Book V, Chapter 8: The Houses of Healing
This post is for a chapter without much that’s fun, illustration-wise, and the copy I’m reading is just another of the Tolkien Millennium Editions that all have the same cover design I posted initially, so let’s pause for an image that shows how at least one of the principal characters got to the Houses of Healing in the first place. There are a ton of depictions of the Eowyn vs. Witch-King confrontation, and most of them are at least reasonably good -- the subject is a freakin’ epic moment, after all -- but I’m particularly partial to this one by David Wyatt, which strikes me as both charming in its evocation of old-school fantasy illustration tropes and pretty solid in putting the two figures in at a scale that makes them more evenly matched: http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/c/c9/David_Wyatt_-_Eowyn_and_the_Nazgul.jpg I get the appeal of making the Nazgul dwarf all his foes, but to me it diminishes Eowyn too much to have her as some little undaunted figure in the corner of the image. Anyway, as was covered last time around, Eowyn and Merry both were badly injured (Eowyn gravely so) in this encounter and were being borne to the Houses of Healing, where Faramir had just been delivered by Gandalf, coming from the Rath Dinen.
Chapter 8 opens with Merry confused and stumbling through the streets of Minas Tirith, more badly wounded than anyone had realized, in need of rescue by Pippin at a very fortunate moment. This is yet another echo, of course -- of the scene where Toby finds Josh in the first episode of Season 2 of The West Wing. Okay, having some fun with you here -- in the text of the actual novel, poor Meriadoc is nearly perpetually in peril, it seems to me. He was in bad shape in the Barrows, of course, and Pippin saved an injured Merry from the Uruk-hai back in Book III. But I’m most reminded of Bree, where Merry is attacked in the street late at night, and it’s only good fortune that Nob was out in the streets looking for him and got him back to the Prancing Pony safely. Pippin fortunately has some friends in the city by now, and when he finds himself unable to bear Merry all the way to hospital, gets a passing Bergil to go fetch Gandalf to fix things. I do appreciate Gandalf’s brief comment here, since I of course groused a little about the composition of the Fellowship back in Book II, Chapter 3, but even then I noted how glad I was that Merry and Pippin got to go, and as the wizard observes, it’s paid off wonderfully. I’m a little puzzled by his fretting over being taken up with hospital duty when the battle still rages -- with Aragorn and Eomer and Imrahil of Dol Amroth out there, how much is Gandalf’s presence still needed on a tactical level?
We catch an interesting glimpse of the tricky politics of Aragorn in Gondor here -- he chooses to drop anchor outside the walls of Minas Tirith, since he’s not exactly sure how he should properly reclaim the throne, but he figures after a few dozen generations he probably needs an invitation. I like the advice he gets from both sides here -- the hot-blooded young Eomer saying “come on, bro, your flag says YOUR KING IS BACK, BUCKOS, what’s the old man gonna say about it?” and the more seasoned and politically savvy Prince Imrahil commenting “no, no, Aragorn’s right, my brother-in-law is a huge dick.” It’s a rare moment where the audience is ahead of the characters, since we know that Denethor is long since gone to the Halls of Mandos -- a realistic quandary for these characters but truthfully more of a plot impediment than anything else.
Aragorn’s being brought into the city and the whole business surrounding his healing hands and the athelas plant serves a number of purposes. In part, though we need no convincing, I get that Tolkien wants there to be some rationale for his wide acceptance as Gondor’s lawful king. Personally I feel like him having liberated the city at the moment of its greatest peril would do the trick. But maybe Gondorians are a little more demanding of their kings. It’s also a nice moment to show that Aragorn’s life as a Ranger has, if anything, tied him more closely to Gondor’s past and its historic glories -- what is remembered here only as folklore and myth is a practical matter, to Aragorn. The conversations with Ioreth serve to establish the validity of “old wives’ tales”, sure -- a nice touch, I guess -- but they also confirm the value of Aragorn’s rough upbringing in settings totally unlike the White City.
I do like Ioreth’s presence here, too -- this is the chapter where the novel passes the Tolkien-Bechdel Test, which if you don’t know it, is a slightly modified version of the Bechdel Test that asks whether two named female characters are both in the same scene and at least one of them is conscious. It’s a good thing we get this chapter, too, since prior to this, the closest we get is when Galadriel’s name comes up in describing her phial of water that’s held up very close to a horrifying (named!) female monster right before she eats Frodo. Sorry, did that sound a little bitter? I just find some of the back and forth with Ioreth a little disrespectful to her character -- this is a novel that barely ever gives women names, let alone meaningful speaking roles, and therefore it’s all the more irritating when one of our precious few examples is treated as sort of a silly busybody who needs to be constantly cajoled into caring about the dying human being in front of her. Ioreth is, in fact, hugely important here -- she is the impetus for summoning Aragorn, she’s familiar with the plant he’s referencing, and she knows where in Gondor to get some. I’m fine with Tolkien letting the loremaster be a bit of a buffoon, since it’s nice to give Aragorn a chance to let off a little steam, but I’d have asked for a rewrite on Ioreth. My image of an elderly nurse in the Houses of Healing, triaging hundreds of wounded patients and trying to manage these VIPs who keep coming in to ask about three individual people as though no one else is hurt, is of a tough old woman with way too little time or patience to play silly word games with a guy in an elven cloak and a salt-and-pepper beard. I feel like Ioreth’s name is getting called about twice a minute up and down the hallway, and at most she’d have time to say “Athelas? <sigh> Yeah, hang on honey, I’ve got to get bandages down to Elanor in Room 3 and I’m mopping up blood by the stairwell and then yes, I will find you your weeds, sweetheart, but it’s gonna be a minute”.
One of the more moving thoughts that came to me as I read this chapter was about the echoes for Aragorn as he kneels by Faramir’s side -- surely he would be reminded of Boromir, at whose side he knelt above Rauros three weeks ago….because yes, it was only three weeks ago that Boromir died and the Three Hunters began their chase across the Emyn Muil. He could not have saved Boromir then, and now he finds the life of the last of Boromir’s house in his hands -- surely he recalls Boromir’s dying plea to save his people, and his feelings of hopelessness and helplessness as he watched the man die and felt the weight of his own failure. There’s something really wonderful, then, about Aragorn being able to restore Faramir to life. And I love how immediately Faramir sees in Aragorn what Denethor never could have, and what Boromir was always slow to accept: he opens his eyes and instantly says “My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?” How moving, I feel, for Aragorn to hear those words and know that the trust placed in him has not been vain, as he said at Boromir’s death (again, just three weeks ago).
There’s a funny quality to the conversation surrounding Eowyn -- on the one hand, I do appreciate Tolkien continuing to respect Eowyn’s character enough to demonstrate the validity of her perspective. Here she is unconscious and so the words spoken in her defense are from others and not from her, but they come across as credible nonetheless. The tragedy, of course, is that Gandalf and Aragorn, who both feel (I guess) in the right to be scolding Eomer a little about not having recognized the strains Eowyn is under as a woman, haven’t ever lifted a finger to do anything about gender in Middle-earth prior to this point. I mean, if they both had such clear sight of Eowyn’s predicament prior to this, what explains neither of them standing up for her or insisting on including her more in war councils (at a minimum) if not riding to battle? Where are the women among the Dunedain whose spirit and courage match Aragorn’s -- are they set any better tasks than tending fires and comforting the aged? As with Eowyn’s argument with Aragorn back in Chapter 2 of this Book, I appreciate very much Tolkien letting his characters be smart and speak their mind, especially on gender, a subject he himself was not at all “progressive” about. But I wish he’d had more courage to allow their perspectives to actually change their societies and their stations. Aragorn is, at least, gentle with Eowyn -- he helps Eomer see how he can support her, and then he is careful to be gone from the room before she wakes, to avoid doing too much to awaken in her the attachment she feels to him.
I do love the reunion with Merry -- Aragorn in slightly cranky Strider-form is probably my favorite Aragorn, and when Merry indicates he’s happy to have a pipe “if Strider will provide what is needed,” I chuckle as Aragorn ripostes, “Master Meriadoc, if you think that I have passed through mountains and the realm of Gondor with fire and sword to bring herbs to a careless soldier who throws away his gear, you are mistaken.” The sweetness of this unlikely friendship between Aragorn and the hobbits is really heart-warming, and I love both Merry’s apologizing and explaining that hobbits are so light-hearted a folk that they jest with each other when their hearts are more deeply moved, and Aragorn’s smiling reply that he knows this and it’s why he is so sarcastic with them. And then after he leaves, Pippin calls Merry “my dear ass” and explains that Aragorn could see his backpack in the corner the whole time, and I genuinely laugh out loud.
There are more sweet reunions and cause for laughter ahead of us, but we’ve got a road to walk yet -- a road that will be discussed carefully and finally chosen in The Last Debate, which will be the subject of my next post: Book V, Chapter 9.