Unhealing

23 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

Tags

Achilles, Frod, Greeks, Morgul Knife, Mysia, Nazgul, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Philoctetes, Telephus, The Grey Havens, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tristan and Iseult, Troy, Weathertop, wound, wounded

As always, dear readers, welcome.

The war around Troy was a very complicated thing, with traditions stretching in all directions. In one, the Greeks actually sailed to Troy twice, the first time missing it entirely and landing in Mysia, to the east of Troy.

There, the Greeks were met by local defenders under their king, Telephus, who was wounded by Achilles

before the Greeks realized their mistake and withdrew.

After they’d gone, Telephus’ wound simply wouldn’t heal, but, after consulting oracles, he was told that there was a cure: rust from the spear which had wounded him. The Greeks had gone back to Greece to regroup and to try again, so Telephus went after them to request that Achilles treat the wound which he had made. For some reason, Achilles refused, so Telephus grabbed the High King Agamemnon’s baby son, Orestes, and threatened to kill him if Achilles didn’t grant his request.

(This scene bordered on the edge of hilarious to the Greeks and was the subject of parodies in ancient times—here’s a pot with one, Orestes being replaced by a wineskin.)

The threat worked and Achilles healed Telephus.

This isn’t the only example of the wound which won’t heal to be found in the Trojan material. Philoctetes, who had inherited Heracles’ bow (given to him by Heracles because he helped with Heracles’ funeral pyre), was on his way with the other Greeks to Troy when he was bitten by a snake. The wound wouldn’t heal and smelled so bad that the Greeks left him—and the bow—behind (this is one version—there are others).

Later in the story, however, a prophecy told the Greeks that they wouldn’t take Troy without the bow. (By late in the Troy tradition, there had piled up a number of these conditions—rather like the horcruxes in the Harry Potter books—all to keep the story going.) Odysseus and Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, went off to persuade—or steal—the bow (in one version—there are lots of others) and eventually persuaded Philoctetes to come to Troy with the bow, where he was healed and used the bow to aid the Greeks.

The theme of the unhealing wound reappears in western medieval literature in several places. In the story of Tristan and Iseult,

Tristan is wounded fighting an Irish giant

and, as in the Greek stories of Telephus and Philoctetes, the wound won’t heal. The theme appears again in the story of the Holy Grail—and like the Troy tradition, it has many versions. In some, the last guardian of the Grail is a wounded king (sometimes called the “Fisher King”) .

But, if you’re a regular reader, you know where this is leading. On Weathertop, Frodo is attacked by the Nazgul.

He is wounded with a morgul knife

and the tip of the blade not only remains in the wound, but begins to travel towards Frodo’s heart. He is saved by Elrond’s healing powers, but, somehow, things are never quite the same and, some time after the hobbits return to the Shire–

“One evening Sam came into the study and found his master looking very strange. He was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away.

‘What’s the matter, Mr. Frodo?’ said Sam.

‘I am wounded,’ he answered, ‘wounded; it will never really heal.’” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”)

We began with Greeks and the complex epic of Troy, then passed through a pair of medieval stories to The Lord of the Rings, but something in all of these tales interested us in what seemed a common theme: protecting something, keeping something, can bring long-lasting harm to the protector/keeper, even if done for the best of reasons. It’s less clear if this pertains to Philoctetes, but Telephus was defending his country, as was Tristan in fatally wounding the Irish giant, who was leading an invasion force to Cornwall, where Tristan lived. The Fisher King is the guardian of the Grail.

Frodo clearly has come to understand this and, when the time comes, he goes with Bilbo and Gandalf and others to the Grey Havens and beyond, saying to Sam:

“…But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

(These are two very different versions of the leave-taking at the Grey Havens—first, the Hildebrandts’, second, Alan Lee’s.)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Too Narrow Escapes

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Tags

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahrawi, Agincourt, Albucasis, Anglo-Scots, arrow removal, arrows, bascinet, bodkin points, Dagger, David Gwillim, elf shot, Elverskud, English Longbowmen, healing, Henry V, John Bradmore, Kenneth Branagh, Laurence Olivier, Medieval, Morgul Knife, Nazgul, Neolithic, Niels W Gade, Otherworld, Philomena, poignard, Prince Henry, Renaissance, Shrewsbury, St Mary Magdalen, Tolkien, Two Men in a Trench, Weaponry, Weathertop, Wraiths

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

We had what we thought was a very interesting idea for this posting—about the effect of a Morgul-knife and that of something from western European—perhaps specificially Germanic?—folk tradition, an “elf shot”.

“Elf shot” was once thought to be a condition in humans and animals, caused by an arrow fired by someone from the Otherworld. There was a long tradition of methods of healing, which could be a difficult problem because the entry wound might be nearly—if not completely—invisible and it took special skills to find it and to remove the arrowhead, while, in the meantime, the victim slowly withered away.

When it was supposedly removed, by someone who was believed to have competence in such matters, the arrowhead was probably actually a Neolithic point, like one of these—

picked up from somewhere and whatever had actually caused the withering was a disease brought on in the natural order of things, but all of the stories we’ve read about the belief and cures appear to end with the point removed—and the sufferer in recovery.

Hmm—we thought. Something familiar about this. On Weathertop, Frodo is attacked by Nazgul.

“The third was taller than the others: his hair was long and gleaming and on his helm was a crown. In one hand he held a long sword, and in the other a knife; both the knife and the hand that held it glowed with a pale light. He sprang forward and bore down on Frodo.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 11, “ A Knife in the Dark”)

The figure stabs Frodo, but the weapon which did it was no ordinary one, as Strider indicates, lifting

“…up a long thin knife. There was a cold gleam in it. As Strider raised it they saw that near the end its edge was notched and the point was broken off. But even as he held it up in the growing light, they gazed in astonishment, for the blade seemed to melt, and vanished like a smoke in the air, leaving only the hilt in Strider’s hand.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “Flight to the Ford”)

In the film, this is represented by something which looks like a medieval fighting dagger.

It seems that its purpose was not to act as a secondary weapon in combat, however, but to inflict a fatal stabbing wound. As Gandalf says,

“They tried to pierce your heart with a Morgul-knife which remains in the wound.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 1, “Many Meetings”)

Thus, we could imagine it looking like a Renaissance poignard, like this one—

Whatever its look, its point is embedded in Frodo’s shoulder and, like someone elf-shot, Frodo is fading and, also like the victim of elf-shot, the wound has changed.

“ ‘What is the matter with my master?’ asked Sam in a low voice, looking appealingly at Strider. ‘His wound was small, and it is already closed. There’s nothing to be seen but a cold white mark on his shoulder.; “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 12, “The Flight to the Ford”)

Neither Strider nor, in turn, Glorfindel, can heal Frodo and even Gandalf was daunted:

“Elrond is a master of healing, but the weapons of our Enemy are deadly. To tell you the truth, I had very little hope; for I suspected that there was some fragment of the blade still in the closed wound. But it could not be found until last night. Then Elrond removed a splinter. It was deeply buried, and it was working inwards.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 1, “Many meetings”)

We thought, then, that we could write a very interesting post about the parallels between that knife and elf-shot—and then we found that it had already been done: see “Elf-shot” in Drout, Michael, ed., J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, London: RKP, 2006.

We are not given to despair, however, and something Gandalf said interested us: “Then Elrond removed the splinter.”

As our regular readers know, we take particular pleasure in linking things of Middle-earth with those of the medieval world in which JRRT spent his scholarly life. In this case, we were reminded of the removal of part of another weapon—the head of an arrow (just like elf-shot) from the head of a real person: Prince Henry of England—the future Henry V (1386-1422) of Shakespeare’s wonderful play. (We grew up on the 1944 Laurence Olivier version, which is full of color and action—the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre at the opening alone is worth watching—although, as we’ve gotten older, we’ve come to prefer both Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 filming and the 1979 David Gwillim version which we mentioned in our last posting.)

When he was fifteen, Prince Hal commanded the left wing of his father’s army at the battle of Shrewsbury, on 21 July, 1403.

(Note: this is an old map, based upon the tradition that the church of St. Mary Magdalen was built on the site of the battle.

In 2006, the Anglo-Scots archaeologists, Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver, led a team to probe the churchyard, where it had long been held that there was a burial pit for some of the dead of the battle. After geophysical exploration and the digging of several test trenches, no trace of such a pit was found, leaving the tradition to remain, at least for the moment, just that. If you are interested to learn more, their visit to the site is from their 2-year series, Two Men in a Trench. Here’s a LINK—you can watch the whole show—and we recommend the entire series for a combination of light-hearted looniness and serious archaeology.)

The battle began with a barrage of arrows from the longbowmen on each side.

The arrows had what were called bodkin points—

which were specifically designed to penetrate plate armor of the very sort which the prince was wearing.

A practiced longbowman could fire ten arrows a minute and his original battlefield issue would have been two 24-arrow linen bundles. We don’t know how many archers both sides had, but even if each had no more than a thousand, at the end of in a single minute, that would have meant 20,000 arrows in the air.

If Hal was wearing a bascinet—as you see on the knight above–because of the shape of the helmet, many of the arrows might have glanced off. Perhaps Hal was wearing an open-face bascinet

or had raised his visor, to give a command, say, but, instead of bouncing off, an arrow hit him in the face, below his eye (there is argument as to which eye) and penetrated his head. Had it gone all the way through, it might have been possible to saw off the arrow head and remove both arrow and shaft, but the arrow head had sunk into the bone at the back of the skull, instead. (Remarkably, it is reported that Hal continued to direct his troops, even in this condition. Tough people, those medievals!) And the first attempt at extraction had broken off the shaft, leaving the arrowhead still embedded. And this, of course, is what made us think of Elrond and the Morgul-knife splinter.

We aren’t told how Elrond found or removed it. A medieval tool for removing arrowheads had been invented by the brilliant Arab physician with the splendid name of Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahrawi, reduced by westerners to “Albucasis” (936-1013). (Here’s a LINK—this is a man of science well worth knowing much more about!)

This might have worked, had the arrow been in a less delicate place, as well as not barbed, but Hal’s wound was just below his brain stem and next to all sorts of delicate blood vessels and the arrowhead was a bodkin point.

At this point, John Bradmore appeared. Interestingly, he had been a goldsmith, as well as a practicing surgeon, and the two seem to have come together as he tackled the problem. First, while he considered the possibilities, he kept the wound open and cleaned. Then he invented this—

It’s a simple but cunning design: the two outer parts are gradually introduced into the wound and spread it gently open. In the middle is a screw mechanism which could insert itself into the socket of the arrowhead. When it is firmly in place, the outer parts are closed as far as possible and then the whole, with, Bradmore hoped, the arrowhead, could be extracted from the wound. And it was. And then Bradmore washed out the wound with wine and kept it clean during the healing process. A completely remarkable piece of work, from the use of antisepsis to the invention and manufacture of the necessary tool.

Hal not only survived the operation (he had reportedly been dosed with henbane, which would have stupefied him but, given the wrong dose, would have killed him within a couple of days), but lived another 19 years to beat the French at Agincourt, marry the daughter of the king of France, and, for a brief time, imagine seeing his son succeed him on the now-joint thrones.

As for Bradmore, he wrote a medical treatise, Philomena, the title being a learned joke– St. Philomena was an early Christian martyr, part of whose martyrdom included surviving arrow attacks—before dying, a very well-off man, in 1412.

(If you’d like to see a very well-done visual segment on Bradmore and Prince Hal, here’s a LINK for a NOVA program of some years ago.)

In both cases, the patient survived, although it would appear that Prince Hal had a better recovery than Frodo. Then again, Hal, for all that his wound was life-threatening, hadn’t been hit by an elf-shot, but only by a mortal arrow, while the hobbit was almost doomed to the Nazgul world by a Morgul-knife.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

One of our favorite Danish composers, Niels W. Gade (1817-1890), has left us a very beautiful dramatic cantata, Elverskud—“Elfshot” (1854). Based upon a Danish ballad, it’s the story of Sir Oluf, who prefers the Elf king’s daughter to his own human bride and the consequences of that preference. If you’d like to hear it—we recommend it and much other music by Gade, as well—here’s a LINK.

PPS

This posting is our 151st! Five more will make exactly three years of weekly postings. Thank you for reading, and we hope to keep you interested for another 150 postings at least.

One More River (2)

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amon Hen, Anduin, Bilbo, Blondin, Bombur, Boromir, Brandywine, bridges, Bruinen, Bucklebury Ferry, Celebrant, Dwarves, Elrond, Elves, Enchanted river, Esgaroth, Fangorn, ferry, flight to the ford, Frodo, Gandalf, Gondorians, Hoarwell, Hobbiton, Isen, Khazad-dum, Niagara Falls, Nimrodel, Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Orcs, Prince Valiant, Rivendell, Rivers, Rohirrim, Sam, Tharbad, The Hobbit, The Long Lake, The Lord of the Rings, Theodred, Tolkien, Tom Bombadil, Weathertop, Withywindle, Wraiths

Welcome, dear readers, as always. In our last post, we had turned our attention to water-crossings in The Hobbit. In this, we want to continue our study with The Lord of the Rings.

We were first prompted to look at such crossings by something Boromir said, almost in passing:

“Four hundred leagues I reckoned it, and it took me many months, for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

Tharbad had once been famous for its elaborate defenses and bridge, but, symbolic of so much of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, it had fallen into decay and was abandoned, the water of the Gwathlo, the Greyflood, spreading wide—an easy place to lose a horse—or a man.

And perhaps Boromir’s loss is also symbolic of the higher level of stress involved in crossing water in the later work. The most Bilbo and the dwarves had to deal with was a water of forgetfulness, whose effect wore off in a relatively short time. There is much worse to come.

The first crossing (after The Water in Hobbiton)

has danger attached, but it’s a danger which pursues the hobbits at the Bucklebury ferry. Here, pursued by one—or more—wraiths,

they cross over by what is a kind of do-it-yourself ferry, where the ferry runs on a cable, which keeps it available and on course, while the passengers pole to add propulsion.

There is a puzzle at their next crossing—because the hobbits don’t appear to have crossed at all! This is the River Withywindle, on whose bank the hobbits meet up with Old Man Willow (not as in the film, where he’s been pulled violently out of context and replanted, for no good reason we can see, in Fangorn’s forest).

Until we began to study water-crossings, we had never really thought about what happens then. The hobbits come to the river, having become lost in the Old Forest. Pippin and Merry are swallowed by the tree. Tom Bombadil comes to the rescue: but how do they cross the Withywindle? We just couldn’t remember! So we went back to the text, saw Tom lead the four hobbits through the forest, where they almost lose him, then they hear: “Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 6, “The Old Forest”)

And so they never actually ford across or are ferried across. Instead, they walk up its course to Tom’s house, which seems to be near the source.

The next crossing is many miles away—over the Barrow Downs, through Bree, past Weathertop, to the Last Bridge, over the Hoarwell. Although Aragorn is anxious that the Wraiths will have gotten there before them, they pass safely and keep moving southwards, towards Rivendell, until, near the ford over the Bruinen, the Nazgul catch up with them at last.

There is a bridge, of course, at Khazad-Dum, although, as far as we can tell, there is no water even in the depths far below it.

Escaping from Moria, the Fellowship reaches two streams in a row and, as far as we know, none of the prominent illustrators has given us pictures, either of the tributary Nimrodel or the main river, the Celebrant, so we provide a rather generic picture to offer a rather general idea.

The Nimrodel is shallow enough to wade across, but the Celebrant is wider and deeper and the Elves provide a rather iffy method of transport: a single line of rope to balance on, making us imagine something like the famous Blondin crossing Niagara Falls in 1859—well, a little!

The next crossing is almost inadvertent, or, at least happens sooner than expected: the Fellowship has been paddling down the Anduin, but, putting in at Amon Hen, things go disastrously wrong. Boromir tries to take the Ring, the orcs appear, Boromir is mortally wounded, and Merry and Pippin are carried off (in our edition—the 50^th Anniversary, One Volume Edition—this takes all of 12 pages—quite a narrative feat for JRRT!), before Frodo (and Sam) cross the river to the east and story begins its major split.

[We might insert here, although, in The Lord of the Rings, it’s only a footnote that at the crossing of the Isen, during this time, Theodred, son of Theoden, is killed.]

After this, there is only one more crossing of any significance, but it’s not by the main characters: rather, it’s by the orcs, who use boats to assault and capture west Osgiliath, which is the subject of one of our earlier postings.

To which we would add the return crossing, days later, of the Forlorn Hope of Gondor and Rohan, on their way to challenge Sauron (and to distract him from Frodo and Sam).

To finish up this posting, we provide a chart below (clearly now one of a series, after the earlier one on doorways and passages) of the water-crossings found in the two books.

Crossing	Characters	Outcome	Source
Tharbad	Boromir	Loses horse	The Lord of the Rings
The Water	Bilbo	Joins Dwarves	The Hobbit
An unnamed river	Bilbo, Dwarves, and Gandalf	Lose baggage	The Hobbit
Rivendell	Bilbo Dwarves, and Gandalf	Helped by Elves	The Hobbit
Anduin	Bilbo, Dwarves, and Gandalf	Transported by eagles	The Hobbit
Enchanted River	Bilbo and Dwarves	Bombur drugged	The Hobbit
Underground river	Bilbo and Dwarves	Using barrels, Bilbo and Dwarves escape	The Hobbit
The Long Lake	Bilbo and Dwarves	Gain help from Esgaroth	The Hobbit
The Brandywine (Bucklebury Ferry)	Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin	Escape Wraith	The Lord of the Rings
Withywindle	Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin	Reach Tom Bombadil’s house (never actually cross river)	The Lord of the Rings
The Bruinen	Frodo and Wraiths	Elrond causes river surge, Nazgul driven off	The Lord of the Rings
Khazad-Dum	Balrog and Gandalf	Gandalf defeats Balrog, but falls down with him	The Lord of the Rings
Nimrodel/ Celebrant	Fellowship and Elves	Fellowship brought into Lorien	The Lord of the Rings
Anduin	Frodo and Sam	Set out on journey to the east	The Lord of the Rings
Isen	Rohirrim and Orcs	Rohirrim driven back, Theodred, son of Theoden, killed	The Lord of the Rings
Anduin	Gondorians vs Orcs	Gondorians driven back from West Ogsiliath	The Lord of the Rings

This is our last posting for the year 2016 and we close the year with thanks to all who follow our blog or simply stop in for a visit. In 2017, we plan to continue our Tolkien travels, sometimes employing the Sortes Tolkienses, as well as to use Tolkien’s world to visit others, beginning with a posting on “Famous Bridge Battles”, from Boromir and Faramir jumping off one to escape the orcs, to Napoleon at Arcola, and beyond. Here’s a taste…

We also plan to explore other worlds and perhaps to add a review section for books and films we think you might enjoy.

In the meantime, thanks, as ever, for reading. Happy New Year!

MTCIDC

What sad and surprising news! Princess Leia is no more– but no– Princess Leia will always be with us, just like the Force.

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When One Door Closes (2)

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Balin, Barrows, Bree, Bridge of Khazad-Dum, Chamber of Mazarbul, Crickhollow, doors, Dwarves, Elven-way, Farmer Maggot, Gandalf, Greenway, Hobbit door, Hollin, Lothlorien, Moria, Nazgul, picaresque, Rivendell, Robert Burns, Tam O'Shanter, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Ford of Bruinen, The Hobbit, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lord of the Rings, The Prancing Pony, Tolkien, Washington Irving, Watcher in the Water, Weathertop, West-door, West-gate

Welcome, dear reader, as always. It’s a rather gloomy late autumn day here as we write this, fitting, perhaps, for the gloomier The Lord of the Rings after the cheerier (well, sometimes) The Hobbit, as we continue our look at the functions of doors and their equivalents in JRRT.

If you’ve read our previous posting, you’ll know that, in it, we examined doors and gates in The Hobbit, dividing them into two basic categories: doors which might lead to safety and doors which led to danger, all based upon Bilbo’s remark about how dangerous it can be, just stepping outside your door.

Bilbo’s door adventures had begun with his own.

When comparing the two books, we get a strong sense of the episodic nature of The Hobbit: we can almost break it down into movement between doors, from the arrival of the dwarves to the knock of Gandalf and Balin, giving it more the feel of a picaresque novel: that is, a novel with an goal, but with much of its focus upon the adventures along the way, adventures which don’t always necessarily lead to that goal. This gives it a lighter tone, as well—after all, it was meant as a children’s book in a time (1937) when such books were understood in general never to be too solemn. The Lord of the Rings, in contrast, develops an almost grimly-focused forward motion, which impels it even when the Fellowship breaks into two after the death of Boromir, and much of the action spreads from Frodo and Sam on the way to Mordor to the separate adventures of Merry and Pippin in Rohan and Gondor.

So what might we see as the first door—in either sense—in The Lord of the Rings? we asked ourselves. And we supposed that we might see minor doors of safety at Farmer Maggot’s and Frodo’s new home in Crickhollow, in both cases brief refuges from the Nazgul, but, as we said in our last posting, doors commonly have some sort of challenge to them—and challenger—and the first one of those appears briefly at the hedge in Bree:

“They came to the West-gate and found it shut; but at the door of the lodge beyond it, there was a man sitting. He jumped up and fetched a lantern and looked over the gate at them in surprise.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

The watchman, when his challenges (and maybe a little too-inquisitive challenges) are turned aside, lets them in and they reach The Prancing Pony, only to escape murder in their beds and the loss of their ponies.

The first gateway which leads to real safety, however, isn’t a door or gate at all, but a natural barrier (with some magical help): the Ford of Bruinen. Here, the role of traveler and challenger is reversed, as the challenged are the Wraiths and the challenger is Frodo, but it is the power of the Elves which closes the door.

At the Ford, by Ted Nasmith

(It is interesting here that Tolkien has chosen not to take advantage of the folk belief—if you know “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, or its inspiration, the poet Robert Burn’s “Tam O’Shanter”, this will be readily familiar to you—that evil spirits are unable to cross running water, even at a bridge.

John_Quidor_-_The_Headless_Horseman_Pursuing_Ichabod_Crane_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

To reach the Shire, the Wraiths have had to cross several bodies of water and now their hesitation to traverse another appears to be derived from their confidence that they can now control Frodo—either by the influence of the Ring, or perhaps from his wound—and call him back across the stream to them.)

From Rivendell, the next such door is that at the western side of Moria.

Here, there is no living challenger. Rather, it is a kind of riddle—or, at least, it is initially understood as such—which bars the way. Its answer is simple, which led us to wonder, what is the purpose of this door scene in the story? As the creature in the pool

barricades the door behind them, it adds to the tension: the Fellowship has been watched and, from the hostile mountains to the wolves to the tentacle thing, it has been forced into darker and narrower ways, those ways seemingly chosen by the malevolent force observing their journey. As well, it suggests the gradual decay of what was once a vibrant, active culture, as Gandalf explains:

“Here the Elven-way from Hollin ended. Holly was the token of the people of that land, and they planted it here to mark the end of their domain; for the West-door was made chiefly for their use in their traffic with the Lords of Moria. Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)

This is a theme throughout The Lord of the Rings and one which, we believe, adds to its power: the events of the close of the Third Age are set against a background of other times and other events and the landscape still bears traces of those times, from the Barrows to the Greenway and Weathertop and far beyond. As well, so many of those traces suggest that violence and the dark spirit of Sauron, sometimes through his agents, sometimes in person, have had much to do with their end.

Now that the Fellowship is within Moria, it encounters its next door: that of the Chamber of Mazarbul.

Here, they are the challengers, when forced to defend themselves from a horde of “Orcs, very many of them…And some are large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum”). There is a second door, however, and, when they have beaten back their attackers, they escape by it—but only so that Gandalf may be the challenger at a crossing—as Frodo was at the ford—at the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, although here magic apparently cannot save him, as it had Frodo.

With Gandalf gone, we see the repetition of a scene from The Hobbit—the escape through a crowd to the outside world:

“…and suddenly before them the Great Gates opened, an arch of blazing light.

There was a guard of orcs crouching in the shadows behind the great door-posts towering on either side, but the gates were shattered and cast down. Aragorn smote to the ground the captain that stood in his path, and the rest fled in terror at his wrath.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 5, “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum”)

At this moment in The Hobbit, Bilbo had used his newly-discovered ring to escape (albeit with the loss of a few buttons), but Aragorn’s sword clearly does just as well.

It is easy to see just how prevalent the pattern is: even after that harrowing moment of being chased through the mines and losing Gandalf, where there is a door, there is someone at it to make a challenge, and this holds true even without an actual door, as the remaining members of the Fellowship seek to enter Lothlorien and are stopped by Elven sentries in a tree. (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 6, “Lothlorien”)

And the pattern continues, even as the Fellowship breaks up, but let’s take a moment to see what we’ve found so far. On the side of doors to safety, we have: Bree (although it’s not so safe as it looks), the Ford of Bruinen, the main door of Moria, and the entrance to Lorien. As for doors to danger, there are: the western doors of Moria and the door to the Chamber of Mazarbul.

In the third installment, we shall see just how many more doors/gates/entryways we find which continue to fit the pattern—and there are a fair number of them.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Weathertop

Unhealing

Too Narrow Escapes

One More River (2)

When One Door Closes (2)