And so the end. If I’m not careful, I’d quote the entire thing.

In fact, long ago when I was a student in Europe and suffering some homesickness as I experienced my first winter, a friend made a cassette tape of the last page and a half, starting with Then Cirdan the shipwright. I listened to that over and over, feeling that not a word was wasted.

But first, back to the Shire, left in a shambles after Sharkey’s spirit looked wistfully westward, to be denied. (As a commenter observed, Sauron’s spirit didn’t do that. To the end, he strove to threaten and destroy, but the winds rendered that stretching shadow-hand impotent, then nothing.)

As the hobbits slowly set things to rights, the sense of loss increases in spite of the happiness. It’s that inexorable sense of passing, mitigated partly by the satisfaction of the hobbits having risen to the occasion, not just ridding themselves of Sharkey’s gang under the leadership of the four, but restoring the Shire to rights.

And of course the humor: the new row at Bag End being Sharkey’s End; and when Sam’s dust from Galadriel restores all the trees, and the harvest is the best in memory, the end of the superlatives crackles with humor: And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass.

But balancing that is Frodo, who is not healing.

Sam comes to Frodo and confesses his love (he hadn’t spoken because he had a job to do, and Rosie hadn’t spoken because Sam hadn’t, but now she feels a year was wasted, and it’s time to get cracking).

They move into Bag End. Sam’s status is on the rise, as he deserves. He is having a great year, except for worries about Frodo.

Finally Frodo asks Sam to go with him, saying that Sam was meant to be solid and whole—and soon would be. He hands over Bilbo’s book, saying it’s finished, for his part. The last pages are for Sam.

Frodo and Sam travel, as they had once before, and meet elves. But this time they know most of their names, and the elves welcome them as is their due. Bilbo is with them.

It’s now that Frodo admits to his journey’s end. “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.”

Merry and Pippin catch up, and there is a sweet, sad parting, laughter and tears. The ship sails, and the last they see of Frodo is the light from Galadriel’s phial.

The three companions ride home, and Sam enters the cozy house at Bag End, which is how his, and he settles down, saying, “Well, I’m back.”

Sam settles in to a good life, Frodo is beyond our reach, yet we left him at the pinnacle of joy. In discussing Sehnsucht (which the English word ‘yearning’ only expresses the surface) Lewis talked about the wild geese—the wild horns—the far call that lifts the heart and then is gone.

G.K. Chesterton says, “In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition.”

I think, for those of us for whom LOTR works not once, but in rereads over our entire lifetimes—as we discover new insights commensurate with our own new experience—this story works as well as it does because it rests on truths of the human experience, though cast entertainingly in the fantastic.

Above all it reminds us that, though we will not be here forever, still we are alive, and free, and dancing in the sun.

And so the reread ends. Thanks, all those who plowed through my blather and commented. Your observations made this so much more fun!

And so, after the long adventure, we are making our way back to the Shire, where everything began. At least, when it began from the hobbit-eye-view. In Fellowship we left the quiet Shire, so comforting, so vividly painted, as our four adventurers dared the larger world. Now they are back, three of them ready to take up their lives again, and the fourth . . . well, we shall see.

Unlike the journey out, in which the hobbits were shadowed by terrifying Nazgul, and they didn’t known whom to trust, this trip is peaceful, and they are accustomed travelers, having a great time with close friends.

Even so, the wise have clearly been watching Frodo. In chapter seven, Gandalf finally asks if he’s all right.

“It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me.” And then, what Frodo is really feeling: “There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?”

The next day Frodo is merry again. They pass the gate at Bree and get a surly welcome. Sam wants to know what happened to Bill the pony.

Barliman Butterbur gives the first hint that all is not well in the Shire. The inn is practically empty, and Bob goes home at nightfall now. Bill Ferny and his gang have taken to robbery. They only attack the helpless—and would have been afraid of the hobbits and Gandalf. Merry and Pippin are surprised, they have become so used to wearing war gear.

There is a great conversation as Barliman utters his opinion of kings, then discovers that the new one is none other than Strider.

And Barliman has news for them: they have Bill the pony!

The next day locals show up, and many ask Frodo the state of his book. He promised to deal with the amazing events in Bree, and so give a bit of interest to a book that appeared likely to treat mostly of the remote and less important affairs ‘away south.’

They take off, and Gandalf says he’ll leave them soon—they are well able to take care of Shire affairs themselves. Frodo is wistful at not seeing Bombadil, though Gandalf says he is as well as ever.

But then he warns them to push on or they might be locked out of the Brandywine Bridge gates.

What gates?

But they ride on, and Merry says, “Well, here we are, just the four of us that started out together. We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded.”

“Not to me,” said Frodo. “To me it feels more like falling asleep again.”

And so we come to one of the chapters that I think contribute to the greatness of this story—“The Scouring of the Shire.”

The hobbits come up against Orders, the Chief at Bag End, and wanton destruction of the environment.

Though hobbits are mostly free of the blood ambitions of men, they too have free will, which can include choosing to follow a bad leader—or giving in because they are afraid of what will happen. The Shire, once complacently proud of its conservative outlook (tradition is tried and true, and innovations get the hairy eyeball) has been “modernized” into a mess.

The chapter is so brilliant, exciting, hilarious, full of terrific character moments. Frodo waxes sarcastic at the news that Lotho Pimple is now Chief. “Well, I am glad he has dropped the Baggins, at any rate.”

They discover that Bill Ferny is keeping the gate. Merry chases him off, but Bill the pony gets in the last word: he let fly with his heels and just caught him as he ran. He went off with a yelp into the night and was never heard of again.

There are all these new Rules. Even for orderly hobbits, the rules go directly against their natures. No one is allowed to take guests, or share food.

The four perforce go to the guardhouse to spend the night, and Sam mutters, “No welcome, no beer, no smoke, and a lot of rules and orc-talk.” And he’s not wrong—Sam heard Orcs talking (as did Merry and Pippin) and Bill Ferny and his gang sound a lot like them.

Then comes a great scene when a shirriff—a two-feather hobbit—attempts to arrest them. At first Frodo wants to laugh, as the shirriffs, holding staves and looking both self-important and scared, list their supposed crimes.

“I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools.”

The four hobbits roar with laughter and say they are going on.

And following, this little bit:

“Very well, Mr. Baggins,” said the leader, pushing the barrier aside. “But don’t forget I’ve arrested you.”

“I won’t,” said Frodo. “Never. But I may forgive you.”

This bit sparked a heated discussion once.

I said then—and still feel now—that the shirriff’s fear, self-importance, and finally politeness as he pulls aside the barrier, but anxiously reminds Frodo that he’d arrested him, were testament to great characterization. We only see this two-feather shirriff for less than a page, but he has his own story arc, his own motivations and wishes, and he makes a decision to cooperate, whereas he might have sicced his fellows with their staves on the four hobbits—who I believe are unarmed through this entire section—or could have been nasty.

But another reader insisted that this same bit was proof that Frodo was a smarmy, self-important git in his “I may forgive you.”

So that started a debate about forgiveness. What’s wrong with forgiveness? It’s patronizing and arrogant by its very nature. What? Anyone can forgive, it is a simple act that essentially means ‘let there be peace between us,’ but the reader (who incidentally thought LOTR was entertaining sword and sorcery, but not literature) said, no, ‘forgiveness’ is a supercilious concept belonging to those who assume authority over everyone else, like a religious leader or a king.

(Since this particular reader never, ever let a moment go by to point out how evil, avaricious, stupid, deluded, and reactionary all religious people are, particularly Christians, that mention of ‘religious leader’ was the signal to choke off yet another rant that would make Bill Maher look mellow and tolerant. If I recall right, it was then that someone brought out the big artillery: frosted triple-chocolate brownies.)

And so, as now, it’s time to move on! One of the shirriff peeps gets a name, Robin Smallburrow. There are more delicious character bits as Sam calls Robin out and gets the inside scoop on the whole shirriffing thing.

Funny as this entire segment is, it’s also an unsettlingly realistic depiction of how otherwise peaceful people are taken over by bullies. Everyone is afraid of being beaten or dragged to a lockup from which no one comes out. And that had happened relatively recently in Germany, as JRRT knew.

The four hobbits hustle their escort along until the latter poops out, and Sam tells them where to meet up. Sam has kept his cool (and his sense of humor) all along until they reach Bag End, and then he loses it when he sees the destruction and billows of black smoke.

Merry cautions Sam to see what they are in for, and things look grim: the Green Dragon is a wreck, and a lot of ruffians hang about with clubs. Merry saw their like at Isengard.

“This country wants waking up and setting to rights,” a ruffian warns the hobbits. “And Sharkey is going to do it.”

When Frodo responds, and the ruffian snaps his fingers in Frodo’s face, Pippin, Merry, and Sam draw their swords. The ruffians are not used to the “little rat-folk” answering back—with steel.

The ruffians take off running, blowing horns. Frodo fears it’s too late to save Lotho; he is sure that Lotho never knew what he was getting into.

Pippin is totally staggered—never thought he’d have to fight ruffians in the Shire, to rescue Lotho Pimple!

Frodo urges the others not to kill hobbits. “You won’t rescue Lotho, or the Shire, by being shocked and sad, my dear Frodo,” says Merry. He knows there is going to have to be armed resistance.

Our LOTR-hater despised Frodo for hand-wringing and whingeing here, which I mention because the text can read so differently to so many people. Others felt that all through this section Frodo is demonstrating how all the violence has been wrung out of him. He craves peace, not just for himself, but for everyone. The idea of hobbit hurting hobbit seems to physically pain him.

Sam suggests hustling quietly to Tom Cotton to get his sons, but Merry makes a strategic decision because he knows that’s just what Sharkey’s gang would like, a retreat. “Raise the Shire!”

They do, and one of those who promptly shows up is Tom Cotton, with three of his lads. Tom Cotton eyes Sam, and says, “I shoulda passed you in the street in that gear. You’ve been in foreign parts, seemingly. We feared you were dead.”

“That I ain’t,” says Sam. He explains their purpose, then adds, “What about Mrs. Cotton and Rosie? It isn’t safe for them to be left all alone.”

And here we finally get a more overt hint of what’s going on in Sam’s secret heart, in Tom Cotton’s reply: ”My Nibs is with them. But you can go help him, if you have a mind,” said Farmer Cotton with a grin.

At fourteen, I was oblivious to this hint not only of the reason behind Sam’s concern, but Tom’s knowing very well the cause.

Rosie’s greeting is anything but romantic. “I thought you were dead; but I’ve been expecting you since the Spring. You haven’t hurried, have you?”

“Perhaps not,” said Sam abashed.

And after he explains, Rosie says, “Be off with you! If you’ve been looking after Mr. Frodo all this while, what d’you want to leave him for, as soon as things look dangerous?”

This was too much for Sam. It needed a week’s answer, or none. He turned away and mounted his pony. But as he started off, Rosie ran down the steps.

“I think you look fine, Sam,” she said.

We don’t get a hint of what Rosie looks like (I would have loved to see her through Sam’s eyes) but she establishes her personality here—a fine match for Sam in her practicality and dry humor.

Pippin rides off to raise the Tooks, and Merry has a plan. Frodo is steadfast in reminding people not to hurt hobbits.

Farmer Cotton reports on the Gaffer to Sam, who goes to fetch him, while Cotton explains to Frodo how Lotho, driven by greed, got in over his head and was finessed by Sharkey, who has been playing a long game.

Not everybody gave in. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, being told to get out of the road by ruffians digging things up, went after them with her umbrella. She got dragged off to the Lockholes (the name we gave to Glen GookKnight’s storage room where all the publication stuff was kept, back in the day; whenever I read ‘Lockholes’ I flash on our merry collating parties).

The Gaffer shows up, thinner and more deaf, but he scolds Frodo for selling Bag End. “They’ve been and dug up Bagshot Row and ruined my taters!”

Frodo apologizes, and promises to make amends. The gaffer accepts that, and says, “And I hope my Sam’s behaved hisself and given satisfaction?”

Frodo gratifies Sam—as Rosie is looking on, eyes shining—by replying, “Indeed, he’s now one of the most famous people in all the lands, and they are making songs about his deeds from here to the Sea and beyond the Great River.”

Is the gaffer gratified? “It takes a lot o’believing,” says Sam’s father. “Though I can see he’s been mixing in strange company. What’s come of his weskit? I don’t hold with wearing ironmongery, whether it wears well or no.”

Did anyone else dissolve into laughter at that? I sure did—always love reaching this line.

So there is a battle, after which Merry winds his silver horn. Frodo says that this is Mordor’s work, done by Saruman even when he thought he was working for himself.

And when Merry wishes he’d stuffed that pouch down Saruman’s throat, guess who oils up.

Then comes a nasty interaction, the worst of which is Saruman betraying Wormtongue as usual, even creepily accusing him of cannibalism with Lotho’s corpse.

When Frodo sends Saruman away, the once great wizard observes that Frodo has grown—and has robbed his revenge of its sweetness. He kicks Wormtongue, who finally breaks . . . and the two of them are soon dead. Saruman’s spirit rises, looking outward, but a cold wind from the West blows him into nothing.

Merry said to Pippin after Aragorn woke him from the shadow, “The soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace, but for them.”

All four hobbits have experienced those deeper and higher things, so very far from home, and more to come before they return to the Shire . . . and to discover there is work for their hands. Work that they once might not have been capable of, but for which they are now prepared.

In the beginning of chapter four, as Aragorn and Gandalf stand firm and grim, watching Mordor attack with ferocity, it is Gandalf who first senses change.

“The Eagles are coming!” We get a magnificent description of the eagles we’ve met before. We already have learned that they obey no man, though Galadriel has been able to ask favors of them, including Gwaihir the Windlord bringing Gandalf off the tower where he lay.

The scene is terrifically visual:

Behind them in long swift lines came all their vassals from the northern mountains, speeding on a gathering wind. Straight down upon the Nazgul they bore, stooping suddenly out of the high airs, and the rush of their wide wings as they passed over was like a gale.

And now we get at least part of an answer about the motivation of Sauron’s minions:

But the Nazgul turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor’s shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower, and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them . . .

Gandalf yells for the Captains of the West to stand and wait. “This is the hour of doom!”

And then we get another intensely cinematic description as “a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire. The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin, and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.</i>

As Gandalf triumphantly announces that the Ring Bearer fulfilled his quest, above that towering, fire-wreathed darkness a shadowy hand reaches out threatening but impotent as the wind scours it away.

Again, such a great emotional payoff. This ending is going to be ringing with emotional payoffs, making me wonder if that was part of why Jackson’s film had about five endings, missing out the Scouring of the Shire, which would have bound them all together (and added twenty minutes to the film; which I think could have replaced twenty minutes of battle gore, but I digress).

Mordor’s forces flee, or fall upon their swords or each other, hide, and the more evil and determined of the Harad and the Rhun prepare to fight anyway, in their fury and despair. Gandalf leaves the battle biz to Aragorn and his captains to deal with, and begs a ride of Gwaihir.

I have to stop and appreciate the way JRRT handles this whole segment. At the end of book five, we saw the Captains of the West fighting right up to some mighty change, then the Eagles are mentioned, but we—in Pippin’s fading consciousness—had no idea what that meant.

Beginning of book six, as Sam contemplates what to do, the narrative voice pulls back long enough to let us know that we’ve gone back in time a bit.

After the ring goes into the goop, we leave Frodo and Sam resigned to death. We come back to see the effect of their successful mission on the all-out battle at the Tower, Gandalf’s and Aragorn’s last desperate deflection.

And—thanks to all three hobbits at Mount Doom, because poor Gollum, a ring bearer himself, has to be included—they won.

Now Gandalf takes action, all deliberate, a chain of events that inexorably leads from one action to another.

This is no easy deus ex machina as the narrator switches us back to Sam and Frodo using the last of their strength to get a little ways away from the crumbling mountain. They watch rivers of fire descending toward them, and face their end, holding hands as Sam says, “What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we? I wish I could hear it told!” He’s spoken like this before—and natters on as a way to keep “fear away till the very last.”

And this is how Gwaihir and Gandalf find them, as they fall, overcome at last.

So we come to another of those profoundly effective payoffs, as Sam wakens to find himself in a clean, soft bed, surrounded by fresh air and sunlight, green and gold.

He finds Frodo asleep beside him—and just as Sam is thinking he must have been dreaming, he sees Frodo’s ring finger missing. To Sam’s utter delight, Gandalf is there—alive!

Gandalf laughs, and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. And he cries.

And so did I. My eyes sting even now reading this again, though I’ve read it so many times.

Frodo wakens, and Gandalf says that the king is to ride to his crowning, but he is waiting on them. And they are to wear their old clothes from the dreadful Mordor journey, even the orc-rags. And he restores Frodo’s glass, and Sam’s box.

When they come out, the entire company sings their praises. Then they see Aragorn, and when Sam greets Strider, the latter says, “It is a long way, is it not, from Bree, where you did not like the look of me?”

Then he sets them at either side of him . . . and to Sam’s total joy, a minstrel of Gondor steps forward and utters the grandest of prefaces before singing about Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.

All Sam’s wishes have come true, and he weeps, as do others: the minstrel sings in several languages, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

Joy was like swords . . . tears are the very wine of blessedness.

On my first read, none of these words made much impression. I was too exhilarated, filled with triumph on behalf of all my favorite characters.

It wasn’t until a reread some years later, at a very bad time in my life, that those words hit me, and they hit hard. Especially as there wasn’t any joy, just the swords, and I couldn’t see any joy ahead. This book’s ending really took me apart—but then on the next reread, I thought about how wonderful the words are, so balanced between joy and pain, or a joy so intense that it is a kind of sweet pain, perhaps bittersweet because one knows that it, too, will not last. The German word Sehnsucht came to mind, even before I found out that Lewis had written about it.

Anyway, it’s time to dress for the coronation. Frodo doesn’t want to wear a weapon. Others prevail—Sting was Bilbo’s gift. Frodo gives in, but this is the first sign that Frodo is changed, and he’s not going to bounce back like Sam is in the process of doing, healed by fresh air and good food and being surrounded by all his friends and their respect and appreciation. Sam’s going to be okay, but Frodo . . . isn’t.

But no one knows that. Frodo and Sam spot Merry and Pippin, the latter giving them “sauce” as he advises them to pester Gandalf for info, but they’ll talk later. We are knights of the City and of the Mark, as I hope you observe.

After there is catching up, further reunions, and rest. Because it’s time for Aragorn to enter his city for reals.

But first, at the start of chapter five, we backtrack to the House of Healing. Eowyn begs to be let out to fill a saddle, and is told she has to get permission from Faramir. He figures out her problems, and she has enough experience to spot that “here was one whom no Rider of the Mark would outmatch in battle.”

A lot of people—and I—have felt that this relationship happens really fast, maybe too fast, and wish it could have been portioned out through the earlier events. The prose is beautiful, but we are being told; compared to the foregoing, there is not enough living the experience alongside the characters. Faramir, I think, actually deserved his own book.

Anyway, here, bang! He falls in love with Eowyn. Bang! She doubts herself, and finally, bang! She will now be a healer, and she’s totally into Farmir.

Still, it is what it is, and JRRT gives us another cinematic moment as the two stand on the parapet, hair tangling together, her blue cloak with the stars blowing in the wind as they strain their eyes peering eastward and waiting.

And though the changes of heart come too fast to resonate with me the way other events have, that doesn’t mean there aren’t awesome moments.

Like: the great news comes, and it’s time to go down to the field of Cormallen, but Eowyn can’t. And when Faramir talks to her, he totally endears himself to me when he pegs her crush absolutely right, but with total respect: “And as a great captain may to a young soldier he seemed to you admirable. For so he is, a lord among men. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.”

I call that top notch characterization—even if Eowyn changes heart with breathtaking suddenness in a very few lines following.

And so to the great gathering. We get a glimpse of Ioreth again, and a spark of humor as she gossips to a relative from the country, interspersed with more solemn ritual as Faramir, as Steward, asks the people if the king shall come into the city and dwell.

Faramir produces the crown, and Frodo is part of the ritual for crowning. Aragorn enters the city, and at last unfurls his banner.

Then comes king business: pardoning and judgments. One of the first orders of business is Beregond. Aragorn acknowledges that in leaving his post, Beregond essentially said that Faramir’s life was more important than his own, and his judgment is merciful and wise as he removes him from his old duty—as he disobeyed orders—but assigns him to the White Company of Faramir’s Guard.

I think that in making Beregond captain of Faramir’s guards, Aragorn acknowledges obliquely that orders ought not always to be supreme—an idea that I wonder might have been an oblique hint about the war Tolkien’s son had been fighting in, and which England had grimly lived through, started by a man who had taken Germany’s tradition of the military staying out of politics and obeying the government’s orders unquestioningly to the most evil extreme. Beregond threw over military correctness for a greater moral need. He still has to abide by military law, but there is a greater law that allows for Beregond to be sent where he will be most valued.

Then comes another scene, one of those that, I think anyway, makes a good book great. We could leave Aragorn on his throne, everybody smiling and happy.

But Gandalf and Aragorn steal away in the night, and Gandalf takes Aragorn up a dangerous path on Mount Mindolluin, one that only high kings tread.

It’s interesting, how much a part mountains play in this book.

Anyway, Gandalf shows Aragorn his realm, and says that he and the elder kind are on their way out; it is the time for men. Aragorn then falters, and on first reading I had no idea why. If we’d known why, I think that moment could have been more profoundly effective—but in any case, Gandalf tells him to “Turn your face from the green world, and look where all seems barren and cold!”

Aragorn finds the sapling of the Eldest of Trees, a sapling of seven years. JRRT despised allegory, and yet this scene is simply humming with symbolism and resonance.

Aragorn says, “The sign has been given,” and he sets a watch. And on Midsummer, the elves come, including Arwen. Though there are so many emotional payoffs through these chapters, this isn’t really one of them. Aragorn and Arwen’s story is told in the appendices, but I still wish, strongly, that JRRT had found a way to weave it into LOTR. I think it makes Aragorn more interesting, understanding his emotions through this wait. But we never feel them, as we feel everything else—we are told, pretty much after the fact.

At the start of chapter six, though we’ve been pretty much denied any emotional investment of Aragorn’s choice of queen, still, she comes out with one of the niftiest moments, one that took years for me to appreciate, backward as I am.

Though everyone has been celebrating up a storm, Frodo begs leave to depart soon—he needs to see Bilbo. Aragorn says he will ride with the hobbits, and whatever they want, he will give them.

That sounds nice, but it’s Arwen who sees clearly enough to give Frodo the only thing he . . . doesn’t want—he doesn’t know what he wants, except to see Bilbo—but he needs. She, who has chosen Luthien’s path—mortality—gives to Frodo the opportunity to go into the West.

It took me several readings over a peripatetic lifetime to understand not just what this means, but to comprehend Arwen’s insight. I had to go all the way back to the Council of Elrond, and though we barely glimpsed her, she was watching Frodo.

She gives Frodo a necklace that might give him some solace.

Eomer returns, and he and Gimli have an argument that tickled me as a teen, annoyed me as a young feminist (arguing over women’s beauty), and in later life, I came to terms with this chivalry, for the two are clearly devoted from afar. Best of all is Gimli’s last line—that criminally underrated romantic, “You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever.”

The company rides out, bearing Theoden back for a burial. Celebration—Eowyn is formally trothed to Faramir—they drink the stirrip-cup together, and on they ride.

Treebeard turns up, and we get to see him cursing. He reports, Gandalf asks about Saruman, to be told that the slimy snake slithered off.

They part, and here is that Götterdämmerung sense again as treebeard says, “It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. I do not think we shall meet again.”

Celeborn, who is a great guy, but just doesn’t seem the shiniest crayon in the box compared to Galadriel, says, “I do not know, Eldest.”

But Galadriel says, ”Not in Middle-earth, nor until the lands that lie under the wave are lifted up again. Then in the willow-meads of Tararinan we may meet in the Spring. Farewell!”

Here again is that glimpse of the greater universe.

They ride on until it’s time to part with Aragorn, and at last we get a tiny glimpse of Celeborn, whose nature is even more hidden in this tale than is Arwen’s.

Galadriel in her farewell tells Aragorn what he already knows, and exhorts him to “use well the days.”

But Celeborn said, “Kinsman, farewell! May your doom be other than mine, and your treasure remain with you to the end!”

We get another terrific cinematic moment as we part from Aragorn and his knights, their gear gleaming in the sunset like gold, as he holds up his green stone that flashes with green fire.

They journey on—and catch up with Saruman, who is not only bitter, but petty. He whines about tobacco, but when Merry shares his pouch, Saruman insults him, takes the whole thing, and kicks Wormtongue into moving.

The hobbits don’t like Saruman’s mention of Southfarthing, but Frodo insists they ride on to Rivendell. When the hobbits sleep at the peaceful campsites, the elves wrapped up looking like gray figures carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. The elves speak mind to mind.

Finally Galadriel goes back to Lorien, holding her ring aloft in farewell, and the hobbits travel on to Rivendell, where they find an old, frail Bilbo, who was invited to Aragorn’s wedding, but “he had too much to do, and packing is such a bother.”

Sam is torn; he would have loved to go to Lorien, but even in a lovely visit to Rivendell, he wants to get back home. He’s worried about his gaffer.

The tenderness and humor of this entire end of the chapter is another of those swords of joy.

Bilbo gives everyone gifts (Merry and Pippin get good advice along with pipes), and then he asks Frodo, “Whatever happened to that ring of mine that you took away?”

“I lost it, Bilbo dear. I got rid of it, you know.”

Bilbo is confused, but not upset; he asks Frodo to take his papers and organize them, then bring them back. “I won’t be too critical.”

Frodo agrees, and they ready to depart, but Elrond takes Frodo aside, saying, “Look for us in the woods of the Shire about this time next year.”

Frodo keeps that to himself.

As book six opens, Sam is so alone, orc voices echoing in the distance. He wonders if any of them “out there” ever think of him and Frodo, then the narrative voice establishes the date, and where everyone is—and that Frodo and Sam are never far from anyone’s thoughts.

But Sam can’t feel it. Uncertain, he puts on the Ring again, which sharpens his hearing, but renders the visual world thin and vague. He discovers that even his hearing can’t be trusted, but then he hears fighting between orcs. His love for Frodo rose above all other thoughts, and forgetting his peril, he cried, “I’m coming, Mr. Frodo!”

Sam’s steadfast, loyal love might be giving him a tiny measure of protection against the growing malice of the ring, but if he kept it on, I’m sure that even love would be torqued into distortion.

He takes off the ring so he can see better: he is now one step into Mordor itself. And wow, is it ugly. Anyone who has seen the poisonous, noisome detritus from heavy industry (or a battlefield, of which I’ve seen films) would recognize JRRT’s vivid description. The only thing not mentioned is the throat-clawing stench.

Sam realizes that the massive fortress was not built to keep enemies out, but to keep them in.

Then Sam becomes aware of a change in the ring. . . . even though the ring was not on him but hanging by its chain around his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, a vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor.

He has two choices: resist the ring and be tormented, or claim it, and challenge Sauron. As the ring tempts him, he sees himself as a great hero from one of the stories he loves so much, but love and hobbit-sense save him. He longs for his bit of garden, and anyway it’s all trickery.

Sam draws Sting and runs, suffering a weird shock, like a magical ward. Something shrieks, and Sam knows that he’s been spotted. “Tell Captain Shagrat that the great elf-warrior is coming, with his elf-sword, too!”

He ventures forth, just to discover piles of dead orcs wearing two liveries. He goes on, then overhears Shagrat and Snagga arguing. As they threaten one another and snarl about murder and backstabbing, they reveal that the fight was over swag.

Sam slips by some action, and toils upward, singing as he goes. But Snaga hears, and comes after. They fight—Snaga trips and falls through the hole in the floor—and Sam spots Frodo.

Frodo sinks with relief into Sam’s arms, and they catch each other up: Frodo was stripped and questioned, the orcs of course wanting the ring, which Frodo thinks they got.

Sam feels no compunction about handing it over: it’s Frodo who has been poisoned enough to get angry, and to see Sam as an enemy, calling to mind the brief, nasty moment when he saw Bilbo as a grasping enemy. Frodo is genuinely distraught, and Sam forgives him, but we know how much he was hurt by the way he draws his sleeve across his eyes.

Sam brings Frodo some orc stuff to wear, they plod on, then Sam takes out Galadriel’s phial. That breaks the malicious ward of the stone Watchers and they pass—barely escaping the smashing fall of the archway’s keystone.

Chapter two sees them on the run, hiding in a thorny thicket, then pushing on. Frodo is losing strength rapidly. He sheds the orc mail coat, and Sam gives him his cloak. They push on until Frodo senses a Black Rider over them; they pause, and toil on.

Presently they feel a shift in the wind, and Sam exclaims, “Something’s happening. He’s not having it all his own way.”

They see a bolting something shoot skyward into the clouds, wailing, and Sam is sure something good is going on, but Frodo wearily says that he can see the ring in his mind all the time, like a great wheel of fire.

When they encounter water at last, Sam wants to protect Frodo by testing it first, but Frodo insists they drink together.

And that’s when they turn east.

When Frodo has to rest, he drops into an exhausted sleep, and Sam holds his hand. They wake up hand in hand, the only bearable thing in their lives right now is human contact, each trusting the other. Then they look in dismay: forty miles to go, over ugly, ruined land.

Unaware, the hobbits plod on as Sauron—unaware of them—pulls his forces out of various ruined places to strike at Aragorn’s force.

They have to hide when a couple of searchers come by. They grouse about the search, and when one implies there’s bad news, the other snarls, “That’s rebel-talk, and I’ll stick you if you don’t shut it down, see?”

Once again raising the question of loyalty, and choice. I was reading a very grim book the other day, a memoir by a Chinese man who was a young teen when the Red Guard went around torturing and killing teachers, parents, anyone else they didn’t like, because “revolution is always right!” He was astounded that former schoolmates, male and female, could beat helpless strangers to death.

Maybe it’s fun to be an orc, if you’re really angry inside.

Anyway, the two mention ‘the black sneak’ and we know that Gollum, not seen for a while, is not far away. Sam is furious!

As they plod wearily on, Frodo admits that his hope is gone. Sam takes care of Frodo, as tenderly as any devoted batman on the worst of battlefields. Sam is furious that Gollum is still around, and wishes he’d been shot.

Frodo rouses from his torpor when orcs catch up with them. One assumes they are deserters, and forced them into the company. The fast, whip-driven pace is torture for Frodo. “Where there’s a whip there’s a will, my slugs,” laughs the leader. “Don’t you know we’re at war?”

Just as Frodo’s strength gives out entirely (and Sam determines that in dying he’s going to take that slave-driving devil—so we’ve got devils somewhere in Middle-earth’s mythology) they run into more orcs, and the two manage to slink into a pit.

In chapter three, Sam determines it’s fifty miles to Mount Doom. Everything seems hopeless; he spares a thought to those at home, and we get Rosie Cotton’s name, though she is mentioned with her brothers.

But the very hopelessness of the task, and Sam’s sorely missing Gandalf (things started going wrong when he was lost in Moria), somehow strengthens him and calms him. He’s going to see it through to the end that he has accepted is nigh.

Coaxing Frodo, Sam gets them going again, often crawling, until Frodo, borne down by the weight of the ring, sheds the last of the orc garb. He has no memory of good things anymore, “no taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me.” He is naked before the wheel of fire.

Comes the last day of travel, and once again Sam debates within himself—and it’s a more sane version of Slinker and Stinker debating within Gollum.

He’s interrupted by a tremor; the mountain is uneasy. His mind clears and calms, with the end so near. He wraps himself around Frodo, and when it’s time to go, Sam says that it cannot carry the ring for Frodo, but he can carry Frodo.

This whole segment is Sam’s—the prose is still homey hobbit, with glimmers of the sort of wry humor characteristic of hobbits, the words plain instead of poetically soaring, which I think underscores the pure heroism on Sam’s part. He has no hope of surviving. It’s love for Frodo, and the grit of determination to keep on until that end, that keeps him going.

Frodo speaks rarely; once thanking Sam in a whisper, and then, much later, saying that he will crawl.

Foot by foot, like small gray insects, they crept up the slope.

Everything is painted so vividly, the emotions raw, subtle, ever-changing. Reading this section throws me back into my fourteen-year-old body, reading this section at about three a.m. after a weekend orgy of reading and doing little else. I was far too anxious to sleep.

Frodo begs for Sam’s help as his hand keeps moving to the ring and he cannot stop it. This is when Gollum catches up at last, and so three of the four ring-bearers climb up, but at the eve of the Emyn Muil, Frodo turns on Gollum, and in a terrible voice, cries, Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom!

We know it is utterly prophetic—if this is the ring speaking, for once it is speaking true. I wonder if it means ‘don’t touch the one holding the ring’ and not the ring itself, because the ring wants reunion with its master, so really, any beast of burden is as good as another until it can get back to Sauron's hand. But its malicious will is still confined by the limitations of Frodo, a hobbit. Frodo might be distorted by that burden nearly into unrecognizability, but he is still stubbornly there—his innate decency recognizes Sam, his total lack of power-lure keeps him on the road because he must, not because he wants. As we saw with Sam, all the ring’s usual tricks are lessened severely by the hobbits’ lack of the usual motivations that have tempted men and elves such as Isildur, and the Witch-King (if he was an elf).

In short, though the ring is weighing Frodo unbearably, yeah, pretty much to the edge, and beyond of endurance, it is still limited by the confines of Frodo's basic goodness.

So Frodo has to go on to the last stretch, and at the very end there, with Gollum groveling before them, Sam, though furious as he’s ever been, cannot slay the pitiful creature. “Oh, curse you, you stinking thing! Go away!”

They reach the ledge—and Frodo surrenders at last. “I have come,” he says. “But I do not choose to do what I came to do.” He puts on the ring, which is using all its considerable strength to save itself.

Sam is tackled from behind, and knocked flat as Frodo vanishes and Gollum launches straight for him.

And far, away, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dur was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundation to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies laid bare.

That oh crap! moment on Sauron's part is such a sweet payoff!

He sics all the wraiths on Frodo, and they go screaming in a “storm of wings” toward Mount Doom.

Sam picks himself up, dazed and bloody, to see Gollum fighting like a mad thing at the edge of the abyss. Then Frodo abruptly appears, and Gollum dances with Frodo’s finger still in the ring, which is glowing like living fire. So Gollum has still not put the ring on yet—and, looking up at it in the dizzying and perhaps distorted triumph of possession, falls. Sploop!

All hell breaks loose. Frodo calmly says, “This is the end.” Grateful, relieved, in spite of the aforementioned breaking hell around and above them, Sam sees his dear master from the sweet days in the Shire. The ring-distortion of Frodo is gone with the ring itself.

Frodo begs Sam to forgive Gollum. Gandalf was right that even he would serve his purpose, and Frodo days, “I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.”

At this point, that first reading, I was crying from exhaustion—reading night and day, I felt as if I’d borne the ring along with Frodo—from gnawing worry and wild joy and the heartwrench of such a steady friendship acknowledged at the last, and I wanted nothing more than to see the hobbits saved.

But JRRT cuts away from them in the next chapter, as the mountain goes on exploding, to return us to the Captains of the West.

There is a fascinating vignette at the start of chapter 9. I can’t help but think of JRRT writing that conversation between Legolas and Gimli after living through two horrible world wars. He might have penned those words during the second one, while his son risked his life every day, or during the long shadow afterward.

At first we get some humor as Gimli and Legolas look around the city. Each vows to send people to Aragorn, once he comes into his own, to improve the city.

After they convey to Imrahil Aragorn’s message that he is not going to enter the city at this time, they go on to muse about Men.

Gimli talks about the stonework, and adds, ”It is ever so with the things that Men began: there is a frost in spring, or a blight in summer, and they fail of their promise.”

“Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,” said Legolas. “And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.”

“And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,” said the Dwarf.

“To that the Elves know not the answer,” said Legolas.

The two go visit their friends in the House of Healing, and have a good time, but then Legolas sees the gulls and gazes seaward, and comments, “But deep in the hearts of all my kindred lies the sea-longing, which is perilous to stir. Alas for the gulls! No peace shall I have again under beech or under elm.”

It is moments like this one, and the discussion of men above, that strikes those minor key notes of Sehnsucht. A term I thought everyone knew—I usually assume that if I know it, every eighth grader does, for I am not, nor never will be, a literary sophisticate.

But as I said in the comments below about Sehnsucht, a word I learned in German, then discovered when I read C.S. Lewis: At the end of Pilgrim’s Regress he said it was, “That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”

This longing remains dormant in daily life until it is sparked by a profound aesthetic experience. Suddenly the soul awakes, and the longing is fleetingly fulfilled. C.S. Lewis called this surge in the heart, this uplift “Joy”. This painfully exquisite joy comes unbidden and echoes in his heart like the sounding of the distant horn of a long lost hero.

Again and again we will be hearing the faint notes of this horn, until the final fanfare when Frodo and the others pass forever into the West.

But we’re not there yet.

The others do their best to jolly Legolas out of his fey mood, and he rewards the hobbits by relating the journey with Aragorn, and how Aragorn sent the Dead off. Then he freed the chained galley slaves and told them to go free.

“Strange and wonderful I thought it that the designs of Mordor should be overthrown by such wraiths of fear and darkness. With its own weapons was it worsted!”

“Strange indeed,” said Legolas. “In that hour I looked upon Aragorn and thought how great and terrible a Lord he might have become in the strength of his will, had he taken the Ring to himself.”

He qualifies that strength of will, for that alone does not equate greatness—not in this book, which is so much more subtle than Tolkien is given credit for. I’ve been reading a very good biography of Hannibal, and it illustrates in graphic clarity just how many thousands die as the result of one man’s intelligence and strength of will.

Then comes the second great council scene, at Aragorn’s tent. Gandalf does not counsel prudence. He says, “I said victory could not be achieved by arms. I still hope for victory, but not by arms.”

He also warns them that Sauron himself is but a servant or emissary, another hint of the eschatological paradigm, I think.

Aragorn admits that he showed himself to the enemy in the palantir. And so now they need to keep Sauron’s eye on them. Without knowing where Frodo is, or even if he’s alive, they have to hope, and to keep Sauron’s devastating attention on them as long as possible.

With this grim decision, they divide up the minor tasks—and Aragorn draws his reforged sword, promising it shall not be sheathed again until the last battle is fought.

The next chapter is straight narrative as Aragorn’s army marches directly to the Black Gate. When the Mouth of Sauron comes out, he, too, uses the familiar “thee” and “thou” as a sign of contempt.

After a palaver, Gandalf has had enough. “Begone!” He sends the Mouth scuttling, and the hordes of Mordor pour out, steel in hand.

The fight is horrible, and we draw to the end of the chapter in Pippin’s POV: as he is fainting, he hears “The Eagles are coming!” but of course he has no idea what it means.

This is a terrific place to end book five—it doesn’t spoil the impact of the next book, while tying tightly to the timeline.

Chapter 7 picks up with Pippin again, filling Gandalf in on the bad news with Denethor. Gandalf has taken command of the defense, something I took for granted as a kid reader, but think interesting now. His rep has to be considerable for him to basically take military and civilian command over what surely has to be an entrenched, or traditional, hierarchy. And he seems to outrank princes, for on the way he hands off control to the Prince of Dol Amroth as though Imrahil was a subaltern.

At the gate of the Citadel they found no guard. “Then Beregond has gone,” Pippin said hopefully.

So either Beregond ran right off, not a moment to lose even in grabbing one of his fellow guards to take his place, or he didn’t want to include another in his breaking of orders.

Or something worse happened: they reach the Closed Door, which they find open, the porter slain. Gandalf attributes this to fifth-column work by Sauron.

And so into the Steward hall where they find Beregond standing off a bunch of servants with his sword, two already having fallen. And just in the nick—as the servants revile against Beregond, Denethor bellows from within, and appears, sword in hand.

Gandalf grabs oil-soaked Faramir from the table and tells Denethor he should be out there fighting, and when Denethor wails that all is lost, Gandalf slams suicide, saying that that was the method of heathen kings.

Heathen! This, too, passed me by as a kid: but now I wonder what JRRT meant by that, as the usual meaning is “other religion than ours.” But there is no religious expression in Gondor that I know of.

Anyway, Gandalf hits hard, saying that those heathen kings slew themselves in “pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death.”

At which time we get the big reveal: Denethor has a palantir of his own, but instead of leaving it safely buried in the archives, he's been using it--weird lights flashing around his tower--and this is how Sauron got his malice inside Gondor. Right at the top. And as Denethor rails on about death, defeat, and Gandalf doesn’t know anything, he shifts from the polite ‘you’ to the intimate ‘thee.’ Again, this sign of disrespect passed over me as a kid.

Gandalf sticks to the polite and formal ‘you’ as he tries to reason, but Denethor petulantly admits to his bottom line: if he can’t have things the old way (i.e. with him as Steward/king) then he will have nothing.

He breaks his staff of office, clutching instead the palantir and leaps into the flames, leaving Gandalf to tell the warring servants that their division was contrived by the enemy, and they need to clean up the mess.

On the way out, we discover that it was Beregond who killed the porter in the madness of his haste. But Gandalf was not wrong.

After Faramir is taken to the House of Healing, Gandalf stands for a while looking down at the city and battlefield below. He could have done more, he tells them, but for Denethor. And they could still lose. They talk about the palantir, then Gandalf tells Beregond to report to his captain, who will kick him out of the guard, but “say to him that, if I may give him counsel,” to send him to the House of Healing. Gandalf's word bears considerable gravitas, as he knows.

And pff to the House of Healing we go for chapter 8, which begins with Merry, who is wearily and sorrowfully shuffling off the field of battle. Pippin finds him wandering, and hears with concern that Merry can’t use his right arm—and things are going dark.

Pippin begins to guide Merry upward, but they don’t make it far before Merry sinks down, muttering in delirium. Pippin spies Bergil running errands, and sends him on his way with an extra message, which brings Gandalf.

“He should have been in honor borne into the city,” Gandalf says. “He has well repaid my trust.” But at the same time, Merry is another in grievous need of healing while the battle is still going.

Merry, Faramir, and Eowyn all lie in the House of Healing, and are tended well but they're sinking anyway, while out on the field, as the sun sets, Aragorn tells Eomer and Imrahil that until the battle is decided, he’s going to be quiet about who he is when he enters the city. So his banner is furled again, and handed off to Elrond’s sons.

He comes to the House of Healing. And here we get a bright shaft of humor: we meet gabby Ioreth, and the equally gabby herbmaster.

Eomer visits Theoden, laid in state, and on asking about his sister, finds out the good news: she is alive.

Aragorn comes to visit, meeting Pippin on the way, and lets drop that if he establishes his house, it will be called Strider. He sends Ioreth off for kingsfoil, and he goes to Farmir and heals him enough that Faramir wakes at last, and welcomes Aragorn as king.

Then he goes to Eowyn, and an interesting conversation follows. He praises her, but talks about the frost in her, saying, “Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not, Eomer?”

Eomer is not the most observant of brothers. He says that he doesn’t blame Aragorn, but she was perfectly happy until he turned up.

Then Gandalf cuts in: My friend, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonored dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff that he leaned on. Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Theoden’s ears?.

And he hits even harder: My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her . . .

Wow. That had tremendous impact on me at fourteen and still being hammered by conformity, and education forcing us girls toward the dread three: secretary, nurse, or teacher.

Now it underscores my conviction that JRRT is so insightful, his characters so complex in their motivations, emotions, and understanding. I cannot understand those who dismiss LOTR as mere black and white.

Aragorn then talks about her crush, saying with shrew awareness of human nature that Eowyn loves Eomer more than she does him—that “but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought; a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.”

He makes sure to slip away before she wakens, and yep, she is still unhappy, though praising Merry, and asking only if there is a saddle she can fill.

Aragorn predicts that Merry will waken to wisdom. Merry does waken, and wants to eat, but at first says he won’t smoke. When Aragorn says to smoke and think of Theoden, Merry agrees—and after they banter, Merry apologizes.

But Aragorn responds in kind, saying “May the Shire live for ever unwithered!” before he takes off to his unending duties, Gandalf with him, leaving Merry and Pippin together again.

Aragorn gives some last instructions, heals more people, then slips away.

This finishes a chapter full of great character insight, bringing us closer than ever to all of them—with not much farther to go. I don’t know about you, but the sense of Sehnsucht, for me, begins intensifying right around here.

I took myself on a date to the six-dollar-Sunday showing at noon. I thought I'd be alone, but the place was packed right up to the first row. I had nothing to do with the film, so I don't know why I was so gratified by the numerous audience. Maybe because the last bunch of DC films sounded drearier than the previous, all testosterone-poisoned blood and guts in a crapsack world of eternal night.

This one was wonderful. I loved it. You still have to have the superhero arc (building up to a gigantic duel with a big bad) but the inevitable duel was more interesting than most, with a couple of grace notes in it, and a strong undercurrent of hope.

So much beautiful scenery, great character arcs, and the women fighting on the Amazon island was simply awesome. So was their battle against the WW I Germans who chased Steve onto the island.

I've always loved Wonder Woman, but wow, the comic was hard to come by--no one had it in my environment but my orthodontist when I was seven and eight years old. It was there, reading those comics, when my interest took a decided jump. I remember it perfectly: instead of the usual bam pow sock battle, only a woman got to do the powing, WW went to this island where the others were all female, and wore interesting clothes, and had powers. I remember paging back to make sure I hadn't somehow switched comics to something way cooler. No, she was definitely WW. For years after I thought I'd dreamed those bits (that would have been around '58 and '59) because the few times I managed to see a WW comic after, it was all about the bam sock pow. No cool magical island of women and girls.

Anyway, I loved this one, and I hope it does well enough that they make more.

. . . is the subject of today's riff at BVC, the focus being that such things go farther back than many assume.

I want to record the results of the marvelous sixteen inches of rain we got this past winter. The jacaranda trees are so lovely: this one is at the entrance of the condo complex.



Then there is the view outside the kitchen window, the scraggly pine that was a live Christmas tree twenty years ago, with all that new growth, and hanging among the branches the new hummer feeder:




And last, my lilies! Look at them! I water carefully all year, every year, and at most I ever get two stalks, maybe more small ones that done bloom, and on those stalks at most four blossoms. But this year!!!

Re the previous chapter, my first thought had been to deal with Beregond’s decision when he faced judgment, but some discussion made me think that at least some of that decision point could be talked about beforehand.

Pippin, in asking, “Beregond, if you can, do something to stop any dreadful thing happening,” puts Beregond in a terrible position. He does tell Pippin that he is not to leave his post, and Pippin acknowledges that, but he is not military (any more than I was as a kid on my first reading), and so he says, “Well, you must choose between orders and the life of Faramir.” And adds as a clincher (which it no doubt would be in the practical Shire), “And as for others, I think you have a madman to deal with, not a lord.”

In other words, ignore those orders, your lord is cracked. Pippin appears not to understand that in the military, orders stand whatever you think of the commander.

And we don’t see Beregond’s decision then, as we follow Pippin down to find Gandalf.

With chapter five, as established in this book, we’re back with Merry, who is rethinking his decision to sneak along, as he's feeling as useless as baggage. And here I find some indirect evidence that Eowyn didn’t just up and abandon her post back home. That is, she did abandon it, but the following lines suggest to me that she made preparations as best she could:

He [Merry] began to wonder why he had been so eager to come, when he had been given every excuse, even his lord’s command, to stay behind. He wondered, too, if the old King knew that he had been disobeyed and was angry. Perhaps not. There seemed to be some understanding between Dernhelm and Elfhelm, the marshal who commanded the eored in which they were riding. He and all his men ignored Merry and pretended not to hear if he spoke.

The narrator adds that Dernhelm was no comfort: he never spoke to anyone.

Elfhelm trips over Merry, who asks for news, and hears that the Woses have come to offer their aid to Theoden. “Pack yourself up, Master Bag!”

Merry sneaks up and overhears the parley. The Woses won’t fight, but they will attack any stray orcs in their forest, and they will scout and bring news. When they close the deal, Ghan-Buri-Ghan spurns treasure (if the Rohirrim survive) and asks only that they be left alone.

Ghan-Buri-Ghan brings news that the orcs, intent on looting Gondor, are not bothering with watching the road, and further, the wind has changed.

The Rohirrim gather themselves for the ride, and Theoden has them go silently at first. We ride behind Dernhem, seeing what Merry sees: burning fire in a vast crescent, darkness all around.

The POV lifts subtly as we see the Rohirrim “pouring in slowly but steadily, like the rising tide through breaches in a dike that men thought secure” as they enter Gondor. The Lord of the Nazgul is too busy slavering over the prospect of getting into the city.

We’re back to Merry, who sees Theoden hesitate, looking old and worn, but then the wind shifts, and in the south the first gleam of dawn as clouds roll away.

Theoden straightens up, utters rhythmic lines in a field command voice, then winds his hor, and the Rohirrim charge! Theoden lights up, his force sings as they lay into the orcs—“and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.”

Fair and terrible. Tolkien knows, viscerally knows, how horrible war is, and yet how exhilarating it can be when one charges, heart high and sure of rightness of the cause, racing shoulder to shoulder with one’s fellows. It’s one of the many dichotomies about us humans, how we can value what is terrible, overlook what is good, and be capable of both great mercy and great cruelty, sometimes in the same day. The same hour.

At the beginning of chapter six, we check in briefly with the King of the Nazgul, who’d anticipated an easy defeat as prepared by Sauron. He slithers off in a strategic retreat as Theoden’s rescuers slow down, attacking hordes of retreating orcs. They haven’t won, but they’ve evened things up a bit.

Theoden spots the Southrons’ glittering spears, and the Rohirrim ride to the attack. Theoden’s spear shivers as he goes for their chieftain, and hews down their black serpent standard. Their cavalry heads for the hills: whatever Sauron had convinced them they were going to get is not gonna happen.

Then the field darkens, and here comes one of the most electrifying scenes in the entire book—and incidentally, one of the few times I wished I hadn’t been spoiled. In this case about Eowyn’s identity.

It’s none other than the King of the Nazgul coming for Theoden, “bringing ruin, turning hope to despair, and victory to death.” His evil raptor kills the gallant Snowmane, and the evil king, “Black-mantled, huge, and threatening”, with no face visible, only a crown of steel above gleaming eyes, he raises his mace.

Around poor Theoden his honor guard lies dead, or carried away by fear-maddened horses, except here’s Dernhelm. Merry is there, too, and exhorts himself to move, as he reminds himself of his vows to Theoden. “Like a father you shall be!” And yet he can’t quite make himself get up, so he hears the conversation between the Lord of the Nazgul, who speaks for the first time, and Dernhelm, and I do wish that at fourteen I’d been able to get the surprise and gratification when Eowyn says, “But no living man am I!”

The Nazgul is taken aback, which suggests to me that the aura of horror that he exudes is some kind of magic spell, because Merry is able to open his eyes, and when he sees Eowyn, so determined but with tears on her cheeks—she knows she’s not walking away from this one, but she’s standing her ground—he makes his move.

I’d quote the entire scene, but you can read it. It’s just as thrilling, and emotionally satisfying, as it was when I read it more than fifty years ago.

Merry is left standing “blinking like an owl in the daylight” until he is roused by Theoden, who knows he’s about to die, but he can face his ancestors as he thinks he killed the Nazgul. (One of the people who hates this book disparaged this scene once, saying that he died in a lie, just as well there is no afterlife, blah de blah. Well, I don’t know what lies beyond death, and neither do you, but one thing I’m sure of: in Tolkien’s universe, Theoden did stride into the halls of his fathers, and what’s more he was greeted as a hero.)

Edited to Add: legionseagle points out that the black serpent actually represents the standard that Theoden struck down, and that the king was not talking about the Nazgul and his rider at all. So that would mean that I misread the scene, as well as others, for example the disparager I mentioned above. I assumed it, one, because of the carnage lying right beside them, and two, when Merry is reluctant to tell Theoden that Eowyn lies nearby, I assumed that that meant Merry was reluctant to correct Theoden about what happened.

Anyway, back to the text! Theoden forgives Merry for disobeying orders, saying that a great heart will not be denies, and asks him to pass on a message to Eomer and Eowyn. Before Merry can speak, Eomer himself sweeps up, and Theoden lives just long enough to pass him the banner—and the kingship.

And then comes a moment that I still find chilling: Eomer sees his sister, and he and his cavalry charge off yelling “Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!”

Merry is left standing about once more, until people come to bear away the slain. Tolkien never loses sight of the animals—we are told what happened to Snowmane and his grave in after days, then returned to the story.

Imrahil of Dol Amroth rides up for news, and on hearing it, it’s he who discovers that Eowyn is alive, though just barely.

Imrahil’s force comes to the rescue, and just as well. We discover that none of the horses will go near the elephants—as was the case when Hannibal used them against Rome. No doubt Tolkien had read Livy and Polybius and Herodotus about them. With new reinforcements from the east, it’s beginning to look bad for Gondor.

Then even worse news: the black sails of the Corsairs of Umbar are sailing up the river.

Eomer rallies his guys, and there is the mad lure of war that makes monsters of us worse than any we can imagine. And yet whose heart doesn’t lift at these words:

For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people. And lo! Even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.

But wonder is right on the heels of this dangerous mood, for a banner breaks out: it’s Aragorn’s standard, the white tree of Gondor, released for the first time.

Aragorn is here to the rescue, and he and Eomer meet in the middle of the battle. Friendship—and battle lust are shared by both, and they turn and smack into it again.

It’s nasty and bloody, for the Southrons have not all fled, and the Easterlings are equally determined, but they break, staining the river. Both sides suffer tremendous losses, as the narrator tells us, no full count is ever told. We end a chapter of whipsaw emotions and vivid images with a galloping ballad by a Rohirrim poet.

And then we return to Denethor. Next round.