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LOTR: An Author's Journey - Wrap Up of The Two Towers, Book 3 · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
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  for those of you who have been following my sidecast on Lord of the Rings, you will
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  realise that we have very recently completed the first book of the two towers and we thought
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  we would wrap this up by highlighting some of the favourite bits from listeners over
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  the last few months when I've been working on this and put them together in a little
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  package for you to enjoy. It's also meant as a taster for those who haven't yet dipped
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  into the full series to see the kind of thing I get up to and I describe what's going
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  on. So, with no more ado, let us start and we begin right at the beginning of the two
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  towers when things have gone awry and here I look out what has gone wrong with Aragorn
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  and what might be the reason behind his seeming laps in leadership. One thing which I've
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  always puzzled about here, which is that Aragorn is oddly negligent. He runs up the hill
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  knowing this is a dangerous situation. Tell Sam follow me but makes no allowances for
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  Hobbit legs. It doesn't seem to notice Sam isn't with him for a very long time. It could
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  be that he's just not a regular leader at this point but I was thinking that this feels
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  to me as though Tolkien is imagining the panic coming out of this crisis point and I don't
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  think it's a panic generated by the ring which could be one explanation for it. It seems
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  to me it's one of those fortuitous accidents that the presiding fate of this world needs
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  to have them scatter at this point because they all got vital roles to play. It's that
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  sense there is a greater plan beneath it and it could be why Aragorn is acting in an
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  Aragorn like way of not noticing that he's left Sam behind. I suppose that gives you
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  the sense that some fate is driving them at this point. They're not quite in control
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  of their choices. And also Aragorn is shown to be... I suppose a little bit unheroic in
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  that he jumps in shouting, Elendil, Elendil, but he's missed the battle. So there's a lot
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  of misfiring, misdirection, misunderstandings, all part of this frenetic activity. But of
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  course the blade may be empty of enemies but it's not empty of everybody because he comes
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  upon Boromir lying on his deathbed. The language around Boromir begins to change a bit. We are
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  moving into the Aragorn register of heroic deeds and kings and queens that kind of world
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  as opposed to the Hobbit every day sense. They have a moving exchange and that exchange
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  masks some suspense that Tolkien is slipping in there. The suspense about which Hobbits
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  have been taken. If we remember the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, we know, but
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  it's the Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas don't know. So it makes their decision even harder.
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  After Boromir has allowed his sort of grandeur of passing in that he makes his confession,
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  he sort of puts things as right as he can at that point. So he ends up as a hero rather
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  than a villain. Aragorn is given a brief cililiquity. It does feel like something from a stage
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  convention where he's lamenting the fault that he has committed by making mistakes.
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  I suppose here we are reminded of the sort of heraldic speeches of the Sahuathurian nights,
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  those kind of things. So it is quite a stage scene with Boromir lying surrounded by the bodies
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  of his foes. It's the sort of end of hamlet feel to it. So that could be going on somewhere in
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  the back of Tolkien's mind. Legolas here is the one who has the idea because Aragorn is
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  flawed, flummoxed, his hesitating, and Legolas is the one with the plan. He says that they must
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  bury Boromir or do his funeral rights and then follow. And he sums it up as let us do first what
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  we must do. So very sensible. And of course the big part of the enjoyment of two towers is
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  encountering the culture of Rohan. And here we have the beginning of that relationship between
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  what's left of the fellowship arriving to meet the riders of Rohan. And here I have a little
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  description of how Tolkien introduces us to this marvellous horse mad culture.
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  We have heard of this culture before. If we cast our mind back to the council of Aragorn,
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  it was one of the details in that Gandalf was telling his story. So we've had a bit of an
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  introduction. But here we get a potted history and like a couple of lines about their history.
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  He calls them true hearted, bot and bold. And obviously the culture is the horse culture.
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  They have songs rather than books. Again this sort of chimes with the sort of Anglo-Saxon world
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  really. And he calls them children of men, i.e. they're from younger days. It reminds me a bit of
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  the description of Arthur's Court in Segalwayne and the Green Knight where the court is described
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  as childlike, interesting adjective. But I think it is trying to sense that the idea here is that
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  they are people from an earlier time, the beginnings of culture. He mentions that they are
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  akin to the baddings. That's the people around sort of like town that area and beyondings
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  beyond the shape-changer in the woods. So they come from the north, that's where they've come from.
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  And they also refer here to the rumour that was repeated. I think it's at the council of Aragorn
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  that they send horses in tribute to Mordor. And this is one of those questions that's going to be
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  aired in this chapter. And Aragorn stands with Boromir by rejecting the rumour. And we soon learn
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  that he actually has deep knowledge having written with the riders earlier on in his life.
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  We get the wonderful arrival of the riders of Rohan. Note here, the Tolkien is so
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  so much thinking about the horses in association with Rohan that the people are described
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  pretty much like horses. The men that rode them match them well, match the horses,
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  tall and long-limbed their hair, flax and pale, flowed under the light helms and streamed in
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  long braids behind them. Their faces were stern and keen, so they have mains too.
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  Is it just a bit of fun description? I love the drama of this moment where the three are hidden
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  by their cloaks and they're not spotted until they stand up. And I think when you think of the film
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  version, they pretty much took the stage directions from the book and transposed them immediately into
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  the film. So I can't help, as much as I try and get rid of thinking about the film, I can't help but
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  think of the choreography of the horses sort of turning round and spinning in a circle
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  and ending up the spears pointing at the interlopers. It was well done by the stud riders.
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  But Tolkien got their first, so they're honouring Tolkien.
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  Moving away from the Aragon, Gimli and Legolas grouping, we're going back to the Hobbits now.
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  And Pippin has been a bit of a dead weight in some ways, comic relief in the Fellowship,
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  and now he comes into his own. We look at that chapter where Pippin steps forward and becomes
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  a hero, we always knew he would be. What I find interesting in this chapter about Pippin,
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  or one of the many things, is how he goes from passive regret to taking action. And the passive
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  regret is characterized by him thinking of himself as a piece of luggage that is being sort of
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  carried around by other people awaiting collection. Now the idea of luggage is a very,
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  well it's very 20th century sort of Edwardian railway idea, which fits with the Hobbit world,
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  which does feel more modern than many of the other cultures, so it fits with the world of the Hobbits,
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  because you can't imagine orcs having concioses and luggage. So it's what part of the big gap
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  between him and the people who are holding him hostage. He's sort of seen himself as other people
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  have seen him as he shouldn't have been there. He's a fish out of water very clearly,
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  but one of the things all the Hobbit sharing comment is once they reach that point,
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  they bounce back, and he bounces back by taking advantage of all politics.
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  So this is the second point I wanted to bring out is here we actually get behind the doors,
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  the closed doors of orcs. If you think about the fights to this point in Moria,
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  we never really understood much about the individual orcs. Here they are named,
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  we understand their factions, we understand their politics. So we've got three main factions.
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  We've got the orcs that have come down from the mines to avenge their leader.
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  We've got the Mordor orcs and Grishnack is their leader, and we have the Isengard orcs
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  who call themselves the Urukai, and Ugluck is their leader. So remember that this is written
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  at the time of war, where the Allies were up against uneasy alliances between one day they
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  shifted, but the Russians at one point until they swap sides, the Germans, the Italians and so on.
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  You can see in the back of Tolkien's mind that he is reflecting on the fact that you're not usually
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  just facing one foe with one agenda, you're facing many with many agendas, the Japanese as well,
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  of course, in that war. We get a snatch of black speech and a hint of their culture because of
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  the fructalkine culture's start with language, but fortunately, because you have the different
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  factions, they lapse into using ordinary language, and so Pippin is able to follow the debate.
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  I just want to underline at this point if we're thinking about the author's journey, just how useful
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  some version of common speech is. Unless you go the Douglas Adams route of having a
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  babelfish to or a spell to translate things you need to make the fact that people can communicate
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  to less of a burden. You don't want to always be going through translation. It's very important
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  for fantasy, so if you're writing a story where people have different languages find some way
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  of dealing with that, so it's not a bore. Unless, of course, the point is that your character can't
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  understand what's going on around them, but I wouldn't hang on in that position for too long.
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  When you're reading Lord of the Rings, you cannot be ignorant of the beauty of the language
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  that he uses. It's just the most marvellous resident stuff, and in this chapter, I celebrated how
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  Tolkien dips into almost Churchillian language for Gandalf on his return, so let's all enjoy a bit
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  of the Tolkien writing at his most eloquent. This chapter is full of those wonderful phrases.
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  He goes on to say, be merry, we meet again at the turn of the tide. So we are in a pivotal point
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  in this story, and Gandalf is telling us we are. This is the fight back. So in terms of the
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  Second World War, this is what happens after Dunkirk. It's the next few years, the arrival of America
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  in the world, that kind of thing. So we're not at the end, but we're at that point where it begins
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  to push back the other way. Gimli in this chapter is really hung up on getting it wrong about
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  thinking Gandalf was Saraman. But Gandalf has some words of comfort for him here. He says,
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  indeed, I am Saraman, Saraman as he should have been, because he has taken over the status of the
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  white, which is more than just a badge of the head of the Order of Wizards. It is actually a kind
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  of being, which Saraman has broken away from by wanting to be Saraman of many colors.
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  And Gandalf goes on to say, I have forgotten much that I thought I knew and learned again much
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  that I have forgotten, which it itself sounds like a riddle. So I said the theme of this chapter
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  was all about puzzles. What we discover here is that Gandalf is the biggest puzzle of the more.
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  We've been led not to answering the question about where Mary and Pippin are. It's actually
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  who Gandalf is and what role he has to play is the real puzzle. Though that's not entirely answered
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  because the real answer lies in the world beyond Middle Earth, the world of the gods and Eluvatar
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  and things which Middle Earth, a Middle Earth story doesn't really answer, but we only sense.
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  We get lots of other kinds of answers, though. And the first one of those is how Gandalf has kept up
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  with what's been going on. And the traces, the interweaving that we mentioned in earlier chapters
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  begins to, you know, the knot is tied off on them. We get to see that the eagle,
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  that Legolas saw on a number of occasions was indeed sent by Gandalf. But when you have a character
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  who comes in like this who is so powerful, you don't want to make them Superman. You don't want to
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  give them too much power. They have to have kryptonite to make them work. And so Gandalf knows a lot,
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  but he also doesn't know some things. He is able to sense where the ring is. The ring has now
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  passed beyond my help, but he didn't know about Sam, for example. He can see how a sore trial it
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  was for Boramir, but he didn't know that that was happened to Boramir until Aragorn tells him.
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  Doing this audacious move, think how audacious it is to bring back someone from the dead, which is
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  basically what has happened to Gandalf here, not quite dead because he is not quite human. But
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  that is the effect. It is very bold and very brave to do this, but it isn't him riding on a white
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  charger to sweep all before him like with some magic spell. He has to come and enter in the thick
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  of it again. He has to get down to the granular level of dealing with people. Otherwise,
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  the story would just implode at this point because Tolkien has daringly given us a big plus point,
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  turned the tide, but he hasn't yet given us the answers as to how that tide is being turned.
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  And finally, in our selection of clips, we return to Rohan and we meet the people of Rohan in a
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  much better place where they have overcome the poison of worm tongue. And here we have a
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  celebration of that culture in how its youth and age come together to form the bond that actually
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  takes them all the way to the fields of the battle of Paleno. So I mentioned that we have a
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  youth and age theme running through this chapter. It comes to head when Ehrmer comes in
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  because he is the young man offering allegiance to the old man. Ehrmer coming forward and offering
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  his allegiance to an act which is copied by all the other warriors during this chapter, reasserts
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  the ancient king at the top and the youth coming to support and to take over. And this is
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  turned take over when the time comes because he's named as Ehr. But we also get worm tongue
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  trying to use that youth and age to unpick it. That's what he's been doing. He's been saying,
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  you're too old for all of this. And that is his argument. He's saying, you must put your feet
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  up. They're trying to lure you to your death. That's the kind of poison. You can see how he's been
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  feeding this poison to Theoden. But it's too late. Gremer's poison is now leaving Theoden.
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  And what we get here is the moment when aged realizes it isn't so old. And the decision point
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  is will you not take the sword? And being reminded of the strength of his youth and the fact that
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  his, though his best days are behind him, he's still got it in him. Ferdin turns into the warrior
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  king at that point when he takes the sword. And we get another little poem. Here it's got the hint
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  of the illiteration. Arise now. Arise riders of Ferdin. Can you see the, the R sound? Arise,
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  Arise riders. Diadids awake. D.D. Dark is to eastward. Let the horse be bridled. Horn be sounded.
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  That's got H sounds and combining the two parts of that literative verse fourth in Aolingas.
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  So that's the probably the most that little ditty there, little war cry is probably the most
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  Old English style poem actually in this section because of the illiteration.
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  And in response, we get one of the first little snatches of Old English in the this refrain
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  West Doe Therden Howe, which is like a kind of great greeting or praise phrase, which Emma says.
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  Never again shall it be said Gandalf that you come only with grief. So it's pushing back on all
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  the things that Wormtong has been saying. I hope you've enjoyed following me through this first part
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  of the two towers. And we've already made a little start on the second part,
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  that's book four, where we have rejoined Frodo and Sam and of course Met Gollum. So please do come
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  and join me for further sidecast as we read our way through the Lord of the Rings. Thank you so
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  much for listening. Thanks for listening to MythMaker's podcast, brought to you by the Oxford
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