteen minutes on is a single page of Tolkien’s manuscript.

In fact, I was stunned to discover that all of the action sequences that thrilled me as a kid are really much, much shorter than I had remembered. The flight to the Ford? A measly 2 1/2 pages. Gandalf’s confrontation with the Balrog? 2 1/2 pages. Frodo’s fight with the Nazgûl near Weathertop? One page. And just think of all the dramatic sequences that Tolkien either doesn’t describe at all or relegates to a character’s secondhand report:

  • Gandalf’s confrontation with Saruman and escape from Orthanc
  • Gandalf’s battle with the Black Riders on Weathertop
  • Gollum’s escape from Mirkwood
  • The Black Riders’ incursion into Bree
  • The elves’ battle with the orcs inside Lothlórien
  • Boromir’s last battle with the orcs
  • Glorfindel’s attack on the Nazgûl at the Ford

And that’s all just in Fellowship. The issue will become even more pronounced in The Two Towers, when Tolkien chooses to sit out the ents’ attack on Isengard.

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Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Hobbit”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion contains a beautiful depiction of the world’s creation through music by Eru Ilúvatar and his choir of Ainur. It has passionate love stories, an Oedipal tale of woe, and theological conundrums aplenty.

The Hobbit, by contrast, contains:

  • A character who invents the game of golf by knocking the head of the goblin Golfimbul into a rabbit-hole
  • Dopey trolls named William, Bert, and Tom, who speak in Cockney
  • Goblins who sing doggerel verse like “Clap! Snap! The black crack! / Grip, grab! Pinch, nab! / And down, down to Goblin-town / You go, my lad!”
  • Silly Rivendell elves who giggle too much and sing verses like “O! tril-lil-lil-lolly / the valley is jolly, / ha! ha!”

Book cover for J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit'If you’re going to read the complete works of Tolkien properly, you definitely should not follow The Silmarillion with The Hobbit. (Read my take on The Silmarillion.) I was planning to read The Children of Húrin or Unfinished Tales next, but I don’t own copies of these books at the moment. So rather than get off my duff to go buy them, I decided to read the next Tolkien novel I had at hand, and now I wish I hadn’t. The works are so unalike in tone they don’t even seem to be written by the same person, much less take place in the same world.

Originally, Tolkien’s intent was to keep The Hobbit a light children’s fable with a few cameo appearances from the characters and places of his Middle Earth mythology. And so Elrond has a token role, and the swords of Gandalf and Thorin were made in Gondolin, and there’s a passage about how the Mirkwood elves were “descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West.” After giving a brief child’s overview of the difference between Light Elves and Dark Elves, Tolkien concludes unhelpfully, “Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People.”

There’s a lot of this irritating condescension throughout the course of The Hobbit, and at several points, I was tempted to just throw the book down and move on. The plot for the first half of the book goes something like this: Gandalf the wizard picks Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit of no special ability or importance, to accompany a band of dwarves on a quest, for no apparent reason whatsoever. Dwarves, wizard, and hobbit have unconnected adventure after unconnected adventure, wherein Bilbo largely sits back and does nothing. Bilbo stumbles on a magic ring by sheer luck, which allows him to sit around and smirk at the dwarves while still doing nothing.

Then something interesting happens: about halfway through the book, The Hobbit grows up.

Suddenly Bilbo is thrust into a position of responsibility. And then not only must he make the standard decisions that any hero must make — should I take responsibility? should I take command? should I risk myself for the sake of others? — but by the end he gets thrust into a number of more complex moral dilemmas as well.

And this is where The Hobbit ventures into territory that’s most peculiar for a children’s novel. Whereas the first two-thirds of the book is quite simplistic, the last third is strangely psychological and postmodern. I hadn’t remembered this from my previous readings, and I wish I could give Tolkien credit for planning such ambiguity from the beginning. But the book doesn’t read that way. It reads more like a tale that’s quite content to bumble along for a while until Tolkien discovers some use for it.

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Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Silmarillion”

After finishing up MultiReal (for the time being, at any rate), I felt that I needed to immerse myself in something familiar. Something classic. And so I decided to re-read J.R.R. Tolkien’s books on Middle Earth chronologically from start to finish, from The Silmarillion to Return of the King with a pitstop at the newly published Children of Húrin. This will probably be my fourth round trip through the whole cycle, the first being sometime … Read more