They Cannot Conquer for Ever! - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 7

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 are continuing our series as we look at The Lord of the Rings from the point of view of what it was like to write it, trying to think back to the sort of craft skills that Tolkien was using. And we have reached Chapter 7 in Book 4, that's towards the end of The Two Towers, and the chapter is called The Journey to the Crossroads. So please do come to the crossroads with me. Now this is probably not on anybody's list as the favourite chapter in The Lord of the Rings, so maybe what happens right at the end is one of your favourite moments, because it is a journey which really is, well, it's a journey chapter. So there's a lot of rinse and repeat repetitions of walking, going to sleep and waking up. But actually I found a lot to enjoy as I looked at it, particularly looking at how Tolkien was making a point about the difficulty of this journey and how beautiful his descriptions are of the physical landscapes that the hobbits and golemies are passing through. If you're thinking about it as a structure, a cactus structure, you've got a brief start with Faramir, and then you've got a brief end with the section by the statue at the crossroads. But in between, you've got this series of day and night, day and night, moving, and they are marked out by the places that the hobbits stop to rest. So that's how it works as a chapter. I would say that this is a chapter where the romantic poets and romanticism are very much in evidence and I will give you my proof of that as we go along. So, one of the things that I always remember about this chapter is the relief of finding somebody giving the hobbits some food other than lembas. I'm sure it's better for their diet. And it's also an important feature of Middle Earth is who gives what food? and who provides. It's true in The Hobbit as well. And we all have very vivid memories of the food in Lord of the Rings. It sort of stands out like a jewel, obviously Lembas, but here we've got Faramir giving them the wayfaring provisions of dried fruit and dried goods so that they can survive a bit longer. Anyway, so that's what happens at the beginning of this chapter. Notice how we have the tension of what's at stake by the way Faramir describes the land they're about to go into. So the hobbits haven't slept. This is a very weary chapter, by the way. Tolkien really wants you to feel the exhaustion of the hobbits. And how does Faramir convey the tension? Well, he gives this kind of pithy... report back. The land is empty. Nothing is on the road and no sound of foot or horn or bowstring is anywhere to be heard. So here's the one who's just making us sort of imagine what's happening. Ask the question of why, why is it empty? It's something ominous, isn't there about emptiness? It's not a relaxing mood. It's something that's saying, and this is harped on a couple of times in this chapter, the storm is about to break. Faramir is like Galadriel in this chapter. There is a sort of mannish, use the Entish term, a mannish echo of Galadriel in Faramir. particularly in the appropriate gift-giving. And he finds in his stores staffs or staves, which are cut down and newly shod for the hobbit height, so thoughtful gift. And they're made of lebethron, which is a kind of dark wood. It comes up again in the casket in which the crown of the kings is held, so it's clearly a high-status wood. But it also seems an sort of almost magical, though remember Faramir is the one who connects us to a more spiritual side of Middle-earth with his prayer before the meal. He says it has a blessing, a virtue of finding and returning. So his bit of Faramir is going with the hobbits. Frodo here shows his maturity and his excellence as a hobbit diplomat. If he hadn't been so badly injured by his journey, he could have done really well as the hobbit envoy to all the lands because he finds good and fair words to say thank you for the gift. In another echo of what happens in Lorien, they are blindfolded as they leave. And just as with the dwarf, Gimli, refusing to be the only one bound, and Aragorn saying, well, we're all going to have our eyes bound, Frodo turns that around in the outward journey by saying that Gollum should not be the only one who is blindfolded. So there's very much a sort of replay of some of the beats in the Lorien story. So what is this doing in terms of craft? I think there's a, there is this element of it makes sense in terms of the plot. But also, I think it ties up the unity of the story. We feel we're still in the same world, the same. The good characters have this way of behaving. It's another of these threads that ties it all together. So in a chapter where it's not the big set pieces, what do we find to keep us interested? I do remember when I was reading this aloud to my children, as is our tradition in the family, this kind of chapter was the harder one to keep their attention. But as a reader, reading for my own pleasure, I find it full of delights. And that comes largely from the specificity of the landscape. He starts off, Tolkien starts off by describing this edge where you get the sensation that it just finishes and there's nothing beyond. There are various places in the Midlands, the Weald, various sort of peak district, places where you get this sort of edge as another one up in Northumberland. And so it immediately feels like a real landscape. I can imagine what he is talking about in this concept of the edge. And of course, this is a landscape on an edge, so it's very appropriate. And the observation is the land dreams in a false peace, and for a while all evil is withdrawn. False peace. So this ominous silence. But also notice that term dreams. That keeps coming up. There is something dreamlike. We don't know if leaving Faramir is falling back into a nightmare or if Faramir himself is almost dreamlike. There's lots of dreams around Faramir, as there is, of course, around Lorien. We get the Robin Hood echo, which is how the merry men, the green-clad men, disappear back into the woods. This is how it's described. They marvel to see with what speed these green-clad men now moved. Rannishing almost in the twinkling of an eye. The forest where Faramir had stood seemed empty and drear, as if a dream had passed. So again, that's this dreamlike exchange. But Tolkien doesn't leave us long in that moment. There's a little line break, and we immediately see there's trouble brewing. And the trouble and the stress and the tension, which you do need to make this actually have some sort of page-turning effect, is in Gollum, of course, which is why he's such a brilliant character. He is the grit, the spanner in the works, the grit in the oyster. Anyway, so Gollum's words here, when Gollum's... Frodo is saying, you were lucky that they showed you mercy. Gollum says, he always forgives, he does, yes, yes, even nice master's little tricks is. So he's got a bone to pick with Frodo. And we can see that this is going to, when is that storm going to break? Not only the bigger storm of the war, but there's this feeling of, You will not be sitting, even on a first read, you're not sitting thinking, it's fine. Gollum's completely reliable. Far from it. So if you've got a kind of rinse and repeat structure, going to sleep, waking up, walking again, you need to change the mood each day so it doesn't feel like a litany of sameness. Unless that is, of course, your point. You may feel that that's what you're trying to point out. But here, Tolkien is reflecting the darkening of the path by the changing of the mood each day. So the next day, it felt as if thunder was brewing. There's the idea of thunder and drums beating throughout this chapter. But we do find that Tolkien goes back to his flora. He loves, in Athelian, there's something that's been released in him in these chapters where he absolutely loves telling us exactly what the surroundings are like. He does it far more than anywhere else. And obviously there was two chapters ago he was doing it, Herbs and Stude Rabbit, three chapters ago. He was doing it sort of majorly. Here we have a sort of little reprise of that. We've got Ilexes, which are holly, but also other forms of like holm oaks, which is one of the places where the hobbits actually go to sleep. We've got ash trees, we've got celandines. And we've also got mention of woodland hyacinths. The companion volume to Lord of the Rings suggests this is bluebells. It's a bit early for bluebells. So I'm thinking he is probably thinking of something which we call Spanish bluebells, which are an invasive species actually, but obviously native to a Mediterranean climate. And this is the warmer South. So it seems to me as though it's not your English bluebell, but your Spanish bluebell that he had in mind there. There is one intriguing new word for me and possibly for most of you here, which is lawns, which is a very rare word. It seems to have some connection, certainly sounds a bit like lawn, but it's like an expanse of green grass, but set through a wilder place. We obviously come to lawns in another way in the Paul Marlin episode towards the end of the adventure. But anyway, I thought I'd highlight that because you may not have noticed as you've read. But interesting new word. I like learning new words. But even in this rather beautiful surroundings, or as beautiful as a world or a country on the borders of Mordor can be, Gollum is nervous and he dictates the kind of behavior how they approach the landscape. And I love this sentence. They walk now with caution, flitting from one long shadow to another. I can totally see that. There is an element where we are reminded from time to time, and particularly in this chapter, of the hobbits aren't human. there's an element of a woodland creature to them. That's something that Martin Freeman talked about when he was playing Bilbo in the films. And I really enjoyed the way he interpreted that with a kind of slightly, you know, the hunted rabbit, the hunted mouse aspect to him, which made us feel, yes, these smaller creatures would feel hunted. And they do seem to pass through this landscape a bit like the rabbits in Watership Down. you know, using the landscape to hide them. And it's beautifully done. And you get an excellent bit of Tolkien geopositioning in this chapter. If you're following along in the book, it's on the top of page 306. He's using Frodo as his point of view. And Frodo is standing, looking out over the landscape. Again, we've talked about this before, but Tolkien likes these moments because they enable us to find where we are on the map, but also we get a sense of the immensity of the journey and there's a nod to where the other characters are. So it keeps reconnecting. Anyway, so we get a deep, dim valley lay before them. On the further side, the woods gathered again, blue and grey under the sullen evening, and marched on southwards. To the right, the mountains of Gondor glowed, remote in the west, under a fire-flecked sky. To the left lay darkness, the towering walls of Mordor, and out of that darkness the long valley came, falling steeply in an ever-widening trough towards the Anduin. So he is setting out the landscape that we're about to go through. We're leaving behind Gondor, turning our back on that. That's not a journey Frodo and Sam are taking. We're going to head into this dark valley. And one of the notes in the companion guide is they pick up on the last of the sentences here, which is, There it seemed to Frodo that he described far off, floating as it were on a shadowy sea, the high dim tops and broken pinnacles of old towers forlorn and dark. It's a broken landscape. These towers are built by the men of Gondor but have been abandoned. Forlorn and dark is an inversion. The note in the companion makes quite a lot of this. This is a common Tolkien stylistic choice. It suits a poetic elevated language. If you were putting that into speech, if Frodo turned around and said to Sam, hey, look, but look, Sam, those towers, look to the pinnacles of old towers full on dark, it would almost be like he's about to start a poem about them. which is in keeping with this world and a particular moment which echoes, gives a sort of sense of the landscape echoes. But it also, this is where we connect to my romantic poets because I've got a feeling that some of the language of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale is running in the background of that. There's an emphasis on the word forlorn. the bell tolls and it tolls, so it's forlorn. It's a verse change in that poem. And you may think, oh, well, that's just a coincidence. But right after, we've got darkling mountains and there's another line in that same poem, unusual word, darkling, I listen. So it seems A lot of this chapter happens in darkness and is about the scents and the sounds. And that's exactly the experience in a benign sort of sense of Keats in the garden with the nightingale. So I think Tolkien may unconsciously, but perhaps consciously, be thinking of the lessons learned from that poem. It's a poem that evokes lots of different flowers and trees as well. So there's a sort of connection there. I also noticed how the landscape is given a character and a voice. Middle-earth does feel like one of the major characters, doesn't it? The sound of the water seemed cold and cruel. The voice of the Morgul Duin, the polluted stream that flowed from the valley of the wraiths. The other stream that had a voice was, of course, the one on the borders of Lorien. So we have a contrast here between that beautiful voice, Nimrodel, and this cold and cruel. So if you're thinking about how to evoke a world and a landscape, not leaving behind what you've already done, but using it as a contrast, even if you don't state it, is a very good tactic there. So they take refuge in what is called the crotch of a large home oak. It's one of the last homely places that the hobbits are able to take some rest in. A the join, just like, I mean, it's obviously a slightly weird word in terms of your thinking human anatomy, but it just means the crossing point where the branches come out. And Gollum's getting increasingly nervous because he's sort of sniffing the air, reading the signs. And he insists that they travel under the cover of darkness. And he turns out to be a very skilled guide in the dark. He seems to see very well. His eyes are illuminated. And Frodo and Sam are mostly in this chapter in a joint point of view, and they're not going to be able to see it. Which you can imagine if you're going on a walk with somebody, you talk about what you're seeing and you sort of agree. There's a sense of they're in agreement. And we're almost, the description is almost us overhearing what they're talking about. There seemed to be a great blackness looming slowly out of the east, eating out the faint blurred stars. Later, the sinking moon escaped from the pursuing cloud, but it was ringed all about with a sickly yellow glare. So the moon is sinking. It's being pursued by cloud. Even the skies are sort of tormented here. And it's ringed, hemmed in by sickly yellow glare, so trapped. And in a way, it's transposing what they're feeling to the skies, but also it's what they're seeing. The next place they stay is actually one of my favorites, which I've never noticed properly before. So sorry, Tolkien, I've read you many times, but I didn't notice this little touch of brilliance. And that is the Thorny Hall. I mentioned I felt they were a bit like characters in Watership Down, like, you know, running underneath the brambles. But actually, of course, this is pre-dates Watership Down. And what it does recall is the ent home that Treebeard takes Merry and Pippin to, but it's a kind of thorny version of that on page 308. It's a hollow hall, rafted with dead branches and bramble, and roofed with the first leaves and shoots of spring. So I love that description because it's the halfway house element of Ithilien. Yes, it's dead branches and bramble, but above is this hint of there could be some kind of restoration that could come for this place because it has shoots of spring. And that's what sums up, really, this landscape on the edge of Mordor and ties in, of course, with the end of the story where Faramir gets to go back and restore the princedom. They've traveled about three days in this section. And, um, why, why do that? I mean, I could imagine if I was the editor of Tolkien in the present day, I'd say, oh, modern reading habits mean that they can't cope with this, this section. It's a bit slow. But fortunately, that kind of editor wasn't around. No blue pencil was out. And I think it's making the point that we have to go each weary step with Frodo and Sam. Theirs isn't the heroic, horse-riding, sword-wielding battle. There's a little bit of the fighting to come. Theirs is the persistence, the resilience, the men in the trenches. Yeah. I guess, and that's what you're getting here. Sam, we dip into Sam's point of view here because he has a dream of the thorns invading the flower beds back at Bag End. So he's picked up the thorns of where they stayed previously, and it also links him back to the Shire. This is the touchstone of Sam. and the very practical thing that he's run out of pipe weed. And that will, without making, pointing it out, that will link us back to the hobbits finding pipe weed in Isengard. So there's still this connection being made between the experience of the hobbits. When Sam wakes up. Frodo says he's not been asleep very long. A storm is coming. It's getting darker, even though it's not yet midday. This is the point, actually, where the extended edition in the Peter Jackson film picks up. Why choose this moment to start? Well, it's because it is a good summary of the gathering storm, but also it's a little microcosm of their relationships. The weary Frodo, the practical... and Shire, Sam, and the sort of unreliable Gollum. So Gollum's off hunting or looking the way ahead. And it's an opportunity for Frodo and Sam to discuss their feelings about him. Sam says, I'd never taken anything on a journey that I'd have been less sorry to lose on the way. Again, there's a connection looking forward because they have to decide what to leave behind. And Sam gives up his pots and pans. And so there's a connection to what happens later. But here, Gollum is like a burden. Frodo is stoic and he's not blaming Gollum. He says, I think we're in for trouble anyhow. He's very grim. He's getting grimmer and grimmer as he approaches, as the burden gets heavier for him. Sam, however, light and sing. And if it's too grim, I think it's hard to read. You need to save that for when you really need it towards the end. So Sam is our light relief in a way, because he comes up with this shire wisdom saying, where there's life, there's hope and need for vittles to the Gaffasane. So, you know, it raises the smile. And when Gollum does bop back into the frame, he's bizarrely childlike in his malignity. I think that's one of the reasons why we sort of love Gollum. He's such a distinct character. I've never read another character like him. And if anyone tries to do the same, you immediately think, oh, that's like Gollum. Anyway, he bounces back in saying, wake up, sleepies. as if it's some kind of child nursery when they're actually trying to destabilize the dark power. And this gets the response from Sam that, oh, it can't even be tea time. In decent places where there is tea time, I'm going to bring the Shire, And of course Gollum says, we aren't in a decent place. You need a character like Gollum to stop us sort of slipping into a malaise. You need to keep the crack of the whip, the urgency, particularly in a journey section where they're not going to achieve the goal in this chapter. They just need to get going. And now we get an echo of what happened with Faramir, but this time they are the ones vanishing. Without the crack of a twig or the rustle of a leaf, they passed and vanished. There's another echo here of Concerning Hobbits where there's a description of how they can sort of move quietly. They've got this skill and Gollum shares it. So another reason to think of him as a kind of proto-Hobbit. He fits him very well in the way they move. So here we come to my favorite bit of this chapter, which is the crossroads, which is magnificent. It's a really magnificent moment. It's in the extended cut of the Peter Jackson film, which I was pleased to see they did try and film it. But it's beautifully done here. So first of all, we got another Entish-like space. The spaces between the trees, the trees of the crossroads, between their immense bowls, bowls is trunk, were like the great dark arches of some ruined hall. And we get this magnificent moment where the light falls on fallen statue of a king. Anybody who knows even just a little bit about English literature will know that this recalls the Ozymandias poem, which is much anthologized and still studied at schools today. It's by P.B. Shelley. So we've gone from Keats to Shelley, which is one of the reasons why I feel this is a romantic, in romanticism terms, chapter. And in that poem, the traveler comes across a fallen statue with the inscription, My name is Ozymandias, King of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. But the sort of twist is that it's in a desert. There's nothing left. Empires fall. And Tolkien is, without acknowledging it, but everybody is thinking it, so he doesn't need to tell us, he doesn't need a footnote. Frodo is actually giving a slightly different version of this. So here's the Ozymandias bit. The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it and violent hands had maimed it, Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round, rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face, with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. So, vandalism has happened. But there's a moment where that turns because Frodo saw the old king's head. It was lying rolled away by the roadside. Look, Sam, he cried, startled in to speak. Look, the king has got a crown again. So it's foreshadowing what's going to happen in the next book. And the crown is a crown of flowers. So there's white star flowers and yellow stone crop. And Frodo draws from this the hopeful message, they cannot conquer forever. If that had been the last thing in this chapter, then it would have been Frodo on an unaccustomed, positive, upbeat, But Frodo isn't in that place, nor is the story. So Tolkien adds another sentence which gives a downbeat, which was, And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell. So what we've got here is taking away of hope. We offer hope and take it away. Not completely, but what Tolkien is saying is don't be too quick to assume it's all going to be okay. If he'd left Frodo being this heroic figure. pronouncing that there's hope, it would have taken some of the feeling of jeopardy away. And Tolkien needs to keep that so that we really think they may not survive as these two small hobbits take the journey further down towards the stairs of Cirith Ungol, which is the next chapter. So please do join me again when we go up those winding stairs. It's a difficult journey, but there's some magnificent things that are said on the way. 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.