 “Suddenly he awoke from his thoughts: a strange feeling came to him that something was behind him, that unfriendly eyes were upon him…” |
The Breaking of the Fellowship
Can I just say that I absolutely love the ending?!! Cause I do. The image of Sam and Frodo in the boat together heading off alone into Mordor is awesome. It’s perfect.
Whereas I was full of doubt about the likeliness of success before, now their journey is genuinely hopeful. Why? Well, because it feels like it’s meant to be just the two of them. Maybe I should be scared for the two hobbits, and I probably will be before all is said and done, but the image is just so right that I can’t feel scared for them, now.
As for the rest of the chapter, I guess everyone knew Boromir was going to screw things up, of course. No surprise there.
The moment when Frodo has the ring on up on the Seat of Amon Hen and Sauron is seeking him out like a dark groping finger of shadow is incredible. I mean I was really impressed. The voice telling him to “Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!” makes me think, ah! Gandalf, like Obi-wan, reappearing for a moment to give his “use the force, Luke!” encouragement at just the right moment…or maybe it was Saruman in the other “point of power” striving against Sauron, striving to take his place.
This has been a great book… if a little slow at times. And as you recall, I mentioned that I couldn’t imagine the first half of the Fellowship of the Ring as a stand alone novel because of the ending. Well, even as much as I like the ending of this book, of course it wouldn’t work by itself either. Clearly these books weren’t meant to be read by themselves–we’re all supposed to read the whole story. It’s also now clear to me that the quest mentioned way back in Chapter 2 in Book I of Fellowship of the Ring, the quest to take the Ring to the Cracks of Doom to destroy it, will most likely last the entire trilogy.
I can’t help but think that I’m going to want to skip through the Two Towers and get right to the Return of the King cause I want to get to the ending already. I have to know what happens next and the title “the Two Towers” sounds like the actual quest to the Cracks of Doom gets put on hold so we can watch what happens between Sauron and Saruman. *sigh*
Oh well.
Bring it on.
Mark-Edmond Howell
Kanazawa, Japan
far(out)
