00:05 - Julia Golding (Host)
Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Now, after a summer break, I am returning to our Sidecast, where we read our way through the Lord of the Rings, and it's very appropriate that this autumn we're setting off with the Two Towers, which is obviously, as you all know, the middle segment. But in terms of how Tolkien thought about it, we're talking about book three, because he wrote it as six books. Now I've not sort of thought about this as deliberately before, so this time I made sure I noticed everything that was happening before we started reading the Two Towers. I tend to just immediately turn to chapter one, but I thought, well, how do they make the bridge between the Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers? And I noticed that there is a very masterful Previously On section, and it also tells you where we're going to end, the start and the end. And so it says this now tells how each of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring fared after the breaking of their fellowship with the coming of the Great Darkness and the outbreak of the War of the Ring. So that says better than I can the land in which the two towers occupies. So chapter one is the departure of Boromir. Now let's think about that first. The choice that Tolkien made here is to hold back on the main members of the quest, who are, of course, Frodo and Sam, and decided to go with the others. That is a good lesson on suspense. If we went straight to Frodo, I think the effect would be we would find all these stories being much less important. 

02:15
Film versions of this interlace. They chop it up so you see the stories happening concurrently. This version of it is Tolkien tells it in chunks, as you no doubt know, anyway. So this particular chapter is notable for being incredibly short. Thinking back to the Fellowship of the Ring, we sat through enormously long chapters, like the Council of Elrond, for example. This one is only seven pages and stylistically it's also quite different. It's in three very brief sections. The first is Aragorn searching for Frodo, which intersects with the Orc attack for Frodo, which intersects with the Orc attack. Then we have the middle section, which is the death of Boromir and the funeral rites, and then the third part of it is the decision about what to do next. They all are hot on the heels of each other. As I said, this is a very, very quick chapter and really what this chapter is about is the movement within Aragorn's psyche, his decision-making process, where he goes from hesitation to resolve. In fitting with the fact that it's only seven pages long, it also, stylistically, is snappier. 

03:45
There's lots of dialogue and there's lots of let's get on with it. And there's lots of short sentences. So when you're thinking about starting a new book, it's obviously quite good to up the pace a bit. It might be a Victorian thing to feel like you've got a whole canvas in which you can do a long sort of Dickensian introduction to a theme. Here we are right into the action, we're into a battle and we're into Aragorn running Very action packed. But notice the short sentences. Aragorn sped up the hill, he stiffened. That's a two word sentence. Aragorn hesitated Another two-word sentence. 

04:29
There is a kind of interlacing happening here which I can't help but see now in film terms because of having watched the films. But you've got Boromir. His presence is made felt by the horn which Aragorn hears when he's standing up on the top of the hill at the place which was visited by Frodo at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring. And there's another connection here which you probably well you could miss quite easily, which is to the eagle. He sees a bird flying in the sky. We don't know yet who is sending the eagles. There's actually suggestion later on that it could be Saruman is spying on them. It's one of those misdirects which is disguising the fact that Gandalf later says that he had word brought of them by the eagle. 

05:27
One thing which I've always puzzled about here, which is that Aragorn is oddly negligent. He runs up the hill knowing this is a dangerous situation, tells Sam follow me, but makes no allowances for Hobbit legs, doesn't seem to notice Sam isn't with him for a very long time. It could be that he's just not a very good leader at this point, but I was thinking that this feels to me as though Tolkien is imagining the panic coming out of this crisis point, and I don't think it's a panic generated by the ring, which could be one explanation for it. It seems to me it's one of those fortuitous accidents that the presiding fate of this world needs to have them scatter at this point because they all got vital roles to play. It's that sense. There is a greater plan beneath it and it could be why Aragorn is acting in an un-Aragorn-like way of not noticing that he's left Sam behind. I suppose that gives you the sense that fate is driving them. 

06:38
At this point they're not quite in control of their choices. And also Aragorn is shown to be, I suppose, a little bit unheroic in that he jumps in shouting Elendil, elendil, but he's missed the battle. So there's a lot of misfiring, misdirection, misunderstandings, all part of this frenetic activity. But of course the glade may be empty of enemies but it's not empty of everybody. Because he comes upon Boromir lying on his deathbed, the language around Boromir begins to change a bit. We are moving into the Aragorn register of heroic deeds and kings and queens. That kind of world, as opposed to the Hobbit everyday sense, masks some suspense that Tolkien is slipping in there, the suspense about which hobbits have been taken, if we remember the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, we know, but the Aragorn, gimli and Legolas don't know. So it makes their decision even harder. 

07:56
After Boromir is allowed his sort of grandeur of passing, in that he makes his confession, he sort of puts things as right as he can at that point. So he ends up as a hero rather than a villain. Aragorn is given a brief soliloquy, it does feel like something from a stage convention where he's lamenting the fault that he has committed by making mistakes. I suppose here we are reminded of the sort of heraldic speeches of the Arthurian knights, those kind of things. So it is quite a staged scene with Boromir lying surrounded by the bodies of his foes. It's a sort of end of Hamlet feel to it. So that could be going on somewhere in the back of Tolkien's mind. 

08:54
Legolas here is the one who has the idea, because Aragorn is flawed, flummoxed, he's hesitating, and Legolas is the one with the plan. He says that they must bury Boromir or do his funeral rites and then follow, and he sums it up as let us do first what we must do, so very sensible. Let us do first what we must do, so very sensible. Note that it's by doing what they must do is where they start to get their answers. They find two hobbit knives and no more. So they're beginning to piece together what might have happened. It's also important, this chapter, brief though it is, to establish how these three work together, they do work very harmoniously together. Brief though it is, to establish how these three work together, they do work very harmoniously together, joining together in creating a funeral which they all agree on. Their decisions about which way to go are debated openly. There isn't much rub between them. There is obviously the rivalry between Elf and Dwarf, but they have created a little threesome band, which is how they travel together, going on from this, even when more people join them. 

10:08
We also get here an explanation of the three kinds of orcs that we have to put in our heads for this particular part of the story. We have the misty mountain orcs, who we've already met, who have come to revenge their leader. We have the new arrivals, who are Saruman's Orcs, which are the ones with the white hand, and they are distinguished by the fact that they have managed qualities, and one of the ways this is picked out by Tolkien is to talk about them having a scimitar like a short sword, but also a long yew bow, longbow which the sort of Robin of Sherwood longbow. So they obviously tall a stature to fire such a bow. So there's somewhere between orc and man, which is one of the things they debate about Saruman, how we know that he has really gone to a very dark side by cross-breeding. And then later in the next chapter we'll meet some Mordor orcs who are the ones coming over the river, the original flavour of orcs. So they carry on puzzling out the signs and it is actually a shock to find that Saruman has orcs when you think about it. He was the leader of the White Council. He was Saruman the White. It's quite extreme to go to using the servants of the enemy and whilst they're puzzling out the signs, preparing for Boromir's funeral, gimli makes the statement which is in all of their minds, which they're facing a decision, but maybe there is no right choice. Tolkien is very good at these moments of crisis that you reach in life, that sometimes there is no right choice, you just have to pick one. Unfortunately, in this case it turns to be the right one. But they don't know that at this point in the story the pace slows a little when we actually get to the funeral. It's beautifully described the way they lay out Boromir and of course it's one of the times when a poem is actually seemingly composed there and then. But let's just dip into a little bit of the description of Boromir Now. 

12:25
They laid Boromir in the middle of the boat that was to bear him away. The grey hood and elven cloak they folded and placed beneath his head. They combed his long dark hair and arrayed it upon his shoulders. The golden belt of Lorien gleamed about his waist. His helm they set beside him and across his lap they laid the cloven horn and hilts and shards of his sword Beneath his feet. They put the swords of his enemies. Then, fastening the prow to the stern of the other boat, they drew him out into the water. They rowed, sadly, along the shore and, turning into the swift running channel, they passed the green sward of Parth Galen. The steep sides of Tol Brandir were glowing. It was now mid-afternoon. As they went south, the fume of Rauros rose and shimmered Before them, a haze of gold. The rush and thunder of the falls shook the windless air and then they let go of the boat and he swept out to sea, out into the great sea, where they think he may have arrived at night, under the stars. 

13:32
Beautiful description, but it slows things down. We're going to take a breath to mark the passage of a problematic but important member of the fellowship, and then we get this poem, which is three verses in couplets of 10 lines, each thinking of the different winds, and they and mentioned, they don't sing the east wind, because that's where Mordor is, of course, notice. Also, it's in a question and answer format. So the first part of the verse is question, the second is the answer. Pretty polished, there's something on the hoof, but one assumes they're all part of poetic cultures. So the idea is they can create these things using the language of their traditional poetry. 

14:27
Okay, so now we move into the last section and Aragorn is basically saying quiet everybody, and now may I make the right choice and change the evil fate of this unhappy day. And he digs deep and at that point he gets a revelation. All that hesitation, he's been driven to the point where he makes the right decision. Basically, my heart speaks clearly at last and he decides to follow the hobbits. That's his priority. And the tempo picks up and they have their cry four for the three hunters. I just want to point out the last paragraph. 

15:11
Tolkien has a wonderful way of exiting from his chapters. Like a deer, he sprang away through the trees. He sped still short sentences On and on. He led them tireless and swift, now that his mind was at last made up. The woods about the lake, they left behind long slopes. They climbed dark, hard-edged against the sky already red. With sunset, dust came. They passed away, grey shadows in a stony land, so thematically they're also passing. This is a chapter about passing people moving on, and even though they're just going to be there in the next chapter, there is a sense that it keeps with that feeling of elegy. The tone hasn't been wrenched in a new direction after sending Boromir over the falls of Rauros. So an excellent little jewel of a chapter gets us going eager to find out what happens in the rest of the adventure. So that's chapter one and we look forward to the Riders of Rohan in chapter two. 

16:28 - Speaker 2 (None)
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