At the Turn of the Tide - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 3 Ch 5

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today we are doing a sidecast episode which is an author's journey through the Lord of the Rings and we have reached, in the Two Towers, chapter five. It's technically book three, but it's chapter five called the White Rider. Now, how would I characterize this chapter? It's quite a long one, but I would say it is held together by the theme of laughter and riddles. It falls into roughly four parts. So we start with the last stage of the hunt for Merry and Pippin, as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli they sort of pick up after the episode we've just had with Treebeard, trying to piece together what happened to their friends. Then we get the encounter with this mysterious man in the forest. We get a long exchange of news and some stories set within stories, and then we get the exit from Fangorn, the arrival of Shadowfax and moving on to the next part of the journey. That's all sort of one very fast piece at the end. 01:27 Okay, so what do we notice about this chapter? First of all, there's quite a what I would call these days a cinematic cut from being on the verge of invading Isengard to Gimli stamping his feet. My very bones are chilled, he says as he wakes up in the dawn. You can see how our filmmaker would deal with that. And of course Tolkien is writing in the age of cinema, so it is part of his sort of vocabulary or stylistic choices as a writer too. Anyway, we immediately get a reminder of the dynamics of the group banter that is developing between these three. So they are looking for the hobbits, and Aragorn is a little bit flummoxed as to how to find them on this battlefield. And Gimli is the one gently well it's sort of a gentle prod of encouragement but also a little bit of ribbing. He says a bent blade means a blade of grass. A bent blade is enough for Aragorn to read, and of course it proves to be so a little bit more than a bent blade. But we get a dropped mallon leaf here. 02:45 This is before we move into the reading of the signs. This is where we're picking up this important theme in this chapter of puzzles and riddles. They've been trying to read the signs ever since this volume started, but we also had the puzzle at the end of the previous chapter with them where the horses flee and they see an old man. That is a question that also is still in their minds. And this is also a sort of a craft issue here, that as an author you want to keep on creating questions but you also have to keep on giving answers. So if you think of something like the structure of a murder mystery, you have a big overarching question who done it? Why done it? Sometimes, but you also need to give an answer at the end and there'll be smaller versions of that throughout the course of your novel. So this is true in some epic fantasy like this. Tolkien is raising questions who was the man they saw at the fireside? What has happened to the hobbits? Are they dead? At this stage we, as the reader, know more than the characters know. We didn't originally, but we now do, so we're watching them work like a team of archaeologists, in a sense time team, picking up traces on the battlefield. 04:18 A couple of things I want to just outline here. One is that we get a glimpse of orc culture, the orc ascetic. The knife they find has a carved handle, with the hideous head, squinting eyes and leering mouth. I was thinking about this and about the world of the orcs that we don't see. To create this, someone has to carve it. Is there a workshop where all this happens? There is sort of so much that you can let your imagination run with on this. Do the orcs perceive this as ugly or beautiful? Do they see it as in the same way you sometimes in some cultures get the like gargoyles on churches, that kind of thing, the idea of use the thing to frighten your enemies? Anyway, I like those unanswered questions about the orcs and thinking about them. 05:09 We then get the fact here that Aragorn is able to read the riddles correctly. So they're all guessing how the mallon leaf got there and how the hobbits got free. Legolas has a go and he has a sort of sassy little number here when he says that the stopping to eat Lembas, that at least is enough to show that he was a hobbit without the melon leaf. But he can't solve the rest of the riddle about how they then got away. And then Aragorn is able to say look, probably this, this, this and this happened. And he raises another correct question about what was the motives within the orc group. That meant one of them split away and him running over it like this and the sort of, shall we say, and him running over it like this and the sort of, shall we say, geopolitics of the issue acts as a recap. It helps clarify for the reader what was going on within that Orc band. So it is a very useful purpose seeing someone else work it out. He's doing the job of the author, reminding us of the stakes and the various parties to this struggle. Aragorn and team then retrace the steps, and here we, as the readers, we are a step ahead. We've already seen this happen, but we like to see them getting it right as well. They go into Fangorn. 06:39 I love these little touches here. We've got Legolas listening to the trees, reminding us that he is a wood elf, and so I think this is the first time we've seen him other than in Lothlorien, but it's first time we've seen him in a sort of a huge, vast forest like this and he's able to read the signs. So he reads the signs in a different way from Aragorn, but he's able to say I do not feel the wood feels evil, I catch only the faintest echoes of dark places where the hearts of the trees are black. There is no malice near us, there is watchfulness and anger, but he's also able to raise the tension. For us. There is something happening inside or going to happen. Do you not feel the tenseness it takes? My breath and that's a reminder to all of us when we're writing is to keep raising the tension as you give answers. You've got to also in other ways turn up the tension so that your story never loses its narrative impulse forward. 07:45 It's interesting here that normally we hear of them as Legolas and Gimli, of course, but at this point Tolkien chooses to refer to them as the dwarf and the elf, and that's because he's telling us something about both races. He's telling us something about both races. First of all, gimli says this wood is lighter than Mirkwood, but it is musty and shabby. So that's the dwarf verdict. But for the elf, for elves in general, they see it completely differently. It is old, very old, so old that almost I feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with you children. It is old and full of memory. I could have been happy here if I had come in days of peace. So obviously we are laying ahead that this is one place he does go back to with Gimli at the end of the story, but it's where the two cultures can't see each other's value in a place. But the difference between this elf and this dwarf is they do try and see each other's idea of beauty and sense of awe and wonder. So we now are deep into the forest and they are following on the traces of Pippin and Merry. 09:08 I think there's a just to highlight here. There's an example of where the book Gimli has more dignity and is less comedic than the film version. When he's talking about he will be careful with his axe as he enters in, he says I will keep my axe loose in my belt, not for use on trees, he added, hastily looking up at the trees under which they stood. So they get the answer here to how many hobbits have escaped. Aragorn sees the footsteps of two different hobbits. He says the marks are two days old. It makes me wonder how you can tell that. Perhaps it's rained or leaves have fallen on it or something like that. Anyway, I'd love to know they have the same impulse as the hobbits to climb what is now called Treebeard's Hill. 09:58 And here Aragorn for the first time meets Entarks. Now this is fun because in terms of puzzling and riddling, we are the quiz masters with the answer. We know he's looking at Entmarks. We also get an interesting little what I would call one of Tolkien's map moments, where Legolas uses this vantage point to say how they could have come here directly from the river, but they've done a big circle. And this is exactly the point where those with maps turn to it and say oh yeah, we know where you are. So Tolkien drops those in with nice regularity. So we always feel we are in a real place following a real journey. So after the moment of the hunt, some answers have been given not all of them, that we've had a sort of new questions and some answers. 10:51 Then suddenly the tempo changes. Have a look at it. In my edition it's in the middle of page 95. And the tempo change comes with rapid dialogue and it's also the glimpse of the mysterious old man in the forest. So Legolas says and yet here we are and nicely caught in the net. Look, look at what Said Gimli there in the trees, where I have not elf eyes, hush, speak more softly. Look, that is very different from the dialogue we've had before, where they've been making much longer speeches about things, and suddenly it's as though the heartbeat is going, as is the character's heartbeat is raising. So you can do that with dialogue. Remember that dialogue is like action. It does that. 11:42 Keeping the reader on tenterhooks is important here, and their indecision about what to do about the man who is approaching builds and builds, and we see the man approaching through Aragorn's point of view. It looked like an old beggar man, walking wearily, leaning on a rough staff, his head was bowed and he did not look towards them. In other lands they would have greeted him with kind words, but now they stood silent, each feeling a strange expectancy. Something no, not someone. Something was approaching that held a hidden power or menace. 12:26 Tolkien is doing the balancing act here. He doesn't want to say relax everybody. It's Gandalf. He's keeping us uncertain and in a sense, gimli is us because he suddenly bursts out in a kind of get on with it, your bow, legolas, bend it, get ready. It is Saruman. He decides he's ready to shoot, but Legolas doesn't take a shot. And Aragorn is the one who says that's the right decision. Legolas is right, we may not shoot an old man. So, at unawares and unchallenged, whatever fear or doubt be on us, watch and wait. Watch and wait. Actually has a biblical cadence to it, doesn't it? It sort of feels like something from a psalm Wait for the Lord, that kind of idea. But here Legolas is showing that he is just. There is no extrajudicial killing, no random bombing of targets just because you think they might be bad guys. It is. We have to find out what's really going on here before we take action. 13:32 The encounter with this mysterious stranger is much longer If you've done this only from seeing it in a film version. It all happens very suddenly. Here it's much more gripping and less pantomime because it's about their confusion and their failure to recognize, and here again we get some religious overtones. In fact, this chapter is one of the ones which has the most most sort of presence of Tolkien's Catholicism in it, because Gandalf is an echo or a version of some idea of a resurrection. So of course the echoes are going to be here, and in this case Legolas, gimli and Aragorn are like Mary in the garden or the disciples on the road to Emmaus, because they do not at first recognize their returned friend until they get hints of them doing something familiar. Mary only recognizes Jesus when he says her name On the road to Emmaus it is when he breaks bread. 14:46 In Tolkien's version, or his echo of that story. They only recognize Gandalf when they hear his laughter. And the laughter is very important in this chapter because it is that eucatastrophe, as Tolkien put it, the triumph out of disaster, which leads to joy, and the laughter changes. So it starts off as laughter on an edge because, remember, as the writer Tolkien is still trying to keep us tense about the outcome of this encounter To Aragorn, the laughter he hears is not terror, but it's like the sudden bite of a keen air or the slap of a cold rain that wakes an uneasy sleeper. So remember that image, because it's going to be a variation of this returns. So we are dialing out of. This is a threat to the. This is something new and strange. Who can it be? That's if we're reading it the first time, second time through. It's just like the joy of opening a present that you know what it contains the most wonderful thing possible. 16:02 Tolkien, however, keeps the oddness going possible. Tolkien, however, keeps the oddness going, and one of the ways he does this is that Gandalf himself isn't being cruel. He also doesn't quite know who he is with these people. Yet it's as though he's coming up in a decompression chamber is what I was thinking. He's rising to the surface of his old memory and we see him do this. He has been in Lothlorien with Galadriel and he's laying on the top of a mountain in a kind of Maya version of himself, the sort of demigod form, spirit version of what a wizard is, and he's gradually becoming more and more human, incarnated, I suppose, to use a religious term. And eventually, as they speak, Aragorn gets his joyful revelation and he says what veil was over my sight? Again, that has there's echoes in various passages in the New Testament where they have that what veil was over my sight, where the scales drop from your eyes. That's a Paul reference. 17:14 But what I love most about this is what I was saying about Gandalf also coming to this revelation point. When Aragorn calls him well, first of all, let's see, first of all Legolas calls him Mithrandir, which is his name amongst the elves and he's familiar with that because that is what Galadriel and others call him. And then Aragorn calls him Gandalf and we get this phrase Gandalf, the old man, repeated as if recalling from old memory a long disused word. So it's not that long ago that this word was used. But Gandalf has dropped out of time and memory and he's now coming back. So it makes sense to him that it was a long time ago. Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf. And the question here is is he going to become Gandalf again? The next step is yes, yes, you may still call me Gandalf. So it's as though he's taking on the mantle of that, the role that he had before. 18:22 This chapter is full of the most wonderful phrases. He goes on to say be merry, we meet again at the turn of the tide. So we are in a pivotal point in this story and Gandalf is telling us we are. This is the fight back. So in terms of the Second World War, this is what happens after dunkirk. It's the the next few years, the arrival of america in in the war, that kind of thing. So we're not at the end, but we're at that point where it begins to push back the other way. 18:58 Gimli in this chapter is really hung up on getting it wrong about thinking Gandalf was Saruman. But Gandalf has some words of comfort for him here. He says indeed, I am Saruman. Saruman as he should have been, because he has taken over the status of the white, which is more than just a badge of the head of the order of wizards. It is actually a kind of being which Saruman has broken away from by wanting to be Saruman of many colors. And Gandalf goes on to say I have forgotten much that I thought I knew and learned again much that I had forgotten, which in itself sounds like a riddle. So I said the theme of this chapter was all about puzzles. 19:48 What we discover here is that Gandalf is the biggest puzzle of them all. We've been led not to answering the question about where Merry and Pippin are. It's actually who Gandalf is and what role he has to play. Is the real puzzle? Actually who Gandalf is and what role he has to play is the real puzzle, though that's not entirely answered, because the real answer lies in the world beyond Middle-earth, the world of the gods and Iluvatar, and things which a Middle-earth story doesn't really answer, but we only sense. We get lots of other kinds of answers, though, and the first one of those is how Gandalf has kept up with what's been going on and the traces the interweaving that we mentioned in earlier chapters begins to. You know, the knot is tied off on them. We get to see that the eagle that Legolas saw on a number of occasions was indeed sent by Gandalf. 20:46 But when you have a character who comes in like this, who is so powerful, you don't want to make them Superman, you don't want to give them too much power. They have to have kryptonite to make them work. And so Gandalf knows a lot, but he also doesn't know some things. He is able to sense where the ring is the ring has now passed beyond my help but he didn't know about Sam, for example. He can see how a sore trial it was for Boromir, but he didn't know that that happened to Boromir until Aragorn tells him, doing this audacious move think how audacious it is to bring back someone from the dead, which is basically what has happened to Gandalf here. Not quite dead because he's not quite human, but that is the effect. It is very bold and very brave to do this. 21:45 But it isn't him riding on a white charger to sweep all before him like with some magic spell. He has to come and enter in the thick of it again. He has to get down to the granular level of dealing with people, otherwise the story would just implode at this point, because Tolkien has daringly given us a big plus point, turned the tide, but he hasn't yet given us the answers as to how that tide is being turned. We get some sense though, and we have this wonderful little note here, because Gandalf is being teasingly cryptic. He says that the arrival of the hobbits, their coming, was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains. Just a little sidebar here when Tolkien as a young man went on a walking holiday in the Alps, there was a rockfall where a very big rock fell between him and the person next in line behind him, which could have killed either of them, but they escaped. So he knows about mountains and rocks. 22:56 Question is Gandalf even sassier when he comes back? He's been known for his sharp tongue. Even sassier when he comes back, he's been known for his sharp tongue. But he keeps handing them out here, these sassy comments. So Aragorn says you've not changed, you speak in riddles. Gandalf says riddles no, for I was talking aloud to myself, a habit of the old. They choose the wisest person present to speak to. So you know he's teasing them. But note here the return of laughter, because after that there's this sentence that says he laughed, but the sound now seemed warm and kindly as a gleam of sunshine. 23:38 Tolkien here has used again the idea of weather. So Aragorn's first mention of the laughter was as a bite or a slap of you know weather to wake you up. Here you're now basking in it in the presence of this person. So you can use this idea of the same image but change the temperature of it. Weather is obviously a good way of doing it. 24:00 Gandalf here gives another recap. So we had a recap of the signs that reminded us of the stakes among the orcs and what happened to Merry and Pippin. Here we get the much bigger recap of the story. If you've got the Peter Jackson extended edition of the Two Towers, there is actually a scene which was put into the extended edition of the Two Towers. There is actually a scene which was put into the extended edition of Gandalf and Aragorn standing against a sort of black background basically talking about this. It was cut from the film because it isn't a filmic way of doing things, but it is a novelistic way of doing things because Gandalf is able to lay out how he sees things and we are interested in his mentality and how he puts things together because it's his wisdom. 24:50 We want this information at this point and he's particularly interesting here on the role of Saruman because he's talking about how the actions that the enemy have taken have their own undoing within them. Actions that the enemy have taken have their own undoing within them, he says. Yet a treacherous weapon is ever a danger to the hand. So by following his own agenda to try and get the ring, saruman has undone both, potentially both himself, definitely, but also potentially Sauron, the party in whom he had an uneasy alliance. And I'm sure it can't have escaped Tolkien's thought here of the shifting alliances in the Second World War, for example Russia and Germany being in partnership and then being enemies and so on. So he was aware of how this plays out in the real world geopolitics. He's reflecting it in his fantasy world. 25:48 Gandalf gives the verdict that the hobbits have arrived in the nick of time. So between them our enemies have contrived only to bring Merry and Pippin with marvellous speed and in the nick of time to Fangorn, where otherwise they would never have come at all. So it's the unintended good consequences of the acts of evil parties. Here we do get some answers again, talking about this being riddles and answers. Gandalf himself says that, starved of information because Aemma and his men had killed all the orcs who were coming back, he himself ventured out to spy on what had happened and Gimli is very happy not to be wrong. So he settles in his mind and Gandalf confirms, kind of he guesses, that it was Saruman. So this is a longer conversation threaded through this conversation, but I think we do get the answer. It's not 100% but it's almost 100% that it was a version of Saruman they saw the night before. 26:58 Also, note that we have here entering the name and naming of the Nazgul creatures who are going to become very important for the rest of the novel. They've been seen across the river, been unleashed Soon. Their terror will overshadow the last armies of our friends, cutting off the sun. The winged creatures with the Nazgul on them. I was reflecting here that the progress of the Nazgul from being black riders to being riding on winged creatures is a little potted version of the development of modern warfare from having cavalry as your major offensive weapon to having an air force weapon to having an air force. And Tolkien lived through the development of aircraft in the first world war from being a novelty, a novelty idea when the wright brothers invented powered flight in that way, very rapidly during the first world war it became a means of bombing the enemy. So he would have seen that in the trenches. And of course you're in a whole new world of much more sophisticated aircraft by a time of the Second World War where Tolkien himself is on fire watch in Oxford in case the bombing raids reached Oxford. 28:16 Gandalf tells them that Merry and Pippin have been picked up literally by the Ents. It's interesting here the reaction of the companions. Aragorn talks about Ents as a legend. He's heard stories. Didn't think they were still around. Legolas talks about them as a memory. He knew they were still around, but they were a memory. And this reminds us that there is this half world that elves live in. When they are at rest they walk in memories as though they are real. 28:52 Gandalf goes on to call the Ents, or Treebeard in particular, the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the sun upon this middle earth. Okay, let's unpack this a little bit. I thought Tom Bombadil was the oldest living thing. Yes, potentially, but Tom Bombadil is more like a kind of a bit more like the Maya. He's the sort of spirit, a creature of that, who seems to be almost beyond not just middle earth but the whole of the world here. So I think that gandalf, unless it's a mistake by talking potentially, but I think the point here that gandalf is making is that the Ents are parts of Middle-earth, just that part, the world here, not the Undying Lands over in the West. And while the Valar, some of whom are in the Undying Lands, are obviously older than the world itself, we're talking about just Middle-earth. That's how I make sense of this. When talking about what the Ents are about to do, earth, that's how I make sense of this. 30:02 When talking about what the ants are about to do, there's a little discussion about who is dangerous. I like this one, because kandalf tells them that everyone is dangerous. I am very dangerous, more dangerous than anything you will ever meet unless you be brought alive before the seed of the dark lord. So we're getting a sense of the hierarchy here. Aragornorn is dangerous, legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, gimli, son of Gloin, for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly, the forest of Fangorn is perilous, not least to those who are too ready with their axes, and Fangorn himself, that's Treebeard, is perilous too, yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless. So everybody is dangerous, gimli, and of course you can imagine the glint in the eye as he says that and he goes on to say that, thanks to the arrival of the hobbits, a thing is about to happen that has not happened since the Elder Days. 31:00 The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong Wonderfully stirring speech that is. What will they do, asked Legolas in astonishment. I do not know, said Gander. Remember, he's not Superman, he's not God, he's not all-knowing, but he knows something's happening, but not what. And that's about as high as you can get as a character in a novel without making them into something that sucks all the energy out of an adventure. 31:30 I want to just do a little sidebar here on the use of line breaks. This chapter in a modern novel probably could be divided in lots of different chapters, because there are moments where we reach a peak and the way Tolkien gives us a moment to appreciate that peak is to give a line break. So it's like different scenes almost, and that's very good, because if you run straight on that underlining of what the end's about to do could be lost. But then we modulate into another phase in this conversation where Gandalf sits down and we return to the riddle about him after hearing about the Ents, who are also a riddle because we don't know what they're going to do, and we get some beautiful descriptions of the new Gandalf. 32:25 He looks like his hands are filled with light as a cup is with water. He's also able to look directly at the sun. Don't try that at home. He tells them that he is now the white. But hope isn't victory, remember, keep the stakes high. And he says that black is mightier still. He can't just go in and fight it out. He has to. He needs allies. He isn't. In fact, he's not the one who's actually in the fight. It's Frodo, isn't it? So that's the wonderful irony of this story. 33:05 Note here that there is a moment of very brief temptation where Gandalf wonders have I made a mistake? If I'd taken the ring, I could have been as powerful. But then he realizes that it's gone beyond him. The deadly peril, as he puts it, of him taking that route is removed. But it's good that they still get this fact that he isn't so sure of his own moves that he doesn't regret things he's done. We get another change of direction here. At this point, gandalf tells Aragorn that the next stage of their particular journey is to go to Edoras, and he needs to do that, both because of the geopolitics of the situation, but also because he gave his word and these things are now. There is a new, firm direction. That stage, the hunt for the hobbits, is finished. We're now moving on. 34:00 But interesting here that we get this moment of what I would say like a set piece which in a film, would be set to swelling music. It's on page 104. So we get this moment where we get the two heroes standing side by side. Yes, we will set out together, sir aragorn, but I do not doubt that you will come there before me if you wish. He rose and looked long at Gandalf. The others gazed at them in silence as they stood there facing one another. The grey figure of the man, aragorn, son of Arathorn, was tall and stern as stone, his hand upon the hilt of his sword. He looked as if some king out of the mists of the sea had stepped onto the shores of lesser men. Before him stooped the old figure, white shining now, as if with some light kindled within, bent, laden with years, but holding a power beyond the strength of kings. 34:55 So it's like a moment where a lot of writers would end the chapter. But we don't get that here. We actually get another line break because there's still more to say. What we get instead is the Balrog tale, and I think this is because Tolkien realised, in this riddle and answer game he's playing with us, that he needs to provide the answer about what happened to Gandalf or the reader will not be interested in the journey to Edoras. That itch has to be scratched, shall we say. It's put in the way that the characters within the tale want the answers, but I feel sure that it's actually a reader demand here and we get the wonderful tale within a tale of Gandalf saying what happened when he fell down into the abyss. 35:47 The cadence of this story is just beautiful. Do listen to versions where it's read out, any of the audio versions. It is wonderfully done. Starts at the place long time I fell to a place where time is not counted, to a place where time is not counted. It has a legendary and epic cadence. I was looking for words. 36:12 I was thinking well, it's Miltonic, from the poet John Milton, who Tolkien would have read many, many times. I think CS Lewis calls him the church organ poet, the one that thunders away. It's also elemental. If you look at it, you've got fire and ice and snow and darkness and water. It has that feel of an absolutely elemental battle that's taking place and you get some wonderful names that really fit the location. So they go down into the depths and they go up to a place called Zirak Zigil, which is pointy, like the actual place. It is right up on the peak. 36:54 Tolkien is so brilliant with his names, of course, but let me point out the absolute Tolkien moment here, which is within this Miltonic elemental story. He bursts the bubble, gandalf suddenly, you've guessed it. He suddenly laughs. But what would they say in song, he says there's no one to see it. Those that looked up from afar thought that the mountain was crowned with storm, thunder. They heard and lightning. They said smote upon Celebedil and leapt back broken into tongues of fire. So those are probably the elves down in Lothlorien who saw this and Gandalf's sort of saying well, let's get this into perspective. What was a big thing with me looks like a thunderstorm to someone else. And that ability to see how others see him is what humanizes Gandalf. 37:51 And his story ends with the great words that he has come back until my task is done. So he's been sent back. He says after that time where he passes out of thought and time. Those words on the top of page 106 are all just worth reading, they're so wonderful. Naked, I was sent back for a brief time until my task is done, and naked I lay upon the mountaintop. The tower behind me crumbled into dust, the window gone, the ruined stair was choked with burned and broken stone. I was alone, forgotten, without escape, upon the hard horn of the world. And so it goes on, wonderful poetic writing. 38:38 And note that we've got the idea that he was sent back, and if you're sent, it denotes a sender. But Tolkien never tells us who sent Gandalf, and this is one of the things he says in his letters is that he removed all the religious, christian overtones in his story. And it has this wonderful deepening effect because the mystery and the awe and the wonder is maintained by not giving us easy answers. So it's no Iluvatar sent me back or one of the Valar sent me back. We don't get the answer. We just get this mysterious idea that there is forces in this world who are paying attention to what is happening and intervening in the shape of Gandalf, without pulling the strings. 39:28 In an obvious way, gandalf is taken by Egil, the favorite escape mechanism, to Caras Galathon, and he is healed there and he has reciprocal counsel with the elves. I like the fact that it's not just him telling the elves or the elves telling him. They talk and they share, and he comes with yet more riddles, and these ones are ones which are not given answers until later in the story. So we've answered some of the riddles earlier, but we're now given a whole new batch. Aragorn gets a riddle which leads him to choose a difficult path to get to Minas Tirith. Legolas gets a warning and it's really about death and leaving and departure. So it's a personal one. And even Gimli's message is a little bit of a riddle because it says have a care to lay thine axe to the right tree. That's the lesson he already knew as he enters Fangorn. But it has the idea of there are more than one kind of tree. And he says he actually realizes it's not at all about trees but about who his enemy is. Since Gandalf's head is now sacred, let us find one that is right to cleave. So he's off to find Orcs and Saruman or someone else to attack. 41:00 And now we move rapidly into the last part of this chapter, which is getting on with the journey to Edoras and the wrapping up in the cloak is like the drawing a veil ending that part of the story, smothering the white light so that we can get on with the everyday. But the arrival of the everyday is done with the dramatic arrival of Shadowfax. He has a great entrance, one of the best entrances in the novel, because we see him coming from afar and everyone gives a verdict on him. Actually, I don't think Gimli does, but Aragorn hears him, legolas sees him and then Gandalf says that is Shadowfax. He is the chief of the Myrras, lord of horses, and not even Theoden, king of Rohan, has ever looked on a better. Does he not shine like silver and run as smoothly as a swift stream? So giving descriptions to a character is a way of lightening the narration. You don't have to put that in there. Gandalf's told us what we're seeing arriving towards us. 42:07 Note that there's different ways of communicating with horses. Here Gandalf talks to the horses like Legolas does. We saw Legolas talk to Arrod earlier, this sort of special way of treating animals. Treebeard mentions that the elves woke up the trees by talking to them. So it's a sort of similar idea of this connection between natural things. But also there's a special relationship here between Gandalf and Shadowfax, which is thought he bent his thought and summoned Shadowfax that way. So he's obviously a horse above all other horses. 42:52 And just finally, in what has been quite a long ride through the White Rider chapter, I just want to point out there is a nice, much neglected probably you've overlooked it paragraph right at the end. It's as they journey away, because we tend to think of Rohan now, thanks to having seen it in films, as just lots of grass. For many hours they rode on through the meads and riverlands. Often the grass was so high that it reached above the knees of the riders and their steed seemed to be swimming in a grey-green sea. Love, that inland sea of grass. They came upon many hidden pools and broad acres of sedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs. But Shadowfax found the way and the other horses followed in his swathe. So Rohan is a nuanced country. It's not just grassland, it has bogs, it has sedge and it feels more real as a result, not as simple as ones that we've seen in a sort of filmic version of it. 44:03 And then we use the sunset as the connection to war. Again, this has been done in other chapters and it's a favourite move, I think, of Tolkien. So as the sun, red fire sinks into the grass low upon the edge of sight, shoulders of the mountains glinted red. Upon either side, a smoke seemed to rise up and darken the sun's disc to the hue of blood, as if it had kindled the grass as it paused down under the rim of earth. So there's the gap of Rohan, and Legolas can see smoke. What may that be, he asks. Battle and war, said Gandalf, ride on. So we know that Merry and Pippin have arrived at Isengard at the end of the previous chapter. We're now getting a hint of what might be happening there, but we're not given the answer. We're given the riddle, we're given the hint and we have to wait to find the answers. So there we are. That's the chapter of laughter and riddles, and the next one we reach the king of the Golden Hall. Thank you for listening. 45:19 - Speaker 2 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide.