Book V, Chapter 10: The Black Gate Opens
There’s something fun about the way this chapter recapitulates the journey Frodo and Sam took, but in reverse -- the crossroads, the Morgul-vale, Ithilien, and eventually the rough, deserted approach to the Black Gate of the Morannon. It’s a nice thing, too, for Tolkien to really ramp up the dread -- the eerie emptiness of the land they pass through, the terror that drives a bunch of soldiers to abandon the mission (and Aragorn’s mercy as king in sending them to Cair Andros instead). By the time we reach the Towers of the Teeth, we’re ready for some serious action.
Of course, most of that action takes place in “diplomatic” dialogue with the Mouth of Sauron, a living man who might as well be a Ringwraith, a Ringwraith wannabe, I guess. He’s well depicted here by Daniel Govar, although in fairness the WETA people did wonders with his makeup in Jackson’s film: http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/9/96/Daniel_Govar_-_The_Mouth_of_Sauron.jpg I do like that Gandalf has learned a lesson from Isengard, where Hobbits were left out of the diplomatic party: Pippin gets to approach side by side with his fellows, which is lovely, though I’m not sure the narrator’s right that ALL Mordor’s enemies are represented here. The Ents, at a minimum, seem to be left out. Never mind that, though -- this is a good group to represent Sauron’s foes in general, and they sure get an earful and an eyeful from the guy they have to deal with.
There’s an interesting insolence to the Mouth -- if we assume his insults are anything more than empty words, he seems to suggest that authority comes from something other than a bloodline or a “piece of elvish glass”, as he calls the Elfstone that Aragorn wears. But what could it come from? I think we can argue that, in a sense, the Mouth is right that Gondor still has no king -- that Aragorn’s true right to the throne will be forged in his sacrificial assault on the Black Gate, through his dedication to the safety of others, of all people, and not due to some heirloom. The Mouth’s a shambling garbage-heap and he’s right for the wrong reasons, but I think he’s still right.
He then brings forward these tokens of Frodo’s, and I have to say, Tolkien executes this sequence really brilliantly, and in a way the films never even attempted to. At this point, the last we saw of Frodo, he was trapped in a tower and near death, and Sam was trying to figure out what in the heck to do about it -- as a first-time reader, we might be genuinely fearful. Did Frodo die? Or is he in prison and Aragorn or Gandalf will need to fight their way in to save him? The suspense is there for us just as much as it is for the characters -- more so, in a sense, since we know for a fact that Frodo was taken prisoner, as they can only guess from these bits of evidence. I do want to point out that there’s something really poignant here -- the Mouth uses the diversity of these items (Dwarven armor, an Elvish cloak, a Numenorean blade, and the hobbit who bore them) as marks of a conspiracy. But this list immediately brought to my mind -- and surely would to Tolkien’s a veteran of the Great War -- the grave of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey. The Unknown Warrior was a fallen, unidentified British soldier, buried in a coffin made of oak timbers from Hampton Court that also bears a medieval English sword. It was laid to rest in the Abbey and French soil from the battlefields was spread to cover it -- lastly, it was covered with a slab of Belgian marble (the invasion of Belgium being the direct cause of English involvement in the war), and that marble is inscribed in brass made from melted down casings of spent ammunition from the war. It’s an incredibly solemn tribute to the allies who together endured and triumphed -- and in this moment, to any reader familiar with those elements, I think the Mouth’s narrative would have made it feel very plausible that Frodo has died. The Mouth, of course, makes other claims -- that Frodo is alive and captive, where he “shall endure the slow torment of years, as long and slow as our arts in the Great Tower can contrive, and never be released, unless maybe when he is changed and broken, so that he may come to you, and you shall see what you have done.” There are echoes here of the Witch-King’s threats to Eowyn: this is a gruesome and horrifying possibility, and in the moment, again, is genuinely possible.
Gandalf seems shaken -- as he should be -- and when he asks for the terms, they feel incredibly closely drawn to the realities of WWII. That’s my reading, anyway -- the description of what Sauron wants feels like Vichy Gondor, to me, a puppet state that makes a mockery of his vanquished foes, ruled by the people they would hate most. Gandalf doesn’t really mess around here, which is good -- it’s not clear to me what he expected from the Mouth, but being asked to surrender everything for the sake of one hobbit who may or may not be in custody was an impossible demand. I wonder what would have happened if Sauron had been savvier -- though I guess without knowing it, none of the people in these negotiations had much time left before the Ringbearer makes them all moot. But I still wonder if, say, The Mouth had simply demanded that Gandalf submit himself to custody and the army march back to Minas Tirith, whether Gandalf would have felt tempted to try such a desperate thing out of compassion for Frodo. We’ll never know.
At this point, the heroes are pretty demoralized -- Frodo’s likely dead or worse, they’ve been caught in a trap that’s on the verge of springing, presumably the Ring is lost (though we, as readers, can hold out a little more hope of that), and the 8 remaining Nazgul are here “with their cold voices crying words of death”. No wonder Pippin Took figures he should “die soon and leave the bitter story of his life”, since at this point it’s not clear how anybody survives the scenario. He fights bravely, slashing at a troll with his barrow-blade, and the troll collapses on him. Pippin can faintly hear something about the Eagles coming, but he figures it’s a hallucination based on Bilbo’s old stories about the Battle of Five Armies, and anyway even if they are coming, he’s trapped and dying under the body of a troll. It would be hard for any reader to be optimistic about the long-term survival of most of the named characters we are familiar with.
The situation Tolkien leaves us in is doubly despairing -- we now know that all of Frodo’s things find their way to the Morannon, so we can hardly be optimistic about poor Samwise and his efforts. And we also cut away from the battle before the Black Gate in a moment where we have to assume most of the people present will die, and we have particular reason to think that a Took will be among them. This sets us up, of course, for Tolkien to surprise us with some good endings -- this is a very Tolkien thing to do, because he’s very interested in an idea he had to invent a word to describe: eucatastrophe. If you’ve not read his essay “On Fairy Stories” (and you should, goodness, it’s incredibly lovely and insightful), here’s a passage on what eucatastrophe means to him -- it’s long but it’s worth it to those of us who have come this far:
“I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite — I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function. The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art.”
In order to accomplish this -- to provoke in us the gasp of surprise at astounding Joy, as astounding as the most harrowing and unexpected news of catastrophic death and horror -- we’ve got to reach the point where success and happiness seem nearly impossible. I’d say the conclusion of Book V neatly manages this in every possible direction -- we begin Book VI hopeful on some level of victory for our heroes but also aware of the high likelihood that many of them will die (if they are not already dead) and that their quest may fail utterly. It’s a good thing that Book VI is coming, and that you and I will see how Samwise manages in The Tower of Cirith Ungol, in Chapter 1.