A green shield seems like one of the simplest images in Rohan: wood, paint, a bright device, something carried by a rider or hung ready in a hall. Yet in The Lord of the Rings, shields do more than protect the body. They quietly reveal the difference between a kingdom, a royal household, and a … Read more
The most famous escape from the Elvenking’s halls begins with an absurdly simple object: an empty wine-barrel. Bilbo Baggins has thirteen Dwarves locked in separate cells, an underground palace full of Elves around him, and no obvious route through the guarded main entrance. Then he discovers the water-gate beneath the cellars. Empty barrels are routinely … Read more
When the Rohirrim finally reach the Pelennor Fields, the reader has spent chapters feeling the approach of catastrophe. Minas Tirith has been darkened beneath Mordor’s shadow. Faramir has been wounded. Denethor has begun to despair. Gandalf stands before the broken Gate. Théoden’s riders have crossed Rohan, passed secretly through the Drúadan Forest, and arrived almost … Read more
The morning after the hobbits first sleep in Tom Bombadil’s house, rain closes around them. It is not a violent storm. The clouds gather into a grey roof, steady rain hides the Old Forest, and water begins running from the hills. Somewhere above the hobbits, Goldberry is singing. Her voice seems almost to descend with … Read more
Frodo Baggins returns to the Shire alive. The Ring is destroyed. The Nazgûl are gone. Shelob has been escaped, Sauron has fallen, and even the last violence brought into Hobbiton is eventually overcome. Yet Frodo does not simply become well. One of the quietest and most unsettling details in the closing history of the War … Read more
Of all the people who might have looked into the palantír of Orthanc, Peregrin Took seems among the least suited to confront the mind waiting on the other side. He is young, curious, frightened, and almost entirely unprepared. Yet when Pippin secretly takes the Stone from the sleeping Gandalf and looks into it, something extraordinary … Read more
When Gandalf and Pippin reached the outer defenses of Minas Tirith, they did not immediately come to the White City. First they passed through the Rammas Echor: the long wall enclosing the Pelennor Fields, built by Gondor with immense labor after Ithilien had fallen under the Shadow. Within days, that wall would be breached. Measured … Read more
When Saruman’s great host pours out of Isengard toward Rohan, the fortress behind it is left astonishingly thinly defended. Within hours, Treebeard and the Ents arrive, tear apart the ring-wall, wreck the machinery of the valley, and trap Saruman inside Orthanc. At first glance, it looks like an extraordinary military mistake. Why would a commander … Read more
At the end of the War of Wrath, Morgoth is finally captured. Angband has been broken, his armies destroyed, and the Dark Lord who once challenged the Valar has retreated into the deepest places of his fortress. He is bound again with Angainor, the chain that had restrained him once before. That detail makes what … Read more
Isildur’s curse upon the Men of the Mountains is easy to remember as a supernatural punishment: they swore to fight Sauron, broke their oath, and were condemned to remain among the living until they fulfilled it. Yet the episode becomes stranger when we look at how the curse actually works. The Dead are not simply … Read more