Book III, Chapter 6: The King of the Golden Hall
One of the wonderful things about taking this journey at the gentle pace I am is that I really get to luxuriate in each scene in this very long story. When a new character is introduced, I’ve got more than enough time to really watch how they’re being depicted and used, and it’s almost always a rewarding experience: Tolkien doesn’t write generic or throwaway characters often at all, and certainly in developing the people of Rohan, he wastes no lines here as he imagines a people beset by evil on every side, and a royal house that is teetering on the brink of disaster. Theoden is not the last of the heroes we will be introduced to, but we’re reaching the point where we’ve got almost all our full complement of characters to work with, and it’s nice to finally add him to the mix.
The thing about Tolkien’s writing that I think lent itself so successfully to Jackson’s adaptations is that Tolkien seems to have thought very cinematically -- for all the griping some folks do about his tedious landscape details, you have to admit that they make it very easy to envision the visual sweep of the story, and he spends a lot of time in setting up these moments that feel like stuff you’d put in a movie trailer. This chapter is chock full of that kind of writing, beginning with the way Gandalf introduces them to Edoras -- he halts at a distance and has Legolas describe the whole thing from a distance like some kind of zoom shot. It doesn’t really make sense in the moment -- they’ll ride up to it soon enough, and they don’t learn much from Legolas’s description that could even plausibly be useful in their encounter with the King. But it makes a ton of sense for us as readers, as Tolkien realizes he’s created a space that can be introduced in this way, and he eagerly does so. They ride up past these somber mounds, the Rohan Valley of Kings, with the simbelmyne blossoming all around -- you can imagine this sort of thing because Jackson cribs liberally from these visuals in presenting Rohan to us in The Two Towers film. It just works. Another lovely thing Jackson manages in the films -- something I’ve thought about commenting a lot along the way, but it seems to fit as an observation here -- is to lift out lovely moments in the text that wouldn’t work in the film as-is, and reposition them. Aragorn sings this lovely poem of Rohan that begins “Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?” -- yes, it’s a lovely poem, Tolkien’s hitting this one out of the park -- but it would sap the momentum of the approach to Edoras here. So Jackson (or Walsh or Boyens -- it took a village to write the screenplay) moves this verse so that Theoden recites a portion of it somberly while Gamling outfits him with armor at Helm’s Deep -- in the background Howard Shore’s choirs have the ominous cranked up to 11, and while we hear Theoden recite a poem he probably learned as a boy, we get a montage of scenes in which frightened boys and trembling old men gear up for battle. I get chills every single time. Tolkien didn’t necessarily lay out the novel as a screenplay, but really everything you need for a wonderful set of films is waiting in here like a sculpture inside the marble, and it’s wonderful that some sympathetic eyes and ears took it all in and wrote the adaptations we know and love.
There’s a lot of back and forth, at the gates of Edoras with the guards and then at the doors of Meduseld, the Golden Hall, with Hama the doorguard -- I don’t really want to unpack it all, although I do think it’s worth noting that Aragorn’s owning his role as King is really coming into its own. He shows a little of the same testiness he had with Gandalf in the last chapter, although here it’s him harumphing about Theoden’s orders to lay aside his sword when he, Aragorn, is really High King of all these lands by right. There’s a complexity to Aragorn that I think is kind of nice here -- we have to ask ourselves where the line is between merited pride and dangerous arrogance. After all, Boromir wasn’t all bluster -- he was a skilled soldier and captain of men who had fought many battles against the forces of Mordor. But his pride was ruinous in the end. So I think it’s worth keeping a weather eye on Aragorn, asking ourselves what the signs are of danger in him, and what it is that allows him ultimately to avoid stumbling in the ways that Boromir did.
Once they enter the Golden Hall, they see this classic tableau -- the withered king, his attractive young ward, his weaselly whispering advisor. Peter Xavier Price did a very fair job depicting it: http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/b/bf/Peter_Xavier_Price_-_The_King_of_the_Golden_Hall.jpeg Tolkien does a really masterful job here in depicting what it would be like to be Theoden -- we get an understanding of how Grima has warped him without having to have everything unpacked explicitly, and we can therefore read his condemnations of Gandalf without holding it against him later in the chapter. A lot of this stuff is subtle -- his little quip about Gandalf being “Gandalf Stormcrow” seems like genuine anger on his part, but soon we hear Grima’s voice and we realize that Stormcrow is a nickname of Grima’s invention, not Theoden’s. Furthermore, though we get some kind of nasty comments from Theoden about having been glad at the news of Gandalf’s death, his position is more understandable when you look at it -- he wonders why he should welcome Gandalf, who is ever a “herald of woe”, and figures if whenever Gandalf shows up, trouble follows, then maybe Gandalf is the source of the trouble. But he’s quiet pretty quickly, and suddenly it’s Grima handling everything -- referencing the death of Theodred, chastising Gandalf and ridiculing his appearance, etc. And Grima’s really good at phrasing things so that they can feel to Theoden like thoughts he had himself -- for instance, he says “In Eomer there is little trust.” Now, who decided that? But Grima knows this comes across much better than “I do not trust Eomer, my lord” since that invites a response -- “in Eomer there is little trust” can slip through Theoden’s ears right into his storehouse of opinions until it seems like his own idea. Grima can keep this up all day, parrying words in front of the decaying Theoden, relieving the King of the need to reply (and filling his head with nonsense): it’s no wonder, then, that Gandalf finally tires of this, and the moments in which he tells Grima off really are joys to behold. “Be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man until the lightning falls.” Dunk on him again, Gandalf -- you’re on fire today.
I talked back in Book II about what it means that Gandalf is a wizard -- and about how he spends a lot less time casting spells than you’d think. The same is effectively true here, since he’s snuck his staff into Meduseld, but how does he use it? He fills the hall with sudden darkness, for effect, and then brings in that single beam of sunlight -- the flame of Anor, an Elf might say -- and uses it to call Theoden to a better path. This really is the magic Gandalf wields, drawing on the best of the created order (light, dark, and the finest horse that ever lived) to call brave folk out of the shadows and convince them to work together against Sauron’s fell purposes. It certainly wakes Theoden up, who surges out onto the terrace, drops his cane, and starts to really take in his embattled realm. I do love that there’s an echo here again of the study at Bag End -- will we ever stop revisiting that moment? I don’t think so -- when Theoden says “Alas, that these evil days should be mine, and should come in my old age instead of that peace which I have earned.” Gandalf doesn’t quite respond as he does to Frodo -- Frodo needed space and time to consider his duty. Theoden doesn’t have time, and anyway, his task is the simpler -- to oppose evil with force. So Gandalf slaps a sword in his hands (courtesy of Eomer), and the transformation is immediate, as Theoden bellows over the rooftops of Edoras that everybody needs to gird their loins for war. Rohan will not prevail against Sauron, but that’s not their purpose -- what Gandalf needs from them is time, just time enough that the right forces can gather to delay and distract Barad-dur from Gandalf’s true agenda. The first necessity, then, is to drive them against Isengard, and in Theoden he’s got a very willing hammer.
I do like how Gandalf handles Grima, too, since his trademark mercy is here -- a mercy that I think does pay off in the end, in multiple ways as we’ll see -- but he doesn’t miss a chance to take another shot at Wormtongue. I mean, listen to him -- “See, Theoden, here is a snake. . . . To slay it would be just. But it was not always as it now is. Once it was a man, and did you service in its fashion.” Once it was a man? If in Valinor there are comedy roasts -- and fine, yes, I’m sure there aren’t, Manwe is way too stiff-spined for that sort of thing -- Gandalf would absolutely slay at them. I get the feeling that “Stormcrow” stung a little: you do have to imagine that after a few centuries of having to ride like the wind all over Middle Earth, starting half your conversations with “doom is now at hand, and yet if you act quickly, not all is lost”, you would get some frosty welcomes, and you’d probably come to resent it a bit.
The chapter finishes with some nice flourishes. I enjoy the Eowyn/Aragorn dynamic -- he can’t help but notice her, even though his heart is given to another. And goodness, she can’t help but notice him -- he’s got the blood of Numenor in those stunning veins of his, as well as the cheekbones of Numenor I assume, and the swagger he’s acquired in the last week or so as he learns to assert himself as King of Gondor surely doesn’t hurt either. We haven’t seen the last of those little glances. And there’s a nice back and forth from Legolas and Gimli, with Eomer thrown in -- Gimli in particular is great at adding just the right dash of humor, and the conversation reminds me a lot of the bromance to come (in the films, and I think at least in part here in the novels). But the big finish is just another piece of cinematic glory -- Tolkien sets us up with Aragorn looking back at Eowyn, called to lead the frail and the young to Dunharrow to keep them in safety. “Alone Eowyn stood before the doors of the house at the stair’s head; the sword was set upright before her, and her hands were laid upon the hilt. She was clad now in mail and shone like silver in the sun.” Whew, that right there is just a gorgeous image -- desolate and adamant and resilient all at once. But he’s just planting it for the callback in this sweeping final passage that carries us to the end of the chapter, since a page later we get:
“The trumpets sounded. The horses reared and neighed. Spear clashed on shield. Then the king raised his hand, and with a rush like the sudden onset of a great wind the last host of Rohan rode thundering into the West.
Far over the plain Eowyn saw the glitter of their spears, as she stood still, alone before the doors of the silent house.”
We haven’t seen the last of the Shieldmaiden of Rohan, and I’m glad, because that finish makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. First, though, we must make for the fastness in Helm’s Deep -- Book III, Chapter 7.