pipkin sweetgrass:
okay, a promise is a promise, so i'll post a passage momentarily, but first i wanted to comment about the role of the "mammy," a loved and feared presence in bourbon society. if a child displeased mammy, she would pin a dirty dishrag to the front of said child's clothing, and it had to be born as a mark of shame, and woe to the child that removed it. i remember a black lady who was quite dear to me who was the grandchild of slaves. i was young and tried to apologize for slavery and she laughed at me! she said it was a question of who owned who! it took me years to figure out what she meant by that, for she became silent on the matter and would only tell me to "larn an' study on it." which i did. she was like a grandmother to me. i miss her very much.
on to the passage!
"pippin had bowed and crushed with horror when he heard gandalf reject the terms and doom frodo to the torment of the tower; but he had mastered himself, and now he stood beside beregond in the front rank of gondor with imrahil's men. for it seemed best to him to die soon and leave the bitter story of his life, since all was in ruin.
"i wish merry were here," he heard himself saying, and quick thoughts raced through his mind, even as he watched the enemy come charging through to the assault. "well, well, now at any rate i understand poor denethor a little better. we might die together, merry and i, and since die we must, why not? well, as he is not here, i hope he'll find an easier end. but now i must do my best."
could anyone ask for a braver soldier than that? i couldn't. this is what makes me proud to be a bit tookish myself. people who are can really surprise others with their dedication to duty and efforts to do what one knows one must. it is a hard thing on a spirit that so loves laughter and song and merriment to have to turn to something so very serious, so very important that nearly everything in your life is eclipsed, but not everything, quite!
even here, we find him thinking of merry, and i think perhaps being inspired by him, and by frodo as well.
the next few paragraphs are riveting, and i'd like to cover them next, but i feel a bit overwhelmed to add them to this particular post. those are the paragraphs that made my heart just sink. heavy stuff, for our prince, to be sure... talk about his darker side! man, poor old pip... so determined and so brave in the very face of death itself.
grishnakthenasty:
pippin is a brave as any war hardened man of gondor, yet he still manages to keep his cheerful spirit. he definitely goes through a major growing-up process. before he was a happy hobbit in the shire. now he's a war hardened soldier of gondor.
we could all stand to learn a lesson from peregrin took.
uofjc1983:
yea, this is a very "dark side" of pippin, and i think i'll ponder on this one a bit... i've read this passage so many times that i've probably lost the true underlying message tolkien wanted to convey-- or better yet, what pippin wanted to convey! what a great passage to think on...
pearl took:
"well, as he is not here, i hope he finds an easier end. but now i must do my best."
wow!
can one really think such thoughts with a hoard of deadly enemies rushing toward you?
tolkien would have known. he lost many friends in wwI. he faced battle, and perhaps he had found himself thinking of his friends as the possibility of his own death would come rushing at him. i always have kept in mind that tolkien could write so realistically about war because he had been there.
it is so often true that the harder the situation the better we handle it, at least while in mid crisis. if there is a falling apart, it often comes later but when we need to be strong and handle the situation, we are strong indeed. pippin shows this so many times which i think is why we can relate to him so well.
uofjc1983:
okay, i'm a rock, but no matter how many times i read the part about how he "understands poor denethor better," i believe i keep missing the point. does pippin understand denethor better because now after seeing his formidable enemy first hand, he (pippin) figures they're all doomed and so resigns himself to death? it almost sounds like pippin is in despair (understandably!), or have i totally got it out of context? also, in the next sentence, it sounds like he recovers and volunteers to give his life:
"we might die together, merry and i, and since die we must, why not? well he is not here, i hope he'll find an easier end. but now i must do my best."
i see this as the kind of courage that only battle can conjure, and it's so typical of pippin to give it his all. i decided that this line was the part i most identified with. to me, it's like while pippin is looking at certain death, he thinks, 'why not?' or better yet 'why not me?' forgive me for sounding cold, but war happens; other soldiers are fighting to the death, why would he be different? so young, and so giving to the point of giving his life.
lostsailors:
i've always thought it sounded a bit like despair too uofjc, but despair as only pippin could spin it. when he says the line "we might die together... do my best" it seems to me pippin is thinking, "since we're all going to die anyhow, why not die together?" relating himself to denethor, who seeing faramir dying decided, "my son is dying, i too will die soon, so why don't we both die together." pippin now thinks he is going to his death. upon this realization he thinks of his best friend, whose chances of making it out of the war of the ring alive are also very slim. pippin wishes, since they will both probably die soon enough, that he and merry might spend their last living moments together.
in the end though, pippin bucks up, he doesn't give in to wanton wishes and despair, "merry is not here though" he tells himself. he wishes his friend a peaceful end and hopes he himself can give his all before he is done.
pippin despairs for such a brief moment (brevity! the soul of wit! unlike some of my posts- ho ho ho!) but is able to regain himself, regain his senses, swallow sadness and fear and just prepare himself to move on to whatever end fate might have in store for him.
pipkin sweetgrass:
i agree, lost, and it is this which makes me say time and again: hate war, but love the warrior, for in the end, a warrior fights, bleeds and dies, not for a banner or country or cause, but for his fellow soldier.
this is especially poignant right now, with war breathing down our necks.
tookishgirl:
great motto pipkin sweetgrass!
on a separate note, i'm interested to see pippin go to war in rotk. the sweetest thing i heard was that even while in his gondorian armor pippin's infamous scarf is never far from him. i think it's so sweet that even while battling on the other side of middle-earth pippin has a bit of the shire which remains forever close at hand.
pipkin sweetgrass:
oh, nooooooo! one more thing that will make me cry *buckets*!!! the scarf! oh dear, i can just see it. invest heavily in puffs and kleenex tissue.
sorry for the rather truncated and messy post, i had a sneezing fit while typing, i must have sneezed twenty times and i was kind of dizzy and my eyes were watering. what a trip that was!
i'm a little nervous about posting the subsequent paragraphs. as i said, this part is very poignant to me especially right now when so many of us have pippins over there right now, who could very well die far away from home and family. this whole thing is depressing to me, and i hope this can be resolved without bloodshed. then again, people felt that way about wwI and wwII. it's not like we little folks have a say in the matter, but it is we who will send our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers etc to pay a price in blood.
i feel that despair here is too strong a word for what pippin was feeling, more like resignment, a knowledge that he most likely would not live, but that he must play his part while breath was still in him.
we must learn from this great work of jrrt. avoid war if you can... but if you must go to war, do it for the right reasons, and then expect it to still be a living hell.
it breaks my heart when i think how the prof. must have felt when he found his own son was going to war, how sad he felt, yet proud.
how very human that is, these conflicting feelings. isn't that really at the core of this story, the human condition?
we fear war, but will fight. we fear death, yet we will give our lives. what a wonderment and puzzlement it all i, and even when one has a little age on them and experience to guide oneself, how confusing it is!
this is an incredibly sad part of the book to me, and i always think about the teenagers i went to school with dying in 'nam. so incredibly sad...
cranky old elf:
this thread is near and dear to me, and i feel i should contribute something to it, but at the moment i'm at a loss for words. i was in viet nam and saw the horrors of war, death and dying firsthand. it is something i wish no one had to even imagine, let alone live through. rotk is going to break my heart... i know it.
coe
tookishgirl:
really coe, you were? i can only imagine the things you've experienced. i have never seen war, nor will i, due to health issues, but the very idea terrifies me. it is one of the many reasons i admire pippin, a young man totally unaware of the ways of war willingly marching towards it
and pippin's scarf reminds me of the soldiers who go to war with tokens from home. oh dear, rotk is going to make me cry!
cranky old elf:
if i knew then what i know now, i would have developed some serious health problems a long time ago. maybe that's why all this talk of war now terrifies me so.
as far as pippin "willingly marching towards it," i don't really think he was all that willing... it was just something that had to be done, and never occurred to him not to go.
tookishgirl:
yes, perhaps "willingly" is the wrong word, i'm sorry. i just can't put it into proper words. you're correct, pippin does not "willingly" march into war, he just does. like you said, he battles because there is no alternative and because if he doesn't fight now there will be nothing to fight for in the future and maybe, if there was no other option i too would go to battle, but i hope that i never have to worry about such a thing.
- i admire those who go to war, because i cannot.
iluvmyboys99:
i've just spent a good deal of my (yay!) snow day reading all 11 pages of this particular topic, and i have such a greater understanding of pippin's character. i have not read the books yet, but i've seen both movies too many times to count (i'm sort of ... obsessed.) and pippin has always been my favorite character. it's nice to read an intelligent conversation for once ... i've read too many upsetting ones lately.
it's going to be interesting to see how the movie for rotk turns out, and i'm planning on going by myself and taking a box of tissues. hopefully i'll be crying because it's so good ... but i'm not too worried about that. i hope everyone who has not read the book that sees the movie gets to see just how courageous merry and pippin are in the end, and that they are not just comedic relief.
it's interesting to see how the story line can relate so well to what is happening in the world right now ... but at the same time it is an entirely different world.
uofjc1983:
"loss for words" is an understatement for me... i wish i could be as eloquent as you all and i thank everyone, esp. lostsailors, pipkin s. for your points of view (yes, i agree, despair was too strong of a word... i like resignment)-- and crankyoldelf... just thank you for serving with honor. i, too, hate war, and if a soldier/sailor is being true, there should be not one among us who would rather pray for peace than go full out into war.
i really love this thread as well; it's such a pleasure to read all the view points-- points that i have never considered after so many years of reading the books. it's just nice to know there are other lotr/pippin fans out there willing to discuss any topic. thanks.