My main takeaway from this penultimate chapter in Fellowship is a growing sense of tension. They’re moving rapidly closer to Mordor. They don’t know what their path is going to be once they have to leave Anduin, and that moment of decision is coming closer. They have an encounter with orcs on the eastern bank, and we get our first glimpse of a Nazgûl in the skies (briefly, thanks to Legolas’ bow). Gollum is a real presence for the first time, and poor Boromir is losing it. There’s no relief to it anywhere: all of it is building towards chapter 10.
Some bits of the writing I want to draw attention to:
On the eastern bank to their left they saw long formless slopes stretching up and away towards the sky; brown and withered they looked, as if fire had passed over them, leaving no living blade of green: an unfriendly waste without even a broken tree or a bold stone to relieve the emptiness. They had come to the Brown Lands that lay, vast and desolate, between Southern Mirkwood and the hills of the Emyn Muil. What pestilence or war or evil deed of the Enemy had so blasted all that region even Aragorn could not tell.
I can! Those were once the gardens of the Ent-wives. During the War of the Last Alliance, the armies of Elendil and Gil-Galad were advancing down the Vale of Anduin, and Sauron scorched the earth ahead of them. That’s when Treebeard and the rest of the Ents lost them. They simply don’t know what happened to them when Sauron destroyed their lands, whether they were killed, fled, or enslaved. Further discussion of the Entwives will hold off until “Treebeard” in The Two Towers.
More of Sam being adorable:
Sam had long ago made up his mind that, though boats were maybe not as dangerous as he had been brought up to believe, they were far more uncomfortable than even he had imagined. He was cramped and miserable, having nothing to do but stare at the winter-lands crawling by and the grey water on either side of him. Even when the paddles were in use they did not trust Sam with one.
The first reappearance of the Nine:
it appeared as a great winged creature, blacker than the pits in the night. Fierce voices rose up to greet it from across the water. Frodo felt a sudden chill running through him and clutching at his heart; there was a deadly cold, like the memory of an old wound, in his shoulder.
A little snark from Boromir:
I fear we must leave the River now, and make for the portage-way as best we can from here.’ ‘That would not be easy, even if we were all Men,’ said Boromir. ‘Yet such as we are we will try it,’ said Aragorn. ‘Aye, we will,’ said Gimli. ‘The legs of Men will lag on a rough road, while a Dwarf goes on, be the burden twice his own weight, Master Boromir!’
…
‘Well, here we are, and here we must pass another night,’ said Boromir. ‘We need sleep, and even if Aragorn had a mind to pass the Gates of Argonath by night, we are all too tired – except, no doubt, our sturdy dwarf.’ Gimli made no reply: he was nodding as he sat.
One of my favorite passages in the entire trilogy, as they’re passing through the aforementioned Gates of Argonath:
‘Fear not!’ said a strange voice behind him. Frodo turned and saw Strider, and yet not Strider; for the weatherworn Ranger was no longer there. In the stern sat Aragorn son of Arathorn, proud and erect, guiding the boat with skilful strokes; his hood was cast back, and his dark hair was blowing in the wind, a light was in his eyes: a king returning from exile to his own land. ‘Fear not!’ he said. ‘Long have I desired to look upon the likenesses of Isildur and Anárion, my sires of old. Under their shadow Elessar, the Elfstone son of Arathorn of the House of Valandil Isildur’s son, heir of Elendil, has naught to dread!’
One last word on the Gates of Argonath - yet another stellar example of Tolkien’s gift for creating absolutely iconic imagery. They’ve been one of the places that have loomed very large in my imagination for a very long time.
Artwork, as always, is from Jian Guo. (Note about Guo’s art: I love to look at the tiny details in the corners. In the case of his Gates of Argonath, you’ve got the cloven Horn of Gondor and the fallen Lórien brooch.)
I don’t have anything clever or funny to say about Friday’s discussion of the Breaking of the Fellowship.