This is my favorite chapter in The Two Towers. My Dad's battered old paperback TTT that I read the cover off of falls naturally open to the page where Aragorn and Éomer charge the Orcs and Dunlendings with the battering ram. Speaking of which, yet another thing I discovered thanks to doing this readalong: the name of Éomer’s sword Gúthwinë (as in his battlecry of “Gúthwinë for the Mark!” alongside Aragorn’s “Andúril for the Dúnedain!”) means “Friend in battle.” Not sure why I never thought to look that up before.
While there’s no question this is an exciting chapter to read, I find I don’t have that much to say about it. I appreciate the fact that Legolas runs out of arrows not once, but twice, but thrice that we see - apparently Legolas never got the infinite ammo headband. Aragorn continues to come into his own, leading men into battle for the first time as the heir of Elendil and doing a rather good job of it. Gimli and Legolas have their little competition, with Gimli coming out on top by a single Orc in the end. Théoden’s charge at the end rocks.
But I also understand why Tolkien himself suggested the Battle of Helm’s Deep as one of the first things to cut for a possible film adaptation back in 1957, calling it “incidental to the main story.” Dealing with Saruman’s army is necessary for the overall story, but I don’t really think there’s too much character growth in this chapter. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that characters are what it’s really all about.
I'm not going to talk about the film much at alll, because I started when writing this and realized I have way too much to say. I don't want to turn this into a movie discussion - though come to think of it, I haven't watched them in years, and revisiting them after I finish this readalong sounds interesting. The one thing I'll say is this: while I think Christopher Tolkien's dismissal of the movies as “action movies for 15 to 25 year olds” is unfair, I also think he has a point, and nothing shows that quite so well as Helm's Deep.
Edited to add: this is the first time we encounter unfriendly Men, and the first time we run into Tolkien's widely known tendency to have the good guys be Caucasian, and the bad guys "swarthy." Except not really, because he doesn't describe the skin tone of the Men of Dunland at all in this chapter, and a little digging reveals that they're actually akin to good ol' Barliman and the Men of Bree. I'll have more to say on Tolkien's supposed racism later, but if you're picturing the wild men as dark skinned savages, it's not because of anything Tolkien said or implied.
Friday, we get a reunion at the end of the Road to Isengard.