"The Tower of Cirith Ungol" always surprises me when I come to it, because after the epic drama of Book V, my memory always makes Book IV out to have been a little drab by comparison. But this chpater has a little bit of everything: magic, battle, songs, high emotion, danger, villains, history.
My memory could be wrong, but I think that, waaaaaay back when I first read The Lord of the Rings, I had a guess, given what happened in "The Black Gate Opens," that Sam would fail at rescuing Frodo (though I did think Frodo would still live), so it was an unexpected joy to have them reunited.
I still agree with my younger self that there's a great untold story in the history of the tower and its treacherous fall. Could this manning this tower have prevented the loss of Minas Ithil? Interestingly, despite the continuing close connection with Minas Morgul, the tower is not under Morgul's command, but garrisoned by Mordor proper: a tiny way of dividing his underlings against each other by Sauron?
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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03-12-2019, 08:16 AM
Hybrid Mode
