Book III, Chapter 1: The Departure of Boromir
I indicate for some of these posts that I am reading a particular edition, and so I should probably make totally clear that whenever I don’t identify an edition, I’m reading the Houghton Mifflin trade paperbacks, which really are my favorite reading editions -- large enough to reduce page turns (and the loss of words in the page gutter) but lightweight enough to be easy to hold for long stretches. I think they’re attractively bound, too -- the Alan Lee painting they selected for Fellowship was that lovely image of Rivendell, and this image of the tower of Isengard is very cool and quite distinct in feeling from the first. It’s a good tonal match for The Two Towers -- in some ways the most complex of the three divisions of the novel, and certainly one I have looked forward to for some time. Anyway, for this chapter, and for any other chapter without a pictured edition, I’m reading the official #PandemicLOTR edition of The Lord of the Rings, and I hope Houghton Mifflin will reward me with some swag.
While I’m noting the switchover to The Two Towers, I should comment briefly on the book’s name -- Tolkien agonized over naming this middle third of the novel (which was largely due to his objecting to issuing the novel in thirds in the first place) and ultimately chose this title due to Allen & Unwin insisting on having something so they could publish the darn thing. Even after choosing it, he vacillated for a while about which two towers were the titular towers -- no fewer than five towers play significant roles in this novel, and it took him a while to decide that the relevant towers were those of Isengard and Minas Morgul (the other three he considered at some point or other, for the record, were Cirith Ungol, Barad-dur, and Minas Tirith -- Jackson seems to have preferred pairing Isengard and Barad-dur, in part because he largely shoves Minas Morgul out of this film and into the next one). For me, as a kid, it was obvious that the two towers were Isengard and Cirith Ungol, and I can’t really accept Tolkien’s decision, myself. Did you ever think about this, when you read the books? I’ve heard all sorts of definitions, including some ideas that Tolkien definitely never entertained, so I’d be glad to hear your answers.
The book opens with Aragorn speeding around the wooded hillside trying desperately to find Frodo, and then trying desperately to reach Boromir in time to come to his aid. He is unsuccessful in both efforts, and I think part of what’s so moving about this chapter is how much it differs from the film version we all know quite well, at this point. The movie needs a surge at the end -- a reason to cheer for our heroes -- and so we get Lurtz, the Uruk-Hai commander (a total Jackson invention), doing gruesome battle with Aragorn until he uses his sword to whip off Lurtz’s head. Every time I saw Fellowship in the theaters, the crowd erupted in cheers at that moment -- and heck, I can’t lie to you and say I didn’t get the hit of adrenaline and happiness that they did, too. But that’s not the story Tolkien is telling. Not here.
By the time Aragorn reaches Boromir, there is no enemy left to fight -- not even a little cleanup tangle with a totally outmatched orc foot soldier. Instead there is just the dying man, lying against a tree, surrounded by his dead foes. Aragorn kneels beside him but does not speak -- cannot, I think. Boromir, with halting speech, confesses his sins, essentially -- he admits what he did to frighten Frodo, and asks Aragorn to save his people, for he has failed. Aragorn is able to extend some words of peace to him just as Boromir breathes his last, and then there is this incredibly touching moment in which Aragorn is simply face to face with the dead, and with his own failure. I like to read passages of the book aloud to myself, as I go -- in part for the beauty of Tolkien’s language, of course, but in part because I find things in the text this way that I would not otherwise find. And this passage, as I read it aloud, choked me up -- I realized that I’d always read past this a little too quickly. Aragorn says to his dead companion, “It is I that have failed. Vain was Gandalf’s trust in me.” This time I really felt the weight of it. Aragorn has no idea what has become of anyone entrusted to him, at this point. He left Rivendell full of hope, and just the other day, as he passed through the Argonath, he felt like the king he will become. But now he’s forced to look his own weaknesses in the face -- how he misread the situation with Boromir (he should never have allowed him the solo encounter with Frodo, even by accident), how he found himself taken by surprise by his foes. He couldn’t even keep track of the one hobbit he had half his attention on, since Sam disappears without him realizing it, right at the start of the chapter. He’s full of grief for Boromir, of course, which the film depicts very movingly, but I don’t think I ever really felt that Viggo’s Aragorn was burdened by feeling a deep, personal failure in that moment. But he really is, and I think the memory of this moment will play an important role in the decisions he makes on the road ahead of him. Learning to lead is hard.
I think that leadership lesson is one he has to confront almost immediately. Reuniting with Legolas and Gimli, thereafter, there’s some conversation as they try to make sense of what has happened -- sense we ourselves, as readers, would struggle to make, since we didn’t see most of these events unfold. They do manage to work out that two hobbits, at least, were seized and despoiled, and that the creatures that took them captive are unusual looking orcs who bear an insignia related to Saruman. This is, if you haven’t looked at the map, a deeply dismaying bit of news -- the road to Isengard is WNW from the falls of Rauros, and a good distance away, hundreds of miles back almost exactly in the direction they have come. Gimli complains about the time wasted in pondering riddles, and Aragorn pushes back that the riddles are necessary if they’re to make the right choice. And I love Gimli’s reply to Aragorn -- “Maybe there is no right choice.” Now, we can read that as despair on Gimli’s part -- he’s lost more than half the companions he set forth with from Rivendell, and is dragging a dead body to the river as we speak. But I think it’s more an insightful comment -- that Aragorn has spent too much time already weighing and arguing with himself about what the best course of action is, and that this dithering is exactly what got them in this mess. The importance here is less the determination of the perfect next step, and more the willingness to take any action at all and bear the consequences of the choice. That’s how I read it, anyway -- Gimli is a dwarf of action, after all. I think Aragorn is right to at least take a moment for reflection, but the urge to be more decisive will be good for him, I think.
Tolkien’s prose is often lovely, but it’s rarely more well-suited to the moment than when it takes on this elegiac voice as the body of Boromir is given to Anduin. I love the vision we get of the falls, since we are above them and not looking up at their imposing height -- Tolkien makes them imposing in a lovely way, saying “as they went south, the fume of Rauros rose and shimmered over them, a haze of gold.” That’s a great image. But few images in The Lord of the Rings can compare to Boromir’s final journey: “The River had taken Boromir son of Denethor, and he was not seen again in Minas Tirith, standing as he used to stand upon the White Tower in the morning. But in Gondor in after-days it long was said that the elven-boat rode the falls and the foaming pool, and bore him down through Osgiliath, and past the many mouths of Anduin, out into the Great Sea at night under the stars.” Whew. Not sure what I can add to that. Aragorn and Legolas sing a farewell to Boromir, and I’ll say this -- I tried singing it rather than just reading it, and I think it did a lot to imbue the moment with feeling.
The ultimate decision of the Three Hunters to chase down Merry and Pippin, and to leave Frodo and Sam to their quest, makes sense as it is presented to us -- Frodo and Sam are in a kind of danger these three fellows can do little to relieve, whereas they can do much, they hope, to save Merry and Pippin. It’s a powerful moment -- Aragorn finally accepting that he cannot be Backup Gandalf -- and that even if he could be, he has no idea what Gandalf would have chosen in this moment. I love that he’s finally decisive, and that even as Gimli notes that they have little hope either way, Aragorn commits to them proceeding whether they have any hope or not. “Forth the Three Hunters!” is cool. It is not, alas, as cool as “Let’s hunt some orc.” But Tolkien didn’t have access to that kind of casual voice, even if he would have allowed Aragorn to use it (and he would NOT have). This chapter was short, but the chapter that follows will be long, to match the incredible distance Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli will manage to cover on foot. And we will finally get our first glimpse of a kingdom of men -- if only through the eyes of that kingdom’s “outlaws”, The Riders of Rohan -- in Book III, Chapter 2.