Book V, Chapter 4: The Siege of Gondor & Chapter 5: The Ride of the Rohirrim
Although I have a few individual volumes left to pick up on this journey, this is the last new edition to share with you all -- the other remaining books are all copies from sets I’ve mentioned before. But this is a one-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings, and given its cover art -- a lovely Alan Lee painting of Minas Tirith, as you can see -- I’d held off on reading it until now. As usual with my editions of The Lord of the Rings, there’s a story to this one, which I’ll tell here. This copy is one I originally gave to a friend -- I think it was a birthday gift, though it’s been so long now, I don’t remember the circumstances anymore. My friend, Jason Carney, was a good guy -- I think a lot of dudes generally get the designation of “good guy”, but Jason really was. You could count on him to do the right thing, to speak up for people who were getting pushed aside or left out. He liked pop music and puns and top hats. When I went to Canada for grad school at the age of 19, I’d never lived away from home before -- the 1-2-3 combo of “living on my own”, “living in a new country”, and “diving into the deep end of a rigorous grad program” was tough and it meant a lot to have support from my friends. Jason was a good friend in particular that year -- the only one (as I recall) who actually scheduled a visit where he came up and stayed with me for a couple of days. I don’t remember much of what we talked about then -- college and Canada and girls, I’m sure, and almost certainly The Lord of the Rings. You can probably tell by now that my use of the past tense is significant. Jason and another good friend of mine, Alina Christianson, were driving together when hit by a young driver who was under the influence. We lost them both on March 3, 2002. A couple years later, Jason’s mother sent me this copy and a note saying that she thought he would want me to have it, and telling me what she thought my friendship had meant to him. Maybe I didn’t just leave this edition until now because of the cover: I couldn’t pick it up and start to read it without thinking of him reading it too, just a kid half the age I am now, and thinking of all the waste of the years he didn’t have. This isn’t some thematic opening to the two chapters I’ll talk about -- there’s nothing about my musings here that’s calculated to tie into anything else. I just wanted to tell you about Jason. He was a good guy.
I know I was praising Gandalf when we last saw him, and he’s certainly doing some great work here, riding out into the Pelennor to defend Faramir and his troops on two different occasions, wielding light like a sword and shield. But there’s some very weird bungles here that expose some weaknesses, I think, or at least some missed opportunities on his part. First of all, I get that Faramir’s news about Frodo is unexpected to him -- the depiction of his shock at hearing it is very successful. But it really, really shouldn’t be, right? He knows where Frodo and Sam left the company, and the general direction they would have been heading. He knows that every soldier in Ithilien would have seen Faramir as the top of the chain of command, and that if they’d found one or more hobbits, that Faramir would have been informed (and likely would have interrogated them). Why doesn’t it occur to him earlier that Faramir might know something? I ask this in part because I think he could have made earlier inquiries, but more so because allowing the news to burst forth in front of Denethor runs an incredible risk. Denethor is peeking at a palantir all the dang time, and between Denethor’s weird references to his “vision” and what Gandalf knows about the locations of the original seeing-stones, Gandalf ought to know it. Gandalf does know how close they came to blowing Frodo’s cover when Pippin looked at the stone -- why is he not concerned about Denethor disclosing what he learns? Faramir is clearly devoted to Gandalf, who could easily have spoken with him right at the arrival in the city, and I think Faramir would have heeded his advice.
The other thing that bugs me about Gandalf here is more something he got wrong a long time ago, but it emerges here: he’s very upset about Frodo and Sam taking the Cirith Ungol route, asking aloud at one point why on earth they’d go that way? Huh, Gandalf, why on earth would they take that dangerous pass? Maybe because there’s NO other way over the Ephel Duath, Mithrandir -- how were YOU planning on getting over those mountains? Certainly knocking on the Black Gate wouldn’t have worked even with Gandalf, as far as I can tell, and without him it’s an absolute no go. What on earth is he even imagining Frodo and Sam might do? I feel like if anything Cirith Ungol is marginally good news -- not only is the Ringbearer still driving the quest forward, but he seems to have miraculously (since NONE OF YOU told him ANYTHING about how to get into Mordor just as a backup plan, even, for this very, very foreseeable outcome) figured out a pass that will actually take him into Gorgoroth on a course for Orodruin. I am willing to accept that the story needs Frodo to have to make up the plan as he goes -- I can hand-wave the question of why Gandalf and Aragorn gave him no ideas for getting in. But then I think it’s ridiculous for Gandalf to react this way. He must have eaten a bad pickle or something, and be therefore off his game when Faramir makes his revelation.
The three-handed conversation between Denethor, Faramir, and Gandalf is really a wonderfully rich text that reveals a lot about all three of them, especially the two men of Gondor whose acquaintance we are still making. It is easy to see the conversation as conveying a simple truth -- Denethor is the WORST father in the world -- and here on a day celebrated (in the U.S. at least) as “Father’s Day” maybe we can and should lean into that reading a little. Certainly even bad fathers generally know that when your kid asks you “do you wish I had died?” your answer can’t just be “of COURSE I do.” But I think it’s more complex than this. Denethor is awful, but he’s awful in a really precise way: he privileges the survival of Gondor and his own honor above all else, and truthfully in his old age he’s grown incapable of distinguishing those two concepts. Faramir is not merely a wounded victim here -- he’s a child so accustomed to appeasement and peacemaking that his instincts are to weather his father’s storm rather than sail into it. Faramir’s not a child any longer -- he’s an adult and a beloved Captain of Gondor, more popular in the city than his father by all accounts, and at some point I think we have to give him enough agency to call him complicit in this family dynamic, don’t we, even if he’s not responsible for it? I want him to speak for himself. Gandalf obviously knows that he increases the tension in this scene -- every exchange between him and Faramir makes Denethor jealous (since he does love his son -- a petty, broken love, one that is too much mixed with his own self-regard as Steward, but there’s a human emotion in there at some level -- and both regrets and resents the idea that someone else has been a better father to him). But he hangs in there -- just to get news of Frodo? I think not: that could be achieved immediately after this meeting. He’s trying to drive the Denethor-Faramir dynamic to a breaking point, I think -- to wake up Faramir (as I want Faramir to wake) to the idea that he’s got to disrupt this arrangement himself. He’s not just a Captain who has to bear his commander’s opprobrium in silence: he’s the son and heir of the Steward, with the right to speak his mind in counsel. Faramir knows how to lead men who have been told to follow his orders, but he’s got to learn the tougher task of contending with the wills of people not bound to listen to him. Gandalf’s a little too late to teach that lesson, I fear.
I’m not letting Denethor off the hook here, though -- he’s terrible throughout this chapter, so full of himself that he thinks Sauron would come in person to “triumph over” him, should the city fall (I’m certain personally that Sauron has never bothered to learn the names of any of the city’s Stewards -- if even the Witch-King of Angmar bothered to come deal with Denethor in person, it would surprise me), so overweening that he ignores all counsel in an attempt to force Faramir to prove his devotion to him (above Mithrandir) in a desperate rearguard action, so frankly unhinged that he’s been sleeping in chainmail. And I haven’t even gotten yet to the Rath Dinen -- oh man, this is going to be a long post.
Denethor’s reputation won’t improve much with us, of course, but I do think Tolkien signals genuine remorse from him after Faramir’s grievous injury. As he tells Pippin, “I sent my son forth, unthanked, unblessed, out into needless peril, and here he lies with poison in his veins.” Now, there’s a little bit of passive construction here -- it would be nice if he’d phrased it more clearly that he’s the one who didn’t thank or bless Faramir. But I think in context it’s pretty clear that he’s bearing the weight of this himself -- he was the one, after all, who chose the “needless peril”. Denethor is still struggling under pride, of course -- in the very next line he bemoans the fate of his house even if they manage to win the war, which is a really revealing glimpse of his priorities, but he’s also a father mourning the impending death of his son. Sure, he’s largely responsible for that condition, but I don’t think that would make the grief easier to bear. When he has Faramir borne to the Rath Dinen, so that they can both “burn like the heathen kings of old”, I think there’s another insight here -- yes, in one sense he’s rejecting the failure of “the West” as he calls it, and it sure looks failed from his vantage point. But there’s also a touch of Faramir here -- his son had criticized the obsession in Gondor with these grand, silent tombs, and I think Denethor’s rejection of the “long slow sleep of death embalmed” is a sort of echo of that. He wants to be an agent of loss rather than its victim. That’s why he tells Pippin, “go now, and die in what way seems best to you.” That’s a bleak commentary on their situation but it’s also a strange call to action. I wish we had seen Denethor in better days: there was something greater in him than this proud ruin.
Great, surely, is the courage of Peregrin Took, though -- the guy who orchestrated his escape from the Uruk-hai is back and moving at full speed once he hears Denethor give the instructions for the live cremation. He rushes out, issuing orders to the servants, calling Beregond to a higher duty than merely obeying the commands of a deluded master, seeking Gandalf out despite having to run basically the length of the city on hobbit-legs to do it. Pippin knows that if Denethor regains any composure at all and learns what he’s done, he may well be imprisoned or executed for his thwarting the Steward’s orders. But Pippin doesn’t despair, not even in the worst circumstances, and he doesn’t allow a friend to go needlessly to death -- he didn’t abandon Frodo at Crickhollow, he didn’t leave Merry behind at the borders of Fangorn, and he’s sure not letting Faramir die uselessly in a fire on the Silent Street. Sure, he’s terrified of the Lord of the Nazgul, so that he ducks into a shadow when he reaches the gate, but nevertheless, Pippin has run into the burning first ring of the city, past many folks running fearfully in the opposite direction, to get Gandalf and put some things to rights. That impulse -- to run into the fire instead of away from it -- is one that I think any of our four hobbit heroes would have listened to, and yet when I think about it, none of them back in Book I, Chapter 2 would have imagined it was in them to do it. Either they’ve grown a lot in the journey, or else there was something remarkable in each of them just waiting to emerge from the beginning. Not sure which narrative I prefer.
The challenge between Gandalf and the Witch-King at the gate is of course yet another echo in a novel full of them -- you’d have to be nearly asleep to miss the resemblance to Gandalf’s stand at the bridge in Moria. Now, we don’t really resolve the question of who’s more powerful here -- Gandalf issues his warning, and the Nazgul laughs and calls him an old fool. But then the Balrog, in response to his warning, extended the shadow of his darkness further and leapt forward with its sword. What would have happened if the Nazgul’s blow had fallen -- would Gandalf have been up to the task? The way Tolkien writes it, I wonder -- my logic says that even with Sauron ascendant, there’s no way the wraith of a mortal man, however empowered by some magic ring, can really contend with a Maia like Gandalf. But maybe I underestimate Sauron’s power. We’ll never know, of course, since a rooster crows (lovely symbolism here, and I of course always prefer my books to have chickens in them) and the Rohirrim arrive. And it’s time to backtrack to their passage to Gondor.
I will take less time with this chapter, since my post is getting much longer than I’d planned, but there are a couple of things I want to point out. The first, of course, is Tolkien’s use of Ghan-buri-ghan and the Wild Men. My interest in race as a lens for this story certainly makes me skeptical of Tolkien using a functionally indigenous people for plot purposes, and there’s plenty to criticize here. Ghan-buri-ghan speaks a very broken Westron that makes him sound a lot less composed and sophisticated than Theoden, for one thing -- for another, even the idea that the Wild Men are good, kind folk who will save the Rohirrim despite their experience of oppression buys into the “noble savage” trope that’s too often used to ostensibly praise indigenous people without acknowledging much in the way of their genuine humanity. But I think there’s also some unexpectedly positive elements in their depiction -- Ghan-buri-ghan’s language may be a little simplistic, but he reveals intelligence immediately with an accurate accounting of Theoden’s six thousand riders. Theoden himself compliments him for shrewdness, and then later Merry hears the Woses speaking their own language to each other, which affirms for us that Ghan-buri-ghan’s simpler speech is simply that of a second-language speaker. Frodo can’t remember the Sindarin for “spider” -- I think we can give the Woses a break for not getting every nuance of Westron, you know? I don’t love the narrator’s choice of analogies -- when Ghan-buri-ghan catches a whiff of salt air in the wind, he’s described as reacting “like some startled woodland animal”, which is certainly not the language we’d have gotten for Aragorn or Legolas under the same circumstances. But I do like that he and his people are more attuned to the environment than the Rohirrim -- it will be hours before they recognize what he scented in the wind, and even then, Theoden and Eomer don’t realize it until Widfara rides forward to fill them in. The Woses are a tantalizing people, and while I get that it isn’t their story, I also wish we could know them better as more than a means to an end.
That takes us to the edges of the Pelennor, where the final paragraph of Chapter 5 is just breath-taking -- Theoden has called out some inspirational words to his men like Henry V (I think Tolkien must be drawing at least a little on the Crispin’s Day speech here) and blown a horn blast so great it shatters the instrument (which is hard to even imagine, frankly -- Theoden’s lung capacity must be incredible). And then he leaps into battle, and Tolkien’s eye for visual detail, always excellent, is wonderfully cinematic again -- “behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Eomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first eored like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Theoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them.” I mean, what on earth can I say after that? It’s like a passage from the Iliad once Achilles has accepted his fate and surges forth to fight even the river itself -- Theoden is in his final moments, but what miraculous and urgently important moments they are, disrupting Mordor’s assault on Minas Tirith just at the moment that they’ve broken through the gates. In the final chapter of Book III a lot of pieces were set in motion, and they’ve been flung in multiple different directions, but there’s something really marvelous about the way they are all poised to reassemble now.
And we’ll see them all come together in my next post, where I take in The Battle of the Pelennor Fields before turning to The Pyre of Denethor in Chapters 6 and 7 of Book V.