“The Eagles are Coming!”: Despair and Hope in *The Return of the King*

*The Lord of the Rings* Reading Challenge, week eight

Here is a link to our reading schedule.

I didn’t have a specific idea for a big essay this week, and so I decided to take a page from

Simon Haisell

’s slow reads and provide a chapter-by-chapter commentary on this week’s reading. This also may be a preview of what it may look like when we do this again in the summer of 2025. Yes, that’s right: you heard it here first. We have barely scratched the surface during this read-through, and so we’ll do it again, though the approach and format will likely be different. It’s early days, but my tentative plan is to invite more guest posts for major essays, while I go into chapter-by-chapter commentary mode. Also, we may pull in The Hobbit and/or The Silmarillion, and possibly some of the shorter works. Perhaps we’ll make it an annual event. Tolkien summers?

Suggestions are welcome! On to this week’s reading:

Book Five, Chapter 7: The Pyre of Denethor

It is no accident that we have the deaths of Théoden and Denethor juxtaposed against each other in successive chapters, as we have followed their inverse trajectories from their first appearances—trajectories emphasized by Merry’s and Pippin’s respective oaths of loyalty to the two lords. While Théoden rises from decrepitude, which has been encouraged by the corrupt Wormtongue, to find an heroic death in Gondor, Denethor slides into despair, especially after the death of Boromir, his eldest son.

These two figures may remind those who have read Beowulf of the sorrow of King Hrethel, described by Beowulf before the fight with the dragon. Like Hrethel, both Théoden and Denethor are tempted to despair after their sons die. In the poem, King Hrethel does not recover, but rather dies of a broken heart, unable to envision a future for his people without his heir. Denethor follows this pattern, while Théoden rises above it, with the help of Gandalf.

The essential difference between them is pride: as Tolkien was well aware, medieval thinkers considered despair a sin closely related to pride, because despair assumes a knowledge that we do not possess. We do not know the future, and so we have no grounds to give up hope. Denethor to Gandalf as he surrenders to the fire:

“Pride and despair!” he cried. “Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind? Nay, I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. For thy hope is but ignorance.” (853)

But, of course, Gandalf never despairs.

Book Five, Chapter 8: The Houses of Healing

This is a chapter of reunion and the beginning of restoration, as members of the Fellowship come together and the as yet uncrowned King comes to Minas Tirith in the role of healer. An interesting sub-theme here is the restoration of lost lore, as the Gondorian “herb-master” is ignorant of the medicinal virtues of the herb athelas, though he remembers an old rhyme about it, “garbled in the memories of old wives” (865). Ioreth, the “old wife” in the Houses of the Healing, on the other hand, despite her chattering, is able to find some.

This chapter also includes Gandalf’s remarkable words about Éowyn, as she recovers in the Houses of Healing, which

Tiffany Chu

will discuss with us in a week or so in a guest post.

Book Five, Chapter 9: The Last Debate

This theme of the recovery of lost knowledge continues in this chapter, as Gimli observes the buildings of Minas Tirith and comments that the older stone-work is superior to the more recent construction, suggesting decline in terms of the knowledge and ability of men: “It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise” (873).

Gimli’s is a medieval historiography, a sort of anti-Whig theory of history: it is a story of a long inevitable decline since a lost golden age. The titular “Return of the King” promises to reverse this decline, at least in part.

This is also one of Tolkien’s “narrative consolidation” chapters, in which various characters share their stories and go on to arrive at some sort of decision for a next phase. We have seen this most notably in “The Council of Elrond,” and we might see “The Last Debate” as a shorter sequel to that massive chapter. And indeed, the decision to draw Sauron’s armies out of Mordor for another battle in order to enable Frodo to complete his task acts to facilitate the progress of the original decision made in Rivendell.

Book Five, Chapter 10: The Black Gate Opens

The chapter title here calls back to Book Four, Chapter 3: “The Black Gate is Closed.” The irony here is that if the gate had remained open in the earlier chapter and Frodo had attempted to enter, Sauron would almost certainly have achieved his goal. Here, on the other hand, the gate opens, as Sauron’s attention is drawn away from the direction of Frodo and Mount Doom.

This chapter marks the only appearance of the nameless character referred to as the “Mouth of Sauron”:

At its [the embassy’s] head there rode a tall and evil shape, mounted upon a black horse, if horse it was; for it was huge and hideous, and its face was a frightful mask, more like a skull than a living head, and in the sockets of its eyes and in its nostrils there burned a flame. The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man. The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr he was, and his name is mentioned in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: “I am the Mouth of Sauron.” But it is told that he was a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Númenóreans; for they established their dwellings in Middle-earth during the years of Sauron’s domination, and they worshipped him, being enamoured of evil knowledge. (888)

It is significant that this desire for evil knowledge is juxtaposed against the theme of the loss and restoration of old knowledge in the previous two chapters, and this in the context of a dark history that complicates the narrative of steady decline. Of course, the knowledge that is being reintroduced in the Houses of Healing is for the purpose of restoration rather than domination. Knowledge here is good only if there is a righteous purpose attached. If it is used to gain power over others, then it is evil.

It struck us when discussing this chapter in class last week that the Mouth’s entrance resonates strangely with that of the Green Knight, who rides boldly into Arthur’s court on his big green horse and disrespectfully issues his challenge. The Mouth addresses Gandalf and company in similar terms, and he uses the informal “thou” to Aragorn, a sign of disrespect. (Reminder: we have a Sir Gawain and the Green Knight reading challenge coming up in November!)

The revelation of the mithril coat and other garments of Frodo and Sam is fascinating in a number of ways. For one thing, it highlights the striking effects of Tolkien’s treatment of narrative time. When last we left Frodo and Sam, Frodo was a captive, and Sam was set on rescuing him; it is unclear to the reader how much time has passed since then, but we are in the dark as to their whereabouts and fate. As a result, the reader is likely to react much as Pippin does, “with a cry of grief” (889).

Also, this moment highlights one of the themes that we have noted throughout Book Five (and throughout LOTR more generally): the temptation of despair. Gandalf does not respond like Denethor to apparent hopelessness with despair. Instead, he refuses the terms of surrender and issues a warning to Sauron’s embassy. Here is a question for potential discussion: why does he ask the Mouth to name Sauron’s terms of surrender? And, once he asks for them, why does he refuse them?

We conclude Book Five with Pippin losing consciousness as he hears the cry: “The Eagles are coming!” As he fades away, he is reminded of another narrative, that of Bilbo.

And Book Five ends with this massive cliffhanger. What happens in the battle? What is the significance of the eagles’ arrival? What happened to Frodo and Sam? Read on!

Book Six, Chapter 1: The Tower of Cirith Ungol

Book Six begins as Book Four ended—with Sam alone. Tolkien situates us in time, as he pauses to tell us of the location of each of Sam’s former companions at that moment, as he wonders where they are. This chapter (along with the very end of Book Four) presents us with Sam’s experience as Ring-bearer, as he briefly imagines a more traditionally heroic role for himself:

Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marches to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. (901)

Sam’s moment of temptation is immediately followed by a moment of clarity, in which he realizes that “one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command” (901).

I am always hesitant to reduce any text to a “message,” and I certainly think that LOTR is an incredibly complex narrative which can signify in any number of ways, but if you were to demand of me that I identify the book’s “message,” then this would be it: freedom paired with responsibility, along with good will towards others and no desire for power over them.¹ This is Sam’s revelation and his doctrine.

It is no accident that this revelation immediately precedes Sam’s arrival as the primary narrative will that is necessary in order to complete the great task. Frodo from this point, while he exhibits heroic endurance, needs Sam’s force of will in order to continue. In Mordor, the “Land of Shadow,” Frodo is a virtual shadow of himself.

This chapter also puts to bed any sense that orcs, if left on their own, might reform, because our two orcish companions from the end of Book Four, Shagrat and Gorbag, have, we might say, had a disagreement. The tower is filled with dead orc bodies, as violence has erupted over Gorbag’s rebellion, motivated apparently by desire for the mithril coat. Shagrat kills Gorbag and then escapes with the “loot.” And now the reader knows how Sauron acquires the tokens that he uses for his manipulative purposes at the end of Book Five.

Book Six, Chapter Two: The Land of Shadow

This chapter is the book’s ecological nadir, as the Land of Shadow is a land of despair. The environmental destruction initiated by Saruman at Isengard was child’s play compared to the post-apocalyptic hellscape of Mordor—a land subdued and rendered unfit for living things by a will bent on maintaining utter power over it. This is Tolkien’s vision of the triumph of the “machine”—for the machine is the enemy of art and virtue, as he explains in a number of letters.²

This profound darkness of Mordor makes it all the more striking that Sam finds hope here, as they hear the cry of a Nazgûl, which is not threatening, but rather is a cry of “woe and dismay,” which signals to the reader that this is the moment of Éowyn’s victory over the Lord of the Ringwraiths. Sam is immediately cheered by this, while Frodo does not feel it; he says: “And I begin to see it [the Ring] in my mind all the time, like a great wheel of fire” (919).

Furthermore, in another instance of hope, in this bleakest of places, “they heard a sound that brought them to a halt. Unbelievable but unmistakeable. Water trickling” (920). Sam seems to attribute this to what we might call his “prayer” to Galadriel for light and water. Once again, in class my students were reminded of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—particularly of the moment at which Gawain is out in the wilderness in stormy weather and prays to the Virgin Mary for respite, only to see the castle of Bertilak rising before him, a haven in the darkness.

The chapter concludes with Frodo and Sam briefly in the company of orcs, who, luckily, mistake them for their own kind, thanks to their borrowed orc-gear. This episode is another example of tempting the reader to despair, as their company approaches Udûn, at the northern edge of which the Black Gate is located. Surely, this is where they will be captured, as Aragorn’s army approaches Mordor.

Source: easternpeaches.wordpress.com

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This has run on a bit long. How does Simon Haisell do this every week? We will save our discussion of Book Six, Chapter Three (“Mount Doom”) and Chapter Four (“The Field of Cormallen”) for Friday’s bonus post for premium subscribers.

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet eagle to yours.

Photo by C Perret on Unsplash

1. When someone wants to tell me the “message” of a book or film, I always want to respond: if it can be reduced to a message, then why should I bother with it? Just give me the message. Much shorter.

2. See, for example, the 1951 letter to Milton Waldman:

[The rebellion against the inevitability of mortality] will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective,—and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of the development of the inherent inner powers or talents—or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognized. (205)