In our discussion this week, we talked about how hope and despair go hand in hand. How you cannot have one without the other. That they exist together implicitly. Tolkien does a great job of demonstrating this, time and time again, throughout these chapters. He doesn’t drag his reader down into hopelessness, but he doesn’t raise their expectations either. He keeps a fine balance between the two in order to create a more realistic and riveting read. I really enjoyed looking at all the examples of this.
One particular example I thought was very interesting was how he showed Eomer, as the newly crowned King of the Mark, lose all hope at the sight of the sails of the ships on the Anduin and yet in that very same moment, he summons the courage to fight to the end, no matter what, despite believing all is lost. I found this intriguing because it is a demonstration of almost foolhardy hope as even though Eomer believes they’re about to be utterly defeated, he’s going to push on anyway. It’s like, there’s no hope, no point, but I’m going to die trying, mentality, which I found really fascinating. Of course, the real hope from the despair comes from when we learn that it’s Aragorn and his company on those boats rather than back up for Mordor’s troops.
Another scene of this mesh of hope and despair that really caught my attention was the scene between Legolas and Gimli, where Galadriel’s warning to Legolas comes to fruition. Legolas sees the sea and yearns for it endlessly. This in itself holds both hope and despair because Legolas desperately longs for this and yet it means he’ll have to leave Middle-earth to pursue this yearning. Gimli then reminds Legolas that there’s still much for him to enjoy in Middle-earth and this again combines the two. It’s hopeful as it provides a reason for Legolas to stay but despair as it’s a precursor to an implied farewell once this has been fulfilled.
I really enjoyed looking deeper into each one of these scenes that are filled with both hope and despair and hearing everyone’s interpretation of them. My favorite scene of hope and despair actually comes from book six, where Eowyn is despairing as they’ve had no news about how things have gone at the black gate, and Faramir brings hope by confessing he doesn’t want the world to end as he just found her. It was very sweet, and I thought Tolkien did an amazing job of delivering that scene so it had the perfect amount of romance in it.
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