Sir Gawain & the Green Knight/Pearl/Sir Orfeo, J.R.R. Tolkien

6 stars

First Sentence: When the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy,
and the fortress fell in flame to firebrands and ashes,
the traitor who the contrivance of treason there fashioned
was tried for his treachery, the most true upon earth—
it was Aeneas the noble and his renowned kindred
who then laid under them lands, and lords became
of well-nigh all the wealth in the Western Isles.

Thoughts: Tolkien gave the world two gifts. The first was as the father of modern fantasy, and the second was in translating and sharing the medieval literature that inspired him to create his own world. Of course, these poems were published after his death by his son Christopher,* but he intended to publish them when he finished fiddling with them.

Sir Orfeo is a medieval English retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Euryidice. In this version, Queen Heurodis is kidnapped by the King of Faerie right under Orfeo’s nose. He goes on a quest to find her, and this time remembers not to turn around before they return to the real world. I love a happy ending.

Pearl is an allegorical poem. The narrator is distraught after the death of his two-year-old daughter Margery (Pearl). He’s crying over her grave when he sees a heavenly light. His daughter appears before him decked in pearls. They have a dialogue over purity and Heaven and all that good stuff. The narrator doesn’t want Pearl to leave him again, so she lets him follow her to the outskirts of Heaven. He gets a glimpse of the life to come, but when he tries to go in he’s thrown back to Earth.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the most famous of the poems. It’s been fully accepted into the Canon and is taught in school, which makes me wonder if the version I read in high school was Tolkien’s. Sneaky way to get into the curriculum, Professor. I’ve always loved this story and its version of Gawain which is much better than the Gawain in Malory-based Arthurian legend.

We all know the story of how the Green Knight showed up at Arthur’s Christmas feast and asked someone to chop his head off and Gawain did it and the knight picked up his head and told Gawain to meet him next Christmas and he would exchange a blow for a blow. Then Gawain goes on his journey and ends up at a castle with a very hospitable host and hostess. The host goes hunting for three days while the hostess flirts with Gawain, and at the end of the day Gawain and the host exchange what they gained. Except Gawain doesn’t give him the green girdle the hostess gives him so when he meets the Green Knight he gets a cut on his neck for being dishonest.

That’s all well and good, but the thing about literature, real Literature, is that it’s a living being that can be interpreted and re-interpreted. Which is a roundabout way of saying that this poem inspired what is probably my favorite movie of this century, The Green Knight. It is everything I ever wanted in a movie. If you haven’t seen it, you absolutely must.

*I appreciate Christopher Tolkien’s work sharing his father’s unpublished works but I think he was taking it too far near the end. I half-expected him to publish The Annotated To-Do Lists of J.R.R. Tolkien before he died.

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

5 stars

First Sentence: Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf’s cloak.

Thoughts: Remember that crystal ball Wormtongue threw at Gandalf in the last book? That was a palantír, one of the seeing-stones of Gondor that Sauron corrupted. Pippin looked into it and accidentally announced his presence to Sauron, so Gandalf snatched him up and took him to Gondor so Sauron would be distracted from the armies preparing to march on his lands. Once in Minas Tirith, Pippin quickly won over Denethor, the depressed Steward of Gondor, and ended up becoming a squire.

Meanwhile Theoden is mustering the Rohirrim to ride to Gondor to help in the final battle. Merry’s going with, but Legolas and Gimli are following Aragorn to the Paths of the Dead instead. The Paths of the Dead are where the ghosts of the armies that failed to help Gondor the last time Sauron attacked are waiting for the King to return. Before he leaves, Aragorn uses the palantír himself to distract Sauron so he’ll be looking everywhere but in his own lands for his enemies to attack.

Back in Gondor, things are not going well. The fighting has started, Faramir was wounded defending Osgiliath, and Theoden is getting weirder and weirder. Then the cheese falls completely off his cracker and he tries to kill Faramir (who he thinks is already dead) and himself. Pippin stops this plan just as the Rohirrim arrive along with Merry and a mysterious warrior who turns out to be Eowyn in disguise. Together they solve the riddle of “Who can kill the Witch-King” by killing him. They were both wounded in the process (these things happen when you fight Witch-Kings) and end up in the Halls of Healing with the newly-rescued Faramir where they sit out the rest of the battle. By this time Aragorn and his Dead Armies have shown up and defeated the forces of Mordor outside the gates. Never one to rest on his laurels, Aragorn gets Gandalf to muster the soldiers still standing and they all go off to the Black Gate to be a distraction.

Which brings us back to Frodo. Remember Frodo? It’s a story about Frodo. As we know, he was alive but taken by The Enemy. Fortunately he had Samwise the Brave with him who earned his name by rescuing Frodo and leading him through the wastes of Mordor to Mount Doom where Gollum reappears in time to save Frodo from making the worst decision of his life. Then the Eagles Ex Machina show up and bring them back to their friends.

Then follows several chapters of celebrating and saying goodbye to everyone and Aragorn finally assuming his throne. Arwen shows up and they finally get married. They escort the remains of the Fellowship back to their several homes, with a brief stop at Isengard to see how the Ents are doing. Then Gandalf and the hobbits go back to the Shire. Or rather the hobbits go back, Gandalf wants to stop off for a chat with Tom Bombadil to see how he’s been since he was doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING while everyone else was off saving the world. Still doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, it seems, because Sauruman and Wormtongue have been wreaking havoc in the Shire and our four hobbits have to chase him out.

I have no use for Tom Bombadil. I don’t know what he is or what his purpose is in Middle-Earth, but I do know that he isn’t to be relied on in a pinch. Unless you happen to be near his house. Anything more than a mile away, forget it, he’s not going to do anything for you. Stupid nature spirit.

It’s a bittersweet ending to our epic journey. I was sad to see the elves leave. It was inevitable because Tolkienesque elves are the mopiest type of elves, but they did bring a little magic to Middle-Earth. Now it’s all left in the hands of the humans and I, like the elves, am not sure if they’re up to the job. Still, though, they’re less mopey than the Tolkien elves. I blame the immortality.

The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

5 stars

First Sentence: Aragorn sped on up the hill.

Thoughts: The Fellowship is broken. Frodo took off after Boromir tried to take the Ring from him, but he didn’t get far before Sam joined him on his trek eastward. When Boromir returned to camp he found Merry and Pippin under attack by orcs. Boromir fought bravely, but the orcs shot him full of arrows and took the hobbits. Aragorn, who had been up at the watchtower with Legolas and Gimli, came back to find Boromir dying and all the hobbits gone.

Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas tracked the orc raiders to Rohan where they encountered a group of Rohirrim on the way back from an orc-killin’ expedition. They directed the trio to the battlefield. They found a pile of dead orcs, but no hobbits. Before they could continue their search they encountered Gandalf the White. Well, look who finally finished killing the Balrog and returning from the dead. Gandalf brings them to Theoden King, kicks out Grima Wormtongue, and leads them into battle against Saruman who’s betrayed them all.

Meanwhle Merry and Pippin are not having a good time. They’ve been bound hand and foot and are being carried like sacks to Orthanc. Pippin not only manages to get his hands free during a quiet moment, he keeps it secret until the orcs get distracted by infighting. He frees Merry and they run into Fangorn Forest where they meet Fangorn himself, aka Treebeard the oldest of the Ents. Treebeard calls an Entmoot to decide what to do with both the hobbits and the orcs on their borders. They decide that the hobbits are good people and they need to take care of this little orc problem once and for all.

Side note: The Two Towers is the first movie I ever paid to see twice in a theater and it’s all because of Treebeard. Ents are a spectacle best experienced on the big screen. They’re also responsible for the scariest moment in the whole trilogy. It’s when Treebeard comes out of the forest and sees the desolation Saruman’s wreaked on the landscape and he lets out a roar of mighty Ent fury. Chills down the spine. Do not piss off the Ents.

Two thirds of the Fellowship are reunited at Orthanc when the warriors find the hobbits chillin’ out in the rubble smoking a pipe. Then the Fellowship is split again because Pippin did something stupid again. Honestly, though, I can’t get too angry with him. I would totally be Pippin if I were in the Fellowship because I would also like to know what all of this neat stuff is and how it works. I’d toss a stone down a Morian well to see how far down it goes and I’d also like to know what that round stone Grima threw at Gandalf was. I wouldn’t last a week in Middle-Earth without a wizard to look out for me.

But what about Frodo and Sam, you ask? They’re still on their long walk to Mordor and they have no idea where they’re going. Fortunately (surprisingly) Gollum shows up to help. He’s been in Mordor and escaped so he knows about a side entrance that Sauron isn’t watching. On the way to the side passage, they meet Faramir and catch up on events in the West since they ran away from Boromir. After a pleasant interlude in Ithilien, they find Gollum’s side passage and walk straight into Shelob’s lair.

Side note the second: I remember a discussion we had in a college fantasy lit course about Tolkien’s use of spiders. We never conclusively decided if he was afraid of spiders, but I personally feel he was very uncomfortable around them. Just look at how menacing they are in The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and here with Shelob. I feel that Tolkien would be the kind of person who would say spiders have too many legs.

Anyway, it all ends with the most frustrating final sentence in all literature: “Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.” That’s a line guaranteed to send you running for the next volume.

The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

4.5 stars

First Sentence: When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Thoughts: I tried to read LOTR as a teenager. I guess I can say I actually read it, but I got through all three books plus the appendix and I had no idea what happened. Something about Frodo and a ring and Gollum from The Hobbit was in it. I put the books back on the shelf and went back to other series.

Then the movies came out twenty years ago. I watched the first one and the proverbial light bulb turned on above my head. So that’s what the hell was going on. All I needed was someone to act it out so I could follow through all the walking and all the High Forsooth. (It didn’t hurt that it was full of eye candy, especially Elijah Wood. Which is why this is one of only two book series I have the movie tie-in version of.) After watching the movies, I reread the books and this time they made sense.

We all know the story, right? Bilbo’s ring he swiped from Gollum in The Hobbit turned out to be the One Ring to Rule Them All. The fun trick of turning its wearer invisible turned out to be extremely dangerous because it brought the wearer to the attention of Sauron the Big Bad of Middle-Earth. Bilbo managed to escape before the ring got the better of him and left it to Frodo. Sauron sent his minions out to reclaim the ring, sending Gandalf into a panic and Frodo and his friends out of the Shire. They all met up at Rivendell where they decided to destroy it, formed the Fellowship, and started on a very long walk.

I forgot how much time Tom Bombadil took up in the first section of the book. I’m on the side of everyone who was glad he was cut from the movie because he really does just bog the story down. Oh, the ring doesn’t affect you but you’re not going to help the hobbits get rid of it? Bite me, Tom Bombadil.

I did like the bit with the barrow-wights, though.

Of course, my favorite part is the Mines of Moria. No matter what medium I am experiencing the story through, I cannot tear myself away from the moment the Fellowship goes into the mountain until they come out again. Especially once they start hearing the drums. Especially especially once they get to the bridge. That Balrog, y’all.

There’s a reason why this series established the groundwork for every other fantasy series that followed.

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

6 stars

First Sentence: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Thoughts: I’m not a die-hard Tolkien fan, but I do think that this is the perfect fantasy novel. There is not one extraneous detail to bog the story down, everything moves in a straight line from Chapter the First to Chapter the Last, Bilbo’s growth as a hero with each adventure on the way…it’s just great. Tolkien never wrote a better book.

For the three people in the back who haven’t read this book yet, this is the story: Bilbo Baggins is an average hobbit living near Hobbiton in spacious Bag-End. He’s boringly respectable and never has any adventures. One day Gandalf, a wandering wizard, stops by and asks Bilbo if he’s up for an adventure. No thank you, Bilbo says firmly and goes inside. Gandalf puts a secret mark on Bilbo’s door and goes on his way.

The next day thirteen dwarves and Gandalf show up at Bilbo’s house for tea. And dinner. Afterwards, they gather ’round the fire to tell Bilbo why they’re there. The chief dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, has found a map showing a secret door into the Lonely Mountain. Thorin’s father was once King Under the Mountain until the dragon Smaug showed up and ran all the dwarves out. Smaug then proceeded to lay waste to all the surrounding countryside, pile up the gold, and lay on it. And there he’s been sitting ever since. But with this map, Thorin & Co. can sneak into the Lonely Mountain, chase Smaug away, and reclaim both their ancestral halls and ancestral gold. They want Bilbo to be their burglar for a 1/14^th share of the treasure. Want to come along?

Bilbo would not. However, the next morning Gandalf returns and pushes him out the door to meet the dwarves at the local tavern where they will embark on their journey. It’s a long journey that takes them to the Last Homely House (aka Rivendell, home of Elrond) to the Misty Mountains to the house of Beorn the skin-changer to the forests of Mirkwood to the halls of the Wood Elves to the village of Laketown and then finally to the Lonely Mountain itself. Along the way they have many adventures with trolls, goblins (or orcs as we later know them), giant spiders, and elves both cheerful and irritable. Surprisingly, Elrond is not one of the irritable ones.

Bilbo himself changes on this adventure from a grouchy middle-aged hobbit to a skilled burglar who can match wits with a dragon in its own lair. The major catalyst to this transformation is a magic ring he found in a cave deep beneath the Misty Mountains when he and the dwarves were trying to escape from the goblins. Soon after Bilbo found the ring he was accosted by another creature that lived in the cave: Gollum. Bilbo challenged Gollum to a riddle contest and won by asking the unanswerable riddle “What have I got in my pocket?” Gollum didn’t know Bilbo had found his ring and Bilbo didn’t know it would make him invisible until he accidentally put it on and Gollum ran right past him. That ring gave Bilbo the edge he needed to face the enemies he and the dwarves would encounter in the second half of the story.

This is Bilbo’s story and he’s a wonderful main character. We really get involved in his experiences, feeling his exhaustion after the long days of travel, his hunger when the rations run short, and terror when he’s confronting an enemy alone. We also feel his triumph when he gets home just in time to keep the Sackville-Bagginses from moving into Bag-End. Bilbo may have lost his reputation as a respectable hobbit, but at least he got one over on the real villain of the story: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.

And the ring, but that’s a story for another time.

The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

4 stars
First Sentence: There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Húvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.

Thoughts: I tried to read this years ago, but I wasn’t successful. It’s so incredibly dense, written in the highest of High Forsooth. If Peter Jackson hadn’t made the LOTR movies, I probably still wouldn’t be able to get through it. Fortunately he did and showed me how to find the story hidden under all the pseudo-Biblical language. Since then I’ve read and understood LOTR and The Children of Húrin, so I felt that I was ready to tackle The Silmarillion again. And I was.

This time I knew to approach this as the language directed me. It’s the Bible of Middle Earth, the story of its creation, how the elves were cast out of paradise, and their subsequent diminishment as the humans took over. The perfect creation that Eru concieved was damaged from the beginning by Melkor’s insubordination. At first Melkor wanted to insert his own ideas of the world into Eru’s song, but as the other Ainur resisted him, he changed tack to actively destroying Eru’s creation. After the world was shattered for the first time, Melkor was exiled so the other Ainur could go about rebuilding the land for the elves.

Thus began the time of myth and legend, when Valar were real Valar, Quendi were real Quendi, and Hobbits hadn’t even been thought of yet. It was the time when a man could spend centuries standing in a forest entranced by a beautiful demigoddess while the rest of his people left him behind for the paradise of Valinor. It was a time before the sun and the moon, when the world was illuminated by the silver and gold light emanating from the White Trees of Valinor. It was a time with no Enemy, because he was in time out thinking about what he did.

That was a mistake. Not only did Melkor think about what he did, he thought of ways to do it better. When he was released he knew exactly what he had to do: destroy the Trees. And he did.

But all was not lost! The mingled light from the Trees was preserved in three magnificent gems, the Silmarils, created by the Noldor Fëanor. But Fëanor was a prideful elf and wouldn’t allow his masterpiece to be destroyed, even to save the Trees. And so began the Fall of the Quendi and the Rise of Man, a tale that would ultimately result in the destruction of Melkor (now known as Morgoth), but also the loss of Beleriand, forcing everyone to move east to Eriador. Just as Eriador was a shadow of Beleriand and Sauron was a shadow of Morgoth, so was the epic tragedy of LOTR only a shadow of the tragedies that took place in the time of The Silmarillion.

I would like to note that some of my complaints about The Children of Húrin were answered in this book. Húrin and Huor’s trip to Gondolin was explained in more detail here, as well as the story of how Húrin was released from Angband and what happened after he met his dying wife at their children’s grave. Why Christopher Tolkien didn’t add some of that to COH I do not know.

For the nerds among us (and, honestly, who else reads Tolkien?), there is an extensive index in the back to help you keep track of all the names and who’s related to whom and so forth. There’s also a nice fold-out map of Beleriand in the back. At least there is in my copy, which is a hardback edition from the 1970s. That’s what I love the most about the Middle-Earth books—there’s always a map. I like being able to track where people are going, especially when they’re wandering across the known world as Tolkien’s characters are wont to do.*

*Brief story that has no bearing on anything else here: for years I could never find Isengard on the maps in LOTR. I searched the maps inch by inch, but I never could find the damn place. Then, when I first watched The Two Towers, one of the characters pulled out a map of Eriador and pointed right to Isengard. How I overlooked it for so long I will never know, but I will forever be grateful to that movie for showing me where it is. That and the Ents are why Two Towers is my favorite movie in the trilogy.

The Children of Húrin, J.R.R. Tolkien

4 stars
First Sentence: Hador Goldenhead was a lord of the Edain and well-beloved by the Eldar.

Thoughts: There have been entirely too many grumpy reviews lately, so let’s take a break and look at some good books for a change. Starting with this one.

As a rule I don’t like unfinished novels. However, Tolkien left enough notes, drafts, and complete ideas lying around so that a full novel could be pieced together from their bones. The main part of the story dealing with Túrin’s angsty wanderings about Middle-Earth is complete, it’s just the beginning and end that’s sketchy.

For example: Húrin and Huor’s eagle ride into the hidden Elven city Gondolin. There’s no context to this little interlude. It’s supposed to be a Big Deal because no one who ever went into Gondolin uninvited ever left except for Huor and Húrin, and that was only because they did ride the eagles in and didn’t know how to get into the city from the ground anyway. However, Gondolin fades away into the background after they leave. It vanishes from the story completely after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Tolkien most likely meant to come back and do something with this section, possibly bringing the Gondolin Elves into the battle, but he didn’t.

He probably also meant to do more with Húrin after he was captured by Morgoth after that same battle. He certainly gave us a great set-up: Morgoth, frustrated with Húrin defying his taunts, condemns him to sit in a chair and see what his children get up to without being able to influence them in any way. Considering the mess that his son Túrin became, that was a terrible punishment. Túrin would have turned out better with a little fatherly counsel or, on one or two notable occasions, a swift kick in the rear, but he was denied that guidance and things fell out as they did.

I can only hope that Tolkien meant to go back and give us some more information on what Morwen and Niënor were up to in Dor-Lomin during most of the story, but since he was Tolkien and they are women I don’t hold out much hope that that was the case. However, since Niënor was a proto-Eowyn, maybe he would have? Who knows. I am an eternal optimist.

So what is the story that Tolkien left us in this fragmentary array? It’s the story of Túrin, son of Húrin, who wants nothing more to avenge his father and reclaim his homeland Dor-Lomin from Morgoth’s clutches but never can because he was born with the gift of always making the wrong decision. Exambles of his wrong decisions include not to calling off his pursuit of a naked Elf through the forest*, not letting a captured Dwarf go home for the night, and not staying in Nargothrond after a dragon attack. In every case his wrong decisions lead to death and misery for everyone Túrin loves. Túrin commemorates his gift by changin his name after every crisis. Every new name is darker and more depressing than the last. He starts off as Neithan (“the wronged”), then becomes Mormegil (“black sword”), and finally settles on Turambar (“master of doom”). Dude seriously needed a Merry or Pippin to cheer him up, but Hobbits hadn’t been invented yet.

Meanwhile Túrin’s mother Morwen and his little sister Niënor have been living in misery in conquered Dor-Lomin. After languishing in obscurity through most of the novel, Morwen decides to follow Túrin south to Menengroth, the Elven forest city where she had sent him as a boy. Túrin is long gone by the time the women arrive so they set off east to find him. They find Glaurung the dragon instead, curled up on a pile of gold inside Nargothrond. Niënor falls under his spell, forgets who she is, and runs off naked through the forest.** She collapses on the grave of a lost Elven maiden and is rescued by a group of hunters. She falls in love with one of them, gets married, gets pregnant, and then Glaurung returns to destroy her life along with her brother’s.

This is one of Tolkien’s darkest tales and that’s saying something. It takes a few twists and turns I definitely wasn’t expecting, especially near the end. And speaking of the end, since endings are something I’ve become sensitive to of late, that is the most fragmentary bit of the whole novel. Clearly Tolkien was planning to do something with Húrin’s release or escape and Morwen’s adventures, but he didn’t so we’re left with a touching graveside reunion with very little context. But you know what? That’s okay. This story isn’t about Húrin; it’s about the Children of Húrin and they had enough tragedy to cover both of their parents and all of their offspring.

Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me….

*No lie.
**I guess that was the thing to do back in the Elder Days.