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But for the first time in The Two Towers, I'm actually enjoying it. I trudged through Rohan and Helm's Deep and Fangorn Forest and Isengard. Trudged. Could not care less about Merry and Pippin. Could not differentiate between Aragorn, Legolas, Theoden, and Eomer. Had to force myself to read anything at all, and didn't understand why things were dragging on and on. Teeny tiny bits of poetic description do linger - the Men looking at the weak River Isen - and the Ent-Entwife saga was amusing, if rather essentialist. I loudly proclaimed to my family that I preferred the movies to the books, whined to my friends, etc. But now I'm in hellish country with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum - and I actually really like it. Keep in mind that I don't enjoy the Frodo-Sam-Gollum parts in the movies - so dreary and drab, so full of Elijah Wood looking drugged - and I've always been a relatively crazy Viggo!Aragorn fangirl.
I think Tolkien is actually better at writing about doom and gloom than he is at writing about happy things, or battles, or conquering heroes. We'll see if my assessment of this changes, but I was really getting tired of listening to Gandalf scold Saruman at Orthanc. I feel like there's a certain... honesty in how Tolkien writes about Frodo/Sam/Gollum and their strengths and weaknesses - Frodo with the weight of the ring just doesn't give any thought to Gollum's state of mind, Sam has admittedly uncharitable and unreasonable thoughts about Gollum, and poor Gollum (who wants to eat birds and corpses) just wants the Precious, so that he can be Gollum the Most Precious One. And they all do things like "grovel heedlessly" when confronted with danger, because fuck, what are they gonna do against a Nazgul? I feel like I can understand all their respective emotional anguishes - whereas the characters in Book 3 just kind of seemed like depthless, emotionless props/war-machines that occasionally became hungry. Kind of like Orcs, but Good Orcs.
Plus, Tolkien's description of these doom-gloom parts of the world near Mordor is great in a fantastical, pseudo-Lovecraftian kind of way. Here's Gollum talking about bringing the Precious (I mean the Ring...) to Mordor: "He'll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world." Here's Tolkien's description of the land near Mordor: "the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing - unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion. 'I feel sick,' said Sam. Frodo did not speak." Ah. And here's the Dead Marshes: "The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers."
And here's my favorite part so far (possibly of the entire thing), also from the Dead Marshes:
I think Tolkien is actually better at writing about doom and gloom than he is at writing about happy things, or battles, or conquering heroes. We'll see if my assessment of this changes, but I was really getting tired of listening to Gandalf scold Saruman at Orthanc. I feel like there's a certain... honesty in how Tolkien writes about Frodo/Sam/Gollum and their strengths and weaknesses - Frodo with the weight of the ring just doesn't give any thought to Gollum's state of mind, Sam has admittedly uncharitable and unreasonable thoughts about Gollum, and poor Gollum (who wants to eat birds and corpses) just wants the Precious, so that he can be Gollum the Most Precious One. And they all do things like "grovel heedlessly" when confronted with danger, because fuck, what are they gonna do against a Nazgul? I feel like I can understand all their respective emotional anguishes - whereas the characters in Book 3 just kind of seemed like depthless, emotionless props/war-machines that occasionally became hungry. Kind of like Orcs, but Good Orcs.
Plus, Tolkien's description of these doom-gloom parts of the world near Mordor is great in a fantastical, pseudo-Lovecraftian kind of way. Here's Gollum talking about bringing the Precious (I mean the Ring...) to Mordor: "He'll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world." Here's Tolkien's description of the land near Mordor: "the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing - unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion. 'I feel sick,' said Sam. Frodo did not speak." Ah. And here's the Dead Marshes: "The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers."
And here's my favorite part so far (possibly of the entire thing), also from the Dead Marshes:
"I don't know, said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. "But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them." Frodo hid his eyes in his hands. "I know not who they are; but I thought I saw there Men and Elves, and Orcs beside them."It's almost like all the stuff that's happening in the kingdoms of Men is B.S. that we're not even getting the straight story about (rather we're reading the Gondor Textbook about the History of Middle-Earth, if you know what I mean), and the story of these three small creatures tries to tell it like it really is, from a perspective that also somehow transcends their particular turmoil and stretches into real mythic poetry. I'll be very curious to see how this evolves in Return of the King, but for now color me really surprised at how this is shaking out.
"Yes, yes," said Gollum. "All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Smeagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping."
