Let's Read Tolkien 76: The Field of Cormallen

All about the hills the hosts of Mordor raged.

We return to the Morannon, where the Eagles show up amidst the battle. With impeccable dramatic timing, at that exact moment Sauron panics and recalls the Nazgûl, and his armies falter. Moments later, the Black Gate itself collapses, and Sauron's forces break and flee. Gandalf, correctly deducing what happened, hitches a ride with the Eagles to fetch Frodo and Sam.

Meanwhile, Frodo has found his inner goth and is happily lying down and talking about dying. Sam persuades him to at least walk a little further from the literal Crack of Doom, but as the volcano erupts around them, they succumb to the fumes and pass out. The Eagles find them, of course, and then we do the scene where a hobbit wakes up in a bed and is addressed by a mysteriously reappeared Gandalf again.

Frodo and Sam meet Aragorn, and get a whole epic poem declaimed at them in front of a crowd about everything they did, which I would think would be excruciating, but Sam loves. Then there's a feast, and afterward everyone sets off for Minas Tirith.

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So it's Eagles again, at the climax of the Lord of the Rings as they were at the Hobbit's. I don't know why Tolkien was so into eagles; maybe he was secretly a big football guy. I mean he even had Pippin lampshade it at the end of the previous book. Nonetheless, the Eagles show up again and save the day.

When Sam wakes up, Gandalf tells him that new year in Gondor will from now on be celebrated on March 25th, because that was the day Sauron fell. I'm not sure what Tolkien's exact calculation here is, but surely the idea is that this prefigures Easter: Frodo, the Christ-figure, has suffered through his Passion and defeated evil: a message reinforced by the presence of the resurrected Christ-figure Gandalf. Like I talked about earlier, this is what Tolkien does throughout: nothing is an exact match with Christian theology or events, but they echo and prefigure them, as it were (you might say analogy, even!). I'd think that if you laid the events of the Lord of the Rings next to the church year, other analogies would occur.

Other than that, though, this is a short and simple triumphal chapter. Aragorn gets to be king, Sam gets to be sung about, and the others get to eat, I guess. And that's pretty much it.

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Next time: ceremonies.