"A shadow & a thought"

[Son of Númenor]

I like what Mark 12:30 is getting at, though I can't say I have much to add to her beautiful post.

When I read the "a shadow & a thought" line, I always took it to mean that Eowyn loved an ideal in Aragorn that was not a reality - that she lusted for a great lord to sweep her off her feet, away to love, war & honour. I never considered any of the many connotations that the word 'shadow' might have in Tolkien's works. Aragorn's use of 'shadow' in the given quote was akin, in my mind, to Woolf's "Angel in the House," - the Victorian ideals of the housewife, however positive- or pleasant-sounding, being described as 'phantoms' & 'ghosts' that had to be overcome by the modern woman.

In the Fellowship of the Ring, "The Council of Elrond", Boromir says:

"...we are hard pressed, and the Sword of Elendil would be a help beyond our hope, if such a thing could indeed return out of the shadows of the past."

This is the only other time that I can recall the word 'shadow' being used without being a reference to Sauron or evil in general. In this case, 'shadows' connotes Boromir's skepticism of the exiled line of Isildur; the statement is indirectly but unambiguously questioning Aragorn's merit as the Heir of Isildur, even challenging Aragorn to prove his worth.

Are these the examples of Boromir's & Aragorn's uses of 'shadow' connected? Not really, except that neither fit Tolkien's 'definition' of the word that davem talked about in his opening post.

I'm pressed for time... Hopefully more later, & less jumbled!

Edit: davem, I started writing this before your last post, & did not read yours before posting mine.

[Morsul the Dark]

i think he means that he reminds eowyn of theodred..... and she is merely hurt by the loss of her cousin so shes trying to fill the void

[Kuruharan]

davem

The 'shadow' is evil - her desire to die in battle, & he will provide her with the opportunity to achieve that desire. Is that what she loves in him - does she see him as heading inevitably for death? Is she so without hope that he symbolises an escape, the only escape?

Yes, I think so.

And is there something of that shadow about him?

I don’t believe so. I don’t think that Aragorn wanted to die. I believe he wanted to triumph. He was willing to die for the Cause, but I don’t think he wanted death for death’s sake. Eowyn, on the other hand, just wanted spectacular oblivion.

Is there something which strikes a chord in her?

Perhaps it is because Aragorn had a cause that he was willing to die for, and death was perhaps the most likely possibility. Maybe Eowyn confused this in her mind with a desire on Aragorn’s part for death. I think death for The Glorious Cause would have struck a cord.

Does she love him in the sense of wanting to live with him, or does she want to die with him? Is he her way to life, or to death?

(This thread is starting to get morbid.) Definitely death on both counts. Living just did not seem to be something she thought about very much.

Death does hang around Aragorn - literally in the Paths of the Dead. The dead serve him - is this the shadow she loves & recognises?

I don’t think so, at least beyond the fact that death hangs around any commander (which probably would have appealed to her in a way).

I would say that the Paths of the Dead were almost incidental to the whole issue, except to Eowyn they were culturally associated with certain death. By taking the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn may have (dare I use the term) “wedded” Eowyn’s concept of him and death more closely together.

Is it something Tolkien himself saw in the soldiers around him on the Somme, a false love of death, a desire to kill & be killed. Eowyn's great confrontation is with Death personified, & she doesn't seek to flle it, but to face it, even though the conflict seems hopeless, & death inevitable?

Erm…yes…well, that is rather awkward, at least so far as it relates to his experiences on the Somme.

Relating to Eowyn, I don’t think she saw it so much as a conflict but rather, as you put it earlier, an escape from drudgery and the thatched barn etc.

Morsul the Dark

i think he means that he reminds eowyn of theodred..... and she is merely hurt by the loss of her cousin so shes trying to fill the void

I doubt it. The love she felt for Theodred and the whatever it was she felt for Aragorn were two different things. She could have actually loved Theodred because she knew him, knew what he stood for, and so forth. With Aragorn, I believe that it was a longing for exotic places, deeds of daring do, almost a general sense of “otherness” (kind of a grass is always greener sort of thing) combined with a desire to have her innards scattered across the landscape in such a glorious fashion that the bards would mournfully sing of it for thousands of generations afterwards. She looked upon this as her escape from the cage of taking care of ailing kings (so boring). She thought of Aragorn as providing an avenue for that.

[Firefoot]

Son of Númenor got here before I did, and I agree with everything that he said. Only a few things of my own to add.

Éowyn loved in Aragorn what she saw in him - not what he was but how she perceived him. She saw him as a high and valiant lord, willing to die for his cause (and a valiant death in battle, I imagine Éowyn thought it would be), which he was, at least part of him, but that was all Éowyn saw him as. She did not see his 'true colors' so to speak. She didn't see the part of him that wasn't a king but the man you see in "Flotsam and Jetsam":

He wrapped his grey cloak around him, hiding his mail-shirt, and stretched out his long legs. Then he lay back and sent from his lips a thin stream of smoke.
"Look!" said Pippin. "Strider the Ranger has come back!"
"He has never been away," said Aragorn. "I am Strider and Dúnadan too, and I belong both to Gondor and the North."

So Éowyn sees her ideal of him in Aragorn, hence the "shadow". I never felt that shadow was used in a negative sense, but rather it was like a shadow of Aragorn - like him and part of him but not him.

One other place that I can think of where shadows are not used in a negative way:

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
a light from the shadows shall spring.

Again referring to Aragorn, except here he is the 'light'. But the shadows here aren't referring to evil. I always thought of it like the back corner where nobody ever looks, like in an attic. Virtually no one (in Gondor, etc...) ever thought that a king would come again out of the North - the shadows. So I think that Tolkien is using the word "shadows" in a couple different ways. One for evil, one for forgotten times and places, and a third for an ideal or perception.