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#15 | |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 6,003
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Wow, this thread has run on! Great to see it sparked such good comments.
I tend to agree, as Aiwendil put it, that the fundamental difference between the fates of Men and Elves would be a very strong case against the fea of a fallen Man being responsible for Merry's dream. However, I want to add another pot to this kettle or, rather, relate these concepts of reincarnation to what Verlyn flieger callsa larger theme running through Tolkien’s major works, that the past is not just tributary to the present, but also inhabits and immediately affects it. Particularly interesting is Tolkien's use of the dream memory. Quote:
Tom Shippy suggested that Merry takes on the personality of a body in the barrow. It can't be one of the Witch King's Men from Carn Dum, for they won the battle (which wasn't fought on the Downs, anyway, but farther north, as I recall) and Merry's dream comes from one among those who lost and who was ritually buried in some kind of royal--the golden circlet--barrow. The Appendix suggests this is a prince. Somehow, not an ancestral voice, but a voice connected by experience with the Dark Lord speaks into Merry's unconscious mind. And then, later, when Merry meets Theoden in Rohan, he speaks of his relationship to the King as like that of a father and son. I've always thought that a bit odd, responding to a foreign king with filial feelings. Can it be that one who died at the hands of the Witch King long ago reaches out to Merry, who will worst the Witch King. Or was the memory imbedded in the Barrow Downs themselves. The Downs were a portal to the past, after all, and in LotR even rocks may have memories.
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. |
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