🦋 Frodo and Sam and Sméagol
I am finding book IV of The Lord of the Rings, the story (so far) of Frodo, Sam and Sméagol journeying towards Mordor, to be the most compelling reading of the first two volumes. I'm really tuned in to each of the three characters and sensitive to what's happening with them. In most of the rest of the book I have been liking it more as a visual experience -- a painting of words -- than as a story. I am very much in awe of Tolkien's ability to create a world, even if the story is not always making it for me -- this is making me feel good about the idea of reading the Silmarillion next, which I understand to be mostly world-creation rather than story. I found this dialogue between Frodo and Faramir (at the end of Chapter 6) very moving -- suddenly this style of writing dialogue, which has been seeming very stilted to me, is making sense:
‘...Do not approach their citadel. ...It is a place of sleepless malice, full of lidless eyes. Do not go that way!’
"But where else will you direct me?" said Frodo. "You cannot yourself, you say, guide me to the mountains, nor over them. But over the mountains I am bound, by solemn undertaking to the Council to find a way or perish in the seeking. And if I turn back, refusing the road in its bitter end, where then shall I go among Elves or Men? Would you have me come to Gondor with this Thing, the Thing that drove your brother mad with desire? What spell would it work in Minas Tirith? Shall there be two cities of Minas Morgul, grinning at each other across a dead land filled with rottenness?" "I would not have it so," said Faramir. "Then what would you have me do?" "I know not. Only I would not have you go to death or to torment. And I do not think that Mithrandir would have chosen this way." "Yet since he is gone, I must take such paths as I can find. And there is no time for long searching."
Some bits of the language in the book are coming back to me from my previous reading of it. I seem to remember that when I read Chapter 9 of book III, "Flotsam and Jetsam", that was the first time I had ever seen those terms, and I looked them up in the dictionary and endeavored to throw them into conversation for the next little while. (If memory serves the distinction is that flotsam is wreckage floating away from the wrecked ship, where jetsam is wreckage that was jettisoned from the ship prior to its sinking.) I remember the name "Morgul" but thought somehow it was the name of an evil character or species, not part of an evil city's name... Either way it is certainly a bad-sounding handle.
posted evening of Saturday, April 18th, 2009
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"Morgul" is an elvish word meaning "evil magic," if I recall correctly.
posted afternoon of April 21st, 2009 by EJ
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