From RotK

[sian22]

I am re-reading this passage again for research and am struck again how absolutely perfect it is.  Simple but so powerful

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.

Gandalf:  End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.



Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?



Gandalf: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

[Haarajot]

Movie!verse right?


The only thing that comes close in LotR is:

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

And this is the dream in Bombadil's house:

That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind; a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.

[altariel]

The Bombadil chapters are amongst my very favourite of the book.

[adaneth]

Yes, that's the movie.

It is a very beautiful image, but in the context of the deeper mythos, it strikes me as callous if not cruel, describing to Pippin an escape mortals cannot take. (Sorry, Sian. That's how it strikes me.) That Frodo gets to travel that road is a special grace, like the return of Beren.

At the uttermost, Olorin could choose to "unhouse" himself and go back home to Valinor. Physical form is mere rainment to Ainur, so it is failure of his mission, not death, that Gandalf faces.

Sorry to be such a killjoy.

[gwynnyd]

Well, yes, callous but hardly cruel. If Pippin gets to that point, he will be dead and can't care anymore. Why not give him a bit of hope at that particular juncture?

Even Olorin doesn't know *for sure* what the ultimate fate of men consists of: Arda Healed could be in Pippin's er.. future.

[sian22]

Agreed Gwynnyd...

have found the original..and it links in a way to Altariel's fav bit w Bombadil

'Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.' ROTK They Grey Havens..

Seems they cobbled it... It is frustrating how much PJ sticks...

I don't find it callous at all. He was given Pippin hope.. that was the sense I took away. And I guess, like Boromir's final moments, I will have to accept that bit of moviecanon as a favourite over the book.

[adaneth]

But does the hope have to be based on an untruth? Men (and presumably Hobbits, since it's a big deal that Frodo gets a pass) don't travel the Straight Road: they died before there was such a thing and their bodies don't go with them, so their spirits surely have some other route to Mandos's halls.

Yes, telling pretty stories about dreadful things helps people get through. That's why we have concepts like Heaven and the Happy Hunting Ground. It's one thing if you tell someone the story if you believe it yourself; it's another if you know that's not how it works. In that case, you're being paternalistic, implying the person you're telling it to can't handle the truth. By this point in the LotR, I think Pippin deserves to be treated like the hero that he is instead of a child. Tolkien was strongly influenced by E. V. Gordon's theory of heroism (from his Introduction to Old Norse).


The Germanic literature which is so nobly represented in Icelandic was essentially heroic; that is its chief significance. The greatness of Icelandic literature lies primarily in its understanding of heroic character and the heroic view of life. This means much more than the representation of courage; the hero of this literature was not merely a courageous man, he was a man who understood the purpose of his courage. He had a very definite conception of the evil of life, and he had courage to face it and overcome it; he had a creed of no compromise with anything that gave him shame or made him a lesser man. The heroic problem of life lay primarily in the struggle for freedom of will, against the pains of the body, and the fear of death, against fate itself. The hero was in truth a champion of the free will of man against fate, which had power only over material things. He knew that he could not save his body from destruction, but he could preserve an undefeated spirit, if his will were strong enough. To yield would gain nothing, since ‘old age gives no quarter, even if spears do*, and yielding made him a lesser man; so the hero resisted to the end, and won satisfaction from fate, in being master of his life while he had it. The courage of the hero rose higher, and his spiritual energy more concentrated as the opposing forces were stronger. He might win the struggle, or he might know that it was hopeless but it was better to die resisting than to live basely.

. . .

As it happens, however, the most definite statement in Germanic literature of heroic doctrine is not in Norse but in the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon. The old retainer Byrhtwold, making his last stand, exhorts the survivors who are with him: ‘The mind must be the harder, the heart the keener, the spirit the greater, as our strength grows less.'

The chief evil in life which men had to face in those violent days was death by the sword. That is why Norse authors usually have feuds or battles as the setting of heroic story. Their motives in doing so are often misunderstood, for many critics have attributed to them a delight in battle and killing for its own sake; but, on the contrary, they saw in it the greatest evil, the one that required the most heroic power to turn into good. The authors* delight was only in the man who had this power.

Most of the sagas are tragedies, because a good death was the greatest triumph of heroic character, and only in defeat and death was all the hero’s power of resistance called into play. Indeed, most heroic literature is tragic, and most true tragedies are heroic. It is the essence of tragedy that there should be a note of triumph in the catastrophe in that the hero’s spirit remains unconquered; tragedy, too, is a version of the evil in life, and how it is overcome, though it appears to win.

The only difference in principle between the tragedy of the sagas and the tragedy of Shakespeare is that Shakespeare usually makes the disaster result from some flaw in the hero’s character; while in the sagas the disaster is inevitable simply because the hero is heroically uncompromising. Nothing could keep Signy from exacting vengeance for her father and brothers; she would go to any length, and the length she had to go to was her death.

To show the utmost of the hero, a good resistance against overpowering odds was made the characteristic situation of heroic literature — the defence of a Gunnar, or the unflinching death of a Njal. This situation had an important place even in religious belief; the gods themselves knew that they would in the end be overwhelmed by the evil powers, but they were prepared to resist to the last. Every religious-minded man of the heathen age believed that he existed for the sake of that hopeless cause, for the gods took all heroes from earth to help them in the last struggle.

The Icelandic authors of sagas usually conveyed understanding of character without the aid of the analyses of the hero’s ‘psychology’ so frequent in modern novels. They showed character dramatically, by synthesis rather than analysis, by exhibiting conduct. Probably in no other literature is conduct so carefully examined and appraised; and the basis of the valuation is not moral, but aesthetic. In no other literature there such a sense of the beauty of human conduct; indeed, the authors of Icelandic prose, with the exception of Snorri, do not seem to have cared for beauty in anything else than conduct and character. The heroes and heroines themselves had the aesthetic view of conduct; it was their chief guide, for they had a very undeveloped conception of morality, and none at all of sin.

I know this is one of those cultural divides between the past and the present. Tolkien invented hobbits to be the bridge between the bourgeois and these kinds of heroic sensibilities. I just wish fewer people used the bridge to drag the heroic into the bourgeois. The way the world is going now, we need all the heroes we can get.

[sian22]

As I understood it Qalvanda is for Men also but leads direct to Mandos' halls..

'Now living Men may not tread the swaying threads of Ilweran and few of the Eldar have the heart, yet other paths for Elves and Men to fare to Valinor are there none since those days save one alone, and it is very dark; yet is it very short, the shortest and swiftest of all roads, and very rough, for Mandos made it and Fui set it in its place. Qalvanda is it called, the Road of Death, and it leads only to the halls of Mandos and Fui. Twofold is it, and one way tread the Elves and the other the souls of Men, and never do they mingle”.' From BoLT1; “The Hiding of Valinor”:

This makes it sound as if Hobbits do not get to travel that way... I haven't heard of any examples of what he imagined for Hobbits in terms of afterlife, though they are considered mortal.

One of those oversights perhaps that the author never considered people would ask about..

I still don't consider it wrong ss to try to give someone hope if you don't know for certain. It is the intention of it.. a-I don't want this person to suffer so will try to help them regardless vs b-I don't care and you don't understand so will just say anything

In Jackson's case I suppose he also never thought about the message it sent. Gandalf's sometimes a tad violent pushing Pippin around made me furious for that same reason... treating him like a child. Gandalf who had been in the Shire more than any one in Fellowship except Strider would have known better..

What sense are you using the word bourgeois here Adaneth? Frodo was the most heroic character in the book--and a hobbit through and through.. not a bridge but an embodiment of the ideal.

[altariel]

Interesting quotation, Adaneth. To some extent, Éowyn’s story, for example, seems to me a refutation of this form of heroism, or, at least, an examination of the point where it becomes self-defeating:

Éowyn: Death!
Faramir: Sure, but now that the war is over, how about sexy funtimes with me in Ithilien instead?
Éowyn: OK.

(I do make a more elegant statement of this, in my story Love Among the Ruins. I’m a novelist, not a critic, so my ideas take story-form. There’s a reason I chose prose and not sociology post-PhD.)

This line between the heroic and the bourgeois which you rightly distinguish in The Lord of the Rings is very interesting. For me, the book is quintessentially a modern book, but one which looks to heroic and pre-modern sources for counsel and wisdom. The hobbits’ narratives, particularly Merry and Pippin, seem to me, now I think about it, a dramatization of what modern people can take from heroic literature in times of war and conflict. They come back from the war taller, bolder – but just as importantly, hobbitier. They laugh at the Rules, and they are merry. They settle down to being squires.

Some of the most touching examples of heroism in the book come from hobbits who do not go on adventures: brave Fatty Bolger starting the resistance; Lobelia S-B whacking baddies with her umberella; the Gaffer grumbling through the occupation and bringing down the house with the line about ironmongery (one of my absolute favourite lines in the book). As an aside, a lot of this, it seems to me, comes from the experience of post-Dunkirk Britain, when the civil defence forces are, for a while, armed chiefly with bread knives. What can we take from heroic literature when the Nazis are about to invade? We can take quite a lot, but we’re not heroes, we’re teachers and bank managers and butchers and housewives and people not in the first flush of youth any more, so we’ve got to take that into account too. FWIW, I would like to read more about the impact of living in wartime Britain on the writing of LotR.

The fanfiction writer, of course, might have her own agenda at work. Fanfiction as a mode seems to me uniquely suited to exploration of the psychological and the intimate, none of which have much place in Njal’s Saga. Writing Tolkien-based fanfiction places a wide range of modes at one’s disposal, which makes it such an interesting phenomenon. There are few other places where I could read a long alliterative verse mourning the death of Elfhild, and then immediately turn to read a story about Faramir and Éowyn as patients in a modern hospital playing MadLibs. I have enjoyed both immensely. (BTW, my recent story A Night Out intentionally makes heroes bourgeois, purely for cheap laughs, as I think Haarajot saw immediately!)

As for Jackson – I can see what he’s doing with that scene, and by that point in the series I am willing to take his creative decisions on their own terms and read them for what they are intended to be. So I do find that exchange very touching. But I also wish that whatever spirit had been moving him during the adaptation of FotR had continued to move him during the adaptation of TTT and RotK. 

[gwynnyd]

I agree with you , Adaneth, about the essential differences between the heroic and the current. I cannot ever see book!Gandalf saying those lines to Pippin, but for the movie!Gandalf in that particular scene, they make movie logic and therefore work.

[adaneth]

Sept 30, 2018 18:25:01 GMT -5 sian22 said:

This makes it sound as if Hobbits do not get to travel that way.

I believe that Tolkien wrote the material in The Book of Lost Tales before he famously wrote "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" in an exam book. That's the challenging part of using the whole corpus, since it was a dynamic work in progress, sometimes self-contradictory on important points. His conception of Dwarves, for instance, changed radically as he was writing The Hobbit, and then you're left with the earlier descriptions of golem-esque folk who occasionally employ Orcs as mercenaries.

I was using "bourgeois" in the Shippey sense of Bilbo as the "bourgeois burglar." I'm pressed for time so I can't go into detail just now, but if Frodo had remained "bourgeois" he could have settled down to living in the Shire after the quest was over. Let me come back to this later! Yes, I do believe there is "bourgeois" courage--that's why Gandalf sent Frodo with Thorin and Company!

[sian22]

will do.. looking forward

[Haarajot]

Sept 30, 2018 16:48:40 GMT -5 adaneth said:

Tolkien was strongly influenced by E. V. Gordon's theory of heroism (from his Introduction to Old Norse).

I stored your quote for future reverence reference, Adaneth. Thanks.

[adaneth]

While I'm dashing about, the first part of this expresses much of what I'd like to say. (The rest is interesting as well.)

Tolkien's Theory of Courage

As for Éowyn, her ride to the Pelennor and confrontation with the Witch King is pure "northern" heroism: she will be the mistress of her fate, even if it kills her. There are conditions under which life is not worth living, and so take as many of the bastards with you as you can, on the way out. It is a grim theory of living, one developed under grim conditions, where there were few alternatives (very common in the past, when human environmental and social engineering skills were less developed). Do you choose the lesser of two evils, or refuse such a choice? Christianity isn't keen on mortals deciding death is a solution, even when an individual decides it for themselves, so Tolkien had to work out how to honor the will without approving the self-murder. A delicate balancing act, which he walks to perfection, I feel, with Éowyn.

Remember Éomer riding across the Pelennor: "Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world's ending!"

They prove they have the will to resist, but Fate--which no (hu)man can conquer--has other plans for them. Éowyn "drifts" for a time, as she feels cheated of her honorable death, before she finds a new and equally honorable path. (Do you think she would have been satisfied with sexy funtimes if the Enemy had not been destroyed and her brother perished at the Black Gate? Well, maybe some on the side as she and Faramir led their band of desperate rebels, until the right moment for sacrifice came.)

Must fly! Later!

[sian22]

For those interested...  Stephen Carter's analysis of the changing model of heroism that Tolkien included amidst the classical heroic... article published in Mythlore and available open source

Faramir and the Heroic Ideal of the Twentie....pdf (361.34 KB)