Now we are past the climax of LOTR, and all else that happens is anticlimax. And also many, many other things. But this was enough for my young son when I read the books to him. As far as he was concerned, LOTR was complete, and its ending satisfying – at least once Frodo and Sam had been rescued. And it can be complete for you, too, as you read this series. Although I may have a few minor things to say before this series’ real end.
So those who will, can now follow me into the final pages of LOTR. And I begin, not with the outcome of the Battle at the Black Gate, nor with the rescue, but with Sam as I left him at the end of the last piece. And I believe that here, subtly, we see the blossoming of Sam. Because here not only has his role and his speech patterns changed since the beginning, but we see others react to him differently: those who have understood what he has really done. And we see Gandalf greet him as Master Samwise, and Merry and Pippin, I believe, treat him as a full equal in the social hierarchy of the Shire, and Frodo hint at the true love and affection of equals welded into place at the Cracks of Doom.
And we see Sam react unconsciously to this by adapting himself into his new role. He is not hanging back deferentially. He is bounding all over the place, finally satisfying his boyhood curiosity about stories, in real life, not merely in books. He is, unconsciously, leading. He is an equal leader among equals, whatever the traces of past speech. He even forgets to call Pippin Mr. Pippin, before he corrects himself.
And then there is the incident at the Field of Cormallen. Where Frodo and Sam are paraded past the assembled Knights of Gondor who do not say Ni or meh, and many others, and, sure enough, they blush like crazy. Thereby proving that hobbits are English. Dreadfully English. Whatever-you-do-please-don’t-make-me-feel-embarrassed-in-public English. For can you imagine an Ammurican grown man who would react that way? No sirree bob, proud as peacocks, we would be.
And then there is the first discordant note in the triumphant symphony. Where Frodo shows an aversion to swords, and wishes Sam to retain Sting, as if Frodo had already made and executed his will and does not wish to be drawn back into life. An almost physical revulsion toward all things violent that I have never been able to fully be in his mind and appreciate, nor will I try in these pieces.
And now I reach the subject I really want to talk about in this piece, the courtship of Eowyn and Faramir. And in particular her seemingly abrupt, seemingly arbitrary, seemingly contrived and perhaps sexist change of mind at the end, from brave warrior to Earth mother. Except I want to argue that there is a possible way that this is not arbitrary at all, nor abrupt, nor contrived, nor sexist.
But before we get there, let us review the course of the courtship. It starts out in a way that would be richly comic, if the circumstances were not so tragic. Because Eowyn is not going to be stifled in bed for long, no, not she, and like Lindsay Vonn she is not going to be deterred by a minor thing like a shattering mental and physical wound from the Lord of the Nazgul. Before two days are gone, she is beating on the door of the Warden of the Houses of Healing, saying let me out of here! And he gives her a bureaucratic answer: Not my department. Whose department? Um, maybe Faramir? Take me to him!
And then Eowyn and Faramir meet, and it seems likely to me that Faramir asks himself two questions when the meeting is done. First, what we all ask upon meeting the Woman Who Does Not Fit: Who is this woman? And second, what is asked when there is the possibility of great love ahead: Where have you been all my life? Or, why does my past and present life suddenly feel incomplete without you? Is it possible that you will complete my soul?
And I would guess that, muffled as these questions are by her focus on Aragorn, Eowyn unconsciously asks herself the same questions. First, what I think we all asked when we first met Faramir in the questioning of Frodo in Ithilien: Who is this man? And second, as Eowyn glimpses his depths and nobility that no one in her life in Rohan before can match: Where have you been all my life?
And now we reach the second stage of the relationship, which contains a dangerous trap. Because Faramir betrays a strong ability to empathize, to speak to what Eowyn is thinking, to seem to read her mind. And some, I believe, go into a relationship not only seeking that ability to read one’s mind, or to do what you need without prompting as if one’s mind is read, but demand it, must have it. And the result, I believe, is long-term tragedy, because no one can live up to that kind of standard. No one. And the result is often long-term resignation, and distancing, and grievance from the one setting the standard, hurting not only their partner but themselves in their desperate need.
But Eowyn does not Fit that category either. Eowyn is self-sufficient – which does not mean that someone else would not complete her soul – and her ailment is only because she cannot envision a real future for herself. So she does not fall into this trap, and the courtship reaches its final point. And still, we have no real explanation for the abruptness of Eowyn’s change.
So consider this: In C.J. Cherryh’s novel Finity’s End, iirc, a youngster who has been living on a space station circling a planet in semi-peace is introduced into the long-lived crew of a merchant vessel which has been in the thick of a war that has gone on intermittently for decades, for hundreds of years. And he does not fit. And so the old fierce head of the ship, the captain, calls the youngster into his office, fixes him with an eagle’s eye, and says to him. Here’s the problem. You don’t fit here because you’re an outsider. But what you don’t realize is that we need you. We need you because the war is ending, and we are going to have to learn how to live in peace, which none of us has ever had to learn, and you are the only one here who has some sense of what peace might be, and how to live in that strange world called peace.
And so, concludes the fierce old man with the eagle’s eye, here’s your job on the ship. Imagine peace for us. Tell us what peace looks like.
Now consider Faramir and Eowyn. Faramir has probably been fighting for most of his life. He has lost his brother, his father, probably comrades, possibly in some senses his mother to this war. He has undergone terrible mental and physical wounds in this war. And now he faces a new world. A world of his dreams. But an alien world. A world, possibly, of peace.
And Eowyn has heard of fighting for most of her life, and has taken part in it. She has lost her father, her cousin Theodred, and her beloved uncle Theoden to this war, and probably seen some of her beloved comrades fall in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. She has undergone a terrible mental and physical wound from the Lord of the Nazgul. And now she faces a new world. An alien world. A world, possibly, of peace.
And so I think, I hope that maybe what she is saying to Faramir, what they are both saying to each other, beneath the rhetoric and the passion, is also simply this:
I love you. I trust you. Help me to imagine peace. Tell me what peace looks like.
Not abrupt, simply recognition as a final piece of the picture shifts into place in the mind. Not sexist, because equally shared in empathic love. Not contrived, but integral to their great characters. Not arbitrary or trivial, but based on profound insight.
And I like to imagine that someday, someday, they will find their answer.
In Patricia McKillip’s Hed trilogy, a young man finds out that he is the land-heir of a great and magical land, where a great war has been going on out of sight and mind for centuries. And he is caught up in this war, and then he finds the last hiding places of the suffering survivors of the first stages of that war. And they tell him that the mysterious ruler whose heir he is, as compensation for their sufferings, has promised them that the ruler’s heir will be a man of peace.
And he does not understand this, through the long struggle that follows. As he, faithful to his charge, tries always to limit the scope and suffering of the war that reaches its climax and end as he finally inherits his birthright, the ability to sense and suffer and shape every person, every animal, every bit of Nature in his realm. And when the war is over, life returns to normal, and yet he is still restless. Something is missing. And then, in a random moment, when he is listening to two farmers arguing about pigs in a remote corner of the land, the final sentence of the trilogy occurs. It says: Peace, tremulous and unexpected, sent a taproot through his heart.
And I like to imagine something like that.
I imagine that they are retired, Faramir from his long duties as a warrior and administrator in distant squabbles, Eowyn from her responsibilities as grand chatelaine and head gardener and ecologist of Ithilien, and they are seated on the porch of their estate in Emyn Arnen, basking in the late-afternoon sun, with their sons and daughters and their consorts discussing not-so-grave matters with drinks in hand among the flowers on the terrace below, and in the field below that their grandchildren squabbling happily over a game of blind man’s buff, and below that the fields and woods unrolling downward in the sunshine, down to the sparkling blue of the Anduin. And their eyes would meet, and their hands would meet. And my last sentence would be:
Peace, tremulous and unexpected, sent a taproot through their intertwined hearts.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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