ROTK Book 1 Ch 6: "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields" ⚔️🐎👻😱
This chapter 😱😱😱😱 the EPIC I cannot. I honestly feel like this is Tolkien at his best writing. Maybe I'm just biased 😅 Anywho, here we go, shorter ch but no promises this will be a shorter post (I appreciate any reading and comments, as always I know these are loooong!)...I got thoughts and feeeels for sure ⚔️🐎👻
The epic scale starts with Théoden facing off against the chieftain of the Southrons...it's JRRT's every word choice that builds that, imo. "Right through the press drove Théoden Thengel's son, and his spear was shivered as he threw down their chieftain." 😱. Both sides are feeling peak battle-ready: "wrath" and "fury" show up more than once each. I also love the inclusion of Snowmane 🥺 v true to the Rohirrim (but I also HATE horses suffering in war 😭).
Fascinating, and also chilling, description of where these fell beasts came from: "A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. And the Dark Lord took it, and nursed it with fell meats, until it grew beyond the measure of all other things that fly; and he gave it to his servant to be his steed." ...ooooof...just the imagery, and the sense of deep time: WOW.
Speaking of Snowmane*....😭😭😭. In the heat of battle, I have to imagine those sorts of accidents really did happen with cavalry (historically rooted). "But Théoden was not utterly forsaken.": nope nope nope, Dernhelm and Merry there. Dernhelm, "faithful beyond fear; and he wept, for he had loved his Lord like a father" (ummm yes SHE did!!!). Merry with "such a horror...on him that he was blind and sick" (😭😭😭) thinks " 'you must stay by him. As a father you shall be to me, you said',"....yeah I'm not ok 😭😭😭😭 *also Snowmane got a burial and a song 🥺🐎
It's Merry's POV of The Moment, comes down through history via him (in a voice "recalling some other voice he had known"...umm yeah!!). "It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him." AAAAAAAAAH. And here is the thing so many miss, imo: this action is based in love for her uncle and king. It undergirds her courage, I do believe. (incredible courage nonetheless, of course!!)
And just gotta note how Merry sees her, just absolutely beautiful: "But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes. Éowyn it was, and Dernhelm also." He remembers the look of someone who wants to die 😭 and "pity filled his heart, and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke...She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided." ....I'm loving them both and their friendship even more this read 😭😭 just extraordinary.
Approximate play-by-play: she chops off the fell beast's head, the Witch King steps forward to fight her, he strikes and breaks her arm, Merry crawls forward and stabs the Witch King behind the knee (thus "breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will"), Éowyn stabs the Witch King: vulnerable to her strike after Merry's...his spirit fades away "to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world." ....oh my ERUUUU 😱😱😱. And here's my thing: the tag team was necessary to defeat this foe, them both being there *mattered*. And the terror we'd seen him spread over the city...would the battle be won with him still alive? I think potentially not. ÉOWYN AND MERRY HYYYYPE 🗣️ always here for it 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
Damn it, my heart can't take more with this ch 😭😭😭 Merry crawling over to Théoden (not Éowyn in text, though that in the film is special in a different way), afraid that he has "done no more in your service than weep at our parting" (STOP IT MERRY you just helped kill the Witch King!!), and Théoden: "when you sit in peace with your pipe, think of me" and "now I shall not see [Éowyn] again, dearer than daughter" (she's so close by and he doesn't know omgggg 😭😭😭). I need a minute, yet again 😫😫😫😫
Éomer feeling "grief and dismay" at finding Théoden dead (💔), but then guides his host to continue with battle: "mighty was the fallen, meet was his ending". But when he finds Éowyn (he thinks is also dead 😭): "what madness or devilry is this?....Death take us all!", and then seems ready to just fight to any end: "Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world's ending!". I feel like his thought process (whether conscious or unconscious) "when women like my sister are also dying in battle, all is lost, none of it makes any sense any more, ready to fight to the death", a touch of nihilism perhaps..plus also his own despair at losing his last living family member 😭 (and S/O to Karl Urban for that blood-curdling scream 😭😭😭 carries what Éomer in text is feeling imo)
The chaos, the noise, the heat of battle: so vividly described. The Rohirrim see Corsair ships and think that it's the end, "the last stroke of doom" (sounds like not only for them, specifically; means that other lands by the shore are conquered, ooof). Éomer is still very much "f*CK it I'm fightin' ": laughing and the "lust of battle was on him". Then "wonder took him and a great joy" because he sees the White Tree, Arwen's standard. Eeeee!!!!
"Thus came Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elessar, Isildur's heir, out of the Paths of the Dead....and the mirth of the Rohirrim was a torrent of laughter and a flashing of swords, and the joy and wonder of the city was a music of trumpets and a ringing of bells." (The aural imagery again, reminds me of an amazing Oxonmoot presentation on 'belphonics', I think last year!). Gimli, Legolas, Elladan and Elrohir, Rangers of the North, "but before all went Aragorn with the Flame of the West, Andúril like a new fire kindled Narsil reforged as deadly as of old, and upon his brow was the star of Elendil." ...aaaaaAaaaaAaaaah....it's just all so epic I CANNOT.
The wholesome moment just snuck into the middle of battle hehehe...Éomer and Aragorn, Kings who are bros 🥰 Aragorn: "Thus we meet again, though all the hosts of Mordor lay between us...did I not say so at the Hornburg?", Éomer: "so you spoke, but hope oft deceives, and I knew not then that you were a man foresighted. Yet twice blessed is a help unlooked, and never was a meeting of friends more joyful...nor indeed more timely."
Aragorn, Éomer, and Imrahil survived the battle but "were now weary beyond joy or sorrow". And then...looking all around the Pelennor...😫😫😫. I very much appreciate how Tolkien does underscore the toll of battle; victory comes at a cost. Self-defense is necessary, but war is not "good". This is a man who experienced the Battle of the Somme and was bedridden from Trench Fever. Lost his three closest friends to war. There's a lot that could be construed as glorying battle in this ch (which produces the epic, which I'm HERE FOR 🍿) ~ this balances that, importantly, imo. Aaaand also because Tolkien, it ends in song that honors the fallen 🥺💙
