Don’t the Great Tales Never End? - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 8

Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and we are continuing our read through The Lord of the Rings where we comment on each chapter from the point of view of what is going on on an author's journey. And we have reached chapter 8 in Book 4, that's towards the end of Two Towers, and we are about to climb the stairs with Ungol. So, I've been noticing as I've been doing these that the chapters towards the end of the Two Towers are a picture. compared to a mammoth chapter like the Council of Elrond, in a way Tolkien is chunking this up into smaller bits. He's seeing this journey in sort of geographic land masses. So we had the crossroads, well, the Forbidden Pool obviously before that, the crossroads, and now we've got the stairs, and then we've got Sheenob's Lair, and so on. So I think it is actually quite a difficult section for him to write because of the darkness, the stress, the difficulty of his journey. And one of the strategies he's using for both himself, probably, I guess, but also for the reader is to chunk it up in smaller parts, which is not a bad idea. So, the first thing I noticed about this is that it has quite an unusual opening. Gollum was tugging this sort of continuous motion. So, we start a chapter not with an action, but we're interrupting a continual motion. And in a way, it's almost like a cinematic break between the end of the last chapter, where Frodo is standing in defiance and the sun is fading, the light is fading. And then we've got almost like a... lost in thought moment between the chapters which is unusual and it's just struck me as a way of underlining the point in the end of the last chapter. If you're turning straight over it's as though we've also stood in thought with Frodo. So it's interesting here that the way the landscape is described, so it's a dark, bleak, rocky place. Yeah. I mean, there's lots of those in Lord of the Rings. But one of the ways he makes it interesting is giving active verbs to inanimate things. So the road in particular here is given almost like a personification. So, for example, the road crawling under its shadow, the road went on. it being the crag. And rounding, it sprang east again and began to climb steeply. It's obviously the journey of the eye that's following this and making sense of that. But there's this unease in the landscape, which this crawling... and springing. These words are also applied to Gollum himself and sometimes to the hobbit, so of climbing and crawling. So we've got the road almost like a character, which I hadn't noticed before. And I think it's an interesting technique that he's using there, particularly when you juxtapose it with the contrast of Frodo and Sam, who are described as plodding, And what I found so true to life about the description of where they've reached in the journey is they are no longer able to care greatly about their peril. If you're really pushed to the end of your resources, perhaps on the front line of a battle or facing something you fear, or experience of those who are given birth naturally towards the end of giving birth, you kind of in the end are so exhausted that you can no longer care greatly. And so this is where they've reached. And I'm sure, I feel sure that this is taken from a sort of battlefield experience in Tolkien's case. And another sort of bit of writing which helps inject needed energy into this bleak, desperate place is how he uses sentence structure to mimic action. So if you look at this sentence, now, feeling the way becomes steep before his feet, this is Frodo, he looked wearily up. And then he saw it, even as Gollum had said that he would, the city of ringwraiths. So it's a long sentence broken into sub-clauses, but it mimics Frodo looking up, and the last thing where it stops, the last thing you see, is the city of the ringwraiths. So it's... Even though he's in a weary stage, there's still an energy in, we are following his actions, looking up with him. And what is interesting about the Minus Morgul old minis Ithil, is the use of the two kinds of light. So we have a memory of pure light. Light will come up again. So remember that. I like the way Tolkien brings the changes on certain ideas in his chapters. It's that sort of poetic side to him. He takes a motif and he plays on it again and again. But in this case, he's starting off with the imprisoned moonlight that used to brighten this amazing city back in the past. So we've got that... that in the back of our minds. And then the rest of the description goes on to compare it to the sort of skull-like building that's there now, where it seems to be lit with a corpse light. And of course, that connects in our minds to the recent experience in the dead marshes. It's unholy. It's that kind of glow of rotting things. So if you want to deepen the darkness, remember the light, I suppose, is the little rule here. One of the things that came to me when I was reading this was how strange it is. I remember thinking the very first time of reading, how strange it is that Tolkien spends a long time describing places that you don't go. It's breaking the rule, you know, the famous Chekhovian rule, if you show a gun in the first act, it must be fired at the last... Here, we've got a lot about Minas Morgul, and you would tend to expect that, okay, at some point, against their will, they're going to go in it. But they don't. At all. And the film version of this broke that rule, or broke that Tolkien decision, because there's a brief scene showing the arming of the Ringwraith, which is sort of inferred to be in Minas Morgul. And I wonder, I suppose for Tolkien, he has such a vast place. He doesn't need to go everywhere. It could be that element. But I do remember feeling, why don't we see that? perhaps there once was a plan that maybe they did go there. It'd been interesting to dig back into the notes to see if that was ever a plan. Because you would have thought that one, you know, a more obvious writer, if Pippin is over in Minas Tirith, you might put Frodo and Sam in Minas Morgul, but he doesn't choose to do that. Perhaps he thought, oh, well, they could never conceivably escape from there. It's just that struck me as a sort of, Unusual choice from an author. Another sentence that mimics what we're going through as readers comes shortly after that, which is about how difficult this journey is. Every step was reluctant and time seemed to slow its pace. Can you hear how slow we're getting? So that between the raising of a foot and the setting of it down, minutes of loathing passed. It's a labored sentence for labored walking. And there are words in there which are padding. They're not padding because they're purposeful. But they extend and draw out the raising of a foot and the setting of it down. It's a longer way of saying lift and fall of a foot. And so I'm intrigued by this technique he's using. I must try and remember to use it myself, but I want to point it out to you out there to unpick what he's doing, this difficult material, to make it an interesting read. There's some fantastic passages here, actually. It is a really good chapter to listen to being read out because there are so many of these moments where the prose is doing the entertainment, the drama for you. And we also get a check-in on our new character, which is the road, because now it is winding deviously. Which is the way he's had an idea about making the road feel active. He's continuing it because they're still on that road. The thing that probably most of us remember about the surroundings of Minas Morgul are these shadowy meads. Here's the description, shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. I remember finding this a very surprising detail. It's not an obvious thing to say. The sort of Gorgoroth plane is the more obvious version of Mordor. This is a really interesting version of things being perverted and going wrong. So first of all, the fact that they're white flowers, obviously the moonlight that links to Minasithil, and this is now a sort of foul version of it. Maybe once these were beautiful meads or beautiful flowers, but now they're these flowers. pale flowers that have a charnel smell, charnel meaning like rotting smell. And we've met white flowers before, haven't we? We've met them in Lorien. We've met them in Rohan, uh, Simbol Muna, which is growing on top of a burial mound, but doesn't have that. So it's a hopeful image of death as opposed to a horrible, disgusting one. And of course, we had a few white flowers forming the king's crown just in the last chapter. So it's showing, I think that one of Tolkien's philosophies of evil was it can't create, but it can only pervert. And this is one of those places where we've had the beauty hanging on in Ithilien. And here we see it being perverted. Now we're closer to Mordor and the borders. Also, in terms of literary sort of heritage, I was reminded of things like the Fields of Asphodel, the idea of the afterlife of Greek sort of myths and legends, or even lotus eaters. There's a sense of the uncanny, the deathly about these flowers, I think. Then we get a break in sort of a moment of action where Frodo is suddenly quite out of the blue and it comes out of the blue, though, you know, the sort of, the tension's been twisting towards this. he suddenly is overcome and he starts running towards the building and he has to be dragged back. It is, of course, the idea of not being an allegory but being applicable to the world outside. The way that his unwillingness but also his inability to resist is a very good picture of somebody caught in addiction. And we sort of get a sense through the hints here that it's the vapors of this street itself that is affecting him. Well, it's affecting him most because he's the one carrying the ring, of course. Now, we move from the road to a path. And like the road, the path also gleams. One detail here which I hadn't noticed is that the gleam fades when they get above the level of the Morgul veil. So it seems as though this gleamingness, this gleam, this glow has been part of the magic, the malign magic of that place, or perhaps even just a natural phenomenon of this sort of, I don't know, these flowers or the stream or something making it sort of have a fluorescence. But it's interesting that you get the sense of when that grip on Frodo fades as he goes further away. And the road, the path, sorry, the path is now fading too. And it's pointed out here that Gollum's eyes are also gleaming, similarly to the road. So there's a sort of, it's a, hey, I'm... It's like a unity of the scene here, which makes it a sort of beautiful version of the ugly. So that moment when they escape is described like this. As they rose above the stench and vapors of the poisonous stream, their breath became easier and their heads clearer. And now their limbs were deadly tired, as if they had walked all night under a burden or had been swimming long against a heavy tide of water. When I was reading this, it reminded me of, I keep referring to the First World War here, partly because I've studied it when I've been writing about it, but I'm sure all of you who've read First World War poetry, something like Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting has this sense of the weariness and the uncanny that you get. The difference between the frontline and moving out of that zone. And of course, the idea of poisonous gas drifting across the battlefield and having an effect on people. It's all kind of part of this same sense of earned suffering, which I think Tolkien has all the way through his story. We get a break here because before they can escape completely from the Morgul Vale, they're witnessing the departure of the army. Now, if you are coming at this from having watched the film first, just forget that. the positioning on the film. I mean, they're limited by sets and things like that. But actually, it's a later shot when they're much higher up looking down on the army. That's more where they are in terms of Tolkien's description. They're much higher up. They're not right by the road. So why a filmmaker does that is to add some drama. They may be discovered. It's much more obviously close to them peril Here, the drama is in fantastic prose. So we get this line break, which is, but it was too late. Never a good sign, is it? And it's very vigorous, this prose. Let's listen to this. Peaks of stone and ridges like notched knives sprang out in staring black against the uprushing flame in Gorgoroth. So this is even before the army comes out, there's a signal from, the red signal from inside Mordor from Golgoroth and it's answered. Well, this is, Tolkien tells us, and Minas Morgul answered. Remember the beacons? One of my favorite scenes in the Peter Jackson version of this, where you see the light going across the mountains to reach Rohan. And there's a decision point, the Bernard Hill character, Theoden, says, and we will, you know, Rohan will answer, we'll come. You know, they'll go to the battle. This is a kind of dark version of that. That scene doesn't exist in the book, by the way. But I don't mind it because it's so beautiful and the music's so soaring and wonderful. It has a sort of Middle Earth background. applicability, it just feels right. And it connects the areas of when you've got your characters scattered, it's a good way of connecting them. Anyway, let's go to the book, which is why we're here. This whole section is worth reading aloud. Go away and do it. It's such fun. It's the description of this army coming out. I do note that the king of the ring race, the head honcho, is still a rider. Again, film version, he's flying over on one of those winged beasts. Not here, he's riding a horse. And we've got this very wonderful image. He's all black, save that on his hooded head he had a helm like a crown that flickered with a perilous light. So we've got this perilous light on top of the leader of the army. Fabulous section. And if you want to learn how to do the marching of armies, go to Tolkien and go to this bit and have a look at what he's doing with his prose. And it's not just a rush of information. There's also this moment of, well, there was a pause, a dead silence. The ringwraith has sensed something in his valley and he signals and everybody stops. This is such good stuff. This moment, this pause is so important for making us feel the tension. There's another pause, which is a bigger, more in many ways, structurally a key pause, which happens between the ring going into the fire and being destroyed. We'll come to that in the next section, in the next book. But here we've got just a sort of small version of this. That moment of stillness and thought and danger is that wonderful craft skill of holding back, keep pulling that bowstring so that is he going to launch the arrow? catch the hobbits, take them into Minis Morgul. That might have happened, but no. And it's strung out a bit more because we've got Frodo waited like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. So we're all held suspended with Frodo. But then it's not in the power of the ringwraith. It's in the power of Frodo, what happens next. And if you're following along in the three-volume version, we've got on page 316 an excellent description of what it's like to be divided against yourself. And he experiences the command to put on the ring differently from how it was earlier in the story. There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was. And he felt only the beating upon him, the great power from outside. It took his hand, and as Frodo watched with his mind, not willing it but in suspense, as if he looked on some old story far away, it moved the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon his neck. I think he's picking up there a sort of experience we all have to a greater and lesser extent, the feeling when we do something which we did not intend and we're not behind an instinct, but obviously we've got magic involved here, so it's even bigger. But I think we can all understand that. And this is where we get... a bit of that light countering it because he reaches, Frodo changes the story by reaching instead for the file of Galadriel. Hooray, you know, we've had this planted earlier in the story and here it comes. It's going to come good many times now till the end of the story. And this file, because it has starlight, a good kind of light, not that perilous light that the Ringwraith commands, it gives him the ability to resist and it breaks the spell, the pause. So the moment passes, the ring race goes on because it's in a hurry. We see that evil, by their inability to wait, to prepare properly, their eagerness to get things done, they bring down their own downfall. What I like here, just as a small note, is the point is made that this is just one of many armies. There are plural armies. This feels like a real war. Sometimes fantasy simplifies things. Many fantasy books will simplify things to an army coming for a showdown. But if you think about global wars or even just smaller wars, it's not just one army. It's usually a multi-pronged attack from different directions. And we get the sense that this is how Tolkien is thinking about the enemy here. This is only just one little element of their power, which of course makes them even more frightening. And then we get access to what I would call Frodo's lament. It's an internal thought process. He doesn't say this aloud, but he thinks about Mere and he thinks about his own failure, what he thinks is his own failure. He thinks he's too late. He's not been quick enough. And this means that he starts weeping. It's one of the lowest points for Frodo. And he sort of drifts off into a daze, a form of sleep. And how do you get out of that? Well, you bring in the Shire. Go back to basics. He's woken by Sam. There's the echo of the Shire. And that is what Sam is to Frodo in many ways, as though he's carrying the Shire with him. And Frodo wakes with a sort of grim determination that it may be too late, but I've got to go on anyway. He doesn't give up. He's got resilience as Frodo. And when he thinks of the list of people that will never know what he's done. It's pointed out in the Companion to the authoring that it's odd to find Gandalf in that list because Frodo thinks Gandalf is dead. It could just be a mistake or he could understand that Gandalf has an existence beyond the, well, obviously elves when they die go to the Undying Lands in some form. And perhaps he is thinking about Gandalf still being present in spirit in some way. But anyway, so what about these stairs? I think Tolkien does a good job of making us understand the difference. So the first stair is like a ladder. Again, referring to the film, that's the one they go for. Though in this case, there are walls either side, so it's not quite the same. But that steepness, I think, is picked up quite well in the set design. This set for me sounds like a nightmare. I don't know if you've tried climbing up to the top of a cathedral or something. It is really hard. Anyway, so poor old Frodo and Sam, because of course they've got little hobbit legs. And then after this straight stair, the ladder-like one, there is the winding stair, Gollum helpfully tells us, which is not as steep, but clearly winds. Here we get a different experience reading it first time and then subsequent times because they're questioning him about, you said something about a tunnel. Isn't there a tunnel? And Gollum says, oh, yes, there's a tunnel. Now, we all will know that. if we're rereading, that that's Chee Lobb's lair. So it's even more ominous. Don't do it. Don't walk into the scary house. You know, it's that thing in the horror film. We can see there's about, they're being led into a trap. Tolkien continues to find new and beautiful ways of describing a landscape, which is quite a difficult landscape to make different. In the moments where there is a little bit of light, Frodo sees the peaks like pillars holding up a vast, sagging roof. The idea of that sort of cloud and smoke mixture, like a sagging roof, I think is very visual. And we actually have spent most of this chapter in Frodo's point of view, by the way. I don't know if you noticed that. That's where Tolkien is sitting for most of this chapter. And as they go up, continue to climb up, there's a moment where Frodo looks down. And it's a very specific description here. We've got down in its depth, the valley, glimmered like a glowworm thread, the wraith road from the dead city to the nameless pass. So he's very careful to make sure we don't lose connection with where we are geographically. But the thing I wanted to... sort of bring out is the glowworm thread not the glowworm the glowworm thread and I know what he means thanks to New Zealand thank you New Zealand because they have some wonderful glowworm caves there some very special places and if you look at a glowworm with some light they hang suspended by a Tolkien must have seen this. And he's noticed that thread. It's not the actual worm he's talking about. It's the thread that they hang from. Just thought I'd point that out because I like how specific he is there. And Frodo spots the Black Tower, which has been hinted at before. So it's not the Minas Morgul Tower. It's another one, the smaller one. And there's a sort of discussion about, well, you know, why didn't you say? And Gollum rightly says that, well, you know, always are watched. But this may be least watched. And so Frodo thinks, well, that's Mordor over there. And he has a false sense that he's near the end. Frodo, you're not near the end. And in this pause, they sit down and eat the two stocks of food they've got. They have some lembas, the food of Lorien, and the food of Gondor, and they drink their own water. It sort of brings together those two parts of their journey. And... They're left to have this wonderful, wonderful discussion, famous discussion as Gollum sort of goes off and does his own thing. And Frodo has a phrase here where he shows that he's a bit like Bilbo. He will sort of lapse into a kind of poetry. He says in answer to Sam, I don't like anything here at all. Step or stone, breath or bone. Either that's just a rhyme he thought up there and then, or it's almost like a wise saying. And if you're looking for Sam's famous speech about why go on and people in stories, it's on page 321. Again, referring to the films, but this is given to Sam at the end of the film, The Two Towers, but they are, for some reason, in Osgiliath, which obviously they are not going to in this story. But it is an important discussion because we've already had Frodo mention old tales. When you think, what is this experience like? They're both thinking, well, it's most like... Beren and Lucien going into Morgoth's dark kingdom to get the Silmaril. And Sam is thinking about this and he talks about how you only hear about the heroes who don't turn back. So if at this point Frodo and Sam said, yeah, too difficult going home, you'd never hear their story. And he also, because Sam is a bright lad, he makes connections from the stories that he's been raised on to the starglass that saved the day just a few paragraphs ago. And he realizes that the light, the Eärendil, so the Silmaril, became a star, Eärendil's star, and the light of that star is trapped in, contained in the file of Galadriel and that's the light that is now comforting Frodo. And the light originally came from the light of the trees over in the land of the Valar. So originally from the gods or God. Sam doesn't say that, but that's what you would understand. So the Silmarils themselves were fairly cursed tools in many ways because so many people wanted them. But what they contained was pure and beautiful. That's why people wanted them. And he ends up with this great question. Don't the great tales never end? Yeah, that's a no. No, they don't. He then has this sort of sense of feeling himself as part of that story. And he goes on and imagines their story being, them being characters in a story, being read out, um, in the comfort of a shire-like room where everything's safe. And he sort of ventriloquizes children asking for the story. Let's hear about Frodo and the ring. Yes, my boy, the famousest of the Hobbits. That's saying a lot. So he's having fun with that idea. And that brilliant thought gives this wonderful moment. Laughter is so important in Lord of the Rings. Note who laughs and how they laugh. And here we've got Frodo laughing. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. Sauron doesn't laugh, or if he laughs, it's at the expense of somebody. Beautiful moment. And just as they've been sort of picking up on Gollum's speech pattern, now Frodo takes on Sam's way of speaking, personifying these future commentators, and he puts Sam into the story. I want to hear more about Sam, Dad. Why didn't they put more of his talk, Dad? So has fun back. And there's a sort of moment when they both say, oh, I was being serious. So am I. So whilst they're making the joke, it's a deadly serious joke. Beautiful moment and also very... meta because these are storybook characters talking about themselves being in a storybook and we know later that this story is written down from the recollections of the hobbits and their friends so we've got another layer and then of course you've got the layer of the writer Tolkien so yeah lots to unpack here if you have to write your your English literature essay about it anyway enjoyable that framing. And it makes you think about what's going on in literature. Why do we read stories like this in the safety of our homes? And seeing the characters drawing strength from that at a low moment is a good reason for doing so. And that sort of thought process leads them to think about the third person in their party. And they say how, you know, even in a story, Gollum would be a good character. Yeah, he is, isn't he? Frodo has reached this place where He knows what he's dealing with, but what can he do? So he's taking the stoic approach. If he's false, he's false. He probably has some little trick of his own understanding that he's actually cooking up. But we have no choice. So after this wonderful conversation, which must be one of the best moments like this in the whole of the book. So even though it's one of the darkest chapters, it has this moment of intense light in it, which is another very Tolkienian moment. We're going to come on next book to one of my favorite moments when Sam sees the stars. This is a bit like that, but in a more extended version. And they fall asleep. Sam can't help himself, he falls asleep as well. And we get something which is very clearly, I think, like a Pieta tableau. Pieta is the Christ taken down from the cross on the lap of Mary. We've got hobbits, not Christ and Mary, but we've got this, you can see there's a famous statue in St. Peter's in Rome, which is this. So we've got, this is what Gollum sees. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways, his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned deep in sleep. On his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces. So it's like a little holy moment. And even poor old Gollum is affected by that. And there's this heartbreaking description of him like an old and weary hobbit who's so alone, so lost. And Tolkien actually does say, this is at the top of page 324, that in his letters that this is the moment where there is a possibility, tiny fleeting possibility, that Gollum could change his mind. Maybe he doesn't go through with this. But Sam waking up and being a bit rough, asking why he was sneaking, gives Gollum the excuse to say, nah, I'm going to stick to the plan. And I don't think it's Sam's fault that he's going to be a good plan. It's more that Gollum's flickering moment of repentance, or whatever you like to call it, is so flickering that the slightest breath in the other direction sends him back to where he was intending to go. And it's interesting here that is at this point, if he really was feeling genuine repentance, he gets a chance because Frodo says, as far as I'm concerned, you've led me where you said you would, you can go. And it's at this point that Gollum chooses evil. And we have the sort of, who was the sort of more hobbity, humane side, is now really Gollum. The two sides are few, so the good side is going on, or good side, he never had much of a good side, but the side that had chance for growth has chosen to join the Gollum side of himself and lead the poor hobbits into She Loves Lair, which is where we are going in the next chapter. So thank you very much for joining me on the stairs of Kiris Angkor. 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 favourite podcasts worldwide.