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1:11

Well, good evening, Little Masters, and

1:13

welcome to Episode 304 of the Prancing

1:15

Pony Podcast, where, well, the road may

1:17

go ever on and on, but we need to stop

1:19

a bit and take a look at the maps. And what a famous

1:22

map it is. Sometimes you need to know

1:24

exactly where you've been to know

1:26

where you're going. Folks, pull up a bench in the common room

1:28

and join us. I am Don Marshall, the Obscure

1:30

Lord of the Rings facts guy, and

1:33

I would like to point out, Alan,

1:34

this is the first time you have gotten

1:36

my name correct in the script. So thank you.

1:39

Is it really? Do I used to call you the Lord

1:41

of the Obscure Rings facts guy? You

1:43

know, it was different every time, I think, and then

1:45

if I'm remembering correctly, you just sort of gave

1:47

up and just said, introduce yourself. Intro nickname

1:50

here. Doesn't

1:53

surprise me. No, not at all. But as I

1:55

said already, I am joined by the

1:58

host of this podcast, the man of the West.

1:59

Mr. Allen Sisto,

2:02

who still uses the Thomas Guide for this sort of

2:04

thing. Well, you know, if they made

2:06

a Thomas Guide for Middle Earth, I'd have to buy one,

2:09

but so would you. I mean, come

2:11

on. Yeah, that's fair. That

2:13

would be pretty awesome. I feel like Google Maps could

2:15

get me there if cell phones existed in Middle Earth.

2:18

Problem is, the GPS exists in Middle Earth. I

2:20

mean, maybe the cell phones do. You know what? I'll

2:22

have to talk to Sauron about that. Fair enough. Folks,

2:25

join us as we review the first five

2:27

books of The Lord of the Rings. That's going to be quite

2:29

a task. And preview book six as we

2:31

begin the Prancing Pony podcast's final

2:34

season in The Lord of the Rings. But

2:36

certainly not your final season, though. Oh, no,

2:38

not even close. We've got Silmarillion,

2:41

Unfinished Tales, Leaf by

2:43

Miggle, Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Yeah,

2:46

the idea is to do a couple of seasons of

2:48

extra legendarium where we'll cover the appendices

2:51

and things like Unfinished Tales and

2:53

History of Middle Earth, you know, more intact stories,

2:55

then a couple of seasons of non-legendarium, and then

2:58

we'll go back and do the Silmarillion one more

3:00

time to

3:01

sort of come full circle and go

3:03

back to where we started.

3:04

You always got to do the Silmarillion twice. And

3:06

again, that's not for everyone, but like, you

3:08

should do the Silmarillion. Oh, it should be for everyone.

3:11

That's my opinion, yes. Well, no

3:13

matter what you read or how you got here, you

3:15

are all welcome here in the common room and the Prancing

3:18

Pony podcast. We are reading and talking

3:20

our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculations

3:22

and lots of dad jokes along the way. Dad

3:24

jokes for me and bad jokes for me, of course. Folks,

3:28

we love deep dives into the lore. We love discussing

3:30

our favorite themes and a whole lot more. But

3:32

we're going to try and keep this, you know, a little bit light,

3:35

a little bit fun, couple of friends chatting

3:37

at a pub, and we're really glad

3:38

that you've joined us.

3:39

Indeed. And I'm sure you'll be glad you joined as

3:41

well. Tonight we're going to go ahead and get

3:44

right into the discussion. We're going to start with

3:46

a brief chat about the composition history

3:49

of book six. Don, why don't you start

3:51

us off? Absolutely. So

3:53

I'm going to take you back to volume nine of the history

3:55

of Middle Earth in the book Sauron defeated.

3:58

Christopher Tolkien writes, quote, With

4:00

this book, my account of the writing

4:03

of the Lord of the Rings is completed. I

4:05

regret that I did not manage to keep

4:07

it even within the compass of three

4:10

fat volumes, but the circumstances were

4:12

such that it was always difficult to project

4:14

its structure and foresee its extent,

4:17

and became more so since when

4:20

working on Return of the King, I

4:22

was largely ignorant of what was to come."

4:25

YELTSIN! If you

4:27

need a reason, that's a pretty good reason.

4:30

If you're Christopher Tolkien and you just simply

4:33

are plowing through your father's old notes, I

4:35

think it's fair to say I didn't know what was coming

4:37

next. This is perhaps the equivalent

4:39

of me trying to dissect the

4:42

entirety of the Prancing Pony podcast if

4:44

you do eventually get to season 25. Season 25.

4:48

Good luck with that, sir. We'll see what happens.

4:50

Christopher Tolkien also points out that when

4:52

his father stopped work on The Lord of the Rings back in 1945 and 1946, that was when

4:54

he was working on the Notion Club Papers. At

5:00

the same time, he was creating the Adonaiac

5:03

language and creating a new version

5:05

of the Numenor legend. So he had a danceful.

5:08

He did indeed, and that switched, that transition

5:11

from The Lord of the Rings to the Notion Club Papers, which

5:14

that's why it encompassed the new Adonaiac language

5:16

and the new Numenorean legends. That

5:18

made Christopher's job in assembling this

5:20

volume of the history of Middle Earth a little complicated,

5:23

including even coming up with a title. He

5:25

explains, My father's suggested title

5:27

for Book Six of The Lord of the Rings was The

5:30

End of the Third Age. But it seemed

5:32

very unsatisfactory to name this volume,

5:35

talking about Sauron defeated, The

5:37

End of the Third Age and Other Writings. When

5:40

the other writings, constituting two-thirds

5:42

of the book, were concerned with matters pertaining

5:44

to the Second Age and to whatever age

5:47

we find ourselves in now.

5:48

Sauron defeated is my best attempt to

5:51

find some sort of link between the disparate

5:53

parts and so to name to the whole.

5:55

I cannot imagine the

5:58

number of hours Christopher has had. to put

6:01

into this. Just thinking about it sometimes

6:03

boggles my mind. And it is thanks to

6:05

Christopher's work in Thar undefeated, we

6:08

can kind of take a look at the chronology

6:11

of his father, Professor Tolkien's

6:13

writings in The Return of the King, specifically

6:16

in Book Six. Right. So Christopher

6:18

explained, I take it as certain that my father

6:20

took up the Lord of the Rings again after the long

6:22

halt at the end of 1944 in the latter part of 1946. This

6:27

was when he returned to the abandoned openings

6:29

of

6:29

the chapters Minas Tirith and the Master

6:32

of Rohan. For the subsequent chronology

6:34

of writing, there is little evidence beyond the rather

6:36

obscure statements in his letters. On

6:39

30th September 1946, that's letter number 106 to

6:42

Stanley Unwin,

6:43

he said that he picked it up again last week and

6:45

wrote a further chapter but there is really no knowing

6:48

what this was, Christopher says.

6:50

Later in December, he writes 107 to

6:53

Stanley Unwin and Christopher Tolkien quotes

6:55

that saying,

6:56

I still hope shortly to finish my magnum opus, The

6:59

Lord of the Rings and let you see it before

7:01

long or before January. I

7:03

am on the last chapters.

7:07

The last chapters you said. Not

7:11

exactly because that was on

7:14

the 7th of December 1946. But on April 7th, 1948, a full

7:21

16 months later, he wrote to Hugh Brogan

7:24

in letter 114 saying, quote, only

7:26

the difficulty of writing the last chapters

7:29

and shortage of paper have

7:32

so far prevented its printing. I

7:36

hope at least to finish

7:39

it this year, which I'm watching

7:42

that quote and I'm amazed at how

7:44

different the world is now that the idea of

7:46

a paper shortage was

7:49

what almost prevented it. Think

7:51

about how different it would have been, you know, had

7:53

anything changed. Because

7:56

keep in mind, it wasn't until the very

7:58

end of October and he wrote to Brogan in letter And again,

8:00

this is letter 117 that he'd said quote succeeded

8:03

at last in bringing the Lord of the Rings to

8:05

a successful conclusion So

8:08

December 7 1946 he goes I'm

8:10

gonna be finished with it really soon I'll let you see it by January

8:13

and then here it is over a year and a half later October

8:15

of 48 He finally brings

8:18

it to a successful conclusion. That is wild. I

8:20

feel like there's a very artistic

8:24

Behavior that I don't know if

8:26

you do this Alan, but I will constantly

8:28

not an artist So probably not you do this podcast,

8:31

you know the creative arts. There's

8:33

always a yeah, it'll be done then Yeah,

8:35

it'll be done then and then it's never finished.

8:37

You know, the artist's work is never finished Well, even

8:40

our book I mean Sean and I kept working on that

8:42

book for ages and ages and ages and

8:44

kept thinking alright Well the deadlines by X

8:46

so it'll be done by X and then you're like Oh, well

8:48

somehow the existence of the deadline doesn't mean the

8:50

work actually got done So we have to extend the deadline

8:53

and still do the work, you know still gotta

8:55

do the work still gotta do the work I'm

8:58

thinking about what happens if Tolkien

9:01

publishes it not 16 months later But 32

9:05

months later or pushes it back or or

9:07

even if it gets published before

9:09

then like if he says, alright It's fine. It's good enough

9:12

and suddenly we miss something in

9:14

those last few edits Well,

9:16

what's crazy is he supposedly finishes at 1948, but

9:19

we all know the books don't come out for another

9:22

Seven years seven years Yes

9:26

So Christopher explained some evidence by the way that

9:28

points to the conclusion of these last chapters

9:31

being written in 1948 He says

9:33

the only other evidence that I know of is found

9:35

in two pages on which my father made a list

9:37

of Candidates for an academic post with

9:39

notes on their previous experience

9:42

Against several of the names he noted both date

9:44

of birth and present age from which

9:46

it is clear that the year was 1948

9:49

On the reverse of one of these pages

9:51

is drafting for the passage in the land

9:53

of shadow in which Frodo and Sam See

9:55

the darkness of Mordor being driven back. The

9:58

second part is overwritten with

9:59

drafting for the discussion of food and water

10:02

in the Tower of Kenneth Ungal, while

10:04

the reverse of it carries very rough

10:07

sketching of the discovery of Frodo by Sam

10:09

in the Tower." Wow.

10:12

As grateful as I am to Tolkien

10:14

for what he gave me personally

10:16

and the world of fantasy as a whole, that

10:20

man with a Google Docs folder

10:23

or some sort of electronic writing device

10:25

where... Give organization. ...and

10:27

then he'd have these subfolders that would just be, all

10:29

right, well, here's this idea that I had, but also

10:32

I was thinking about this cat Tazildo

10:34

and then Baron and Lucy. What if I... Oh,

10:37

man. And then,

10:39

of course, he'd have a folder

10:41

full of just a literate verse, a folder

10:43

full of the canto's and the

10:45

different... Yeah. Wow. Yeah,

10:48

you're not kidding. I mean, if he was able to do all this with literally

10:50

pen and paper for the vast majority of

10:52

it, I mean, yes, he eventually did type scripts, but as

10:55

he said very slowly because he couldn't afford

10:57

to get them properly typed up by somebody,

11:00

imagine how much more he would have

11:02

been able to do if he was

11:04

doing it electronically and efficiently and not

11:07

having to do it over millions of pieces

11:09

of scrap paper. Would have made Christopher's

11:11

job a little easier too. Yeah, seriously. You

11:14

say that. I don't think I'd ever use efficient

11:16

to describe J.R.R. Tolkien at all. No,

11:19

no. And that's okay. Yeah. Oh,

11:22

of course. I'm not efficient at all. No. Here's

11:26

the entire book in prose. And then I rewrote

11:28

it in iambic pentameter. And then this one

11:30

takes place entirely from the perspective of Tom Bombadil.

11:33

Oh my goodness. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That

11:35

would be so much. Unbelievable. Wow.

11:38

Goodness. So 1948 is

11:40

when it looks like he got near the very end.

11:43

Yeah.

11:43

Yeah. Oh my goodness.

11:46

And so that evidence that you said, Alan,

11:48

leads Christopher to conclude that, quote,

11:51

in December 1946, he

11:53

was on the last chapter of

11:55

the Lord of the rings and hoped to finish it before

11:58

January. But in. 1948 he

12:01

was drafting the opening chapters of book

12:03

six the explanation must be

12:05

I think that by the end of 1946 he

12:08

had completed or largely completed book

12:10

five and so in relation to the whole

12:12

work He could feel that he

12:14

was now on the last

12:17

chapters and greatly Underestimating

12:20

as he had so often done before How

12:23

much needed to be told before

12:26

he reached the end? He thought

12:28

that he could finish it within

12:30

the month, but 1947 was

12:33

largely unproductive and as the letter

12:35

implies book six was not

12:37

written until 1948. I Love

12:40

that. I love that sideways snark

12:43

from his son By the way greatly underestimating

12:45

as he had so often done before how much

12:47

needed to be told Yeah, there's

12:50

so there's always more the thing with Tolkien

12:52

that I love so much is that there's always more

12:54

that needs to be told The man if the

12:56

man were a movie director every movie

12:58

would be 15 hours long Seriously,

13:01

there would not be an extended edition because he wouldn't

13:03

release anything that wasn't already an extended

13:06

edition. No, no No, well, I

13:08

mean think about the books the Baron and

13:10

Luthien book the children

13:12

of Horan book the fall of gondolin book Those

13:14

are all more or less extended editions.

13:16

Oh, I really are various parts of his writings

13:19

Mm-hmm. They sure are so even though book

13:21

six wasn't written until 1948 What's

13:24

interesting especially as we look at sour

13:26

undefeated is that some of the elements were

13:28

there from far far earlier?

13:30

Christopher explains quote the conception

13:33

of the fiery mountain in which alone the ring

13:35

could be destroyed and to which the quest will

13:37

ultimately Lead

13:38

goes back to the earliest stages in the writing

13:41

of the Lord of the Rings

13:42

It first emerged in Gandalf's conversation

13:44

with bingo bulger Baggins Oh

13:48

No, bingo bingo bingo bingo

13:51

and Gandalf tells bingo I fancy

13:53

you would have to find one of the cracks of earth in the depths

13:55

of the fiery mountain And drop it down into

13:58

the secret fire if you really wanted to just

13:59

I

14:00

love that the secret fire which

14:02

of course is Vastly different from

14:04

what we understand the secret fire to be in the Silmarillion

14:07

But yeah, of course, of course and sometimes, you

14:09

know It's it's very similar to how

14:11

I run like my D&D campaigns or my

14:13

camp my DTR PG games within Middle Earth Sometimes

14:16

you get an idea and you're just set on it. And if

14:18

it doesn't work in this scenario Maybe we can tweak

14:20

it another way But also keep in mind in

14:22

the outline that Christopher says

14:25

quote almost certainly dates

14:27

from 1939 Wow,

14:30

we read that Bingo reaches the

14:33

crack but cannot make himself throw

14:35

it in anyway, he hears Necromancer's

14:39

voice Offering him great

14:41

reward to share power with him

14:43

if he will keep it and that

14:46

moment Gollum who has seemed

14:48

to reform and has guided them by secret ways

14:50

through Mordor comes up and Treacherously

14:53

tries to take the ring they wrestle

14:56

and Gollum takes the ring and falls into the crack

14:58

the mountain begins to crumble Wow

15:03

1939 he already had that part set

15:06

aside Yeah So, you know I

15:08

am sure we're gonna talk more about the development

15:10

of that particular part of the story when

15:12

I reached the chapter Mount Doom later On this

15:14

season for now though Let's take a quick break

15:16

and we'll come back to discuss the themes as

15:19

we've seen them develop over the last five books

15:21

and five pieces

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16:10

Well, folks, soon we'll get back to where we've been over the last

16:12

five years. But before we do, we want to remind

16:15

you that there's a lot more talk going on at

16:17

the Prancing Pony podcast than just me and Don.

16:19

The PPP has an amazing listener community,

16:22

and I've been fortunate enough to speak to a lot of

16:24

them. They are always coming up with

16:26

great questions and discussion

16:28

and memes. I feel like I need to shout

16:30

out

16:30

the memes here a little bit. The memes and gifs

16:32

are pretty phenomenal, I've got to admit. If you're not familiar,

16:35

a meme is an internet thing

16:38

that everybody knows. It's just like one

16:40

of those idioms in the English language,

16:42

but told through moving pictures

16:45

or images. Yeah, the visual

16:47

idioms. So you can

16:49

come check out the common room on Facebook,

16:51

the dedicated subreddit, Twitter, and more.

16:54

That's right. Now on Facebook, just look for the Prancing Pony

16:56

podcast. You can follow the page to get news and

16:59

new episodes. But the thing is, you're going to really

17:01

want to join the group to get in those great discussions.

17:03

Or if you would prefer Reddit, you can find us there

17:06

at r slash PrancingPonyPod. On

17:08

Twitter and Instagram, we're simply PrancingPonyPod.

17:11

And if you want daily Tolkien content, well,

17:13

check out today's Tolkien Times on YouTube

17:16

and all of your favorite podcast apps. It's

17:18

my new short form daily show with everything

17:20

from Mailbag Monday to Silmarillion

17:23

Saturday.

17:24

Be sure to check it out at YouTube.com slash

17:26

at Tolkien Times and follow at

17:28

Tolkien Times on all your social media.

17:31

And folks, if you enjoy the show, please consider supporting

17:34

us by joining the Fellowship of the Podcast. It's

17:36

what helps us make this show better every season.

17:39

When you join, you get the best discord

17:41

community around. That includes all the memes,

17:43

all the stuff. It

17:46

also includes live episode recordings and hangouts

17:49

every month, episode postscripts, ad

17:51

free episodes, and a whole lot more. You

17:54

can also become a part of our questions

17:56

after nightfall episodes. Some of, if it's

17:59

not too much to say. favorite interactions

18:01

in the Tolkien community. A lot of fun there.

18:03

It's so much fun. You can even join

18:05

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18:08

please go to patreon.com slash

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PrancingPonyPod to show your support

18:12

and join the fellowship of the podcast.

18:15

And of course you can always help us out by giving us a rating

18:18

and review on Apple Podcasts and a rating

18:20

on Spotify. And please don't stop recommending

18:22

us to your friends. Well now it's time for

18:24

us to do a quick recap of the story and

18:27

themes so far, but this one's gonna be a little

18:29

bit different. Right, so normally we'd

18:31

recap the previous book for you, but with book six

18:34

we are going to be picking up with Frodo

18:36

and Sam and we don't see them in book five.

18:39

No we don't. So instead we're gonna do a very quick

18:41

recap of books one two and

18:43

four at first to remind you what Frodo

18:46

and Sam had been through when we last saw them

18:48

because Frodo and Sam were, sirs, not appearing

18:51

in book three or five. And if you

18:53

do not understand that reference you're too young to listen

18:55

to this podcast. No I'm kidding.

18:58

No you just haven't watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

19:00

We can get that fixed for you, just let us know. A

19:02

fantastic movie. We will still do

19:04

the recap though of book five even though they

19:06

were absent from it. I think it'll be helpful just to kind of,

19:08

you know, we'll compare and contrast themes that

19:11

we saw in the last book with the ones that

19:13

we are looking forward to in this one. That's

19:15

right. Plus, you know, it's really only the first part

19:18

of book six that is Frodo and Sam.

19:20

We'll eventually end up right where we left off

19:23

in book five. So we need to recap those events and

19:25

themes as well. And folks, remember

19:27

this is a Prancing Pony Podcast recap so

19:29

we're generally assuming that you know the story.

19:32

We're focusing primarily on themes here. Right.

19:34

The story has been told a

19:36

lot of times. It's a story about a young

19:39

gardener who finds his courage

19:41

to—I'm not wrong. No,

19:44

you're not entirely wrong. It's just a really long—and

19:46

look, I could tell this story, this

19:48

recap, many different ways. For Legolas, it

19:51

was the equivalent of a long weekend out with some

19:53

guys he met along the road. That's about

19:55

right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what is a year-long

19:57

journey for him? That is just a, you know— Yeah,

20:00

and from Rivendell to

20:03

Ring, can I spoil it? Do your

20:06

readers know that the Ring was destroyed? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

20:08

the Lord of the Rings. Yeah, they know the Ring is destroyed

20:10

of course. I can just imagine

20:12

someone not reading the books and only

20:15

listening to this podcast and thinking

20:18

this is how I'm going to find out. I need to know.

20:21

We have spoiled the entire story of course. I mean,

20:23

I think we've tried to avoid spoilers in the Silmarillion

20:26

knowing that a lot of people were trying to make their way through

20:28

that for the very first time. But with The

20:30

Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, we just have to assume

20:32

because it's so difficult otherwise,

20:34

right? I mean, because there's so many times where we want to

20:36

reference future events as being connected thematically.

20:40

So we just assume that folks know the story and we go from

20:42

there. So yeah. The themes and the tones

20:45

of The Lord of the Rings as we sort of step into this,

20:47

you can think of this as like,

20:49

this isn't your dad's insert

20:52

noun here. It's not your dad's hobbit. No, it's

20:54

a very different feel, isn't it? Oh

20:56

my God. Can we put not your father's

20:58

hobbit on a t-shirt or something? I think

21:00

we probably could. Not your father's halfling,

21:03

maybe. Hobbit might be a harder word. Right, right,

21:05

right. We got to legally distinct

21:07

from various other things. Anyway,

21:11

the point of all of this being The Lord of the Rings

21:13

themes are darkened very early

21:15

on in book one. We are introduced

21:17

to the world of the Silmarillion. There's things

21:19

like the Black Riders and the Necromancer

21:22

that are quickly intrude on what

21:24

was a very simple sequel to

21:26

The Hobbit very early on.

21:28

That's right. I mean, we start getting some of those backstory

21:30

elements very, very early. I mean,

21:32

even in the midst of the Shire itself

21:34

where it was beautiful and peaceful

21:37

and green and lovely, there was still

21:39

this ever present sense of danger.

21:42

And that sense, of course, has only increased as the story

21:44

has gone on. The tone has shifted significantly

21:46

from The Hobbit days. Let's

21:49

take a look at some of the individual themes. The first one I want

21:51

to look at is fate and free will. Now,

21:53

that early arc of Frodo and Sam gave us a

21:55

lot of fate and free will back

21:57

in books one and

21:58

two, especially as Frodo wrestled.

21:59

with his role in the events playing

22:02

out. Not only when he left the Shire in Book

22:04

One, but even when he made up his mind to go to Mordor

22:06

in Book Two, and he made that decision

22:08

twice, right? In Rivendell, and

22:11

then again by himself he

22:13

thought at Park Galen. Right, and

22:16

keep in mind Gandalf's words to Bilbo,

22:19

or about Bilbo, was that he was

22:21

meant to find the ring and that

22:23

Frodo was meant to have

22:25

it, which I interpret at least as Gandalf

22:27

sort of seeing providence at

22:30

work, that idea of fate. Exactly,

22:32

Illuvatar moving behind the scenes, and yet simultaneously

22:35

Frodo still exercised the free will to

22:37

do what must be done, and we remember that meanwhile

22:40

there's some great moments in the Council weren't there about that.

22:43

Oh my god, the Council of Velrond is probably one of

22:45

my favorite chapters, but one

22:48

of my favorite parts is that we really we learn

22:50

the difference between fate, which is

22:52

this idea that you know Illuvatar's will

22:54

is sort of played out, and then just perceived

22:57

by everybody in Arda, in

22:59

Middle-earth, and also the free will

23:01

of the people of the world, and the ability

23:04

to, as the Silmarillion mentions about

23:06

men, quote, shape their

23:08

life amid the powers and

23:11

chance of the world beyond

23:13

the music. I love that quote

23:15

so much. Absolutely right,

23:17

I love that quote as well. The quote that comes to

23:19

my mind though is from the Council of Elrond,

23:21

and it's that another fate and free will mix.

23:24

It's after Frodo has said he will take the

23:26

ring, though he doesn't know the way. Elrond

23:28

says to him, if I understand to write all that I

23:30

have heard, I think that this task

23:33

is appointed for you Frodo,

23:35

and that if you do not find a way, no one will.

23:38

But then he says, it is

23:40

a heavy burden, so heavy that none could lay it on

23:42

another. I do not lay it on you, but

23:45

if you take it freely,

23:47

I will say that your choice is right.

23:50

So it's both

23:52

a task appointed and

23:54

a choice.

23:55

Yeah. It's just fantastic. It's so rich. It's

23:58

such a duality too between all

24:00

of that, you know, that idea of fate,

24:02

because, you know, oh yes, of course the ring gets destroyed.

24:05

God said it was going to happen. That doesn't make for it.

24:07

That's the equivalent of why didn't they take the eagles

24:09

to Mordor. Well, it doesn't make for a very good story.

24:12

Talk about Deus Ex Machina, I mean. Yeah. That's

24:14

quite literally Deus Ex Machina. Yeah.

24:16

And also keep in mind, we saw more

24:18

of this theme in Book 4 when Frodo

24:20

and Sam seem more

24:22

or less fated to enter Mordor with

24:25

Gollum through Kyriath Ungol.

24:27

True. And, you know, there are so many quintessential

24:32

moments of like, oh, well of course they chose

24:34

to go there. That makes the most sense. But

24:36

was it really? Was it fate? Was it designed

24:38

that way? And, you know, was Ungoliant

24:41

even a part of the plan?

24:44

Because without Ungoliant, Shelob's mother,

24:47

think about it, Kyriath Ungol doesn't

24:49

exist without Shelob. Shelob

24:51

does not exist without Ungoliant.

24:53

Ungoliant in her form that she is

24:55

does not exist without Morgoth. Morgoth does not

24:57

exist without the Louvatar.

25:00

Is it all, it can all

25:02

lead back to, honestly,

25:04

Spabimi. The idea of Spabimi is

25:07

right here, front and center. Wow. First

25:09

time that's come up already in season 8. For folks who

25:11

are new to the show, just a quick reminder. In

25:14

season 1, we came up with this acronym Spabimi.

25:16

It's SPBMI. It stands for Shel

25:19

Prove But Mind Instrument. And that's

25:21

from a line in Aina Lindelei, which is

25:23

the music of the Aina or in the creation of the world. And

25:25

it's basically our shorthand way of referring to

25:27

a Louvatar's plan being

25:30

able to be worked out regardless of the circumstances.

25:32

So even if somebody does something evil that's bad,

25:34

that's not part of the original plan, a Louvatar

25:37

is able to turn it around and use

25:39

it in a way to still accomplish, you know, whatever

25:42

the music has predetermined would happen.

25:44

Fantastic stuff. I'm trying

25:46

to think of maybe some other book for moments

25:48

of fate and free will. Faramir

25:50

comes to mind. I love his

25:53

ability to reject the

25:55

ring because it feels so much like

25:58

free will and, you know, So that idea

26:00

of I will not take the ring, I

26:03

will stay, and it's a great foil

26:05

to Boromir in that they are so different

26:07

in that moment. And Faramir's,

26:11

I don't want to call it a temptation because it wasn't

26:13

really a temptation, but there is that moment of was

26:15

it always destined that Frodo

26:18

was going to be there, or could it possibly

26:20

be that maybe Faramir is another

26:23

instrument? Maybe Faramir, tell

26:25

me Tolkien didn't think about, well, maybe I just get Faramir

26:27

to take him into Mordor. Basically Aragorn

26:29

Light, let's just, you know. She

26:33

loves not a problem if you've got Faramir

26:35

there and just, you know, all three of them

26:37

hacking at the spider well may be stolen. Well,

26:39

especially plus all of Faramir's Rangers, but yeah.

26:42

Well, you know what? Hear me out.

26:44

I don't know if Faramir's Rangers

26:46

go into Kyreth Ungol with him. Well, I

26:48

love this speculation. The idea that Faramir would

26:50

actually take them with him, that

26:52

he would lead the way. I don't know. I

26:55

think his sense of duty to his father is a little too much to

26:57

do that. Yeah. I like the

26:59

idea. I really do. That's a good

27:01

point. Well, maybe I'll make another alternate

27:03

universe, Lord of the Rings tabletop role-playing

27:06

game session where Faramir

27:09

takes them to Kyreth. It'd be probably a little bit

27:11

shorter and I imagine does Faramir

27:14

survive? That's a conversation for another time. We're talking

27:16

about Satan free will. Sorry. He's

27:19

got to survive because otherwise who's going to help rescue

27:21

Aowyn from her despair? We're going to see that later

27:23

this season when she's still really

27:26

really in the depths of that despair and it's

27:28

Faramir's absolutely selfless love

27:30

for her that sort of brings her back.

27:33

That's one of my favorite moments in the entire legendarium that we'll get

27:35

to later on with the steward and the king. That's

27:39

much further on in the season. For now, I'm thinking

27:41

of other book four moments. I mean, obviously

27:43

the choices of Master Samwise

27:45

comes to mind. We'll see more of

27:48

other themes in those moments. I think we'll

27:50

get to that a little bit later, but let's in

27:52

fact move on to another one of those themes. That's

27:55

the theme of hope and despair. Now

27:57

going back to book one, we started

27:59

seeing this.

27:59

very early on in the Barrow

28:02

Downs when Frodo nearly gave in to

28:04

despair, abandoning his friends to die,

28:06

but he chose not to. And

28:08

we learn after that that Bilbo and Gandalf both

28:10

believed him to be the best hobbit in

28:13

the Shire. High

28:15

praise indeed. That is perhaps

28:17

the best praise you can have. There are a lot of great hobbits

28:19

in the Shire. And keep in mind, you know,

28:22

that theme of hope and despair

28:24

continues throughout book two, we've

28:26

got things like Gandalf's death,

28:29

where, you know, oh my gosh, there's

28:31

this huge Balrog. Oh my gosh,

28:33

we have hope Gandalf's gonna win. And

28:35

then there's that despair of we've lost

28:37

Gandalf. I'm reminded of

28:40

a Sean Astin quote in

28:43

the behind the scenes of

28:45

the Peter Jackson trilogy where he says,

28:47

well, yes, of course, good will

28:49

win. But at what cost?

28:51

What will be? I'm paraphrasing, of course, but he says, you'll be

28:53

lost. And that idea

28:56

of you can have so much hope, like, of course,

28:58

the ring is going to be destroyed. This is a fantasy story

29:00

I can read into the themes. Yeah, what's it gonna

29:03

cost you to succeed?

29:05

And what despair will you feel? Yeah,

29:08

in between then and now. And right

29:11

up until the breaking of the fellowship, when we see

29:13

Aragorn start to have that moment

29:15

of near despair, but he

29:17

keeps doing what needs to be done. And then

29:20

we see, you know, that play out

29:21

really, really poignantly in book three.

29:24

He definitely had those moments there of

29:27

near despair, giving up on, you

29:29

know, every decision I make has gone wrong, that

29:31

sort of thing. But he stuck to it and did what he needed

29:33

to do and certainly held on to hope.

29:36

And that hope fueled their chase of Marion

29:38

Pippen. I am often, you know,

29:40

asked, why is it basically just

29:42

a musical? Why did Tolkien write so many songs? What

29:44

was the point of all of it? I skipped those. I

29:47

used to, too, though, in all fairness, I used to skip all

29:49

the poetry and music. Yes, I do. Yeah.

29:52

I am ashamed to say it now. And I'm thinking, and this is what I love

29:54

about coming on this podcast, Alan, is you give me

29:56

different ways to think about Tolkien.

29:59

I now see. the lament for

30:01

Boromir when they are singing at the river

30:04

has almost a way to try and rekindle

30:06

that hope. Oh, yeah. To sing

30:08

of the despair of loss and say, all

30:10

right, we are grieving in this moment. This

30:13

is our lamentation quite literally

30:15

for this man that we lost. And

30:18

our hope is

30:19

temporarily at least

30:21

being abated. And it's not

30:23

there the way it was. We need something else.

30:25

And I think for the first time in my life, I'm

30:28

seeing this song totally differently, which again

30:30

is, I think I said this last time I was out here, it's a

30:32

new way to see Tolkien through this podcast. And I love it.

30:34

That's what we keep trying to do. Honestly, it's what

30:37

we end up discovering ourselves. I mean, obviously,

30:39

for six years, it was me and Sean

30:42

discovering new things every single episode.

30:44

And last year, I was discovering new things every

30:46

single episode with, you know, half

30:48

a dozen or more new co hosts that

30:50

were working with me all season. And every time

30:53

I do this, every time I write an episode, I

30:55

learned something new, no matter how many times I've gone through

30:57

this, it's fantastic. Getting back to hope and despair,

31:00

I've actually come back to Lothlorien,

31:02

right? Galadriel and Kelleborn in book two,

31:05

they give us a lot of opportunities to think about

31:07

the way hope and despair interplay with one

31:09

another in the fighting of the long

31:11

defeat. There's this ultimate

31:13

despair in the sense that we know eventually

31:16

we,

31:16

this is the long defeat, we have to leave, we're not gonna,

31:19

we're not gonna be able to win this forever.

31:22

But there's also hope that we can continue

31:24

to win until it's time to go. Yeah,

31:27

the defeat implies that there will be

31:29

an eventual loss.

31:31

And I think that is the despair portion,

31:34

you could almost call it the long despair,

31:36

instead of defeat, because it is kind of this idea

31:39

of, oh, man, this is, this

31:42

is going to be a forever thing. But then there is also

31:44

that hope of, well, even if we

31:46

are doomed, even if we are defeated, even

31:48

if we are despairing, let's do some

31:50

good along the way, let's leave it better than we found it.

31:53

Exactly, exactly. We'll talk more about that in a

31:55

little bit, because what you just talked about there is very much

31:57

a Beowulf monsters and the critics sort

31:59

of thing. of the circle of light. So we'll get

32:01

to that. That's actually the next theme. But

32:03

boy, let's talk about some of those book four

32:06

moments. And we saw a lot of

32:08

hope and despair in book four. My goodness,

32:10

start us out. What was your big highlight

32:13

for book four? I mean, let's not neglect

32:15

the choices of Master Samwise and just that

32:17

entire chapter as a whole. It

32:20

is, I mean, bounces from despair

32:23

to hope. Well, mostly in despair.

32:25

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, wouldn't you write?

32:28

We can all see Samwise Gamby. He got

32:30

this far with Frodo at his side.

32:33

And now at the very moment, very

32:36

critical moment of the mission,

32:38

he believes his master to be dead. And he's got to make

32:40

a decision. And no matter what decision he makes, he knows

32:42

he's convinced it's going to be the wrong one.

32:45

It is almost and I've never drawn this parallel

32:47

before. So help me workshop it live on

32:49

this podcast as we recorded. I'll do my best. Is

32:52

Sam's loss of Frodo the

32:55

almost equivalent of Frodo's loss of

32:57

Gandalf? It's

32:59

certainly very similar in the sense that,

33:02

you know, Gandalf gave Frodo

33:04

wisdom and gave him hope and was

33:06

the leader. And

33:07

Frodo in turn was Sam's leader

33:10

and source of inspiration and hope. Yeah, I think there's

33:12

a lot of similarity there. And then he comes back.

33:14

And it's very different, though, of course, in that regard, because,

33:17

you know, Frodo doesn't know that Gandalf comes

33:19

back until he wakes up in the field of Kormaland later.

33:21

No, I mean, we won't do that until, oh,

33:24

I don't know, spring sometime, I think. And

33:26

it is a fantastic moment, right? When Sam discovers

33:29

the same thing. And I think that is something that

33:31

sort of gets lost on people as you read

33:33

this, you know, very heavy book

33:36

like so much going on. Tolkien does a pretty good

33:38

job reminding us like, Oh, right, Frodo thinks he's dead.

33:40

There's a couple of moments there, but I will occasionally

33:42

find myself forgetting, like, Oh, right. Aragorn,

33:45

like, a lesson Gimli have no idea

33:48

where they are, they could be, you know, there's

33:50

that despair again, but also that hope

33:52

our Frodo and Sam alive or dead. And then,

33:54

you know, we talk about book four, where it is

33:57

Frodo and Sam, like, imagine Faramir

33:59

just I really hope they succeed

34:02

in their quest. I have

34:04

to go back to my city now because

34:07

everything's falling apart. So, Fathomir

34:09

I think is another great, there's another moment

34:11

of hope and despair as well. A little

34:13

bit. There's a moment of hope that comes to mind

34:16

and that's in Journey to the Crossroads I think. Right

34:18

before the very end of the chapter when

34:21

the sunlight comes streaming down on the

34:23

crown of the king that has been taken

34:25

off. The head of the king has been taken off that statue

34:27

and defiled by the orcs. And

34:30

there's this reminder, to me

34:32

it sort of feels like it's calling forward

34:34

a moment that hasn't happened yet. It to me links

34:36

with the moment that we'll see in this book when

34:39

Sam looks up and sees the star, the

34:41

rock of clouds. Yes, absolutely.

34:44

And even in

34:46

the midst of all this darkness there's still the stars.

34:49

And that moment was even with the

34:51

clouds covering everything there's still this last

34:53

ray of sun. The sun is still out there.

34:55

And yeah, I mean it was short,

34:58

short lived. But it was powerful

35:00

and moving and really did serve to

35:03

inspire both Frodo and Sam I think. A

35:05

little bit of thematic foreshadowing there

35:07

as well. I think so. I think also

35:09

we're missing a pretty big character. Gollum

35:13

and Smeagol I think are the perfect

35:15

dichotomy of hope and despair.

35:18

Hope that Smeagol can be saved and

35:20

despair that Gollum

35:23

might be the one to rest

35:25

control of the body, of the mind, of

35:28

everything. And it is that duality

35:30

of Gollum's struggle that can

35:32

be interpreted so many different ways.

35:34

I mean we've talked about it previously on

35:37

this podcast about how Gollum represents so

35:39

many things to so many different people. There's

35:41

people that struggle with addiction. There's people that struggle

35:44

with depression and anxiety or just

35:46

a melancholy, a sense of despair

35:48

or isolation. And there's so many – sorry

35:51

I'm naming way more themes. No, you're right though. You're

35:53

absolutely right. I mean I'm thinking of even

35:55

the despair that Frodo and Sam felt when they got

35:57

to the Blackgate and realized – well.

35:59

I guess this is it.

36:01

Yeah. And they're going to go do it. And

36:03

Gollum's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We've got another

36:05

way. Wait a minute, wait a minute. So he gives them a

36:07

hope, though it's really honestly a false

36:09

hope. But at the same time,

36:12

there was no hope at all of

36:14

getting the Black Gate itself. None. And

36:16

then there's Shelub's lair. Shelub's lair was filled

36:19

with total despair. Just this idea

36:21

they're never going to be able to get out. My goodness, no,

36:23

so much. And then Frodo holding

36:25

aloft the vial of Galadriel. Literally

36:28

hoping his hand. Let's go ahead and take a look

36:30

at another theme. This is very similar to hope and

36:33

despair. It's not quite the same. I want

36:35

to talk about the two essays that we've referenced

36:37

so often on the Francine Coney podcast that are

36:39

sort of the opposite extremes. The Tolkien

36:42

being a man

36:42

of dichotomies as he was. And

36:44

that's Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics, and

36:47

on Fairy Stories. So with Beowulf, the Monsters

36:49

and the Critics, we talk a lot about things like the

36:51

little circle of light being surrounded by darkness

36:54

and backs against the wall and that sort

36:56

of northern ethos of, okay,

36:58

we're going to die. We're going to die

37:00

going out in style. We're going to fight.

37:03

And even though we have no chance of victory. On

37:05

the other hand, you have on Fairy Stories in which Tolkien

37:08

introduced the idea of the eukatastrophe,

37:11

which he was an absolute master at writing.

37:14

So even though there's a lot of hope and despair in

37:16

those two themes, they're separate enough that I wanted to talk

37:18

through that. Going back to book one, for

37:20

instance, the Shire itself was a little circle

37:22

of light surrounded by darkness, right? Frodo,

37:25

Sam, Merry, and Pippin going out to do battle with the

37:27

monsters, which they quite literally did

37:29

in book two.

37:31

Those are some very early examples. Again,

37:33

we've mentioned it before on this episode,

37:36

the idea that long defeat, that's

37:38

right out of Beowulf, the

37:41

monsters and the critics. And

37:43

then we've already mentioned it as well, the whole idea

37:45

of Laurie and that circle of light, the thing Frodo

37:47

is literally holding in his hand, the potential

37:50

foreshadowing of all of that. Yeah, that's true.

37:53

And then of course, in books one and two, we did see a lot of

37:55

moments in terms of eukatastrophes,

37:59

fairy stories, sort of light. Instead of the circle

38:02

of light within the darkness, we saw the light itself. So everything

38:04

from Gildor in the Woody Inn to Tom

38:06

Bombadil, all of these are sort of mini

38:08

eukatastrophes that serve to save

38:11

our protagonist along the way, while also

38:13

giving us moments of light.

38:15

Yeah. And I think that light is so important

38:18

to maintain and why these mini

38:20

eukatastrophes, as we'll call

38:22

them, are so important to the themes

38:25

because like, yes, of course the hobbits are going to be saved

38:27

by someone stronger than them. Everything

38:29

is stronger than them. When they get in trouble. It doesn't

38:31

take much. Yeah. It doesn't take

38:34

much. But also keep in mind, right, there's

38:36

that deep, that sort of fairy resonance

38:39

of Lorien. The hobbits are in the heart

38:41

of Elvendum on Earth. We

38:43

have that idea of like the

38:46

hope, the safety, the

38:48

sanctuary. These eukatastrophes

38:50

take so many different forms and

38:53

then Tolkien is also weaving in

38:55

the fairy themes as well,

38:57

the recovery, the escape, the

39:00

consolation of the fellowship after what is

39:02

an incredibly, as we've mentioned

39:04

before on this episode as well, a traumatic

39:06

moment, not just for Frodo, but for the fellowship

39:09

as a whole in Moria. That's

39:10

a very good point. Yeah. Recovery, escape and consolation

39:13

being absolutely central to the idea of fairy

39:15

story. Going on into book four,

39:18

you know, it did bring some more of the same. I

39:20

think of Henneth the Noon as a little circle

39:22

of light in the midst of sort of Mordor

39:24

dominated a Philean. And then

39:26

I think we saw a lot of little eukatastrophes

39:28

throughout. What were some of the eukatastrophes, the

39:31

little mini eukatastrophes that you saw

39:33

in book four?

39:34

Well, I was, I was of course going to say Faramir,

39:37

but you say eukataster, a mini eukatastrophe.

39:40

But so the thing about, you know, eukatastrophes

39:43

as a theme is it's moments of danger,

39:45

it's things like

39:47

the dead marshes, it's the

39:50

darkness. And when, you know, when Frodo falls in

39:52

and Gollum is pulling him out and you know, there is that

39:54

moment of, oh my goshness, we've been saved

39:56

by the most unexpected thing

39:59

ever. You know, honestly,

40:01

it's it's not necessarily a mini you

40:03

catastrophe, but sam deciding to Go

40:07

on his own that's not necessarily an external

40:09

force, but he's put in a situation where Okay

40:12

The main character that we've been following

40:15

from the beginning is gone

40:17

My turn

40:18

and that becomes almost maybe

40:20

not as much but you know, it's still

40:22

certainly I think The way his

40:24

fight with shilab ends was sort of another

40:27

mini catastrophe There was virtually no

40:29

chance even with sting in the vial that

40:31

he could defeat or drive off shilab And

40:34

yet the only thing that would end up

40:36

Doing so was shilab driving her own weight

40:39

down on

40:40

Sting itself There's no way he

40:42

could have penetrated that hide it reminds me of

40:44

obviously the lord of the rings Has a

40:47

few of these in it and then the marvel movie

40:49

avengers civil war where the bad

40:51

guy realizes The only thing that can destroy the avengers

40:54

is the avengers themselves The only thing

40:56

that can destroy shilab is she

40:58

loved herself and that's true of Sauron

41:02

almost to a point as well. Sauron doesn't if

41:04

he had not put all of his strength into the ring Exactly

41:07

the destruction of the ring wouldn't have done anything to

41:09

him. Exactly So it becomes that little mini

41:11

you catastrophe of almost like a hubris

41:14

that sort of fatal flaw of Either

41:16

the main characters or the villains.

41:18

Yeah. Yeah good stuff Well, I

41:21

mean I know there's more and and folks trust

41:23

me when I say We could probably spend an entire

41:25

episode on each of these themes since we're talking about

41:27

four or five books worth of stuff You could start a podcast

41:30

on just each

41:30

one of these things

41:32

Yeah, but we want to keep moving and

41:34

so we're going to go back to a different theme now in this case

41:36

We're going to talk about the fellowship theme. So now we're going

41:38

back to books one and two Obviously

41:41

from the title of the volume. It's pretty clear

41:43

that we should expect a lot of fellowship moments You

41:45

know, we get a lot of that with frodo and bilbo especially

41:48

in rivendell Just some fantastic stuff there.

41:50

Yeah, and keep in mind. It's also the four

41:52

hobbits. We've got the thing at crick hollow there They're

41:54

sticking together Through thick

41:56

and thin they're taking the bow at the end of day

42:00

It's and it's such a light moment too that I

42:02

think a lot of people are like I would talking

42:04

right a bath scene together Well, like this

42:06

is the vast. Yeah, this is the last

42:09

light-hearted Whimsy we're gonna

42:12

get for a little bit just buckle up because

42:14

there's that hobbitry that joking around

42:16

just like it's very reminiscent It's sort

42:18

of harken back to my other

42:20

hyper fixation of World War one

42:23

Oh, yeah, and soldiers in

42:25

the trenches using, you know, that

42:27

sort of light-hearted sometimes it's gallows

42:29

humor Sometimes it's just propping each other

42:31

up in the trenches of World War one and I think

42:33

talking really leaned into that I think he did

42:36

and then there's that really amazing,

42:38

you know One of my favorite

42:40

portions of the books is the fellowship getting

42:43

to know each other in book two Just

42:45

like talking having those conversations,

42:47

which I think I get why it

42:49

wasn't a big part of it I do wish we

42:51

had gotten a little bit more of that from from

42:54

the movies just man that extra

42:56

level of like Mary

42:58

and Pippin learning to sword fight with Boromir

43:00

and Gimli and Legolas having

43:03

a conversation with I there that

43:05

Brotherhood that camaraderie that

43:07

fellowship is so quintessential

43:10

to the entire story Yeah, especially

43:12

I think that that Gimli Legolas thread it would have

43:14

been nice to see more of that. Mm-hmm Mm-hmm.

43:17

Yeah, we definitely saw plenty of it in the book and

43:19

then going to book four We saw even

43:21

more of these moments, right? It was a smaller fellowship

43:24

at this point It's just Frodo and Sam for

43:26

the most part growing closer in their friendship

43:28

and then honestly a sort of unexpected

43:31

fellowship of sorts with Faramir I really

43:33

like that. Yeah, and I think Tolkien

43:36

does a really great job with that one because

43:39

The idea of Faramir

43:41

is very easy. I think to mess up He

43:43

could be just the next big

43:46

human in their way that gets tempted by the

43:48

ring and Frodo is constantly over and

43:50

over again You know having to fight

43:52

back against this idea of you know, the temptation

43:54

will always be there But instead

43:57

we get this really as you said unexpected

44:00

camaraderie. The aramir

44:02

is not tempted by the ring the same way Boromir

44:04

was, and it harkens back to that hope and despair

44:07

theme, weaving in with fellowship.

44:09

You bring that to the table,

44:11

and suddenly you've got a character

44:14

that is an unexpected

44:16

comrade, an unexpected fellow. Yeah,

44:19

absolutely.

44:20

Same can be said for Gollum.

44:22

Well that's the thing. Gollum is interesting. I

44:25

mean, I guess you could say in some ways, Smeagol,

44:27

Frodo does try to form a little bit of a fellowship with

44:30

Smeagol.

44:31

I think we need to make that distinction that

44:33

Smeagol is the theme

44:35

of fellowship. And again,

44:37

we're using this very loosely, but I think if we're going to do

44:40

anything, if we're going to do anything,

44:42

the idea of Smeagol

44:44

being the thing, the

44:46

person, the fellowship, the idea, the

44:49

mindset that maybe

44:51

all hope is not lost. Maybe together we

44:53

can accomplish more. Maybe there are things

44:56

that we can do to make it easier.

44:59

And you know what? I don't blame

45:01

him.

45:01

No, but it is sad because of course there is that

45:04

one moment, that one moment where Gollum

45:07

is just about ready

45:08

to possibly turn. And

45:12

Sam, and even Tolkien talks about it in his letters as

45:14

this being Sam's kind of

45:17

big screw up, right? Yeah, yeah.

45:19

I mean, Sam made a mistake, and it's

45:22

really heartbreaking to see. But

45:24

Tolkien does explain that Gollum was very

45:27

unlikely to actually

45:28

convert. But he did speculate about

45:30

what might have happened if he had. There is speculation

45:33

about how Gollum, it might have ended

45:35

the same way, but in the sense that Gollum

45:37

would have

45:38

known that Frodo couldn't do this, and he would have

45:40

taken the ring and thrown himself in voluntarily. Yeah.

45:44

It's some very interesting ideas that Tolkien came

45:46

up with, sort of speculating and bouncing

45:48

around. But that's not really fellowship, so

45:50

we'll move on from that to ring at work.

45:53

And we'll see in the ring at work, going

45:55

back maybe to books one and two. Right.

45:58

So the ring at work, obviously. Mostly

46:00

Frodo. This is a very Frodo-centric

46:03

portion of it. But you know, we do see

46:05

others as well. Other characters are involved

46:08

with the Ring. Bill Bowe had trouble leaving Bag End

46:10

and even handing the Ring off. Aragorn, the Ring

46:13

didn't necessarily work on him, but it tried.

46:15

When he was tempted at the Prancing Pony. I know we spent

46:17

a lot of time talking about this on the show. I

46:20

believe firmly that Aragorn knew he would

46:22

someday face that temptation

46:24

and had already prepared in his mind for that moment. And

46:26

so for him, it was just turning

46:29

something that was a rehearsal into reality. He

46:31

already knew how to respond.

46:32

Practicing so many times and like, I know my

46:35

lines. I know what I need to do. This is the action I need

46:37

to take. Yeah, because he knew he was going to face it at some

46:39

point under some set of circumstances. You

46:41

think Aragorn overthinks a lot of things

46:44

a lot. I've often wondered how I think

46:46

he does tend to, you know, you look at the

46:48

way he's afraid his decisions will lead to the

46:52

wrong, you know, conclusion,

46:54

so to speak. Marion Pippen or

46:57

going after Marion Pippen, going after Frodo

46:59

and Sam. Yeah. He's thinking ahead of what all

47:01

the options, what all the things could be. I

47:04

can feel that. Yeah. I have a tendency to do the same

47:06

sort of thing. Yeah. Not that

47:08

I'm like Aragorn in any other way. Let's just be clear.

47:11

All right. Hey, hey. Other than the fact that I'm

47:13

very dangerously close to 88. Dangerously

47:18

implies you're in your 80s. I think you're

47:21

nowhere near that. I'm like your

47:23

lifetime away. Folks. I think I'm your

47:25

life. Wow. Wow. I

47:27

think I'm pretty much your lifetime away from 88. So

47:29

that's all right. Listen, I have gone an hour

47:32

and three minutes into this recording without making

47:34

an old person joke. I feel that's fair. You

47:36

have earned the right. Thank you. Someone

47:38

though that the ring does not work on very

47:41

thematically. Tell them about the deal. Just, oh

47:43

yeah, not having to flex. And

47:45

not only does it not work on him in the sense that

47:47

it doesn't tempt him, it doesn't work

47:49

to wear the ring around him. The effects

47:52

of the ring aren't even seen

47:54

by him. So weird. Like, no, I'm good. I'm

47:56

good. That's fine. You have it back. Where are you

47:58

going, Frodo? Where? be you

48:00

were going. Oh my

48:02

god. Can we bring that that sort of language back?

48:04

Can we can we all just talk like

48:07

where be you will go in and can we all talk

48:09

in iambic pentameter? No, it is not

48:12

iambic pentameter. It is trochaic tetrameter.

48:15

So trochaic tetrameter features lines

48:18

composed of four trochaic feet. And

48:21

so it would be dumped the dump

48:23

the dump the dump the

48:25

so there's four feet each one is

48:27

with the first syllable stress without

48:30

the explanation. I do kind of

48:32

feel like you would be making this up. But the fact that

48:34

you don't like you

48:36

you took the Wikipedia article and

48:38

then you summarized it using to dun dun dun dun

48:41

dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun and honestly, now

48:43

I respect dump the dump the it's you

48:45

just went back into iambic pentameter, which is Oh,

48:48

excuse me, the the second syllable being stressed.

48:50

Oh, that's what makes this so weird is it's the first

48:53

syllable stressed. Where do you

48:55

go in Frodo? Oh, my

48:57

God. I this

49:01

is the weirdest conversation we've ever had on this podcast.

49:03

Let's be wondering is Tolkien did all this

49:05

and like let me have a guy talk like this wacky

49:08

meter. I

49:11

don't remember when we were speculating about this. But

49:13

I think Sean and I were discussing what if he just

49:15

changed his meters every month or every

49:17

season? Like they just happened to

49:19

come upon him during his tetraic trochaemeter

49:22

or trochaic tetraemeter phase?

49:24

Sorry, trochaic tetraemeter phase? What

49:26

if they came six months later and he was in iambic

49:28

pentameter or some other beaker? Okay,

49:31

so what if he was just in his beatnik phase and

49:33

he was just snapping his fingers all the time,

49:35

you know, so do you remember that Google Drive

49:37

reference I made a couple minutes ago?

49:39

I do. I'm imagining I'm

49:42

imagining him coming up to Christopher and going,

49:44

kid, you're

49:45

not going to believe this. I rewrote the

49:47

Tom Bombadil chapter, like

49:49

eight times in different meters.

49:52

These are all different meters. Dad, what did you do?

49:55

I was really bored one night, Chris. I

49:57

just I really wanted

49:59

to Like I couldn't figure out which one works and so I

50:01

wrote all of them and now I want to include all

50:04

of them That's awesome. I want

50:06

that. That's brilliant. I want the next

50:08

extended edition of the book Like

50:11

the Baron and the fall of Gondor portion

50:13

to just like six versions of the Tom Bob

50:15

the Tom Bombadil chapter over man

50:17

over and over you might be the only person on

50:19

the planet who would want that actually There's

50:21

so many people that don't like Tom which I

50:24

look I understand. I actually like Tom But you know,

50:26

he is a very different character. Yeah

50:29

Yeah, I think Goldberry would just grow tired of After

50:34

a while like can we talk differently

50:36

than we do something and can we do literally

50:38

anything else? Yeah So

50:43

Tom the ring doesn't work on Tom Mm-hmm

50:46

and neither does I am big pentameter at this point No,

50:48

but you know who it does work on is Galadriel Galadriel

50:51

drive that met that meld out all

50:53

shall love me and despair nuclear

50:58

Agree Yeah,

51:00

you know, I do love that moment in the books I mean to

51:03

his credit Jackson used almost the exact

51:05

dialogue from the text. So yeah, it's

51:07

just he added that sort of In

51:10

my opinion sort of nonsensical

51:12

glowing thing, but it happened

51:15

cool. It was pretty cool. Yeah Yeah,

51:17

no, I think tempted her for sure and

51:19

she I don't know whether

51:22

she had prepared the way

51:24

Aragorn had

51:25

The airborne knew he would one day face

51:28

the ring because he knew that it was in Bilbo's

51:30

possession and then Frodo's possession And he knew

51:32

that Gandalf wanted Frodo to take the ring and leave

51:34

so he knew he was gonna be encountering it Galadriel

51:38

until Frodo showed up on her doorstep

51:40

with the ring

51:41

Which I'm sure she knew was present

51:44

the moment he came in Oh instantly

51:46

So that means her preparation was just

51:48

a matter of days as opposed to Aragorn

51:51

who probably This are pondering it for

51:53

years Okay. Well, well

51:55

riddle me this Batman then cuz now I'm thinking

51:58

about it. Yeah

51:59

She probably was

52:03

preparing herself just

52:05

in case something like that happened. No?

52:08

Yeah. I mean, I would think so. I

52:10

would think so. Certainly, there's the very likely

52:13

fact that she would have gotten word from

52:16

Elrond

52:16

that

52:19

the Fellowship was leaving with the Ring.

52:21

You know, that she would have known either

52:24

through Eladon and Elro here, or through

52:26

some of their scouts, or even through

52:28

Osanwe, right? Through the telepathic

52:30

method. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the ability

52:33

to communicate that elves possess. Well,

52:35

actually, that all beings possess, but that the

52:38

more mortal you are, the more tied to your body

52:40

you are, the harder it is to use that scowl. Yeah,

52:42

sorry, I got this body. It just, it won't stop.

52:45

I'm sorry. Man, Osanwe is such a fascinating concept.

52:47

I love that. Yeah. But anyway,

52:49

I totally digress by getting into that. But the idea

52:51

is that she did probably know now that I think about it even

52:54

before that

52:55

moment when Frodo stepped in. So,

52:57

yeah, I think she'd probably been preparing.

52:59

I dig it. I dig it. I

53:01

can see it. I can see it happening. I

53:04

can see it happening. And then, of course, the Ring really, really

53:06

did work quite effectively, sadly, on poor Boromir.

53:09

And I'm so glad that

53:11

he repented that he had

53:13

an opportunity to realize his wrong and

53:15

then to make

53:17

that wrong right

53:19

by fighting to protect Merry and

53:21

Pippin. That arc of his, that all

53:23

too brief redemption arc

53:25

is one of my favorite moments in the entire

53:27

books. It's just fantastic. Oh, easily, easily.

53:30

Yeah. Yeah, there's no doubt the Ring worked on

53:32

him. Absolutely. It did exactly

53:34

what it was intending to do. And it got

53:36

him good, that's for sure.

53:38

As you've made my mind turn all

53:40

these ways, I'm now thinking about the

53:43

what if scenario of what if

53:45

he survives? What

53:48

if he's injured enough that he can't go after Merry and

53:50

Pippin, but he's like, I have

53:52

to make it up

53:53

to...

53:55

So he goes and tries to find Frodo and Sam on the other side

53:57

of the river? And everything

53:59

happens again. again and again and again. Yeah,

54:01

no, OK. Maybe not. No, that's a bad idea. Yeah,

54:04

yeah. We talk about this at the time, that Boromir's temptation

54:06

by the Ring is what, in

54:09

essence, helped the quest actually

54:11

survive. Oh, absolutely. Brode will have to leave

54:14

when he left. He absolutely had to leave when

54:16

he left. And there would have been no other

54:18

force

54:18

that would have

54:20

triggered his departure

54:22

than something like this. It really was the

54:24

thing that needed to happen.

54:26

And I think that was the, you know, as fun

54:28

as it is to speculate, as I so often do, that

54:31

is sort of how I explain it to people. Like, yes, as a

54:33

matter of fact, Boromir did need

54:35

to,

54:36

you know,

54:36

die. And there's a reason that,

54:38

like. Or at least he needed to try to take the Ring. I mean,

54:40

yeah, what if he had lived? What if he had gone with the

54:43

three hunters and, you know, all of that?

54:45

We could talk about that. We could talk about,

54:47

I've always one of my favorite speculations is what if

54:50

Denethor did send Faramir in Boromir's

54:52

stead. Oh, I love that. And

54:54

then Boromir was the one in Athillion. Oh,

54:57

crap. Oh. Yeah. Oh,

55:01

boy. I don't think Frodo

55:03

gets out of Athillion. I don't think

55:05

he does either.

55:06

I don't think he does. Wow.

55:09

What a cool thought experiment. Isn't

55:11

it an interesting thought? These little experiments are

55:13

like, well, what if? What if? What if? Do

55:16

you want to start a what if podcast for Lord of the Rings

55:18

and just speculate for a couple hours? You know, that might

55:20

actually be a really good segment. Wouldn't that be a fun

55:23

segment to introduce? Maybe a what if segment?

55:26

Can we do that? I think we have to do that.

55:28

I don't think there are any rules that say I can't. It's my

55:30

show. I can do that if I want. Alan, do

55:32

you want to start another podcast?

55:34

Another podcast? That's why I'm saying an intro

55:36

segment, my friend. I don't think I could start anything more

55:39

right now with today's Tolkien times,

55:41

just finishing up a book, narrating the audio

55:43

book. You're a bit busy, aren't

55:45

you? I am. I am. Yeah. Surprising.

55:47

Oh, my goodness. All right. So yes, 100%

55:50

Boromir is the

55:52

quintessential The Ring at work, so much so

55:54

that even in the alternate realities, The

55:56

Ring is still at work. Through Boromir. And then,

55:59

of course. Frodo's whole

56:02

idea of the ring at work obviously

56:04

on Frodo get even more so

56:06

pushed onto Frodo in book four Oh,

56:09

of course as he gets closer to Mordor and as

56:11

he becomes Connected to Gollum

56:13

especially through the ring as the ring is

56:15

sort of the the source of his authority over

56:17

Gollum Yeah, and speaking of Gollum

56:19

we see the ring working against him repeatedly

56:23

Leading eventually of course to his betrayal. Yeah,

56:26

and that's the Lord of Shelob's lair And

56:28

that is I think perhaps the

56:31

the most Gollum portion of

56:33

the ring at work because you know Gollum

56:35

was hanging out for 500 ish

56:38

years in that cave Ring

56:40

wasn't you know, he was no and

56:43

but now it's right in front of him Well,

56:46

all of a sudden we're gonna crank that up to 11 then aren't

56:48

we? Yes, we are it goes to 11. Yeah Yeah,

56:52

now we talked about the ring being

56:55

incredibly successful in its work against Boromir

56:57

But how about the ring not being very

57:00

successful in its work against fire

57:02

a mirror in book? That was fantastic I

57:05

love that because I think if

57:08

you run into a situation where

57:11

you know It's it's almost like

57:13

the flipping the trope on its head

57:16

Yeah, well you met this guy wait

57:18

till you meet his brother and my Mob

57:21

movies gangster movies all those

57:24

like superhero ones like well, but wait,

57:26

there's something much worse Lurking behind the corner. It's

57:28

his brother We call him tiny

57:31

or whatever the heck is named like I'm

57:34

now a picturing fair. We're being called tiny Frodo

57:37

was gonna be named Bingo at this point You could

57:39

probably get away with an Aragorn was gonna be named

57:41

Trotter. That is true. Yeah,

57:43

but yeah, you're right You know so often the brother is sort

57:46

of this this trope and here comes

57:48

fair mirror and he's nothing like Boromir He's

57:50

just a guy and he does not

57:52

have the same I don't want to say mannerisms because

57:55

they are similar in a lot of ways. They're very similar.

57:57

Remember Frodo finds him being so

57:59

similar

58:00

That it like strikes him right away the similarity

58:02

with Boromir But what's different is

58:04

and we learn this actually in the text There's

58:06

a little bit about how the Numenorean

58:09

blood runs true in

58:10

Denethor and in Faramir

58:14

Not so much in Boromir and

58:16

and I think it's that that

58:18

helps him to be this

58:20

thoughtful planning careful And

58:23

you notice that what he's done is he set himself up

58:25

in such a way that even though the

58:27

ring might tempt him He now

58:30

is bound

58:31

by the oath that he swore, you know I would

58:33

take now those words as an oath He says the whole thing

58:35

about yeah if I found this thing this thing that I don't

58:37

know what it is But it must be a powerful weapon

58:39

of the enemy

58:40

If I found this thing lying by the side of the highway

58:43

and I was the only one who could save Minas Tirith

58:46

And I had to use it to do that

58:48

No, no, and

58:50

then so then when he finds out. Oh, oh, it's the

58:52

ring. It's the ring one ring Well

58:56

now I have to take those words as an oath I can't I'm

58:58

not gonna even be tempted by it's like he shut the

59:01

door on any potential temptation And

59:03

it's just locked there's no power

59:05

that the ring can have to overcome

59:08

that because he's Such a man of honor

59:10

and I get that why they change that in the films because how

59:12

do you? Literally, right

59:14

you meet. Yeah, you know Have a guy

59:17

who's flawless. I mean Viggo Mortensen

59:19

is right there Alan. Let's true. It's true

59:23

It's really really tricky, you know, but that's the thing

59:25

we talked about in

59:27

the films Jackson portraying

59:29

the ring as as being

59:31

Super powerful and that men cannot

59:33

resist its its call men will

59:35

always fail right Elrond's famous line men

59:38

are weak and We're seeing Isildur

59:41

being portrayed differently in the film than he is in

59:43

the books in terms of his decision-making

59:45

and things but Aragorn You know at the top

59:47

of Parth Gallen Grabs Frodo's hand

59:49

and folds it shut back on the ring and says

59:52

I would have gone with you to the very fires of Mordor Aragorn

59:55

does fight the temptation of the ring in

59:58

the films.

59:59

So they could have done

59:59

that with Faramir but I understand why they chose not

1:00:02

to because Aragorn's the hero. You got to let Aragorn

1:00:04

have his day. And then it's the whole arc thing. We've

1:00:06

gone into this a hundred times the idea that well they actually

1:00:08

love so they have to have an antagonist and

1:00:11

then they have to give him an arc so that he develops

1:00:13

from this way to this way and

1:00:15

because this is what Jackson so often did the

1:00:17

trigger of that arc is one of the hobbits. It's

1:00:20

Sam and Sam's dialogue that changes

1:00:22

Faramir's mind just like it's

1:00:24

Pippin who changes Treebeard's

1:00:27

mind after the Ents say no we're not going to go which

1:00:29

is different from the books because in the books the Entmoot

1:00:31

decides we're marching on Isengard.

1:00:34

In the films they say no never mind not our problem

1:00:37

and then Pippin tricks him takes him to that grove where all

1:00:39

the trees are gone

1:00:40

and it's Pippin that then triggers Treebeard's

1:00:43

arc.

1:00:43

So these hobbit folks are

1:00:45

they're so important to the story my gosh.

1:00:48

They really are and Jackson does a decent

1:00:50

job of making them even more important. It just kind

1:00:52

of tweaks to the story but yeah so the ring

1:00:54

didn't work against Faramir. It sure did work against

1:00:56

Gollum. So any other big ring at

1:00:59

work moments from book four that you can think of? I know we got

1:01:01

plenty in book six that we'll talk about a bit. How

1:01:03

about the Witch King? Because the

1:01:05

Witch King is yeah when Frodo

1:01:08

and Sam and Gollum are feeling

1:01:10

his presence and he's right there and almost

1:01:12

that physical manifestation of

1:01:15

oh this is the thing that will kill me

1:01:18

that isn't a metaphor. Right right

1:01:20

so when the Witch King leads the forces

1:01:22

out of Minas Morgul that's right. I remember

1:01:24

now because the text it says something and I'm gonna look it

1:01:26

up real quick. He felt only the beating upon

1:01:29

him of a great power from outside. It

1:01:31

took his hand and as Frodo watched

1:01:33

with his mind not willing it

1:01:35

but in suspense as if he looked on some

1:01:37

old story far away it moved

1:01:39

the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon

1:01:41

his neck.

1:01:42

Then his own will stirred slowly it forced

1:01:45

the hand back and set it to find another thing a

1:01:47

thing lying hidden near his breast

1:01:49

cold heart it seemed as his grip closed on

1:01:51

it the vial of Galadriel. And

1:01:53

there's that hope and despair. That was a very

1:01:56

close moment without the vial he loses

1:01:58

that battle. Yeah yeah. Yeah, he does.

1:02:00

And that's there again is that hope and

1:02:02

despair being weaved into

1:02:05

the ring at work. Tolkien's a genius. I

1:02:07

keep saying this, but like he

1:02:09

puts so much thought and effort into it, and it's only

1:02:12

in, you know, peeling back

1:02:14

the many, many layers. Like, you ever see

1:02:16

something and you can't quite explain why you like it, but it speaks

1:02:18

to you? Oh, yeah. I feel as though that's

1:02:21

Tolkien for so many people, but as soon as someone

1:02:23

puts it into perspective, it's like, oh, that's –

1:02:26

Yeah. That's why. It's

1:02:28

one of the reasons why I wanted to do this show from the very beginning,

1:02:30

because for me, for a very long time, Tolkien

1:02:32

was that way. I could not explain to people why

1:02:34

I liked it so much.

1:02:36

And as I started to dive deeper into the themes

1:02:39

and recognizing

1:02:40

sort of the connections between

1:02:42

all the works, I'm like, okay. Okay.

1:02:44

This is one of the reasons why I like this. You know,

1:02:46

the interconsistency of reality is probably the

1:02:48

number one reason, right? This world building

1:02:51

that feels so real from the very beginning. Right.

1:02:54

But yeah, the tying together of these themes. Great stuff.

1:02:56

Great, great stuff. Well,

1:02:58

that takes us up to Book 5 and last season,

1:03:00

where we really saw the themes shift

1:03:03

as the storylines split up again, right? We

1:03:05

had Gandalf and Pippin going to Minas Tirith

1:03:07

where we finally meet Denethor,

1:03:09

Mary staying with Theoden. Of course, the

1:03:11

whole Eowyn storyline, but then you get Aragorn,

1:03:14

Gimli, and Legolas making their way through the paths of the dead. So

1:03:17

it's a totally different set of storylines

1:03:20

than what we were experiencing with the Frodo-Sam

1:03:22

storyline in Book 4. I'm quite the sucker

1:03:24

for Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli going on adventures. So

1:03:26

when I was watching the movie and also reading the

1:03:29

book, I was like, yay, it's just the two towers,

1:03:31

but with the stakes raised. That's right.

1:03:34

There's this other random group that's just, you

1:03:37

know, there. Well, except in the movie,

1:03:39

the random group doesn't even show up. Like, where are the

1:03:41

rangers? Where is the Kray company? I can see

1:03:43

how introducing another 20 characters

1:03:46

to the story might be a little... Yeah,

1:03:48

it might have been nice to introduce Elodin and Elro

1:03:50

here and maybe Halbran, but okay. Well, you know,

1:03:53

they had the Ewoks in Star Wars, and,

1:03:55

you know, that was made to sell teddy bears. I feel

1:03:58

like this didn't have much marketability to include.

1:03:59

I don't know. I think I've been able to sell

1:04:02

some plushies at a great company. All

1:04:04

right. I'll let you try that one. I'm not

1:04:06

sure I want to go there, actually. I really not. Poor

1:04:08

Hal Brand. So, let's start with Ring

1:04:10

at Work, because that sounds like an easy one,

1:04:12

right? There's probably not a whole lot there. Yeah,

1:04:15

definitely not too much happening

1:04:16

in book five. Remember,

1:04:21

Denethor and then his reaction to the conversation

1:04:23

between him, Gandalf, and Faramir, he

1:04:26

would have kept the ring but

1:04:28

hidden. I wouldn't have used it. No, no, Gandalf.

1:04:31

I'm sure I wouldn't have used it. I would have used it. No,

1:04:33

no, no. Of course not. Just

1:04:35

like I was supposed to hide the Palantir. Yeah. Yeah. He

1:04:38

also knew that Boramir would 100% have been like, hey, Dad,

1:04:40

I have been craving your approval for 30-plus

1:04:43

years. Here you go. Except,

1:04:45

of course, I think he was wrong. And Gandalf

1:04:47

told him that as well. Yeah, Boramir would have taken it with the

1:04:50

idea of bringing it to you, but he

1:04:51

would have kept it himself, because that's what the ring does to

1:04:53

people.

1:04:54

Yeah. There's really no escaping

1:04:56

it. It's that line from Galadriel. One by one,

1:04:58

they're all going to be tempted. You're

1:05:00

all going to fall under it. There's no getting

1:05:02

out of it. Unless you're Faramir. Faramir

1:05:05

is the exception. He is the, for all intents

1:05:07

and purposes, the self-insert character in

1:05:09

a way, as he kind of came

1:05:11

out of whole cloth, out of thin air

1:05:14

maybe. A little bit. I do love

1:05:16

the letters to Christopher that Tolkien

1:05:18

writes about how we've encountered a new

1:05:20

character. I didn't even intend

1:05:22

to bring him on the scene, but lo and behold, here's this Faramir

1:05:24

guy. He's just some guy, and he's here,

1:05:27

and he's going to save everything. Oh,

1:05:29

shoot. What do I do with that human

1:05:31

woman? Oh, right. Well,

1:05:34

speaking of Denethor, his despair

1:05:37

and suicide were certainly connected more to

1:05:39

the Palantir than to the ring. But,

1:05:41

I have to say, it was the certainty

1:05:44

that he had. I mean, it was incorrect, but

1:05:46

the certainty that he had that Sauron

1:05:48

had the ring that contributed

1:05:50

to that despair. That's what he thought

1:05:53

he saw in the Palantir. But,

1:05:55

of course, that wasn't really true, because Sauron

1:05:57

never had it. So, indirectly,

1:05:59

certainly the...

1:05:59

ring

1:06:01

contributed to the despair that he felt.

1:06:04

But it wasn't working directly on him. Like

1:06:06

we would have seen it working directly on others.

1:06:09

He would have fallen pretty quickly, I think.

1:06:12

Oh yeah. If the ring had somehow made it to me this earth.

1:06:14

Can you imagine if Frodo brought

1:06:16

the ring to ministeris thinking, well, it'll

1:06:18

be safe here.

1:06:20

I think we've established the only thing

1:06:22

I do is think of middle earth alternate universes

1:06:24

at this point in my career. So yeah. Yeah.

1:06:27

We better be careful about that one. Because we could just go down, go down

1:06:29

there for a very long time. Very true.

1:06:32

All right, but of course we have a lot more themes than just

1:06:34

the ring at work. Don, what do we have?

1:06:37

Next up, we've got some pretty opposites

1:06:40

of the extreme. A lot of the themes

1:06:42

we see, as we've mentioned previously, the

1:06:44

Beowulf, the monsters and the critic, and

1:06:46

on fairy stories. So we've got quite a

1:06:48

bit of that here in

1:06:51

book five. So many. That's

1:06:53

right. Of just like opposites of hope

1:06:55

and despair. That's the whole thing.

1:06:58

Tolkien was a man of dichotomies. He had

1:07:00

these

1:07:01

light and dark, hope and despair, fate

1:07:03

and free will. And this

1:07:06

idea of taking on fairy stories and Beowulf,

1:07:08

the monsters and the critics is a way for us to look

1:07:10

at sort of the way that Tolkien

1:07:13

crafted these stories with these ideas in mind. So

1:07:15

let's start with the Beowulf moment. So here I'm talking

1:07:17

about circle of light stuff. This is the

1:07:19

good guys standing in the circle of light, knowing they're surrounded

1:07:22

by the monsters. You're facing

1:07:24

certain defeat, but you go and face them anyway.

1:07:26

First thing that comes to my mind, I don't know, what

1:07:29

do you think about Paths of the Dead? At least from Gimli's perspective,

1:07:32

this is like certain death. For

1:07:34

sure. And I think the beauty of me

1:07:36

being here for book five was that I remember

1:07:39

reading that part about Gimli in the Paths of

1:07:41

the Dead. And it struck me how

1:07:44

good of a horror genre

1:07:46

writer Tolkien is, but it

1:07:48

then occurred to me, I think, while we were recording

1:07:50

our first, that very episode,

1:07:53

that a lot of that horror was probably experienced

1:07:55

firsthand in the very

1:07:57

real world experiences in World War I. Oh,

1:08:00

absolutely. Things like the passage of the dead marshes

1:08:02

are absolutely reminiscent of what he

1:08:04

would have experienced on the psalm. The Path of the Dead

1:08:07

is a little different, but certainly that kind of

1:08:09

otherworldly fear, you know, might be something

1:08:11

that he was drawing on. It's a march almost

1:08:14

that like going to certain death

1:08:16

is also, you know, very heavily

1:08:18

handed. You know, the Ents do it, Gimli

1:08:20

and the Grey Company, everyone do it in the Path of the

1:08:22

Dead. It's interesting though to contrast

1:08:25

that with the way you go

1:08:27

to certain air quotes, because of course not

1:08:29

everybody dies, but certain death.

1:08:32

The right of the Rohirrim, the Rohirrim's initial

1:08:34

charge

1:08:35

does not feel like this

1:08:38

at all. No, you're right. They had,

1:08:40

you know, the numbers, they are a cavalry.

1:08:42

Yeah, it's more of an unfair stories moment. It's a eukatastrophe.

1:08:45

They show up, right? It is. The very

1:08:47

last minute, all of a sudden here is this other

1:08:49

group also willing to charge into

1:08:51

certain death to save, not people,

1:08:54

but their neighbors, their human comrades,

1:08:56

if you will. So charging

1:08:58

that leader, and it's quite the momentous

1:09:01

upswing. Contrasting though, Gimli's

1:09:03

sort of perspective of like going into certain death,

1:09:06

the Rohirrim's initial charge does

1:09:08

not feel like that at all. They, you

1:09:10

know, they have the upper hand. Right, it's more of a eukatastrophe

1:09:13

than it is. Exactly. But,

1:09:16

and as such is the theme with Tolkien,

1:09:19

things change much later, and sometimes

1:09:21

very quickly. They are in charging the

1:09:23

leader and the standard of the Southrons

1:09:26

seem to sort of fit this. That's a fair point.

1:09:28

Yeah. I mean, because by that point, he doesn't have

1:09:30

the numbers anymore. He's successful. He

1:09:33

certainly is the victor in that battle, but

1:09:36

it definitely sort of backs against

1:09:38

the wall. We're on the field of battle here. We're not

1:09:40

here to survive the day. We're here to save

1:09:43

Gondor, even at the cost of our own lives. Yeah,

1:09:46

the circle of light moment there would strike me as

1:09:48

being when

1:09:49

the Witch King arrives for sure. At

1:09:52

that point, Theoden's lost his battle. He's

1:09:54

thrown by his horse and he's mortally wounded.

1:09:57

Which I think is something that not

1:09:59

everybody... Well, maybe I'm projecting

1:10:01

a bit because I didn't see it at first. It

1:10:03

never struck me until many years later,

1:10:05

Theoden isn't killed

1:10:07

by the Witch-King exactly. No, he's

1:10:10

killed by his horse. He's killed by his horse

1:10:12

as so many real life

1:10:15

actual rulers in

1:10:17

European history have been.

1:10:19

That's fair. That

1:10:20

is fair. I'm thinking of another circle of light

1:10:22

moment. Probably the biggest one is,

1:10:25

or at least the most obvious one that I can think of from book

1:10:27

five, is that force of just 7,000,

1:10:30

which of course would have actually been smaller by the time

1:10:32

they left some of them to go to

1:10:34

Kairandra, so maybe 6,000, that arrived at the

1:10:37

Black Gate,

1:10:38

ready to take on the forces of Sauron,

1:10:41

knowing they were outnumbered 10 to 1. They

1:10:44

were marching to their deaths. There are certain

1:10:46

deaths.

1:10:47

They all knew that.

1:10:49

And that is absolutely the classic circle

1:10:51

of light moment, this idea of

1:10:53

backs against the wall, going out there in the darkness,

1:10:56

facing the monsters, even though you know you're not going to be able to

1:10:58

win.

1:10:59

But thankfully,

1:11:02

Tolkien was a man of dichotomies, as

1:11:04

we've talked about before. And that is,

1:11:07

even though he brings these really

1:11:09

heavy moments, these kind of certain defeat

1:11:12

moments, he also has the on-fairy

1:11:14

story moments. These are the ones where we

1:11:16

talk about recovery, escape,

1:11:18

and consolation, of course, the consolation

1:11:21

of the happy ending, which is the eukatastrophe. Let's

1:11:23

not forget, though, it's easy to jump into the eukatastrophes

1:11:26

because there are a lot of them. But let's

1:11:28

talk a little bit about recovery and escape

1:11:30

first as well. We got a lot

1:11:32

of that, especially in this book. A lot

1:11:35

of that. We've got the recovery, it's

1:11:37

anonymous with healing sometimes in the

1:11:39

modern age, the houses of healing.

1:11:42

That chapter, how important that is to setting

1:11:45

up the sort of endgame for

1:11:47

Eowyn, for Faramir, for

1:11:50

Merry, even for Aragorn a little bit himself,

1:11:52

as he sort of grows and shows the

1:11:54

other side of him. And they're

1:11:56

all healed by Aragorn. And sort of as he's doing

1:11:58

this, they're restored.

1:11:59

Responding

1:12:01

very differently to to what Aragorn

1:12:03

is doing. They each had their own very

1:12:05

unique response to that healing with the

1:12:07

Atholas and Yeah, Aragorn laying on

1:12:10

hands. Yeah, I love that part that really was

1:12:12

that was one of my favorite Moments in

1:12:14

in the chapters this last season was was

1:12:16

walking through that with Sara Brown. That was a

1:12:19

lot of fun I think in past

1:12:21

read-throughs, that's an area that's easy

1:12:23

to sort of skim. He's like, all right. All right get

1:12:25

everybody better Let's get moving. Let's get back to the battle. Yeah.

1:12:28

Yeah, you miss so much detail

1:12:31

if you do that Yeah, you really do It's

1:12:33

it's funny I think back to one of the first times

1:12:35

I read it and I don't know if anybody else used to read like this

1:12:37

as A kid if there were really long

1:12:40

paragraphs, I would skim it and just

1:12:42

immediately look for quotation marks It's like who's

1:12:44

talking where where that's why I gravitated

1:12:47

so early to comic books I was like, oh, it's

1:12:49

just people talking and flag the dialogue, right?

1:12:51

Yeah. Yeah, and that's that's what caught my interest So

1:12:54

okay, well, it must have been a challenge for you to read Tolkien

1:12:56

because he's the notorious pages

1:12:58

of narrative was a struggle I Did

1:13:01

struggle and I had the audiobooks to help me through

1:13:03

thank goodness. But uh, yeah,

1:13:05

it's it's definitely a challenge You're

1:13:07

your first time maybe even

1:13:10

your second now for everybody That

1:13:13

is a really good set of recovery moments

1:13:15

There's one that I didn't put in our notes, but it just came

1:13:17

to mind and it's the it's

1:13:20

the army of the dead They

1:13:22

get their escape finally. They finally

1:13:24

able to

1:13:25

Honor their oath

1:13:28

to live up to what they promised they would do

1:13:30

and now they finally get the gift of a luvitar

1:13:32

They finally get the release that their

1:13:35

souls have been craving for, you

1:13:37

know, a couple thousand years That's an escape

1:13:39

right there and a consolation in a way for sure But

1:13:42

consolation really or the consolation

1:13:44

of the happy ending specifically view catastrophe. There

1:13:47

are a bunch. So let's just kind of

1:13:48

Mention them. Maybe we can talk through them

1:13:51

a little bit Obviously the

1:13:53

well, I say obviously these are all big ones,

1:13:55

right? Well, some involve

1:13:58

way more people than others and I love I

1:14:00

love that. I think the arrival of the Rohirrim,

1:14:03

right? The cock crowing and the

1:14:06

Witch King and his standoff against Gandalf

1:14:08

realizing Something has changed,

1:14:10

right? I no longer have the upper hand Yeah,

1:14:12

but even in the eukotastrophe

1:14:15

the Rohirrim arriving we have this sort of mini

1:14:17

eukotastrophe of Hanber

1:14:20

ichan being able to help them arrive

1:14:22

at the battlefield intact and

1:14:25

secretly Instead of having to face

1:14:27

a battle on that road

1:14:30

leading from Rohan to

1:14:32

Minas Tirith And then arriving later

1:14:35

and in smaller numbers after a battle and

1:14:37

would you want to talk about happy endings? How

1:14:40

about Hanbury Hans happy ending

1:14:42

of the Rohirrim basically saying hey,

1:14:45

we'll leave you alone now. Yep Thanks for

1:14:47

the help Have fun and that gets

1:14:49

confirmed in book six, of course by Aragorn

1:14:51

who does the same thing who basically says this

1:14:53

land the Druidhan Forest now

1:14:56

no longer belongs to Gondor or

1:14:58

Rohan. It is

1:15:00

Its own place the land of the people

1:15:02

of Hanbury Han the Woses which

1:15:04

of course we know from unfinished tales is the

1:15:06

Druidhan Yeah,

1:15:08

yeah, absolutely. We've of course got

1:15:11

more Baragorn saving Faramir.

1:15:13

Oh Well,

1:15:15

yeah Gandalf saving him first, but then yeah Baragorn

1:15:18

from certain death. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, there's

1:15:20

there's a lot of saving Faramir from certain death

1:15:22

in this series As

1:15:24

we learn And then

1:15:27

goes without saying Mary and Aeowyn Fight

1:15:30

and defeat of the Witch King of Angmar. Oh

1:15:32

my great moment Absolutely huge

1:15:34

you catastrophe because it took both of them to do it.

1:15:37

We'll also get to that I think when we talk about

1:15:39

fate and free will because there's You

1:15:41

know with with the involvement of the prophecy and

1:15:44

all of that as well as a win and Mary's choices

1:15:46

to get to the battlefield But I think the

1:15:48

big you catastrophe the moment if

1:15:51

we have to define a single you catastrophe

1:15:54

It is the arrival of Aragorn that

1:15:56

is the moment

1:15:57

that turns everything right?

1:15:59

That's the way one where Aamir who was ready

1:16:02

to just die right there on that hill, he'd

1:16:04

formed a shield wall, he was ready to go down fighting,

1:16:07

throws his sword in the air, you know,

1:16:09

he realizes that's it. We've

1:16:12

won, you know, this is not more

1:16:14

orcs showing up. This is not the southern showing up.

1:16:17

These are the good guys. And

1:16:19

it is, it's all of the forces from Pilargea,

1:16:21

all the forces from the southern fiefdoms. It is

1:16:23

not the army of the dead, for

1:16:25

those of you who'd forgotten. It is the arrival

1:16:27

of Aragorn and no ghosts whatsoever. Yeah.

1:16:30

Thanks a lot, Peter Jackson, for making

1:16:33

our jobs a lot harder. Well, you see, the ghosts,

1:16:35

they can't actually fight, but they can scare

1:16:38

people. And it's like, anyway, I

1:16:40

don't know. I still think they can have physical impact.

1:16:42

Right. I think we talked about this. There's

1:16:44

the guy that they found, Brego, right?

1:16:47

Or no, no, Brego is the name of the horse. What

1:16:49

was that guy? I can't remember his name there. Is

1:16:51

it Balor? Yeah. Yeah.

1:16:54

They find him at the door, clawing at some door. And

1:16:57

when we read a note in History of Middle Earth,

1:16:59

we find out that Tolkien imagined

1:17:02

him being attacked from behind and

1:17:04

they broke his legs.

1:17:06

They didn't break his neck to kill him. They broke

1:17:08

his legs so he couldn't escape and he had to starve

1:17:11

to death or die of thirst or whatever.

1:17:13

Terrifying. Terrifying. Yeah.

1:17:16

And I don't think anybody was still alive then. I think we're

1:17:18

talking about the ghosts. Yeah. Because

1:17:21

by this point, Rohan was in its, well, second

1:17:23

king because he's the one who built Medjicel. Medjicel,

1:17:26

and then he went

1:17:28

in the paths of the dead. So

1:17:29

I still think that they had enough

1:17:31

tangible power that they could have done something, but

1:17:34

we didn't see them do it necessarily. Legolas

1:17:36

says they didn't have to fight. Their

1:17:38

mere presence was enough to drive everybody out.

1:17:41

Everybody out of the pool. It

1:17:44

was time. The Southerns were gone. The Corsairs

1:17:47

of Umbar were gone. And it was time now for

1:17:49

the Fiefs from the south, from

1:17:52

Lebennen and the

1:17:54

Harland and

1:17:55

Langstrand and all those other places to settle down. Now

1:17:58

you're just showing off your geography skills. I

1:18:02

will say though as we as we sort of transition

1:18:04

because Alan I see your notes And

1:18:06

I think I have to disagree with you on something

1:18:09

Okay, we have a bit of an arrival

1:18:12

that yeah you

1:18:14

you think it's Aragorn's arrival That is perhaps

1:18:17

the most you catastrophe moment

1:18:19

fine You might have a different opinion and I'm gonna bet I'm gonna

1:18:21

tell you on what I'm basing it, right? Okay,

1:18:24

go ahead And it's in on fairy stories

1:18:26

the quote that I'm thinking of when he kind

1:18:28

of talks about what a eucatastrophe is I'm gonna go and read

1:18:30

it because I think it's that important even though I know

1:18:32

we've probably read it on the show three or four times

1:18:35

He says far more important is the consolation

1:18:37

of the happy ending

1:18:38

almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy

1:18:41

stories must have it

1:18:42

at least I would say that tragedy is the true form of

1:18:44

drama Its highest function,

1:18:46

but the opposite is true of fairy story

1:18:49

Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses

1:18:51

this opposite. I will call it eucatastrophe

1:18:54

The eucatastrophic tale is the true form

1:18:56

of fairy tale and its highest function

1:18:58

Now just as a sidebar the EU prefix

1:19:02

is the same prefix that we

1:19:04

would also know it as EV prefix Evangelium

1:19:06

right so good news

1:19:08

It's in Greek. It's that same prefix.

1:19:10

So it's a good catastrophe.

1:19:12

That's the formation of the word

1:19:14

I'm perhaps tipping my showing my hand

1:19:16

a little bit too much here But Alan are

1:19:18

you familiar with the neon Genesis

1:19:20

Evangelion anime the same? Yeah,

1:19:23

it's the same route the interesting

1:19:25

I don't think I put that together. Yeah, the EU

1:19:27

and EV prefix or you know Yeah

1:19:31

So Tolkien goes on to say the consolation of fairy

1:19:33

stories the joy of a happy ending or

1:19:35

more correctly of the good catastrophe

1:19:38

The sudden joyous turn for

1:19:40

there is no true end to any fairy tale

1:19:42

this joy Which is one of the things which fairy

1:19:45

stories can produce supremely? Well

1:19:47

is not essentially escapist nor fugitive

1:19:50

in its fairy tale or otherworld setting It is

1:19:53

a sudden and miraculous grace

1:19:55

never to be counted on to recur. It

1:19:57

does not deny the existence of discotastrophies

1:20:00

of

1:20:00

sorrow and failure, right? Discotastrophe being

1:20:02

bad catastrophe.

1:20:04

Tolkien says the possibility of these is necessary

1:20:06

to the joy of deliverance. It denies,

1:20:08

in the face of much evidence, if you will, universal

1:20:11

final defeat, and in so far is Evangelium.

1:20:14

Good

1:20:14

news, giving a fleeting glimpse of

1:20:16

joy, joy beyond the walls of the

1:20:18

world,

1:20:19

poignant as grief.

1:20:21

And here's kind of his definition of like, what

1:20:23

does eukatastrophe look like?

1:20:25

It is the mark of a good fairy story of

1:20:27

the higher or more complete kind, that

1:20:29

however wild it's event, however fantastic

1:20:32

or terribly adventures it can give

1:20:34

to child or man that hears it, when

1:20:36

the turn comes, a calf of the breath,

1:20:39

a beat and lifting of the heart, near

1:20:41

to or indeed accompanied by tears.

1:20:44

As keen as that given by any form of literary

1:20:46

art

1:20:47

and having a peculiar quality. And so

1:20:49

that's, I think, why for me, I see

1:20:51

Aragorn's arrival as like the central

1:20:54

eukatastrophe. That's the one that

1:20:56

catches my breath and always draws

1:20:58

a tear.

1:20:59

But tell me, what's the one for you? Is

1:21:01

it- For me, it's the eagles. In book

1:21:04

five. Okay, in book five. Well- is

1:21:07

a eukatastrophe. I mean, if we're talking about

1:21:10

the entire- Sure, sure, sure, sure. That's expected.

1:21:13

I think the eagles for me, maybe it's

1:21:15

because, for me, when I read

1:21:17

it, it was Aragorn

1:21:19

showing up like, yeah, of

1:21:21

course he was gonna. He's the good

1:21:24

guy. That's how my brain worked.

1:21:26

It never occurred to me that he'd die

1:21:28

off screen or Tolkien

1:21:31

would pull any stuff like that. It was expected.

1:21:33

The eagles thing, I think, is so

1:21:36

unexpected, to me at least, because

1:21:39

it's been hinted at so many times,

1:21:41

right? It happens in The Hobbit. It's been

1:21:43

mentioned several times throughout.

1:21:45

Gandalf has certainly been transported around

1:21:47

by him. Absolutely, yeah, he mentions his

1:21:49

ride with Gwai here. But

1:21:52

the eagles are not a taxi service. No, they are not. They

1:21:54

keep that in mind. in the first

1:21:56

place. They're definitely not a courier service.

1:21:59

No. No, no, no, no, no, no. But

1:22:01

you're right. The arrival of the eagles at the end, I think

1:22:03

the only reason why I don't

1:22:05

count that as a big eukaryote in book five

1:22:07

is because it's still very unsure if it's actually

1:22:09

happening.

1:22:10

We see it from Pippin's perspective. Oh,

1:22:12

yeah. No, that's not

1:22:14

my story. That's Bilbo's story. And then he fades

1:22:16

into unconsciousness. And we're left to think that

1:22:18

Pippin's dead. Yeah. Just

1:22:20

dreaming that the eagles are going up. For a whole book. For

1:22:23

a whole book. Although, how? You know

1:22:25

what? I don't necessarily know

1:22:27

if

1:22:29

I was led to think that Pippin was,

1:22:32

maybe Pippin was going to die, but I

1:22:34

didn't think Tolkien would leave us on such

1:22:36

a cliffhanger that there

1:22:38

wouldn't be some sort of resolution. Well, yeah, yeah.

1:22:41

Because this wasn't like a separate volume. This was just

1:22:43

the book five, book six break. So it's still in the same volume.

1:22:46

But you don't know about Pippin's feed

1:22:48

for several chapters. I mean, until you get

1:22:51

really pretty far into the field of Cor Malin.

1:22:53

It's not even the beginning of the chapter after Frodo

1:22:55

and Sam wake up, they discover they're still alive.

1:22:58

Then they discover Gandalf's still alive. It's

1:23:00

only later that as they're being served, they

1:23:02

see these two people who are much shorter than

1:23:04

everybody else. They're like, wait a minute. Hang

1:23:07

on. That's the first time we find out they're still

1:23:09

alive. But yeah, there are so

1:23:12

many eukatastrophes in book five. And of course, we're going

1:23:14

to see even more in book six. But we'll get to the

1:23:16

book six preview in a minute. What's another

1:23:18

one of the themes that we want to talk through a little bit? Oh,

1:23:20

fellowship for sure. I mean, there's a lot of

1:23:22

that at work. A lot of wonderful

1:23:25

individual moments of two

1:23:27

and three characters. Obviously, the

1:23:29

first thing that comes to mind for me is the Pippin and Baragon

1:23:31

relationship. I love that. Really, it's

1:23:34

not one that I expected because, you know, we don't

1:23:36

expect to meet a lot of new characters

1:23:38

in book three or the final

1:23:41

act of a trilogy. And obviously, there's a reason

1:23:43

why he doesn't show up in the films because why

1:23:45

introduce new characters. I did love

1:23:47

that one. I also love the friendship that sprouted

1:23:50

between Pippin and Baragon's son, Virgil.

1:23:53

I thought that was really sweet. That was really nice.

1:23:56

And it's wonderful to show off, I think,

1:23:58

both of Pippin's sides. of course there

1:24:00

is that maturing side of him. But there's also

1:24:02

something very childlike about a hobbit. Well,

1:24:04

he is the youngest of the four for sure. You know,

1:24:06

he's barely kind of an old teenager

1:24:09

really. So yeah. But boy, he sure has

1:24:11

seen a lot. He has grown so much since he's left

1:24:13

the Shire. Very much so. I think Baragon

1:24:15

is just taken by surprise at the depth of

1:24:18

this guy, you know, I think everybody's taken

1:24:20

by surprise with hobbits and no one

1:24:22

more so than honestly, this father and son duo

1:24:25

learning different things about them separately.

1:24:27

And then I imagine them just comparing notes. Did

1:24:30

you hang out with that guy, the

1:24:32

little one? Yeah.

1:24:35

What about that incredible fellowship

1:24:37

that we saw with, and these are your favorite

1:24:39

characters. So of course you noticed this, Aragorn,

1:24:42

Legolas and Gimli through their journeys,

1:24:44

right? As they

1:24:45

went through the paths of the dead and,

1:24:48

you know, through all the southern

1:24:50

fiefdoms of Gondor to Pilar gear with the big

1:24:52

fight where they didn't really have to do much and

1:24:55

up the Anduin, right? Until they got off at the

1:24:58

docks there at the Harlan. What

1:25:00

about that fellowship? It's my favorite. I mean,

1:25:02

I'm a sucker for a really good just camaraderie.

1:25:05

I think I looked for that

1:25:07

exact sort of friendship in a lot

1:25:10

of my media. And also keep in mind though, it's

1:25:12

not just Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli going through

1:25:14

this journey. It's also the Grey Company.

1:25:16

What if we formed our

1:25:18

own fellowship with 23 of

1:25:21

us? Yeah, sure. And that sounds

1:25:23

awesome. Yeah. Eladon, Elro

1:25:25

here, the 20 Rangers.

1:25:29

Oh, so 25, excuse me. 25. Okay.

1:25:32

Pretty amazing. And then I

1:25:35

think of this fellowship that we saw

1:25:37

that was really unique. I'm gonna

1:25:39

say Merry and Dernhelm, even though Dernhelm

1:25:41

didn't speak, right? Yes,

1:25:44

it was Aowyn, but it was Dernhelm also. I still

1:25:46

love that line.

1:25:47

In the Dernhelm character, I talked about, you know,

1:25:49

Merry

1:25:50

sitting on the horse with him because that's

1:25:52

Dernhelm, that's not Aowyn. And

1:25:54

I feel like there was a fellowship between

1:25:56

those two characters,

1:25:58

even without words, they both knew.

1:25:59

They

1:26:00

were going against the explicit wishes of the king.

1:26:04

But they knew they were doing what they felt was

1:26:06

the right thing. Just

1:26:07

doing what we're trying to do. It's no more complicated

1:26:09

than feeling compelled by

1:26:11

duty and a desire

1:26:14

to help in that very

1:26:16

important way that really only people

1:26:19

who are trying to hide can

1:26:22

really do. I just love that it's

1:26:24

a fellowship that we saw develop with virtually

1:26:26

no words. And again, this is why I so

1:26:29

often am reminded of Tolkien's literary

1:26:31

genius. It's like, oh yeah, that's

1:26:33

just some guy.

1:26:34

He's going to be hanging around

1:26:36

and they're just going to be chatting a little bit

1:26:38

and then they're done. And now they're bros. But

1:26:41

oh, wait a minute. It was actually Ayo in the whole time.

1:26:43

That's amazing stuff.

1:26:45

Which if we're going to talk about that family's

1:26:47

level of camaraderie and companionship, the

1:26:49

Aragorn and Aomer friendship

1:26:52

is probably one of my favorite

1:26:55

relationships. Oh, I love

1:26:57

it. They've been talking about this for ages. We'll

1:27:00

meet again, even though the whole host

1:27:02

of the world is going to end. It's fine.

1:27:05

You and I, we're going to fight. We're

1:27:07

probably both going to die. But think

1:27:10

how awesome it's going to be when

1:27:12

we're there and just beating

1:27:15

everybody. Everybody. And

1:27:17

everyone, right? I mean, we get to the end of that chapter

1:27:19

and there's that description about how basically

1:27:22

Aragorn, Aomer and Prince Immerhill

1:27:25

were un-conched. They were so

1:27:27

masterful at what they did. Every single orc

1:27:29

was like, oh, heck no. I'm not trying to take that guy

1:27:31

on. Look at his armor. Look at his

1:27:33

sword. No. If you're in a video game

1:27:36

and you see the boss, this is the equivalent

1:27:38

of the boss. Yeah. Three bosses

1:27:41

just, wait, I thought this game was supposed to

1:27:43

be balanced. No, you're fighting against the

1:27:45

pros. They're all here at once. They're

1:27:47

all really angry and they're never going to let

1:27:49

you forget about it. That's right. You

1:27:52

have zero chance. Just run. Yeah.

1:27:55

You're getting out of this unless you run and

1:27:57

many of them do. And I love that.

1:28:00

And what about, oh, after

1:28:03

the battle, after the houses of healing, the

1:28:05

fellowship of Mary and Pippin reunite. Oh.

1:28:08

Wasn't that just one of the most, oh, such

1:28:10

a heart gripping moment. It's so

1:28:12

important too, because like, I

1:28:15

think, obviously, Tolkien writes

1:28:18

male friendships so well.

1:28:21

Yes, he does. But there is something so important,

1:28:23

even I would say, you know, the opposite

1:28:26

of the Frodo-Sam relationship is the Mary

1:28:28

Pippin relationship. Right. Right. These are very much

1:28:30

peers. Yeah. Yes, they are. They are,

1:28:32

you know, it's Frodo and Sam and Mary and Pippin.

1:28:35

Yeah. And very rarely do

1:28:37

you see all four of them together,

1:28:39

and I think you see why specifically in this reuniting.

1:28:42

It's like, oh, hey, we're also friends,

1:28:44

and we are here together

1:28:46

now in this terrible, terrible

1:28:49

place, but we're together, and that's

1:28:51

important. Though by the time they

1:28:53

were together, they were actually in a pretty decent place, the houses of

1:28:55

healing. Yeah, that's true. I

1:28:58

was thinking of that great conversation they had

1:29:00

talking about how, you know, we can't live long in the heights,

1:29:02

you know, and true. This humility

1:29:05

that Hobbits have, this inherent humility

1:29:07

about, hey, we're not like Aragorn and these guys.

1:29:10

And yeah, look at what they did.

1:29:12

Mary helped kill the Witch King. It's

1:29:15

kind of a big deal. It's a huge deal,

1:29:17

and Pippin at this point has not done

1:29:19

the same sort of stuff, right? And

1:29:22

the text makes that clear, like, you know, I hope

1:29:24

to be able to equal what you've done. And

1:29:26

he even thinks about it like, well, if I killed

1:29:28

that troll, then maybe that's

1:29:30

the equivalent of collaboratively taking down the Witch King.

1:29:33

Have you ever heard of a false equivalency

1:29:35

there, Mr. Took? Yeah, that might

1:29:37

be a trap. Yeah, but, you know, he'll make up

1:29:39

for it at the scouring of the Shire. He certainly

1:29:42

will. He certainly will. So let's move

1:29:44

on and talk about fate and free will. It's

1:29:46

not as prevalent with every

1:29:48

character here, but there are some really very

1:29:50

interesting twists that I want to talk about. Obviously,

1:29:53

the first one that comes to mind is Dennethor,

1:29:55

right? He believed,

1:29:57

absolutely convinced, through the Palantir.

1:30:00

that defeat was fated, right? So he saw

1:30:02

no way out,

1:30:04

right? This goes back to Gandalf at the Council

1:30:06

of the Iran saying that despair is for those who see the

1:30:08

end beyond all doubt. Dennerler was convinced

1:30:10

that he did exactly that. He was wrong, which

1:30:12

is why we should always have doubt, even

1:30:15

if we think we see the end. But he

1:30:17

believed that defeat was fated and

1:30:19

therefore he exercised his free will. So

1:30:22

he saw what he thought was fate, decided

1:30:24

to do something about it. And what he did, of course, was the most

1:30:27

damaging and destructive thing that you

1:30:29

could do. Instead of going out and fighting

1:30:32

for your city and dying in battle,

1:30:34

he took his own life and tried to kill his son at the same time. I

1:30:36

hesitate to draw this comparison

1:30:39

because obviously it's a

1:30:41

very different scenario. Oh yeah. But

1:30:44

it's, the first thing that came to mind was

1:30:46

if you were in a sports game and

1:30:49

your team was rallying

1:30:52

in the bottom of the, if this is a baseball game

1:30:54

and you're rallying in the bottom of the ninth or

1:30:56

there's a minute left in whatever game you're

1:30:59

gonna have to score a point in, punching the mascot

1:31:01

in the face is usually not the best way

1:31:03

to have, if the general manager

1:31:06

comes out and is like, I've had enough of you

1:31:08

Baltimore Oriole and just socks him.

1:31:13

I'm sorry to any- I don't know if you pick up the Orioles, but

1:31:15

okay. It was the first thing that came to mind, dude. I'm sorry.

1:31:17

That's all right. So

1:31:20

who's the Denethor in this analogy? The head coach

1:31:22

of the losing team? Yeah, the head coach of

1:31:25

the team that's like, oh man, maybe

1:31:27

we have a chance. And the losing team's coach

1:31:29

is just like, no, I think

1:31:31

I'm gonna just maybe go punch our own

1:31:33

mascot. Not that Faramir is mascot,

1:31:36

but he is the symbol. He's the next steward.

1:31:38

And so he's literally leaving the city with

1:31:41

no leadership whatsoever. He's taking out himself

1:31:43

as the active steward. Boromir

1:31:45

is already dead. He's gonna kill Faramir. So now

1:31:48

even if the city were to be victorious,

1:31:50

there's no more houses of stewards.

1:31:52

This is where being convinced that

1:31:54

something is fate when it is not- So

1:31:57

important. It's a very, very poor decision

1:31:59

when it comes to exercising.

1:31:59

free will. But he did have the choice to do what he did.

1:32:02

And that he did. He did. Aowyn also

1:32:04

comes to mind. Oh, interesting. In that

1:32:06

she's refusing that fate

1:32:09

of stay at home. Right. Keep

1:32:12

an eye on the kingdom while we're gone. You have permission

1:32:14

to burn in the house when we lose. Yeah.

1:32:17

Oh, what a line. What a line. Right?

1:32:19

Yeah. But yeah, Aowyn's Aowyn sort

1:32:21

of, you know, all right, fate, try me.

1:32:24

I'm, I'm not doing this. Tough.

1:32:27

Wow. Yeah, very good point. She really

1:32:29

does exercise her free will in

1:32:32

a way that is at least in the eyes

1:32:34

of Theoden and even in Aragorn's eyes at the time

1:32:36

where he's trying to explain what she should do.

1:32:38

She's quote

1:32:40

unquote disobeying and God, she did because

1:32:43

what she did plays a

1:32:46

huge role then in fulfilling prophecy, which is

1:32:48

really another word for fate

1:32:50

when it comes to the slaying of the witch king on the Polennor,

1:32:53

you know, without her being there,

1:32:55

he

1:32:56

doesn't go down. Not permanently. I mean, Mary,

1:32:58

maybe, well, no, Mary would never have gotten

1:33:00

that close to him. That's the whole point. No, no, I don't think Mary

1:33:02

gets even remotely close. The sort of

1:33:04

Westerness certainly did have the dagger,

1:33:07

right? Basically got rid of the spell that

1:33:09

sinew to sinew. That's what the text tells us. And

1:33:11

that's what then enabled Aowyn to

1:33:13

strike that killing blow. But yeah,

1:33:16

without her presence there, the witch king

1:33:18

is victorious on that battlefield. And then,

1:33:20

you know, obviously we're, we're sort of missing the biggest

1:33:23

culprit. Mary is also there,

1:33:25

tempting or rather refusing,

1:33:27

I should say. That's true. Doing the exact same thing

1:33:29

that Aowyn did. I'm not going to listen to you, King.

1:33:31

I'm sorry. Yeah, no, we're, we're done

1:33:33

here. We're not, we're not doing that anymore.

1:33:36

I love that. I think also the

1:33:38

paths of the dead are another one of these great moments. Right. I

1:33:40

mean, it's, we talked about fate

1:33:42

kind of being tied in with prophecy, right? I mean,

1:33:44

at some point

1:33:45

this is going to happen. At some point,

1:33:48

Isildur's heir is going to go through the paths

1:33:50

of the dead,

1:33:51

call the men of the

1:33:53

mountains to honor their oath and

1:33:56

do something about it. Aragorn's like, well, I sure hope

1:33:58

that prophecy is about me.

1:33:59

So we exercise free will to do it.

1:34:02

Oh God, what if it's not? What if it's not? What

1:34:05

if I'm wrong? Oh goodness. So you could

1:34:07

make the argument that Aragorn was fated, but

1:34:09

the free will, even if you don't

1:34:12

buy the Aragorn, exercised his

1:34:14

free will to go. And I do. I believe

1:34:16

that he did. I believe he's like, I may be wrong.

1:34:19

I'm going to do this because if

1:34:21

I don't, there's no other way that Minas Tirith is going to survive.

1:34:24

So even if I do this and I

1:34:26

die, too bad. So he exercises free

1:34:28

will for sure. Even if we argue

1:34:30

that he was fated to do this, the others

1:34:33

went with free will. Yeah, which

1:34:35

is arguably more important. Legally,

1:34:37

kimbling, Eladon, Elro here, and all

1:34:40

of the Rangers and their horses. Yeah.

1:34:43

Which is just astounding. Yeah,

1:34:46

absolutely.

1:34:46

Man, that

1:34:49

fating free will, I don't know that

1:34:51

we talked about it much during the season. I

1:34:53

hope that

1:34:54

this time around I'm a little more observant of those

1:34:56

themes as we walk through. I'm

1:34:58

going to be taking closer notes this time.

1:35:00

Big one. Big, big, big theme. This

1:35:02

is something that we see throughout all of

1:35:04

the legendarium and so many moments on both.

1:35:08

They really came to a peak in book five.

1:35:10

Certainly the despair moments did. And that is the

1:35:12

hope and despair dichotomy. Again, kind of

1:35:15

kind of circling back to the on fairy stories, Beowulf,

1:35:17

but not quite because despair is

1:35:19

a personal choice. Right. And

1:35:21

we talk about hope being plus 10 on

1:35:24

the scale. So you can be hopeless at zero, but

1:35:26

despair is negative 10.

1:35:28

So it's a full spectrum. So

1:35:30

you can be without hope and be at zero. And

1:35:32

Aragorn is sometimes hopeless, but he never despairs.

1:35:36

And so it's when you get to the negative side of that

1:35:38

scale that you run into trouble. Let's talk

1:35:41

real quickly at the beginning of book five. There

1:35:43

were certainly a lot of hope in the people of Minas

1:35:45

Tirith as they saw the armies coming

1:35:47

from those Southern thetans. But wow,

1:35:50

despair that there wasn't going to be enough. I mean, yeah,

1:35:52

what did what did Bergiel say that it was a tenth of

1:35:54

what they'd expected? Ah, tithe

1:35:57

of their strength or something along those lines is what he

1:35:59

said. to indicate that the strength

1:36:01

was not nearly what they really wanted. I

1:36:03

literally think he used the word tithe, so yeah, we're

1:36:05

talking about a tenth. Oh, and that is of course because

1:36:08

the corsairs of Umbar were raiding the coasts

1:36:10

and all those places needed to keep their people there

1:36:12

in order to defend their homes. So yeah.

1:36:15

And lo and behold, here they are and

1:36:17

just, you know, yeah, oh, God,

1:36:20

you're here, but is it going to be enough?

1:36:23

And it's one of those things of so many

1:36:25

different types of despair where Eowyn's

1:36:27

despair is, oh, God, you're not here anymore.

1:36:30

Aragorn, you're going away.

1:36:32

Pull her up. That really did drive her to despair,

1:36:34

didn't it? Yeah. I was also here

1:36:36

for that portion of the book where

1:36:39

you explained the difference between the and thou.

1:36:41

And I was like, hang on, hang on.

1:36:44

Is this romantic

1:36:46

parts of speech? Get

1:36:50

out of here. Yeah, that was pretty

1:36:52

cool figuring that out, kind of dying deeper

1:36:54

into that use of what we now

1:36:57

see as formal, but what is actually

1:37:00

informal and intimate,

1:37:01

the the and thou and die and

1:37:04

Aragorn keeping her

1:37:05

arms blank and saying, sorry, lady,

1:37:07

you know, man, heartbreaking

1:37:11

stuff. Yeah, it's just not really.

1:37:13

It's like,

1:37:14

it's so sad. It's

1:37:16

so sad, but also it drives

1:37:19

people to do things that they otherwise

1:37:22

wouldn't have done have Aragorn in this case. It's

1:37:24

good, right? Yeah, because Aerwin decides

1:37:26

to go as Durnhelm, takes Merry with

1:37:28

him

1:37:29

and ends up slaying the Witch King. Fantastic.

1:37:32

I think there was some serious despair going

1:37:34

on in the people of Minas Tirith. We see

1:37:37

others that the Rohirrim would not arrive

1:37:40

in time.

1:37:41

They basically thought they're going to show up in time

1:37:43

to basically kick the orcs out having a party in the

1:37:45

guard towers at the top of the Citadel. No,

1:37:48

no, that's that's not how this goes at all. No.

1:37:51

In fact, I would argue it goes the exact

1:37:53

opposite. Yes, it does. It's

1:37:55

so masterfully done by Tolkien. He

1:37:58

sprinkles it in, right? It's not a. long

1:38:00

drawn-out conversation between well

1:38:03

I mean partially it is but it's not

1:38:05

so heavy-handed that it's on the nose but

1:38:07

no sprinkled in here and there is Baragon

1:38:09

and Bergil wondering and then people on

1:38:11

the left and the right of Pippin and Gandalf

1:38:14

saying I I really hope they show up and

1:38:16

it's like oh that consistent hint

1:38:19

over and over and over again and yet because

1:38:21

of Gandalf they do I mean if

1:38:23

they had waited for the red arrow to arrive it

1:38:25

would have been too late

1:38:26

yes because keep in mind folks who are listening

1:38:29

to this if you're remembering the movies

1:38:31

because the Beacons of Minas Tirith are a fantastic

1:38:33

sequence in the films the score reaches its absolute

1:38:36

zenith at that moment it is the

1:38:39

most amazing score it is the you know beautiful

1:38:41

cinematography great scene beacons have

1:38:43

nothing to do with actually alerting Rohan

1:38:46

the beacons were there to to let the

1:38:48