The Return of the King Warfare

This oath of fealty sounds a lot like a marriage vow to us. In sickness and in health, as long as they both shall live, Denethor and Pippin are now bound by their respective roles as lord and liegeman. It sounds nice and fancy, but it has immediate consequences that are easy to forget when you hear the high falutin' language. In a city at war, Pippin just might have to lay down his life for Denethor sooner rather than later. But hey, at least, as a lord, Denethor has a personal responsibility to the men who vow to fight with him. Whatever Pippin's sacrifice might come to be, Denethor owes him. In theory.

We can tell that we are approaching the end of the The Lord of the Rings series because Tolkien is pulling back and giving us the big-picture perspective. Up until now, we have seen the individual members of the Fellowship of the Ring fighting with "orcs in the woods and the mountains," struggling with those crebain from Dunland—the "birds of evil eye"—and of course, there were the Nazgûl "even in the lanes of the Shire." But those have mostly been individual battles, powered by the personal courage of a handful of men, dwarves, elves, and hobbits. Now, Tolkien is reminding us that these smaller skirmishes have all been part of "a great war long-planned," a war that is being fought on multiple fronts but that will end soon. It's not just the great war with Sauron that has been long planned; Tolkien's own enormous narrative structure is looking towards its conclusion.

Aragorn, as the leader of the Good Side, is between a rock and a hard place. See, the thing about war is that you can't exactly plan it, let alone predict it. Aragorn knows they don't have much time, so Rohan will have to do the best they can to muster all the troops they can in the time they have. Then, no matter what, it's time for a fight. Being in tough spots like these means making tough calls, like going to the City of the Dead to bolster their ranks.

Modern warfare comes to Middle-earth. The Gondorians feel that they are safe because their city walls are thick and smooth. Who could break them? Who could scale them? But of course, they are totally misunderstanding the purpose of the orcs' siege engines. Why bother with walls at all, when they can just lob missiles inside the city and do the most damage that way? It's like the shift away from chain mail and armor once gunpowder became popular in Europe: all of the old techniques of warfare that are supposed to withstand arrows, spears, or swords don't help much when you're talking about the power of bullets or explosives. Tolkien may resist the idea that the The Lord of the Rings is an allegory for World War II (for more on that, check out our "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" section for The Two Towers). Still, the fact that the "great engines for the casting of missiles" rest in the hands of the orcs and not the good people of Gondor suggests some fairly obvious criticism on Tolkien's part of the explosiveness and damage of modern warfare.

Remember Denethor's words: "[Sauron] uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling" (5.4.113)? And Gandalf also remarks that the Lord of the Nazgûl is driving his slaves before him and avoiding the battlefield at the siege of Minas Tirith (see Book 5, Chapter 4). It seems both Denethor and Sauron like to stay away from the front lines. Here, though, we see Théoden right at the front of the Riders of Rohan, inspiring them to great feats of valor. Yet, the disadvantage of having your king on the battlefield is that he might get horribly killed by a giant, stinky Nazgûl. Maybe it's best for the kings to stay off the front lines if you're worried about their survival. But if you're worried about the survival of the cause, well then having a king up front just might prove useful in the end. After all, it's Théoden's death that leads a devastated Éowyn and Merry to defeat the Lord of the Nazgûl once and for all.

Éowyn-as-Dernhelm, driven by love for Théoden and by her own desire for fame and valor, stands tall to face the Nazgûl, demanding, "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!" (5.6.11). Merry, on the other hand, is so terrified that he cowers, shakes, and crawls away. Since Merry is the character we know the best and sympathize with the most, his horror feels perhaps more immediate than Éowyn's fierceness. This is a much more human, anti-heroic depiction of the awfulness of battle than you might expect from a novel about heroes at war. The Lord of the Rings series celebrates courage and sternness in the face of evil, but it also refuses to forget that war is always brutal, and there is always a high cost to be paid by those who fight on the good side—those like scared little Merry in this scene. It may sound awesome to stand your ground in the face of a great, stinky beast, but it's easier said than done.

Tolkien could have described the beauty or strength of the host setting out to Mordor for this last battle at the gates of Barad-dûr. Instead, he chose to view it all from the eyes of mopey, injured Merry. All Merry can think about as he watches the armies march away is that he may never see the people he loves again. This isn't about heroics and glory, folks. Instead, it's about the fear and sorrow of those whom the armies leave behind.

Aside from the fact that this passage reminds us of Sauron's great talent for twisting things to his will, we wanted to stop for a second to note that Sauron keeps slaves. We have seen evidence of this before in the chained galley slaves of the Umbar fleet at Pelargir (see Book 5, Chapter 9). And when Sam observes Faramir fighting the Southrons, he wonders if the Southrons are there by choice, "or what lies or threats had led [them] on the long march from [their] home" (The Two Towers 4.4.99). In other words, a lot of the people fighting on Sauron's side may actually be doing so against their will. So the Big Bad is forcing people to do his bidding while Aragorn is letting his guys go (in Book 5, Chapter 10). It seems like we have two very different types of combat leaders on our hands.

This squabble between the tracker and the fighter (and the self-destruction of the orcs of the Tower of Cirith Ungol) raises a question for us. If Sauron had won at the end of the The Lord of the Rings (not that he ever would, since Tolkien would never be so bleak), what kind of an empire would he have? How could he establish a victory "so complete that none can foresee the end of it while this world lasts" (5.9.61)? His soldiers kill each other all the time. They have no faith, either in each other or in their "Higher Up" (6.2.64). How can you maintain an empire, even an evil empire, in a state of constant war? This is why we say a victory by Sauron would be impossible according to the terms of The Lord of the Rings: Sauron can conquer, yes, but he cannot build or establish anything after the conquest. His servants will just squabble until they kill each other off.

One of the terrible things about Frodo's return to the Shire is precisely that these wounds—"knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden"—have left marks that aren't visible to the people around him. When Frodo gets back to the Shire, it's as if he's suffering from PTSD. He has traumatic dreams and flashbacks to Mordor, and he just can't seem to get past his experiences on the Ring quest. That's the thing: the war may be over, but its effects will never be forgotten, and that's true of all wars, right? While Frodo's particular wartime experiences are unique to Middle-earth (we don't find too many soldiers at war today being asked to chuck a gold ring into a volcano), Frodo's emotions returning to the Shire, and his difficulty rejoining regular Shire life, seem totally recognizable.