LOTR: An Author's Journey - Wrap Up of The Two Towers, Book 4

Hello and welcome to Myth Makers. Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. Now, as we are taking our summer break, we are compiling best of podcasts to celebrate the season we've just finished. And we've been reading our way through book four of The Two Towers. And we have put top moments from that season when we've been looking at the author's journey of how Tolkien went about writing that part of the Two Towers. And we're going to start in chapter three, where we see Tolkien using Gollum, of all people, to summarise the stakes of of the story. You have to keep reminding your reader just what is at risk if the quest fails. So here's a little bit about Gollum. And this actually prompts what I think is probably the best summary of the threat that Sauron poses. And surprisingly, it's actually from Gollum that this comes. He says, if the Dark Lord gets the ring... He'll eat us all if he gets it. Eat all the world. So he wants to consume and destroy. And I think it's very vivid. And it's simple words, simple stakes. And then you get the little phrase which is let past to start, but comes back again. He says, give it, meaning the ring, back to Smeagol. So what is going on in this? I think... I don't know, but I'm wondering if Tolkien actually knew what was going to happen. Sometimes as a writer, if you don't plan, I mean, I expect Tolkien knew the ring was going to go into the fire. He had a sense of where his ending was going, but he didn't know the route to get there. And he's probably reached a point here. I feel he's reached a point that he has written himself to the edge of what he knows. Philip Pullman has a phrase about writing into the dark. He's in one of those dark moments. He doesn't know the next steps. So I get the sense that this debate is almost a debate he's having with himself. He's hoping the characters will... show him a way out of it. That's my guess. That's what I feel myself when I write things, that I meet these moments and this is what I feel here. There are obviously earlier versions of this in the papers, but I think that it still holds true that when the first drafting of this, he was looking for that chink of light that would show him a way forward. Frodo is the person who is kind of representing the stuck author, shall we say. He's saying what comes after must come. I'm going to go ahead, whatever happens. Sam is showing his own heroics by saying that whatever happens... is not going to go alone. And within this little group of three, Tolkien comes to the realization that if anyone is going to come up with an alternative, it will have to be Smeagol Gollum. And he's hinted at it already, of course, when he talked about maybe she will help which had come in the previous chapter. And he is the one who has the alternative. That is logical, isn't it? Because Smeagol has come out of Mordor, so he will know a way back in. So he... He provides the answer. And that's very often when you're writing. You'll find that the answer is there amongst the elements you've already assembled. You just need to work out which one it is, which of the clues it is, or which thread it is that you tug that will release that particularly knotted point of the plot. The points of view that you get in this chapter are fascinating because you've got largely Sam, you get a bit of Frodo and you get a bit of the narrator. And Sam is interesting here because he is getting to understand that. in a very, what Tolkien puts down as a slow but shrewd mind, he understands the two halves of Gollum and Smeagol, Slinker and Stinker. And he realizes, having heard that discussion, he's the one who knows that Gollum's already been plotting, that the two halves have reached a truce and a temporary alliance with, But what's really fascinating is the danger there, if you think, oh, well, Sam knows what's going on, it would make Frodo look a bit of an idiot in contrast. And Tolkien's very clear that that's not the case. In fact, he underlines that Frodo is, he is the officer in this little squad trying to invade Mordor. And so he goes to the edge of the little cleft where they're hiding out, the dell, and he's granted a kind of vision of the state of affairs, seeing the movements of peoples. And he sees it's not the armies of Gondor arriving, but it's further allies for the Dark Lord. So knowing that, knowing there is no easy way in, of course, he didn't expect there to be, he takes the first step in his decision, which is saying, Smeagol, I will trust you once more. And he goes on with this phrase, may the third time prove the best. The companion to Lord of the Rings, points out that this is an old adage which you find in things like Sir Gawain in the Green Knight. Sir Gawain in the Green Knight, the test of Sir Gawain is the rule of three. Three times he has to pass the test. And it is actually a rule of narrative, three times. that if you're wondering how many times you attempt something, twice that fail and once that succeed, it seems to be a pattern which our storytelling brain likes. But anyway, that has become a sort of saying, and Frodo is using it here. because they have, it's not that Gollum has failed them twice, it's more that they have trusted him in small ways twice and he's not failed them. So this big gesture of trust is the moment when may it prove the best. That's what's going on here. In chapter five, I celebrate being in the company of a poetic Faramir and how in the Peter Jackson film, they try to nod towards this in some of the ways they filmed that section. So this leads us on to Faramir's, what I would call a poetic account of his vision of Boromir. If you've watched the Peter Jackson films, the extended versions, there is a kind of He tries to do this. He does it in a kind of dreamlike sequence where you see Faramir thinking back. It's paying homage to this section. But I would say that this is one which is really worth reading because it feels like a piece of translated Anglo-Saxon poetry. And particularly, there is a series of laments that break into it that feel like within that form, a lament for a fallen warrior. And it's got the most beautiful cadence. So it starts with the, after the sort of the telling of how the, the sort of chronology of when he heard the horn and all that kind of thing. He then says, this is Faramir, I sat at night by the waters of Anduin in the grey dark under the young pale moon, watching the ever-moving stream and the sad reeds were rustling. Now, that's in no way realistic dialogue. We're not in the world of realism in that sense. We're in the world of poetry, poetic speech. Because if he was just having a conversation to get to the point, he would say, well, I was by the river Anduin among the reeds. Cut out all the poetic language. But no, this is about casting a literary spell, a sort of... atmosphere and the sense of the majesty of this world. And it goes on, that night all the world slept at the midnight hour. Then I saw, or it seemed that I saw, a boat floating on the water, glimmering grey, a small boat of a strange fashion with a high prow, but there was none to row or steer it. And he goes on and describes seeing Boromir in this boat, including things which he could not have known in advance, how he was dressed and the Lorien belt. And this is where you get the lament, Boromir, I cried, where is thy horn? Whither goest thou? Oh, Boromir. But he was gone. It reminds me of Lewis saying how he fell in love with Northern stories by coming across the phrase, the lament for Boulder, oh, Boulder is dead. Even though he didn't know who that character was. There's an element of the echo here, I think. And the passage then concludes with this wonderful cadence which takes us out to sea. And I do not doubt that he is dead and has passed down the river to the sea. It's probably only somebody so steeped in that kind of literature could write something like that. It feels like a song. And it's noteworthy that he gives it to Faramid to say this. You would expect it from an elf or something like that. But this character is the most elven of men. Or as Sam says, most wizardly of men. And so he's being characterised through his speech here, which is something that Jane Austen does particularly brilliantly, but not this kind of character. And we get a line break after this, what is a set piece. in order to sort of say, well, that was that kind of register and now we're moving on. We note here that when they go on to discuss that they've come out of Lorien, when Frodo explains where the belt comes from, that Faramir... actually calls Lorien by its old name, Lorilindorinan, which those of you who are following along will remember, that's Treebeard who used that name. And like Treebeard, Faramir is not going to make a hasty judgment. So he's in that set of people who take their time. Fortunately, not quite as long as an ent. There is an interesting little, um, several phrases that pop up out of this conversation, which I think have wider interesting applications to the whole book. One is a discussion about was what he saw like a dream or an artifice or a vision or something like that. Faramir says, it wasn't evil, for his works, for Sauron's works, filled the heart with loathing, but my heart was filled with grief and pity. And I think this is something which both Tolkien and Lewis understood about works of art, that they have a sort of imprint that they leave on the works. reader. And one of the reasons why so many of us love Narnia Middle-earth is the imprint they leave is one that is of, in the case of Middle-earth, this sort of longing and this grief and this pity, sort of the greatness of the characters within it. Perhaps one of the reasons why subsequent fantasy works don't attach in the same way is they don't have quite that power. There may be some that slip through and do leave that impression. I mean, Harry Potter, for example, does also have the idea of a sort of, as one of the whimsy, there's a sense of the greatness of sacrifice and a slightly sort of sour understanding of the sacrifices that you have to make in order to defeat evil. There's some interesting aftertaste left by Harry Potter. But anyway, going back to Middle-earth, I think that this grief and pity is actually something that Tolkien meant his work to do. So it's not a work of Sauron, it's a work of the good, which we obviously knew already. In chapter six, I put the spotlight on Frodo and his moral choices. Yeah, Gollum's quite an annoying companion, isn't he? But does he really deserve being shot by Faramir's men? What's most interesting about this scene, this little bit of the scene, is Frodo's dilemma. And I think it's a very relatable dilemma. Yeah. Because he has a moral choice here. He's thinking, oh, I wish I could get rid of Gollum. Wouldn't life be easier if we just got rid of him? But he reminds himself that a servant has a claim on the master. That's more of an old-fashioned idea now, but I think we can understand what he means. But also, he says Gandalf would not want it. Remember, at this stage, he thinks Gandalf is dead, but he's still using Gandalf as his guide to the decisions he makes, which is a very good guide. Another thing we noticed in the earlier chapters, not the last one, but the one before, of Herbs and Studerabbit, is that Sam fell into talking a bit like Gollum. Frodo is doing it here. He's talking about himself in the third person. Master wouldn't like it. Master wouldn't do this. It does seem as though Gollum's speech is almost like an infection. Everyone starts speaking like that around him. But also, I think it gives a sense that Frodo is being his most inauthentic here. He is unhappy that he is playing a role. And so he has to fall into it. to be the person that Gollum is expecting and will obey in order to save him. And we get this insight into what he's going through. Frodo, his heart sank. This was too much like trickery. And then a bit further on, what else could he do to keep faith as near as might be with both sides? He's making a compromise. Life in the Shire was relatively simple. Life out in the world is full of such compromises. And I think I really feel for Frodo here. Because in a way, it's one of these moments that Gollum uses to justify the betrayal in Shelob's lair. We do get a sort of check-in with a visual of Gollum. When Gollum's been taken into the caves and is brought before Faramir, we get a little glimpse of what he looks like. This reminded me that if you haven't described your characters for a very long time, it's a good idea to check back in with them sometimes, with a purpose, and just to keep a sort of in everybody's mind what they look like. Characters can sometimes kind of disappear, particularly if there's a large cast of characters. You think, which one was that? Not that we're going to forget Gollum, but I think it's just, and it makes a point here about the contrast between this shrivelled little proto-hobbit and a regal noble man. But anyway, so we've got Gollum in front of Faramir. Gollum blinked, hooding the malice of his eyes with their heavy pale lids. And a very miserable creature he looked, dripping and dank, smelling of fish. He still clutched one in his hand. His sparse locks were hanging like rank weed over his bony brows. His nose was snivelling. So we get a very physical impression of what this creature now looks like. Faramir obviously asks us a question, which is... Why are you here? What are you doing here? In fact, Faramir has a range of questions for him. What is your name? Whence do you come? Whither do you go? What is your business? He doesn't give his name. He doesn't really answer the questions, but he does give a truth, which is more truth than he knows because he answers by saying, we are lost, lost. Yeah, Gollum is one of the most lost creatures in literature. He has lost himself. He's lost his ring. He's adrift. Hopeless. A hopeless creature in many ways. But he's a hopeless creature with a bite in more ways than one. Because he... hits back at the people who are holding him with sarcasm. He sort of says, oh, you're all so wise they are, so just, so very just. He means the opposite. But he's presenting that he's holding up a mirror to the people around him saying, you think you're so just, well, you've got me here as a prisoner. And of course, that self-righteousness, which he often tries, he's tried it all the way along, doesn't survive because Faramir has worked out just how bad Gollum has been. He has a way of reading Gollum's heart. And there's an interesting... sign of this. We've heard about the greenish light and the light in his eyes of Gollum, which sort of signals a switch between the two sides of his personality. But when Faramir confronts him, we get this. All light went out of them, them being Gollum's eyes. And they stared, bleak and pale for a moment, into the clear, unwavering eyes of the man of Gondor. It's the moment when all pretense is stripped away. So some ways Gollum plays both Frodo and Sam. He plays on their pity. He plays on their, their need for him. I mean, Sam obviously hates it, but even Sam sort of doesn't have the power over him that a Faramir does. He couldn't bring him to this stripped down version of himself. And Faramir has this very penetrating observation on him. There are locked doors and closed windows in your mind and dark rooms behind them. Lovely description. And indeed, that gives a great sense of the schema, the deviousness of what is superficially a very pitiable creature. Yeah. And reaching chapter seven, I celebrate the little bits in Lord of the Rings. When you reread it and you find little treasures of details that you haven't noticed before. The next place they stay is actually one of my favorites, which I've never noticed properly before. So sorry, Tolkien, I've read you many times, but I didn't notice this little touch of brilliance. And that is the Thorny Hall. I mentioned I felt they were a bit like characters in Watership Down, like running underneath the brambles. But actually, of course, this predates Watership Down. And what it does recall is the ent home that Treebeard takes Merry and Pippin to. But it's a kind of thorny version of that on page 308. It's a hollow hall. Rafted with dead branches and bramble, and roofed with the first leaves and shoots of spring. So I love that description because it's the halfway house element of Ithilien. It's, yes, it's dead branches and bramble, but above is this hint of there could be some kind of restoration that could come for this place. because it has shoots of spring. And that's what sums up, really, this landscape on the edge of Mordor. And ties in, of course, with the end of the story, where Faramir gets to go back and restore the princedom. They've traveled about three days in this section. And, um, why, why do that? I mean, I could imagine if I was the editor of Tolkien in the present day, I'd say, Oh, modern reading habits mean that they can't cope with this, this section. It's a bit slow. But fortunately, that kind of editor wasn't around. No blue pencil was out. And I think it's making the point that we have to go each weary step with Frodo and Sam. Theirs isn't the heroic horse riding, sword wielding battle. There's a little bit of the fighting to come. Theirs is the persistence, the resilience, the men in the trenches. Yeah. I guess, and that's what you're getting here. Sam, we dip into Sam's point of view here because he has a dream of the thorns invading the flower beds back at Bag End. So he's picked up the thorns of where they stayed previously, and it also links him back to the Shire. This is the touchstone of Sam. and the very practical thing that he's run out of pipe weed. And that will, without pointing it out, that will link us back to the hobbits finding pipe weed in Isengard. So there's still this connection being made between the experience of the hobbits. When Sam wakes up, Frodo says he's not been asleep very long. A storm is coming. It's getting darker, even though it's not yet midday. This is the point, actually, where the extended edition in the Peter Jackson film picks up. Why choose this moment to start? Well, it's because it is a good summary of the gathering storm, but also it's a little microcosm of their relationships. The weary Frodo, the practical... and Shire, Sam, and the sort of unreliable Gollum. So Gollum's off hunting or looking the way ahead. And it's an opportunity for Frodo and Sam to discuss their feelings about him. Sam says, I'd never taken anything on a journey that I'd have been less sorry to lose on the way. Again, there's a connection looking forward because they have to decide what to leave behind. And Sam gives up his pots and pans. And so there's a connection to what happens later. But here, Gollum is like a burden. Frodo is stoic and he's not blaming Gollum. He says, I think we're in for trouble anyhow. He's very grim. He's getting grimmer and grimmer as he approaches, as the burden gets heavier for him. Sam, however, light and sing. And if it's too grim, I think it's hard to read. You need to save that for when you really need it towards the end. And so Sam is our light relief in a way, because he comes up with this shire wisdom saying, where there's life, there's hope and need for vittles to the Gaffasane. So, you know, it raises the smile. And when Gollum does bop back into the frame, he's bizarrely childlike in his malignity. I think that's one of the reasons why we sort of love Gollum. He's such a distinct character. I've never read another character like him. And if anyone tries to do the same, you immediately think, oh, that's like Gollum. Anyway, he bounces back in saying, wake up, sleepies. as if it's some kind of child nursery when they're actually trying to destabilize the dark power. And this gets the response from Sam, that, oh, it can't even be tea time. In decent places where there is tea time, we're going to bring the Shire, And of course Gollum says, we aren't in a decent place. You need a character like Gollum to keep, to stop us sort of slipping into a malaise. You need to keep the crack of the whip, the urgency, particularly in a journey section where they're not going to achieve the goal in this chapter. They just need to get going. And finally, we end with a crescendo because we are in Chapter 8 with Frodo and Sam sitting on the stairs. And this is the famous moment when they get round to talking about their possible role in future stories. They're left to have this wonderful, wonderful discussion, famous discussion, as Gollum sort of goes off and does his own thing. And Frodo has a phrase here where he shows that he's a bit like Bilbo. He will sort of lapse into a kind of poetry. He says in answer to Sam, I don't like anything here at all. Step or stone, dress or bone. Either that's just a rhyme he thought up there and then, or it's almost like a wise saying. And if you're looking for Sam's famous speech about why go on and people in stories, it's on page 321. Again, referring to the films, but this is given to Sam at the end of the film, The Two Towers, but they are, for some reason, in Osgiliath, which obviously they are not going to in this story. But it is an important discussion because we've already had Frodo mention old tales. When you think, what is this experience like? They're both thinking, well, it's most like... Beren and Lucien going into Morgoth's dark kingdom to get the Silmaril. And Sam is thinking about this and he talks about how you only hear about the heroes who don't turn back. So if at this point Frodo and Sam said, yeah, too difficult going home, you'd never hear their story. And he also, because Sam is a bright lad, he makes connections from the stories that he's been raised on to the star glass that saved the day just a few paragraphs ago, and he realizes that the light, the Eärendil, so the Silmaril, became a star, Eärendil star, and the light of that star is trapped. or contained in the file of Galadriel, and that's the light that is now comforting Frodo. And the light originally came from the light of the trees over in the land of the Valar. So originally from the gods or God. Sam doesn't say that, but that's what you would understand. So the Silmarils themselves were fairly cursed tools in many ways because so many people wanted them. But what they contained was pure and beautiful. That's why people wanted them. And he ends up with this great question. Don't the great tales never end? Yeah, that's a no. No, they don't. He then has this sort of sense of feeling himself as part of that story. And he goes on and imagines their story being, them being characters in a story, being read out, um, in the comfort of a shire-like room where everything's safe. And he sort of ventriloquizes children asking for the story. Let's hear about Frodo and the ring. Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits. That's saying a lot. So he's having fun with that idea. And that brilliant thought gives this wonderful moment. Laughter is so important in Lord of the Rings. Note who laughs and how they laugh. And here we've got Frodo laughing. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. Sauron doesn't laugh, or if he laughs, it's at the expense of somebody. Beautiful moment. And just as they've been sort of picking up on Gollum's speech pattern, now Frodo takes on Sam's way of speaking, personifying these future commentators, and he puts Sam into the story. I want to hear more about Sam, Dad. Why didn't they put more of his talk, Dad? You know, so has fun back. And there's a sort of moment when they both say, oh, you know, I was being serious. So am I. So whilst they're making the joke, it's a deadly serious joke. Beautiful moment and also very interesting. meta because these are storybook characters talking about themselves being in a storybook and we know later that this story is written down from the recollections of the hobbits and their friends so we've got another layer and then of course you've got the layer of the writer Tolkien so yeah lots to unpack here if you have to write your your English literature essay about it anyway enjoyable that framing and it makes you think about what's going on in literature why in the safety of our homes. And seeing the characters drawing strength from that at a low moment is a good reason for doing so. And that sort of thought process leads them to think about the third person in their party. And they say how, you know, even in a story, Gollum would be a good character. Yeah, he is, isn't he? Frodo has reached this place where He knows what he's dealing with, but what can he do? So he's taking the stoic approach. If he's false, he's false. He probably has some little trick of his own understanding that he's actually cooking up. But we have no choice. Thank you so much for listening to this season of our author's journey through the Lord of the Rings, the two towers in this case. And I'm really looking forward to digging into the return of the king because, of course, that's where it all comes to a head. But thank you so 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. 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