We just moved, the Tanuki family did, and while we're waiting for our stuff to arrive we're sort of catching up on some movies we missed. M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening is one of them.
This is it: I'm now officially getting off the bus with this guy. I'm stubborn enough that I've stuck with him over his last three, very uneven, films on the strength of his first two. I loved Sixth Sense as much as anybody, really liked Unbreakable, had problems with Signs but was generally on board, was maybe the only person I knew besides the Mrs. who liked The Village, and don't really remember Lady in the Water. Mrs. S.T. says I hated it.
I think everybody else gave up on him with The Village; like I say, I'm stubborn. If an artist gives me pleasure I'll cut him or her a lot of slack. But with The Happening I ran out of rope (does that even rise to the level of a mixed metaphor?).
First of all, it has some of the stupidest dialogue I've ever heard in a movie - poor Marky Mark, so much the best thing about The Departed, tries desperately to believe in what he's saying, but obviously fails. John Leguizamo just looks like he's trying to get it over with. Zooey Deschanel just looks. None of the subplots work (who cares if she's being stalked? who cares if she and Marky Mark stay together?).
But what's worst is that there's absolutely no suspense. Say what you will about Shyamalan, he can usually create suspense. But here, once you figure out that The Plants Did It, you pretty much know how it has to end. That means that nothing that happens in the last hour of the movie means anything. All that business about the paranoid people shooting from the windows, and the Luddite lady with her Underground Railroad house - none of it matters. It's just filler, to make a feature-length film out of what would have been an okay half-hour Twilight Zone episode. And it feels like filler. Annoying.
Even Shyamalan's cameo (as Zooey Deschanel's off-screen stalker) is irritating. Too cute for its own good.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Appendices
I'm one of those who reads the Appendices every time I read Lord of the Rings. Partly it's because of all the background info they contain on the fictional world: the fictional world, fully fleshed out, is what I read this for, as much as the story itself.
But partly I read the Appendices because they complete the story. They have extra little bits of key narrative tucked in here and there, such as the full tale of Aragorn and Arwen's love, and further info about what the Travellers did after coming back to the Shire. But more than that, the Appendices complete the novel, in a way, by allowing the reader to immerse himself or herself fully in Middle-Earth. "The Shire has been saved," Frodo says, "but not for me." But it is saved for the reader, and in the Appendices, we get it all.
One thing that hits you as you hit the hard road of the Appendices is the framing device. After a thousand pages of Tolkien's narrative you're lucky if you can remember that he ended the Prologue with that bewildering bit about the Red Book, and the Thain's Book, and the copy in Minas Tirith, and whatnot. Fictional historiography: dry stuff.
But then you read the Appendices, and they refer you back to the Prologue, and furthermore long sections of the Appendices' account of Numenor, Arnor, Gondor, etc., are given as direct quotations from something, and you realize, oh yeah, they're from the Red Book.
Then it hits you. The Lord of the Rings itself is meant - asks you to read it as - more or less Frodo's account, reworked in Rivendell and the Shire. I mean, sure, there's that scene at the end of the story proper where Frodo gives Sam the manuscript (Peter Jackson, admirably, retained it). But for me at least, it's not until I cross over into the Appendices and those significant quotation marks that I realize that everything that's gone before is meant to be read as a paraphrase of what's supposedly in this Red Book.
And that suddenly explains what is for me one of the most conspicuous features of The Two Towers and Return of the King. This is that Tolkien employs two very different prose styles for his narration. The chapters dealing with Frodo and Sam are written in the same style as Fellowship: detailed, novelistic narration, with lots of dialogue that sounds like authentic speech. Lots of description of place and feeling. The chapters in which Frodo and Sam don't appear - i.e., the sections in Rohan and Minas Tirith - are told in a more elevated, archaic, and in fact storybook style. Description of setting is often minimal, and conversations are rendered in a fair and graceful speech that you can't imagine anyone actually using.
I used to think this was a sign of two things that became true as the book wore on: one, maybe Tolkien was getting tired and rushed; two, as the deeds became greater, he decided to treat them in more of a legendary fashion. Because that's what it feels like: like you're listening to a storyteller. As opposed to the Frodo sections, which feel like you're reading a book.
But now - I don't know if this is what Tolkien intended, but I do think it fits - it seems to me that this stylistic divergence fits the frame device. The Rohan and Minas Tirith sections are things that Frodo didn't witness firsthand, things he learned about only later, through people telling him tales. It's only appropriate that the narration become more storybook-like here.
The proof, I think, is that the tone becomes most campfire-taleteller-like in scenes in which neither Merry nor Pippin are present. Exhibit A, I would say, is the first half of the chapter called "The Steward and the King." This is the part that tells of Faramir and Eowyn falling in love in the Houses of Healing. The tone here is perhaps the most elevated - courtly is the right word - of any section; you could almost be reading Malory. In terms of narrative, the tone actually weakens it, I think, because you can't really believe it as a love story in a novel, not the way you can believe, say, the courtship (deftly suggested through a minimum of details) of Sam and Rosie.
But if you think of it as a retelling of a retelling of a retelling of events that only the two principals really knew about (think of how your grandkids, or maybe your nieces, might one day tell the story of your own courtship), it becomes quite a charming passage, and a key part of the grand denouement of the novel.
But partly I read the Appendices because they complete the story. They have extra little bits of key narrative tucked in here and there, such as the full tale of Aragorn and Arwen's love, and further info about what the Travellers did after coming back to the Shire. But more than that, the Appendices complete the novel, in a way, by allowing the reader to immerse himself or herself fully in Middle-Earth. "The Shire has been saved," Frodo says, "but not for me." But it is saved for the reader, and in the Appendices, we get it all.
One thing that hits you as you hit the hard road of the Appendices is the framing device. After a thousand pages of Tolkien's narrative you're lucky if you can remember that he ended the Prologue with that bewildering bit about the Red Book, and the Thain's Book, and the copy in Minas Tirith, and whatnot. Fictional historiography: dry stuff.
But then you read the Appendices, and they refer you back to the Prologue, and furthermore long sections of the Appendices' account of Numenor, Arnor, Gondor, etc., are given as direct quotations from something, and you realize, oh yeah, they're from the Red Book.
Then it hits you. The Lord of the Rings itself is meant - asks you to read it as - more or less Frodo's account, reworked in Rivendell and the Shire. I mean, sure, there's that scene at the end of the story proper where Frodo gives Sam the manuscript (Peter Jackson, admirably, retained it). But for me at least, it's not until I cross over into the Appendices and those significant quotation marks that I realize that everything that's gone before is meant to be read as a paraphrase of what's supposedly in this Red Book.
And that suddenly explains what is for me one of the most conspicuous features of The Two Towers and Return of the King. This is that Tolkien employs two very different prose styles for his narration. The chapters dealing with Frodo and Sam are written in the same style as Fellowship: detailed, novelistic narration, with lots of dialogue that sounds like authentic speech. Lots of description of place and feeling. The chapters in which Frodo and Sam don't appear - i.e., the sections in Rohan and Minas Tirith - are told in a more elevated, archaic, and in fact storybook style. Description of setting is often minimal, and conversations are rendered in a fair and graceful speech that you can't imagine anyone actually using.
I used to think this was a sign of two things that became true as the book wore on: one, maybe Tolkien was getting tired and rushed; two, as the deeds became greater, he decided to treat them in more of a legendary fashion. Because that's what it feels like: like you're listening to a storyteller. As opposed to the Frodo sections, which feel like you're reading a book.
But now - I don't know if this is what Tolkien intended, but I do think it fits - it seems to me that this stylistic divergence fits the frame device. The Rohan and Minas Tirith sections are things that Frodo didn't witness firsthand, things he learned about only later, through people telling him tales. It's only appropriate that the narration become more storybook-like here.
The proof, I think, is that the tone becomes most campfire-taleteller-like in scenes in which neither Merry nor Pippin are present. Exhibit A, I would say, is the first half of the chapter called "The Steward and the King." This is the part that tells of Faramir and Eowyn falling in love in the Houses of Healing. The tone here is perhaps the most elevated - courtly is the right word - of any section; you could almost be reading Malory. In terms of narrative, the tone actually weakens it, I think, because you can't really believe it as a love story in a novel, not the way you can believe, say, the courtship (deftly suggested through a minimum of details) of Sam and Rosie.
But if you think of it as a retelling of a retelling of a retelling of events that only the two principals really knew about (think of how your grandkids, or maybe your nieces, might one day tell the story of your own courtship), it becomes quite a charming passage, and a key part of the grand denouement of the novel.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Shelob and Galadriel
Isn’t there something interesting about how the first two volumes of an epic famously poor in female characters both feature strong, even primordial female presences at the height of the action?
The visit to Lothlorien and the encounter with Galadriel isn’t quite the climax of Fellowship, not the way the battle with Shelob is the climax of The Two Towers, but it’s close enough, I think, to invite us to compare the two characters.
Here we go:
Galadriel and Shelob are both female. Undeniably: Shelob’s feminine nature is adumbrated even in her name. She-lob, she-spider (even if this etymology is spurious according to Tolkien’s scheme, I have no doubt it’s what he had in mind).
They both come from outside Middle-Earth: Galadriel came with the rest of the elves, while Shelob came from “the Land of the Elves in the West” (p. 707). Both are beings of great power, essentially immortal; we’re not even sure if Sam’s attack kills Shelob.
Both now rule over their own pocket of Middle-Earth (Lothlorien; Cirith Ungol), which responds sympathetically to their psychic power – Galadriel’s calm, Shelob’s malice. Galadriel’s light, Shelob’s dark.
And of course each represents a pole of morality: Galadriel is one of many exemplars in the novel of pure, or as nearly pure as can be imagined good; one of many but probably the most memorable, because least challenged and most fleetingly glimpsed. Shelob is presented as pure evil, worse in her own way than even Sauron, if not as powerful.
What does this mean, this locating of two poles of mysticized femininity at the ends of the first two installments of the novel? I don’t know. But at the very least it’s a powerful parallel, an effective unifying feature.
Part of why I don't know what it means is because there's no obvious follow-up in the third volume. Several female characters make an appearance in Return of the King, ranging from the majestic Eowyn to the homey Rosie Cotton. But none of them have nearly the presence, much less the elemental overtones, of Galadriel and Shelob.
This could be intentional, as the extended ending, at least, of the third book is all about the reestablishing of normalcy, or rather the establishing of a new, post-Elven standard of normalcy, and it could be that Tolkien wants us to see in Rosie an earthy femininity that stands as a pole, in its own way, to the two kinds of mystical femininity that overshadow the ends of the first two books.
Buried at the very end of the appendices, we find Tolkien noting (p. 1109) that he has anglicized the hobbit names that appear in the book, because "in hobbit-names a was a masculine ending, and o and e were feminine." This means, I suppose, but Frodo's real name was Froda.
Does it also mean something more, more than Tolkien's inscrutable linguistic groundwork? Tolkien's right: to the English speaker's ear, Froda sounds like a female. Are we here, at the end of all things, meant to have a moment of confusion, in which we see, ever so faintly, all the male hobbits whose adventures we have followed for a thousand pages, not as males, but as females? After all, hobbits are full of traditionally-conceived female virtues such as love of hearth and home, cooking and gardening - as opposed to forestry - they're not Ents, but Entwives. Certainly the hobbits aren't the lost Entwives per se, but maybe, just maybe, they're Tolkien's representatives of an unmystical, earthly, healthy femininity.
The visit to Lothlorien and the encounter with Galadriel isn’t quite the climax of Fellowship, not the way the battle with Shelob is the climax of The Two Towers, but it’s close enough, I think, to invite us to compare the two characters.
Here we go:
Galadriel and Shelob are both female. Undeniably: Shelob’s feminine nature is adumbrated even in her name. She-lob, she-spider (even if this etymology is spurious according to Tolkien’s scheme, I have no doubt it’s what he had in mind).
They both come from outside Middle-Earth: Galadriel came with the rest of the elves, while Shelob came from “the Land of the Elves in the West” (p. 707). Both are beings of great power, essentially immortal; we’re not even sure if Sam’s attack kills Shelob.
Both now rule over their own pocket of Middle-Earth (Lothlorien; Cirith Ungol), which responds sympathetically to their psychic power – Galadriel’s calm, Shelob’s malice. Galadriel’s light, Shelob’s dark.
And of course each represents a pole of morality: Galadriel is one of many exemplars in the novel of pure, or as nearly pure as can be imagined good; one of many but probably the most memorable, because least challenged and most fleetingly glimpsed. Shelob is presented as pure evil, worse in her own way than even Sauron, if not as powerful.
What does this mean, this locating of two poles of mysticized femininity at the ends of the first two installments of the novel? I don’t know. But at the very least it’s a powerful parallel, an effective unifying feature.
Part of why I don't know what it means is because there's no obvious follow-up in the third volume. Several female characters make an appearance in Return of the King, ranging from the majestic Eowyn to the homey Rosie Cotton. But none of them have nearly the presence, much less the elemental overtones, of Galadriel and Shelob.
This could be intentional, as the extended ending, at least, of the third book is all about the reestablishing of normalcy, or rather the establishing of a new, post-Elven standard of normalcy, and it could be that Tolkien wants us to see in Rosie an earthy femininity that stands as a pole, in its own way, to the two kinds of mystical femininity that overshadow the ends of the first two books.
Buried at the very end of the appendices, we find Tolkien noting (p. 1109) that he has anglicized the hobbit names that appear in the book, because "in hobbit-names a was a masculine ending, and o and e were feminine." This means, I suppose, but Frodo's real name was Froda.
Does it also mean something more, more than Tolkien's inscrutable linguistic groundwork? Tolkien's right: to the English speaker's ear, Froda sounds like a female. Are we here, at the end of all things, meant to have a moment of confusion, in which we see, ever so faintly, all the male hobbits whose adventures we have followed for a thousand pages, not as males, but as females? After all, hobbits are full of traditionally-conceived female virtues such as love of hearth and home, cooking and gardening - as opposed to forestry - they're not Ents, but Entwives. Certainly the hobbits aren't the lost Entwives per se, but maybe, just maybe, they're Tolkien's representatives of an unmystical, earthly, healthy femininity.
Friday, July 24, 2009
John Dawson, R.I.P.
I'm a longtime Deadhead, but I've only recently started to get into the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Kind of a country-rock Dead alter-ego during a period when, on the one hand, the Dead were already pretty drunk on country-rock and, on the other hand, most of the SF bands were dissolving into loose agglomerations of fluid membership (otherwise known as creative communes), the NRPS quickly took on an identity of their own, although they'd always be pretty indelibly linked with the Dead.
Anyway, John Dawson, founding member of the NRPS, died the other day. The Dead's own website eulogizes him better than I could.
Here's my current favorite song by NRPS, with Dawon singing. It's an obvious choice, but an irresistible one. One of the better drug-smuggling hippie songs I can think of (along with this one).
Anyway, John Dawson, founding member of the NRPS, died the other day. The Dead's own website eulogizes him better than I could.
Here's my current favorite song by NRPS, with Dawon singing. It's an obvious choice, but an irresistible one. One of the better drug-smuggling hippie songs I can think of (along with this one).
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Choices of Master Samwise
As I noted, each of the two sections of The Two Towers begins with the leader of that section (Aragorn in the first section and Frodo in the second) lamenting the fact that all of his choices have been wrong. “All that I do goes amiss,” says Aragorn, as the weight of his responsibility for the Company in Gandalf’s absence, and then the Ring-bearer’s, sinks upon him; “All my choices have proved ill,” laments Frodo, as the weight of his responsibility for the Ring, now that Gandalf is gone and Frodo himself has left Aragorn and the rest behind, sinks upon him.
Note, then, how The Two Towers ends: with a chapter called “The Choices of Master Samwise.” In which Frodo for the time being has failed in his stewardship of the Ring – outrunning Sam’s protection of him, Frodo has been stung by the giant primordial spider Shelob. Sam finds him and thinks he’s dead; we’ll later learn he’s not, but Sam doesn’t know this.
Sam has to choose: stay by his master’s side and defend/avenge his corpse, or take up the Ring and try to complete the quest on his own.
Sam, it’s important to remember, has never really been a free agent, not in the same way Frodo is. Sam is a servant, not quite indentured but still bound by tradition and social station to serve his master. He seldom acts for himself, and now he has to.
The chapter title refers to “Choices” in the plural, and of course he makes many decisions along the way, but I think it also refers to the fact that he makes the same decision several times, because he doesn’t have the strength to stick with what he’s decided. He knows right away what he has to do: “I’ve got to go on” (p. 714). But after he’s prepared Frodo’s body to be left alone, Sam revisits his decision: “in his heart keeping a debate” (p. 714). He finally arrives – again – at the conclusion that he has to take the Ring and try to finish the Quest himself, and duly takes the Ring.
But almost immediately he has second – third? – thoughts. “‘Have I got it wrong?’ he muttered. ‘What ought I to have done?’” (p. 716). As the narration points out, to strike out on his own, to assume his master’s responsibilities (and possessions) is “altogether against the grain of his nature” (p. 716).
But still he goes on. Three times now he’s made the same decision: to try to finish the quest himself. But then – then he puts on the Ring, overhears orcs finding Frodo’s body, and “he flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them” (p. 718). He goes back to Frodo’s body to defend it against the orcs.
His conclusion at this point is interesting: he knows this is the wrong thing to do, but he also believes it’s the only thing he can do. “‘I can’t help it. My place is by Mr. Frodo. They must understand that – Elrond and the Council, and the great Lord and Ladies with all their wisdom. Their plans have gone wrong’” (p. 718).
Again the emphasis on plans, choices, deeds going amiss. Here, though, the speaker isn’t talking about his own intentions going wrong, but those of others; which go wrong because he can’t carry them out. He believes he’s failing others, but only because he belatedly decides that to serve them he’d have to fail in his duty to his master, which he can’t do.
What’s going on here? First of all, I think that the earlier emphases on choices going wrong pays off here. Aragorn’s comments remind us that he’s in charge, and has been since Gandalf's fall; Frodo’s comment, echoing Aragorn’s, helps us realize that for the first time since the Quest began, really, Frodo is in a position of leadership too, forced to make decisions and experience their consequences. Now, at the end of the book, the emphasis on Sam’s choices, and the way his dilemma echoes Aragorn’s and Frodo’s (which way to go?), indicates that the role of leader has devolved upon Sam.
And what of his choices? In fact he does choose correctly, even if he comes to a fork in the road and takes both paths. By first (and second and third) choosing to take the Ring upon himself, he removes it from the path of the orcs who would surely have overpowered him and captured it had he simply stayed to defend Frodo’s corpse. His decision to continue the Quest at this crucial moment saves the day.
But he never could have finished it alone: he’s right to perceive that his role is to support Frodo, and that without Frodo he’s not much good. So he goes back, and it’s good that he does: he eventually rescues Frodo and together, they finish the Quest. He was right to choose to complete the Quest on his own, and he was right to rethink that choice and go back for Frodo. And, in his humility, he doesn’t quite realize that this tricky alternation of decisiveness and doubt has led him in just the right direction.
This is Tolkien’s irony. Heroism seldom looks like it. But even just attempting to do good may do some good. Despite appearances, it's a rather hopeful book.
Note, then, how The Two Towers ends: with a chapter called “The Choices of Master Samwise.” In which Frodo for the time being has failed in his stewardship of the Ring – outrunning Sam’s protection of him, Frodo has been stung by the giant primordial spider Shelob. Sam finds him and thinks he’s dead; we’ll later learn he’s not, but Sam doesn’t know this.
Sam has to choose: stay by his master’s side and defend/avenge his corpse, or take up the Ring and try to complete the quest on his own.
Sam, it’s important to remember, has never really been a free agent, not in the same way Frodo is. Sam is a servant, not quite indentured but still bound by tradition and social station to serve his master. He seldom acts for himself, and now he has to.
The chapter title refers to “Choices” in the plural, and of course he makes many decisions along the way, but I think it also refers to the fact that he makes the same decision several times, because he doesn’t have the strength to stick with what he’s decided. He knows right away what he has to do: “I’ve got to go on” (p. 714). But after he’s prepared Frodo’s body to be left alone, Sam revisits his decision: “in his heart keeping a debate” (p. 714). He finally arrives – again – at the conclusion that he has to take the Ring and try to finish the Quest himself, and duly takes the Ring.
But almost immediately he has second – third? – thoughts. “‘Have I got it wrong?’ he muttered. ‘What ought I to have done?’” (p. 716). As the narration points out, to strike out on his own, to assume his master’s responsibilities (and possessions) is “altogether against the grain of his nature” (p. 716).
But still he goes on. Three times now he’s made the same decision: to try to finish the quest himself. But then – then he puts on the Ring, overhears orcs finding Frodo’s body, and “he flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them” (p. 718). He goes back to Frodo’s body to defend it against the orcs.
His conclusion at this point is interesting: he knows this is the wrong thing to do, but he also believes it’s the only thing he can do. “‘I can’t help it. My place is by Mr. Frodo. They must understand that – Elrond and the Council, and the great Lord and Ladies with all their wisdom. Their plans have gone wrong’” (p. 718).
Again the emphasis on plans, choices, deeds going amiss. Here, though, the speaker isn’t talking about his own intentions going wrong, but those of others; which go wrong because he can’t carry them out. He believes he’s failing others, but only because he belatedly decides that to serve them he’d have to fail in his duty to his master, which he can’t do.
What’s going on here? First of all, I think that the earlier emphases on choices going wrong pays off here. Aragorn’s comments remind us that he’s in charge, and has been since Gandalf's fall; Frodo’s comment, echoing Aragorn’s, helps us realize that for the first time since the Quest began, really, Frodo is in a position of leadership too, forced to make decisions and experience their consequences. Now, at the end of the book, the emphasis on Sam’s choices, and the way his dilemma echoes Aragorn’s and Frodo’s (which way to go?), indicates that the role of leader has devolved upon Sam.
And what of his choices? In fact he does choose correctly, even if he comes to a fork in the road and takes both paths. By first (and second and third) choosing to take the Ring upon himself, he removes it from the path of the orcs who would surely have overpowered him and captured it had he simply stayed to defend Frodo’s corpse. His decision to continue the Quest at this crucial moment saves the day.
But he never could have finished it alone: he’s right to perceive that his role is to support Frodo, and that without Frodo he’s not much good. So he goes back, and it’s good that he does: he eventually rescues Frodo and together, they finish the Quest. He was right to choose to complete the Quest on his own, and he was right to rethink that choice and go back for Frodo. And, in his humility, he doesn’t quite realize that this tricky alternation of decisiveness and doubt has led him in just the right direction.
This is Tolkien’s irony. Heroism seldom looks like it. But even just attempting to do good may do some good. Despite appearances, it's a rather hopeful book.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Catwoman
No, not Halle Berry's Catwoman: that was, erm, disappointing. I'm talking about Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, in Batman Returns. Not as good a movie as Tim Burton's first Batman, but a more Tim Burton movie, and that's not a bad thing. To fill Jack Nicholson's shoes he had to have two villains; Penguin in all his mad tragedy and grotesque venality, and Catwoman. The result was confused drama (so of course they replicated the pattern in the next two movies in the franchise: talk about your diminishing returns).
I don't know much about the character of Catwoman in the comics. But Michelle Pfeiffer: this is silver screen immortality. She nails the sexy: "Meow," she says, and packs in the whole cinematic lineage of femmes fatales. She nails the mousy of the pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle: "Hi, honey - I'm home. Oh, I forgot, I'm not married." (I used to quote that to myself for years, until I got married.) And she nails the Working Girl-era feminist subtext beautifully. Forget all that Dasani mumbo-jumbo about mystic cat ladies. "Meow," indeed.
This Catwoman, now that I think about it, is an early version of the Tim Burton heroine: strong, sexy, and strange-bordering-on-macabre. Think Katrina Van Tassel, Ari, Emily the Corpse Bride, Mrs. Lovett.
I don't know much about the character of Catwoman in the comics. But Michelle Pfeiffer: this is silver screen immortality. She nails the sexy: "Meow," she says, and packs in the whole cinematic lineage of femmes fatales. She nails the mousy of the pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle: "Hi, honey - I'm home. Oh, I forgot, I'm not married." (I used to quote that to myself for years, until I got married.) And she nails the Working Girl-era feminist subtext beautifully. Forget all that Dasani mumbo-jumbo about mystic cat ladies. "Meow," indeed.
This Catwoman, now that I think about it, is an early version of the Tim Burton heroine: strong, sexy, and strange-bordering-on-macabre. Think Katrina Van Tassel, Ari, Emily the Corpse Bride, Mrs. Lovett.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Aragorn and Frodo in The Two Towers
"Alas! An ill fate is on me this day, and all that I do goes amiss." So says Aragorn on the first page of The Two Towers (p. 403). He's lost Frodo, and while he's searching for the missing hobbit, he hears Boromir's horn and realize that other members of the Fellowship are under attack. On the next page, after seeing Boromir draw his last breath, Aragorn repeats his lament: "All that I have done today has gone amiss." The formulation is striking enough to stick in the reader's memory. Not "I have erred," or "I made the wrong decisions," but "all that I have done has gone amiss." Is Aragorn expressing himself this way to evade responsibility for bad choices, or to correctly identify a malign influence on his fortunes? Maybe both. At the end of the chapter (p. 409) he seems to recognize the roles of both his will and blind luck, when he says, "And now may I make a right choice, and change the evil fate of this unhappy day!"
Fate vs. free will, as an explanation for bad happenings. That may be what Tolkien's getting at with this wording. But I also think he's just trying to get us to remember this scene. Why? Because The Two Towers is such a bifurcated book. The story splits into two when Frodo and Sam take off on their own, but rather than intercut between their narrative and that of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas (as Peter Jackson does so masterfully in the films), Tolkien spends the first half of this second book following Aragorn and company exclusively. It's not until the second half that we rejoin Frodo and Sam, and then we follow them exclusively.
And when we rejoin Frodo, what do we find him saying, almost immediately (p. 590)? "All my choices have proved ill." This isn't happening precisely simultaneously with Aragorn's laments - a little time has passed by now since Frodo and Sam left Rauros - but it's close enough. The similarity in sentiment, if not wording - the idea that one's best intentions are being thwarted - reminds us of Aragorn, and that in turn serves to remind us that, in shifting to Frodo's story, we're traveling back in time several days. I imagine Tolkien realized that his decision not to intercut the two stories (after all, in the first half of the book he does some intercutting, switching between Aragorn and co. and Merry and Pippin) was bound to create an odd experience for the reader, and he did what he could to remind us, despite the time dislocation, that these storylines are parallel. This doubling of sentiment is part of that effort (along with Frodo and Sam seeing Nazgul fly overhead, Nazgul that Aragorn and co. will soon see).
The doubling of sentiment also subtly equates Aragorn and Frodo. When the company was whole, Frodo, though Ring-bearer, was a follower; first of Gandalf, then of Aragorn. Now Aragorn leads only two followers, while Frodo leads a party of his own, although he only has one follower. Furthermore, Aragorn has the right of leadership due to his royal lineage; Frodo only has the Ring, and his social status as Sam's superior. Nevertheless, he's now called upon to lead: his choices, all he does, now matter. If they go ill, amiss, there are serious consequences.
Fate vs. free will, as an explanation for bad happenings. That may be what Tolkien's getting at with this wording. But I also think he's just trying to get us to remember this scene. Why? Because The Two Towers is such a bifurcated book. The story splits into two when Frodo and Sam take off on their own, but rather than intercut between their narrative and that of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas (as Peter Jackson does so masterfully in the films), Tolkien spends the first half of this second book following Aragorn and company exclusively. It's not until the second half that we rejoin Frodo and Sam, and then we follow them exclusively.
And when we rejoin Frodo, what do we find him saying, almost immediately (p. 590)? "All my choices have proved ill." This isn't happening precisely simultaneously with Aragorn's laments - a little time has passed by now since Frodo and Sam left Rauros - but it's close enough. The similarity in sentiment, if not wording - the idea that one's best intentions are being thwarted - reminds us of Aragorn, and that in turn serves to remind us that, in shifting to Frodo's story, we're traveling back in time several days. I imagine Tolkien realized that his decision not to intercut the two stories (after all, in the first half of the book he does some intercutting, switching between Aragorn and co. and Merry and Pippin) was bound to create an odd experience for the reader, and he did what he could to remind us, despite the time dislocation, that these storylines are parallel. This doubling of sentiment is part of that effort (along with Frodo and Sam seeing Nazgul fly overhead, Nazgul that Aragorn and co. will soon see).
The doubling of sentiment also subtly equates Aragorn and Frodo. When the company was whole, Frodo, though Ring-bearer, was a follower; first of Gandalf, then of Aragorn. Now Aragorn leads only two followers, while Frodo leads a party of his own, although he only has one follower. Furthermore, Aragorn has the right of leadership due to his royal lineage; Frodo only has the Ring, and his social status as Sam's superior. Nevertheless, he's now called upon to lead: his choices, all he does, now matter. If they go ill, amiss, there are serious consequences.
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