LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 08 - The Stairs of Cirith Ungol

[littlemanpoet]

Your post, Formendacil, has helped shape a distinction for me between Minas Morgul and Mordor.

Minas Morgul's evil is eerie. It is hair-raised-on-the-nape-of-the-neck evil. All living things, or those things that normally are associated with life, such as (especially) flowers and water, as well as roads and towers, are here associated with corruption, decay, and undeadness.

Mordor is a destroyed land. Life is gone. It's a blasted, wasted desert. The feeling associated with this is not the thrill of the unnatural undead, but of drought and despair; the absence of life.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Your post, Formendacil, has helped shape a distinction for me between Minas Morgul and Mordor.

Minas Morgul's evil is eerie. It is hair-raised-on-the-nape-of-the-neck evil. All living things, or those things that normally are associated with life, such as (especially) flowers and water, as well as roads and towers, are here associated with corruption, decay, and undeadness.

Mordor is a destroyed land. Life is gone. It's a blasted, wasted desert. The feeling associated with this is not the thrill of the unnatural undead, but of drought and despair; the absence of life.

You've given me the germ of another idea...

If Mordor is a destroyed land, is Imlad Morgul a land in the process of being destroyed? In Mordor, evil is a given thing, it has totally taken over, to the point that is taken for granted.

Is the more active feeling of evil that I associate with Minas Morgul perhaps a sign that evil there has to be more active, because it has not yet totally subdued the land? Mordor seems to have been a less-than-attractive land even before Sauron set up shop, and he's had an age and a half to make it evil, whereas the Witchking has only been in Minas Morgul for a millennium or so. And perhaps there is more inherent resistance to evil in the "bones" of old Minas Ithil. We know that the land remembers the Elves long after they leave. Could a similar thing happen with the Numenorians?

[Lathriel]

I find Minas Morgul terrifying because it is Frodo and Sam's first real encounter with a land that is evil to its very core. The dead marshes have been corrupted and the land before the Black Gate has been laid to waste but now the hobbits are actually entering the worst place in ME.
Maybe Minas Morgul is scarier for me because it has a sense of being alive. Whereas Mordor is simply a dead land with evil creatures roaming through it the Morgul vale has a deadly river flowing through it and it is inhabited by the witch king who is the most powerful after Sauron himself. Besides the witchking is half alive compared to Sauron who doesn't even seem to have a physical form. Besides the morgul vale is another entrance to Mordor and it seems that of all the places in that black land the entrances are the places that are under the heaviest security.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

If Mordor is a destroyed land, is Imlad Morgul a land in the process of being destroyed? In Mordor, evil is a given thing, it has totally taken over, to the point that is taken for granted.

Is the more active feeling of evil that I associate with Minas Morgul perhaps a sign that evil there has to be more active, because it has not yet totally subdued the land? Mordor seems to have been a less-than-attractive land even before Sauron set up shop, and he's had an age and a half to make it evil, whereas the Witchking has only been in Minas Morgul for a millennium or so. And perhaps there is more inherent resistance to evil in the "bones" of old Minas Ithil. We know that the land remembers the Elves long after they leave. Could a similar thing happen with the Numenorians?

This occurred to me too. My own thought in answer was that Mordor was under the domination of the 'machine' of Mount Doom, which used killing fire to destroy the land. In contrast, the Witch King's 'machine' is the evil coming from the negative spirit-realm that Frodo enters whenever he wears the Ring, and is therefore both more subtle and pervasive. It's as if the Un-life of the Witch King is infecting the life of the vale with a cancerous (for lack of a better analogy) substitute to real life.

I also think that length of time, as you've suggested, has a part to play.

[Firefoot]

The thing that really caught my eye about this chapter was the flowers, which I have never really noticed before. In many ways they seem to be metaphorical for Minas Morgul itself. It seems that once they may have been fair and beautiful, though now they are horrible of shape, giving forth a sickening smell. This is like to Minas Morgul, once the fair Minas Ithil and now sunken into decay and evil. Both also give off a sort of luminous light - light that illuminates nothing. Light, another symbol of 'good,' has also been perverted in this sense. No longer is it good and beautiful, but eerie and threatening.

Interesting also how the flowers are white. In most other instances that I can think of, white is the color of good: Gandalf the White (the White Rider, etc), Minas Tirith the White City, the White Tree. The exception that I can think of is Saruman and his White Hand, though Saruman becomes no longer white, and even the symbolic hand is cast down by the Ents. So too, the white flowers are no longer pure, but horrible and demented.

[Lathriel]

It just shows that appearances can be deceiving. Just like Saruman clothing himself in white. That was an illusion too, and it would have been much more appropriate for Saruman to dress in black.

[Encaitare]

Originally Posted by Lathriel

It just shows that appearances can be deceiving. Just like Saruman clothing himself in white. That was an illusion too, and it would have been much more appropriate for Saruman to dress in black.

That's what I like about this, though: everything is not strictly divided into black = bad, white = good. It goes this way in many cases, ie: Mordor, the Black Land, and Gandalf the White. But then we also have opposite examples, such as the black (or "sable") standard of the King of Gondor, and the White Hand of Saruman. It's a refreshing change, really.

I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes I find the super-evil, black-clad villain to get very old. A "color reversal" I liked was in Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, in which the chief baddie -- not a nice guy at all -- lived in a beautiful palace in a pleasant land, was very handsome, and happened to fancy wearing white robes.

In Tolkien's works, evil is associated with darkness -- but then, if it were not for darkness, we could not see the stars. This may just be a random musing, but I just wondered whether there is a difference in Tolkien between blackness and darkness. The elvish mor seems to be used interchangeably to mean black or dark. But the people/places who hold this title as part of their names range from the Moriquendi to Morwen to Moria to Morgoth.

The Moriquendi never beheld the Two Trees, which might be considered a sorrow to the Calaquendi. Yet these "Dark Elves" are not evil. Morwen was named thus for her dark hair -- she was not evil either. But Moria is a dark and evil place, and we all know how unpleasant Morgoth was...

Thoughts?