Month: August 2016

Gimli Crawls Like a Beast on the Ground.

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

So we end our short season in this blog of guestposts on Eówyn of Rohan and judging by the record number of “Visitors”to the blog they have been well received. Of course, this is not the last time that we will think about Eówyn’s story. We will travel with her on the great Ride of the Rohirrim, stand with her when she faces the Lord of the Nazgûl, wait at her bedside in the Houses of Healing and delight in her reawakening as she finds love and hope with Faramir there. Some of these events within her story have already been touched upon by contributors but if you would still like to make a contribution then please send in a Word Document to mail@stephenwinter.net including a brief biographical piece on yourself and links to any work that you have done. I look forward to hearing from you.

And this week we return to the journey of Aragorn’s Company through The Paths of the Dead and Gimli’s humiliation. I look forward to reading your comments. It is always one of my favourite aspects of the blogging experience.

If we tend to do all that we can to try to avoid pain then our efforts are even greater to avoid humiliation. We hold onto a picture of ourselves that we may have spent years trying to construct. We associate that picture with words like honour and reputation. We may extend the picture to involve others so that our spouse, or other members of our family, also serve our reputation and honour. Or perhaps we may find ourselves having to uphold the reputation of a family or an organisation so that the picture that we have of ourselves is inexorably linked to that bigger picture. Sometimes this might give us strength. To be one of the Dúnedain and to follow the Lord Aragorn gives great strength and resolve to every man within that company. They know their greatness. Sometimes it will impose a great burden upon us such as when the reputation and honour of the people to which we belong is under threat as it does to Eówyn during the days when Théoden is imprisoned within the darkness of his own mind.

Whether it is the image of our self that is under threat, or the image of the people or family to which we belong, we will do all that we can to avoid humiliation. But sometimes humiliation is unavoidable. So it is with Gimli and his journey through the Paths of the Dead.

Aragorn, the sons of Elrond and the Dúnedain of the North and Legolas the Elf of the woodland realm, have all passed through the terror of the Door until Gimli is left all alone.

“His knees shook, and he was wroth with himself. ‘Here is a thing unheard of!’ he said. ‘An Elf will go underground and a Dwarf dare not!”

It is with that thought as a goad to his pride that Gimli passes through the Door but his entry is only the beginning of his trials. The fear only grows as the journey continues and especially so when the torches of the company go out.

“Of the time that followed, one hour or many, Gimli remembered little. The others pressed on, but he was ever hindmost, pursued by a groping horror that seemed always about to seize him; and a rumour came after him like the shadow sound of many feet. He stumbled on until he was crawling like a beast on the ground and he felt that he could endure no more: he must either find an ending and escape or run back in madness to meet the following fear.”

Poor Gimli! Let no one judge him unless it be one who has had to face a fear like he has although if there is one that has known such a fear then that one may also have the deepest compassion for him. I hope they will. And I hope that they will not sit in judgement upon themselves either.

Gimli could not avoid his humiliation. Either he would have turned back from the Door and crawled back to the Lonely Mountain never to face his friends again or he would enter the Door and so be reduced to the crawling thing that he is by the end of the journey. Readers of The Lord of the Rings may remember that when Aragorn leads the army to the Black Gate many go through an experience similar to Gimli’s. Aragorn does not shame them but offers them a task that enables them to avoid humiliation. Gimli has no such alternative. At this point in the story it is not a possibility. All must either go on or turn back in shame or in madness.

My hope is that all who read this will look upon all who are overcome by fear, either themselves or another, with compassion. To know fear and to pass through it, even with all pride stripped away, shapes character in a most profound manner. For such a person kindness will never be mere sentimentality but will have a depth that will reach out to others with a healing power that those who avoid fear and humiliation can never have.

The Paths of The Living Dead

/ stephencwinter / 5 Comments

A big thank you to all who have contributed to this short “Éowyn of Rohan” season whether you did so as bloggers, commentators or as readers. All of you have been most welcome!

This is the final contribution to the season and it is a poem written by H.G Warrender. This is what she says about herself.

I am the writer of two blogs, one, a writing blog called The Eccentric Author, and the other a fandom-related blog called Middle Hyrule. I am a 15 year old homeschooler and published author, who juggles writing with fan-fiction, crochet, archery, piano, ocarina, schoolwork, video games, TV, social life, reading, and running a Lord of the Rings fanclub. My book can be purchased on Amazon,Barnes&Noble.com, or CreateSpace. You can find my fanfictions on Archive of Our Own under the username The_Kawaii_Hobbit. 

 

My lord, you are weary

Lay down your head

Go not to the land of the living dead

But if so, take me there.

I shall not be parted

When I could bring aid

I’ll not be known as the coward who stayed

When you went journeying there.

 

My lady, you are young

And honour shall come

I sense that your part has already begun

In the story of our lives.

The dead are restless

Their hearts are black

I doubt that we shall ever come back

But there my fate now drives.

 

My lord, I fear not

The things you have said

I have no fear of the living dead

My only fear’s a cage.

To stay behind

As others fall

In glorious battle, heroes all

While I succumb to age.

 

My lady, you are youthful

As I have said

And foolish not to fear the dead

So why shall you not stay?

Would you join their number?

For even here,

The battle shall reach your kingdom dear,

Nay, lady, stay.

 

I stand in the darkness

Of my own home

It feels a great burden, like none I have known

But here I have been sent.

My place at his side

Went to others instead

I was not allowed to ride out to the dead

And now my hope is spent.

Éowyn After Aragorn: What Becomes of the Broken-hearted?

/ stephencwinter / 12 Comments

We all know the clichés that attend a broken heart.

Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned! 

We know the stories of revenge and bitterness. They have been told again and again. But what of Éowyn? We know her shame as she watched the dishonouring of her people and of their king. We know that she was always aware that she was being watched by Wormtongue. She was to be one of the prizes that he would gain amidst the ruin of Rohan, a trinket to be carried off and enjoyed by the victor in the fight. We know too that although she was a warrior her role was always confined to be dry nurse to the broken man who was Théoden.

Then Aragorn comes into her life and with him comes the awakening of hope and the possibility of happiness. She knows that he is a captain that men will follow. The arrival of the Dúnedain in Edoras, a mighty company following their lord and hero, merely confirms to her what she can already see for herself.

And then he leaves her and he will not take her with him even though she pleads with him. All the hope that has begun to awaken in her heart is dashed; both hope for her people and hope for herself. And perhaps, too, in the lonely watches of the night, she has pictured herself as a mighty queen adored by her people. Can we blame her? We may remember the moment when Frodo offered the Ring to Galadriel.

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

Such words do not come from nowhere as if in an unthinking manner. Galadriel, too, had allowed herself dreams of greatness. So too had Boromir. So too had Saruman. So too had Lotho Sackville-Baggins. So too had Gollum “the Great”. Dreams of greatness are common both to the mighty among us and also to the weak. It is not our dreams that distinguish us from one another but the actions that we take in consequence of our dreams. Among the list of dreamers that we have just named Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo although he triumphs gloriously over his temptation in giving his life for Merry and Pippin; Saruman betrays the peoples of Middle-earth and the Valar who gave him his mission; Lotho becomes an ally of Saruman and betrays the Shire into his hands; and we know the long and tragic tale of Gollum.

And Galadriel?

“I pass the test,” she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

Éowyn, too, will “pass the test” eventually, but even in her darkest moments she will not betray her people and become an agent of darkness. In her deepest despair and desire for death she will remain true to the love that she has for Théoden who has been as a father to her. When, in the battle, Théoden falls under the attack of the Lord of the Nazgûl and all his household knights are slain or, through the terror of their horses, desert him, Éowyn does not desert him. And, as Anne Marie Gazzolo recently commented on this blog, she is there to be the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.

Ultimately it is not her dreams that will determine her destiny but her long practice of faithfulness to the drudgery of her life in Meduseld and the practice, too, of her love for Théoden. It is our practice that will determine our destiny although eventually we will have to surrender to a grace that is greater even than our practice, even as Éowyn will in order to fulfil that destiny. And it is that practice that will sustain us through our darkest nights as it did for Eówyn “when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in.”

The Rejection of Éowyn

/ stephencwinter / 7 Comments

In the last two weeks Jennifer Leonard ( loveroflembas.blogspot.com) and David Rowe (@TolkienProverbs and @mrdavidrowe) have offered their reflections on the story of Éowyn of Rohan. Both have had a substantial number of readers and I want to thank them both for what they have offered. This week I would like to offer my own contribution that was prompted by “Middle Hyrule’s” comment on David Rowe’s post entitled “Why Did Éowyn Want to Die?” in which she says,”I thought she wanted to die because Aragorn didn’t love her.” As always I love responding to your comments so please let me know what you think about what I have written.

When Aragorn leads his company away from Edoras towards the Dwimorberg, the haunted mountain, and the Paths of the Dead, he leaves Éowyn behind him, his last words to her nothing more than, “Nay, lady”. And so he leaves her, “stood still as a figure carven in stone, her hands clenched at her sides” and she stumbles, as one who is blind, back to her place of lodging. She may have tasks to perform as the ruler of her people in the absence of the king but these no longer have meaning for her. In speaking to Aragorn she described them as the work of a dry nurse. They have no meaning for her. Life has no meaning for her.

Aragorn has rejected her, refusing to take her with him on the Paths of the Dead. If he had done otherwise then Théoden and Éomer would have been torn between mustering the Rohirrim to try to raise the siege of Minas Tirith and in following her upon the Paths of the Dead. Perhaps they might even have considered her to be abducted and their following would have ended in battle. Aragorn may be gripped by pain but he will not be swayed from his mission by any concern. Éowyn, too, has only one concern, and that is that Aragorn should not leave her behind. The two concerns cannot meet and so Aragorn’s leave taking is almost brutal.

In the last two weeks, Jennifer Leonard and David Rowe have spoken about Éowyn’s despair, of her desire for death, and of her eventual healing. This week I want to remain with the moment of rejection. It is this moment of rejection that brings all the unhappiness of the years of hopelessness to a head. Aragorn asks her what she fears and she replies, “A cage… To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” Those who know Byron’s poem, The Prisoner of Chillon, a telling of the story of of the imprisonment of the monk,  Bonnivard, in the 16th century, will recall that when, at last, he is set free, he has become so used to his cage, that, we are told, ” I learn’d to love despair.”

Éowyn rejects such counsel, if counsel it be. She will choose death rather than a cage. She will embrace despair, not as an act of submission, as Bonnivard did in Byron’s poem, but of defiance. This will be her response to Aragorn’s rejection. This will take her to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields at the gates of Minas Tirith.

To make a response to rejection is something that almost all of us will have to do at some point in our lives. Indeed we might say that the only ones among us who are never rejected are those who never risk themselves. The list of ways in which we might be rejected is very long indeed and each of us might make our own. From the day that we are not picked for a sports team at school to the refusal of a declaration of love and finally the rejection by our own body that will carry us no longer where we wish to go, this will be our experience at some point or other.

Rejection strips away the self that we seek to construct through the first half of life. We have to construct a self with clear boundaries as we emerge into adulthood. If we fail to do that then we will be absorbed into the selfhood of a stronger ego. If we are to find our True Self there must  first come the creation of boundaries but then later we must take leave of the boundaries in a leap of faith. Few of us are prepared to leave the security that we have made by choice even if we have become unhappy within it as Éowyn has. Rejection brutally forces us away from our constructed self. It is no leap of faith but rather a casting of the self into the void. The wonder is that the void is not an empty space but that everywhere the arms of Love await us if we can but submit to them. Before this happens to Éowyn she will pass through Hell and through Purgatory but she will find her way through.

 

Why Does Éowyn Want to Die?

/ stephencwinter / 15 Comments

This week’s blog post in the current series of guestblogs on Éowyn of Rohan comes from David Rowe. As with Jennifer Leonard’s piece that was featured last week it ends with Éowyn’s healing journeying first with her desire to die. ‘David is the writer of ‘The Proverbs of Middle-earth’, soon to be published by Oloris Media. He tweets at @TolkienProverbs and @mrdavidrowe, and the following is an adaptation of a passage from his book.’ I am delighted that he has offered this excerpt from his work for this platform.

If you have a piece on Éowyn that you would like to include here then please send it to me in Word format using my email address mail@stephenwinter.net. Please include some detail about yourself and any links to your work that you would like me to include. 

 

‘I do not desire healing… and I do not desire the speech of living men. ‘I looked for death in battle… to ride to war like my brother Éomer, or better like Théoden the king, for he died.’

When first seen in her guise as Dernhelm, Merry shivers, perceiving in Éowyn ‘the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.’ Having disobeyed orders and ridden to war, rather than remaining in Rohan as the King’s regent, she achieves what no man could: the killing of the Lord of the Nazgûl. In doing so she rises higher than any woman, at any time, in any kingdom of Men, and yet her emptiness remains utter.

Recovering in the Houses of Healing, Éowyn feels like a prisoner: she is jealous of the dead, jealous of the now-departed host of the West, even jealous of those with a better view from their windows. How did she reach this point?

Éowyn grew up as an orphan, adopted into the King’s household but with neither mother nor adopted mother. Her lack of female role-models, alongside the restrictions that barred her from emulating the nation’s heroes (virtually all of whom, according to the Appendices, were male), left Éowyn powerless: unable to give vent to the determination, steely character, and latent greatness within her. With a spirit and courage at least the match of Éomer’s, but without the opportunity to fight for the fields of Rohan with a company of riders as he does, Éowyn lacks comradeship. She is left isolated and alone, an indomitable shieldmaiden reduced to ‘dry-nursing’ the declining King – a role she deemed ‘more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.’

The arrival of Aragorn to Edoras both sparks Éowyn back to life and plunges her into despair. As Faramir correctly diagnoses, ‘You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn… but when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.’ Having had her love and hope of high honour and nobility exposed as vain, Éowyn withers; seeking only the honour of a valiant end she goes ‘in search of death.’ Knowing that none have ever returned from the Paths of the Dead, she begs Aragorn to take her there with him, but is refused, and instead goes into disguise in order to ride to Minas Tirith with the host of the Eorlingas.

Where will wants not, a way opens, Éowyn declares as Dernhelm, Good will should not be denied. Although these words are spoken to and for Merry, a double meaning is also plain: Éowyn is using them to justify her own disobedience. While, by quoting traditional proverbs, Éowyn shows that she is still in touch with Rohan’s philosophical tradition, she is actually being unfaithful to its wisdom. In place of the Rohirric devotion to duty is a different fearless determination: that of self-destruction. While Théoden, Éomer, and Rohan at large embody the belief that doing your duty is fundamental to moral goodness, Éowyn scorns such a perspective. ‘Too often have I heard of duty,’ she says. ‘May I not now spend my life as I will?’

Disguised as Dernhelm, Éowyn becomes free at last, but the freedom she gains is the liberty to self-harm. She can ride with the host of the Rohirrim, but her motives are not theirs. A nihilism has taken over, arguing that life carries no intrinsic value or moral purpose, and therefore can be used (or disposed of) at the individual’s whim. Éowyn has become a lonely, solitary death-seeker, surrounded by courageous, faithful men, riding bravely against hopeless odds. She is alien even to her own people; not part of a company, nor sharing in the national motivations. She derides compassion, and is a stranger to dutiful courage and the great virtues. It is therefore fitting that, when she subsequently fails in her quest for death, she meets her match in Faramir, in whom these traits are so prevalent.

Éowyn emerges from her nihilistic darkness not through being argued into submission, but by being loved. Perhaps because she recognises that Faramir is a man ‘whom no Rider of the Mark would outmatch in battle’, she is able to listen to him and he to command her respect. Faramir draws her out of despair with his company and kindness, saying Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, referring both to Aragorn’s reaction to her and to his own love. And it is as this great warrior and leader willingly exposes his vulnerable core that ‘the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it.’ The darkness departs, and she determines to marry, to become a healer, and to ‘love all things that grow’. Éowyn finally stops fighting, and Faramir is able to declare to the Warden:

‘Here is the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, and now she is healed.’