This week in the Lord of the Rings re-read, we visit “The Houses of Healing” in Chapter 8 of book V of The Return of the King. The usual spoilers and comments follow after the jump.
What Happens
Merry accompanies the procession of Théoden and Éowyn into Minas Tirith, but becomes separated from them and is found by Pippin. Merry, Éowyn, and Faramir become patients in the Houses of Healing and grow silent and cold from being exposed to the Nazgûl. Hope wanes until Ioreth, one of the wise-women, mentions an old saying that “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer.” Gandalf goes and finds Aragorn, who had not intended to enter the city in hopes of avoiding a confrontation with Denethor. Aragorn agrees to help but directs Imrahil to rule the city and Gandalf to lead them all.
When Aragorn comes to the Houses, he is greeted by Pippin. He asks Ioreth and the herb-master for athelas, and eventually overcomes their long-windedness and acquires enough to call and wake the three patients. Faramir wakes to quiet joy; Éowyn to health but not, perhaps, to hope; and Merry to hunger and grief. The former Fellowship members are reunited and then Aragorn spends much of the night healing the people of the City. He slips out of the city just before dawn, “(a)nd in the morning the banner of Dol Amroth, a white ship like a swan upon blue water, floated from the Tower, and men looked up and wondered if the coming of the King had been but a dream.”
Comments
The thing that most struck me about this chapter is what a different view of war it gives us. Until now it had been fairly, well, heroic: dawn charges and singing and apparently-hopeless stands over the body of your king. And now we have a chapter that opens with a view of “the wreck and slaughter that lay about all” and prominently features a magical version of post-traumatic stress disorder. Since this is the chapter that also really wraps up the battle plot, I think it’s significant that we end with this view of war—that we get this view at all.
I admit that it took me way longer than it should have to realize that the Black Shadow was, in fact, a magical form of PTSD. Not a psychologically realistic one, of course (compared to Frodo), but a stand-in that serves the dramatic function of showing the traumatic effects of battle while saving the long-term and more serious version for Frodo. I think it would not be unreasonable to criticize this chapter for such a simple problem and solution, but I am inclined to give it a pass because there is PTSD later; this kind of rapid-onset magical despair is consistent with the Nazgûl’s effects so far [*]; and this is more than I expected from the level of psychological development that the battle had been conducted at so far. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this, though.
[*] Note that other people have actually died of it before Aragorn gets there, otherwise they wouldn’t know the progression of the disease.
* * *
Before I go further with talking about this chapter, let me just get this out of the way now: I cannot bear Ioreth. Every word that comes out of her mouth is like sandpaper on my nerves. I can see that she serves a function, that she’s the equivalent of the hobbits who are carefree, that she provides a realistic view into the thinking of ordinary people. But I just want her to be quiet.
(I particularly loathe that I can count the female character with speaking parts without taking off my shoes, and she’s one of them. Lobelia, Mrs. Maggott, Goldberry, Arwen, Galadriel, Éowyn, Ioreth, Rosie Cotton, Mrs. Cotton. Did I miss any?)
I am a little surprised that it takes her to give Gandalf the idea to go look for Aragorn, though; I’d have thought that Gandalf would be dragging in anyone he could think of who might have an idea.
* * *
Some other things about the Houses of Healing proper. Here are the three different scents of the athelas for each of the sick we see Aragorn heal:
Faramir: “like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in spring is itself but a fleeting memory.”
Éowyn: “it seemed . . . a keen wind blew through the window, and it bore no scent, but was an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam.”
Merry: “like the scent of orchards, and of heather in the sunshine full of bees.”
I admit that I had a hard time parsing Faramir’s; I believe it is, in effect, describing the Platonic ideal of spring? I’m guessing “renewal” for the symbolism, to go with unstained but lifeless, and food.
Everything I can think to say about Éowyn otherwise keeps getting tangled in what’s going to happen in “The Steward and the King,” so I think I’ll just note Gandalf’s summation of the situation (which seems confirmed by her words when she wakes) and move on. Don’t let me stop you from discussing her, though.
‘My friend,’ said Gandalf [to Éomer], ‘you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on. . . . who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?’
* * *
Aragorn. His efforts here to avoid conflict with Denethor got me inevitably thinking about what a conflict would have looked like. And since I had made cryptic references previously to feeling like it would have been too similar to the Scouring, it seems like now would be a good time to explain that.
*deletes several starts on long hypotheticals, rambling discursions on characters, and the like, as excessive and likely obfuscating rather than clarifying*
Let me sum up. Denethor as written would not—could not—accept Aragorn as King. But Aragorn is not going to be prevented from being King to spare the feelings of one man. So, like Saruman, Denethor will have to be (at best) turned away, resentful and vindictive, with those around him sad and somewhat repulsed at what a once-great man has come to. And I don’t think we need to do that more than once.
And yes Denethor written differently would survive to meet Aragorn and accept him as King, but that would, not to put too fine a point on it, suck. Denethor serves so many purposes in the narrative: counterpoint to Théoden, demonstration of the subtler influences of Sauron, honorable but mistaken opponent to Gandalf and Aragorn, layer of hierarchy to be removed and permit change and growth, echo of the sins of Númenor, genuinely tragic figure. Plus he is just so well-written as he stands, psychologically complex and convincing and emotionally engaging, and his suicide is so carefully constructed. I think it would be a real shame to lose all that out of the narrative.
* * *
Hobbitry. I found genuinely funny Aragorn’s speech to Merry after he woke; I can just hear him saying it. (Also, to a lesser degree, the scene where Aragorn arrives at the Houses and Pippin calls him Strider, because I imagine Imrahil practically holding his nose at the uncouthness of it all.) I was not quite convinced by Merry’s excursion into philosophy, though. I know he’s the most mature of them in a lot of ways, but his transitions into and out of the philosophical bits just didn’t quite work for me—I couldn’t make myself “hear” it all in a plausible way.
* * *
Finally, just a minor question: I note that it’s specified that there are twelve torches and twelve guards while Théoden lies in state; anyone know of specific symbolism or historical resonance?
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Kate Nepveu was born in South Korea and grew up in New England. She now lives in upstate New York where she is practicing law, raising a family, and (in her copious free time) writing at her LiveJournal and booklog.
Ioreth reads much like my grandmother- she tends to run on and on, and i can be tough to get a word in, but there are nuggets of gold in there.
PTSD was known of, fuzzily, at LotR’s writing. An example of how medical knowledge has grown to go with the advancement of society.
12 is probably just a nice round number, a dozen, maybe double the common number of pallbearers.
Imrahil was definitely taken aback, but was polite enough.
Hi! So excited to find this re-read. Hope you dont mind if I join in, so late in the day?
One of the most touching bits for me is when Merry asks Pippin “Are you going to bury me?”
It is so out of character, that it shocks me into understanding, a little, how devastated he must have been.
I also wonder how Eowyn must have felt to be woken by Aragorn. That must have been very awkward for her. So vulnerable.
I think you’re supposed to be a little annoyed at Ioreth. Even Aragorn seems to have some difficulty maintaining his patience around her. These days, all I can think of in relation to her is the “wise woman” bit from Blackadder.
Twelve is generally mythologically and symbolically significant. It connects to the calendar – thus a significance of time – plus you can do a lot with it mathematically, especially when you have to rely on fractions.
I think something else motivating Aragorn’s not claiming the crown yet is that he isn’t sure he’s going to live much longer. They’ve put a brief halt to Sauron’s plans, but everything still hinges on Frodo. Aragorn is probably already contemplating the assault on Mordor, and he is aware of the general disruption to the political life of Gondor if he becomes king and then gets killed. It is also a distraction to the allied forces at a time when they really need to be focused.
“Let me sum up”. Heh.
I actually like Ioreth. A bit like Beregond’s son Bergil, Ioreth provides a view of the ‘common-folk’ as counterpoint to the heroes (Eowyn, Aragorn, Eomer etc.) running around doing ‘heroic’ stuff. In many fantasy stories, scant (if any) attention is paid to the people (like Ioreth) who do the thankless work of maintaining infrastructure.
Also, Ioreth comes across as a real person, though not necessarily someone to like or want to spend a lot of time around.
I think putting that speech in Wormtongue’s mouth was one of the better changes made by the films. It’s a very bitter and twisted view of things – in Gandalf’s mouth, it’s meant to shock people into seeing things from her point of view, but it works equally well in Wormtongue’s hands reinforcing the viewpoint for Eowyn, and seems to fall more naturally from his tongue too. And it gives us a look at how well-spoken he can be, and how he can twist those words to cause pain, which isn’t demonstrated in the book and which I think is necessary to understand how he can have gotten his position at Theoden’s ear while being despised by everyone else.
WWI brought keen experience of PTDS; they called it ‘shell shock.’ The condition featured frequently in fiction written between the wars. Peter Wimsey suffered shell shock, for instance, partly because of being buried with the dead by an exploding shell. Bunter digs him out some — many — hours later. This is the foundation of their later bond.
Perhaps we cannot fault too much Professor Tolkien’s generally less than stellar female characters, since he had so many other ‘others’ to write, including several kinds of trees — Old Man Willow, ents, etc. :)
Love, C.
On Ioreth, Kate’s listing of the females with speaking parts struck me: how different each woman is from the others. If he was falling back on types, he’d observed them closely enough to bring individuality to each.
On Denethor: Last week when Jerry (?) was mourning the fact that he doesn’t survive and there isn’t a confrontation between him and Aragorn I started playing with hypotheticals, and quickly ran out of things for him to do. (Of course, I am not a writer….) Either he’d have to die off quickly anyway, or he’d just hang out in the background being scenery. Or Tolkien would have had to give him a lot more to do which would probably step on Aragorn’s toes. So, from that standpoint I’m ok with his suicide. And agree that his character arc is satisfying as it stands.
I think Faramir’s ‘memory’ is probably of Numenor, since we know that he dreams of the downfall of Numenor. Also, the original version of the Numenor story, The Lost Road, was about how memories are reborn in successive generations of a family throughout the ages; and Tolkien said that Faramir was the character (in LOTR) that he most identified with, I think because of his dream.
Arwen speaks?
(Just kidding. But I’ll have more about that later when she reappears.)
I suddenly “got” Ioreth after my father ended up in the hospital after a minor cardiac event and we had to deal with an annoying nurse who, like Ioreth, rambled and just didn’t get it.
I figure that this was a type that Tolkien encountered after he got sick in World War I – well meaning, but frustrating, and when you try to explain that yes, yes, there’s a problem and COULD WE FOCUS ON THAT, THANKS, doesn’t, and that this was Tolkien’s way of venting.
The other problem with Ioreth, for me, is that she seems to be the only woman in the series without a redeeming or helpful role – the others you mention all do something either for the story or for our heroes or with Eowyn and Lobelia, something actually heroic on their own. Ioreth….wastes time when Eowyn and Merry could die at any minute.
I do count Shelob as a female character, but of course she doesn’t speak. Horrifically effective, though, and more terrifying than Sauron.
@Foxessa – In the Silmarillion and the History of Middle Earth, Tolkien demonstrated that he could write powerful, heroic, and in some cases quite literally stellar characters. The women gods/angels help create the world; Luthien saves Beren; Idril saves many of the people in Gondolin (and has the good sense to create an escape plan in the first place) and several other women have major roles.
I think the removal of women in Lord of the Rings was partly deliberate, partly unconscious, but in both cases, rising from Tolkien’s experience in World War I, which was an unusually gendered war. Propaganda and other works of the period demonstrate: men were supposed to fight, women were supposed to guard the home front (which, in Lord of the Rings, they have difficulty with, since the war comes to them – but note that Lobelia is one of the loudest and most aggressive fighters on that home front. That was the war that was seeping into the book (more, I think, than World War II, even if much of the book was written during that war) and at least partially explains the shift from the works in The History of Middle-Earth and Lord of the Rings.
Also, the bit with Merry and Aragorn is one of my favorite bits — partly because it’s such a relief to be amused finally after all of that war and despair (especially given what’s coming.)