Bookmark Thoughts of my Current Read: The Lord of the Rings Part Three: The Return of the King.
My connection to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy started when I was about eleven years old. I didn’t really understand a lot about the books at the time, but I loved the fantasy world that Tolkien created nonetheless, with The Hobbit being a particular favorite.
But I never actually finished the trilogy. I have now set out to re-read what I had read as a young girl (I re-read the first two books last summer) and to finally read the last part, The Return of the King.
Fortunately, for as popular as LOTR is, I have somehow managed to abstain from watching the third movie to enjoy the last book without any pre-conception as to what is going to happen, which means just about everything I am reading is almost all brand new to me! And, as many of you may know, this is one of the best feelings to have as a reader.
Here I want to share my thoughts to the point of where my bookmark currently lies, which right now is at “Chapter 3: The Muster of Rohan.” And I want to focus on a moment that has been one of the best conflicts and instances of character development in the trilogy so far.
The Best Conflict? The Best Character-Writing? Or Both…(Spoilers Ahead)
The moment at hand is the one which takes places between Eowyn and Aragorn in Chapter 2. Up to this point, Pippin is with Gandalf at Minas Tirith, preparing alongside the townsfolk for impending war. Merry is with Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and some of Theoden’s men. They have set out to find the “Paths of the Dead,” urged on this journey by Aragorn, in order to find reinforcements against Sauron. But on the way to the “Paths of the Dead,” the company returns to Edoras where Eowyn, Theoden’s niece, has stayed behind to care for the townspeople.
When she learns that Aragorn and his company will be travelling through the “Paths of the Dead,” she is not only worried about this dangerous endeavor, but, more than anything, she wants to be a part of it. However, Aragorn will not let her because of her responsibility to care for Rohan’s people and, quite possibly, because he does not want her to be in danger. After all, nobody is known to have made it out alive from the “Paths of the Dead.” Here is a glimpse of the beautifully conflicted conversation:
‘Lord,’ she said, ‘if you must go, then let me ride in your following. For I am weary of skulking in the hills, and wish to face peril and battle.’
‘Your duty is with your people,’ he answered.
‘Too often have I heard of duty,’ she cried. ‘But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will?’
‘Few may do that with honour,’ he answered. ‘But as for you, lady: did you not accept the charge to govern the people until their lord’s return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.’
‘Shall I always be chosen?’ she said bitterly. ‘Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?’
from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Return of the King,” “Chapter 2: The Passing of the Grey Company”
What makes this conflict an amazing one is its depth and intensity. On the one hand, Aragorn’s response to Eowyn is true and fair. But at the same time it’s not. He assumes that “some marshal or captain” would have the same duty as Eowyn if they were appointed to her position. Yet, as Eowyn voices, she has never been given any other choice as a woman.
The conflict deepens (painfully so) when, later, Eowyn, dressed in armor, gets on her knees and begs Aragorn to go with his company. Aragorn refuses and stoically rides away.
I was enthralled by the way Tolkien arranged this conflict because it made me want to side with Eowyn (her plea is so dire and relatable), but it also made me see Aragorn’s insight about duty/responsibility and his desire to keep her safe.
Beyond conflict, I believe this is also a moment that showcases Tolkien’s character development at its best. Eowyn’s character has shone through like no other character up to this point of the trilogy (not to mention, more than any other female character). She shows strength, willpower, and a desire for adventure. She makes herself at once vulnerable and empowered in her conversation with Aragorn. Aragorn, too, shows complexity in that he is torn towards wanting Eowyn to be free as a person but also in wanting to protect her.
Questionsto Consider
Of course, I cannot help but ask the obvious question: Is Eowyn a feminist character?
Does Aragorn indeed feel torn? He does not voice any actual emotions, but is his behavior enough to signify that he is affected by Eowyn’s concerns?
Thank you for checking out today’s “Bookmark” post! Stay safe, and as always, happy reading! 🙂
Words Wednesday is a recent weekly feature on the blog that explores words of inspiration from well-known authors and provides uplifting, mid-week “food for thought.”
I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise –
Emily Dickinson, “I Dwell in Possibility” — (466), Poetry Foundation
I chose this poem by Emily Dickinson for today’s “Words Wednesday” feature because it gives a refreshing message of hope, one that is perhaps particularly needed with the current state of a pandemic that at times seems hopeless.
I tend to interpret this poem as Dickinson explaining her love for writing poetry versus writing prose. With her words “I Dwell in Possibility” in contrast to the following line, “A fairer House than Prose,” Dickinson seems to be contrasting poetry (i.e. “Possibility”) to “Prose.” She shows how poetry gives her the power and freedom to express herself.
I particularly love the last two lines: “The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise –” It expresses an immense joy that comes from writing. Through writing, one can explore and gather the treasure trove of ideas that the world has to offer.
Food for Thought:
Whether poetry or prose, words are powerful. Through reading and writing, we can “gather Paradise” as Dickinson expresses in this poem.
Perhaps more than ever, words can help us get through the difficult times we are facing. Have you found reading and/or writing to be particularly helpful in challenging times?
I encourage you to pick up a book to read or a pen/pencil to write some of your own poems, stories, or prose. Don’t be afraid of whether you are any “good” or not; All of us have words to share with others or with ourselves, words that have the power to “gather Paradise.”
So, if you really want to hurt me, talk about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity — I am my language.
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Language seems to be something that gets overlooked when we think of identity. Unfortunately, there is so much strife in our world when it comes to language. Peoples’ languages throughout history to the present have been attacked and ridiculed; consequently, identities have been attacked and ridiculed.
But as Anzaldua shows, language is much more complex than simply English, Spanish, French, etc. – especially in a world with borders and diverse experiences, histories, cultures, and languages. So much of our language stems from the culture(s) in which we have grown up in, and, because cultures are so often blended, language will be blended as well. The language one speaks may not be “proper” to one language or another but is a valid language nonetheless. Moreover, language will also take its shape due to other experiences such as the influence of family or pop culture.
For Anzaldua who grew up on the border of Texas and Mexico, her language developed into a blend of Spanish and English. Additionally, as she discusses in Borderlands/La Frontera, her language would vary depending on who she is talking to and on the circumstance. What I think is so great about Anazaldua’s perspective is that she emphasizes that each person’s language is unique to who he/she is as an individual.
I like that the quote above resounds of an unshakable confidence. Anzaldua shows no shame in the language which makes up who she is when she bravely and powerfully states, “I am my language.”
Video Recorded by the Laredo Public Library / Reader Bear Posted on YouTube by Me
Hi fellow bookworms! Today I am sharing an Author Spotlight video that features my dad, Marcus Guerra, who has recently published his book Daggers in the Desert. The public library in our hometown generously invited Mr. Guerra for a live stream Q & A session to talk about his book and the inspiration behind it.
Note: This was written for one of my final master’s program courses. It may not exactly be as casual as my other book reviews and probably sounds a bit too academic. My apologies! I plan on hopefully editing this piece later. But if you’d enjoy reading a piece of student coursework, feel free to read on! 🙂
In Ted Chiang’s most recent publication, Exhalation, published in May 2019, the author’s second collection of short stories delivers another set of fiction which has been meet with welcoming reception. This is with rightful reason: Each story in Exhalation delivers an abundance of philosophical considerations, wisdom, and poignant insight about the world we live in, making it a book worth reading (and savoring) for ages to come. Ted Chiang’s science fiction stories have put him on the map as a prominent writer of the genre since 1991, with many stories winning renowned awards for the writing of science fiction and another, “The Story of Your Life” (1998), earning his writing a place in film as the basis for the 2016 movie Arrival (“Chiang, Ted”).
In Exhalation, Chiang flourishes in his ability to take classic concepts – such as time travel, the unethical violations of artificial intelligence, and free will/predestiny – and make them “new” for the reader, often framing his stories in a way that directly involves the reader and mankind as a whole. In addition, Chiang’s smart and direct style of writing brings technical ideas, which may otherwise be jargon-heavy, down to earth, creating highly engaging and pleasing fiction that takes readers’ minds into worlds deeply creative and thought-provoking.
One of Chiang’s most prominent stories in the collection is “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.” While it is the collection’s longest story, it also deals with a popular and relevant topic of our time, something which movies ranging from Blade Runner to Ex Machina (and countless other books and films) have explored: artificial intelligence. However, how Chiang manages to somehow expand this topic in a new and unique way is nothing short of sheer genius.
The story details a virtual environment in which the story’s human protagonist, Ana Alvarado, a former zookeeper, becomes employed by training a tech company’s latest virtual “pets” known as “digients.” People can log into the online world and buy a digient, much like one can care for a virtual pet in video games and phone apps today. However, the difference is that these “digients” have been created to have the ability to talk and think, and it is up to the owner to grow their digient’s abilities. The result of this is an unfortunate demise where many digient owners become exasperated by the unpredictable results of their digients and consequently “suspend” them. When the tech company eventually shuts down, Ana, her former co-worker and friend, Derek, and a handful of other people, stay loyal to the idea of caring for their digients, until they are faced with a choice to compromise their digients’ physical agency in order to help transfer them from their abandoned virtual world to the new, populated virtual world so that the digients are no longer lonely and miserable.
The story poses questions of one’s attachment to an artificially intelligent creation and the ethics involved upon treatment of AI beings. Still, what sets Chiang’s story apart from other AI – related stories is that the popular science-fiction concept of artificial intelligence becomes here a matter of “raising” an AI being as one would a child or even a pet. As Chiang explains in his story notes, “I was […] interested in the idea of emotional relationships between humans and AIs, and I don’t mean humans becoming infatuated with sex robots.” The story relates this interest by focusing on the relationships that constitute growth and character in an AI and, inversely, the growth and character of the dedicated digient owners such as Ana and Derek.
Even when sex does play a role in the story, Chiang explores the concept of robots and sex through a lens of ethics. As the digients are ultimately sold to a tech company which creates sex robots, with the prospect that they will be programmed to enjoy sex, the question beckons as to whether this element is enough to constitute a digient’s happiness (and agency) if they are given no choice to either enjoy or not enjoy sex or even who they can enjoy sex with. In the end, it is up to the digient owners to consider this as they deliberate the decision to sell their digients to this new company. Moreover, they struggle with this, not only because of the apparent unethical implications involved, but also because of the relationships they have created with their digients in a non-romantic, yet loving way. Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” unravels a unique philosophical leaning that can become glazed over or unexplored in many other fictions about AI, creating a rewarding reading experience that is one of the pinnacles of Exhalation.
In a smartly devised manner, Chiang saves his other lengthy and equally thought-provoking story, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” to finish the collection. Like “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” it maintains themes not unfamiliar to the realm of science fiction by exploring free will and the concept of parallel universes. Chiang creates a one-of-a-kind, multi-layered framework that delves deep into the question of whether one’s actions affect other dimensions or whether a knowledge of other dimensions is cause for certain actions. The people of the fictional society in “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” have access to tablets which allow them to see and speak to their parallel selves. This has resulted in feelings of anger, anxiety, and depression for many of the individuals who become addicted to the tablets, as they will often see their “para self” living out a better life than they themselves are living. On many levels, the story explores how different characters affect and are affected by the knowledge contained in the tablets. Overall, the story creates a plot and ideological realm unmatched for in originality and depth within the topic of parallel dimensions.
In addition to Chiang’s insightful workings of otherwise common science fiction topics, Chiang’s Exhalation also shows his masterful use of perspective. He is unafraid to navigate the perspectives of people from different walks of life. This ability to write from different perspectives is genuine and causes the reader to feel invested in what each story has to offer. In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” Chiang takes up the perspective of Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a Muslim man who becomes enrapt with the idea of a time traveling mechanism built by a local merchant; In “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling,” Chiang’s narrator is a single father who comes to terms with the reality of the frayed relationship between him and his daughter; “The Great Silence” is narrated by a parrot; and “Omphalos” is told from the perspective of a woman of devout religion who is also an archaeologist. While this is a widely varied combination of vantage points – and there are others, including those written in focalized third-person perspectives – none of these feel contrived or inauthentic. Chiang unbiasedly takes up each perspective with a sure-footed sense of control that keeps the reader interested in each story and trusting of every narrator, all of which allows each story’s ideas to be at the forefront, without the distraction of inconsistencies. By expertly and creatively handling each perspective, Chiang explores the effects that technology and science have in a universal sense.
In fact, one of Chiang’s best stories is the short but daring “The Great Silence.” In the story, the parrot narrator demonstrates how scientific advancements impact something as seemingly small as the parrot species. As humans look to the highly advanced telescope, Arecibo, to “hear across the universe” in hopes of finding extraterrestrial life, the parrot expresses the futility of such an endeavor in a poignant and heartfelt manner: “But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices? We’re a nonhuman species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?” (Chiang 231). The parrot’s questions and its observations serve as a powerful commentary on the tendency for human beings to overlook what is right in front of us. One could not help but sympathize with Chiang’s parrot who reveals the ironic ignorance and/or denial that scientific advancement can sometimes bring about.
Finally, one cannot boast of Exhalation’s numerous and wonderful aspects without comment on Chiang’s style of writing that makes it all possible in the first place. At once both simple and neat, Chiang’s writing style is also welcoming without ever “dumbing down” the information used to wander the philosophical and technical realms of his stories’ ideas. Chiang does not alienate his readers, even those who may not perceive themselves as acquainted with science-fiction.
In the title story, “Exhalation,” for example, the protagonist uses complicated technology in order to dissect his own head and understand how the story’s species operates cognitively. The protagonist uncovers the many mechanisms that reside in the brain: “But at last the cognition engine itself was exposed, supported on a pillar of hoses and actuating rods leading down into my torso” (Chiang 46). While this is not a scenario any reader would be acquainted with, Chiang imaginatively creates an entirely new brain anatomy for the species of the story and manages to have it all make sense to the reader. Rather than Chiang’s stories, such as this one, being dense or confusing, there is only room for intrigue and fascination, and, more importantly, the philosophical ideas presented in his work which the sci-fi elements all point towards.
While it is easy to be enthralled by nearly every aspect of Chiang’s collection, one regret is that some of his stories can leave one craving more (and this is ironically a good thing, too!). As much as “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” is one of the collection’s hallmark stories, it ends abruptly and with little to no closure for the AI species and the characters of Ana and Derek which the reader has become so invested in. “Omphalos” ends in a similar way when the the archaeologist is at a crossroads, struggling to maintain faith in God after reading an academic paper that disproves her religious beliefs. The ending of this story, while beautiful in its design and structure as a prayer to God, is somewhat anti-climactic. One longs for a second part that can explain a little bit more about what the narrator will believe in the end. These stories all have a good amount of length yet feel slightly unsatisfying by their conclusions, and if Chiang does this for a purpose, to leave the reader with a sense of loss, this stylistic choice can be held in high regard.
Still, most of Chiang’s stories have a gratifying, optimistic tone which makes it difficult to be satisfied with the endings of these two stories in particular. For example, in “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” after Fuwaad ibn Abbas navigates the time portals created by a merchant in an attempt to alter the event of his wife’s death, which he blames himself for, he realizes that it is not possible. What he learns instead is that “nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough” (Chiang 35). With this conclusion, and others that end on an equally hopeful note, Chiang brings a closure that is far from cheesy or even predictable, creating instead moments of powerful depth and life-lessons.
If you know little to nothing about science-fiction, you are in good hands with Ted Chiang’s Exhalation. If you are a science-fiction aficionado, the same is true. Because, above all, Chiang’s writing is simply good writing that is hard to beat. Exhalation is a work that will stand the test of time. It is a work that will make you think hard about difficult topics, as Chiang both challenges and invites. Yet, it is also a work that will make you feel, because, as Chiang is so keen to show, the advancement of technology, and that of mankind, cannot really advance without compassion and empathy.
Note: Here’s some Works Cited info in case you are interested.
Works Cited
Chiang, Ted. Exhalation. Kindle ed., Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.
The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe. But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices? We’re a nonhuman species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?
I have been working on a review of Ted Chiang’s collection of short stories, Exhalation, and I am excited to post the review soon. For today, I wanted to give a glimpse into this amazing book by selecting a part of my favorite story in the collection. The story “The Great Silence” juxtaposes humans’ fascination with trying to seek other life forces by using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico alongside a commentary that humans are also overlooking other species on our planet which have an incredible way of communicating, namely parrots. In fact, “The Great Silence” is told from the perspective of a parrot that both praises humans for their capacity to create something as advanced as Arecibo but which also laments the communicable language of the parrots which may be lost forever if they were to die out.
This story is simply so powerful and beautiful, which is why I wanted to showcase it here today. “The Great Silence” was created in collaboration with artists Allora and Calzadilla who created a multiscreen video installation and who invited Chiang to create an accompanying written portion for their video, which is posted here:
Tirza Reads 