Book VI, Chapter 4: The Field of Cormallen & Chapter 5: The Steward And The King
I mentioned in my last post how glad I was that Sauron went into the void soiling his trousers, and there’s a nice glimpse of how truly, abjectly terrified he was at the opening of Chapter 4 -- the advancing armies of Mordor are suddenly disrupted by a “terrible call from the Dark Tower”, and as the Nazgul wheel and flee, all of the bravado and cruel certainty of Sauron’s troops vanishes, and they look into the eyes of some of the deadliest and most grimly determined soldiers Middle-earth has known. Tolkien takes very little time to play this out, which is a slightly missed opportunity for some of the soaring rhetoric we had when Rohan rode into the Pelennor from the north, but of course all of this fighting is fast becoming moot. The scene instantly becomes truly epic, as Gandalf turns from the commotion on the battlefield, leaving it to Aragorn, and calls to Gwaihir as the Eagles arrive. Gwaihir is, of course, one of the few throughlines to The Hobbit, the little novel that started this big war (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln), and there’s something harmonious and cool here about his appearance now: his forces carried Bilbo to safety long ago, moments after Bilbo had taken the Ring into his possession, and now he will see Frodo saved immediately after the Ring goes out of hobbit hands forever. I love the tone of this whole exchange -- Gwaihir saying he would bear Gandalf “even were you made of stone” and, when Gandalf asks for speed beyond that of the Nazgul, assuring him that “the North Wind blows, but we shall outfly it”.
Frodo and Sam’s “final conversation” on the slopes of Mount Doom is a little sad -- it seems that Frodo cannot even understand that victory has come, or that’s how I read it when he says “Hopes fail. An end comes. . . . We are lost in ruin and downfall, and there is no escape.” I mean, is he talking only of their impending death? I feel as though “hopes fail” and “we are lost in ruin” suggests more than that. But maybe I should give Frodo more space to grieve his own death, since even knowing that Sauron is dead would be cold comfort here: he has no idea how much damage has already been done, but he’s seen armies marching, and the news he had from Faramir implied the death of the rest of the Fellowship. Maybe it would be hard to believe in victory, at that point, even as you see Barad-dur falling. And then comes the eucatastrophe: “Side by side they lay; and down swept Gwaihir, and down came Landroval and Meneldor the swift; and in a dream, not knowing what fate had befallen them, the wanderers were lifted up and borne far away out of the darkness and fire.”
The scene where Sam wakes up in the field of Cormallen is another of Tolkien’s echoes, maybe one of the most explicit -- since this is an almost perfect mirror image of Book II, Chapter 1, Many Meetings, which opens with Frodo waking and asking groggily where he is, and being told by Gandalf that he is in the house of Elrond. The first person Frodo asks about is Sam. Here, Samwise wakes and asks the same question, and Gandalf informs him he is in the land of Ithilien -- and we can hardly be surprised at who Sam asks about first. I do love, though, his gasp of surprise first, as he realizes Gandalf is alive, and I love what he says: “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?” If only, Sam, if only. But the fact that The Lord of the Rings helps us imagine such an outcome is part of why it brings some hope and some solace to us readers who remain stuck here in a Middle-earth still beset by plenty of sorrows. The rest of Chapter 4 doesn’t require much comment: the scenes are sweet but they don’t ask me to dive too deeply. After the relentless despair of Mordor, they come as quite a relief.
Chapter 5, meanwhile, offers us some closure for two characters who have suffered greatly: Faramir by his father’s distrust and neglect, and Eowyn by her society’s. As has been true for some time, I find Tolkien’s depiction of Eowyn both laudable and disappointing: I love that he gives her space to speak as she likely would, given her critique of her society. But I hate that he is so unimaginative about how to provide opportunities for escape from the life laid out for her. Her briskness with Faramir is wonderful -- “I do not desire the speech of living men” is a phrase that I’m sure more than one Tolkien-loving woman has had tattooed on her arm, and it sure sets Faramir in his place. And then when he gives her this big wind-up speech about her beauty and his desolation and the fervent beating of his heart, etc., she tells him flat out, “look not to me for healing.” “I won’t be your Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” a more modern Eowyn might have said. “This isn’t Garden State.” I know, folks, I know -- she doesn’t really hold this line. But isn’t it lovely that she draws it at all? I see the real Eowyn there, remote and proud and a little terrible. What a queen she would have been.
Their conversation later that week, staring out at the Shadow, is significant: I love the little detail of their hands clasping even though neither of them know it, and I love Faramir’s comment, as they feel the shattering of Sauron from a great distance, that it reminds him of Numenor. I nearly invoked Numenor in the last post, when Frodo and Sam see Barad-dur fall, since there’s a lot of resonance here between Tolkien’s vision of the great wave that collapsed an entire civilization and what we see happening in Mordor. Amazon’s got a chance to do this right and goodness, I seriously doubt they’ll get it right but I feel forced to watch. Anyway, Faramir, the most Numenorean fellow we’ve yet met, is a good bridge between Tolkien’s larger mythos and this precise moment. And then the Sun’s unveiled -- Ted Naismith’s depiction of them gazing out into that moment is a nice one, I think, though I do generally find that depictions of Eowyn run a little too wispy and willowy for a shieldmaiden of the House of Eorl. Eowyn needs to have the kind of beauty that could bullrush a boxcar into derailment. http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/8/8b/Ted_Nasmith_-_The_Sun_Unveiled.jpg The following transition for the two of them is less successful for me. I don’t mind Eowyn’s heart changing, and I like Tolkien’s note that maybe she just finally understood a feeling she’d had all along. That has the ring of truth for me. But what doesn’t have the ring of truth is this full-scale rejection of battle to make herself a nurse in the Houses of Healing -- what explains that? And when she demands of Faramir why she should leave her people, he seems to just settle things with a kiss. I guess in the 1950s that seemed romantic but now it just seems a little gross to me. Grow up, Faramir. And Eowyn….I’m happy for you, girl, but I kind of wanted more for you. Not “more than Faramir” per se -- he seems like one of the more heroic fellows in the story, a very eligible bachelor -- but more than being some kind of cool exotic foreign bride who will specialize in growing flowers in Ithilien. I get that there’s some echoes here, too -- echoes of Galadriel, and the idea of a garden land made by humans to replace the land of Lorien which will soon fade. But it’s not super satisfying to me, and I can’t help feeling I’ve not been sold on how it’s satisfying to Eowyn.
There’s a strange happiness -- the strangeness I’ll unpack in a moment -- to all that unfolds thereafter. The joy of the city welcoming Aragorn is really wonderful to see, and as a guy who loves pageantry and ceremony and ritual, the elaborate encounter before the walls between Faramir and Aragorn (with a few others helping) that culminates in the King’s coronation is great for me. I like the exchanges we get between the various characters and Aragorn, who wants to start things off right, and the morning that Gandalf takes Aragorn up to the heights and talks about the age to come, etc., is very sweet. It’s nice to see these two have a really good conversation together as equals -- or if not equals, as guardians, the one stepping away from his duties and the other stepping into them, who can share an understanding of the burdens of power. Gandalf’s comment about how the tree’s lineage is more ancient than Aragorn’s own is just a nice tree observation from Tolkien, who sure does love trees. These two chapters, of course, take a couple of months to unfold now, and there’s where the strangeness comes in -- those of us who know the books know what’s waiting for the hobbits back in the Shire. If you know all of that, this luxurious and meandering pace towards the four of them going home is agonizing -- it feels like Gandalf’s learned nothing from last year (yes, it was only last year) when he left Frodo behind in the Shire rather than skipping parties and things and just getting stuff done. It feels like the hobbits have forgotten that also. I understand why everyone would feel a great relief, at this point, but still -- we’re whole chapters away from the Shire, and the knowledge of the danger and sadness lying back there waiting for relief is enough to sour some of these very sweet moments for me.
Well, if I’m going to get to the Shire, I’ve got to get the hobbits through their Many Partings and see them properly Homeward Bound in Chapters 6 and 7 of Book VI. That’ll be the next post, then, and I’ll see you there.