Puttin' the Blog in Balrog XIV: Return of the King VI: 1-4

We last left Samdo in deep, deep kimchee as a co-worker of mine likes to say when there are people who are around who wound be offended by her saying "excrement." Frodo, whom Sam left for dead, has been carried off by Orcs, leaving Sam to trot after the rescue raiding party as best he can, invisible thanks to his desperate decision to put on the Ring, packing Sting, too, and regretting more than ever that he hadn't been able to get the mithril mail off Frodo while he was plundering. Oh, come on, I know it's not like that and he was very torn up over the decision. But I already talked about that.

As Sam stands near the entrance to Shelob's lair (he has had to retrace his steps a bit to pick up the trail to where Frodo has been taken), Tolkien helps us out a bit by explicitly placing this action in temporal context with the other characters' scenes, something he rarely does. We are, as Sam starts thinking about how the Snape he is going to rescue Frodo, concurrent with Denethor's first moments of serious insanity before his attempt at burning himself and his mostly-dead son alive. So while the Steward of Gondor fights with madness and Pippin sort of fights with the Steward, the rival goblins who took Frodo are fighting with each other up in the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

"I'm coming, Mr. Frodo."

Like Gandalf's choice to save Faramir at the expense of many lives on Pelennor Field, Samwise's* choice to rescue Frodo is a bit troublesome. Taking the Ring, whether you're using it or not, invisible or not, into a Tower infested/inhabited by who-knows-how-many Orcs to save his friend, just one friend, even if it is your best friend, puts the whole rest of the world in jeopardy. And while Gandalf has someone (Prince Imrahil of Innsmouth Dol Amroth) to take over command of Gondor's forces and some other someones (Eowyn and Merry) dispatch the

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for him, Samwise has nobody waiting to check into the game, as it were. Coach put him in when Shelob fouled Frodo and took him out for a while, but there is no one left on the bench.

Actually, he doesn't even have a coach!

And the basket into which he's gotta shoot? Dude, it's way out of even hail-Mary range. "In such an hour of labour Sam beheld Mount Doom, and the light of it, cut off by the high screen of the Ephel Duath... now glared against the stark rock faces..." and that's even before he gets a load of what's guarding said basket (he's very lucky Mordor plays zone defense instead of man-to-man) (I think. We're really pushing my sporting knowledge here).

But so let's abandon the basketball metaphors and go somewhere I'm more comfortable, because this bit when Samwise first gets a load of the Tower here, the Ring, which he has just recently used for the first time, starts messing with him. Even though it's on a chain around his neck, it starts tempting him "gnawing at his will and reason," like the Adversary with Jesus. Imagining himself as Samwise the Strong with a flaming sword, he starts believing he could lead an army to conquer Mordor altogether, and when that's done he'll make the sun shine and the flowers grow whether they want to or not, by gum! And here Tolkien makes a declarative statement that I can't agree with, claiming it's "the love of his master that most helped to hold him firm." I say its Samwise's thinking of that giant garden he would force into existence. Gardens aren't forced, they're coaxed, by patient people propitiating the elements and caring for the soil. And he is one of those patient, coaxing, propitiating people. What need has someone like that for a Ring?

Although it would be pretty sweet if he could make anything grow...

I always found the next bit, with the Two Watchers, the most uncanny part of the whole epic. Are they made of stone or do they just appear to be? Can they move if someone with a strong enough will makes it through their force field type thingie? We never find out for sure, because Sam busts out the Simaralcrum, which scares them silly, makes them break the field themselves, and gets through, though not without setting them to screaming the alarm.

Luckily, there don't seem to be a lot of Orcs left alive to respond, and the few that are seem easily intimidated by what they have imagined Samwise must be: that mighty warrior who kicked Shelob's ass in the tunnel. Which he is, except hobbit sized; they just see what they want/expect to see when they look at him. So he scares one away, not knowing that Orc bears "a precious burden" and comes to a dead end, where he starts to sing, which annoys another Orc into revealing the trap-door above which may be found Frodo. Samwise follows the Orc up into that top floor, about to whip Samwise's (cough) master, and slices off the Orc's whip-hand. Booyah, Samwise!

By the way, what is it with Orcs insisting on pouring their energy drink down everybody's throats?

If I had an awesome artist like Megiggles, there would totally be a picture of Manoj Bhargava all Orc'd out, right here.

What happens next is probably the scene I'd nominate for the second most amazing/important/pivotal scenes in these novels, after Eowyn and Merry kill the WKoA: Frodo's supposition that the quest has failed because the Orcs took everything, followed by the revelation that actually the only thing that was left to take after Sam left Frodo for dead was the mithril mail, followed by an ugly quarrel that is only saved by Samwise's patience, goodness and strength of will. As soon as Frodo realizes that Samwise has the Ring, he demands to have it back immediately. When Samwise observes that it's an even heavier and more unpleasant burden now that they're in Mordor and offers (out of the best of motives, I think; Samwise is another Faramir, whose true goodness pretty much proofs him against the temptations of the Ring) to share the load if Frodo wishes, Frodo gets seriously nasty and Gollumesque: "No you won't, you thief!" This while Samwise is in the process of handing the Ring back, mind. And after he's risked all there is to risk, all of Middle Earth, to save him.

That Samwise forgives Frodo immediately, and never holds this moment of bitch-faced weakness and malice against him may seem like mere servility on Samwise's fault, but I think this is a demonstration of Samwise's extreme wisdom and compassion. Having borne the Ring a little himself, he realizes that, while he could probably take it to Mount Doom himself, he might not be able to bear it and Frodo, and since he's already risked all for Frodo, he's not going to leave him now. No, if Frodo takes the Ring, Samwise can concentrate on keeping the pair of them alive and get them through, as we'll see shortly when he carries Frodo up the slopes of Orodruin. It's sadly calculating but also shrewd, this decision he makes. It's also totally Samwise.

And now there's nothing for it but to dress the basically naked Frodo up in Orc drag. Oh, if Treebeard could see them; he might rethink his classification of hobbits as not-Orcs, eh?

But UH OH, as Samwise has to use the Similracrum to get past the Watchers again, the alarm they kick up notifies a flying Nazgul! But of course they get away, though they learn of yet another thing that Orc armor is not proof against. Uh. Thorns.

Dudes, why do Orcs even get armor? They might as well just get chainmail bikinis. And that would actually make them fearful to behold. I know if there's one thing no one ever wants to see, it's an Orc in a chainmail bikini.

I have never been more relieved to be right about something in my life.

The next day sees Samwise and Frodo observing a curious thing: a Nazgul passes over them but it's going the other way, shrieking "woe and dismay, ill tidings for the Dark Tower." We have just been told that at this moment Theoden lies dying at Pelennor, so there can only be one piece of bad news a Nazgul can be carrying to Barad Dur: the death of the WKoA. So not only does Eowyn and Merry's feat signal a sea change for our side, but it's a terribly disheartening blow to the Enemy, too. See? Most important single event in this novel!

And the rest of this section, and yes that includes the shocking revelation that Gollum is still on the hobbits' trail, is just foot-tappy time passing for me, until we get to the point so brilliantly depicted in the greatest song ever to grace a cartoon of questionable quality:


True story: that was the first song I ever bought to go on my Mp3 player.

I always snicker a little at their escape. Good thing that whole other army happened along to cause mass pandelerium into which the hobbits could disappear.

Does it seem to anyone else like these two hobbits spend pretty much the entirety of these last two novels mountaineering? For here they go again, but Frodo is too spent to even crawl up the slopes of Orodruin; as he pretty much prophesied earlier, Samwise has to carry him, but is surprised at how light Frodo is. I'm sure lots of the "Ring causes everything" crowd have bounteous theories about this, but I just figure the better part of the year's marching and boating and climbing and getting poisoned by giant creeping evil in spider form have left Frodo rather wasted and insubstantial. He's probably skin and bones and weighs not much more than a rabbit. As for the Ring not adding to the actual weight, well, no. Its burden is psychic, and Samwise, focusing entirely on another's well-being, altruism personified, is pretty much proof against it.

But then comes Gollum, who attacks the pair and has his first real try at just physically taking the Ring. But Frodo grabs the Ring on his chain itself, and even though he's not wearing it, it imparts some extra confidence and authority, perhaps even actual power though I tend to think of it as a magic black feather unless it's actually worn, and Frodo says "Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path. Your time is at an end.

You cannot betray me or slay me now.

And then we suddenly see things from Samwise's perspective. And somehow, these two combatants look somewhat different, metaphorical versions of themselves, or what they could potentially become soon. Gollum is "a crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing" and Frodo appears as a figure in white "stern, untouchable now by pity" who calls out to Gollum that "If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom."

Prophetic much, there, Frodo?

At any rate, they retire into the house with scornful looks exit Frodo, on his way solo to the aforementioned Fire, leaving Gollum to the tender mercies of Samwise. Who suddenly discovers just how extensive his mercies really are; when Gollum cowers, Samwise realizes just how much it really does suck to be Gollum and spares Gollum's life and runs to catch up with Frodo.

Who has decided not to destroy the Ring after all, thank you very much. Instead he puts it on, and suddenly Sauron is very much aware of him for the first time -- Aragorn's big diversion at the Black Gate has been working very well up until this point -- and Sauron freaks the hell out and summons everything, leaving his millions of minions just sort of loitering around with a bad case of the stupids because the mind that has been driving them is suddenly very much occupied with something else. But he's too late. Everybody's too late. All kneel before Zodo.

But wait, there's still Gollum, whom Samwise sees struggling with an invisible foe. Off comes the Ring finger, to the longing breast of Gollum goes the Ring, and down into the fires teeters Gollum, just as Zodo had commanded.

And then Sauron discovers the real extent of his folly. If only he had hired trustworthy contractors who didn't adulterate the foundational concrete with a whole lot of magical crap instead of doing quality work. But no. Down comes pretty much everything, crumbling, melting, shattering, pretty much everything you don't want load-bearing stuff to do.

Meanwhile at the Black Gate, those flying dei ex machinae, the Eagles, have shown up, there to prompt every over-analytic, picky fanboi and fangurl to start wondering for all time why they couldn't have just taken Samdo to the volcano in the first place, but no, their job is to bring the boys back to Ithilien, where all the bigshots await their pleasure.

I love how Samwise just breaks down into wonderful tears when a minstrel announces that he is going to play a song of his own composing, about "Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom" just as Samwise had daydreamed about betimes. Hooray!

Now it's really all just running out the clock from here. There I go with poorly understood sports metaphors again...

*I'm going to call him Samwise from now on; Sam is his slave name.

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog XIII: The Return of the King V: 6-10

I have written elsewhere this week about the moment in The Lord of the Rings that I find the most pivotal and dramatic. It occurs in these chapters: the death of Theoden and the triumph of Eowyn and Merry against

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Rather than rehash things here, I urge you to go check out my guest post over at Snobbery.

But!

It's not like that's the only thing that happens in these chapters; far from it. For one thing, Eowyn barely survives her moment of glory, and is thought dead until Prince Imrahil of R'lyeh Dol Amroth bends over to ogle her and realizes she's breathing. Saved by the Male Gaze, is Eowyn, which makes me want to say harrumph, but you know what? Before that she and Merry killed the biggest actual baddie in these tales, so just this one time... ah, who am I kidding. I give literary sexism a pass all the time.

Good thing Eowyn's pretty, though.

Her near consignment to death along with Theoden King really foreshadows quite a lot, immediately and a bit down the road. Immediately, the Rohirrim, despite the defeat of

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are outnumbered, weary, in trouble, and then things look to get even worse. Those Black Ships we've been hearing about since Pippin arrived at Minas Tirith? Here they come, up the Anduin, and the host of Mordor is plenty happy to see the Corsairs of Umbar come to assure victory at Pelennor.

But oh! Just as Eowyn turns out to be only mostly dead, the ships aren't something to mourn and fret over, either: "upon the foremost ship a great standard broke, and the wind displayed it as as turned... There flowered a White Tree, and that was for Gondor; but Seven Stars were about it, and a high crown above it; the signs of Elendil that no lord had borne for years beyond count." This banner I've talked about before in this blog: it's the one Arwen made for Aragorn, asserting his lineage, his claims and his promises in fabric, thread and white gems.

And like all good icons, it communicates a very clear message: the ships do not carry the Corsairs but the gonnabe King of Gondor, who took these ships with the help of his army of oathbreaker ghosts.* Soon Imrahil and the knights of Ulthar (meow) Dol Amroth flank Mordor on one side, the Rohirrim have them blocked from another, and together they channel Mordor towards the waiting Greys and Deads and Elves and Dwarve and Manves, and soon there is victory!

Would there, though, be victory so complete had not Eowyn and Merry stood up to the

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and destroyed him? We can't be sure, but really we've already been told, by Tolkien himself, that the watershed moment had occurred. We are told this when the death of Snowmane, who accidentally killed his master, Theoden, is discovered and discussed. Snowmane gets a grave mound at Pelannor Field, and we are told that, while grass grows long and green over that grave, where the foul flying steed of the

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died, the ground stays forever black. The fact that land so close to Mordor stays fertile and fair long enough for Snowmane's Howe, as it comes to be known, to become grassy basically tells us right there that Sauron lost.

Unless maybe the long green grass is kudzu. 

It would grow fast, but in doing so would probably prove that Sauron had won, amirite?

I believe this is the first time we're given this retrospective view of Frodo's quest and all of the fights and failures around it as a fait accompli, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, onward, to the other thing Eowyn's near-death foreshadows**: her future fella's own brush with death.

When we last left those anxious souls in Minas Tirith, Pippin was racing to find Gandalf to help prevent a tremendous tragedy: Denethor, not content to give up on Minas Tirith and himself, has also chosen to give up on his only remaining son, wounded but only mostly dead. Denethor has built a pyre for himself and his son, had them wrapped in a shroud and drenched in oil, and is fixin' to "burn like the heathen kings of old."

I find it just a little troubling, this choice that Gandalf makes to abandon what may well be the most important battle in the history of Middle Earth and his secret job of wielding his Elven Ring to keep everyone's spirits up, commanding Gondor's forces, and very likely doing some fighting himself, to ride up to save the life of one Man, even if it is one that happens to be one of my favorites. It just reeks of the kind of feudal elitism that makes me foam at the mouth; you know he wouldn't hesitate to throw, say, Beregond, under the Burn Bus.

But then again, how much does it really matter? We have already come to understand that Gandalf and his ilk are due to fade soon from Middle Earth, and Eowyn and Merry have proved to everyone that you don't need a wizard to destroy a Big Bad, just strategic knowledge of its weak points***, and nothing kindles the hearts of fighting men like scoring big, big points against the enemy. So maybe Gandalf isn't so terribly vital to the battle effort after all. And hey, the Fellowship did kind of all right during the time he was fighting his way out of Joseph of Arimathea's Tomb Zirakzigil and pulling a Lazarus, too, no?

The question, then, may well be, does Gandalf think his presence at Pelannor is so very important? Because if he does, then it's a tiny bit reprehensible, in the grand scheme of things, to desert so many to save so few.

I'm pretty sure he would have stayed at Pelannor.

But then there's the possibility**** that no one else can save Faramir; no one is willing to cross his lunatic father.***** So, Gandalf puts Prince Imrahil of Cykranosh Dol Amroth in charge of directing the battle and up and around he goes.

He finds quite a scene, but is just in time. Revealing himself for a split second to be quite a lot more spry than he looks (sort of like Grand Maester Pycelle, eh?), he leaps onto the heap of wood doused in oil and yanks Faramir off the pyre Denethor has built (or rather, ordered built). Denethor has a last grand round of theatrics, ranting and raving and revealing that he knows about Aragorn in the process, and he refuses to hand over the kingdom to the last son of "a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity." To prove that he means it, he snaps in half the white Rod of the Stewards of Gondor (thus destroying the last heirloom of his house, probably at right around the time that Aragorn revealed his fancy new heirloom that completes his collection) right before he lights the fire.

Faramir is carried down to the Houses of Healing, and soon Eowyn is, too. As for Merry, he has gone all but unnoticed, Bilbo-style, but made it into the city under his own power -- just barely. The reunion he has with Pippin as he comes staggering in is as sweet as can be, both of them still in awe that they've experienced what they have. But Merry, who has lost the use of his right arm to icy numbness following his killing stroke on the

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is, like Eowyn and Faramir and many others, overcome by the Black Breath and will surely die of it, unless there's a miracle.

There is a miracle, and her name is Ioreth, who sort of wistfully reminds Gandalf that back in the good old days, when there were kings of Gondor, you could tell the rightful king because "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer." So, while Aragorn has made the humblebraggy decision to wait for the Steward to recover and invite him into the city, he is summoned earlier than that by Gandalf to ply the kingsfoil cure. And so the news breaks and spreads throughout the city.

Then, because so far The Return of the King has come so very, very close to passing the Bechdel test, Tolkien does something weird, seemingly by way of making sure it doesn't. But hey, give him credit for this: he couldn't bring himself to make Eowyn cause the failure directly: he makes her brother and Aragorn her proxies for this as she lies raving in her recovery from the Black Breath. Aragorn gently lectures Eomer about how all of the surprising and saddening things she's muttering aren't really coming out of nowhere, how Wormtongue wasn't just working on Theoden, and for good measure he pretty much implies that her big problem is that she has the hots for him, Aragorn.   Because it's all about Aragorn. Says so in the title. "Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned."

Nor, actually, is this Aragorn's only cock remark; when he moves to Merry's bedside and speaks to Pippin, he tells Pippin not to worry: "Do not be afraid. I came in time."

And I called him back.

But yeah, I know it's true. But jeeze, look who's starting to believe his own press already. Though yes, he does create a stir as he leaves the House of Healing to go back to his campsite outside the city until Faramir is well enough to perform his duties like making a new Rod of Stewarding, whipping everything into shape for Aragorns big, uh, re-entrance. Meanwhile, Prince Imrahil of Dunwich Dol Amroth, after a meet cute with Gimolas****** is tagged to be the uh, Steward for the Steward.

But meanwhile, there is still the matter of

PRETTY MUCH UTTER DOOM

to be discussed. It's still up to Samdo to save the world from the Ring, but meanwhile it's up to the rest of his friends to keep Sauron distracted while Samdo sneaks through Mordor.

The idea boils down, more or less, to trying to make Sauron think that Aragorn has the Ring and is maybe fixin' to do some things with it. Neener. They're going to leave a crew behind to guard Minas Tirith, sure, but everybody else is going to go knock on Sauron's Gate. Hoo dogies!

Merry is still down, but Pippin gets to go. Of course Gimolas gets to go. Replacing Boromir are Eomer and Imrahil (I've beaten the Lovecraft jokes into the ground now, yes?). Oh, and a thousand calvary and seven thousand infantry. Which kind of sounds like a lot until everybody starts thinking about how many Orcs/Evil Men/Other Icky Things are still waiting for the chance to kill 'em at the Gate.

There follows a long stretch of trashed scenery and heralds yelling, in effect, "Come out, come out, wherever you are, but hey, this is our land again" as we pass through Ithilien, retracing some of Samdo and Smeagollum's (Samsmeagoldo's?) footsteps. Despite the bravado, some of the men chicken out and the host dwindles a bit. I guess the WKoA isn't the only one with trouble finding good help these days.

Anyway, they finally get there and line up outside of the Gate. The Lieutenant of Barad-Dur, also called The Mouth of Sauron, rides up to challenge them.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, God said let there be lips...

And lo wast there a lot of trash talk, followed by the taunting display of some stuff, including a certain coat of mithril, forcibly taken from a certain pair of hobbits that really should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

Of course, the Lips of Sauron give away pretty much immediately that Mordor has no idea why Frodo or his stuff are so important and just brags about what a crappy spy he made. But only Gandalf seems to grasp this, and when the Lips start talking terms, Gandalf tells them to shut and go away, which they look to be doing but Ackbar time; while the Lips have been flapping, the Easterlings have been cutting off our heroes' escape route. The Black Gate opens and more bad guys emerge.Complete with Hill Trolls. And I'm sure there are some more Oliphaunts somewhere in there. UH OH.

But before things get completely out of hand, Pippin wounds and likely kills a troll. He's gotten a bit taller from those Ent draughts, maybe, and has a good sword, and manages at least to hamstring it or something! Yay! But then the troll collapses on top of him. Boo! But then... Eagles... eagles again.

And that's it for these chapters, and really, as far as I'm concerned, for me. I'ma finish Book VI, don't worry, but as an adult reader of this trilogy, for me the culminating moment of it all, the watershed moment, is when Merry and Eowyn take out the WKoA. From there, it's all just clean-up, as I said over at the Snobbery.

*Or are they ghost oathbreakers? Oh noes, argument time!

**Narratively, if not historically; it's possible that the future lovers are in their gravest danger at the same time, the way Tolkien has structured these chapters.

***Lo, like unto Bard of Esgaroth. Sure, you can insist that it's all because of magic because how else would anyone have learned to converse with Thrushes, but it still boiled down to skill, courage and strategic intelligence.

****I say "possibility" because, even as Gandalf will soon be heard to all but lament that he could have, e.g., prevented Theoden's and many other deaths if he'd been around to take on the

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himself (because we all know nobody else could take him, right?), practically within the same breath he gives credit for saving Faramir to Beregond of the Tower Guard, Pippin's friend, who was the only one who had Manned the Snape up and tried to break into the room where Denethor was whipping up a batch of Steward Roast. Which is it, Gandalf? Only you can kill the Witch King but oh, look, Eowyn and Merry did it (though they couldn't save Theoden, they saved potentially many, many more, including, very possibly, all the Rohirrim), or only you can save Faramir but oh, look, Beregond would have managed all right? Or both? I don't have the answer, just as I don't have the answer to whether or not Gandalf's choice was defensible. Which is marvelous.

*****Who has also, by this time, gazed into the Palantir that remained in Minas Tirith. Now, it's an open question, I think, whether in wresting the Orthanc Palantir from Sauron's control Aragorn also freed all of the Palantir or not. If it was just the one stone he freed, then the Minas Tirith Palantir basically would have made a temporary connection between Denethor and Sauron, doubtless not to Denethor's benefit. But even if Aragorn freed all the stones, Denethor used it to get a look at what his people were facing -- the Orcs, the evil Men, the

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and probably the Corsairs for good measure (shades of the fate of Aegeus, there, since the ships' sails were black and Aragorn didn't bother to unfurl his new banner until he arrived at Pelennor) and that burned through all, like, two of his remaining sanity points.

******You know, we never do hear with whom it was he had those children, including the daughter who eventually marries Eomer...

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog XII: The Return of the King V: 1-5

So we last left Frodo's cousin Pippin learning the meaning of haste on the Shadowfax ride at Six Flags Over Middle Earth, watching the scenery blur past as Gandalf gives him history lectures and orients him and us on the map, and that's pretty much where we pick up here. From afar they see the beacons of Gondor being lit and Pippin, bless him, is concerned that what he's seeing is dragon fire, because what would he know? He's grown up on Bilbo's tales, and he's in the east now, where the dragons were, after all!

Gandalf explains the beacons, how they summon help from the Rohirrim in the north and other allies in the south, including Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, who I still maintain snuck into this epic, Thursday Next-style, from an H.P. Lovecraft story, but that's immaterial, because Gandalf is still talking, about how they didn't use to need beacons because they had the Palantir. You know, like the one Pippin gazed into that started this race to Minas Tirith in the first place.

Hey Sauron, am I the Halfling you're looking for?

At last they halt just outside of Minas Tirith and exchange words with the head of an outlying guard post, and, echoing Gandalf's visit to Edoras, tart observations are made about how Gandalf only seems to show up with bad news, and Gandalf replies to this pretty much the same way he did in Rohaaaaannnnn. Okay, but so what's up with the midget? Oh, he's here to take my place entertaining the troops so I'm free to fight for our cause this is a Halfling but not the one prophesied, just one of his cousins. And next thing you know, Pippin is spilling the beans about Boromir, earning Gandalf's wrath yet again (poor Pippin!) because they should have saved that news for Denethor, who's going to be a big enough pain in the ass anyway without having to lead off with his reaction to that. But oh, um, turns out there have already been "tidings" of Boromir's fate, haven't there.

Fine. Nothing for it now, let's go see Denethor in his little chair.

Poor Denethor, descendant of a long line of also-rans who still wound up having to do all the work while the line of the Kings of Gondor were otherwise occupied carrying around broken swords and drinking beer in places like Bree and not even bothering to show up and get crowned, let alone help out with anything (I'm speaking from the chip-on-their-shoulders Stewards point of view here as I imagine it when they're feeling especially self-pitying). At what point do you just accept your loss and move on, Gondor, and let these guys be kings already? Because really, you're kind of like those sad-creepy parents who keep their suicidal teenaged sons' bedrooms as inviolate shrines for decades after the kids blew their heads off with shotguns outside of prom, you know? And pretty much neglect the other kids in the family for the rest of their lives, even if they grow up to be super successful and awesome and present you with amazing grandchildren and offer to buy you a new house? Yeah, Gondor, you're kind of like that. It's embarrassing.

But so anyway, here's Denethor, heir to all the dysfunction and now having to contend with Mordor resurgent to boot, and he's been kind of unconsciously acting out that very same dynamic and pretty much set up his oldest son, Boromir, to be a great big hero-martyr and making his second son, Faramir, keep eating at the kids' table even though he's in his 30s now. I mean, wow.

And he's gotten his sick little wish, hasn't he? Boromir has kicked the bucket, shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! Boromir is an ex-Captain of Gondor! And so Denethor gets to have all the theatrics, but first he gets to be all passive-aggressively coy with Gandalf. Hey there. Something you ought to be telling me about how I sent you a big strapping manly man and I got back a broken horn* and a corpse in a boat? Hmm?

Speak and be not silent!

Look, it's not that I don't like Denethor. My heart aches for the guy, and we do not get to see him at his best, as Gandalf keeps reminding us. He comes from a proud lineage, blah blah blah, but well, we all know how I feel about a person's importance being measured by who his ancestors were, so I'm pretty much ready for Gandalf to shut it long before he actually does.

And I love Pippin for his move here. Though he is not yet a daddy himself, he has a daddy, and I picture him kind of imagining Paladin II and how he'd feel if Pippin never returned alive. Plus, he probably wants to stave off an extra helping of drama, an understandable impulse with Gandalf and Denethor all but climbing up the drapes, and so he makes the polite gesture of offering his service in place of Boromir's, which he perhaps thinks is just a nice gesture but which Denethor seizes on. My son saved your life so now yours belongs to me, or something like that. Anyway, tickety boom, Pippin winds up swearing allegiance to Denethor, much to Gandalf's concern and, yes, annoyance. Dude, Pippin can not win with this guy.

But the ritual speeches they exchange here are very nice. "I will not forget it," Denethor says, "Nor fail to reward that which is given: fealty with love, valour with honour, oath breaking with vengeance."

I like the slight implication that Boromir might have been Finduilas' son by the milkman or somebody that Gandalf makes as he and Pippin leave the Steward's presence. By some chance, Gandalf says, the blood of Westernesse runs nearly true in Denethor, and in Faramir "yet did not in Boromir whom he loved best." Of course, there are lots of other, less salacious explanations for this (don't make me break out my Punnet squares again, you guys) but it's still a fun observation to make and a thought that only ever occurred to me on this reading.

And I love how Pippin becomes the wonder of the Citadel, and how in the short time he has been there wild notions that a "Prince of the Halflings" (Earnil I Pheriannath) has come to offer Denethor 5000 little swords, and/or that doubled up behind each Rider of Rohaaaaaaannnn on his horse, there will be a fierce little Halfling warrior. Despite Pippin's having to burst these bubbles, he makes quite a splash around Minas Tirith with two generations of Men of Gondor and is welcome among them as they watch outlanders from all over the country come in to help with the defense of Minas Tirith, including Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth**, and his Cthulhu cultists Lohengrins knights and men-at-arms. Ia ia.

Meanwhile back in Rohan with Aragorn, Gimolas and Merry... they are also preparing for war. Theoden will head off to Edoras to muster the rest of the Eorlingas and it is quickly decided that Merry will go with him over his protests against being "laid aside like baggage"; he still hasn't told Theoden all about the Shire yet, is the excuse he's given.

Hey, Gratus, baby, I'll tell you about the Shire. Hubba.

But first! The party is found by one Halbarad, a Ranger buddy of Aragorn's, some other Ranger types, and Elrond's twin sons Elladan and Elrohir, come to help with the war and also to give Aragorn  the banner Arwen has made for him, which I've already talked plenty about in other posts, and some advice from Elrond -- "If thou art in haste, remember the Paths of the Dead." Which, I'm not sure I'd be in any hurry to take a short cut by such a name, but I'm not a tall badass gonnabe king with a famous sword and magic blood or whatever.

And so Merry goes off to become Theoden's esquire, and after Aragorn spends the night in Gethsemane looking into the Palantir and wresting control of it from Sauron (thus revealing exactly who he is to the Dark Lord. DRAMA BUTTON), he decides to take the Paths of the Dead, as Elrond counseled. This freaks out the Rohirrim, who tell him it's unpossible and impassable, but they know better to try and talk him out of it, and agree take Merry with them as they go. Sadz.

With the departure of horse lords and hobbits, Aragorn reveals more of what he learned on the Night of the Stone to Gimolas: peril approaches Minas Tirith from the South (it's a fleet of bad guy ships, and yes, Minas Tirith knows about it) and the only way he can head it off is to go through the aforementioned Paths, which is not only a short cut, but also an opportunity to collect some more allies: "for the hour is come for the oathbreakers... the heir of him to whom the oath they swore... need shall drive him..." The ghosts of Men who swore an oath to Isildur and forsook him can be found there, and it was their breaking of that oath that has condemned them to a dim half-life inside the White Mountains. Gimolas is all for going along, so off they go!

Of course their way takes them past Edoras, so they stop off for supper and Eowyn gets to make eyes at Aragorn some more, and begs to go along with him when she realizes she can't talk him out of going where he's going; she's tired of being "a dry nurse" and wants to fight. I love her little speech when Aragorn lectures her about her duty, kind of patronizingly: "All your words are but to say, you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more."

I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death."

But Aragorn continues to patronize her and she strides off angry. Perhaps this is what shall finally galvanize her to become Dernhelm and kick ass, but I can't help but feel a little annoyed at Aragorn right here.

The next morning brings a bit of a repeat of this conversation, as only Eowyn has come to see them off, but the result is the same, and next thing we know it, the Grey Company (as the Rangers and the Elves who travel with them call themselves) is at the Dimholt gate and having to jolly their horses into entering the cave, in which Aragorn summons his ghostly oathbreakers to follow them to the Stone of Erech and we're firmly in Lovecraft territory at last! A pity we don't get to spend more time there, but...

Meanwhile back in Rohaaaaannnnnn...

Theoden and his riders arrive back at Edoras for the Muster of the Rohirrim. Merry has gotten used to riding the pony he's been provided, Stybba, possibly the least unfortunate pony in all of Middle Earth, save Fatty Lumpkin, and realized that he can almost understand Rohanese, since it's kind of a kin-language to the Common Tongue, the way the Norse languages are to Old English, at least: "It was a language in which there seemed to be many words that he knew, though spoken more richly and strongly than in the Shire, yet he could not piece the words together." And then he alone shows any interest in the Pukel-men, the Easter Island statues of Middle Earth. I love that this is how he passes his time on the ride when he's not telling Theoden about the Shire, you guys. Love. Merry is not a buffoon. He is a Tolkien character.

And then he meets Eowyn, soon to be his partner in Witch King slayage! Hooray! Of course, he doesn't know that yet! All he knows is that all of his original friends have left him behind! Never mind that he gets a little tent all to himself right next to the king's! But I would feel a little sorry for myself, too, in this situation! Because it's human and hobbit nature to think more about what we don't have than what we do! And hey, at this stage, Merry is basically kept on hand to entertain the king! Like a jester, a jester, a funny idea, a jester!

And then, though we might think the beacons of Gondor had maybe already done their job, we have not actually had anyone on the Rohaaaannnn side seeing them, so perhaps it's good that Denethor decided to be anal and send Hirgon with the

Red Arrow!

 Because, uh, no one would take Hirgon's road for it that things were getting dire in Gondor unless he also carried the

Red Arrow?

Uh, I got nothing here. I think it's kind of lame. Pretty sure Theoden already knows by now that things are getting dire, right? And he was already mustering the Rohirrim to ride to the aid of Minas Tirith? But at least now we're sure, because of the

Red Freaking Arrow.

That's "Speedy" to you, Eorlingas.

Theoden of course agrees to go, since he was already going to, but advises that if Gondor had been willing to wait a bit he'd have 10,000 spears instead of just the 6,000 he's going to bring now. They'll leave tomorrow, but it takes about a week to get from Edoras to Minas Tirith, so...

And then Hirgon waxes melodramatic "you are like to find only ruined walls in seven days from now" and you can just tell that he was one of Boromir's buddies, can't you? Drama queen.

But he's got a point, because next morning a dark cloud of Shadow has blotted out the sky and everyone starts talking about how they might never see the sun again, which Theoden kind of cheerfully takes as a sign that the jig is up and nobody needs to try for secrecy anymore.

And then he turns to Merry and releases him from his service, telling him to stay behind with Eowyn and help her govern the folk who aren't riding to war. Merry, he says, is too little to ride a horse and his groovy little pony isn't cut out for war or keeping up. Merry declares that if no one will let him ride behind him on a war horse (you know, the way the Minas Tirith guys were fantasizing), then he'll bloody well run/walk behind and just show up late for the battle. Theoden is kind of patronizing, just like that other king was with Eowyn, and so it should be no surprise to anyone that Eowyn decides to team up with Merry, outfitting him in what she can gin up by way of arms and armor and dropping hints about maybe meeting him again someday. Which, of course, they do, except Eowyn's in drag and calling herself Dernhelm. Hooray! Off they go to war, just like the big boys, and don't they have a big job to do!

By the way, love the snatch of epic poetry we're treated to before the Eorlingas ride forth, full of alliteration and drama like a proper Beowulfian chant: "Forth rode the king, fear behind him, fate before him. Fealty kept he." LOVE.

Meanwhile, back in Gondor...

Pippin is summoned back to Denethor, who has decided to let his squire go fight in defense of the city and that Pippin will do as his squire. He also seems on the verge of making a jester of his assigned hobbit, and Pippin almost has to sing for him, but he was not commanded to sing. Policy matters tear the Steward's attention from him, and Pippin is sent off to get livery and gear, which is all black and dark grey and would be hell in the sunshine so good thing the Stormcloud of Sauron darkens the sky over Minas Tirith, too. Wearing his somber new duds, he has a somber new conversation with Beregond, his first and best friend among the Tower Guard that he has joined, which is interrupted by the cry of a

Nazgul on a Fell Beast!

Five of them, actually! And they are harassing a small band of horsemen that will turn out to be Faramir and his men! Oh noes! But then

Yay Gandalf!

rides out on Shadowfax to save our brave boys. The Nazgul don't want to tangle with him and take off (you've got to go see EssJay's post on this topic!). He helps bring in a wounded member of the small party that were escaping the Nazgul, which turns out to be Faramir and buckle up, everybody, because things are about to get super bumpy. But first, a trade in expositions is undertaken along the lines of, what's a Halfling doing in Tower livery, I have seen a Halfling before, yay that means Samdo's alive but oh man, Cirith Ungol, really?

Denethor has witnessed most of this exchange and is suddenly jealous of how Faramir seems to be looking to Gandalf for guidance on how much to say of what he knows about Samdo, not that that matters because Denethor can see it in Faramir's mind, exactly how and why Boromir died and next thing we know he's telling Faramir to his face that he wishes it had been Faramir who died instead of Boromir "for Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard's pupil... He would have brought me a mighty gift." Gandalf, of course, shoots this down for the crap that it is -- if Boromir had taken the ring, he'd be well on his way to being Wraith Number Ten, and wouldn't that be lovely? But Denethor is way too carried away by his own rhetoric right now; one wishes for a rainstorm and nudity and a fool to wash some sense into him, but instead he has impatient Gandalf and a plan to send his wounded Cordelia off to fight some more reinforcing the garrison at Osgiliath.

Amid all this drama, though, Gandalf starts seeing things a little differently. He's terrified to hear that Frodo is taking the Stair but has realized that everything the rest of the former Fellowship has been up to is probably doing a fine job of distracting Sauron from Frodo's progress, even Pippin's foolishness with the Palantir. Ha! And Gandalf doesn't even know that Aragorn has Palantired as well!

But small hope that is right now for Minas Tirith. The Rohirrim are still days away, the Black Fleet is coming up the river, and by the way, a host has come out of the Black Gate to meet up with some Haradrim and march on Osgiliath. You know, where Faramir is being sent to hold off whatever comes there. With not enough men. With your shield or on it, Faramir. With your shield or on it. Sigh.

Of course he comes back on it, more or less, giving Denethor the opportunity to indulge in the worst histrionics yet. First he just betakes himself to his rooms to sulk, leaving Gandalf to arrange the defense of the City, and then... Ugh. Even though his remaining son is only mostly dead, Denethor starts wittering on about "No tomb for Denethor and Faramir... We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West." And all you people who are asking Denethor for instruction because "the first circle of the City is burning?" Well, it is like unto an Earth, Wind and Fire song. And then he commands that Faramir be taken to the houses of the dead, to be laid down next to his father and covered with one cloth and set on fire!

And so Pippin has to race off and find Gandalf to stop this, because Denethor won't listen to a Halfling, even a Prince of the Halflings. He's enjoying his raving too much. But oh noes, Gandalf is down in the battle somewhere, dealing with the likes of Grond, which is, for my money, the single best-named thing in all of Middle Earth: a giant battering rand shaped like a wolf. Grond. GROND!

Look!  Even the Battle Droids love Grond. GROND!

And pretty soon, Grond breaks open the Gate of Gondor, and in pour the Nazgul, including the Black Captain, aka

THE WITCH KING OF ANGMAR

and only

YAY GANDALF

is able to stand up to him, although

THE WITCH KING OF ANGMAR

is not impressed. Fortunately, here come the Rohirrim, bringing with them some other people who are capable of taking him on. The Riders have won through to Gondor thanks to the Woses (aka the Pukel Men, whose statues Merry admired back near Dunharrow, aka the Wild Men of the Woods), broad, squat, Dwarve-like Menve led by Ghan-Buri-Ghan, who kept a bunch of Orcs at bay while the Rohirrim passed through, and then showed them an easier, forgotten way to get to Minas Tirith. Man, I loved the Woses when I was a kid, but as I've gotten older it's gotten harder and harder not to see them as a bit of a caricature, how an English professorial-type imagined Native Americans/First Nations/Australian Aboriginals would be (perhaps more of the last than the former, as Ghan-Buri-Ghan sports a grass skirt and all) and I kind of wince at how their speech is depicted and how cargo cultish their view of the people who live in stone cities is. Sigh.

Anyway, we find out for sure that Denethor had no word that the Rohirrim were coming because Speedy Roy Harper Hirgon got himself killed on the way, still clutching the Red Arrow. Dude. That stupid arrow again.

But so at long last, the Rohirrim burst upon Pelennor Field, where all is chaos and Orcs and siege engines and Nazgul and looming nasty death.

*See, just as Aragorn is going around and collecting all the heirlooms of his house that he didn't already have, the Stewards seem fated to lose theirs. They, like Pippin, really just can't win, can they?

**Who is Denethor's brother-in-law. That's right, Denethor married a Princess. The rest of the world thinks he's royalty, even if Gondor doesn't. Mmm hmm.

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog XI: The Two Towers IV 6-12

Wow! So many posts about these wonderful, wonderful books already! As usual, EssJay has the run-down to rule them all at her clearinghouse page, which she's just updated to include the latest. Of particular interest to me has been Mandy of Adventures in Borkdom's post on J.R.R. Tolkien as a writer who's just like us. That's only Part I, with Part II to come later in the week. I'll update when it's there.

And now to wrap up The Two Towers.

We last left Samdo at Henneth Annun with Faramir and his Merry Men, and Faramir has done what his brother could not: turned down the chance to accept as offered or take by force the Ring and "show his quality." If you can't tell, that's one of my favorite lines in all of Tolkien.

My brother didn't get to marry Glynnis Johns -- I mean Eowyn, either.

As a new chapter opens, Faramir again shows his quality after he discovers Gollum fishing in the Forbidden Pool (why there needs to be a Forbidden Pool, why that Pool is Forbidden, we never learn, but man, it sure sounds pretty!), but instead of just killing him outright per policy, he wakes up Frodo to show him and get his opinion. Frodo begs for Gollum's life ("the servant has a claim on the master for service, even service in fear"), though Sam would rather just let the Men kill Gollum and be done with it. The scene crackles with tension, tension under the moonlight (and that's totally going to be the title of my next D&D module)! Faramir doesn't want this creature on the loose and knowing the location of his secret hideout -- what if he's captured by Orcs and spills it? Frodo finally agrees to at least have Gollum captured but not "by a feathered shaft": he will go down quietly and get Gollum to come quietly himself. And so he makes his careful way down to the water, trying not to think about all the hidden archers with arrows trained on him and Gollum against a false move by either...

And Gollum is reluctant to come, feeling that he has been deserted and misused. Frodo gets impatient, even though he feels very badly about what he's doing, stops speaking kindly to him and threatens to put on the Precious and say "make him swallow the bones" of the fish Gollum wants to finish "and choke. Never taste fish again." That threat -- or the reminder that Frodo has the Ring -- is what does it, and Gollum comes along, poor thing.* And gets tied up, so in one moment the relationship of servility and trust that has sort of grown between Frodo and Gollum is pretty much destroyed, as Gollum's burst of sarcasm "So wise they are; so just, so very just" makes clear. Sigh. But then again, didn't it have to be?

Anyway, because Frodo sticks up for Gollum so passionately (and, let's face it, guiltily), Faramir gives Gollum safe conduct as long as he sticks with Frodo, but then goes all but operatic on trying to warn Frodo that Gollum is Evil, and that there is some foul thing guarding the pass atop Cirith Ungol but no one knows what it is and though Faramir gives Frodo rather an extensive history lesson about the Men who were the Lords of Minas Ithil before it became Minas Morgul apparently no one is erudite enough to put "Cirith Ungol" and "Ungoliant" together and think "gosh, what if it's a giant spider, hmm?" but there you go. Faramir's dad probably didn't think too much book larnin' was manly enough for even his despised younger son.

And then it's time to go, and, to parallel the Fellowship's trip through Lothlorien once again, blindfolds are required again, but since Faramir has decided that Samdo is okay by him, only Gollum needs one -- but when Gollum squeals and squirms, Frodo declares that all three of them must be blindfolded. Once again, no safe word is asked for or given.

Blindfolds off and good-byes said, the hobbits are now back to having to rely on Gollum, who has a new eagerness to be on their way and wakes them up too early in the morning and everything. "Hobbits must make haste! Schnell!" Okay, he doesn't say "schnell", but I'm pretty sure he would if he had known any Germans, especially a certain kind of German whom it's well known Tolkien had in mind during a lot of the writing of these novels. At any rate, good Smeagol who always helps, if there was ever a chance for him to win out and switch sides, is truly dead now, which is just as well since it turns out to be nasty Gollum who is needed at the end of all things, isn't it?

Next thing we know, he's done runoft for a while, leaving Samdo to brood over how the days are getting shorter and darker as they get closer to Mordor, even though it's springtime and they're pretty far south from where they started.

But soon he turns up and shoos them on their way like a mother who wants the kids to get the hell off to school so she can sit on the sofa eating bonbons and watching her stories in peace. We must get to the Crossroads, only way, only way.

And what's at the Crossroads? Why another gigantic statue of a former King, this one defaced by Orcs in various ways, including replacing the crowned head with a giant red eyeball, Residents-style.

Pity they left off the tophat, though. Orcs have no fashion sense.

 Mr. Skull doesn't think they smell very good, either.

Anyway, then Sam finds the King's head in the grass and a trailing plant with flowers like small white stars has bound itself about the brows of the statuehead, prompting Frodo to exclaim "The king has got a crown again!" and furthermore "They cannot conquer for ever" because no power in the 'verse can stop weeds from growing and thus, can stop the good guys from winning, either, I guess?

Oh, and those are the last pretty flowers in this book, because from now on all we see are "pale white flowers. Luminous these were, too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel smell." You know, just to make sure we know we're getting close to EEEEEEVILLLLLLL. As if the whole Ring getting heavier thing wasn't warning enough?

But wait, there's more! Tell them what else they've won, Don Pardo! Well, Frank, how about a cameo appearance by the

WITCH-KING OF ANGMAR

 riding out to battle at the head of a host of other nasties! To a purpose we don't really learn of until next book! But for now serving to give us one more chance for Frodo to almost screw up completely by putting on the Ring in the presence of Nazgul! Only a chance grasp at the Silmaracrum snaps him out of it! Plus the elvish cloaks maybe hide them from unfriendly eyes, as advertised! Because if the

WITCH-KING OF ANGMAR

still has eyes, they would definitely count as unfriendly ones! Wouldn't they! And the Black Gate clangs shut and Frodo gets depressed because it's obvious now that he's too late and Sauron has already won and --

Oh but PSYCH, it was all a bad dream, or possibly a flashback to the Mirror of Galadriel, and Frodo's safe and snug in bed at Bag End and Sam has just made break--

No he hasn't! They're still just outside Mordor, just not back at the Black Gate! DOUBLE-PSYCH!

At any rate, now it's time to go up the stairs, great stone slabs in considerable disrepair that go on for so long that the hobbits are all but crawling at the last. And then Gollum, with considerable glee, informs them that that horribly long and barely endurable Stairway to Hell they just climbed? That was just the first one, the Straight Stair. Now they have to go up an even longer one, The Winding Stair. Gollum's already starting to exact a little revenge here, by acting like a P.E. teacher. No rest yet, cross the plateau first, then you can rest. A bit. But then we have to go up the other one, maggots!

If I had an awesome artist like EssJay's Megiggles, there would totally be a picture of Gollum blowing into a coach's whistle right here. Or possibly dressed as a drill sergeant.

While they pause, Sam busts out his erudition (you can bet if he had been a boy who'd grown up in Gondor, he bloody well would have figured out what's ahead of them in the tunnel) and he and Frodo have an exchange that made EssJay get all kinds of sappy. Go have a look.

Meanwhile, Gollum has done runoft again, no doubt to make sure a certain spidery someone is still interested in the bargain they've struck, or maybe just to compete in the Melkor Memorial 500k Fun-Run to show up those lazy hobbit maggots.

Soon it's time to climb again, and the higher they get, the worse it smells as they approach Shelob's Lair. And Gollum, so close to his big bully of a friend, gets downright uppity as everybody starts batting aside tendrils of old web that's gotten everywhere, and then just scarpers, possibly for good, because as happy as he is to feed Master and the other, Nasty Hobbit, to Shelob, apparently he doesn't want to watch (though more likely he just doesn't trust Shelob not to "forget" to leave him out of her dinner plans). He'll just wait and dig through Shelob's frass** later. Because he's brave and klassy like that. Anyway, Samdo blunders around a while, Sam quotes Admiral Ackbar and wishes for TomBom to come and save them and then remembers the Simaralcrum.

And, by the way, good thing Galadriel implanted that post-hypnotic suggestion to remind Frodo to call out "Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima!" once it's all lit, because I seriously doubt he would have busted out with that on his own. Of course, she could have just, you know, told him, but no, "he knew not what he had spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his." And how else would Shelob have found him, huh? Oh wait, that's right, Galadriel's on our side. Never mind. Except wha--?

Because now Shelob, grand-daughter-or-something of Ungoliant, who was Darkness in Spider Form (kind of like Venom, right?) shows up and basically spews shadow to combat the Silmaralcrum's light just before she attacks! And between the Silmaralcrum and Sting (remember Sting?), she looks almost bested for a while but for her stinger. D'oh!

And while Frodo is getting stung, Sam is ready to save him, but oh no, Gollum! Gollum stops Samwise from rescuing Frodo until it seems it's almost too late. "So far, Gollum's plot had succeeded."

But Sam finds Frodo anyway, bound up in super-silk, Sting on the ground next to him. Sam grabs this up and attacks Shelob with it, because he is brave and awesome as well as being erudite and attentive to detail. He gets her in the eye, but her return assault, even as she thrusts herself upon "a bitter spike" (i.e. Sting), almost crushes him. I always envision Sam basically carving his way out, though this detail is left out of the novel. Le sigh. But what he really does is even more awesome, really, because he grabs the Silmaralcrum, busts out with even more erudition in the form of what amounts to a powerful Elvish incantation, and kicks Shelob's ass but good.

And then he finally gets to see to Frodo properly, only to find he's mostly dead. Possibly all dead. And Sam has to make some decisions. Does he go on alone to the Crack of Doom (hee hee. Sorry, had a spell of being twelve again) and leave Frodo's body behind, probably to rot if not to simply turn to frass eventually after all? I remember the first time I read this, I was absolutely convinced through these pages that Frodo was dead, and that the third book, title aside, was going to be mostly All Samwise, All the Time and fist-pumping the air, except that was long long ago, in a time before fist-pumping was a Thing. Anyway, he takes the Ring on its chain from around Frodo's lifeless-seeming neck and promises he'll come back for Frodo's body if he's at all able, after the quest is fulfilled. I totally believed he would, too, while I thought Frodo was dead, because Sam is Awesome. And so, with the Ring heavy like regret around his own neck, Sting at his side and the Silmaralcrum in his pack somewhere, Sam sets off...

...and almost blunders into a company of Orcs! And his only way of escaping detection is, you guessed it, to put on the Ring. And with his heightened Ring senses, he hears the crack of stone and, down away under the rock "the bubbling misery of Shelob"*** and the Orcs speaking their own language, which he can now understand because Ring and then he runs away, back to Frodo, because he is now terrified of the Ring and has lost all confidence in his ability to Bear it. And possibly thinks it can resurrect the dead? I don't know. I've never felt like I've known. But it's all moot because some of the Orcs got to Frodo first, and are carrying him off! And it's suddenly a very good thing indeed that Sam thought he was dead and took up the burden alone, isn't it?

And many pages of Orc-squabbling later, we learn that while Peter Jackson doesn't have much respect for Sam, these Orcs certainly do, because something freed Frodo from her silk, and something cut through her webs, and something drove her away from Frodo (and thus made it safe enough for the Orcs to find and fetch him), and it sure as Mordor wasn't Frodo, was it? Heh.

But glory be, Frodo is alive! And this means Sam still has work to do before he heads off to Mount Orodruin: he has to rescue Frodo!!!!

*Yes, I am one of those who feels bad for Gollum through all the books, even when he betrays. I can't help it. I have a long history of being very upset by characters like this. Don't even get me started on villains brought low who cry. Oh man.

**Frass, for those of you who are not versed in the study of our more-legged fellow creatures, is the droppings of an insect or arachnid (such as, say, a spider). Yeah, I'm talking about poop. Because I am also klassy like that.

***Yes, almost there, with that line, I felt a little sorry for Shelob. Just for a moment, though. Shut up.

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog X: The Two Towers IV: 1-5

Funny how things change. When I was a kid, I tapped my foot very, very impatiently through the first, Samdo-free, half of The Two Towers, annoyed at all the new characters introduced and all the military stuff that happened. I enjoyed the stuff with the Ents because what is there not to like about Treebeard and company? But other than that, I was quite annoyed.

BUT!

This time around, I reveled in those chapters (except, maybe, for all the running) and when I got to Samdo in Emyn Muil, I won't lie, I had a hard time even getting started. My eyes just kept sliding off the screen. I'm pretty sure because I was inwardly sighing at how tiresome this part of the film is.

But Book-Sam is nothing at all like Movie-Sam! That's what I all but chanted to myself as I finally got a start on these chapters. And vive la difference!

I haven't changed my mind. But it's only sense: put the one lowest as is most likely to slip. I don't want to come down atop of you and knock you off. No sense in killing two with one fall.

Sam here is explaining why he is going first down a steep gully among the rocks that looks to get the pair of them a fair part of the way back to proper country instead of lost in climbing hell. Any newbie freeclimber who has eagerly and perhaps recklessly scrambled up some rocks they don't know well (yo!) knows what this can be like, looking down every few minutes wondering if that jump is a) survivable b) survivable without being injured c) suicide or d) any more so of any of the above than the last downward prospect.

Before Frodo could stop him, he sat down, swung his legs over the brink, and twisted round, scrabbling with his toes for a foothold. It is doubtful if he ever did anything braver in cold blood, or more unwise.

Frodo talks him into coming back up until morning, when they can maybe at least see the bottom. They debate the wisdom of this a bit, realizing that if they guess wrong about a downward progress and reach a point with no further hand- or toe-hold, they'll have to climb back up to where they started, which would be terribly weary and dangerous work. How well do I know it!

I wonder when that busy don and philologist, J.R.R. Tolkien, had the time to go rock-climbing like this, or whose brain he picked to get these passages so very, very right.

 Hell's Half Acre in central Wyoming, which is pretty much how I always imagined Emyn Muil. 

Lots of more images depicting its fractal degree of difficulty can be seen at this blog.

Oh, and then they get caught in a thunderstorm! Great! We're back in the kind of opus contra naturam territory we haven't really seen since Caradhras. But worse than there, not just the terrain and weather are against them: here there be winged Nazgul, most likely. The sound of one startles the hobbits and sends Frodo bumping down a bit, and he winds up more or less trapped there until Sam remembers he's got a coil of elvish rope (light and strong, doesn't take up much space in the pack, silky to the touch... I always basically figured it was Middle Earth paracord)! Hooray! And a little more rope otaku-ry ensues, and I found myself wondering what kind of plant provides the fibers for such stuff, as is my wont.

Nor is that, of course, the only moment where that sorta-magical rope (it unties itself from Sam's knot around a tree stump high above them, after all) is important; once Smeagollum comes along after a wonderfully creepy scene of him sticking to the sheer cliff face like an insect, crawling head downwards, it is an integral part of keeping the creature under control. Once Smeagollum has "sworn upon the Precious" to be good, Sam ties the rope around Smeagollum's ankle (amid much thrashing and crying out that the elvish rope "burns") and they're off on Smeagollum's secret way through the Dead Marshes.

Ah, the Dead Marshes, where at the end of the Second Age the Last Alliance of Elves and Men fought Sauron's forces on the battlefield called Dagorlad. The corpses -- or at least the images of the corpses -- of Men and Elves and Orcs now lie in the mucky, smelly water that crept over the rotting bodies over the centuries. I always kind of thought of this as a giant field of peat mummies. Marsh gases or something more sinister occasionally gives rise to puffs of white misty light like will'o'the wisps, and the footing is treacherous. It may be that only little folk like hobbits and former proto-hobbits could really cross here now, though supposedly Aragorn caught Gollum here once. Samdo and Smeagollum make their careful way through, their progress only sort of hampered by the passage overhead of a winged Nazgul, dispatched from Mordor in response to Pippin's having looked into the Palantir on the way out from Isengard. The decoy hobbits have maybe taken their job a little too seriously, eh?

And the reminder of the Nazgul and the Precious boots a lot of the Smea out of Gollum. UH OH! And for his part, Frodo definitely starts feeling the burden of the Ring, even to perceiving it as a physical weight growing heavier the closer the trio gets to Mordor. And they're heading into nastier lands:

"Even to the Mere of Dead Faces some haggard phantom of green spring would come; but here neither spring nor summer would ever come again. Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness... They had come to the desolation that lay before Mordor; the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing, unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion."

Sounds like a post-nuclear wasteland, almost, doesn't it? But we who have read Wormwood Forest know that to the landscape after a nuclear attack or accident much nature can return, whereas this territory would seem to have no hope at all. So it's more like a landscape after the coal-bed methane people have had their way with it.

I imagine a whole landscape that looks like the lower half

of this picture, from a CBM play in Wyoming.

And through this our trio has to pass. Nobody likes it, least of all Gollum, who has been here before and has not-so-fond memories of his visit to Mordor on his mind as he starts having those famous arguments with himself that the movie people chose to depict as a case of MPD. Hey, worked for me. Gollum wants to take the Ring for himself and make the hobbits grovel, among other things*; Smeagol at least wants to be nice to Frodo, who has been nice to him. But how to get it? Oh wait, yes!

SHELOB!

Whom he so far refers to, within Sam's earshot anyway, only as She.

I love Em's observations in her guest-post over at EssJay's blog about how things go down on the way to the Gate of Mordor, casting Gollum as one of those super-annoying NPCs in text adventures and other early command-line based computer games who take one's commands super-literally. "Bring us to the Gate," Frodo says, and so that's what Gollum does, more or less willfully misunderstanding of Frodo's true wishes: get us into Mordor, preferably undetected. But hey, he asked for the Gate, he gets the Gate, in all its over-the-top intimidating glory. Sneaky Gollum is softening up the hobbits for his alternate route, via Cirith Ungol and the lair of Shelob. "Smeagol very good, always helps, indeed."

While Frodo dithers, an army of Easterlings enters by way of the Gate, further depressing everybody and deciding Frodo; he will trust Smeagollum some more and take this other way into Mordor. But, Frodo will brook no nonsense from him; if need be, he'll put on the Ring and command Smeagollum to kill himself. Sam, who up to this point has thought Frodo was maybe too blind, too nice, is pleasantly surprised. Smeagollum is cowed but not so much so that he can't gin up a fair amount of salesmanship, making sure all the ways into Mordor sound terrible except for the way he wants the hobbits to choose.

Who's the tricksy one, again?

So now the trio turns south, into slightly nicer territory, where Smeagollum at least looks forward to being able to catch some nice fish from clean water again. They travel alongside, rather than on, the road and see nature reasserting itself over the ruins left by Men and again I think of Wormwood Forest and the town of Pripyat. I may never not think of Mordor as the Zone of Alienation now, of Ithilien as Polissa. But hey, it's spring, and the former Garden of Gondor keeps "a dishevelled dryad loveliness." The landscape actually sounds a lot like I've always heard Italy being described. And next thing you know, Sam has set Smeagollum coursing after hares for their supper and finally gets to use the cookware he's been lugging all these miles! Smeagollum, of course, thinks cooked meat is gross.

Alas, the creature's right about one thing, though as disasters go, there could be worse. Sam's cooking fire attracts the attention of four Men, and so enters into our story Faramir**, brother of Boromir, son of Denethor, Man of Gondor. 

With firm application and determination...

>And with him are some of Aragorn's people, Rangers of the Dunedain. They're in the territory hunting some of those evil Men who are marching to join the Enemy in Mordor, and are very interested in the hobbits but have work to do and a skirmish to fight.

Nonetheless, these Men are not done with the hobbits, and after they defeat the Sothrons (and send an oliphaunt off masterless and blundering north, to Sam's awe and delight), the hobbits are detained. Faramir had the dreams first, remember, that Boromir talked about, about seeking the Blade that was Broken and halflings and Isildur's Bane. So yes, Chapter Five is pretty much more dueling exposition, though it's Frodo and Sam who have most of the news. Aragorn lives and carries the Blade, Gandalf does not live and perished in Moria. Boromir is also not so good, by the way, Faramir says for his part, and expects Frodo to know that already and how he died, since they were such good friends and all.

I love how Sam stands up to him for this. "See here!"

Faramir is suitably intimidated by Samwise not taking his "sauce".

Faramir backs down, sort of, and tells Frodo and Sam how he and his men heard Boromir's horn from afar the day the Fellowship split, and how they later found Boromir's body in the boat in which Aragorn and Gimolas launched him down the falls at Rauros. And from this news, Frodo jumps to the depressing conclusion that all of the rest died too, that day, even his cousins the decoy hobbits. Sad, illogical Frodo is sad and illogical.

There follows much more talk in which the Ring is a big shiny oliphaunt in the campsite, as it were. More trust needs yet to be won. Strangely, this is won by Faramir's conducting the hobbits (but not Smeagollum, who has been missing since just before the Men found them) to his secret hideaway and making them wear blindfolds for the trip. Because yeah, nothing makes me trust a guy more than his ordering me to put on a blindfold. Um.

But at least Henneth Annun is a pretty place, when they get there. And they get a safe place to sleep, a good dinner, and a history lesson for their having come. And then they get to talking about the hobbits' own trip again, and in the heat of his defense of Galadriel (who seems to need a lot of defending, verbally anyway), Sam lets slip that she saw through Boromir and furthermore that Boromir went after the Ring!

Ring? What Ring might this be, Faramir asks. D'oh. But then he gets a chance to prove his quality, which is higher than that of his brother, at least in terms of not taking what doesn't belong to him, like a good younger brother.

And there we leave them, until the next chapter.

*Gollum's desires, even at his most self-aggrandizing, are suprisingly modest, aren't they? "Lord Smeagol? Gollum the Great? The Gollum! Eat fish every day, three times a day; fresh from the sea." Here we perhaps see why hobbits getting their hands on the Ring actually wound up being quite a good thing. Even had Bilbo known its true power, he might well have still mostly used it to hide from annoying neighbors... hobbits and proto-hobbits don't seem to offer the Ring much in the way of vices for it to work on and through. Now perhaps if Lobelia had gotten the Ring... best not to think about that, though. Shudder.

**By the way, I am quite relieved to find that I am not the only person among us who thinks that David Wenham is a dead ringer for Danny Kaye. Even to hear him speak!!! I'm hither and yon, I'm there and gone, I'm Johnny not on the spot!

David Wenham as Faramir of Gondor

Danny Kaye dressed as the Black Fox in The Court Jester.

Glynnis Johns is every bit as pretty as Miranda Otto, too, and just as badass!

Puttin' the Blog in Balrog IX: The Two Towers: III: 6-11

Up till now, whenever speech and eloquence have  been employed, they have been so with high purpose and kindly, if not noble, intent. There has been poetry to celebrate, amuse or mourn, there have been prophecies to warn, and grand orations and friendly pieces of advice.

Now as we approach the halfway mark, we're getting a different view of the power of speech, eloquence in the service of deception and treachery. It's an interesting place for a word-drunk philologist to go, isn't it?

Along with the darkening of the power of words comes our first real look at how Sauron and Saruman's efforts are affecting mere mortals. The people we meet in these chapters are bravely trying to go about their daily lives but are grown mistrustful, even fearful. The first human kingdom we have visited since Esgaroth back in The Hobbit seems like a miserable place even though its setting is beautiful and highly civilized.

And all because of evil words!

Gandalf, Aragorn and Gimolas make mighty good time through the pretty wet meadows of Rohan, and Gandalf warns everybody to watch what they say around Theoden. Gandalf visited this king on his get-well tour and borrowed a horse, but not just any horse: he took Shadowfax, the greatest horse ever, a veritable Fatty Lumpkin of horses. And Theoden wasn't happy.

So Gandalf choosing to revisit the city of Edoras and the hall of Meduseld so soon after that last encounter seems kind of foolish, but, as Galadriel told us last novel, nothing Gandalf does is needless. Saruman is probably going to take out his rage at not getting the Ring on Rohan, and the king needs to get ready.

Alas. The king Gandalf and the fellas find is even more sunken into gloom and despair than he was last time the respawned wizard visited. The hall of Meduseld is dark, everyone is subdued and a little frightened, and, as Theoden will soon observe, dark have been his dreams of late.* Theoden accuses Gandalf of always being the bearer of bad news and a demander rather than a giver of help.

Thus begins a serious and subtle argument over how it's not always bad to bring bad tidings, in which Grima Wormtongue, who seems to have become Theoden's sole counselor, delivers a hell of a tirade. After Theoden exclaims that ill news is an ill guest, Gandalf says that yes, he often brings bad news but it's important bad news, and with the news he has brought help this time, really! Look, here's the heir of Gondor and an Elve and a Dwarve! I mean dude, it's like we've already won! Then Wormtongue has his say: "But there is a third kind [of person who brings bad news]; pickers of bones, meddlers in other men's sorrows, carrion fowl that grow fat on war."

Now, from a certain perspective, is Wormtongue entirely lying? Though his words could perhaps more accurately describe himself than Gandalf, he is very effectively planting a suggestion in which he doesn't make anything up so much as put a slight spin on the truth, as he's clearly been doing for some time now. He has, after all, convinced Theoden to shut himself up in his darkened throne room and ignore the state of kingdom except when something important needs done, like agreeing to impose tighter restrictions on his hall and his subjects. Aren't people like Gandalf just the sort of thing Wormtongue has been warning about?

Gandalf, of course, is having none of it, and busts out his staff that he persuaded Hama the guard to let him keep when Hama confiscated everybody's weapons. There are flashes of light and Gandalf glows tall and white and next thing we know, Wormtongue is sprawled out on the floor and Gandalf is leading the king outside to partake of the healing power of his still-beautiful and well-ordered and healthy kingdom. "Look out upon your land! Breathe the free air again!"

Talk is cheap; reality trumps it every time.

But seriously, how awesome is Brad Dourif? 

I <3 him and we have the same birthday.

P.S. Aliens suck!

And then! It turns out that while Aragorn and Gimolas were whooping it up at the edge of Fangorn and then playing catch up with Gandalf, Eomer and his men returned to Edoras, but not to much of a welcome. Indeed, Gandalf has to shame Theoden into letting his nephew out of the dungeon! Soon Eomer joins them and puts his sword at the king's feet, and once Theoden has that in his hands his cure would seem to be complete. Forth, Eorlingas!

For the present, though, "forth, Eorlingas" chiefly means "evacuate Edoras." The women and children and elderly have to go into hiding when the menfolk ride forth to war. As these orders are being given and Theoden is considering who to send to keep order among the evacuees, Hama brings Wormtongue out into the light; Wormtongue had been keeping the king's own sword in hiding, but of course, the king had given it into his keeping, hadn't he?

You've got to admire this in Wormtongue: he's got the balls to keep trying until the very last. He lays it on thick in a last attempt to convince the king that he's too old and sick to be playing warrior and it's just Gandalf's having bewitched him that makes him want to. At the very least, the king should hang back and let younger men do this nasty work. Theoden, of course, bawls him out and tells him to "go clean the rust" from his sword; Wormtongue's coming to fight with the men, by god!

But no, Wormtongue wants to be left in charge, the cheeky bastard. But Gandalf loses his temper, accuses Wormtongue of working for Saruman, and tells Theoden to give the "snake" a horse and let him go wherever he wants. D'oh!

And as everybody gets ready and has dinner, they meet Eowyn, who has already been checking Aragorn out, of course, so when she is formally introduced, she is a bit giddy. Poor Eowyn! Thank goodness Tolkien wrote you and not some jerk who would just let your unrequited love define you, though, you badass!

But then, sadz. Someone from the royal family needs to stick with the evacuees, and guess who gets that job? I mean, it's great that she gets to basically be Theoden's regent while he rides off to take on Saruman, but she's a shieldmaiden of Rohan! She wants to go fight, too! Sigh.

Sister-daughter, you're just more valuable in the original packaging.

At last everyone is off, heading for the Fords of the Isen and, more or less, the border of Saruman's and Theoden's territories. The plan is to join and assist the Rohirrim who are already there, fighting Saruman's forces. It was these whom Theoden's son Theodred led until he was killed, and there aren't many of them left when our heroes arrive. They learn the battle at Isen was lost and the men's commander, Erkenbrand of the Westfold, has tried to draw the host of Orcs and evil Men to the fortress of Helm's Deep, where the Rohirrim might stand a chance. So! Off to Helm's Deep! Well, everybody except Gandalf, who suddenly remembers an errand he has to run. Um.

For once we're spared a journey, though not a description of Helm's Deep, which sounds like one of the most impressive structures we'll see in Middle Earth, at least until we get to Minas Tirith and the Gate of Mordor next novel. It is lavishly described, but what matters is that it's very, very defensible. Erkenbrand has tried to lead the Sarumanians into a trap. But first it's almost a trap for Theoden and co., who have to fight their way through the enemies that are already there harassing the garrison. Meanwhile, an enormous army "bringing fire" is not far behind them. There is going to be BATTUL, the first we've gotten to witness in Tolkien (The Hobbit had the Battle of Five Armies, true, but we only got that as told to Bilbo, who missed it all, invisible and unconscious).

Except, er, none of Erkenbrand's men (formerly Theodred's men, i.e., most of the clean-limbed fighting men of Rohan) seem to have made it, so it's just the guys Theoden brought and the old men and boys already at the fortress. UH OH.

And as they get ready, another tender moment for Gimolas. This time, Gim feels good because he's in some mountains again, and Olas is uncomfortable, but says to Gim "You comfort me, Gimli, and I am glad to have you standing nigh with your stout legs and your hard axe." Get. A. Room.**

They don't have long to wait once they're arrayed, the Helm's Deepers. Saruman's host quickly chases the valley defenders back up to the fort, and in the darkness, Orcish arrows start flying and battle is joined! Eomer and Aragon ride out into a sortie and are driven back, narrowly escaping because Gim followed them out "to shake off sleep" and kills two Orcs, saving them. And thus starts Gimolas' famous body count competition. Olas has a pretty good lead, though. Gim has two notches on his axe, but Olas claims to have shot 20 dead with his bow. Hoom.

But this is a siege, and the Rohirrim and their allies are way outnumbered. There is only so far they can fall back, even in their own fortress. So as dawn approaches, Theoden has one last desperate notion: he's going to ride out himself with whoever will go with him and take it to the enemy. Of course Aragorn will go. As for the rest, Gim and Eomer are unaccounted for and Olas is off hunting for more arrows.

So out ride Theoden and Aragorn and what Eorlingas could be rounded up. And, as if they knew the plan all along, out come the men from the caves to attack the Isengarders from the sides. They break through and, well, how about that, overnight the forest got a LOT closer to the Deeping Coomb, didn't it? And Erkenbrand! Gandalf found him and got him through. But he's not really needed; the relocated forest so freaks out the Orcs and Evil Men that they run away and disappear into the woods, never to be seen again.

The sudden appearance of these woods is not explained, within the narrative, for quite a long time. Of course we readers who benefit from the omniscient third person Tolkien know how the trees -- the Huorns! -- got there, but Gandalf is ever coy and tells everybody that if they want to know about all that, they should come to Isengard with him, but for a parley rather than a fight. They take care of their dead (Hama! Sniffle...), then head out, passing the trees of this new forest, which are Old Forest Creepy: "The ends of their long sweeping boughs hung down like searching fingers, their roots stood up from the ground like the limbs of strange monsters, and dark caverns opened beneath them." I wonder, indeed, if the Old Forest isn't a similar tree army the Ents rustled up for the defense of the Shire, or who- or whatever the Shire was at that time, in the long long ago -- or to pen up another wizard gone bad, with a mind full of metal and wheels? Parallels!

Along the way, Gimolas argues about woods versus caves, and Gim has a suggestion that I'm sure would give many a stump-humper the vapors: the caves around Helm's Deep are marvelous, he has discovered, and many a Dwarve would pay gold to visit them. ARGH! Middle Earth's first tourist trap?

Available in the gift shop. Buy one for a pal!

Next thing you know, Gimolas is planning a honeymoon for after the war, a tour of the caves of Helm's Deep (aka Aglarond) followed by one of Fangorn (aka something hideously polysyllabic it would take a year to say). Awww!

And then the party comes across some Ents, but these do not deign to notice our heroes; they're just calling out to one another and keeping an eye on the trees they herded to Helm's Deep. Thus Theoden learns he has allies, but not ones that care so very much about the fate of his kingdom; they just have a common enemy. Nonetheless, in the dark of night, the Ents take care of a lot of stuff behind the scenes, including the giant pile of Orc corpses that the Eorlingas could not burn without cutting down trees, so left in a heap. And they also free the waters of the Isen from whatever nefarious dam-type-contrivance Saruman has had built to divert the water for his own steampunky purposes. That's right, I said steampunk. Prove me wrong!***

Alas for Saruman! By the time our heroes arrive at his tower of Orthanc, it is pretty well trashed; the water Saruman was abusing has been turned against him, to the ruin of everything. And in the rubble: Hobbits! Merry and Pippin, chillin' after dinner with a pipe full of weed. This reunion is one of the happiest scenes in this whole trilogy, for my money, as is the hobbits' first conversation with Theoden, which threatens to become a discourse on the history of smoking! For there is tons of pipeweed to be had, of the very best quality. So any remarks Saruman might have made about Gandalf's love of the leaf sound a bit hollow now, eh?****

What follows is a sort of mini-Council of Elrond, really. Again. So I guess Rivendell doesn't quite have all the exposition. How unfair of me. Pippin, by the way, is a way more exciting expositor than Elrond, but then again, he's talking about the Ents' attack on Isengard, which WOW, even though we're getting it second-hand, just like when Bilbo missed the Battle of Five Armies.

Soon it's time to confront Saruman, and here we get our second, greater example of speech as a means to work evil. Like a Bene Gesserit adept's, Saruman's very voice can bewitch people, we've been told; only Gandalf, Elrond and Galadriel might be able to withstand it (so it's completely wonderful that Christopher Lee, whose own voice is so marvelous I'm glad he doesn't do advertising voice-overs, was cast as Saruman in the films!). Curiously, Gandalf counsels everyone who comes with him not to jest or approach Saruman with a light heart. Talking to him requires willpower.

I admire Tolkien for not just letting these declarative statements and descriptions of Saruman's power do the work here. Saruman's actual speeches are kindly and reasonable in and of themselves, carefully wrought with just the right touch of rhetoric. Lesser writers would, and have, let the "magic" do all the heavy lifting.

And I love that it's Gim, of all people, who shoots this rhetoric full of holes: "In the language of Orthanc, help means ruin and saving means slaying." Theoden busts out with a speech against Saruman, too, and maybe his is the more heroic for having been under the influence for so long, but Gim was first. Go, Gim!

By the time Gandalf gets his verbal licks in, they just seem cruel, really, though they come only after Saruman has managed, very subtly, to convince everyone that what was going to happen next was a private council between these two lofty Istari to which the rest would not be privy. Perhaps the cruelty was needful. Perhaps. At any rate, Gandalf -- now calling himself Gandalf the White -- announces that Saruman is cast out of the Order and proves that his own voice is powerful, too: "Your staff is broken," he says, and CRACK. Saruman crawls away, and -- UH OH -- Wormtongue chucks a Palantir (as always for this old, old stuff, check out Essjay's posts on the Silmarillion for more on that, if you don't want to read the Silmarillion yourself, though Gandalf does tell a bit of their history later on) that almost hits Gandalf in the head! Which Pippin picks up! But Gandalf snatches away! Foreshadowing!

And so Saruman is left with the Ents to keep him prisoner in his impregnable, but now tree- and water-surrounded tower. And so is established The Watchwood. Hoom hoom. Again, I wonder about the Old Forest, and TomBom, perhaps Treebeard's counterpart in the West?

It is not very hard to guess which finger from the White Hand that used to adorn the pillar is really lying athwart the path of our heroes as they depart, is it? I imagine it sticking right up. I mean, Tolkien says "forefinger" but come on.

Camping that night, Pippin sneaks a peek at the Palantir, which has been gnawing at his imagination since he first picked it up, and gives Sauron his first eyeful of Hobbitve. Oops. Fool of a Took... (he even calls himself an "idiotic fool" -- has he internalized Gandalf's impatience? Because of course he's no more a fool than is Merry, whatever PJ and PB may have done to him cinematically). What follows is the only time, I think, that Sauron actually speaks in these books. At first Sauron thinks it's Saruman, but when he realizes it's a hobbit, he says "Tell Saruman that this dainty is not for him."

So now the mystery of how Sauron and Saruman have been communicating is solved! And since it allows its bearer to communicate by sight, sound and thought with others who have Palantirs (pretty much all of them lost except for maybe one that wound up in, TA-DAH, Mordor), it is also probably how Saruman was corrupted. Here is where an object can actually make people evil. I do not buy in the slightest that the Ring has this ability, especially not as an ambient generator of evil the way the films depict it. Since the films, it seems everyone reads the books looking for signs that the Ring is corrupting people. I do not remember playing those games before the films, and neither does EssJay. I find them tiresome and beside the point. The Ring is a weapon that can enable and magnify the ill intentions of its user, and pervert the good intentions, if there are any. Take SmeaGollum; he is a greedy creature to begin with, who covets a pretty bit of gold, and it takes a good while after he kills Deagol before he gets kicked out of proto-Hobbit society. And then its the long, slow work of years (and having to survive on his own, catch-kill-cook-eat) to turn him into the creature that's stalking Frodo. Boromir was consumed with the notion of defending Gondor and correctly saw the Ring as a weapon that might aid in that effort (and perhaps had the common failing of being too sure that he, of all Men, would be strong enough not to be corrupted by the Ring and the power it bestowed). Bilbo kept the Ring for years and the worst thing he ever did was be reluctant to give it up and maybe once, out of what really just seems like withdrawal symptoms, get grabby after it with Frodo in Rivendell.

The Palantir, though? I totally buy as a means of magically turning people evil.

ANYWAY, sorry for the rant, but it's been coming for weeks, Tolkiephiles.

For safer-keeping, Gandalf gives the stone to Aragorn, who declares that it probably once belonged to Elendil and thus is actually part of his inheritance.

If I had an awesome artist like Meggiggles over at The Snobbery, I would totally insert a picture of Aragorn and the Pokemons here, because Aragorn has got to catch them all. Anduril. Check. Elessar. Check. Palantir. Check. Banner. Being made by his awesome Elve babe. Things are looking mighty good for Aragorn. But he doesn't think he's ready for Sauron to know about him yet; far better the Dark Lord be obsessed with Pippin for a while.

And then OMG WINGED NAZGUL. Run away! Run away! Gandalf and Pippin make for Minas Tirith on Shadowfax at Mach 1.

*When Rohirrim are present,Tolkien has a tendency to slip into a weird pattern of word order in sentences that we mostly associate with Yoda, putting the adjective first. He goes into overdrive on this when describing Eomer's sister, Eowyn, for the first time: "Grave and thoughtful was her glance", "very fair was her face", "Slender and tall she was... but strong she seemed..." And then again when describing Orthanc: "A strong place and wonderful was Isengard." Tolkien has, of course, taken care to establish that the Rohirrim have their own language that is no longer mutually intelligible with that of their kindred in the North, so I'm sure this is just his way of conveying that difference, but oh man, has this gimmick led to a lot of bad imitators who have cranked out reams of this kind of crap in their turgid multivolume Tolkienian pastiche. Thud.

**Also, does this sound like the kind of guy who is going to surf down some castle steps on a shield soon? Of course not. It does, though, sound like the only Elve at the Battle of Helm's Deep, which is as it should be.

***In your heart, you know Saruman was striving to turn into this:

As Pippin says of him, "I think he has not much grit, not much plain courage alone in a tight place without a lot of slaves and machines and things, if you know what I mean."

****Perhaps also this is foreshadowing/explanation for Saruman's destination after being chased out of Orthanc, hmm? "Those bastards smoked  up all my weed!"