Just a Fool's Hope - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 5 Ch 4

0:05 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 and today we have one of our sidecast episodes where we are reading our way through The Lord of the Rings and looking at it from an author's point of view. I spend most of my time as an author, so when I come to read Lord of the Rings this time, I'm looking for those places where we can see the hand of the master at work and what we might want to notice, to appreciate it in more depth, but also perhaps to learn from. And wow, buckle up, everybody.

0:47 We have one of those chapters. It's chapter four in The Return of the King called The Siege of Gondor. And this is an epic chapter in every sense of that term. And I thought we would think particularly about how Tolkien is handling the theme of war, because this is really what's going on. as the forces of Mordor invade. It's just prior to the Battle of the Poleno. And of course, war and battles are meat and drink to many a fantasy novel and historical adventure.

1:28 So I thought it would be worth looking at what Tolkien does. Just as we have mentioned a number of times in this series, of course, we are bearing in mind here that Tolkien himself experienced war as a young man in the First World War trenches. And he was writing the majority of this book during the Second World War, when there was a lot of loss and tragedy on the home front, as well as his own sons being involved in the fighting. So in many ways, one way of thinking about Lord of the Rings is as a war novel in that tradition. What I think is sort of headlines here, and I was thinking back after I'd read it, this is a Pippin chapter.

2:13 And he makes a wonderful point of view character for us because of his humour and his warmth, but also his down-to-earthness. But it gives us, because of the smallness of that character and his feeling of being a small fish out of... He's swimming in such a vast ocean where normally he's in a little hobbit pond. And so you get the idea of... how everything is striking him for the first time. And his, I'm using the word humanity, but I mean hobbitry, don't I? In contrast to the inhumanity that's going on is another way which is underlying the sort of emotional journey of this chapter.

2:54 And then you get another sort of scale thing between the small and the humble and the vast, like the Lord of the Nazgul, you know, you've got these contrasts, but you have scenes which are small and intimate. And then you've got vast panoramas and you've got very quiet, solemn places and the noise of the battlefield. So first lesson is when you're charting your own battle chapters, you've got a lot of people who are in the middle of the battle. Don't think about them as a series of, and this happened, and then this, and then this, like some kind of frenetic action hero sequence that may work on film. But in a story, in a novel, you need to handle it differently.

3:37 And you can see how Tolkien does it as we read our way through this chapter. So it starts on the small and the intimate. It starts with this tetchy but affectionate little scene one morning as Pippin and Gandalf are getting up. Well, Gandalf is waking up Pippin. And even that act where he brings him his breakfast, that shows the sort of paternal figure that Gandalf is to Pippin, which is so charming in this story. Yeah. And it very much filled the little hobbit at sea in this big new world. And he's looking at this small loaf and what he calls an inadequate pat of butter.

4:19 It's rationing, isn't it? Don't forget Tolkien's writing during a time of rationing where many a person who remembered before the war would be thinking how inadequate the butter ration was. So there's probably a little smile in his face as he writes that. But anyway, so we've got the... The Hobbit being shocked by the smallness of it. And it doesn't stop there, though, because while he does do a few Hobbit-style grumbles... Gandalf quickly points out the bigger stakes and you get this very uncharacteristic silence from Pippin.

5:02 It's literally Pippin said no more. He doesn't carry on arguing. He's called at other times an unquenchable hobbit, isn't he? He's... Well, quenched is perhaps not quite, he's certainly not down and out, but he is on a road here to maturity. And this little scene, which seems to be about breakfast, is actually really about that, the changes that we are beginning to see in Pippin. So when you're putting in a scene like that, which in other ways doesn't earn its place because it's not a development, but it does earn its place as a character development passage. So the contrast to this warm, affectionate scene between Pippin and Gandalf, you've got this image of Denethor sitting on his own in the gloom.

5:54 And here Pippin's thought is that he is like an old and patient spider. Spiders... He's not quite Shelob, but obviously that's not a positive thing to say about someone. And there is actually a mention of webs and traps in this, which Denethor throws out at other people, particularly Gandalf. Webs of wizardry comes up. So there's this image of Pippin is surrounded by these people who have bigger plans. There's this sense of everyone is running their own schemes. That's another way of thinking about how Tolkien's setting this out.

6:35 We've got the bigger scheme of the Dark Lords and you've got Gandalf's counter scheme, but then you've got Denethor's little scheme. And we'll see it's quite a selfish scheme, but he himself is trapped in... thanks to the palantir, which we don't know is influencing him. He's trapped. He's a spider caught in a trap himself. Anyway, so that's set up really in just that little phrase. Pippin, again, is holding his tongue. These are... These mentions happen within the first few pages. So we are alert to the fact that Pippin is changing. He's on his own.

7:16 He's no longer the youngest child, the youngest one in the company. He's having to step up. And he is the Shah's representative. So all of these things, he is changing. But even so, we find that Denethor is disturbingly well informed and sees through Pippin, which Pippin, of course, finds unnerving. There's a sort of remark about you're finding the food here inadequate, that kind of thing. And this then moves on to Pippin being given his orders as a page because the original page has gone out to join the fighting, Pippin stepping up to fill that role.

7:58 And here we get the odd challenge, which Peter Jackson picked up and ran with, which is can you sing Pippin? So I thought it'd be worth reading that little bit because it doesn't happen how it does in the film. So this is one of those times where we need to overwrite what was a splendid way of dramatizing this for film, but it happens differently in the book. So let's just remember. And it's got its own pleasures, this. So Pippin's answer to the Can You Sing is yes. Well, yes, well enough for my own people. We have no songs fit for great halls and evil times, Lord.

8:40 We seldom sing of anything more terrible than wind or rain. And most of my songs are about things that make us laugh, or about food and drink, of course. And Denethor's answer, which was delivered in the film version as a sort of very The Denethor is unrelieved in his darkness in the film. And I think we see a more balanced version of Denethor here. So it doesn't have to be given such a negative spin. He says, And why should such songs be unfit for my halls, or for such hours as these?

9:21 We who have lived long under the shadow may surely listen to echoes from a land untroubled by it. Yeah. So that Denethor is not a kindly old man like Theoden, but still there is more to him as we see. He is largely on this slide down into darkness, but there's these little glimmers where he's saying, I too can appreciate those things. And it's worth just pointing that out. And also that Pippin doesn't sing. Though I do like the version in the film where he sings and that's set against the Faramir excursion. That's a good way of doing that. But that doesn't happen in that order in the book.

10:01 So let's delete all that for the moment and stick with the novel, which is what we're appreciating here. Pippin is sent away to be armed. Again, it's a lonely experience. So there's an echo here. This chapter and the Rohan chapter that came just before is, they're purposely echoing each other. Merry's experience is to be in more like a family setting of Eamir, Erwin and Theodan looking after him. Here, Pearl Pippin is sent off on his own, and he gets dressed up in this small gear, which makes him look like the Prince of Halflings.

10:44 There is an extra scene in Peter Jackson's version where he gives Faramir a chance to say, you're wearing my stuff I wore as a boy, which is a lovely touch. I don't, and I'd forgotten that it actually isn't from Tolkien, it's just a... a nice extra scene invented by the filmmakers. But anyway, so poor old Pippin is doing this on his own. And when he steps away wearing all this gear, he's allowed to keep his cloak but not wear it while on duty. He says that he felt uncomfortable. He doesn't feel like a prince anymore. And this sense of unease is what dominates this chapter.

11:26 And we begin to see that it's not actually down to... just sort of the mood that Pippin has. There's something external changing the mood of those inside Minas Tirith. And it has a visible expression in a great cloud that comes over devouring light. Tolkien uses these weather moments to combine, to sort of link up his different storylines because that is seen by Frodo and it's seen by Merry. So these are ways of tying these stories up. When you've got a complicated war story with events happening on lots of different fronts, you have to decide how are you going to tell this story and how are you going to keep it together.

12:15 I've actually written one sort of real world historical novel set in the First World War. And there was so much information to write about that. and I'm no talking, that I actually decided I would focus down on the experience of one person in the trenches at one particular spot. And I found a set of diaries written by somebody who survived the Battle of the Somme. And I used that to help me see what was known to the soldier. And it kind of narrowed my focus. So that was the way I cope with that. Tolkien's actually doing something far cleverer, of course, because he's showing us the whole of it. He's showing us what happens out with Aragorn.

12:57 He's showing us what happens out with Merry and, of course, with Frodo and Sam. And it's how he organises that, which is really what structures this book. Anyway, so back to Pippin. He's fortunate in that he meets Beragond, the captain of the guard, who he made friends with. And there's a little note here which I just wanted to highlight. Berrigand has been out on Errand to the guard towers upon the causeway. You're thinking, what guard towers upon what causeway? This is where, if you come at this from film versions or even just from illustrations, it's very hard for... the whole detail of the real world, the real world, well, the real seeming world, let's put it like that, of Middle-earth.

13:44 Tolkien doesn't have a flat plain around Minas Tirith. He has farms and roads and cottages and mills and an outer wall with gates, which leads to a causeway leading towards Gilead. So we get a sense of there being perhaps muddy or poorer land there, which a causeway is built across. It's much more detailed. So one of the joys of coming back and reading it carefully is filling in these details. So next time you're imagining that battle, think about all that. finer detail of the battlefield, how it's not just a place you can charge across with vast cavalry and oliphants and things.

14:30 It is a place like the Battle of Waterloo happened in a real farmland with real chateaus and real farms. That's more what you need to imagine to do justice to Tolkien's war writing. Anyway, moving on from that, one of the images used about this gathering gloom, it's like a pool. A pool is like a shroud. Yeah. And you get the last gleam. And here, Tolkien makes a connection to Frodo. Now, this is something that Pippin doesn't know at this point. So it's not a Pippin thought.

15:11 But in this idea, the meta idea that this was put together by the Hobbits afterwards, you can imagine at one level... Frodo, writing this down, says, ah, that was when I saw that was at the crossroads. So he mentions the crossroads. But of course, at the further back is the author thinking, how do I connect this story to the other stories? Right, I'm going to use this moment to say this last gleam of light was the same gleam of light seen by Frodo. And that is a very effective way of weaving together the story. So as the... enemy invades, sort of fills up the fields of Pelennor.

15:57 I don't think there's any of us who can read this without thinking of Tolkien's own experience of the trenches. And this is where his war writing is so fine because it is someone who lived, you know, one day felt like a year. He felt that. And there's this very interesting sort of weariness in Pippin. Pippin, our most useful and joyful of the hobbits, talks about how weary he is And he says, the thought is in his head, he doesn't say this, already it seemed years to Pippin since he had sat there before when they first had their conversation with Beragond.

16:42 In some half-forgotten time, when he had still been a hobbit, a light-hearted wanderer touched little by the perils he had passed through. That was only a couple of days ago. Now he was one small soldier in a city preparing for a great assault, clad in the proud but sombre manner of the Tower of Guard. So you can imagine what it would have been like for the young men joining up, who at one moment are farmers, scholars. tailors, whatever your great-great-grandparents did, putting on the uniform and suddenly finding themselves this weary soldier facing unimaginable odds.

17:23 And that's what is captured there. And it does seem a very bad place to be in because Pippin says one of the most shocking things the puppet says, get ready for it, He says how waiting around is a sore trial for Hobbit. Indeed, what is the good even of food and drink under this creeping shadow? That's when, if you were a friend of Pippin, you'd stage an intervention, which is kind of what Beragon does. Beragon does it by explaining to Pippin or diagnosing, is perhaps a better way of putting it, that actually part of what Pippin is feeling is from this cloud, this fume that is brewed to darken hearts and counsel.

18:15 And his hope is in the return of his captain Faramir, So that name sort of chimes and we'll be thinking of having already met Faramir, we know about him, we know that he will be coming bearing news of Frodo, what will happen when that comes. So that kind of is a little point again of a connection binding the stories. And their conversation is interrupted by an overflight of the black riders. Now, if you think about Tolkien's life, he went to war in the First World War, in the first war that used air force.

18:58 It was a technology that was rapidly developing. So he would have been in the trenches seeing both home fighters and enemy fighters going overhead. And no doubt that was a terrifying moment. But in the Second World War, there was even more, in many ways, even more terrifying fact that planes were so much bigger, so much more powerful and reaching home, reaching London, reaching elsewhere. and Pippin reflects how the cries he hears overhead he had heard long ago in the Marish of the Shire, but now it had grown in power and hatred, piercing the heart with a poisonous despair.

19:48 And we have a great moment here. This is one of those, let's learn from this sections, where Baragond and Pippin go to the wall where they're sitting and they look out upon the landscape. Okay, I'm now going to do a little bit of Tolstoy. If you read Tolstoy, which I hope you do at some point, in War and Peace, of which there are many battles, I remember being struck by how he told Tolstoy, Might have been the Battle of Austerlitz. It doesn't really matter which battle. But he starts the battle up on the hill with Napoleon. And he looks down across the battlefield with the commander's sort of eye view.

20:30 And then he sweeps down and gets closer and closer to, I think it's Prince Andre who's fighting. And sort of goes into the mind of the individual soldier whose story we're following. So he goes from this battle. strategic view right down into the heart of the battle. It's a very good way to inform your reader exactly what's going on. And here we've got something a little bit similar. Not quite Napoleon Hill, though it is Pippin, so, you know, our little short guy. And he puts Pippin above the action. The fell beasts are flying in the middle of, heirs, so below him and below them are the lower levels of Minas Tirith.

21:21 So it's a very, and he can look out over them and beyond to see what they're doing. And it really helps us. It's the equivalent of without being a god, a sort of a god's eye view of what's happening in this scene. And it's very clear the effect the fel beasts are having on Minas Tirith as they fly over. We do get a bigger and sort of more detailed description of what exactly these creatures look like later on in the confrontation with Erwin. But at this stage, we just know they're sort of dark, large creatures. And...

22:02 many of us are wondering, well, where did you get them from? Are they dragons? Well, they're not quite dragons, are they? And there's a letter from 1958 where a reader asked him if they were a form of pterodactyl. Tolkien would have seen information about all sorts of dinosaurs. He lived just up the road from Oxford Natural History Museum. And he calls this science of, Fossil hunting. Semi-scientific mythology of the prehistoric. I'm not sure his colleagues would appreciate that.

22:42 But he was aware that there was a certain amount that fossil hunters did. They sort of piecing together a jigsaw, but they didn't have all the pieces. So there was an element of invention. You know, that's what happens in lots of archaeology has to do that because of the incomplete record. But I thought it's quite funny that he was being quite, he called it a mythology of the prehistoric. So he's borrowing from that. And he says that his creatures do indeed own something to that. And if you want to look up in more detail about Tolkien's relationship with the sort of prehistoric, He gave a wonderful lecture, a dragon lecture, in about 1938, I think it is.

23:28 Christmas of 1938. So not many years before this, where he talks about dragons and dinosaurs. So he loves this, playing with this idea that the two are sort of part of a mythology. Anyway, so yes, I think we're allowed to think they are in some way like a pterodactyl, that kind of creature. So how do you keep ringing the changes about a battle? If you've got a long battle, so if you think about the phases in the Battle of Polenor, you've got the invasion of the enemy, the siege, and this chapter ends with the horns of the Rohan arriving, and then later chapters are about the actual fighting on the ground in the Battle of Polenor.

24:15 Tolkien tells each part of this longer battle in different ways. And this one, he chooses to do it by having Pippin and Berrigan as like our sports commentators. He actually does use the comparison of a horse race at one point. So I'm not being, you know, I'm not thinking, not being rude about what he's doing here. It's something he's got in his mind. Yeah. And so it gives us this breathless commentary on what we're having, what's going on in front of us, but also the emotion of it. So, for example, let's just read a little bit of that.

24:59 "'Black riders of the air! But see, Beragon,' he cried, "'they're looking with something, surely. "'See how they wheel and swoop, "'always down to that point over there. "'And can you see something moving on the ground? "'Dark little things. "'Yes, men on horses, four or five. "'Ah, I can't stand it! "'Gandalf, Gandalf, save us!' "'So Pippin is narrating, and then as he gets overwhelmed... And it's handed over like a baton to Beragon who says, I won't read it all, but a little snippet here. The Lord Faramir, but how can he win to the gate? These foul hellhawks have other weapons than fear. But look, they hold on. They will make the gate. No, the horses are running mad.

25:39 So it's like blow by blow, he's saying... telling us what's happening. And then he runs off to go and help Faramir. So Pippin has to get up and complete it. And then we get it more as a, he does say some things, but it moves into his observation as opposed to a commentary. We're never allowed to forget that it's kind of a Pippin view. Pippin is making sense of it in his own way. So for example, when Gandalf drives off the Nazgul, It's described like this. It seemed to Pippin. This is how he makes sense of it. A shaft of white light stabbed upwards.

26:22 So it's a very, what's the word? It's a very subjective experience of what's going on. And of course, if you stop and think about it, as I did this time, I hadn't thought about this before. There is an echo here of such a thing that happened such long ago of the Battle of Weathertop, where it was seen from a distance as flickering light like lightning. I think there's Aragorn and Frodo see that, I think. And so here we now are closer to seeing how Gandalf actually defeats his enemy. So another little echo across the novel.

27:03 And there's also another description here of Gandalf, as well as this white light. As he arrives to Pippin, Gandalf seems like a small star down on the dusky fields. Gandalf and Shadowfax. And this idea of a small star, and we've got coming up one of the most moving moments in the whole novel, which is Sam seeing the star in Mordor. So you've got this hope there. Even in this darkness of the stars, they always are hopeful, which for those of you who know your Tolkien lore is, of course, right at the heart of elven culture, Eärendil and so on.

27:50 So this idea of a hopeful star is an important image that crops up again and again in Lord of the Rings. So after that fight, with the big vista, we move quickly to the more intimate moments of Gandalf and Faramir than the interview with Denethor. But it starts with Gandalf and Faramir, and we see them side by side. If you remember back in The Two Towers... I think it's Sam who says that there's something about Faramir that reminds him of Gandalf.

28:31 There's this element, there's a kinship between the two. And this is something which Pippin also thinks. But there is a lovely description here of Gandalf's returned, his light is spent, he's covered his white light, but a fire still smouldering in his eye. And that's important because there's about to be a gaze duel, a staring match. This man is on, this man, this wizard is on fire. He is ready for this battle. And Pippin is having thoughts about Faramir, which he would never have had when he first left the Shire. He's learned to understand the face of somebody who's passed through fear and mastered it.

29:16 He also finds him like Boromir, and you get this lovely little snippet, which we didn't see that much of, we hear that Pippin always admired Boromir. But this stirs Pippin to respond instantly. with a form of love for Faramir, seeing him as a man who's less high than Aragorn, but also less incalculable and remote. So he's not one of these mythic heroes, not like the Argonath figures of Isildur and Elendil. He's closer and lovable. He's picking up what Beragon feels about his captain. So while Denethor is not the most lovable of Lords of Gondor, The equivalent warm relationship that's being formed here is the one between Pippin and Faramir, which of course means that Pippin's heroics that are about to come are even more stirring.

30:13 So Faramir goes to report in to his dad and Pippin slips in, hardly noticed. And it's quite funny here because Faramir is reporting all these, oh yes, we fought this group and we did this and we did that. Oh, and by the way, I met Frodo who was carrying the ring. You know, it's like he leaves this bombshell to the end. And... I guess it may be because he's almost afraid to tell his father because he knows that this is going to be the thing that blows up this particular relationship. And he knows that his father is likely not to agree. So he's kind of holding back the bad news. But what is most disturbing here for a reader of the book and for Pippin, as our POV character, is Gandalf's hands are trembling.

30:59 He's troubled, even afraid. So if you're following along, this is page 85. And Faramir picks up these signals from Gandalf and says, don't worry, the darkness came before Sauron would have had a chance to do anything to Frodo and Sam. And then we get this harsh dismissal, which is the Denethor-Faramyr argument. It doesn't happen the same way in the film. It's sort of truncated in the film. It happens over a number of scenes here. And what's interesting from an author's point of view is that we can see from the drafts of this that Tolkien went back and rewrote this.

31:45 So his first thought was to have a A spiky relationship, but Faramir was the one who was going to volunteer to go out again. But he changes it so that the father, Denethor, pressures the son into doing something which he feels is suicidal. And he makes it much harsher. So this is a good lesson. If you've got a scene which is a bit undercooked, a bit under, you know, the tension fizzles, you have to raise the stakes. Move the emotional... make that a bigger sum, not just a slight disagreement, but a big disagreement where there's a feeling that Faramir could break with his father, but he doesn't.

32:33 And that Denethor could say, he does say, it's like fairly unforgivable to his son, but you need to push that relationship to breaking point. And what they're arguing about, of course, is the fact that underneath it all, Denethor is jealous of, of Mithrandir, Gandalf's relationship with his son. And of course, Gandalf's sitting there. And Denethor says to Faramir, he has long had your heart in his keeping. So even though there are these big war stakes, Tolkien reminds us of the smaller family stakes, which influence the bigger stakes. And Denethor mocks his wise, quieter son and says, But in desperate hours, gentleness may be repaid with death because Faramir didn't bring the ring to him but took his own counsel and sent Frodo on.

33:33 And then we get this awful, awful exchange, which is the real twist of the knife in the wound moment. And you need these things to make your reader care and feel. Poor old Faramir says, do you wish then that our places had been exchanged? I could have gone Boromir's stead, been dead like Boromir. And Denethor says, yes, I wish that indeed, for Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard's pupil. He's acting like a rejected, he feels rejected by his son. So there's a love hurt here, as well as a disagreement about policy.

34:18 So that's what gives this moment so much power. Yeah. And it's worth running just a little thought experiment here. So Faramir had been the first one to have the dream that sent Boromir to Rivendell. What if Faramir had been the one to be sent in his place? That would have perhaps been a wiser choice, but it would have been in terms of more fitted to being part of the fellowship. But it would have been a terrible story choice. You need to play with the combinations in your mind of a set of characters and make sure they don't all agree with each other.

35:01 You need the one like Boromir who's going to break things. And so you can't send Faramir. There's not much story in that. He's too much of a consensus. He'd get on fabulously with Aragorn, for example. So that wouldn't work. So just think about that in your own, if you're doing some writing, about am I making too many nice people do nice stuff? That's okay in Ted Lasso because that's what that program does. But in a sort of fantasy epic, you need the Boromirs to, in a sense, more than you need the Faramirs. You definitely need the Boromirs. And this is where Gandalf finally breaks his silence and he comes in with some home truths.

35:45 He says, Boromir would have kept it for his own. And when he returned, you would have not known your son. Well, of course, Denethor doesn't want to hear that. And they argue about it And there's this moment here about what Denethor says he would have done. And he gives himself away. He's like the politician who, by speaking, is a confession. So he says, Nay, it should have been kept, hidden, dark and deep. Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need.

36:27 but set beyond his grasp, that's the Dark Lord, saved by a victory so final that what then befell would not trouble us being dead. So he's giving himself away. It wouldn't have been used unless in the last extremity, and he would probably have reached the last extremity pretty quickly if he'd had that temptation in his hand. And Gandalf says, frankly... Well, good. Faramir's decision was good because I do not trust you. I don't trust you. But this is where we see the wisdom of Gandalf because he says, I do not trust myself in this and I refuse this thing even as a freely given gift.

37:16 He's like Galadriel. He knows, he's wise enough to know what temptations he should not be led into, to paraphrase the Lord's Prayer. So it does draw some of the sting, but clearly there is not a meeting of minds between Gandalf and Denethor. And there's in fact a duel. And it's described in quite an extraordinary way. So they're sitting looking, Denethor and Gandalf are sitting looking at each other. Pippin felt once more the strain between their wills. And now almost it seemed as if their glances were like blades from eye to eye, flickering as they fenced.

38:00 Reminds me of those old master pictures, particularly ones of the Annunciation, where you get a line between the eye of Angel Gabriel and Mary. It's always like a visible line. But it sort of makes what is a sitting down and talking scene much more dramatic, the idea that it's almost a visible fencing match happening here. So what I wonder if you remember... What I want to draw your attention to is after all this tension, that's the moment when in a film you cut away. But here, actually, it moves back to business as usual. He's asking, Denethor is asking Faramir about Osgiliath.

38:41 He's sort of changing the subject. And he does allow himself a moment of tenderness for his son. Denethor says, you are weary, I see. You have ridden fast and far and under shadows of evil in the air, I am told. And he sends him off to rest. He's not as merciless as the filmic version. So we do see that idea that, yes, Denethor does love his son. He's just said terrible things to him, but he actually does, after everything, he does love his son. So in contrast to that little moment of paternal concern, we then have Pippin and Gandalf. It's almost more like grandparental concern, doesn't it?

39:23 Sort of a matching moment when they've left this audience chamber. Pippin takes Gandalf's hand, It's quite interesting when you think about how many moments people are actually touching each other in this story. And they're not that many, other than battle, obviously. And this one is one of the few. So it's noteworthy. And Gandalf's response is to put his hand on Pippin's head. That's like a blessing. That's why it feels grandfatherly. And Pippin's asking if there's any hope. And Gandalf echoes Denethor's words and says, just a fool's hope.

40:04 If you think about Tolkien's Christianity, the wisdom of the fool is foolishness to the Greeks. There is an element of hope in that. But still, Gandalf is sort of almost mocking himself. There is a tradition of the holy fool, so it's not entirely negative. He might be thinking he always knew it was a huge gamble. But there is this sentence that follows, which I've always wondered about. So he is reflecting on hearing that Frodo's headed for Shelob's lair, basically, Curious Ungle. And Gandalf says, why that way, I wonder?

40:46 And I always think when I read that, what do you expect? What other way was there? Go through the gate, they tried that. And, you know, there was no handy eagle to take them in. I often wonder what other ways there could have been. Answers on a postcard. It doesn't seem as though Frodo was left with much choice. And then we get a moment which is a useful bit of connecting things. catch-up connecting, which is Gandalf works out that, yes, maybe Aragorn has forced the hand of Sauron by showing himself in the Palantir. It's useful to do this so that you don't have to have the recap when the characters finally meet.

41:28 And Gandalf shows his wisdom by being able to anticipate the moves of his allies. And then we get this little moment of Pippin, who's returned to being unquenchable, where he says, but. And Gandalf says, you'll only allow one but that night. It's so typical of them. And you need these moments of sort of warmth and levity. But the conversation is about Gollum. And this is something which I was just thinking about, that this reminds me that sometimes when you're so used to having introduced a character like Gollum, because he came in a couple of books ago, you know, in the middle of Two Towers, you have to remember that that's new information to this set of characters in the same way as when Frodo and Sam wake up after the big events.

42:23 When Sam wakes up, he sees Gandalf and thinks, wow. Hang on, you're dead. All the bad things are going to be undone. You've got to remember the state of knowledge of your characters. They don't sort of know these things. So this is why Pippin raises Gollum. But it also has a helpful reminder, because we now get Gandalf's perspective on what might be happening, And this is the hope that keeps coming up all the way through. Gandalf says, let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. There's some sort of instinct, some gut feeling in Gandalf that this is where the path is lying.

43:10 He said it very early on, right back in chapter two, I think it is, the pity that stayed his hand, that part. He's thinking, yes, this Gollum creature is a useful, potentially useful presence. He's a disruptor and it may work out for the best. So the next day, we've got Pippin walking around and this is like the preparation to what happens next, the sort of onslaught process. And because he's roving, we've got a series of short paragraphs where he's picking up the mutterings in the city. The mood of the city, a bit like a reporter saying what the mood on the streets was.

43:52 One of those is the view that the Lord drives his son too hard. Denethor's too harsh on Faramir. There's this idea, he moves into the Ordinitz chamber where the War Council is meeting. And we see just how hard Denethor is driving Faramir. And it sounds like the kind of discussion that people who are not physically putting themselves out there to expend their own life might have. The sort of, the companion to Lord of the Rings mentions First World War generals, but I think it's almost all generals at any time in history.

44:37 Because Denethor is saying, and the enemy must pay dearly for the crossing of the river. But Faramir is sort of saying, well, the enemy can afford to throw away troops. We can't. So this impasse leads to, I do not oppose your will, sire. And he goes off to stage this hopeless defense of Osgiliath and the war in the Plenor Fields. What are we learning here about war stories? I think it's showing how command works. how decisions are taken, the complexity of motives, The history, so Denethor is saying, well, your brother kept, you know, he took us Gilead.

45:29 And Faram is saying, well, it's a bit different now. And so there's the layers of history. You can think of similar discussions that would have been had about, say, the retreat to Dunkirk and things like that. There's this sense of peace is moving now. And Farama is the piece who has to go and join the board. So more isn't just about the man in the trench on the front line, which is kind of the way I wrote about it. It's about this level too. And we go back into another series of short little paragraphs about the preparation with snatches of news. You get the sense of Pippin, roving reporter, moving around.

46:11 And. And it's mentioned here that the black captain is more powerful now than he was in the Shire. We got that from the cry, the one about the Marish. But there is a sense of that he has been given greater wizardry. There's another phrase that comes up about how he drives his forces in front of him. It's like he's got the whips of Sauron behind him. You know, it's that thing. He's got this, and we do see him... use a spell. So he is the dark version of Gandalf. I found, when I was reading this, an echo of the Helm's Deep preparation when they look out and see the fires in the valley and Rick Cotton Tree were being burned.

46:59 The same is going on here. The homelands, the farms, all of these places where the people really live are being destroyed. And whilst that's happening... Denethor is sitting, the spider Denethor is sitting, desperately willing Rohan to arrive. There's an interesting little exchange here, which Pippin instigates, really, because he doesn't quite know what's going on. And there's this sort of moment of tension. And he says, is the Dark Lord arrived? It's not the Dark Lord. It's the Lord of the Nazgul. It's the chief of the Nazgul.

47:42 He will come and triumph over me when all is one. He's very narrow in his view. He is saying, and this is the problem about Denethor, he only sees it about Gondor. Gandalf is, as he said elsewhere, he's got the whole of the peoples of Middle-earth in his thoughts. He's taking it as a battle between him and Sauron. That's That's how he sees this fight. He's spending his son. He's wearing a sword, which he doesn't actually use to fight against the enemy. He isn't a Theoden who's much more, sees himself as part of a bigger struggle. He's narrowed.

48:24 He's so proud that he's narrowed down to the sort of Gondor being the West. That's what it means for him. the prophecy that the chief of the Nazgul is not going to be killed by the hand of a man, not by hand of a man shall he fall, when Denethor says, are you going to go out and match him? I had a little thought here. Is Gandalf... Is he a man? Or is the wizard slightly different? Anyway, I think, well, Laogand have to be a man. I kind of thought, well, maybe the prophecy could apply to you.

49:05 But as we know, it's got a better answer coming up. Denethor shows that he knows things. He knows about the fall of Caer Andros, which is, if you look at the map, this sort of boat-shaped river island, one of their strongholds. And he's prepared a sortie There's a little breadcrumb here, which is clear when you read it again, that he's been looking into the stone. It's one of the ways that Lord of the Rings changes each time you read it. Because if you read it without foreknowledge, you think, how does he know all this? And then you see, ah, yes, that was the clue that he is being poisoned by the propaganda from Sauron.

49:47 We had commentary, like the two Pippin and Beragond narrating what was happening. Now we've got an excited bit of narration about this retreat that... is sort of seen as a joint experience of watching it from the walls, but I think we can assume that Pippin is our point of view. So they see the troops coming back. Then the retreat becomes a rout. And Denethor holds back, holds back, and then Dol Amroth, the Prince Imrahil, rides out, leading a sortie. Gandalf again drives off the Nazgul. And we've got this image of the hosts of Morgul intent on their prey, broke, scattering like sparks in a gale.

50:31 This is just a finger, a little, not even a finger, a slip of a nail of the actual forces. But it's the precursor to the bigger battle that's going to come. But the drama of the moment is last to arrive is Faramir in the arms of Prince Imrahil, who is his relative. I think his mother's, on his mother's side. Well, he's carried home in the arms of family. This is the moment where Delethor really goes over the edge. In a way, it's easy to be jealous and bitter when you don't feel you have, you know, while Faramir is okay.

51:17 But now seeing that he might lose his son, knowing that he was the one who sent him out, it totally shatters him. And he goes up into his tower where a pale light gleamed and flickered. Hint, Palantir, second reading. And then we've got, it gets worse. We've got Ingold, who's the chap we met when, in chapter one, when Pippin and Gandalf came through the outer wall of, He has the bad news that an army holds the road to the north. So it's being blocked by the enemy. Rohan can't come that way. They're not coming, guys. There's no relief. This is another thing you may not have noticed.

51:58 You may just be thinking about the armies set, you know, in front of Minas Tirith being what's blocking them. But in the novel, there's another army that, further north which is why Rohan goes through the the old forest with Gamburri Gan so that's we're getting we're getting there in a second but that's the army and the news is brought the bad news is brought by Ingold so it's the lowest moment of the low it's the darkest hour And of course, strategically, you've got to do this in a novel.

52:38 You've got to take it all the way down to despair before you get the glimmer of light, which comes at the end of this chapter. Anyway, Pippin is looking out again. He's got this wonderful view where he can see what's going on. The tents are springing up like fungus. There's ant-like activity. There's trenches with their engines for throwing missiles. You can't help but think of First World War with the artillery sitting back behind the trenches and the light of the enemy soldiers in their trenches. But there's an element here of the sort of horror of medieval warfare or earlier warfare.

53:22 where the missiles being thrown in set fire to the lower ring of Minas Tiris, but also send the heads of the victims on the field. They're dishonoring the dead. And it's obviously a really horrific and devastating. It's one of the ways that sets apart the army who behaves honourably by the laws of war and that one that does not. And there's this very poignant sentence, but mild and disfigured as they were, that's the heads coming over the wall, it often chants that thus a man would see again the face of someone he had known.

54:06 who had walked proudly once in arms or tilled the fields or ridden in upon a holiday from the green veils in the hills. It's this awareness of the... lost the victims and what they mean. Tolkien, of course, lost so many dear, dear friends in the First World War. And an element of that grief is in that sentence. And it makes it matter more. It's not just nameless soldiers who are dying. These are friends, loved ones. but it all adds to the feeling of what is called dread and despair, which can unman a city swifter than hunger.

54:48 The Nazgul have this oppressive presence. So you would have thought Thinking about this as a war story, you would have thought that this is a moment you then say, see Jen Wun-jin's forward, let's start the battle. No. We move from there, from this big focus to the intimacy of a sick chamber. Pippin is standing witness to the change that happened to the city leader, to Denethor. He tries to comfort him, but is brushed off. And Denethor says he thinks the enemy has found it. There's some discussion in the critics about what he has, you know, has he seen it in the Palantir, has he told Sauron about Frodo and so on.

55:37 No, no, no. I think it's enough to say that he has drawn conclusions from being shown the propaganda that it's a hopeless battle. He thinks they're so strong they must have found it. There's nothing we can do. That's what I think Tolkien meant us to understand here. And Denethor gives up his command. He says you can follow the grey fool if you must. And so good news for Minas Tirith is that Gandalf does take over and he has at his side Prince Imrahil, whose elvish heritage is here celebrated.

56:18 And the two of them walk around the city and there's an echo of Shakespeare here. In Henry V, there's a line about Henry V going amongst the soldiers before the battle and there's a phrase... A little touch of Harry in the night. So here we've got a little touch of Gandalf and Prince Imrahil in the night. But the first circle is pretty much gone and there are some people manning the walls who are cut off. It's grim. You can't help but feel some sympathy for Denith Thor. It is despair. But he says it repeatedly that the West has failed. I found reading that this time...

57:00 It felt even more relevant. We're living through more difficult times than many of us have known, where people are having this debate. Has the West failed? Has democracy failed? You know, all that kind of stuff. And that's the kind of thing Denethor says. So we're not going to say that on this podcast, but we're going to try and understand it. And in his despair, the one thing he cannot let go of is his pride. because he's thinking, I'm going to decide the time of my own departure. I'm going to take my son with me because he's dying anyway. The house of his spirit crumbles.

57:41 And Pippin is the bigger man because his reply is that he refuses to despair whilst Gandalf has hope. And I love this little note. He looks Denethor straight in the eye. Remember there was a fencing match happened between Gandalf and Denethor? Pippin is now the one saying... The one meeting his eye and daring it. Pippin is growing up so quickly. He is so admirable in this chapter. And we get this funereal procession to the houses of the dead behind the citadel.

58:24 And just notice how this is orchestrated. You've got this solemn procession. But just out over there is a raging battle. Have a look at this in page 99. Out from the white tower they walked, as if to a funeral, out into the darkness, where the overhanging cloud was lit beneath with the flickers of dull red. Softly they paced the great courtyard, and at a word from Denethor halted beside the withered tree. You know, Condor is a withered tree, it's looking pretty grim. All was silent save for the rumour of war in the city down below, and they heard the water dripping sadly from the dead branches into the dark pool.

59:14 Fabulous, Tolkien. Love those bits. Really pull out these atmospheric stops here. And it works all the more because we're aware of the siege engines and all the fire and all the battle that's happening just over the way. So Pippin shows he is a man of his own mind, a hobbit of his own mind, unlike some of the servants. He thinks it's quite likely that Faramir needs medicine more than tears. And he orders the servants. He's stepping up here. He's saying, right, go slow. And he meets Berrigan and tells Berrigan that his master, Denethor, is fae and dangerous.

59:59 Yeah, quite. And then there's a really important... message here. As Beragon's saying, but I've posted to obey Denethor. And Pippin says, well, you must choose between orders and the life of Faramir. And as for orders, I think you have a madman to deal with, not a lord. There you go. That's the answer to any illegal order that you might be given in life. You have to choose. And Pippin is very clear about what he chooses. But another thing here is, in order to have our roving point of view, we've got to have a reason for getting Pippin down into the action in the front line.

1:00:44 And this is a brilliant reason. He's got an urgent personal reason. Faramir's life is at stake. Denethor has run mad. But he's heading straight into the enormous thing that is at stake, which is the survival of the city. And so I was saying that each section of the war is narrated in a different way. Here we have a sort of poetic, almost, not the poetry of the Battle of Polenor Fields, where it goes straight into poetry. Here we have... narration that has a kind of Tennysonian cadence. Tennyson was the Victorian poet that, well, he was certainly someone that Tolkien would know very well, but he was famous for his thumping rhythms, like the charge of the Light Brigade, half a league, half a league, half a league onwards into the valley of death, rode the 600.

1:01:40 that stuff is underlying this verse, the use of repetition, the use of sort of rhythmic half sentences. So you really need to go and have a look at this if you haven't for a while. We're on page 102 and we are talking about Grond. Yes, Grond, great name for a battering ram. Naming of weapons, that's a whole other discussion, isn't it? So we've got here, first of all, the lineage of this weapon.

1:02:22 That's something which Tolkien picked up from his reading of the epics. You talk about the history of a sword or the history of the shield. Here we've got the history of a battering ram. Long had it been forging in the dark smithies of Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in the likeness of a ravening wolf, and its spells of ruin lay. So it's not only a physical object, it's got spells on it. And this is where we have the dark version of Gandalf. We'll see the wizardry of the dark side here. So we've got a repetition of grond crawling on, grond crawled on, grond crawled on.

1:03:08 And then it strikes three times, rule of three, and there's a spell. So those all combine. Then the black captain rose in his stirrups and cried aloud in a dreadful voice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and stone. So that's going to do it, isn't it? And then we get these inversions of sentences are very Tolkienian touch. It can be badly done, but Tolkien, I think, does it well, in my view. So the next sentence after the line break is, in rode the Lord of the Nazgul.

1:03:50 So normally in English, you'd say the Lord of the Nazgul rode in, but not in this kind of heroic verse. Narration. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. If you listen to any of the audio versions of this, this is a real tub-thumping moment done brilliantly by all the readers. So do listen as well or read aloud yourself because it's great fun to read aloud. So we've got this great build-up, got the Lord of the Nazgul, everyone's fleeing. And then beginning of the next paragraph, note the use of the short dramatic sentence, all save one.

1:04:35 That's the one who stayed behind. Who is that? Gandalf sitting on Shadowfax, and Shadowfax is the only one who could withstand the terror. And Gandalf's words are very reminiscent of what he said to the Balrog, and that ended up quite well, didn't it? You cannot enter here, said Gandalf, and the huge shadow faltered. Go back to the abyss prepared for you. Go back. Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your master. Go. Very similar. And just as the Balrog responded with sort of revealing his, you know, his fire and shadowy wing-like sort of shadows around him, we've got the Black Rider revealing himself.

1:05:24 These moments are great crescendos. What we've been waiting for. Frodo did glimpse them, but he was glimpsing them in the world of the shadows, where they were pale and ghostly forms. Here, this is what the Nazgul look like with their cloaks off. And behold, he had a kingly crown. And yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it, and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter. So he's a creature who's sort of become just fire and malicious.

1:06:08 He lives more in the world of the shadows. He doesn't live in the real world anymore. Wonderful, fabulous stuff. And he, of course, this word fool has been echoing through this chapter. Old fool, he said, old fool, this is my hour. And this is the hubris of the bad guys, mocking the bravery of those who resist them. Gandalf did not move. And then we get the ewe catastrophe, Tolkien's beloved word, where something good comes out of a seeming disaster. You get the cock crow.

1:06:49 Cock crows, of course, they echo through the Bible, through stories. It's a moment of mourning, herald of the mourning. And the cock crow reckons nothing of wizardry or war. There's a world going on which is outside the fates of men and hobbits and elves. But we get instead this, the cockerel is a sort of version which then become horns. And here we get, I'm sure you could set this out like poetry. And as if in answer they came from far away, another note, horns, horns, horns, rule of three.

1:07:34 In dark Mindaloo inside, they dimly echoed, great horns of the north wildly blowing. That's not a sentence with a verb, but we don't worry about that. Rohan had come at last. I want to cheer. Always want to cheer at that point, because it's such a brilliant moment. And we're on a knife edge because we've got the Rohan have come, The gates are down. Faramir's on his... Dad's trying to burn him alive. Ah, you know, when you're in a war story, keep piling on the stakes. And we're going to make that moment of tension live with us, stay there, because actually the next chapter takes us back to the ride of the Rahirim.

1:08:24 So we're going to find out how the Rahirim got there. We're not going to find out what happens to Gandalf and everybody at the gate. So we've got to carry on reading, haven't we? And that's another thing you need to do, keep the pages turning. So as I said, I promised you an epic chapter and it's just magnificent. My takeaway is if you're doing a Narrate it in different ways. Think of ways of bringing it alive. Make sure you've got characters who have overviews so that you're not lost in the fog of the detail, so that your reader can follow. Keep the personal and intimate present at all times.

1:09:07 Contrast big, flashy scenes with the quiet and the solemn and the unbearably sad. It's all in there in this chapter, so... I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I clearly have. 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. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts.

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