Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones

of marvel that Minas Tirith is not degenerate and cynical after all. The city has been kept before us one way or another since the Council of Elrond, so that, along with the surprise when we come to it at last, there is a sense of familiarity, as of a hidden theme related to all the others finally emerging from the orchestra. Something of it has been suggested too in the episode back in the Shire when Fatty Bolger is left alone to deal with the Black Riders, and the Hobbits sound their alarm. We are told that the horn “rent the night like fire on a hilltop. AWAKE!” (I, 188). And again in II when the watchfires of Rohan surround the Orcs. Now the beacon fires spring alight round the city as Pippin rides up with Gandalf. The effect is to give Minas Tirith distinctly Christian associations—and why not, since Tolkien has used everything else in our heritage?—because you think at once of “Christians awake!” and that bit of a hymn “How gleam thy watchfires through the night,” which not only adds to the stature of the city, but, as we shall see, casts a little Christianity on Frodo and Sam too.
    But it would be daft to see Minas Tirith as Jerusalem, bravely fronting evil. It owes far, far more to the doomed city of Atlantis. With it, Tolkien is working another sleight-of-narrative. Atlantis was very old, wonderfully civilized, and built in a series of terracelike rings. And it was inundated before the dawn of history. By deliberately using and knowing that he was using Atlantis as a model, Tolkien again ensures that the reader gets the message without needing to know: Minas Tirith is doomed. And, as the muster of Mordor proceeds, you cannot see how, even if Rohan comes, that could make much difference.
    Rohan is preparing to come. So is Aragorn. In an action heralded in the Barrows, in Moria, and again in Shelob’s Lair, Aragorn sets out with his Grey Company to take the Paths of the Dead. Aragorn is of course, as the descendant of the Kings of the North, preeminently qualified to summon those faithless dead in there and make them keep their word at last. But this episode, terrifying as it is, repeats such an often-adumbrated scene that it almost carries the weight of an allegory: you can take the failures of the past, much as Tolkien has by now taken most of Western literary heritage, and force them to do at least some good toward the future. Tolkien would deny this. He says irritably in the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings , “I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’” (I, 7), and maybe he is right. And watch out. Strewn all around this section are striking examples of the fey or doomed utterance. Aragorn himself says, “It will be long, I fear, ere Theoden sits at ease again in Meduseld” (III, 46). Halbarad says in Dimholt, “This is an evil door, and my death lies beyond it” (III, 59). And in the midst of the battle, the Black Captain himself says, “No living man may hinder me!” (III, 116). This sort of thing has also been heralded, when Aragorn warns Gandalf against entering Moria. Because of that, we are prone to believe these sayings. Then notice that not one of them comes true in the way it suggests. Theoden is killed and never sits in Meduseld. Halbarad is not killed in the Paths of the Dead, but a long way out on the other side. And the Black Captain is hindered by a Hobbit and killed by a girl. Since the bringing about of the future is what this movement is concerned with, we should be troubled.
    For, you see, the battle which ought to be final, in which the forces of good throw everything they have at Mordor, is no such thing. It is a magnificent battle, though. One of Tolkien’s gifts is being able to rise to the largest occasion. I wait with bated breath every time for Rohan to come, or not come, and sing as they slay. But when it is over, the enemy is still working on Denethor