And now we come to the Chapter beginning with the sad death of Denethor, and ending in the House of Healing. And the healing of Faramir. And Eowyn. And Merry.
I will add brief thoughts here. No grand pronouncements compared to the wonderful prose.
Has anyone noticed that the relationship between Pippin and Denethor is oddly similar to that between Sam and Frodo? Sam and Pippin must both deal with the descent of their Masters into acts of seeming madness and despair. In his way, Pippin cares about Denethor and wishes to help him, although certainly not to the impassioned extent of Sam’s devotion to Frodo. But what do you do when the pride of the person you care for prevents you from helping them as they need? At least Sam never had to deal with that with regard to helping Frodo.
I think that often readers often overestimate the effects of healing Faramir, and underestimate the effects of all the healings Aragorn did after Merry, on Aragorn’s popularity in Minas Tirith. Think of it this way: the effects of the Shadow on the population of Minas Tirith besieged was pretty much universal. Granted, it was strongest on the fighters; but given that we are all within five degrees of separation of Kevin Bacon, it is likely that just about everyone in Minas Tirith knew someone who knew someone who was sick and in the Houses of Healing.
And think how very extraordinary this action of Aragorn’s was. To have a great hope for the future show up and save Minas Tirith was one thing; to go ahead and help heal Faramir was icing on the cake; but to have that hero save your kin, and the kin of your friends, right after the battle – well, I would have voted for the guy based on that alone. You tell me how many heroes of our world have done that: have fought and then have become surgeons.
And finally, there’s the mystery of Faramir. Think of the description of Faramir’s healing. At first, Aragorn calls out to him, as if Faramir is lost in the landscape of near death and Aragorn cannot find him. Then comes the breathing of the infusion of athelas, and Faramir immediately wakes up, and his eyes immediately fill up with recognition of Aragorn, and love, and eagerness to serve.
Now, we know from the last Book that Faramir knows all about Aragorn from Frodo. But he does not know Aragorn by sight. And Eomer, who likewise gets a revelation of the grandeur of Aragorn back in Book 3, does not in the moment show anything like the devotion and eagerness to serve of Faramir. All in all, it seems to me too abrupt. Too seemingly magical compared to Tolkien’s usual ambiguity.
I have no good explanation for this; but I can say what it reminds me of: Jesus’ call to his disciples. My lord, you called; I come. I wonder if this is a place where Tolkien’s Christianity obtrudes with special force into a subcreated world supposedly devoid of purely theological elements. In effect, it seems to me, Faramir is acting like Aragorn’s disciple.
I will add one other element of Aragorn’s character here, simply because I can’t think where else to put it: Aragorn the prophet, Aragorn the oracle.
This is a characteristic that seems almost unique to Aragorn. Not quite unique; even common soldiers get flashes of prescience, as when Hama says on the road to Helm’s Deep, as for me, I will wait until I see Gandalf again, and his companion says, maybe you will wait long, and then … But most of the pronouncements like that seem to be associated with Aragorn.
Now, many pages is too short a span to discuss the ins and outs of prophecies and oracles, in our world and the world of fantasy fiction, and the role they play in a story. But what I can say, here, is that they have two key characteristics: ambiguity and indefiniteness as to when the prophecy will be fulfilled. Of course, in the real world, some prophecies never get fulfilled, unless you believe that somehow, someday, Merlin will be reborn and save the Welsh (cf. Henry II of England and his invasion of Wales as described in Costain’s books on the Plantagenets).
But I think that what we are meant to understand is that these prophecies, including the ones that Aragorn himself voices, are the final links in a chain of prophecies that have come down to him from Malbeth the Seer, from (iirc) Arvedui Last-King, from his mother, from Galadriel, from his ancestral heritage that includes an ability to prophecy correctly, and therefore he is like a person filled to the brim with past and potential prophecies, all of which will come to fruition right now.
And this gives the story an air of completion, a sense of “Oh, now I see how everything fits together”. Which is, in fact, what the Gods’ perception of the Music of the Ainur as the story of the world unfolds is like. So if we understand that Aragorn is in some sense the personification of the best of Man, the one Man in history who rejects that fragment of Morgoth within him all his life, including the temptation of the Ring, we can see that in some sense, the completion of these prophecies is the Third Music of the Ainur at work, to the Gods, and to us – the combination of the music of Man and the cacophony of evil in which the music of good turns that very cacophony into something profound and inspiring.
And we can see Aragorn as somehow more than Aragorn, as a figure that holds and beams forth prophecies and their fulfilment as a High Elf holds and exudes fea, spirit. Who redefines our understanding of the working of the world as a tractor’s grooved tires leave patterns all the way across the muddy fields of history.
On the other hand, he has one hilarious prophecy in the next Chapter where he says to Anduril: “you shall not be sheathed until the last battle.” We know he can’t hand Anduril to anyone else; so what is he going to doin the meantime, walk around constantly holding it? Sleeping with it in his arms? Waking up every morning to cuts all over his hands as if he’d been shaving them? Come on …
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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