Dead Faces in the Water! - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 2

0:04 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 have a special Sidecast where we take an author's journey through the Lord of the Rings, by which we mean we're looking at it from how it was written rather than the sort of minor points of Elvish or that kind of thing. We have reached in our journey chapter two of book four, that is the second half of The Two Towers, and it's a chapter called The Passage of the Marshes.

0:46 Now, when I came to write this down, I realised I'd misremembered it as The Passage of the Dead Marshes, because it is indeed the Dead Marshes, but the chapter title is actually just the simple Marshes. And if you're reading it for the first time, that holds back that there are dead things in the water. So I just wanted to try and refresh our memory as to what it was like to read this for the first time. Looking at how this chapter is divided, it's one of the longer ones. I actually have read it and also listened to the Andy Serkis version of this, partly because there's so much Gollum in it, so why wouldn't you?

1:29 And it is over an hour reading time, so it's one of the longer chapters, but not as long as The Council of Elrond, never forget that two-hour mammoth chapter. Anyway, I would say that it is divided mainly by places, this one. So we go from the gully, which is the sort of last part of the Emyn Weal, that rocky landscape they've been clambering around in for what seems like forever. Then the marshes themselves, then there's this pit, horrible pit at the end of the marshes, and then there's a sort of moving on.

2:10 It's a very small bit where they're moving on from the pit, haven't quite reached the gates yet, but they're pretty much in sight of the rampart walls of Mordor. One of the things just to note here is that Gollum has been here before, as he refers to that a number of times. And so we are in the area where the film The Hunt for Gollum will probably be spending some of its time, because this is a place with layers of history, as is so much of Middle-earth. When you're thinking about the world building that Tolkien does, this is a good example to have in mind. So you've got very recent history of Gollum's recent journeys in this area, but it of course goes back to stories of the Battle of Dagorlad, which is the origin of the that they later see, which is thousands of years, 1,500, a long time ago before one of the battles in front of the gates.

3:11 And of course, there is going forward, another battle at the gates of Mordor that's going to happen later in Return of the King. So there is a sense of history rhyming here. It repeats itself, but has a different outcome. Anyway, that's the sort of setup of this chapter. I would say the most important thing from the author's journey point of view is looking at how Tolkien is characterising Gollum. Gollum is the star of these chapters, there's no getting away from it. He's the star really until we meet Faramir. He's acting here as the conscientious guide. He's casting around for traces. He's often compared to a dog. It happened in the previous chapter and it's happening again in this one.

3:55 Repeatedly, they keep going back to this idea of a dog. And casting around for traces is like the bloodhound sniffing out what's the right direction. There's a weird connection here, which I hadn't thought of until I was concentrating on this, to how Gandalf finds his way through Moria. He also sniffs the air. So clearly, it's a good thing for a guide to do. When we look at Gollum here, he's full of contradictions. I made a little list of the ways he appears. I've written down drama queen, jester, cynic, villain, and child, and dog, as we've just heard.

4:41 The childishness comes in him singing this little song. But it's like a child in a horror movie. You know that there's something off about them, something wrong. It also gives a link back to Bilbo. It's the reference to the riddle game that they play in the Misty Mountains, one of those connections that weaves the Hobbit into The Lord of the Rings. Some of you will be familiar with the latter part of this song, which is about catching a fish so juicy sweet, because it's transposed in the Peter Jackson film from here to a little bit later on, when they're in the pool beneath the hideout that Faramir's men are using in Ithilien.

5:36 If you're listening to it, it's quite fun because Andy Serkis sings it again. Just another reason to have a listen to that audio version. This chapter is largely from Sam's point of view. If you've listened to what I said about the previous chapter, I mentioned how Frodo begins to disappear. This is actually the chapter where he really starts to vanish under the burden of the ring. A lot of the narrative weight is carried by Sam's point of view. Here's the one who notes the change of behavior, these mercurial changes of behavior in Gollum, largely.

6:21 When Gollum mentions Bilbo, there's this sentence, "'A glint came into his eyes, and Sam, catching the gleam in the darkness, thought it far from pleasant.'" Understatement. The rule seems to be, more or less, that when there is a green gleam, that kind of gleam, it's the Gollum villain. The paler light is a more childlike, wanting-to-please Smeagol. They're flipping between the two, as we see in a minute, when we get to that standout conversation of this split personality.

7:04 But that's not yet. Sam, at this point, and it's referred to later in the chapter, he is thinking about their threat in a simple way. Tolkien describes him as having a simple mind, but it's not meant as an insult. It's meant that he calls a spade a spade. He is thinking here that they could be food for Gollum, which of course is true. They could indeed be food. That note is struck a number of times. There is also another way of telling who's in control of Gollum.

7:47 On the whole, when he talks about his unitary self, that's, I will stay here, it tends to be Smeagol. When it's we, he tends to be shifting over into Gollum. Not always, but you'll see that's largely what is happening. One of the things that Gollum reveals is that he is scared of the sun. He wants to only travel in the darkness. You get this beginning of him being this more cooperative Smeagol. He says, nice, sensible hobbits, stay with Smeagol. Note how his speech is characterized by S and F sounds.

8:30 It all goes with the whistling, cringy voice. When you get the Gollum, you often get harder, more cracking sounds. Let's have a look at that a bit later on. Anyway, so he's being more Smeagol here. This comes to moving on from Sam fearing they're going to be food to working out how much food they've got left. Frodo is the one who offers some of their lembas, which Smeagol tries and of course hates. This is where we get Smeagol the absolute drama queen. You try to choke poor Smeagol, dust and ashes, he can't eat that.

9:12 It goes on. He coughs and he spits. Then he goes, nice hobbits, Smeagol has promised he will starve. He will starve poor thin Smeagol. This was one of the things that the film did very well because he was rolling around on the floor, so to say, how awful it all was. Complete drama queen at this point. I was reminded here of the last battle and I think perhaps this is something that C.S. Lewis might have picked up or it may be one of the sources for what happens to the dwarves when they go through the stable. In the last battle, when they're in the stable, they think they're not in a beautiful land but in a horrible mucky stable with only turnips and rotten veg to eat when there's actually a feast.

10:04 The idea there is that some states of mind, some sinful or evil people cannot see the good that's in front of them. Frodo says this. He says to Gollum, it would do you good if you try, but perhaps you can't even try, not yet anyway. That not yet anyway betrays the fact that Frodo does believe in redemption. He wants to believe that Gollum can be saved. It's an important hope for him to carry him on this journey. Then we get one of these references to Gollum being like a dog.

10:44 There's lots of them. I won't pick all of them out, but this is one that I particularly liked. Once he refuses the lembas, he watches them like an expectant dog by a diner's chair, thinking that maybe they've got something else hidden. Anybody who's a dog owner knows what that looks like. In the discussion about Gollum, and Sam is not worried about him being upset by anything he says, Sam is the practical one, but Frodo is astute. He knows, he understands what's going on. The way this was done in the films is much more contentious, so much more arguing about it.

11:26 Here, it's more of a discussion because this is really a chapter of the changing power dynamics between three people. It's not exactly a love triangle. It's a triangle of faith and trust and mistrust. Probably is a better way of thinking about it. For filmic purposes, they push it to make it so they break up Frodo and Sam, which doesn't happen in the book. So it's good to actually try and delete all that from your mind and reset it and read it how it's written in the book because Frodo isn't ignorant here. He is astute and he's trying to beyond this present moment.

12:08 He's actually foreseen where they're going in a way that Sam hasn't yet. This little episode in the gully is resolved by them falling asleep. There's this nice little detail here, which sums up their different behaviors. Frodo's just gone to sleep. Sam prods Gollum gently and then whispers in his ear, fish. There's a note saying he restrains his thoughts about using his sword and the rope on him. Sam is under orders not to hurt Gollum, but also remember he only tied the rope lightly. So he may be saying things, but he would never carry them out as is proved later on when he spares Gollum at the key moment.

12:52 Sam's intention to stay awake doesn't work out. When he wakes up having slept well, I like this fact that he curses himself with various reproachful names from the gaffer's large paternal word horde. So word horde is a very sort of sound like an Anglo-Saxon word, but you know exactly what's going on here. And this is the association with Sam is always goes back to the shire, the gaffer, his potatoes, that is the grounding. And one of the things I would say about the world building here is that the contrast in the places is always made to by evoking something else.

13:37 And there's this hint of the shire with Sam always. And you'll see this chapter refers back to earlier places in the chapter to say, there was that, but this is worse. There was that, but this is worse. It's like a link, paper chain link across this chapter. In terms of the power dynamics, Sam is really the quartermaster. He's the one counting the food, saying how much have we got left? Will it get us back? But here there is an enormous change. It's one of those break moments in the narrative, which is sometimes easy to miss. It's on page 231 of the three volume version of Lord of the Rings, where Frodo's language to Sam shifts because he's saying to Sam that actually we're on a suicide mission, basically.

14:35 But Samwise Gamgee, my dear Hobbit, here's the change. Indeed, Sam, my dearest Hobbit, friend of friends, not servant, friend of friends. I do not think we need give thought to what comes after that. Very moving. He's saying it's about achieving the mission, not about our own survival. And Sam's response is very touching. He reminds me here of a disciple to John the Baptist or Jesus, that kind of figure, the faithful servant with the person on this mission.

15:16 And he reaches out and touches Frodo affectionately. He's weeping. And then, before we get too maudlin and sentimental, he gets up, sort of clears his throat, stamps around and tries to whistle to hide his emotion. That sort of hiding the emotion is that restraint of the stiff upper lip. He's not an English gent, obviously, but there is that sort of restraint of an English man, which he is reflecting here. He's not weeping and wailing. He's holding it back, which makes us admire him all the more because he's being strong, when he's just realizing that he is very likely to die.

15:58 So, when Gollum comes back, you get this question, trust Smeagol now, which is Gollum's question. And that really is the question that presides in this chapter and in the next few chapters. Do they trust Smeagol? Well, Sam, clearly not. Frodo, to a point. Then one of the unusual features in this chapter compared to the book is we get one of the really short passages of description, but separated out by line breaks. It's quite striking when you find it on the page. And this is the description of the marshes as they approach them.

16:43 I'll just read it. It's only two or three sentences. On either side and in front, wide fens and mires now lay, stretching away southward and eastward into the dim light, mist curled and smote from dark and noisome pools. The reek of them hung stifling in the air. Far away, almost due south, the mountain walls of Mordor loomed, like a black bar of rugged clouds floating above a dangerous fog-bound sea. So, what is happening here? Though visually, that separated paragraph is to make us almost stop and look at this scenery as the hobbits are.

17:27 It forces you to pause and take it all in. One of the distinctive things that happens in Tolkien's passages of description are these moments of looking out across larger, vaster landscape. We've referred to it before, but there's this idea that Tolkien loved, the idea of the vistas beyond the vista, the places you don't see. And this is one of those. We never actually really get to see that part of Mordor over the mountains there. We go further south when we're in Mordor. So, there's places we glimpse but don't ever see.

18:09 And that gives the sense of the expanse of Middle-earth and gives the depth to the world-building. And now we enter properly into the marshes. Well, what are these marshes? I was reading in the Companion to the Lord of the Rings, which I've been referring to, Hammond and Scull, thank you very much. And they suggest a number of sources. They refer to H. Rider Haggard's She, which we know Tolkien admired. There's an old Gothic source, which I think he would be thrilled to know about because of his love for the Gothic literature. But also, of course, there is the connection to the battle landscapes of Northern France.

18:51 And they quote two particular ones that are very close to the descriptions here by an officer called Alfred Bundy and the famous poet Siegfried Sassoon. But of course, Tolkien wouldn't have needed to have read those diaries of poems because he was there and he saw it himself. And this whole chapter really is more literature when there comes to a lineup of the great works of the First World War. Lord of the Rings should be in it, really. The Hobbits are now wholly in the hands of Gollum. And this is a very long strung out jeopardy.

19:32 Remember, there always has to be something at stake in your story when you're writing. And in this one, it's the trust Sméagol or not question. And perhaps we are as readers thinking, when is going to portray them or if at all? But I think it's more of a question of when from the way he behaves, the sense that he is barely restrained by this frail promise. We get a shift here as well, where we move from Sam's point of view to a narratorial point of view, which isn't available to the Hobbits. Because they don't know. They don't know that just over the ridge is the hard to Mordor and that this was the field of the ancient battle.

20:17 So there's a moment here where we're moving to the narratorial stance. But remember, the concept here is these are the reminiscences of the Hobbits later put together by Bilbo and Frodo. So a later reflection on this, though it feels a bit like talking to me. And there is a wonderful summing up of their dilemma by Sméagol. This is where you've got a passage creating character, developing character, but also telling us what's going on. And it's just brilliantly done. This is at the top of page 233, if you've got the same edition as me, because they're basically saying, can't we go some other way?

21:03 And Gollum, this is where he gets to be the sarcastic. Well, he's making a joke at their expense, really. But it's very black humour. He says, oh, no need at all to go that way. Not if the Hobbits want to reach the Dark Mountains and go to see him very quick. And he goes on to say, to stress that the eye is watching. This connects to a later passage about what Frodo is feeling. It's a little glimpse into the back story of how Sméagol was caught himself. And he's saying he now knows other ways. It's I know other ways, which possibly, Sméagol speaking, more difficult, not so quick, but better if we don't want him to see.

21:50 Follow Sméagol. He can take you through the marshes, through the mists, nice thick mists. Follow Sméagol very carefully and you may go a long way, quite a long way, before he catches you. Yes, perhaps. Before he catches you. Yes, perhaps. Keep undermining. This isn't a sense of a quest that's inevitably going to succeed. And Sméagol is part of the undermining of the foundations of their hope. So they go off in single file, Gollum, Sam, Frodo. I'm just underlining that here because there is a change that comes later when on the other side or getting towards the other side of these marshes, which further emphasises the shift from Frodo being in control to Sam being more in the forefront.

22:40 Sam has to look after Frodo and they shift position. But let's have a look at this wonderful descriptive prose of what it's like to be out on the marshes. And it's done by summoning up what isn't there. Cold, clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark, greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers. Like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers.

23:23 So there's almost like a ghost of summer present in this haunted place. Wonderful evocation. And that contrast of what's not there is further evoked by mention of the sun. Because the next paragraph goes, far above the rot and vapours of the world, the sun was riding high and golden now in a serene country with its own floors of dazzling foam. But only a passing ghost of her could they see below. So again, this idea of they're in a world of ghosts. Even the sun feels like a ghost. I had to stop and think. I was trying to work out if Tolkien ever flew.

24:05 Answers on a postcard because I'm not sure that he did. But we know that his son was in the RAF, Christopher. And there were obviously people have written about flying. So he, Tolkien himself, didn't have that experience which most of us have of looking out of the aeroplane to the sun being above and the clouds looking beautiful. But underneath we know that the world below is experiencing a grey and gloomy day. I have to keep thinking about that. Did he ever fly? Can't think that he did, but I might be wrong. One of the descriptions here of them moving through this landscape is of the three of them together, squatting like little hunted animals in the borders of the great brown reed thicket.

24:59 This is just a reminder that hobbits aren't human. There is an element where they're more like, of course, they're a kind of human, but they hide quickly. They've got these hairy feet. There's something more creaturely about them. And I remember listening to Martin Freeman talking about how he played Bilbo. I think it must be in the extended edition extras. And he thought about him as a hedgerow creature. And you can see that in his performance. He sort of slightly like a mole or like a wind in the willows creature aspect to his performance when he's in Bag End.

25:43 It's quite interesting to sort of just have that sort of reminder that these creatures are also in their own way, part of this landscape, a little different. And that's the moment where it just pops up again. One of the most difficult things when you're writing a big epic like this is keeping up with the chronology, particularly when you've got multiple different stories. So Tolkien had a scheme where he wrote everything down as to what was happening. You shifted things about to try and make connections. So in terms of where we are in the year, this is the end of February moving into March.

26:24 February has 30 days in the Shire calendar, all months do. And so we're moving from that end of winter into an uncertain spring. And we'll see later that he tries to connect it to the other stories that are happening by the overflight of the ringwraiths, but he doesn't quite manage to find it at the right time. So he has to abandon the idea. But anyway, let's carry on looking at what's going on here. So we've got now into the deeper into the marshes. And we've got Sam as the one spotting the pale sheen of the lights, which Gollum warns them are Trixie lights.

27:09 This, of course, is the Will-o'-the-Wisp, the idea of the marsh gases releasing pale flames. But they're also here more of a magical flame that is to do with the presence of the dead creatures in the marsh as well. I would say that eerie and ghost-like is the prevailing mood. Again, when you're writing, if you're having lots of dark places, the stony, impossible Eminweal, the ash heaps of Mordor, you don't want to do the same kind of language for all of them. You want different lexical sets for each place. And this one, the prevailing mood, I think, is that of eerie, stagnant, pungent, all those things.

27:55 We get the most horrific moment, which comes really more or less in the middle of this chapter, where Frodo has wandered off. He's been at the back and he's fallen behind. And he's in this kind of dream state, nightmarish state. But it's not from his point of view that we see that. It's Sam who is the one who goes back and he falls down and sees what Frodo has seen. And it's interesting the way this is written. In the film, they do it, Frodo falls right into the pool and he's got jugged down by these sort of eerie creatures. It's all very much in your face. Here, it's actually spread out between the three of them.

28:38 Sam falls and sees, and it's described as a sort of grimy window that he's looking through. But we don't then get a sentence saying what he saw. We get his exclamation about faces in the water. Gollum gives the explanation of where they came from, the battle, and that the marshes have eaten up the graves of the fallen warriors. And it's Frodo who gives us the gothic poetry description of the eeriness of what you see in the water. It's worth reading because it feels, the cadence is very haunting.

29:19 In the pools, when the candles were lit, they lie in all the pools, pale faces deep, deep under the dark water. I saw them, grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad faces, many faces, proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair, but all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them. Rearrange that, it becomes a poem. Repetition, the sense of internal rhymes is one of his heightened moments that Tolkien gives in description through the voice of Frodo.

30:01 And it's interesting that Gollum picks it up. It feels almost a bit like a Greek play with the chorus coming in, if Gollum can be thought of as the chorus. He goes, yes, yes, all dead, all rotten. He sort of re-echoes what the hero has just said. Elves and men and orcs are dead marshes. There was a great battle long ago and so on. And he gives this echo of what Frodo has said, an explanation of where they came from. And then he moves into a typical Gollum moment of having tried to reach them. Sam suspects he tried to eat them. Remember, there's this theme of who's food for whom in this chapter.

30:42 And then he ends with this weird off-color note of Gollum the jester, where he says that if the hobbits aren't careful, they will go down and join them and light little candles. Don't look at the lights. So I suppose I added Greek chorus to the list of things that Gollum is doing in this chapter. At this point, we get the overflight of one of the ringwraiths. And I mentioned how in this world building, Tolkien is trying to connect this to the other stories. He found that his chronology was out of sync. We know the ring goes into the fire on the 25th of March.

31:24 We're now right at the beginning of March. He hasn't got long really. And the events don't quite link up. So what we get instead is an overflight which then goes back into Mordor. I think a reader will anyway make the connection because they have just come out of reading a book where the ringwraiths appeared a couple of times in the air, scaring those characters. And perhaps it's more like thinking about a general air service, like in the Second World War, when you heard the drone of the approaching Luftwaffe. It didn't really matter if it was the same plane as your friend saw.

32:06 It's the same overflight, the same sense of threat coming from the evil nation with the risk of being discovered or destroyed if spotted. And of course, this must have felt very close to what Tolkien was experiencing at the time because he was on fire watch as an air raid warden at this time. And he's writing this in Oxford because of the fear that there would be a bombing campaign in Oxford. So after the ringwraiths overflow, there is a shift in everybody's relationship.

32:47 Remember this triangle? This is what this chapter is about, this triangle of relationships. Gollum becomes more fawning and less reliable in some ways because he's been reminded of the threat. Frodo becomes silent, lost in this nightmarish world that he's in, and he's vanishing. The idea that he is getting a foothold in the wraith world. And it is shown here by him becoming, well, no longer driving what's happening. Sam puts him in front of him because he's worried he's going to stumble off the path or just stop walking.

33:28 And we get a very sudden shift. I think it's the only one in this chapter where we suddenly move to the point of view of Frodo, where we hear how heavy the ring is feeling, how he is obsessed or feels invigilated by the eye watching him. And there is another psychological battle going on here, which is really where it's being fought for Frodo. It's internal, as well as the external struggle, his is internal. And we get a little glimpse of that here. But we do return back to Sam. So we reach almost the last part of this chapter, which is the pit.

34:12 So they're coming out of the marshes and it becomes a landscape which is described a lot in terms of how it affects the throat. First World War, of course, used poison gas. And I feel there's an echo of this here. There's a bitter reek. Their mouths are parched. They've been a long way since they had fresh good water. And it's called No Man's Land. That is a First World War term as well, No Man's Land, written slightly different. But No Man's Land is what Tolkien decided to call it. And remember, I've talked about the paper chain of you thought that was bad, this is worse.

34:54 Here, that's what they're thinking. The land in front of Mordor, like the desolation of Smaug in the Hobbit, this is worse. The area in front of Mordor is worse because in the marshes, there's this beautiful phrase, there was a haggard phantom of green spring. Something was growing there despite everything. But here nothing lived. And even the sunlight was defiled. And the characters are described as little squeaking ghosts that wandered among the ash heaps of the Dark Lord.

35:36 It does remind me of First World War poems, Wilfred Owen, that kind of image of the small person lost in the No Man's Land in the nightmare world. They retreat to the pit, which is described as a foul sump of oily many -coloured ooze. Now, I think this is definitely a First World War image because the oil, of course, machinery of war, the tanks and so on, artillery, is one of the most obvious sources of an oily ooze and sump is an oil sump. So, it's laying underneath this, though of course, you can get a natural world oily sheen.

36:20 And we're not wrong to think that because in a 1968 interview quoted in the Companion Guide, Tolkien told the Birmingham Post that he remembered miles and miles of seething, tortured earth, perhaps best described in the chapter about the approaches to Mordor. It was a searing experience. That's what he remembers of northern France. For northern France, read the land just in front of Mordor. And he goes on to say in this text that the gully now seemed a place of peace and beauty. So, we've gone from the marshes seeming a haggard spring to that gully where they got fresh water being relatively idyllic compared to this.

37:12 So, when you're creating a world, don't forget to use the elements within the world to push the experience from bad to worse to even worse. It's a very effective strategy. Then we get the great Gollum and Smeagol debate. It's interesting here. I mean, made famous by the film, brilliantly done, brilliantly read, obviously by Andy Serkis in the audio version, but also reads brilliantly if you're just reading the book. One of the things that is interesting in this sort of almost like political debate and sort of trying to persuade himself to do something to break his word to Frodo. One of the interesting things here is what it reveals about Gollum is what he thinks he would do with power.

37:59 There is an element of innocence, childlike, toddlerlike innocence to Gollum, which is part of his tragedy because what he wants to do with the power is not be hurt. He wants to be strong in the way that someone who is bullied wants to be strong. What he thinks is the best life he could live is having lots of fish. So, his wants are relatively innocent. Well, within Gollum terms, that is. And he does here sound like a drug addict, desperate for the next fix of the precious, which is why he isn't going to be reliable.

38:47 He can't keep his word because he is not reformed. And also in this, when you're thinking about planting seeds for future chapters, Tolkien drops in here the mysterious she who might help him. Unanswered questions are one reason to make a reader move on. You want to find out why something is happening or what it's referring to. And this is one of those times where he just drops it in. Who is this she? That's Sam's thought. But he can't wait to find an answer because Frodo is at risk.

39:27 And he pretends to wake up so that Gollum moves back from Frodo. And there's a sort of change in mood here from Frodo, who is refreshed for once, feels he's coming to an end. He's almost like, okay, almost near the gates, right, you know, won't be long now kind of thing. And in a way, this refers back to what Tolkien had thought in his letters to Christopher. He vastly underestimates how much narrative he's got to go. So perhaps he's having a little joke at his own expense here of saying, oh yeah, you thought you almost finished, did you? So Frodo is standing in front of the author here.

40:09 But there is another presence here. There's a third overflight of one of the ringways at this point, which really spooks Gollum. And this particular chapter ends with a kind of forced march where they have to make Gollum move on. Frodo has to get stern with him because he doesn't know who he's more scared of, breaking his word, the ringwraiths, Mordor in front of him, memories of the past. He is a tortured soul, clearly. And this is reflected in the weary end of this chapter.

40:50 It ends in a sort of ominous, eerie silence where they're left hearing nothing but the wind hissing in their ears. And that takes us right up to the gates of Mordor, where if you're reading for the first time, you might think you're almost there, but there's a lot more to come, isn't there? So I hope you've enjoyed the passage of the marshes. And I look forward to returning to chapter three to see what happens when the Black Gate is closed. We're actually coming to one of my favorite bits of the book. And amongst all the darkness, there is a wonderful moment of light.

41:33 Thank you very much for listening. 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 favorite podcasts worldwide.