Book V, Chapter 2: The Passing of the Grey Company & Chapter 3: The Muster of Rohan
Again, this is a stretch of the reading experience I’ve been looking forward to -- I am always so fired up by these sequences, and I think Tolkien puts a lot of time and care into building tension and excitement towards the clash of armies at Minas Tirith. We open, of course, with Aragorn’s buddies finally showing up -- these Rangers of the North who will accompany him into great peril, and also his future brothers-in-law, Elladan and Elrohir. Again, this is a cast of characters who probably should have helped fill out the Fellowship -- there’s another universe in which we know Halbarad or Elladan a lot better, but alas, to us they’ll be mostly names. Their function here is to provide that last spur to Aragorn really stepping into the mantle of kingship -- not just talking a good game about being King of Gondor at the threshold of Meduseld, but putting his money where his mouth is by walking the Dimholt Road, and seeing if he really does have the power of Isildur’s inheritance at his beck and call. They also give us one of our rare glimpses of the Aragorn-Arwen relationship -- I’m sure they were in love, of course, but as far as the novel (sans appendices) is concerned, this is a very somber and formal couple.
Far less somber and formal is the delightful scene in which Meriadoc unknowingly mimics Pippin -- although of course Pippin will not actually do this for another day or two -- by offering his sword to Theoden in service. I think it’s sweet to see the two hobbits having basically the same brave impulse, and how differently they’re met -- Theoden’s response does not involve Merry having to swear to serve until the end of the world, let alone any harsh warnings against treachery, unlike Denethor. Instead, he blesses Meriadoc Brandybuck and hopes that he will bear his sword “to good fortune”. The hour is not so late here, of course, and the troubles of war are further away from Theoden at this point than they were for Denethor in Chapter 1, but I still think we’re getting a lot of insight into these two leaders and how they differ. It makes Pippin’s pledge feel even more ominous in retrospect, and maybe makes us a little anxious for him. I really love this pledge from Merry, too -- Theoden’s made it pretty clear he’ll be kind to Merry regardless and give him a very easy pathway, but Merry insists on more boldly tying himself to the King’s service. It gives context for that moment when Aragorn watches the Rohirrim ride away and comments (in a way that made me get a little misty-eyed), “There go three that I love, and the smallest not least,” referring to Theoden, Eomer, and most importantly, Merry: “He knows not to what end he rides; yet if he knew, he still would go on.” The bravery of a hobbit -- not bravery that causes them to leap into the gap as an action hero, but bravery that pushes them onwards in service to their friends even at great personal cost -- is certainly one of our themes, and coming on the heels of Book IV, Chapter 10 and Book V, Chapter 1, it’s great to see Merry demonstrate yet another instance of that bravery, now that all his hobbit friends have had their moments.
Aragorn has set a dangerous course for himself, motivated by Elrond and Arwen’s words, and he’s decided to grab his kingship with both hands -- revealing himself to Sauron in wresting control of the palantir away from him was an incredible risk (even though he argues that it’s a smart strategic move to put pressure on Sauron and strike a little fear into him), and it’s even riskier to take the Paths of the Dead, as every conversation in this chapter makes plain. My favorite of these conversations is his dialogue with Eowyn at Dunharrow, since Tolkien consciously drops out of the novel’s ordinary voice into the voice of a saga or myth: the narrator is almost totally gone, the language used by both Aragorn and Eowyn is even more elevated and formal than usual (lots of “thee”s), and the effect is to heighten the significance of this decision and our sense of the risks he’s running. The second conversation between them, though, is the more significant -- Eowyn finds him right before he goes to sleep, dressed in white with her eyes on fire. Tolkien’s not interested much at all in creating sexual tension but, uh, you could cut it here with a knife I think -- at least it’s clear that Eowyn’s heart fell very, very deep into the pools of Aragorn’s open eyes the moment they first saw each other, and while Aragorn’s heart might be allegedly skipping in some Rivendell meadow with Arwen, she sure didn’t send him much comfort in her last message. She effectively told him “Dad says you need to take the throne back -- maybe it’s time to risk your life, my man” and here’s Eowyn saying “dude, you’re awesome, why on earth would you go risk your life like this?” Tolkien’s uninterested in making this a love triangle but come on, any actually human Aragorn would at least ask himself if there was a better life waiting here in Rohan, riding side by side with Eowyn (I know, I know, there’s an age difference that he even points out to her, but Arwen is, what, two thousand years older than him? I think he’d be flexible on this one).
Anyway, I love this conversation between them not for the romantic tension (such as it is) but because Tolkien makes a surprisingly good case for Eowyn -- the man was, let’s face it, no feminist activist, of course. But when Aragorn makes a noble but condescending argument that Eowyn should be happy to stay here defending her people -- since the “deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes” will be no less valiant despite being forgotten -- Eowyn punches back with some force, doesn’t she? “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.” That is straight fire. More importantly, it is totally justified -- Aragorn’s argument DOES amount to this, and Tolkien’s stepping out of the way to let Eowyn give voice to it is a real kindness he does to her character. She’s got plenty of problems from a gender analysis perspective -- Eowyn seems to hate femininity and to view other women with something approaching scorn, but that surely arises from a complicated upbringing, in which firm gender roles have been conveyed to her right alongside the idea that she is “of the House of Eorl . . . and I do not fear either pain or death.” How to reconcile the two? She can’t, and so she feels like a caged wild thing -- someone whose youth and strength are ebbing away in idleness until she either accepts meekly her place, or else her will is so broken that it loses the desire to break her bonds. This is hardcore -- and it’s a really valid critique of Middle-earth’s gender paradigms spoken in-world by a character that I think Tolkien wants us to see as credible. I have to doff my cap at least a little here -- even as I nod along with the complaints that Tolkien could have done a LOT more to create meaningful roles for women in the novel he wrote.
The sequence within the Paths of the Dead is great -- Tolkien isn’t writing real horror here, but there are moments that definitely raise a little hair on the back of the neck. Maybe most significantly the skeletal figure (Baldor, presumably?) who died trying desperately to open some terrible door that Aragorn simply steps aside from and continues past -- what’s back there? We’ll never know, as Aragorn confirms for us. This is an interesting parallel to the Shelob’s Lair sequence -- a passage through a tunnel that is supernaturally dark, a path that would never have been taken if the urgent need to oppose Sauron didn’t drive them -- but of course the setup is very different. Though terrifying and lethal, the oathbreaking Dead are not evil per se -- just spirits haunted by their own failures and charged with guarding this passage. Shelob, of course, is malevolence personified. And Aragorn always keeps his cool, summoning them to the Stone of Erech and not being apparently troubled even by the loss of his torches. I do like that Tolkien’s developing a sense for how to get the tension just right -- we know that the Dead will keep their oath, but we don’t quite know where Aragorn is headed, or what he’ll do there, and we have no idea what image is on his standard. All this will help a surprise land just a little more effectively in a few chapters, of course, which is fun. It’s also a little fun to me that Aragorn, who we first meet under the name “Strider” -- what would you say that means, walking guy, maybe fast or resilient walking guy? -- has opened both Book III and Book V on basically a world-record setting sprint cross-country that basically nobody but him (and his doughty companions, of course) could have completed. Yeah, yeah, he’s not on foot this time, that does lose a little of this. But I still say it’s no accident that he is introduced as Strider.
Chapter 3 is fun reading, but I have less to say about it -- much of it is filling in the gaps from Chapters 1 and 2. We saw errand riders from Gondor in Chapter 1 -- here we get to see Hirgon deliver his message. We know Aragorn and company walked the Paths of the Dead -- here we get additional information about that pathway (which would be higher stakes if we didn’t already know the boys had made it through fine, alas). We knew a little something about the look and feel of Dunharrow but this account fleshes it out far more successfully. And we understood Eowyn’s emotions pretty well in Chapter 2, but we get more insight here (especially if we can spot her in disguise -- spoiler alert! -- as Dernhelm). Oh, here’s a nice image by Matt Stewart of Dernhelm with Meriadoc along for the ride, literally: http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/f/fb/Matt_Stewart_-_Dernhelm.jpg
There’s a lot of foreshadowing here, of course -- when Merry tells Theoden he’d follow him even on the Paths of the Dead, Theoden tells him not to speak omens over him, since plenty of roads lead to death. Oof, sorry Theoden, damage already done, I guess. And when Merry sees Dernhelm -- who we don’t know yet, of course, but who we will pretty easily identify eventually -- he notices that “he” has the face of “one without hope who goes in search of death.” There’s insight into Eowyn’s emotional state here, for sure. But Eowyn is also someone who has lost “hope” -- Aragorn’s childhood nickname, of course, was Estel, or “hope” -- and who will, by passing nearly into death, find herself next to another who passed nearly into death, Faramir of Gondor....but I’m getting ahead of myself. I just think that at least sometimes, with Aragorn, Tolkien is intentionally punning on the word “hope”, and this is one of those cases.
I do find the finish of the chapter inspiring -- the words of Hirgon were ominous but hadn’t necessarily provoked Theoden to the kind of swift, reckless action that will be necessary to turn the tide at Minas Tirith. Denethor’s messenger gets (understandably) a little chippy about it -- Theoden’s promise of an arrival a week hence elicits the reply “cool, you’ll show up in time to pick a few of the orcs off of our lifeless bodies, #ThanksRohan” -- but that doesn’t seem to cause the King of Rohan to rethink his plans at all. But when he wakes to a world lying under Mordor’s growing Shadow, Theoden gets fired up, and the energy of the chapter just keeps heightening as he flings as many soldiers eastward as they can -- mid-chapter he’d been talking about maintaining all those garrisons for defense of his borders, but by the final page, they’re getting news of orc incursions into the Wold of Rohan and Eomer basically cries out “let’s hope they don’t burn it all down before we get back” as they speed thousands of Rohirrim to the defense of Gondor. I like the driving finish of both of these chapters -- Chapter 1 had ended with Gandalf worried for the fate of Minas Tirith, and now we’ve ended consecutive chapters with our heroes in Rohan tearing at breakneck speed for Gondor to prevent Gandalf’s worst fears.
The chapters get a bit shorter here as Tolkien tries to weave things together -- my next post will take in both The Siege of Gondor and The Ride of the Rohirrim in Chapters 4 & 5 of Book V.