The Lord of the Rings is hands-down the greatest work of fiction ever penned by mortal man. I could talk for ages. Ask my family if you doubt me. The Lord of the Rings is the story that made me want to write stories, not just read them, and I find new beauties in every read-through. Today, I hope, I can show off some of the gems of the story, focusing on one particular scene, with some reference towards its depiction in the film adaptation. Today, let’s walk the Paths of the Dead. It’ll be fun, trust me.

Spectacle v Subtly

Perhaps the greatest failure of the Lord of the Rings film in this segment (talking Theatrical, not Extended) is its use of spectacle. In the film, the ghastly army appears, all glowing, translucent green, and they swirl around the three companions (the fullness of the Grey Company not being present). The danger is real and present, but it’s danger, not terror. If things go wrong, this will be another fight scene. Fight scene may be tense, but they aren’t terrifying.

Now, calling the book version ‘horror’ is overselling the experience. Tolkien isn’t going for that; he wants fear, terror, even awe, but not in the way that a horror novel might. Yet it has a subtlety and restraint the film version lacks. In the original, the ghosts receive almost no description at all. They are ‘Shadows’, ‘the Shadow-Men,’ and there is a “chill wind like the breath of ghosts.” Save for a single line conveying the essence of their consenting voice, this is all. The horror of the ghosts is not from being glowing green superhumans with breathy voices and decayed countenances. Their horror rises from something deeper.

The horror of the ghosts rises from how the world reacts to them, how the characters react. The first weight comes with Aragorn’s obvious reluctance to enter the path. He manifestly does not desire it; it is an act of necessity, a chosen path. Unlike the film version (and the better for it), he has no true doubt of his purpose, but if another way presented the same viability, he would assuredly take it. This weight is only augmented by the words of Eowyn and (later) of Eomer and Theoden, how they regard his entry there not as a path of danger but of certain death, a fate not to be hoped against, merely to be mourned. The Paths of the Dead, this tells us, is a terrible weight, a trial and a terror from ages past.

The immediate entry to the Paths continues to accrete this aura of fear. It is the world which no now warns us, as seen both in itself and through the characters: “There under the gloom of black trees that not even Legolas could long endure they found a hollow place opening at the mountain’s root, and right in their path stood a single mighty stone like a finger of doom.” Legolas, remember, is an elf; more, he has lived in Mirkwood for roundabout two millennia. If this is a forest he cannot long abide, this is a truly terrible place. A contrast here to Fangorn proves instructive: Legolas, while cautious, found Fangorn precisely to his taste, for all that was a place dangerous beyond the bravery of many.

Tolkien uses the characters, whom we know already, to declare the danger and terror of the journey. Halbarad, little time as he has been given, impresses upon us the gravity of the situation and of the choice to proceed; Gimli, in fear of the underground for the first time (and as we contrasted Fangorn for Legolas, remember Gimli in Moria), nearly falters, and it is Gimli whose exhaustion in the depths of the darkness maintains the atmosphere, keeps us immersed in something between fear and awe; the people of the land they issue forth into flee in stark terror. They cry, indeed, of the ‘King of the Dead,’ and we taste the terror of their flight.

The film, then, seeks to create terror of the known; Tolkien, more wisely, shows us glimpses of the unknown, declares a numinous terror which presses out of the book and into our hearts, in a way no skull-avalanche (Extended Edition) or glowing ghosts every could. We know that the Grey Company, even though it counts among its number more than thirty of the greatest warriors of Middle Earth, men to stand besides the Three (2 Sam. 23:8-12),¹ that the Grey Company is holding itself to its course by an effort of will beyond the grasp of most men, the type of will that it would take to face a Nazgul head-on and meet its blade.

I love too the subtle element of how they issue forth from the caverns of the Path: they come out into a narrow defile, a deep, deep canyon, and there are stars above. Yet, as Tolkien informs us, it is still day. If you’re not aware, this isn’t magic. It is possible to find such phenomenon in real life, places where the sun’s light is so obscured that the stars appear in the day. It’s an element that would frankly have improved the movie immensely, particularly in conjunction with the Stone of Erech.

Prose

This’ll be the smallest segment, mostly because it’s just me being enthusiastic. I love Tolkien’s prose. He uses conjunctions liberally, he concatenates sentences, and he relates the tale with rolling, insinuating sentences into which the place names are set like well-cut gems. “They passed Tarlang’s Neck and came into Lamedon; and the Shadow Host pressed behind and fear went on before them, until they came to Calembel upon Ciril, and the sun went down like blood behind Pinnath Gelin away in the West behind them,” he writes, and this simile is yet another joy in my heart. Consider: this similar not only communicates the physical element of the sunrise but carries to you a sense of the mood. This is a blood-sun, an omen of coming and already present war, and even without analysis we understand, just by the image.

Aragorn: Dignity and Right

This, the Paths of the Dead, is one of the great trials of Aragorn’s mettle, as his choice on the Anduin, to join Frodo or go to Gondor, was a test of his discernment. This trial comes upon us, and we understand its weight by Elladan and by Legolas, by Gimil and by Halbarad, even by Arod and the men who flee their homes before the Shadows. Through all of this, Aragorn strides, steady and stalwart, calm even, with resolve which marks him in soul, not just blood, as a king among men, a true heir to the Edain and their long war against the Enemy.

Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t hate Aragorn’s portrayal in the movie version of this sequence. He has undoubted dignity; he has strength; even in the moment of apparent defeat (which might not be in the Theatrical cut, as I can’t remember and YouTube won’t tell me), he acts the man. Yet he has not the impact of the book’s version for several reasons.

First, the challenge he faces in the book feels much greater. For all the reasons outlined above, the terror of the circumstance is magnified. More, the sequence of the events is different. In the movie, the ghosts appear only at the moment of challenge, only a moment before Aragorn calls them to fulfil their oath. Their terror is thus closely succeeded by the event their terror should accentuate, too closely. The awe of them has not had time to settle, to infiltrate the heart. In the books, however, the Shadows are a growing presence, appearing at the beginning of their passage in through the Path, their presence constant. The Shadows follow, and the world changes about them, and only when this has had time to percolate does Aragorn call them openly to follow him. Even then, the decisive moment waits for the Stone of Erech, after their passage across the lands between the Path’s end and the place of the Shadows’ original oath. Here, at the Stone, Aragorn calls them to account, and they heed. This moment has not merely the weight of a few seconds of spectacle but of a well-built and subtle terror; Aragorn is called to himself a force more dangerous by far, in our instinct’s estimate.

Second, the book has in it a moment for Aragorn which is missing entirely from the film: his contemplation of the skeleton before the door. This is the moment leading to his first recorded words in the passage, his first challenge aloud to the Shadows, and he sees the corpse of a man once mighty, a great man of Rohan. He mourns for him, I think, holding to compassion even in the midst of the exceeding terror of that place. He sees too the treasure the Shadows guard, the treasure most men might seek. Then he turns from it, a choice which the reader must foresee and the ghosts assuredly took as a measure of his character, and he calls upon those who felled, by some unknown means, this man, and he calls them as a king calls his vassal, for such he is.

Third, then, is the difference which struck me most on re-watching the negotiations in the movie: Aragorn is uncertain, even anxious. In the book, meanwhile, Aragorn bears the weight of the journey, but he bears it with resolve and assurance. He calls upon the ghosts not as a bargainer but as a king. He has authority, and he speaks in authority to them. He has come to free them, yes, but first he comes to lead them to the fulfilling of their oath. In this purpose he does not waver, for all the Paths demands it, and thus it is not he but the Shadows he summons, the Shadows he interrogates, who must answer for the reason of their coming: “‘To fulfil our oath and have peace.’”

But I’m Not All Criticism

It may surprise you, but Jackson’s film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings is hands-down my favorite movie of all time (It’s one twelve-hour film, fight me). I may think he made some literally brain-dead decisions (what was even with the Morannon scene? And please, that whole Arwen thing needs to go, and making Frodo an idiot about Gollum contrary to the books, and why in the world wouldn’t we have the Grey Company, and the changes in Rohan just make it less coherent, and Weaving was a bad casting choice). Yet I love the films nonetheless.

Jackson was blind at some points, but the films were made in a sincere effort to adapt the books. It shows. The spirit of Middle Earth is there, a bit muddled but present, and it makes all the difference. In this scene in particular, barring the puff-puff from Gimli and the skull-valanche (both Extended Edition), while he takes the path of spectacle, he does a decent job doing so. I talk smack, but there is legitimate tension. Condemning the film here is a matter of comparing a 7/10 to a 10/10. The 7 is good, but it looks terrible next to the 10.

Similarly, Aragorn is treated with respect in the film’s version. He acts the king, if not so impressively as his book counterpart. The set design for the entrance and exits, the mist, Legolas’s re-located line on what he sees, all these are excellent (with above reservations). The music adds an element the book can’t directly compete with, given how audio interfaces with our emotions, and I gladly admit to having listened to the movie’s full score at least ten times (it’s amazing for writing).

Takeaway (Short)

All in all, remember these few points. First, read The Lord of the Rings, preferably twice. I’ll concede that it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but everybody should give it an honest try. If you write fantasy or historical fiction, that goes double, just out of respect for a master. Second, the films are great, just not superlative like the books. Third, subtlety is often a better friend than spectacle, particularly in writing, where you are using words to get people to see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and understand all at once, to turn information (verbally conveyed) into sense and emotion. Fourth, remember how set-up plays into characterization; even small changes can produce strong impressions on the attentive.

God bless

Footnotes

1 – Yes, I did manage to fit two literary references into one word, even if one of them is to The Lord of the Rings Itself.