Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings
A weekly blog exploring the wisdom of The Lord of the Rings
Théoden Leads His Army into Battle.
January 31, 2017 January 31, 2017 / stephencwinter
The Riders of Rohan reach the Pelennor Fields at last and look down upon the horror below them. "The king sat upon Snowmane, motionless, gazing upon the agony of Minas Tirith, as if stricken suddenly by anguish or by dread. He seemed to shrink down, cowed by age." Until this moment it has been possible to push the impossibility of what they must do to the back of their minds by attending to all of the essential tasks that a soldier must do. That possibility exists no longer. Théoden stares at his own annihilation, something that he shrank from through the years of Wormtongue's whisperings, and for a moment he is the shrivelled old man in the darkness of his hall and of his mind. And then…
"Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!"
And the old man is transformed and rides into battle like a god, "even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young". And like Oromë the hunter he takes a horn and blows such a mighty blast upon it "that it burst asunder". Théoden the godlike king rides with such might that he outruns even the swiftest of his army and as he rides the grass about Snowmane's feet flames into green, the wind turns and blows fresh from the sea "and darkness was removed and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them."
Tolkien takes the language of myth and of Old English song that had captured his heart when he was a young man in order to describe this scene in the story. Skilled story teller as he is he could have taken us into battle with the frightened Merry or the death-seeking Éowyn or the standard-bearer Guthláf trying desperately to keep up with his lord but he chooses the godlike king before whose face all creation is transformed, transfigured.
And what do we do as readers? Is it encumbered upon us as those who are disillusioned and disenchanted modernists to demystify or demythologise Tolkien's language and to insist that we describe war as what it is, as foul and filthy, as a thing of horror? We could do so if we choose and what is more Tolkien could do so better than most of us for he saw war at first hand in the killing fields of Flanders in the First World War. But Tolkien chooses not to do this but to take us to a wholly different level of human experience. It is not that he has a nostalgic longing for medieval warfare which was just as foul and bloody as anything that we can invent today nor does he seek to promulgate what Wilfred Owen called, "the old lie", that to die for one's country is a sweet and proper thing. No, what Tolkien does is to take the human experience of the horror of war and to transform it. Note, please, that I have not said take the horror of war and transform it but to take the human experience of war and transform it. And in doing so he chooses not to reduce human beings in war to dumb animals in the slaughter house but to elevate them to gods. And he does it for just this paragraph only as the Rohirrim ride into battle giving us the briefest of glimpses into what we truly are. When we look across the page we return to the description of events, to one action after another. Both kinds of narrative are true and both are true together.
And we will end this week's reflection with a final thought. When the hopelessly outnumbered Riders of Rohan ride into battle in defence of Minas Tirith they do so in the likelihood that they will die in the attempt. And yet they still ride on. Their plunge into the heart of darkness is godlike and one that was recognised in one of the oldest of English poems, The Dream of the Rood, a poem that likens the death of Christ upon the cross to the triumph of a mighty warrior in battle and so transformed the experience of the warrior forever.
A life too big for us, Dark Journeys, The True Warrior
J.R.R Tolkien, Oromë the Great, Snowmane, The Cross, The Dream of the Rood, The Lord of the Rings, The Pelennor Fields, The Riders of Rohan, The Rohirrim, The True King, The True Warrior, Theoden
← Merry Feels Useless as He Prepares for Battle
Théoden, a True Warrior King →
2 thoughts on "Théoden Leads His Army into Battle."
Anne Marie Gazzolo
Theoden is so the opposite of Denethor, who hides in his tower, away from his men who are fighting and dying and some are fleeing for want of a strong leader. Here in Rohan's lord is a true man, leading from the front, and willing to fight and die for those who he doesn't even know but who comes to honor the bond of friendship and loyalty between the two kingdoms that stretches back so many centuries. Both look at despair and could have been cowed. Denethor was and not even by present reality, just what was coming and hadn't arrived yet. He flees into the arms of death. Theoden faces present realty and rushes into battle. Ultimately the arms of death embrace him as well, but what a difference those two runs are, one self-willed, one not.
Namarie, God bless, Anne Marie 🙂
stephencwinter
I agree with you entirely on both Denethor and Théoden. Théoden's journey from the darkness of Meduseld to the glorious freedom of the Pelennor Fields is one of my favourites in The Lord of the Rings and it is the entire opposite of Denethor's. Both will die upon that day but what a difference in the manner of their dying!
Follow Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings on WordPress.com
Luke Shelton PhD
ViaMedia.News
Aníron
A Pilgrim in Narnia
Middle-earth Reflections
CAPM and More
Earth and Oak
The Flame Imperishable
The Old Shelter
Out of the Chancel
Idiosophy
The Oddest Inkling
Witnesses to Hope
Book Oblivion
The Rejection of Éowyn
A Scene which Caused Tolkien to Weep as He Wrote It
A Chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to Show his Quality!
Frodo Comes to the End of All Things on Mount Doom but Sam is Not So Sure.
"I Tried to Save The Shire, and It Has Been Saved, But Not For Me." Frodo Leaves the Shire and Goes Into the West.
The Pity of Bilbo.
The White Tree of Gondor Teaches us about Death and Resurrection
Why Does Éowyn Want to Die?
The Feast at Rivendell. Frodo is Seated at Elrond's Table Amongst the Great.
"He Would Have Brought Me a Mighty Gift." Denethor and the Ring.
A Big Life Aragorn Arwen Athelas Bag End Beauty Bilbo Bilbo Baggins Boromir Choice Christmas Cultivation of Desire Dark Journeys Denethor Despair Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dreams Elrond Ents Eowyn of Rohan Faithfulness Faramir Friendship Frodo Frodo's Failure Galadriel Gandalf Gimli Gollum Gondor Healing Hobbits Hope J.R.R Tolkien Joy JRR Tolkien Legolas Lord of the Rings Merry Merry and Pippin Minas Tirith Mordor Númenor Patrick Kavanagh Pippin Pity Providence Rivendell Rohan Sam Gamgee Saruman Sauron Sméagol Spiritual Capacity Spiritual Practice Strider The Fellowship pf the Ring The Houses of Healing The Lord of the Nazgûl The Lord of the Rings The Nazgûl Theoden The Old Forest The Prancing Pony The Ring The Shire The True King The True Self Tolkien Tom Bombadil Transformation Treebeard Truth Wisdom Wormtongue
Tolkien Researcher and Editor
Rediscovering the Middle Ground
a journey through the imaginative worlds of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings
Essays on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien
Musings from a Data Analyst, podcast enthusiast and history lover.
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
On Hiking, Nature, Storytelling and Tolkien. Twitter: @Earth_and_Oak
A blog about Tolkien, St. Thomas, and other purveyors of the Philosophia Perennis.
Dieselpunk Roaring Twenties. Sarah Zama's Author Blog
Jenny Bridgman
A physicist loose among the liberal arts
An exploration of the works of poet Charles Williams (1886-1945)
Reclaiming the Art of Living on the Earth
I'm a blogger, dammit, not a theologian
"And hope does not disappoint us for the love of God has been poured out into our hearts." (Rom. 5:5)