Tolkien Reading Day: Mount Doom
Tolkien Reading Day is held on the 25th of March each year. The date of the 25th of March was chosen as the date on which the Ring was destroyed, completing Frodo's quest and vanquishing Sauron.
I began my 'real time' re-read in earnest with The Shadow of the Past in April 2023. But for the sake of completion, I wanted to read from the very beginning including the prologue and A Long Expected Party, so it seemed only right to begin on Tolkien Reading Day 2023 - it hadn't really occurred to me that I would reach Mount Doom in exactly one year's time!
It's Tolkien Reading Day 2024, and I'm reading The Black gate Opens from the Rings of Power tie-in The Return of the King (I thought Adar's gauntlet was suitably Mouth of Sauron-esque) and Mount Doom from The Return of the King with the cover illustration by Roger Garland - very fittingly depicting Orodriun surrounded by Lava, with Barad-dûr in the distance.
It's a grey, rainy day. I've mentioned before the sense of reading along with the seasons - the waning light of Autumn as we leave the Shire, heading into the darkness of Moria in the dead of Winter and then the return of the light, bringing life and hope, along with the destruction of the Ring on the 25th March - as close to the Spring Equinox as makes no odds.
So I was probably expecting the clouds to part, and dazzling sunshine to herald the end of Sauron. But bearing in mind that Frodo and Sam are "at the end of all things", and they don't actually wake up in The Field of Cormallen until the 8th April - the greyness seems appropriate. The host of Mordor have fled, and Sauron has been scattered by the winds, but there is not much celebration here reading in isolation, just a grim sense of duty - which is very apropos to the theme of this year's Tolkien Reading Day: Service and Sacrifice.
The thing that struck me the most as I eked out the journey through Mordor over the last week, was when Frodo and Sam cask away their gear. Specifically, Sam throwing away his pans. No more breakfasts!! Was that the moment he truly knew there was no hope of going "back again"? And yet they didn't turn back, or run, they did what they set out to so all those months ago.
But surely the real eucatastrophe (Tolkien's term for "good catastrophe") is waking up on the fourteenth day of the new year (in Gondor)?
I look forward to the imagined blue skies and flowers and gentle spring breeze on the 8th of April, but for now it is enough to know that the Quest is over.
So to mix my fandoms in celebration of Service and Sacrifice, I'm going to quote from the Doctor Who episode, Extremis:
"Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis."
Even with the Ring gone, Frodo and Sam are truly without hope as they lie down to die on their island ashen hill at the foot of Orodruin, and in what they believe to be their final moments they choose to forgive Sméagol. This act of kindness is the ultimate defiance of Sauron's malice.
I began my 'real time' re-read in earnest with The Shadow of the Past in April 2023. But for the sake of completion, I wanted to read from the very beginning including the prologue and A Long Expected Party, so it seemed only right to begin on Tolkien Reading Day 2023 - it hadn't really occurred to me that I would reach Mount Doom in exactly one year's time!
It's Tolkien Reading Day 2024, and I'm reading The Black gate Opens from the Rings of Power tie-in The Return of the King (I thought Adar's gauntlet was suitably Mouth of Sauron-esque) and Mount Doom from The Return of the King with the cover illustration by Roger Garland - very fittingly depicting Orodriun surrounded by Lava, with Barad-dûr in the distance.
It's a grey, rainy day. I've mentioned before the sense of reading along with the seasons - the waning light of Autumn as we leave the Shire, heading into the darkness of Moria in the dead of Winter and then the return of the light, bringing life and hope, along with the destruction of the Ring on the 25th March - as close to the Spring Equinox as makes no odds.
So I was probably expecting the clouds to part, and dazzling sunshine to herald the end of Sauron. But bearing in mind that Frodo and Sam are "at the end of all things", and they don't actually wake up in The Field of Cormallen until the 8th April - the greyness seems appropriate. The host of Mordor have fled, and Sauron has been scattered by the winds, but there is not much celebration here reading in isolation, just a grim sense of duty - which is very apropos to the theme of this year's Tolkien Reading Day: Service and Sacrifice.
The thing that struck me the most as I eked out the journey through Mordor over the last week, was when Frodo and Sam cask away their gear. Specifically, Sam throwing away his pans. No more breakfasts!! Was that the moment he truly knew there was no hope of going "back again"? And yet they didn't turn back, or run, they did what they set out to so all those months ago.
But surely the real eucatastrophe (Tolkien's term for "good catastrophe") is waking up on the fourteenth day of the new year (in Gondor)?
I look forward to the imagined blue skies and flowers and gentle spring breeze on the 8th of April, but for now it is enough to know that the Quest is over.
So to mix my fandoms in celebration of Service and Sacrifice, I'm going to quote from the Doctor Who episode, Extremis:
"Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis."
Even with the Ring gone, Frodo and Sam are truly without hope as they lie down to die on their island ashen hill at the foot of Orodruin, and in what they believe to be their final moments they choose to forgive Sméagol. This act of kindness is the ultimate defiance of Sauron's malice.
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