LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 10 - The Black Gate Opens

[Galadriel55]

This chapter brings repetition and contrast to Pippin and Merry's stories. Yet again Pippin is taken onward by Gandalf (and Aragorn) while Merry is stuck behind alone. This time though Pippin is the one who has to fight in battle. And interestingly, though he thinks even killing the Mouth wouldn't quite put him "level" with Merry, he is a lot more proud and happy about his troll kill later on, and arguably gets some pleasure out of boasting about it now and again (like he does to scare away the ruffians). I don't believe Merry ever speaks about his moment of glory. Having touched the "shadow world" in that fashion brings him closer to what Frodo has become, even though he never bore the Ring. So of the four Hobbits, only Pippin remained whole. Pippin's story mimics Bilbo's in TH: there's maturation and wisdom but without the damage - the price Frodo has to pay, and to a lesser extent Sam and Merry.


Every time I read this chapter I can't believe how lucky all the events were in terms of timing. Sure, timing was important in the Ride of the Rohirrim and the Grey Company, but they had a specific target to aim for. Here, Aragorn doesn't know what's happening to Frodo and Sam. He doesn't know if they're alive, or where they are within Mordor (if they even got that far). His timing ends up being perfect, but it hangs so close. A day too late and the Ring might have never made it to Sammath Naur, a day too early and regardless of what happened to the Ring the whole army would have been dead and who knows what forces would be sent out to pillage the poorly defended west. Gandalf sounds very logical and convincing when he pushes this course of action in The Last Debate, but the whole magnitude of their risk - that all the men who go are knowingly setting themselves up to die - only becomes evident in this chapter. The amount of coincidence and good luck in this chapter is overwhelming considering the consequences of failure.

I suppose that plays in to Aragorn's choice to leave so many people behind and not to encourage more to overcome their fear and follow him onto the "doorstep" of Mordor. Everyone who goes, goes willingly because they trust their commanders that this battle is necessary, but a certain death can't be forced onto people.

I find the splitting of the army atop two hills an interesting tactical choice. Hills are good because gravity works for you and against the enemy, and you have more advantage of height, etc. But splitting into 2 parts? If any tactician/historian can explain the value of this decision, I am very curious to know. It seems to me that by analogy of the speed of dissolving of a round piece of ice in water, breaking the volume into two pieces of ice means more surface area and the pieces dissolve faster - which is the opposite of what you want in battle. Clearly the tactic had to have some advantage - the challenge was a suicide mission but not that suicidal.

Originally Posted by Formendacil

A small detail, perhaps, but one of those details that I didn't notice in my dozen-odd previous readings, and one that totally changes my mind's-eye view of the battle. (And, incidentally, something totally absent from PJ's version.)

It raises a couple of small questions, however, that I'll mention. The first is where did the water come from to make the pools and mud? The rest of this region seems quite waterless. But that's really a minor question.

My second question is a minor one as well, but it deals with the movement of the embassies: on which side of the pools and mud did the meeting between Gandalf, Aragorn, et al, with the Mouth of Sauron take place? My assumption would be on the outer side. If so, how did the Mouth and his escort go through? The description seems to be that these were pretty deep pools if TROLLS were wading through them.

Again, these are minor questions, and I can think of any number of possible answers, but I thought I'd toss them out and see what other people think. Assuming they deign to revisit this old thread...

Funnily enough, I failed to notice this detail too, presumably too influenced by PJ's landscape to ever think about it, until today. My [new] impression was that the pools were irregular and probably discontinuous in some regions - unlike an actual moat that implies a continuous strip of water - and thus had passages between them of relatively shallow mud.

As to the side of the parley meeting, it says Gandalf&co rode up to shouting distance of the gate. I'm not sure what that implies of the relative distance between the army and the gate, or where along that length the pools and muck would be. If it's really moat-like, I would expect it to be closer to the gate, but then again Mordor can be as huge and overbearing and out-of-proportion as Sauron wants, so who knows - maybe he wanted the mud away from his doorstep.

Edit: crossed with Form. Darn! I meant to get this in before you commented on the chapter.