LOTR: An Author's Journey - Wrap Up of The Two Towers, Book 3

1:00:04 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 for those of you who have been following my sidecast on Lord of the Rings, you will realise that we have very recently completed the first book of the Two Towers. And we thought we would wrap this up by highlighting some of the favourite bits from listeners over the last few months when I've been working on this and put them together in a little package for you to enjoy. It's also meant as a taster for those who haven't yet dipped into the full series to see the kind of thing I get up to when I describe what's going on.

1:00:51 So, with no more ado, let us start. And we begin right at the beginning of the Two Towers when things have gone awry. And here I look out, what has gone wrong with Aragorn and what might be the reason behind his seeming lapse in leadership? One thing which I've always puzzled about here, which is that Aragorn is oddly negligent. He runs up the hill knowing this is a dangerous situation, tells Sam, follow me, but makes no allowances for Hobbit legs, doesn't seem to notice Sam isn't with him for a very long time.

1:01:34 It could be that he's just not a very good leader at this point. But I was thinking that this feels to me as though Tolkien is imagining the panic coming out of this crisis point. And I don't think it's a panic generated by the ring, which could be one explanation for it. It seems to me it's one of those fortuitous accidents that the presiding fate of this world needs to have them scatter at this point because they all got vital roles to play. It's that sense there is a greater plan beneath it. And it could be why Aragorn is acting in an un-Aragorn-like way of not noticing that he's left Sam behind.

1:02:19 I suppose that gives you the sense that fate is driving them at this point. They're not quite in control of their choices. And also Aragorn is shown to be, I suppose a little bit unheroic in that he jumps in shouting Elendil, Elendil, but he's missed the battle. So there's a lot of misfiring, misdirection, misunderstandings, all part of this frenetic activity. But of course, the blade may be empty of enemies, but it's not empty of everybody because he comes upon Boromir lying on his deathbed.

1:03:00 The language around Boromir begins to change a bit. We are moving into the Aragorn register of heroic deeds and kings and queens, that kind of world, as opposed to the Hobbit everyday sense. They have a moving exchange and that exchange masks some suspense that Tolkien is slipping in there. The suspense about which Hobbits have been taken. If we remember the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, we know, but the Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas don't know. So it makes their decision even harder. After Boromir is allowed his sort of grandeur of passing in that he makes his confession, he sort of puts things as right as he can at that point.

1:03:49 So he ends up as a hero rather than a villain. Aragorn is given a brief soliloquy. It does feel like something from a stage convention where he's lamenting the fault that he has committed by making mistakes. I suppose here we are reminded of the sort of heraldic speeches of Arthurian knights, those kinds of things. So it is quite a stage scene with Boromir lying surrounded by the bodies of his foes. It's a sort of end of Hamlet feel to it.

1:04:32 So that could be going on somewhere in the back of Tolkien's mind. Legolas here is the one who has the idea, because Aragorn is flummoxed. He's hesitating and Legolas is the one with the plan. He says that they must bury Boromir or do his funeral rites and then follow. And he sums it up as, let us do first what we must do. So very sensible. And of course, a big part of the enjoyment of Two Towers is encountering the culture of Rohan.

1:05:14 And here we have the beginning of that relationship between what's left of the Fellowship arriving to meet the riders of Rohan. And here I have a little description of how Tolkien introduces us to this marvellous horse mad culture. We have heard of this culture before. If we cast our mind back to the Council of Elrond, it was one of the details in that. Gandalf was telling his story. So we've had a bit of an introduction. But here we get a potted history, like a couple of lines about their history. He calls them true-hearted and bold.

1:05:56 And obviously, their culture is the horse culture. And they have songs rather than books. Again, this all chimes with the Anglo-Saxon world, really. And he calls them children of men, i .e. they're from younger days. This reminds me a bit of the description of Arthur's court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where the court is described as childlike. Interesting adjective. But I think it is trying to sense that the idea here is that they are people from an earlier time, the beginnings of culture.

1:06:41 He mentions that they are akin to the Bardings. That's the people around Lake-Town, that area. And Bjornings, Bjorn, the shape-changer in the woods. So they come from the north. That's where they've come from. And they also refer here to the rumour that was repeated, I think it's at the Council of Elrond, that they send horses in tribute to Mordor. And this is one of those questions that's going to be aired in this chapter. And Aragorn stands with Boromir by rejecting the rumour. And we soon learn that he actually has deep knowledge, having ridden with the riders earlier on in his life.

1:07:22 We get the wonderful arrival of the riders of Rohan. Note here that Tolkien is so much thinking about the horses in association with Rohan that the people are described pretty much like horses. The men that rode them matched them well, matched the horses, tall and long-limbed, their hair flaxen pale flowed under the light helms and streamed in long braids behind them. Their faces were stern and keen. So they have manes too. It's just a bit of fun description. I love the drama of this moment where the three are hidden by their cloaks and they're not spotted until they stand up.

1:08:06 And I think when you think of the film version, they pretty much took the stage directions from the book and transposed immediately into the film. So I can't help, as much as I try and get rid of thinking about the film, I can't help but think of the choreography of the horses sort of turning around and spinning in a circle and ending up with the spears pointing at the interlopers. It was well done by the stud riders. But Tolkien got there first. So they're honouring Tolkien. Moving away from the Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas grouping, we're going back to the hobbits now.

1:08:51 And Pippin has been a bit of a dead weight in some ways, comic relief in the fellowship. And now he comes into his own and we look at that chapter where Pippin steps forward and becomes a hero we always knew he would be. What I find interesting in this chapter about Pippin, or one of the many things, is how he goes from passive regret to taking action. And the passive regret is characterised by him thinking of himself as a piece of luggage that is being sort of carried around by other people awaiting collection. Now, the idea of luggage is a very 20th century Edwardian railway idea, which fits with the hobbit world, which does feel more modern than many of the other cultures.

1:09:43 So it fits with the world of the hobbits, because you can't imagine orcs having concierges and luggage. So it's part of the big gap between him and the people who are holding him hostage. He's sort of seeing himself as other people have seen him as he shouldn't have been there. He's a fish out of water very clearly. But one of the things all the hobbits share in common is once they reach that point, they bounce back. And he bounces back by taking advantage of orc politics. So this is the second point I wanted to bring out is here we actually get behind the doors, the closed doors of orcs.

1:10:24 If you think about the fights to this point in Moria, we never really understood much about the individual orcs. Here they are named, we understand their factions, we understand their politics. So we've got three main factions. We've got the orcs that have come down from the mines to avenge their leader. We've got the Mordor orcs and Grishnak is their leader. And we have the Isengard orcs who call themselves the Uruk-hai and Ugluk is their leader. So remember that this is written at the time of war, where the allies were up against uneasy alliances between, one day they shifted, but the Russians at one point until they swapped sides, the Germans, the Italians and so on.

1:11:21 You can see in the back of Tolkien's mind that he is reflecting on the fact that you're not usually just facing one foe with one agenda. You're facing many with many agendas. The Japanese as well, of course, in that war. We get a snatch of black speech and a hint of their culture because obviously for Tolkien, cultures start with language. But fortunately, because you have the different factions, they lapse into using ordinary language. And so Pippin is able to follow the debate. I just want to underline at this point, if we're thinking about the author's journey, just how useful some version of common speech is.

1:12:04 Unless you go the Douglas Adams route of having a Babelfish or a spell to translate things, you need to make the fact that people can communicate less of a burden. You don't want to always be going through translation. It's very important for fantasy. So if you're writing a story where people have different languages, find some way of dealing with that so it's not a bore. Unless, of course, the point is that your character can't understand what's going on around them. But I wouldn't hang on in that position for too long. When you're reading Lord of the Rings, you cannot be ignorant of the beauty of the language that he uses.

1:12:48 It's just the most marvellous resident stuff. And in this chapter, I celebrated how Tolkien dips into almost Churchillian language for Gandalf on his return. So let's all enjoy a bit of Tolkien writing at his most eloquent. This chapter is full of the most wonderful phrases. He goes on to say, Be merry, we meet again at the turn of the tide. So we are in a pivotal point in this story, and Gandalf is telling us we are. This is the fight back. So in terms of the Second World War, this is what happens after Dunkirk hits the next few years, the arrival of America in the war, that kind of thing.

1:13:37 So we're not at the end, but we're at that point where it begins to push back the other way. Gimli in this chapter is really hung up on getting it wrong about thinking Gandalf was Saruman. But Gandalf has some words of comfort for him here. He says, Indeed, I am Saruman. Saruman as he should have been, because he has taken over the status of the white, which is more than just a badge of the head of the order of wizards. It is actually a kind of being which Saruman has broken away from by wanting to be Saruman of many colors.

1:14:18 And Gandalf goes on to say, I have forgotten much that I thought I knew, and learned again much that I had forgotten, which in itself sounds like a riddle. So I said the theme of this chapter was all about puzzles. What we discover here is that Gandalf is the biggest puzzle of them all. We've been led not to answering the question about where Merry and Pippin are. It's actually who Gandalf is and what role he has to play is the real puzzle. Though that's not entirely answered, because the real answer lies in the world beyond Middle Earth, the world of the gods and Iluvatar and things which a Middle Earth story doesn't really answer, but we only sense.

1:15:06 We get lots of other kinds of answers though. And the first one of those is how Gandalf has kept up with what's been going on. And the traces, the interweaving that we mentioned in earlier chapters begins to, you know, the knot is tied off on them. We get to see that the eagle that Legolas saw on a number of occasions was indeed sent by Gandalf. But when you have a character who comes in like this, who is so powerful, you don't want to make them Superman. You don't want to give them too much power. They have to have kryptonite to make them work. And so Gandalf knows a lot, but he also doesn't know some things.

1:15:49 He is able to sense where the ring is. The ring has now passed beyond my help. But he didn't know about Sam, for example. He can see how a sore trial it was for Boromir, but he didn't know that that happened to Boromir until Aragorn tells him. Doing this audacious move, think how audacious it is to bring back someone from the dead, which is basically what has happened to Gandalf here. Not quite dead because he's not quite human, but that is the effect. It is very bold and very brave to do this.

1:16:30 But it isn't him riding on a white charger to sweep all before him with some magic spell. He has to come and enter in the thick of it again. He has to get down to the granular level of dealing with people. Otherwise, the answer to the question of how that tide is being turned. And finally, in our selection of clips, we return to Rohan and we meet the people of Rohan in a much better place where they have overcome the poison of Wormtongue.

1:17:22 And here we have a celebration of that culture in how its youth and age come together to form the bond that actually takes them all the way to the fields of the Battle of Pelennor. So I mentioned that we have a youth and age theme running through this chapter. It comes to a head when Éomer comes in because he is the young man offering allegiance to the old man. Éomer coming forward and offering his allegiance, an act which is copied by all the other warriors during this chapter, reasserts the ancient king at the top and the youth coming to support and to take over.

1:18:06 And this is take over when the time comes, because he's named as Éomer. But we also get Wormtongue trying to use that youth and age to unpick it. That's what he's been doing. He's been saying, you're too old for all of this. And that is his argument. He's saying, you must put your feet up. They're trying to lure you to your death. That's the kind of poison. You can see how he's been feeding this poison to Theoden. But it's too late. Grímr's poison is now leaving Theoden. And what we get here is the moment when aged realises it isn't so old.

1:18:52 And the decision point is, will you not take the sword? And being reminded of the strength of his youth and the fact that his best days are behind him, he's still got it in him. Theoden turns into the warrior king at that point when he takes the sword and we get another little poem. Here it's got the hint of the alliteration. Arise now, arise, riders of Theoden. Can you see the R sound? Arise, arise, riders. Dire deeds awake, deedee. Dark is to eastward. Let the horse be bridled, horn be sounded.

1:19:33 That's got H sounds combining the two parts of that literative verse. Forth aeolingas. That little ditty there, little war cry, is probably the most Old English style poem actually in this section because of the alliteration. And in response, we get one of the first little snatches of Old English in this refrain, westu Theoden hal, which is like a kind of greeting or praise phrase, which Aema says, never again shall it be said, Gandalf, that you come only with grief.

1:20:19 So it's pushing back on all the things that Wormtongue has been saying. I hope you've enjoyed following me through this first part of The Two Towers. And we've already made a little start on the second part, that's book four, where we have rejoined Frodo and Sam and, of course, met Gollum. So please do come and join me for further sidecasts as we read our way through The Lord of the Rings. Thank you so much for listening.