The Return of the Totally Platonic Best Friends

And some eagles! | Vol. 3 Iss. 6

Did you miss me? I only left my home town for over a year and in the intervening months it’s been overrun by bad guys who’ve taken away all the beer. And nobody will talk about all the cool stuff I did for hundreds of pages because it didn’t happen here and everybody’s just sooooo small town.

But we love them anyway. It’s good to be back.

Spoiler warning: Does this have spoilers for all three Lord of the Rings books? Yes. Are you allowed to tell me spoilers for the last movie? Absolutely not. I can’t wait to see how they made this into a movie, because many of the choices in this book are deeply uncinematic.

Journey Part 5 - The Return of the King

I’ll have you know that I read most of the last two chapters of this book while getting a pedicure, and might have stayed to actually finish it while my nails got just a little bit more dry, except that I was tearing up and did not want to weep in the middle of this nail salon. So I came home.

We’ll start with the end of the book, which felt strangely relevant to my last post about the feeling of home, and of the places we love and leave changing as we do.

I love the Shire. I love the hobbits. I love that when Frodo was like “let’s move in together, my platonic friend who I fall asleep holding hands with constantly and also sometimes he kisses me on the head,” and Sam was like “I’m getting married,” Frodo was like “sure thing, bring her too.” And then they literally all live happily ever… well, for a year, but it’s not because their living situation wasn’t working, it’s because Tolkien was making it very clear that there would be no sequels.

My fear for this book going in, and certainly for the movie based on it, was that this would turn into Aragorn’s story. And sure, nepo baby gets his throne because he has magic hands to heal people like Middle Earth Jesus, but the stars in the book are still definitely Frodo and Sam.

(Sorry, that was harsh about Aragorn. I just liked him better when he was hot and mysterious in the first book. And then in this one he borders on a religious figure.)

That the story ended with not just Sam and Frodo and their relationship, but also with the four hobbits retaking the place they were fighting for, and the people they were fighting for rising up for their home, even when the larger fight hadn’t touched them as much, re-centered the story in a way I really appreciated.

The last few chapters as the characters journeyed together and winnowed back down as they went also felt like a return to the tone of the first book, which was so much less battle-focused. Gimli and Legolas got to see the caves and the forest! Gimli and Eomyr settled their Galadriel beauty dispute! And Gandalf went to visit Tom Bombadil, who definitely feels like he was from a trippy kids book rather than a series that ultimately gets sort of focused on numbers of troops.

The end sold this book for me, and perhaps, ultimately, the series. If people aren’t having Shire-themed weddings, I think maybe they should. Because the Shire is the thing these characters are fighting for - home and family and community - when everything else is over with.

Because at the end of the day, you want to come home to your platonic friend, who was literally willing to die with you on the side of a mountain until you were rescued by giant eagles, and also his wife and their child, who was supposed to be named after you but it turned out she’s a girl. That’s home.

The Two Structures

The thing I felt was uncinematic about this book was the order of the scenes. It’s not a true Story A then Story B like Two Towers was, but it’s also not in strictly chronological order. So there’s a point at which you know the ring’s been destroyed, because you saw it happen with Sam and Frodo, but then the story jumps back to the main battle guys and it hasn’t happened yet, but the stakes are messed up because you know it’s going to happen.

(I understand that in different styles of stories, knowing what happens at the end can make it interesting to see how we get there, but I think in this case the order was mostly confusing or used to create suspense in a way that wasn’t effective, i.e. Gandalf being handed Frodo’s clothes and then it being clear within about five pages that Frodo is, in fact, totally fine.)

I was, however, genuinely shocked by the way the ring was destroyed. I had heard on a podcast once that, essentially, all the Gollum stuff pays off in a way that’s really surprising, but I assumed that meant he would turn out to help them. And in a way I think those expectations helped increase the shock in Frodo being about to fail when Gollum destroys not just the ring but himself, both in his greed and violence.

However, I bet the movie spends more energy on the lead up to that moment. Because after all they’ve been through, the book is like “And then Sam carried his platonic friend Frodo who he won’t let anything but death part him from up the mountain and it took about an hour and there was a nice convenient door.”

Also - I was so surprised we never saw Sauron! This was in part because in the intro to the first movie there’s a guy in a knight outfit who has his finger cut off, and I was so curious as to whether that was really what he was like. But without the influence of the movie I think the idea of the all seeing eye is much creepier than a guy in a knight outfit. However, I’m a little concerned that the movie will give us the second kind of Sauron, since they already did it once.

I was still less interested in the Aragorn plotline than the Frodo one, but I thought framing more of the battle plot through Merry and Pippin was a really effective choice. It’s interesting, having not read The Hobbit yet, to think of Tolkien coming from writing a children’s book and then deciding that this one was for adults. I am not a child but I really enjoyed the more childlike perspectives from Merry and Pippin because they feel less self-serious while not reducing the stakes of the moment. In a way it increased them, because while Aragorn seemed drawn to this fight by fate, Merry and Pippin actively chose it.

I was a little bit confused when the ring was destroyed to find that there were still about a hundred pages left. The Shire stuff, as mentioned, was a lot of fun and almost could have been its own book if the series were more hobbit focused, but I felt less invested in Aragorn getting married and Eowyn getting married but not to Aragorn, because the books aren’t really romance focused (and that’s okay!) in the way the movies are.

Scattered Thoughts

Saruman… I don’t know that this is a useful villain. I guess, plotwise, it’s helpful to have a guy who’s not an all-seeing eye, because then he can give villain monologues, but there are orcs and such. And when he popped back up in the Shire it was a) not surprising and b) a little baddie of the week, to me.

Eagles! I remember giant talking eagles from the parts of the Hobbit films I did not sleep through, which was very little, but in this I think it would have been helpful to set them up earlier than when they swoop in as a deus ex machina.

I feel like I’m being too critical, and perhaps some of that is because I spread this book out over too much time. When I finally settled in to finish it, I found it really emotional and felt a lot more invested in the story.

Is taking a boat across the sea… death? It certainly seems like it. But also, that is very sad and perhaps that’s why it’s left ambiguous.

I’m afraid it may have taken me until this book to really think about who the Lord of the rings is. Also, when towards the end Frodo finishes writing the story, he shows it to Sam and the title has absolutely nothing about any number of towers. So… there’s that.

I’m going to wait until after the last movie to put down my thoughts on What It All Means and fandom and trying to love something on purpose. (There will be baseball comparisons. Thank you in advance for your patience.)

What Else?

Watching

This is just a call to anybody who’s watching Andor to text me (but not with spoilers for the last three episodes because we aren’t quite caught up). If you aren’t watching Andor, may I recommend starting? It’s fantastic. It feels timely but also so rooted in history, every production design choice feels so detailed and thought out, and the acting and writing are really top notch.

Also, I think maybe I want to read and watch more spy stories? Between this and Black Bag, they’ve been some of my favorites of the year. If you have recommendations for spy thrillers that are more craft than guns, maybe we can have a newsletter about that.

Playing

I have become addicted to the NYT Connections puzzle. Will has as well, and several days a week discuss the absolute chasm between difficulty levels on different days of the puzzle. (If you’re not familiar, they give you sixteen words and you have to put them into four groups that have something in common.) One day the thing four of the words had in common was that they were all white, which feels like they didn’t even try! And then other days I’ll get three of the groupings and pick the last four words by default with absolutely no idea what they have in common. And, this is not a real example, but they’ll show the answer and it’ll be “words that came to English through French from the Greek” and I have no idea how I was supposed to know that.

Legislating, I Guess

I’m still tired, guys. Congress is in the middle of budget reconciliation, which is a) ruining my sleep schedule and b) going to have tangible impacts on healthcare, student loans, and taxes. My work on education reconciliation is behind a paywall, but my Roll Call colleagues are doing great work if you want to get up to speed on what’s in this bill and how it could affect you.