The Return of the King

Yeah, I never thought I'd cry reading this book but I did. Twice.

The book picked up almost at a bit of weird place, where The Two Towers left off. Pippin has gone ahead with Gandalf to Gondor, Merry is left with Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and the Riders of Rohan, and Frodo is now in the custody of Mordor orcs while Sam ventures to save him. Sauron is already on the alert, mustering up all the armies of Mordor to march upon Minas Tirith in Gondor.

There were parts of this book that I skimmed, particularly the battle scenes which I wasn't a huge fan of. The bits where Tolkien goes on for pages describing the scenery and landscape through which our adventurers are traversing is still happening in this book, but instead of whimsical and beautiful places like the forests of Lothlorien or the Old Forest of Tom Bombadil, we're generally getting the dark, stifling, ugly crags and deserts of Mordor, so those were much harder to read as well.

So yes, while I did skim through some parts of this book, it also had so many beautiful, heart-warming, uplifting, or just hilarious parts.

I loved the Macbeth-ish part when, during the battle at the siege of Gondor, the Nazgul said, "No living man may hinder me!" and Dernhelm is like, "*But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter." And then she just swoops in and smites some Ringwraith ass. I love that we had two characters (Eowyn and Merry) that all the other warriors and men were like, eh stay at home and don't hinder us during the battle, who actually rose to the occasion and slayed them some Nazgul.

More than ever, I love the hobbits. All four of them. I love how, even though they've seen and been through some really horrible shit, Merry and Pippin just stayed down to earth and drew their courage from the way they choose to lead their lives simply. This quote from Merry in particular, after he came out through a very dangerous time:

“But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.” - Book 5, Chapter 8 “The Houses of Healing”

choose

Firstly, when Frodo and Sam (or really mostly Sam) have destroyed the Ring and they wake up in Gondor, and everyone's bowing to them, honouring them and going, "Praise the Ring-bearers! Praise them with great praise!". I love that you have a story with all kinds of awesome, great people that could've been heroes of their own stories any day - valiant warriors, noble kings, powerful wizards, immortal and wise elves, hardy dwarves, etc. but in the end it's up to these humble, almost powerless hobbits to save the day. They have no powers, no strengths except that of will, and even that wavered sometimes, and really nothing special to make them "the Chosen One", they were just simply caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. But they persevered and made it through and saved everyone's asses. And it's not like they had superhuman strength of mind - both Frodo and Sam wavered so hard, whether in terms of how difficult the journey was or how they became tempted by the Ring. They both contemplated just giving up, especially the closer they got to Mordor. But they didn't - and they made it through! And I felt so hard the strength of their achievements, and I love how ordinary Tolkien wrote them.

I don't think it needs to be very much explained why this chapter made me cry. The bit when Frodo made his goodbyes to Sam, and they realised that they must be parted forever. And then when Gandalf said, "Here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil." OH MAN. OHHHH MAN. Just typing it out makes me cry all over. It just felt like I'm on that journey with them and now it's ending and fdslajfdkls;fjkl;asdjfdls;a dissolves in a puddle of feelings