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Old 02-10-2019, 08:24 PM   #46
Formendacil
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Perched on Thangorodrim's towers.
Posts: 3,346
Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.
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As horror stories go, I don't think the unspecified fate of Baldor the hapless can easily be beat. For that matter, the entire journey through the Paths of the Dead, though brief in number of pages, always feels much longer, reading through it over Gimli's shoulder. It's enough in one chapter to make me reject my younger claim of being disappointed that we only get Aragorn's ebcounter with Sauron offscreen, so to speak.

But it *is* a major moment in the War of the Ring, as large as Sauron's encounter with Pippin, larger the Ride of the Rohirrim--at least in Sauron's eyes--larger than the death of the Witch-king. And it is passed over somewhat quickly.

This is actually the chronologically earliest chapter in The Return of the King, beginning just after Gandalf dashes with Pippin. It's typical of how Tolkien structures his interweaving plots to go back and restart things from an earlier point and it makes sense to me that Book V opens with a focus on Minas Tirith, which will be the centre of the book's gravity: all action will flow there.

I have a tendency to forget that this chapter has the Aragorn/Eowyn dialogues, but they're always a pleasure to rediscover. It's some of Tolkien's most dramatically layered dialogue. Both characters have far more going on behind them than they speak, and hakf the drama comes from knowing those layers and reading them through what isn't said.
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