Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 2 Chapter 9

00:00 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today we are going to have one of our sidecasts as we take an author's journey through the Lord of the Rings. And we have reached chapter 9 in book 2, that's towards the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, and the chapter is titled the Great River, and it very much does what it says, because it's the longest stretch of the river travel that they do, heading south towards Mordor. Now, looking at this chapter, I don't suppose it's anyone's favourite chapter as a whole, but there may be some favourite moments in it, and there are two for me, maybe three actually, but we'll look at those as we go along. 00:59 The actual structure of this chapter the other previous chapters I've been talking about it falling into sort of three parts or that kind of thing here. Actually, when I looked at it, it seemed to me as if it's more like a string of beads. There are probably around six little episodes strung on the string of the river as they go along. So look out for that as a change of structure as they go along. So look out for that as a change of structure. It starts in a dreamy, drifty mood. It's got an uneasy opening. Frodo wakes up. He fell asleep at the end of the previous chapter. So this is one of the ways that Tolkien often starts a chapter is with Frodo waking up and we get here. 01:49 Sort of it's an odd beginning because it seems as though they're not exactly aimless, but they are definitely drifting and it's described like that. It said that not that most of the company were eager to hurry southwards, they all want to hold back. Not that most of the company were eager to hurry southwards, they all want to hold back. Aragorn let them drift with the stream as they wished, husbanding their strength against weariness to come Now. I think it's a dangerous game in a book to let it feel as though it's drifting. But what rescues this particular version is the undertow of the river. They are moving onwards, no matter what. If that same sentence had been written about them just camping on the bank for a week, I think it would have lost the tension. But there is the reluctant drag into adventure that is happening here. So I see Tolkien actually just keeping us, reminding us of the stakes, and he does that through the point of view of Aragorn, saying that he felt in his heart that time was pressing and the Dark Lord hadn't stayed still whilst they were in Lorien. So keep the drum beat up. Keep the tension going, even if you are in a passage which is purposely seemingly more relaxed, because you want that in order to make this abrupt change into action, as comes in an episode or two, feel even more of a contrast. 03:24 This is another place where we could admire Tolkien's world-building. Sometimes, actually, I think he's almost at his best in these little, unremarkable corners of Middle-earth. The brown lands he described as brown and withered, they looked as if a fire had passed over them, leaving no blade of green, an unfriendly waste, without even a broken tree or a bold stone to relieve the emptiness. This is the eastern bank of the river Wonderful description. I love the sort of. Again, it's where his prose seems almost poetic. Brown and withered, they looked that inversion rather than they look brown and withered. Brown and withered. They looked as if a fire had passed over them, leaving no blade of green. Blade, a hard edge, but it's not even you know, like it could be a spear or a blade of that sort, but we're talking about a blade of grass. Also harsh edges even in the description of what's not there, an unfriendly waste, without even a broken tree or a bold stone. That sort of juxtaposition tree and stone Wonderful. But of course what this makes us think of, if we know Tolkien's experience in the First World War, is it does feel like a battlefield, and it is described as Aragorn doesn't know what had happened here. Even he doesn't know exactly, but there's a feeling of the plots of the enemy, the battles of yesteryear having passed over this and blighted it forever. 05:07 And I wonder if Tolkien had in mind what had happened to the fields of France, the idea that the blasted trees and no stone left standing in no man's land. If that was in the back of his mind. It certainly is more and more as you get closer to Mordor, and he says that himself in his letters that it is in the back of his mind, though he admits he also has some William Morris stories in his head as well. So never think there's just one reference point. Tolkien's always drawing from a whole scrapbook of ideas and of course any creative does the same. So, in contrast to the eastern bank, which is the left bank, as they go down the river on the right bank. The other is a wonderful description of a flat green land with the rushes, and here we get the evocative mention of small birds peeping in the rushes, but they're unseen. And then you get the phalanx of black swans going overhead. You never know if those swans were in some way friendly or unfriendly, but everything seems like a portent in this emptied out landscape. So here what we're looking at is an author creating a charged atmosphere in a landscape which is bleak and desolate. 06:46 It is Aragorn who is taken over from Celeborn. Celeborn, back in Lorien, was giving us the. He was our map describer. Aragorn is now doing it. He's the one providing the geographical brief and he makes it clear and Sam recognises this because Sam is the one reacting that they are on the front line and actually a river is a very clear demarcation of a front line. It's very helpful for a reader to be able to imagine oh yes, the enemy territory is on that side of the bank and dangerous but friendly territory is on the west side of the bank. I did actually one stage of my life go to a war zone as part of a job I was doing um for oxfam, and the front line in this particular conflict in mindanao, which was a civil war conflict in the philippines, was a road and so driving down the road you can sense the sort of divided lands. Those civil wars are obviously more messy and less tidy than this particular front line, more like the front line as it stood in the First World War, as it stood in the First World War. 08:04 Tolkien continues to turn the ratchet of tension slowly here because as they carry on in this drifting with the current way, there's a feeling of insecurity grew on all the company. And here we get an unusual check-in on what everybody's thinking. So it starts with Frodo, which is not surprising because the conceit is that he's later on putting it back together again as the story. He's thinking back to Lorien, which gives us the contrast of the green land with gold and silver with this land of mists and brown lands. You know, when you put one shiny, bright thing against something dark and drear and misty, you get each looks better, you know one more extreme version of themselves. But we also get a check-in to the headspace of Legolas, very unusually, and Gimli who's thinking about what he's going to do with Galadriel's hair, but tellingly we see Boromir from the outside, it's Pippin who is worried about him. So Boromir's behavior, which has been disruptive for many chapters, he's now seeming to lose it a bit, because he's basically been quite creepy. He's paddling up to catch up with Frodo and then sort of drifting back again. So he is falling under the power of the ring, though that isn't spelt out here, but an attentive reader will be aware of the alarm bells which should be ringing around Boromir. So that's the first section, which I would call the sort of drifty, menacing section. 09:51 And now we get to the second of our little episodes, and this is when they pull up on an ayot or an eight. What that is, if you're wondering, is a peninsula or even a little island on the bank of a river. The spelling that Tolkien has chosen, e-y-o-t, is not the most usual one. It's often written down as A-I-T. Anyway, that's what it is Water around an island or a little peninsula into a river or lake. 10:26 And here we get remember, we've had this long, long build up to Gollum's approach. But here he actually gets named because Sam has noticed and, unlike everybody else who's been keeping it to themselves, including Frodo, sam who notices something a log with eyes in the river basically tells Frodo everything he saw and dares to give it a name as well. And Frodo says yeah, I know why they don't talk to each other is one of those mysteries in this part of the story. And then they agree to go it alone on keeping watch. But that doesn't last very long because as Frodo is keeping watch, he has a near miss of seeing Gollum. And that wakes Aragorn. So Aragorn says so, you know about our little footpad, do you? And that wakes Aragorn. So Aragorn says so you know about our little footpad, do you? And Aragorn goes on to tell Frodo and us that he's tried to capture Gollum on a number of occasions. Okay, why has he not told the rest of the company? I don't have an answer for that and I can't think of a story answer for that, other than perhaps maybe not wanting to alarm them or he didn't think it was necessary. But it does mean that finally it becomes a company knowledge, because Aragorn twists the tension by saying he's a dangerous creature, quite apart from murder by night on his own account, he may put the enemy that is about on our track. So he spells out the danger he sees from Gollum and it does become a full company watch. So now everybody is in on the fact they're being tracked by Gollum. 12:27 So, moving on from the eight, there's a change in landscape and I've written this down. It's quite a long passage but I loved it. Soon they were passing through a hilly, rocky land and on both shores there were steep slopes buried in deep breaks of thorn and sloe tangled with brambles and creepers. Behind them stood low, crumbling cliffs and chimneys of grey weathered stone, dark with ivy, and beyond those again there rose high ridges crowned with wind-ridden firs. Why did I bother to write down a passage about a place I don't even get off the boat to go and see? 13:11 Well, have you noticed how tolkien has organized that? One of the challenges when you're describing a new land is how to organize what you see so that you take the reader with you. And here tolkien and here Tolkien is doing it like a landscape painter might sketch out a scene before him or her. He moves from the foreground to the background, so we have the shores and the breaks of thorn and slow that's like underbrush, and then behind that the cliffs and behind that the ridges. So our mental eye is drawn and organized so that we can see one thing in relation to another, and note how specific he is. Again he talks about different flora and fauna. We've got not fauna in this case, but flora, thorn and slow brambles and creepers and firs, so you could imagine all of these different plants that are growing wild, plants of that are growing wild. And here at the end of this little section, which I've called the Eyjafjallajökull section, we get an eagle just glimpsed high up in the sky, which is possibly a link to Gandalf. We later find out, but it's just planted there so that it can be referred to later. 14:55 Okay, in the third episode, tolkien quite rightly thinks I've been drifting a bit and they've been chatting away and we've had the tension mounting with knowing golems on their heels. But something's got to happen, and two things happen in quick succession. First is a physical danger when they suddenly find themselves much closer to the San Gabriel rapids than they thought. Do note that Boromir is as helpful as ever, basically telling you know, we're all going to die, kind of thing. Aragorn admits to being out of his reckoning because they've gone faster than he thought. He's not been here before this way, so he's learning on the job. He does say he's less, shall we say less comforting. In this section he says turn if you can. I'm not quite sure what the alternative is. It's to go over the rapids, is it? Anyway, it's clear that the turning of the boats against the current or across the current is massively difficult. And even Boromir well, not even Boromir, but Boromir starts shouting orders, almost as if he's fed up with Aragorn and he wants to take charge, which is that sort of tension that's been working away subtly underneath everything. Anyway. So between Aragorn and Boromir they manage to get the boats away from the rapids. But that's not the only danger at hand, Because in an excellent piling on of the drama, that is the moment when the orcs attack. 16:30 And here it ties up the Eyot episode, because there is a suggestion that these orcs may have been alerted by Gollum. So Gollum's been swimming down the river, so he of course can land on both the east and the west bank. So it's plausible that he may have alerted nearby orcs. And at this point the current has pushed the boats far over to the east, so it's a perfect place for an ambush. Here we have a sort of memory of lorian still holding on to protect them, because after a few near misses, an arrow striking Frodo, but bouncing off his cloak, his male shirt underneath his cloak, and so on. The arrows stop fighting their mark and there's a reference here to possible protection from the cloaks and the boats making them very hard to spot. And with an effort they reach the West Bank. 17:32 I love this bit. That's about to happen, because Legolas doesn't do an awful. He's one of the least used of the company. We get less glimpses of him, fewer glimpses of him, I should say, and this is one of those moments where he comes to the fore and we see it from Frodo's point of view. When they reach the shelter of the West Bank, legolas leaps up with his bow he's the one with the long range weapon and Frodo looks up and sees Legolas's head. It was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind. We're suddenly reminded that he is this ancient one of the ancient race of the elves. 18:19 And then we get an echo of the eagle episode, but it's come back in a much darker, more terrifying form. Darker, more terrifying form. They don't yet name the Nazgul because that is a little bit early, but we get to sort of precursor. We see one without knowing what it is, but we know it's not an eagle, because Frodo feels its evil presence and his wound starts to ache, just as we think all might be lost. You know, there's an overhead attack, legolas's bow sings out Tolkien is picking on the usage of the twang of the bow being like singing, which you'll find in folk tales and things, but it seems particularly fitting for an elven bow, doesn't it? And Legolas manages to get a shot in which fells the creature, the winged fell beast, and it disappears and the sky is described as being clean again, so that dark, evil presence is gone. So a hero moment there for Legolas, which is very enjoyable to see. 19:38 Boromir, by contrast, is still being his creepy self, whilst one person is standing up crowned with light. You've got Boromir being darker and more nasty, sort of trying to work out why, when frodo says I, I think it felt like something, but I can't say what. Boromir is trying to pry and poke and find out what frodo's already said. He doesn't want to say. So all is not well with boromir. So here we come to the fourth of our little beads on the thread, which is the river, which is when they are sort of sheltering on the bank and the immediate danger is passed. 20:20 There is a reflection on the nature of time, and it's right that Legolas has just had his hero moment and he now has one of his most wonderful passages in the whole book that he gets to say, and that's about the nature of time. Sam is worrying because he's seen the moon come up a new moon and he's trying to work out where they are in terms of the calendar. Frodo says he feels like time stops in Lorien, and Legolas has this rather wonderful notion or speech about time. As it appears to the elves, nay, time does not tarry ever. So you know, they may have felt like it stopped, but it doesn't. 21:08 But change and growth is not in all place, in all things and places alike. For the elves, the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift because they themselves change little and all else fleets by. It is a grief to them. Slow because they do not count the running years not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples, ever repeated in the long, long stream. Yet beneath the sun all things must wear to an end at last. 21:45 So he's using the river that is around them as a sort of visual of this idea of both the ripples and the moving on, the drag onwards which connects to where we started with this, the feeling that they are being dragged into their quest. You can't stop and stand on the bank. You have to carry on in this direction. And that phrase yet beneath the sun is actually quite like um ecclesiastes is sort of biblical in phrasing, as elves often are. Frodo puts his foot in it a bit by speaking out loud about the Lady's Ring and is told to speak no more of it by Aragorn. And this little interlude about time is sort of wrapped up at that point and Aragorn is still being not very positive because he says time flows on to a spring of little hope. But I guess, you see, the alternative is for him to say, yep, we've got this, guys, it's in the bag. Of course he can't say that because that would make us not believe the quest could fail. We have to believe they could fail in order to want to stay with them, to see them succeed. 23:12 The next day they wake in a wet and foggy world and Boromir and Aragorn are arguing again as to the right path. Boromir wants to give up on the river and set out to Minas Tirith, because all the time they've been on the river that he knows what he wants to do. His agenda is clear. He just wants everyone else to fall into line and go with him. Aragorn likes the river because it puts off the decision. He knows what he wants to do in his heart, but he also knows what the quest needs to do, and he says that the river is at least a path that cannot be missed. Carrying on down this front line is putting off the decision, and Boromir says something which, on a second read, sounds prophetic. Boromir says, well, all right then, kind of thing, to the tall isle I will go, but no further. And of course he does go no further. 24:20 Now we get to the fifth episode, which is the Portageway. I want to just sort of sing the praises of an unfilmed episode in the story where there is no BBC audio version, there is no Peter Jackson version, to get in the way of you just enjoying the prose of Tolkien. I love these extra special because they don't feel tired and worn out and I haven't seen them a million times. And this is also a turning point in Aragorn's sort of mood as well. He starts by saying, once they've gone off, to try and find a way around the rapids. It looks pretty bleak, but he and Legolas go and have an explore and he comes back saying all is well, they found the old path. 25:09 Boromir is still being a grump, frankly, and one of the ways in which he's stirred into action is by Gimli saying a very Gimli-esque thing, which is the legs of men will lag on a rough road while a dwarf goes on be the burden twice his own weight, master Boromir. So a bit of prodding from everyone else. Boromir and Aragorn carry the boats up and around, down, past the falls to the next safe mooring point, but it doesn't stop there, because there is. This is why it's a little episode, because it also comes to an end. This is tiring work, carrying these boats, even though they're unexpectedly light, and everybody is exhausted by the time they reach the bottom of the rapids and Boromir gets to sort of have a clap back at Gimli who's nodding with tiredness. 26:06 So a fun little episode all of its own, with the company showing both their their willingness to work together, but also the fact that it's not all sweetness and light in the company. And so they get back on the river there was one little bit of description here as the land gets high either side as they approach the Argonath, which is the two statues of the kings. That actually is very memorably realized in the Peter Jackson film. But there's a bit here which I thought was really beautifully described before you get to the Argonath, which is, as they go down this chasm, tolkien writes over them was a lane of pale blue sky. So he's flipping it so that if you're looking up you've got this pale blue sky in the lane. It gives you the sense of how steep the sides must be for the sky to be just a lane above their heads. It's a very clever way of telling us what it feels like to be at the bottom of this chasm. 27:21 And then we move into the last episode, the sixth episode in this river chapter, which is the wonderful moment of reaching the Argonath, which might well be somebody's favourite moment. It's up there amongst mine and it sort of starts with Aragorn's declaration in a way behold the Argonath and it's well worth beholding. So let's do a little bit of beholding of the Argonath Seen from Frodo's point of view. As Frodo was born. Towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. 27:58 Giants. They seemed to him vast grey figures, silent but threatening. Many saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned. The craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved, through the suns and the rains of forgotten years, the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters, to two great kings of stone. Still with blurred eyes and crannied brows, they frowned upon the north. The left hand of each was raised, palm outwards, in gesture of warning. In each right hand there was an axe. Upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty. They still wore the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. 28:51 I'm probably not the only person who is reminded of a rewriting of Shelley's Ozymandias here, ozymandias which is the poem about the fragment in the desert. Look on my work. She mighty in despair. That statue is a symbol of a broken kingdom. So, though, gondor is also a broken kingdom. The king has been gone for many, many generations. These statues are still standing, still on guard, so the message is different here. It's that actually, the king is returning. One odd fact, if you visualize this. One odd fact, if you visualize this. Both of the kings are holding out their left hand, which is a bit, doesn't the symmetry of that doesn't quite work, if you think about it. Anyway, it might have been better if one was holding out the left and one the right. But hey, I'm not going to rewrite Tolkien. Just when you think about it, they're both. One of those arms is going to be over the river. Anyway, I'm nitpicking, aren't I? I should stop Because, again, this Argonath is a bit like meeting Galadriel. 30:10 It's a test of what you all feel and think. For most of them it's a daunting and unsettling experience, particularly for poor old Sam who is basically bleating out. What a horrible place. And that is the prompt for Aragorn to really settle into this more kingly role that he's sometimes been flirting with. But now this is the moment where it sort of settles on him the mantle of kingship, fear not. And then the passage goes on in the stern sat Aragorn, son of Arathorn, proud and erect a king, returning from exile to his own land. So we're not with Strider anymore, we're with Aragorn, though he still is in doubt. He says he wants to go to Minas Tirith, but he knows he should go into Mordor. The chapter ends. 31:16 Once you get that glimpse of kingship, you get them mooring their boats again on a little inlet called Nen Hithol, and there's a great end to this chapter. It sums everything up the tenth day of the journey was over. Wilderland was behind them. They could go no further without choice between the east way and the west. The last stage of the quest was before them. I think when Tolkien wrote that, he really did think he was coming towards the end. Clearly, we all know there's another two books. This is not the end, but it is the last stage of the quest for the fellowship as a whole, because the next chapter, which concludes fellowship of the ring, is the breaking of the fellowship, and that's where we have to say goodbye to one of our companions, and I'm sure that's not a plot spoiler. So meet me again for the breaking of the fellowship. 32:22 - Speaker 2 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses in person. Stays in oxford plus. Visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.