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
One of Moria’s most memorable revelations happens before Gandalf reads a single surviving line from the Book of Mazarbul. The Fellowship enters a dim chamber, sees a white stone slab illuminated by a shaft of daylight, and almost immediately learns that Balin is dead. Only afterward do they discover the battered record that explains what … Read more
When Merry rides among the Rohirrim, he hears something strangely unsettling in their speech. He cannot properly understand it, yet individual words seem familiar. The language sounds richer and stronger than the speech of the Shire, as though something half-forgotten has suddenly returned from a much older world. That moment reveals one of the most … Read more
Few moments on the Pelennor Fields feel more fiercely Rohirric than Éomer’s cry after he finds Éowyn lying among the fallen. Théoden is dying. Éowyn appears dead. The young marshal has effectively lost his king and, as far as he knows, his sister almost at once. Grief turns immediately into wrath. He calls the Riders … Read more
When Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard in Fangorn, one of the strangest things about him is not his size, his age, or even the fact that he can speak. It is the way he remembers. Treebeard does not remember the Elder Days as a sequence of kings and battles. He remembers willow-meadows, elm-woods, beech forests, … Read more
Bilbo Baggins is completely lost beneath the Misty Mountains. He has no map of the goblin tunnels. He has been separated from Gandalf and the dwarves. He does not know which direction leads toward daylight, and the creature who knows these passages better than anyone has every reason to stop him from escaping. Yet Bilbo … Read more